*hits self upside the head*

I have no idea how I missed that…sorry!

No, I meant the wishful thinking to be referring to the editor at the time: he knew better, he knew to be on the lookout, and yet somehow he believed that Hitler was subdued by his time in jail and would go forth to sin no more? (Wow, that was a strange mixed-religion reference.)

We can look at it now (hindsight) and wonder how he could have been so naive, but he would have been looking at a different set of facts and rumors at the time.

I agree with you that people have a tendency to only pay attention to suffering in another part of the world if there’s something in it for them.  As you say, this guy was different: he was very much attuned to the specific situation….except, somehow, he wasn’t.

I don’t have specific knowledge to add to what you’ve already said, except to agree with you that there was a lot of German support by that time in the US thanks to significant immigration in the late 1800′s.  In other words, they were onto the next generation or two, no longer the newbies, and we know how descendants of immigrants to the US can be very vocal about how THEY are real Americans and any new wave of immigration is suspect.  A number of Jews were actually moving back to the area now (once again) known as Israel even back then…the US was not the only immigration choice for them at the time.  So I’m sure you’re right, that there was more pro-German than pro-Jewish sentiment informing the intel the editor was getting, both professionally and socially.

And yes, US industrial leaders had a lot of financial reason to believe the best of a country that was purchasing in bulk.  I think you’re right that IBM was one of them.

How to read the signs, in time?  How to know when what you’re witnessing is sending up a real red flag that needs to be heeded ASAP?  As you said, the guy must have been haunted by his credulity for the rest of his life.

Disqus does not make extended discussion very easy, so I’m glad we’ve been able to continue this past an initial post and response.  That’s the only way to really understand what someone is saying.

I wrote both posts – your 2nd para above underlines the point I made that it’s triple-weird.  Which it really, really is.  There’s got to be much more to this story, because a savvy mass-media organisation, which the NYT most certainly was in 1924, could be accused of varnishing or manipulating the truth – at best, failing miserably in their ‘duty’ to print the news.  There is a strong case to be made that well-informed mandarins the world over knew precisely what Hitler was going to do, and held back from action for one reason or another.

I initially read into your ‘wishful thinking’ comment a challenge to my personal stance that history repeats itself, and anyone with any nouse knows what it is that is about to be repeated.

In general, sadly, unless there is some crucial resource (eg oil / strategic military interest) involved, our developed-nation ethical sensibilities evaporate into misty-eyed comments and waffle.

Like in Srebrenica, we let the massacres happen before moving seriously to stop it.

Know any more about this situation (1924 NYT)?  I’m feeling there may have been a lot of pro-German sentiment in the USA at the time – especially given booming stock prices, a large immigrant German population, and the rapid development of a potential trading partner.

Didn’t IBM export a load of gear to the 3rd Reich?

Thanks for checking back in.

Hindsight is 20/20, but for that particular editor to dismiss any concern at that point seems hard to explain.

Having been actively involved myself getting people out of one of the countries you mentioned (an Underground Railroad-type operation), I would expect to be more sensitive to news coming from that particular country, just as peregrinus was saying should have been true about the NY TImes editor.

Hitler article from the previous day has far less detail (http://archive.org/stream/NYTimes-Dec16-31-1924#page/n186/mode/1up Bottom of last column to the right)

http://abcnews.go.com/US/charles-manson-denied-parole-dangerous-man/story?id=16111128

How do you feel about Somalia, Afghanistan, Pakistan, DR Congo, North Korea, Burma, Ethiopia?  How about the news coming out of Mali – jeez, even Timbuktu just spent the best part of a year being run by psychos.

Kind of that there’s stuff going on, but … what?  Like, girls can’t go to school?  Women have to wear burkhas?  Quarter of a million people displaced by ‘violence’?

The mass media really doesn’t like reporting on upcoming genocide, as it really upsets people and turns them off the news outlet.  But it’s perfectly predictable – a lot of things get set in play before the trigger gets pulled.

I don’t believe in 1924 they were any more innocent to the potential of Hitler than we are now to the actuality.  But because the dice hadn’t yet rolled, they kept it on the way back-burner.

Check out http://www.genocidewatch.org for an informative read.

I don’t think they’re tame, either.  And I don’t think I’m paranoid to be wary of them.

http://archive.org/stream/NYTimes-Dec16-31-1924#page/n231/mode/1up

Making Hitler believe that the English thought there was going to be no war made the Germans delay an invasion of Britain, and it allowed enough planes to be built that the Battle of Britain went the way it did.  Not only that but the British public overwhelmingly was against war and wanted appeasement, so there’s not a whole lot more that he could do.

I’m not saying that Chamberlain did everything right, or that he didn’t make some bad choices, but if he hadn’t done what he did, there wouldn’t have been much for Churchill to do anything with.

Unless I’m wrong, which is always the possibility with this stuff.

*(I am not a history professor)

History is being kept from me by a paywall.

Adolph Ochs owned and edited the NYT at the time.  He was jewish, and a crusader against anti-semitism (in particular, the negative portrayal of jews in the US media).  He was born to German-Jewish immigrants.

By 1921, Hitler was openly and loudly campaigning on a platform that, amongst other things, was openly anti-semitic.  The article suggests the NYT were very familiar with him as a high-profile individual, and that the NYT simply went along with the ‘authorities’ view that he was now safe.

All in, this was a shite piece of reporting and must have haunted Ochs from 1925 on.  You’d have thought eyes would have been closely on Hitler from the moment he uttered an anti-semitic word.

Imagine the difference had the NYT crusaded early against Hitler.

Or, worse, some people DO agree that something is fascist, when it isn’t, and do something about it. (Luckily, that hasn’t happened yet, but there have been a whole hell of a lot of threats, and it may actually happen.)

(Torture is not what I’m talking about.)