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Thread ID: 8052 | Posts: 23 | Started: 2003-07-11
2003-07-11 13:26 | User Profile
[ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 7/11/03 ]
Truman rant on Jews surprises scholars Diary found at his library
By REBECCA DANA Washington Post
"The Jews, I find are very, very selfish," President Harry S. Truman wrote in a 1947 diary that was recently discovered on the shelves of the Truman Library in Independence, Mo., and released by the National Archives on Thursday.
Written sporadically during a turbulent year of Truman's presidency, the diary contains about 5,500 words on topics ranging from the death of his mother to comic banter with a British aristocrat.
But the most surprising comments were Truman's remarks on Jews, written on July 21, 1947, after the president had a conversation with Henry Morganthau, his Jewish Treasury secretary, who called to talk about a Jewish ship in Palestine -- possibly the Exodus, the legendary ship carrying 4,500 Jewish refugees who were refused entry into Palestine by the British, who then ruled the region.
"He'd no business, whatever to call me," Truman wrote. "The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgement [sic] on world affairs. Henry brought a thousand Jews to New York on a supposedly temporary basis and they stayed."
Truman then went into a rant about Jews: "The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political, neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog. Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist, he goes haywire. I've found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes."
Thursday, those comments startled scholars, because Truman is known as a president who acted to help Jews in postwar Europe and who supported recognition of Israel in 1948, even though his State Department opposed it.
"My reaction is: Wow! It did surprise me because of what I know about Truman's record," said Sara Bloomfield, director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Truman's sympathy for the plight of Jews was very apparent."
But Truman's comments were, Bloomfield said, "typical of a sort of cultural anti-Semitism that was common at that time in all parts of American society. This was an acceptable way to talk."
"Truman was often critical, sometimes hypercritical, of Jews in his diary entries and in his correspondences, but this doesn't make him an anti-Semite," said John Lewis Gaddis, a professor of history at Yale University. "Anyone who played the role he did in creating the state of Israel can hardly be regarded in that way."
"The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political, neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the underdog.
Some things never change.
** But Truman's comments were, Bloomfield said, "typical of a sort of cultural anti-Semitism that was common at that time in all parts of American society. This was an acceptable way to talk."**
For some of us it still is and perhaps after Bush succeeds in the ultimate folly and folks wake up to the fact that his war really was as Paul Craig Roberts put it, a plot cooked up by the Likud party and their Neocon allies here in America.
Truman is also supposed to have said words to the effect: "How in the hell do you expect me to please the Jews? Jesus Christ couldnt do it and I cant either."
2003-07-11 14:11 | User Profile
"My reaction is: Wow! It did surprise me because of what I know about Truman's record," said Sara Bloomfield, director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
What did the Director of the World War II museum say? Surely he had some comments on Truman, since he ended WWII with those bombs on Japan and signed the docs shredding Germany.
What's his name, anyway?
-Jay
2003-07-11 14:59 | User Profile
That one Jewess is trying to defend him still - That will tell you that he did a lot for them, if they don't turn there backs on him after this.
:sm:
2003-07-11 15:20 | User Profile
(moved from Culture Wars) Funny stuff, this. Lindbergh. Mencken. Billy Graham. Martin Luther!!! And now Harry Truman, otherwise known as a father of the state of Israel. They are all undeniably huge cultural figures, but in one area they have to be regarded as moral reprobates.
Instead of Truman's first person testimony being insight on the Levantines, it is seen only as insight into supposed bigotry on Truman's behalf. Any serious investigation of what has happened in Palestine and how the American Jew's have propelled it has to include a long look at the Morgenthau policies mentioned below. But of course, the U.S.- which consisted of a population more than 60% of whose members had Germanic ancestors- is graced with a holocaust memorial in its capital, while there is no memorial to the U.S. soldiers who fought in WWII.
You can only hope that whenever truth like this seeps through the cracks, some Americans will turn away from watching millionaire sports gangsters with their kids and perhaps start instructing them on what is and what ain't.
[url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2003Jul10.html]http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2003Jul10.html[/url]
Harry Truman's Forgotten Diary 1947 Writings Offer Fresh Insight on the President
By Rebecca Dana and Peter Carlson Washington Post Staff Writers Friday, July 11, 2003; Page A01
"The Jews, I find are very, very selfish," President Harry S. Truman wrote in a 1947 diary that was recently discovered on the shelves of the Truman Library in Independence, Mo., and released by the National Archives yesterday.
