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Overview
Lorraine M. Lees explores the persistent tension between ethnicity and national security by focusing on the Yugoslav-American community during World War II. Identified by the Roosevelt administration as the most representative example of the ethnic conflict they sought to address, the Yugoslav-American community suffered from a severe political split, as right-wing monarchists loyal to Mihajlovi´c and the Chetniks battled left-wing supporters of Tito's partisans.
Lees examines the views of two groups of administration policy makers: one that perceived America's European ethnic groups as rife with divided loyalties, and hence a danger to national security; and a second that viewed such communities as valuable sources for political intelligence that would help the war effort in Europe. Yugoslav-Americansand National Security during World War II is significant not only to understanding the Roosevelt administration's equation of ethnicity with disloyalty, but also for its insights into similar attitudes that have arisen throughout periods of crisis in American history as well as today.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780252032103 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Illinois Press |
| Publication date: | 09/21/2007 |
| Pages: | 288 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d) |
Read an Excerpt
Yugoslav-Americans and National Security during World War II
By LORRAINE M. LEES
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS
Copyright © 2007 Lorraine M. LeesAll right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-252-03210-3
Chapter One
About Aliens and the Fifth Column
In 1951, former Attorney General Francis Biddle wrote, "Freedom and fear cannot live together in the same community on equal terms." While the "impulse to freedom" was "tolerant" and "rational," that of fear led to "persecution, hatred and violence." Often throughout its history, the United States, Biddle lamented, had sought to protect its own freedom of speech and thought by denying those privileges to others on the grounds that the "expression of opposing views" endangered American democracy. Although Biddle was writing to combat the excesses of the postwar Red Scare, his words are applicable to America in the 1930s and early 1940s. As fascism threatened and then broke the peace, the United States became alarmed at the number of immigrants and aliens present in the country, fearing the effect they might have on internal security. The Roosevelt administration implemented a number of policies in response, ranging from restrictive legislation, to surveillance of ethnic groups, to the creation of agencies designed to boost immigrant morale and participation in the war effort once the country itself had become a belligerent.
* * *
In 1934, President Franklin Roosevelt, concerned about the impact that fascism abroad could have on America's multi-ethnic population, asked Bureau of Investigation head J. Edgar Hoover to furnish him with information on the "influence of foreign totalitarian powers" within the country. By 1936, the information Hoover provided, which demonstrated that both communist and fascist groups existed in the United States, caused Roosevelt to direct the bureau, renamed the Federal Bureau of Investigation the year before, to develop a systematic intelligence program to deal with "subversive activities." However, Hoover could not act on the president's request. During World War I, President Woodrow Wilson had given the Department of State control over espionage and intelligence; other agencies could continue to gather information, but State was to provide "the coordination, evaluation and dissemination of information and overall planning." The Congress had then authorized the secretary of state to "request investigations of foreign directed activities." Before Hoover could comply with Roosevelt's directive, the 1916 statute, under which the attorney general could direct the FBI to undertake such tasks only at the request of the State Department, had to be invoked. When informed of this by Hoover, Roosevelt promptly summoned Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who agreed to make the needed request but to not put it in writing. Hoover later informed the attorney general and military intelligence of the authorization.
Hoover actually needed little encouragement; concern about radicals and immigrants, and the use of administrative tools to alleviate that concern, was virtually second nature to him. Hoover biographer Richard Gid Powers notes that Hoover, a Washington native, had grown up in a white, middle-class world where "immigrants were scarce and self-abasing." In 1917, using family connections, Hoover secured a post in the Justice Department supervising enemy aliens. This placed him at the center of the country's "hysteria over traitors, spies and saboteurs" at a time when the Justice Department was, according to Powers, "committing some of the most egregious violations of civil liberties in American history." Although Hoover was an attorney, his work in the Alien Enemy Bureau, which involved judgments on the loyalty of aliens and their possible internment, "accustomed him to using administrative procedures as a substitute" for legal processes.
As the postwar Red Scare began, Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer appointed Hoover, the Justice Department's "resident alien expert," to head the Radical Division within the Bureau of Investigation. Renamed the General Intelligence Division (GID) in 1920, it collated "all information about radical activities collected by bureau agents, the State Department's consular service, military and naval intelligence, or the local police or forwarded by patriotic citizens." By 1920, one-third of the bureau's agents were monitoring radicals; the GID had two hundred thousand dossiers on radical activists and files on five hundred foreign-language newspapers that were considered outlets for radical propaganda. As head of the GID, Hoover assisted Attorney General Palmer in his arrests and deportations of supposed alien radicals.
