The exhibition does not offer simple answers to such a troubling question. Instead, it emphasizes that the domestic context of the United States at the time - especially Americans’ isolationism from world affairs in the aftermath of World War I; prejudices against foreigners and immigrants, racism, and antisemitism; and the economic devastation of the Great Depression - shaped Americans’ responses to Nazism. News about Nazism was always overshadowed in American newspapers by coverage of the Great Depression in the 1930s and then World War II in the 1940s.
Context alone is not enough to explain American inaction, however. The exhibition also looks closely at decisions made within the US government by its leaders. During the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his administration focused on lifting the nation out of the Great Depression. As the 1930s gave way to the ‘40s, FDR prioritized leading the nation to war but not rescuing Jews.
We cannot fully understand the government’s response to Nazism without also asking what American citizens wanted from their elected leaders. Public opinion polls from the late 1930s reveal that the vast majority (usually around 70%) of Americans were against admitting refugees to the United States and that most Americans hoped that United States would not enter the war in Europe. The exhibition prompts visitors to consider these opinion polls from the era and then to ask why FDR and his administration opted to go against the grain of popular opinion on intervention in war but chose not to try to lead the public to more openness on the refugee question. Simple explanations, still offered too often to explain FDR’s decision making, should not suffice here, and the exhibition helps visitors understand the texture of American life in all its complexities during the 1930s and ‘40s.