The Century-America's Times- Episode 5 Over the Edge

In the summer of 1936, the city of Berlin had put on its best face as host of the Olympic Games. Berlin was a lovely city, it was a joyous. It was a happy city at that time. It was more attractive as a city for me, and then were London or Paris. In a world still plagued by the depression, the capital of Nazi Germany was thriving. The Nazis used the Olympic Games of 1936 to try to project a positive image of the new Germany. To translate the athlete success into the success of national socialism. During the Olympics, the uglier side of Hitler's national socialism was kept under wraps. There was no outward sign of anti semitism. There were no signs. That the reported later on, of course, Jews and dogs forbidden, I never saw that sign during the games. But the glittering surface of the international Olympic spirit could not completely obscure a darker reality. Like all pandemic equipment. Marty glickman and Sam stoller were members of the American relay team. The morning of the day we were supposed to run, we were told Sam and I that we were not going to run. No fit, American track and field athlete has ever not competed in the Olympic Games. Except Sam staller and me. The only two Jews on attractive. Marty glickman is convinced it was politics that kept him out of competition. He believes the American Olympic Committee did not want to embarrass Hitler. By having Jews stand on the winners podium. Almost everything at the Olympics seemed to be going Hitler's way. In event after event, German victories appeared to support his notion of Aryan racial superiority. But then came the 100 meters. The hopes of the American team rested on the son of an Alabama sharecropper. Jesse Owens. I was standing ten yards behind paper. Hitler hearing the name Jesse Owens angrily pushed back his chair and with a deep growl on his face, walked right past me and walked out. In that tense summer of 1936, Owens went on to win four gold medals. The competition was grand. I was very glad to come out on top. Thank you for coming. There were other American victories, but Germany won far more medals than any other nation, and with the 11th olympiad Hitler had pulled off an international success. For the rest of the decade it was not his athletes but his soldiers, who challenged the world. As Hitler with ever greater boldness, threatened his neighbors, the rest of Europe and Britain stood by incredulous. America safe on the other side of the ocean was still worried about the depression. I see one third of a nation ill housed ill clad ill nourished. January 1937. The clouds of The Great Depression still hovered over Franklin Roosevelt at his second inauguration. I see millions whose daily lives in city and on farm continue under conditions labeled in peace. Half a century ago. The president thought that in order to lift the nation's spirits he had to make the country face the economic crisis, head on together. And he used a battery of newly available mass media to do that. The government hired photographers to capture the faces of The Great Depression. No other government has ever done this. Carl maiden's just 28 of the time was among those who set out with their cameras. The 35 millimeter camera became the heart of the new age of photography. That is the new age of photojournalism. What moved me greatly was this spirit. They simply were proud of the fact that they could live in the circumstances and still be solid citizens. We photographers were putting skillful. One could not look at those pictures about what was happening in the country and not be affected by them. These photographs were all over the new magazines, life, chief among them. I can remember as a kid, running home from school on the day that life came to get that copy before my brothers got home and take it to my room so I could look at it first. It was as if the whole world was opening up in those pictures. And that magazine changed the way we saw the world. The United States Supreme Court today handed down its long at a time when people were desperate for news radio, more immediate and more trusted than newspapers became America's favorite way to keep up with events. Declared today that the man who really discovered radio to use it on a massive scale which made history was FDR. He found in order to be able to reach the citizenry he could use radio. And that was the beginning of the fireside chats. Our capacity is limited only by our ability to work together. He made the difference, people would be glued to their radios all over the country to find out from this man what's happening. What's going on? When can we get work? What will things change? And just as he understood the power of the still photograph and radio, Roosevelt also saw the newsreel as a way to pull the nation together. Boulder dam put into operation, giant spurts of water for always, there was something in there. A dam was being built. Or the river was being trained. It's formally opened by president for a client was being reopened. Or some invention was being announced. There was something good going out. Roosevelt made The White House an amplifier of all that the government was trying to do. And gentlemen, the president of the United States. 