Analysis: The War and Human Freedom
"Analysis: The War and Human Freedom" explores the critical intersection of warfare and the fight for human rights during World War II, particularly in the context of the Holocaust and the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany. It highlights the chilling reality of the systematic extermination of Jews, escalating from early discriminatory practices to the full-scale implementation of mass murder in gas chambers, marking a profound violation of human dignity and rights. The discussion centers on the moral imperative for nations to combat totalitarianism, framing the war not merely as a conflict between countries, but as a profound struggle between good and evil, freedom and oppression.
The overview also emphasizes the role of international cooperation in safeguarding human rights post-war, advocating for a collective commitment to rebuilding societies and ensuring that such atrocities are never repeated. By reflecting on the lessons of this dark chapter in history, it urges contemporary societies to remain vigilant against the encroachment of tyranny and to uphold the fundamental rights of all individuals. This analysis serves as a reminder of the responsibilities that come with freedom and the necessity of collective action in the face of oppression.
Analysis: The War and Human Freedom
Date: July 23, 1942
Author: Cordell Hull
Genre: speech
Summary Overview
US secretary of state Cordell Hull delivered this speech on all US radio networks on July 23, 1942, just weeks after the New York Times reported on the systematic mass murder of Jews in gas chambers at Chelmno, an extermination camp in Poland. The report was so shocking that at first many assumed the number of murdered Jews—seven hundred thousand—had been exaggerated or included those who had died of other causes. Though the murder of European Jews had been carried out fairly openly since the beginning of the war, the scale and nature of the killings—the systematic, state-supported murder of civilians—had not been widely known or reported. Hull's speech was one of many to look ahead to the world after the war and to advocate for international recognition, and protection, of human rights. All previous peacekeeping efforts had failed, he stated, and the world needed to ensure that once the brutal conflict was over, it would not be able to happen again. Winning the war was the most immediate concern, but for Hull and many others, the struggle was not between warring nations, but between good and evil, freedom and slavery. Though both German and Japanese leaders would be tried for crimes against humanity after the war, the Nazis' systematic slaughter of the Jews remains one of the most egregious violations of human rights in history.
Defining Moment
There were 9.5 million Jews living in Europe in 1933, the year Adolf Hitler became the chancellor of Germany. Jews constituted a little less than 2 percent of the European population and came from widely diverse cultural, racial, and ethnic backgrounds. Also in 1933, Hitler's regime set up concentration camps, imprisoning those deemed dangerous, including political opponents, homosexuals, and Romani (or Gypsies). In April 1933, Germans boycotted Jewish businesses, and Jews were removed from civil service positions. Nazi racial theory, which held to a strict racial hierarchy with Aryan people at the top and Jewish people (and others, including Romani) at the bottom, was taught in schools, and Jews were systematically excluded from all aspects of public life. In August 1934, after the death of the German president Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler removed the last vestige of constitutional government and declared himself Führer, or leader. In September 1935, the Nuremberg Race Laws provided a legal framework for the persecution of Jews, identified by their ancestry, rather than by their religion. In November 1938, a wave of anti-Jewish violence known as Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) swept through Germany. Synagogues were burned, businesses were destroyed, and, in the weeks that followed, laws and restrictions were issued stripping German and Austrian Jews of any remaining rights to property, money, and freedom. American students, journalists, diplomats, and tourists visited Germany during these years, and reports of the deteriorating situation in Europe were widespread. Despite this, the United States remained isolationist and neutral, failing to act to protect Germany's Jewish people in any large-scale way.
Germany's invasion of Poland in September 1939 spelled the end of any pretense of human rights for the Jews of Europe under Nazi control. Within weeks of the invasion, high-ranking German officials issued instructions that German Jews should be moved to Poland and that Polish Jews should be concentrated in cities near railway lines to facilitate their removal. By the spring of 1941, the removal to camps and ghettos of Jews in occupied areas was well underway, but the institutionalized mass killing of Jewish people was not yet widespread. However, after Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, mobile killing units of police and paramilitary units, called Einsatzgruppen, began to murder Jews on a massive scale, emptying entire communities and murdering all of their inhabitants. These units followed German troops into the Soviet Union. They were disbanded when the death camps were operational, as the latter were considered to be a more efficient method of carrying out the eradication of the Jews.