Written sporadically during a turbulent year of Truman's presidency, the diary contains about 5,500 words on topics ranging from the death of his mother to comic banter with a British aristocrat. But the most surprising comments were Truman's remarks on Jews, written on July 21, 1947, after the president had a conversation with Henry Morgenthau, the Jewish former treasury secretary. Morgenthau called to talk about a Jewish ship in Palestine -- possibly the Exodus, the legendary ship carrying 4,500 Jewish refugees who were refused entry into Palestine by the British, then rulers of that land.
"He'd no business, whatever to call me," Truman wrote. "The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgement [sic] on world affairs. Henry brought a thousand Jews to New York on a supposedly temporary basis and they stayed."
Truman then went into a rant about Jews: "The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog. Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I've found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes."
Yesterday, those comments startled scholars because Truman is known as a president who acted to help Jews in postwar Europe and who supported recognition of Israel in 1948, when his State Department opposed it.
"My reaction is: Wow! It did surprise me because of what I know about Truman's record," says Sara J. Bloomfield, director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
But Truman's comments were, Bloomfield says, "typical of a sort of cultural anti-Semitism that was common at that time in all parts of American society. This was an acceptable way to talk."
"Truman was often critical, sometimes hypercritical, of Jews in his diary entries and in his correspondences, but this doesn't make him an anti-Semite," says John Lewis Gaddis, a professor of history at Yale University and a prominent Cold War scholar. "Anyone who played the role he did in creating the state of Israel can hardly be regarded in that way."
Throughout his presidency, which lasted from 1945 to 1953, Truman was a prolific but sporadic diarist, jotting down his thoughts in diary books and on loose pieces of paper. This newly discovered diary appeared in a book titled "The Real Estate Board of New York, Inc., Diary and Manual 1947." The book, which begins with 160 printed pages of information about the Real Estate Board, was donated to the Truman Library in 1965, seven years before his death, and has sat on shelves there ever since. Apparently its tedious title scared scholars away and nobody noticed Truman's handwritten comments in the diary section in the back of the book until recently, when a librarian reshelving books happened to see them.
"This is probably the most important document the Truman Library has opened in 20 years," Michael J. Devine, the library's director, said in a prepared statement. "Once again, in this diary, we are able to hear that strong personal voice that Truman almost always projected in his writings."
In one memorable entry, Truman recounts a meeting at which he offered to yield the 1948 Democratic presidential nomination to Gen. Dwight Eisenhower if Gen. Douglas MacArthur campaigned for the Republican nomination.
Truman's comments on Eisenhower and MacArthur came in an entry dated July 25, 1947, years before Truman's famous firing of Gen. MacArthur during the Korean War. In the entry, he wrote of a discussion that afternoon with Eisenhower, who was then Army chief of staff.
"We discussed MacArthur and his superiority complex," Truman wrote. "Ike & I think MacArthur expects to make a Roman Triumphal return to the U.S. a short time before the Republican Convention meets in Philadelphia. I told Ike that if he did that that he (Ike) should announce for the nomination for President on the Democratic ticket and that I'd be glad to be in second place, or Vice President. I like the Senate anyway. Ike & I could be elected and my family & myself would be happy outside this great white jail known as the White House."
Truman did not reveal how Eisenhower, who was elected president as a Republican in 1952, reacted to his suggestion. He did note that he and Ike agreed to keep quiet about it: "Ike won't quot [sic] me & I won't quote him."
But Eisenhower did tell the story to confidants, and it leaked out and was recounted in "Eisenhower," a 1983 biography by Stephen E. Ambrose.
"At the time, Truman's chances for reelection appeared to be nil," Ambrose wrote. "Eisenhower assumed that Truman wanted to use him to pull the Democrats out of an impossible situation. The general wanted nothing to do with the Democratic Party; his answer was a flat 'No.' "
Eisenhower sat out the 1948 election, as did MacArthur. Truman ran against New York Gov. Thomas Dewey and won a stunning upset victory.
The diary contains several other interesting Truman comments.
He had praise for Gen. George C. Marshall, whom he appointed secretary of state: "Marshall is, I think the greatest man of the World War II. He managed to get along with Roosevelt, the Congress, Churchill, the Navy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff and he made a grand record in China."
On Jan. 6, he wrote: "Read my annual message. It was good if I do say it myself. . . . Clark Clifford did most of the work. He's a nice boy and will go places."
In that comment, Truman proved prescient. Clifford, then a 40-year-old Truman aide, later became an aide to President John F. Kennedy, secretary of defense under Lyndon Johnson and a major Washington power broker until his death in 1998.
On March 7, he wrote: "Doc tell's [sic] me I have Cardiac Asthma! Aint that hell. Well it makes no diff, will go on as before. I've sworn him to secrecy! So What!"
