25 Spring 2026 opposed immigration. Wealthy industrialists thought immigrants were more likely to be socialists, communists, or favor unions, threatening their wealth. In a majority Protestant nation, many Americans saw Catholics, Orthodox Christians, Muslims, and Jews as a threat to the moral fiber of the country. The Protestant majority succeeded in establishing Prohibition. But, with the exception of Muslims, followers of these other faiths, especially Catholics, Orthodox Christians, and Jews consumed alcohol in their houses of worship, their restaurants and taverns, and the privacy of their homes. In the wake of 18 million immigrants arriving between 1900 and 1920, those who considered themselves to be the “real” Americans (White, Protestant, and from the “right” parts of Europe), wanted to dramatically limit immigration. From 1933 until 1938, the Nazi regime persecuted Jews, gradually denying them almost all rights. After 1938 the threat became lethal, and with the beginning of the War in September 1939, Germany soon moved to mass killings and its final solution. Could the United States have done more to save Europe’s Jews? A firmer response to Hitler might have deterred some of the persecution. If the U.S. had implemented the 1924 immigration law to take full advantage of the quota limitations, approximately 25,000 Jewish Germans could have come into the country every year from March 1933 (when FDR became President) until 1939, when the War began, or perhaps the end of 1941, when the United States entered the War. This would have brought between 175,000 and 225,000 Jews from Germany and the former Austria into the country, instead of the 110,000 or so who came to the U.S. Full implementation of quotas for other parts of Europe might have brought in another 50,000 or so Jews in this period, assuming of course that Jews outside Germany immediately began to depart when Hitler took power. But outside of Germany there was no imminent threat to Jews until 1939. In September 1938 Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain promised “Peace in our time” and most Europeans believed him. Two months later the world witnessed Kristallnacht. The takeaway from this history is that law can matter a great deal. Had the U.S. allowed open immigration in the 1930s, as it had allowed before 1921, most of Germany’s 550,000 Jews would have made it to safety, as well as the Jewish communities of Austria and Czechoslovakia. Prescient Jews in Poland, Romania, and elsewhere might also have come to the United States. It is not implausible to imagine two million Jews living, instead of dying. But counterfactual history is, in the end, not history, it is only a way of considering alternative outcomes. The only alternative outcome, within American immigration law, would have brought 150,000 to 200,000 European Jews to the United States under the quota system. That might have happened had there been no world-wide depression. In a nation where one out of every four men was out of work, it was unlikely the country would have welcomed massive immigration. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the best friend Jews had ever known in American presidential history. He appointed far more Jews to offices than all previous presidents combined. He expressed his horror at the evil of Nazism throughout the 1930s, and protected Jews on tourist visas after Kristallnacht. In the face of rampant isolationism, he used his political capital to prepare the nation for what he correctly understood would be an inevitable war to defeat Nazism. He disliked American immigration law and starting in 1938, changed existing policies and procedures to admit as many refugees as legally possible. He should have begun this process sooner, but his major focus when he took office was on the Great Depression and the economic chaos facing the country. He could not change the 1924 law, written by a xenophobic Congress and signed by a xenophobic president, and still supported by a majority of members of Congress. In April 1938 Roosevelt addressed the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) — an organization of mostly upper-class White Protestant women whose ancestors fought in the Revolution. DAR members were generally hostile to immigrants and “foreigners.” Roosevelt’s ancestors had fought for Independence and every woman in his family was eligible for the DAR. His wife was a member.36 This was an audience likely to be unsympathetic to 36. She would resign from the organization a year later when the DAR refused to allow the great contralto Marian Anderson to sing in their building in Washington, D.C. because she was Black.
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