5 years of information through the radio and the moving picture. Have taken the whole nation school in the nation's business. We have learned to think as a nation. We have learned to feel ourselves a nation. I am. Villa with an assurance who could. In Germany, too, the new mass media were part of the national myth making machine. Joseph Goebbels, there's Hitler's minister of enlightenment and propaganda control the printed press and exploited the power of pictures and sound. At goebbels direction, the government put loudspeakers in the streets and made cheat radios available to every shop school and home. Every German was now within the sound of Hitler's voice. To have a real radio now that was fantastic. Every day they will political programs themselves and I learned a lot. From the radio, I thought it was great, but for the father so it was one of the main weapons now of brainwash. Propaganda films promoted a glorious Germanic world of tomorrow. We were told that we were the top nation on earth. We were the chosen people. He was ahead of us, we called it the master race. And that we were more intelligent and better looking and stronger than all the others. And that it was our God given duty to force our life onto all the others. To glorify the master race on film Hitler's choice was Germany's preeminent filmmaker Fritz Lang. Lang sensing the time when one could say no to the Führer had passed, left for Paris. The powerful film propaganda post would go to Hitler's second choice. Director laney grief install. Her film triumph of the will use the 1934 Nazi Party Congress as a vast backdrop designed to make Hitler look like a God. Military music was played and he marched down the center aisle, flanked by heaven knows how many fortresses uniform creatures. And then he would hold behind the lectern, standing there, silent. Waiting. Until the tension rolls. And then he would start. Her sexter. For tight arc to be begun to end up. Thus familiar and torture, he also had wounds that alliance steam slowly revving up a scroll to Belgium. Now I can try to find finally reached a tremendous pitch. If you sat in an audience like that, you just swept along. Never before had mass communication been more effective. Never before had it been used with more sinister intent. The sight also I just need to stick the judiciary intellectualists for this room to enter. Only four months after Hitler came to power bonfires burned in the streets of German cities. Flames were fed with books by Thomas Mann, Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, Sigmund Freud. And other authors who were deemed subversive to the German people. They are November public. Democracy in Germany was dead. Hitler's own book mein kampf, my struggle was now the blueprint for Germany's future. In the new Germany, Nazi Party thugs the paramilitary brown shirts would patrol the streets to root out and arrest anyone who stood in Hitler's way. Thousands of political opponents were sent to hundreds of concentration camps. The first was near the German village of Dachau. Everyone knew that you could be sent to such a camp without due process of law. We had a verse that was widely recited, lieber got mahmic, does it need? Dear God strike me dumb so that I won't be sent to Dachau. In the new Germany, everyone was classified by race. In the new Germany, only those who Hitler considered perfect, the purest members of the Aryan race were welcome. The main undesigned group of the Jewish people, the Jews. We were being told that the Jews say are behind everything which is bad in Germany. There was a lot of propaganda against the Jews. There were no longer any normal newspapers, most of them were Nazi. You saw headlines or Jews at criminals, the Jews are vermin. They must be killed. They must be ousted. Hitler had declared in mein kampf that Jews weakened the German master race. Well, of course we talked about race in school. And the superior races, the non superior, the degenerate races, and the teacher had some calipers to measure the width of your eyes and your nose and so on, the head. In our classroom we had a poster, the head shapes from the sides, the Aryans, of course, they looked good from the sides. They look good from the front, they were blond and they were blue eyed. And when I was about 14 years old, my hair began to darken. And I sometimes was worried that I didn't look like a proper area anymore, because my hair was not really blond anymore. And also my nose is a little bit hooked as you might probably see. Sometimes they look at another mirror here. And I was frightened that somebody should think that I had some Jewish connections. Two years after they came to power, they came out with the nurnberg racial laws, which separated the Jews from the German people. We were not allowed to go swimming with the other children. We were not allowed to play with the other children. We ran a lot to go and excursions with the other children. And so on. Jews were stripped of their citizenship. Their businesses boycotted. They were forbidden to marry or have sexual relations with Aryans. Any trace of Jewish ancestry meant immediate banishment from all civil service jobs. I was classified a quarter Jew. Mongol of the second degree, I was dismissed on the