On July 28 -- "terrible day" -- Truman wrote about his mother's funeral. "Along the road cars, trucks and pedestrians stood with hats off. It made me want to weep -- but I couldn't in public. I've read through thousands of messages from all over the world in the White House study and I can shed tears as I please -- no one's looking."
But Truman's famed plain-spoken wit is also evident in the diary. On July 4, after attending Independence Day festivities in Monticello, Va., he wrote a passage that can only be called Trumanesque:
"Mrs. Astor -- Lady Astor came to the car just before we started from Monticello to say to me that she liked my policies as President but that she thought I had become rather too much 'Yankee.' I couldnt help telling her that my purported 'Yankee' tendencies were not half so bad as her ultra conservative British leanings. She almost had a stroke."
é 2003 The Washington Post Company
2003-07-11 15:35 | User Profile
Originally posted by jay@Jul 11 2003, 10:11 * ** > "My reaction is: Wow! It did surprise me because of what I know about Truman's record," said Sara Bloomfield, director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum*
What did the Director of the World War II museum say? Surely he had some comments on Truman, since he ended WWII with those bombs on Japan and signed the docs shredding Germany.
What's his name, anyway?
-Jay **
Whenever that name is found- if it ever happens- it will almost certainly end with -stein or -ovitz, one of the historical luminaries produced by the racially and ethnically balanced Ivy League.
Wouldn't want to have one of them there "revisionists" Bush keeps warning us about...
2003-07-11 18:26 | User Profile
I had known of some antipathy that Harry held for Jews, but he was pushed into recognizing Israel by such stalwarts as Clark Clifford. George C. Marshall, Dean Acheson and most of the State Department were against this rash act.
"[color=blue]The Jews, I find are very, very selfish,"[/color] President Harry S. Truman wrote in a 1947 diary that was recently discovered on the shelves of the Truman Library in Independence, Mo., and released by the National Archives yesterday.
**"He'd no business, whatever to call me," Truman wrote. "The Jews have no sense of proportion nor do they have any judgement [sic] on world affairs. Henry brought a thousand Jews to New York on a supposedly temporary basis and they stayed."
[color=blue]Truman then went into a rant about Jews: "The Jews, I find, are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as D[isplaced] P[ersons] as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog. Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I've found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes.[/color]"**
These words should be in the party platforms for both Democrats and Republicans in the next election.
"Truman was often critical, sometimes hypercritical, of Jews in his diary entries and in his correspondences, but this doesn't make him an anti-Semite," says John Lewis Gaddis, a professor of history at Yale University and a prominent Cold War scholar. "Anyone who played the role he did in creating the state of Israel can hardly be regarded in that way." If anybody on this forum stated these thoughts publicly, immediate branding as an anti-Semite would result. I hope this helps bring about a public debate.
2003-07-11 21:30 | User Profile
*Originally posted by AntiYuppie@Jul 11 2003, 14:25 * ** Many people naively believed that Jews sincerely wanted a "homeland" and that if Israel was created they would end their existence as parasites in Western nations. Instead, Israel became a giant parasite in its own right, and served as not so much a "homeland" as a rallying cry and a political symbol for "Zionists" who hadn't the slightest interest in actually moving there. **
Trust a Jew...
2003-07-12 02:42 | User Profile
According to Revilo Oliver, Truman was a Jew. Eisenhower too. I'm fairly sure he is wrong on both counts, not to say they didn't act like it, especially Eisenhower with his death camps.
2003-07-12 05:15 | User Profile
Eisenhower was part-Zhid.
2003-07-12 06:02 | User Profile
*Originally posted by Franco@Jul 11 2003, 23:15 * ** Eisenhower was part-Zhid. **
zhid? :sm:
2003-07-12 06:07 | User Profile
Zhid = jew, Jew, khazar, chosenite, etc.
