What did we know and when?
Hitler's pursuit of genocide was hardly a well-kept secret, yet early in the Nazi
regime many nations did little or nothing to stop it or to help its victims. In Skidmore's
2016 Balmuth Lecture, distinguished historian Richard Breitman will explore how U.S.
President Franklin Roosevelt and his administration responded, or failed to, when
reports of the Holocaust began arriving.
Free and open to the public, the lecture "FDR and the Early News of the Holocaust"
takes place Monday, April 18, at 8 p.m. in Davis Auditorium, Palamountain Hall. A
reception will follow in the Class of 1967 Lobby.
Tillman Nechtman, Skidmore history professor, describes Breitman's work as "a bold
intervention in a fraught historical field." To difficult questions like " What did
the American's know about the situation in Hitler's Europe and when? What was done?
Was it enough?" he says Breitman contributes "nuance and clarity, sound judgment,
and unimpeachable archival research."
Breitman is a distinguished professor emeritus of history at American University.
He is author or co-author of 10 books and many articles on German history, U.S. history,
and the Holocaust. Before co-authoring FDR and the Jews, he was best known for his Architect of Genocide: Himmler and the Final Solution (1991) and Official Secrets: What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew (1998). He edits the journal Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
In addition, Breitman served as director of historical research for the Nazi War Criminal
Records and Imperial Japanese Records Interagency Working Group, which helped to get
more than 8 million pages of U.S. government records declassified under a 1998 law.
He holds a B.A. from Yale and Ph.D. from Harvard.
The Balmuth Lectures began in 2001, with support from David Moses '84, to honor Dan
Balmuth, professor emeritus of history, who died in 2013.