The United States entered World War II on December 8, 1941. That same day, the killing center at Chelmno, Poland, began the first stationary, large-scale gassing operations of the war. The report of this killing center made its way to the New York Times on July 2, 1942, in a report from the exiled Polish government in London.
Author Biography
Cordell Hull was born in Pickett County, Tennessee, in 1871. He attended elementary school in a one-room rural schoolhouse and then attended Montvale Academy at Celina, Tennessee; the Normal School at Bowling Green, Kentucky; and the National Normal University at Lebanon, Ohio. He received his law degree from Cumberland University in Tennessee in 1891. Hull briefly practiced law before running for a seat in the Tennessee legislature. He was a state legislator from 1893 to 1897, and returned to practice law after serving briefly in the Spanish-American War. In 1903, Hull was appointed a Tennessee district judge.
In 1907, Hull was elected to the US House of Representatives, where he served until 1931, when he was elected senator. He resigned in 1933 when he was appointed secretary of state by President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He resigned in 1944 because of ill health and was given a Nobel Peace Prize in 1945. He died in 1955 in Washington, DC.
Document Analysis
Hull begins his speech by stating that the present war is not limited to conflict between nations or regions but is a “life-and-death” struggle against “the most ambitious, depraved, and cruel leaders in history.” The nations that oppose this tyranny are defending freedom for the entire world, not just for their own people. Hull groups Germany and Japan together as the perpetrators of this war on human freedom, arguing that in every country that has been invaded by these nations, no matter the form that the invasion occurred, the result has been the same—the complete annihilation of all human rights and the enslavement of the population. Nations that have been conquered by these totalitarian leaders saw the “murder of defenseless men, women, and children; rape, torture, and pillage; mass terrorization; the black system of hostages; the starvation and deprivations that beggar description; the most thorough-going bondage the world has ever seen.” Rather than being a “New Order,” this descent into slavery is instead the legacy of the worst periods in human history. There is no way to avoid conflict, and attempts to remain neutral are unrealistic, Hull states. There is no reasoning with the “the would-be conquerors and enslavers of the human race,” he argues.
The human race has a natural inclination to seek freedom, Hull argues, which eventually dooms any conquest that depends on enslavement. Once freedom is won, however, Hull states, many nations fail to defend it. In times of peace and security it is hard to believe that evil of this magnitude exists, Hull notes. The greatest shame in the worldwide fight for freedom is to refuse to participate in its defense. Hull calls on the reports of mass murder in Europe and Asia, including in German-operated gas chambers, to ask whether anyone honestly believes that they would be better off with totalitarian masters.
Hull calls upon the Unites States to accept its failure to defend freedom in the way he describes, though he is careful to lay out the good-faith attempts at peace and diplomacy that the United States hoped would forestall or prevent war. Initially, Hull notes, the United States turned a blind eye to the growing worldwide threat—“War began in 1931 when Japan invaded China.” As peaceful countries were conquered one by one, the danger of Japanese and German aggression to the world became more and more clear. Once roused, however, the United States became determined to achieve the destruction of the totalitarian regimes of Germany and Japan.
Hull looks ahead to when, after the war is won, the pressing needs of war-torn countries will need to be met. Hull says the world needs to address both the transition from war to peacetime economies and the challenges and opportunities that rebuilding the world will provide. Led by the Allied powers, the international community will need to work to create law-abiding nations and rebuild shattered economies and infrastructure. Hull calls upon the nations that signed the 1942 Declaration by the United Nations to fulfill their promises of cooperation, economic freedom, and the protection of human rights, once peace is achieved.
Bibliography and Additional Reading
Beevor, Antony. The Second World War. New York: Little, 2012. Print.
Friedlander, Henry. The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1995. Print.
Lipstadt, Deborah E. Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933–45. New York: Simon, 1986. Print.