2003-07-12 08:48 | User Profile
Originally posted by Franco@Jul 11 2003, 23:15 * Eisenhower was part-Zhid.*
From what I know, Eisenhower was of German descent. He can be taken as a case study on how leaders are selected and groomed in today's world. Simply put - at some point our ZOG elites find an ambitious mediocrity like him and say - "this is going to be our guy". From then on all the dors are open, provided "our guy" obeys to his puppetmasters. When war broke out, Ike was an officer that lacked any combat experience and has never commanded a large formation, yet, as by miracle, he is made supreme commander of the allied forces in Western Europe, passing over 100+ more qualified candidates. Of course, he had to repay his sponsors by being particularly zelous in terrorizing German POWs and the civilian population. It is he who in March 1945 issued the 'Disarmed Enemy Forces' order by way of which the German POWs were not to be treated according to the Geneva convention. Hundreds of thousands, maybe over a million, died in his death camps like [url=http://www.deutsche-zeitung.com/Vorhof/Redaktion_1/INHALT_DZ/inhalt_dz.html]this[/url] while German civilians were shot for trying to feed their POWs; After the war ended, under his command the German population was intentionally starved for years and Red Cross trains with humanitarian help were routinely turned away at the borders. The infamous Morgenthau plan (dismantling of the German Economy) that was supposedly abbandoned by the Allies, under his command went full steam ahead until 1950. And on, and on, and on... Who were the overlords he was so eager to please? When he became president, he once interrupted a vacation to attend the opening of a park named after the father of his jewish "friend" and "advisor" Bernard Baruch. At this occasion he admitted that "as a young and unknown Major long before the war I took the wisest step of my life: I consulted Mr. Baruch about my Future." Even today, after his death, his mith is kept alive. Witness for example, how his role in the suppression of the [url=http://www.worldwar1.com/dbc/bonusm.htm]"Bonus Marchers"[/url] is systematically understated, while those of George Patton and Douglas MacArthur are trumpeted to the world's four sides.
2003-07-12 17:02 | User Profile
This is wonderful news.
Many years ago I used to patronize a used bookstore run by a comical zhidnik who used to regale one and all with fulsome praise for Harry - "de grettest Prezidant dot ever vas". Of course I was 14 or so, and didn't know or care from Israel. But I did interrupt him once to point out that Hiroshima certainly complicated his claim, if not invalidated it.
He looked kosher daggers at me. "Neva mind! He did vhat he het to do! He saved de solja's lives! You dunt talk bed about Hetty Truman in mine store!"
And many Jews, ordinarily so cash-register pragmatic on matters, retain a sentimental fondness for Truman. So I'm delighted the one guy they were sure genuinely liked them - ol' Burn-In-Hell Harry - didn't. Gets the batting average back up to a healthy .1000!
2003-07-12 17:23 | User Profile
Isn't internet facilitating comparing notes on the zhids?
2003-07-13 02:47 | User Profile
Originally posted by Rudel+Jul 12 2003, 00:48 -->
QUOTE (Rudel @ Jul 12 2003, 00:48 ) <!--QuoteBegin-Franco@Jul 11 2003, 23:15 * Eisenhower was part-Zhid.* From what I know, Eisenhower was of German descent. He can be taken as a case study on how leaders are selected and groomed in today's world. Simply put - at some point our ZOG elites find an ambitious mediocrity like him and say - "this is going to be our guy". From then on all the dors are open, provided "our guy" obeys to his puppetmasters. **
The same way Clinton was picked out, eh? Yep, that's the way it works for a lot of our "leaders". Not so for guys like Jorge Boosh, born into the right caste, but overall, it's the way safe "outsiders" can join the club.
For all his rants about the jews, and despite some saying Harry was a turncoat for supporting the creation of Israel, maybe Truman was just trying to be optimistic, and praying (against his better judgment) that the yahoodis would ALL indeed move to Israel. Simplistic, but you never know. <_<
Franco
2003-07-13 03:05 | User Profile
Well, I had a post HERE saying that Ike was Swedish/Jew [part], but SOMEONE pulled it....why?
ÃÅbeltäter
2003-07-13 03:57 | User Profile
*Originally posted by Franco@Jul 12 2003, 21:05 * ** Well, I had a post HERE saying that Ike was Swedish/Jew [part], but SOMEONE pulled it....why? **
Tex is doing his great purges, agian.
:sm:
Texas Dissident
2003-07-13 06:23 | User Profile
*Originally posted by ÃÅbeltäter@Jul 12 2003, 22:57 * ** Tex is doing his great purges, agian. **
You've made 141 posts in 12 days, tater, and are still posting. Pray tell what great purges you've witnessed. SomeAmishGuy and 2Pac4Ever?
ÃÅbeltäter
2003-07-13 17:22 | User Profile
Posts are being deleted and people are having their posting rights revoked.
:sm:
Franco
2003-07-13 19:11 | User Profile
Well, granted, people do not "have the right" to post at OD. Tex decides that.
But I am a little shocked that my mild comments about Jews [e.g. calling them 'sheenies'] have been pulled. I can think of much worse, and more accurate, terms for Jews than that.
Those people sacked our country [read KMacD], and yet we have to play nice with them?
But of course, it is Tex's BulletinBoard and he can decide the terms. I for one find OD a valuable and much needed BBoard....