public service. All I had achieved for examinations through studying and other efforts to establish myself in life, all that had was, I spoke of the pen cut off. Hitler had made his vision for his people a reality. And he planned to force that vision far beyond Germany's borders. And I remember when I was a guest with my mother at the British discard, you could see on a clear day you could see Salzburg. And he pointed out to me to see that there, boy. That Salzburg, that is in my homeland of Austria. And one of these days, I'm going to see to it that that will join with Germany. On March the 12th, 1938 Hitler made good on his plan. Americans heard it first from NBC's max Jordan. Ladies and gentlemen, at the Austrian frontier town of Minsk and envious stream of German soldiers is pouring into Austria. It was astonishing the takeover of a country broadcast live on radio. The cheers of a Chancellor Adolf Hitler, returning to his homeland for the first time in almost 25 years. Carla stepped lived in the Austrian capital Vienna. She was 20 years old. And a Jew. It was my home. So when suddenly the Germans marched into Austria, where they were welcomed with open arms the world ended for them. It was a Friday evening. Carlos began to march down, shouting slogans, and remember one specifically, which was, which translated means Jews, perish in your own filth. And it was clear that something was imminent, something was happening. Saturday morning, the brown shirts and Brexit already started to go against the Jewish population. They got Jewish men and women out to scrub the sidewalks on their knees. Being kicked by the population standing around them. Hitler wasn't even in Vienna yet, but what took Germany 5 years to Austria 24 hours. In the spring of 1938, few Americans could avoid the news of Hitler in Germany. Shows that once again, Germany has a real arm that would mean war. When will Nazi aggression end? The democratic nations draw together again. The rest of Europe, Hitler orders all Germany to mobilize that its full war train, a million and a half. Growing anxieties over the increasing power of the Third Reich turned a heavyweight boxing match in June 1938 into an international showdown in one corner of the ring would be Hitler's pride and joy max schmeling. In the other, the American champion, Joe Lewis. Joe symbolized not only the fight against discrimination, but the struggle against fascism. At a time when the entire world was talking about Hitler was antisemitism under the ring Maxwell, Joe Louis, let's pick with two straight left to the chin. There is tremendous tension. I write to the head and the tournament is watching carefully. I was glued to the radio. I left up to the jaw and sneering his down. We just exploded, shouted. Wow. The count is 5, 6, the men are in the ring. The fight is over. Match living is peaking in one round. People shouted out of their windows, Joe wands, so on all up and down the paper. We won. It was a victory. And we needed victories very badly at the time. When 21 year old milt wolf heard the news about Joe Louis Wolfe was already fighting against Hitler in the Spanish Civil War. In that war, Nazi Germany was supporting Francisco Franco's fascist rebels who were about to overthrow Spain's freely elected government. There is a kid in Brooklyn, okay, and I was caught up in this whole bit of the war in Spain. For myself and with a commitment to a struggle against fascism. Milk wolf joined 2800 American volunteers in the Abraham Lincoln brigade in defiance of American neutrality, they went to defend democracy in what was widely seen as a dress rehearsal for the greater battle with Hitler. Though these were guys who were essentially coming off the street, most of them had no military training at all. And up to the front they went. They were hitting us with our children. And they were shaking us with the German planes. And guys, we're getting killed and wounded. For myself, the war in Spain gave meaning to the word anti fascism. By 1938, democracy was doomed in Spain as it had been in Italy and Austria and Germany. Hitler's ideology and Hitler's armies were a danger to freedom everywhere. It has now reached the stage where the very foundations of civilization are seriously threatened. Let no one imagine that America will escape. That America may expect mercy. Let this western hemisphere will not be attacked. September the 12th of 1938, the entire civilized world as a CBS broadcast put it was anxiously waiting to hear Hitler's next threat. It came in an unprecedented live broadcast from the Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg. Hitler demanded that the sudetenland a region of Czechoslovakia inhabited mostly by German speaking people become a part of Germany. The Columbia broadcasting system has brought its listeners to the address by Adolf Hitler. At this time we present HP causing born. Good afternoon, everybody. Adolf Hitler has spoken in the world has listened. The world has listened because it's here that this speech might mean war. The British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, who had never been on an airplane before, flew to Germany twice within ten days to seek a peaceful settlement. Just to see on the news real screen Chamberlain