Palmer's excesses and the corruption scandals of the Harding Administration led to a reorganization of the agency in 1924. Attorney General Harlan Stone abolished the GID, banned probes of individuals' political views, and insisted that the activities of the bureau be limited to investigations of violations of federal laws. He also fired the director and appointed assistant director Hoover, who had a reputation as a "stern taskmaster," to head the bureau. Hoover complied with Stone's orders, announcing that since there was no federal law against "radical ideas," the bureau would not collect political information. However, he continued to have agents "monitor radical activists and organizations" under the pretense that such information resulted from public informants rather than direct bureau operations. He used Roosevelt's 1936 request to secure the official resumption of the collection of political intelligence and to re-create a General Intelligence Division within the FBI. In September of that year, Hoover instructed to his agents "to obtain from all possible sources information concerning subversive activities being conducted in the United States by Communists, Fascists, [and] representatives or advocates of other organizations or groups advocating the overthrow or replacement of the Government of the United States by illegal methods."
Although Hoover's instructions to his agents may have appeared to exceed the president's directive, he sent the results of his findings to the White House, indicating that "Roosevelt know exactly what Hoover was doing." Historian Kenneth O'Reilly points out that Roosevelt was "not insensitive to civil liberties"; he often relied on less extreme security measures that those advocated by Hoover, and the steps he did take were often characterized "by restraint and not excess." However, like most presidents, Roosevelt put the nation's security, or his view of it, above any other concerns. Athan Theoharis, recognized authority on the FBI and its history, maintains that historically, Roosevelt's action and Hoover's response initiated a trend: that after 1936, presidents and their attorneys general "increasingly turned to the FBI in a quest to anticipate foreign directed threats to the nation's internal security." Hoover, already adept at monitoring the political views of suspect individuals, not only had an official sanction to continue this work, but since his targets operated by "stealth and subterfuge," he too could "rely on inherently intrusive and invariably illegal investigative techniques." The results of most of these investigations could not be used in court, but the FBI could "contain" subversives by passing the information on to the White House.
Congress provided a more overt mechanism for safeguarding the country against foreign intrigue. As the continuing unrest in Europe increased the number of political exiles entering the county, the fear that their public appeals for support could divide the foreign language community or serve as the nucleus of a fifth column increased as well. To protect American citizens from being used unknowingly to advance a foreign cause, federal legislators proposed a registration and disclosure system for individuals, organizations, and media outlets working on behalf of a foreign entity. The resulting Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) of 1938 required groups or individuals who acted on behalf of a "foreign principle" to register that connection by submitting a relatively simple three-page form and a photograph to the Department of State, which administered the law. To further reduce the appeal of foreign exiles, the government stressed the importance of naturalization for immigrants intending to reside permanently in the United States. Immigration authorities, the United States Bureau of Education, and local citizens organizations and school districts formed partnerships to standardize citizenship classes and make them widely available. Yet the average immigrant took more than ten years to become a citizen, while some waited for as long as twenty.
To accelerate the naturalization process, the federal government sponsored a radio series called "Americans All ... Immigrants All," which celebrated the contributions that ethnic groups had made to American life while emphasizing the virtues of citizenship and a common culture. The Federal Radio Project of the Office of Education, Department of the Interior, developed the series of twenty-six programs in 1938, with the assistance of the Works Progress Administration and in cooperation with the Columbia Broadcasting System and a private organization, the Service Bureau for Intercultural Education. George Seldes, a playwright who was also a CBS executive, wrote the scripts, and James L. Houghteling, Commissioner of Immigration and Naturalization in the Department of Labor, who had expressed his support for the project in its earliest stages, reviewed them. To Houghteling, the name perfectly suited the program because it conveyed his belief that "we are all Americans," and that immigrants, "by changing their birthplace" through naturalization, "make better natural citizens than those who were born to it."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Yugoslav-Americans and National Security during World War II by LORRAINE M. LEES Copyright © 2007 by Lorraine M. Lees. Excerpted by permission.
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Table of Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
About Aliens and the Fifth Column 13
A Feud Entirely European in Origin 54
A Question of Public Order 89
To Bully a Conscientious Little Paper 128
A Wordy Civil War 161
Conclusion: To Achieve Propagandistic Control 194
Notes 215
Sources 255
Index 257