[edited]
Sertorius
2003-07-15 03:58 | User Profile
The New York Times resident zionist throws in his two cent`s worth:
Truman on Underdogs By WILLIAM SAFIRE
ASHINGTON
A 5,500-word diary in President Harry Truman's handwriting, unnoticed for decades, recently turned up at the Truman Library in Independence, Mo. Three pages were mysteriously loose and interleaved in the journal.
On these detached and reinserted pages was this entry: "6:00 P.M. Monday July 21, 1947. Had ten minutes conversation with Henry Morgenthau about Jewish ship in Palistine [sic]. Told him I would talk to Gen[eral George] Marshall about it."
On that day, news reached the world that 4,500 Jewish refugees seeking entry to Palestine aboard the ship Exodus 1947 had been seized by British soldiers. These "displaced persons" had been placed on three vessels ostensibly headed to nearby Cyprus for detention until permitted entry to the Holy Land, where other Jews waited to welcome them. Instead, the homeless families, including a thousand children, were encaged on decks being taken back to a hostile Europe.
"He'd no business, whatever to call me," Truman wrote. Morgenthau, who had served as F.D.R.'s treasury secretary, was telephoning Truman as chairman of the United Jewish Appeal, and had an obligation to get through to the president to stop this further atrocity.
"The Jews have no sense of proportion," wrote the incensed Truman after he hung up, "nor do they have any judgement on world affairs. Henry brought a thousand Jews to New York on a supposedly temporary basis and they stayed." These refugees were welcomed in Oswego, N.Y., just after the war, and Truman saw political implications in Gov. Thomas E. Dewey's support for Jewish immigration: "When the country went backward ââ¬â and Republican in the election of 1946, this incident loomed large on the D[isplaced] P[ersons] program."
Then the president vented his spleen on the ethnic group trying desperately to escape from Europe's hatred: "The Jews, I find are very, very selfish. They care not how many Estonians, Latvians, Finns, Poles, Yugoslavs or Greeks get murdered or mistreated as DP as long as the Jews get special treatment. Yet when they have power, physical, financial or political neither Hitler nor Stalin has anything on them for cruelty or mistreatment to the under dog."
After equating the cruelty of Jews with that of Hitler and Stalin, Truman waxed philosophic about ingratitude: "Put an underdog on top and it makes no difference whether his name is Russian, Jewish, Negro, Management, Labor, Mormon, Baptist he goes haywire. I've found very, very few who remember their past condition when prosperity comes."
Truman wrongly assumed that the plight of all of Europe's displaced was the same ââ¬â ignoring the "special treatment" Hitler had inflicted on the Jews of the Holocaust, resulting in six million murdered, genocide beyond all other groups' suffering. The homeless survivors now faced sullen populations of former neighbors who wanted no part of the Jews' return.
This diary outburst reflected a longstanding judgment about the ungrateful nature of the oppressed; in a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt, he repeated that "Jews are like all underdogs. When they get on top they are just as intolerant and as cruel as the people were to them when they were underneath."
Did this deep-seated belief affect Truman's policy about taking immigrants into the U.S., or in failing to urge the British to allow the Exodus refugees haven in Palestine? Maybe; when the National Archives release was front-paged last week in The Washington Post, historians and other liberals hastened to remind us that the long-buried embarrassing entry was written when such talk was "acceptable." The director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum dismissed it as "typical of a sort of cultural anti-Semitism that was common at that time."
For decades, I have refused to make such excuses to defend President Nixon for his slurs about Jews on his tapes. This is more dismaying.
Lest we forget, Harry Truman overruled Secretary of State George Marshall and beat the Russians to be first to recognize the state of Israel. The private words of Truman and Nixon are far outweighed by their pro-Israel public actions.
But underdogs of every generation must disprove Truman's cynical theory and have a duty to speak up. I asked Robert Morgenthau, the great Manhattan D.A., about Truman's angry diary entry, and he said, "I'm glad my father made that call."
[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/14/opinion/14SAFI.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fWilliam%20Safire]http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/14/opinion/...illiam%20Safire[/url]
W.R.I.T.O.S
2003-07-22 21:45 | User Profile
Truman was an evil scumbag. I hope he is burning in hell along with Richard Nixon.
Bardamu
2003-07-23 19:22 | User Profile
Originally posted by W.R.I.T.O.S@Jul 22 2003, 15:45 * Truman was an evil scumbag. I hope he is burning in hell along with Richard Nixon.*
What is it about Truman you dislike? His zionism? Nuking Japan?
What do you dislike about Nixon? His sweaty look? Kissinger? Vietnam? Watergate?
What president do you like? I suppose I like Teddy Roosevelt, but I can find easy fault with him too, as he more or less started the Pax Americana.