coming ever since umbrella. It's unthinkable to the German mind, Hitler was an umbrella, and you laugh and you think about that. We thought about weak. Chamberlain failed. Hitler refused to withdraw his demands. The sudetenland would be his one way or the other. War now seemed inevitable. In Britain, nervous citizens began to build bomb shelters. He in France, army reserves were called up. And then only 24 hours before Hitler's promised invasion of Czechoslovakia. Prime minister Chamberlain, once again flew to Germany. At a meeting in Munich with Hitler and Italy's Benito Mussolini, Chamberlain abandoned the sudetenland to Germany. In return for what he called peace in our time. Hitler gave his word that there would be no more territorial claims. Chamberlain flew home to a hero's welcome from a Britain anxious to avoid another conflict. After the devastating slaughter of World War I, only 20 years earlier. Which bears his name upon it as well as mine. As symbolic of the desire of our two peoples, never to go to war with one another again. Chamberlain got what he thought was peace. Hitler got the sudetenland. To Austrians, it was a great thing, their land is bordering on Germany and as the Sudan people were Germans. So we thought yes, well, I should say live in Czechoslovakia. On October 1st, 1938, Hitler welcomed three and a half million czechoslovakians of German blood into the Reich. Hitler's reception was a replay of Austria. As Hitler was being cheered in the sudetenland, the Nazis campaign against German Jews was intensified. Very much aided by an incident in Paris. On November 7th, a young Jew Herschel grinspan distraught over the deportation of his parents. Walked into the German embassy in Paris and shot a minor official, Ernst von rotten. While she was fighting death, the newspapers carried headlines, Ben I headlines against the Jewish people. The Jews have taken off their mask from their face. They have shown now what they want to do to us. It was dreadful. We said, if only this man does not die. But of course he died. Death became Hitler's opportunity. Only a junior diplomat, the von rath was nonetheless accorded the honors of a fallen hero. The ceremony was intended to inspire revenge. For once, said Joseph Goebbels, the Jews should get the feel of popular anger. That anger exploded on the night of November 10th, 1938. Christel knight. I saw a synagogue in flames. People came from all over. The fire department came. They did not make one effort to put out the flames. Kids were laughing, kids were having fun. I heard killed the Jews, killed the Jews. For 24 hours, Nazi stormtroopers rampaged through Germany and Austria, destroying synagogues and shops. The night of broken glass, in German, cristal. Scores of people were killed, more than 20,000 arrested. It was now clear there was no future for Jews in Germany. For the first time in America, it broke through a certain part of the awareness that something horrible was happening in Hitler's Germany. Roosevelt himself said he just was incomprehensible to imagine that such a thing could happen in the 20th century. And still people felt we've seen what happened when we get involved in Europe's wars. This is Europe's problem. On Easter Sunday, 1939, an enormous crowd came together around the reflecting pool in the nation's capital. To hear one of the great voices of modern times, Marion Anderson. Because she was a Negro, Anderson had been barred from performing a constitution hall by the daughters of the American Revolution. When president Roosevelt heard this, he enabled her to sing at the Lincoln Memorial. And I was among the 75,000 people gathered to hear her sing that day. This was a moment, maybe even more important to us than what Joe Lewis had done when he demolished max schmeling. And we stood there. And we listened. And tears ran down our faces. It was a part of America's statement. And Hitler's face about what we truly thought about black people. Marion, affirmed for all of us what the true meaning of America was. That powerful symbol of racial justice gave hope to Europe to Jews. Hope that despite strict quotas, limiting immigration, America would provide a haven from the terror of Adolf Hitler. A mother desperately tried to get out of Austria and because of the quota system, there were others difficulties and could not gain entrance in the United States. And one possibility was to get entrance to Cuba. Fred Reich's family joined more than 900 Jewish refugees on board the steamship St. Louis bound for Cuba. But it Havana, Cuba officials refused to let them land. Some suicide started to happen. Remember one person slid his wrists and jumped overboard in the harbor. The fear is, of course, if you can't land in Cuba, then you have to go back to Germany. To a concentration camp. We all knew that. And so the St. Louis turned north towards the United States. For 5 days, the ship sat off the Florida coast while the captain appealed for refuge. Everybody's hopes were up, Franklin Roosevelt was everybody's idol. And nothing will happen to us. America wouldn't let us down. But the United States government did not permit them to land. The passenger sent one last urgent plea directly to president Roosevelt. There was no reply. The St. Louis had