Advocate for the Doomed The Diaries and Papers of James G. McDonald, 1932-1935 [Hardcover]

The private diary of James G. McDonald (18861964) offers a unique and hitherto unknown source on the early history of the Nazi regime and the Roosevelt administrations reactions to Nazi persecution of German Jews. Considered for the post of U.S. ambassador to Germany at the start of FDRs presidency, McDonald traveled to Germany in 1932 and met with Hitler soon after the Nazis came to power. Fearing Nazi intentions to remove or destroy Jews in Germany, in 1933 he became League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and sought aid from the international community to resettle outside the Reich Jews and others persecuted there. In late 1935 he resigned in protest at the lack of support for his work.

This is the eagerly awaited first of a projected three-volume work that will significantly revise the ways that scholars and the world view the antecedents of the Holocaust, the Shoah itself, and its aftermath.

. . . this collection is an invaluable document in understanding the period that witnessed the Nazi 'seizure of power.' . . . Highly recommended.McDonald's diaries shed important new light on efforts to assist Jews fleeing Germany in the years 19331935 from the perspective of an individual deeply involved in those effortsand one who did not revise whatever he wrote at the time. . . . The volume, with its extensive new information, will appeal to a substantial audience, not only in the academic world but among a wider readership likely to extend well beyond U.S. borders.

Richard Breitman is Professor of History at American University. His books include The Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution and (with Alan Kraut) American Refugee Policy and European Jewry, 19331945(IUP, 1988). He is editor of the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.

Barbara McDonald Stewart has taught at George Mason University and is author of United States Government Policy on Refugees from Nazism, 19331940. She lives lÃÄ