When Americans volunteers came back from fighting fascism in Spain, the US gov hounded them, but since the US was technically supposed to be opposed to fascism, they wrangled up a new category just for them—“prematurely antifascist” https://twitter.com/paulacweston/status/1300871311170957314

Although, in some kind of a ~*nuance*~, Roosevelt did speak of his refusal to support (or at least not actively undercut) the Spanish Republic as one of his bigger mistakes, up there with Internment, and not bombing the train system to the death camps or allowing in refugees.

That said, it’s all fine and good for a president to privately regret something, even to many people with whom he spoke, but the relevant criteria ultimately is what they did, not that they felt bad about it.

In all 4 of the above cases, Roosevelt’s concern was that these policies (or their reversal) would be deeply unpopular either with America as a whole, or with a specific necessary contingent of the constituency.

Roosevelt’s refusal to allow in refugees in general, was due to a broad xenophobia & opposition to new immigration to America. His refusal to not allow in Jewish refugees specifically as well as to not bomb the trains etc, was he didn’t want to be seen as fighting a war for Jews.

He privately regretted internment, and his wife publicly campaigned against it, but he reasoned that internment was too popular among the American electorate & that undoing it would make him seem soft & would lose public support.

For the Spanish Republic specifically, it was motivated by the Catholic constituencies he had, specifically Polish Catholics but also the Clergy, who threw their support behind the Francoists.

Setting aside the morality of any of these questions, which I think we can agree they’re immoral, what can we say about each of these?

The hounding of the Republican volunteers was not uniquely top down or Federally based, as there were plenty of local red squads, & it was an extension of national anti communist policy. That said, almost no one would have noticed if they’d just left them alone.

The refusal to support the Republic—from an electoral standpoint it may be true that actively supporting it could have lost him the Catholic constituency—would he have lost the election? Idk. But this doesn’t change that he could’ve remained genuinely neutral & symmetric.

As concerns bombing of the trains, it’s hard to see how that could have been used propagandistically as that would require admitting their existence. It also wouldn’t have diverted that much military resources. Seems unjustifiable even on the crassest realpolitik terms.

Not allowing in refugees & thus condemning 100s of thousands if not more? Absolutely morally horrendous & inexcusable. Ditto for Britain & its Commonwealth, Which even more so could have saved millions. As in theory, could have the USSR (although that’s a slightly different case)

But was Roosevelt right that the instinctive American xenophobia & antisemitism would have made allowing in refugees deeply unpopular? Unfortunately the answer is probably yes. As is the fact that the Nazis would have used it for propaganda purposes in any of the 3 cases.

Japanese Internment is a similar issue—absolutely morally horrendous & inexcusable—but the American body politic at the time was deeply racist & xenophobic, & internment was incredibly well supported. Domestic competitors would’ve used it for propaganda against FDR.

Rather than bog this thread down further, I’m just going to write what i was going to write about the realpolitik vs. morality of each of these, & the nature of historical inference, but in my notes and post the screenshots.