no choice but to sail back across the Atlantic. At the last minute England, France Holland and Belgium agreed to take the stranded refugees. But because the war was spreading over the next 6 years, 660 of the more than 900 passengers would perish at the hands of the Nazis. President Roosevelt was sympathetic to the plight of the refugees, but with the United States Congress in an isolationist frame of mind, he felt he could not spend political capital saving a small number of Jews when all of Europe needed help against Hitler. Roosevelt believed that the only way to stop Nazi aggression and keep America insulated from Europe's troubles was to arm Britain and France. It was not a popular idea in a country that was officially neutral. In March 1939, 6 months after the Munich agreement, which Neville Chamberlain thought Hitler would honor Hitler broke his promise not to make any territorial claims and took all of Czechoslovakia. And still, most Americans wanted to leave the Europeans to deal with their own crisis. America was interested in a very different future. Sound of brass rolled a drum. To the world of tomorrow we call it. In the summer of 1939, New York was home to the world's fair. It was called the world of tomorrow. Here we come young and old. Visitors got their first look at television. How it worked we did not know. I didn't ask. I was just in awe of the whole thing. General Motors confidently offered visitors a future without traffic jams. General Electric, dreams of easy living. With a dishwasher. All of the dreams of the future were suddenly going to be materialized, machines were going to make us better. I'm here he comes, ladies and gentlemen, walking up to greet you under his own power. He was like science fiction for me 12 years old waiting to see the world of tomorrow. The flags of 16 nations flew over the fair. Only one major power was absent. Germany had been invited but Hitler had declined. He had his own plan for the world of tomorrow. On the last day of August, visitors were enjoying another festive evening at the fair. As we were approaching the Polish pavilion, the lights went out. And we didn't know whether it was an electrical problem. For one, because the rest of the fair was still lit. All of a sudden, a loud speaker went on. And they had announced that Germany had just marched into pulpit. Suddenly the world tomorrow had lost its right promise. And here is united France from Warsaw which says officially that German planes have bombed railway station in three voltage towns. I am speaking to you from the cabinet room at 10 Downing Street. This country is at war with Germany. I remember the broadcaster in London saying and I'll never forget that sentence he used tonight the lights are going out all over Europe and no one knows when they live or come back on. While the storm clouds gather for a broken sea. Let us swear I'll lead you one night free the war in Europe made Americans realize just how blessed they were. It is display of patriotism flag sales soared. And a song by famous Jewish immigrant Irving Berlin went to the top of the hit three. America. I lost most Americans still wanted Europe to fight its own battle, but president Roosevelt and a growing number of people knew that they had to prepare for the worst, as events in Europe raged out of control. In the spring of 1940, Hitler turned his blitzkrieg, his lightning war against the countries in Western Europe. I think that time probably he was at the top point of his power. 6 weeks to be held in 18 days to occupy Norway and Denmark took beat Holland in 5 days and built him in 17 days. I think those who doubted him, they then thought that man is just superb he wins everything. And then France fell in just 6 weeks. On June 14th, German troops entered Paris. Even as France collapsed, the German plane started to attack Britain the last democratic stronghold in Europe. Still, the United States held back. President Roosevelt was able to help America's battered English ally with the program to lend and lease them arms. We shall send you in ever increasing numbers, ships, planes, tanks, guns. That is our purpose and our pledge. But as a beleaguered Britain became freedom's last holdout in Europe, full American involvement became increasingly inevitable. In December of 1940, the first peacetime draft in American history began. America's armed forces were in woeful shape. The U.S. Army had under 200,000 men, fewer than Holland, or Portugal. I remember even running around with sticks for rifles, and we used old tomato cans from the mass hall. They got Campbell's soup cans and they'd put gravel in them, and they'd rattle, and then we'd throw them over as far as we could throw them. And that's learning how to throw a grenade. Oh, then ROTC, I was starting to be an Austin in the American army. And I would look at that German war machine. And it put the cold chills up and down my back. And I used to say to myself, you mean to tell me when you got to go up against those guys? It wasn't very pretty picture. By 1941, history's deadliest conflict was underway. And the very survival of freedom in the world depended on the outcome. That's on the next episode of the century, America's time. I'm Peter Jennings, thank you for joining us.