The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses [Hardcover]

Stephen H. Norwood (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 25, 2009 | ISBN-10: 052176243X | ISBN-13: 978-0521762434 | Edition: 1

This is the first systematic exploration of the nature and extent of sympathy for Nazi Germany at American universities during the 1930s. Universities were highly influential in shaping public opinion and many of the nation's most prominent university administrators refused to take a principled stand against the Hitler regime. Universities welcomed Nazi officials to campus and participated enthusiastically in student exchange programs with Nazified universities in Germany. American educators helped Nazi Germany improve its image in the West as it intensified its persecution of the Jews and strengthened its armed forces. The study contrasts the significant American grass-roots protest against Nazism that emerged as soon as Hitler assumed power with campus quiescence, and administrators' frequently harsh treatment of those students and professors who challenged their determination to maintain friendly relations with Nazi Germany.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Stephen Norwood's groundbreaking research and eloquent pen have added immeasurably to our understanding of how Americans responded to Nazism in the 1930s. The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower reveals a painful but important chapter in our nation's history." - David S. Wyman, author of The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945

"Stephen H. Norwood forcefully demonstrates [that] . . . some of America's top universities adopted a hear-no-evil attitude toward Hitler's Germany that bordered on complicity."-Ari Goldman, Columbia Magazine

"Norwood has opened the door so that American colleges and universities can be exposed for allowing Hitler and the Nazis to slaughter Jews with reckless abandon."-Jerusalem Post

"already flaming controversies and debate. . . . [a] seminal study. . . . Norwood's book is a must read."-Steven Plaut, Front Page Magazine

"the first study of how a crucially important segment of American society responded to the Nazis."-Sueddeutsche Zeitung

"[A] disheartening history lesson. Norwood . . . knock[s] down one myth and then knock[s] down another. . . . that American Jews were silent and passive in regard to Nazism [and] that American universities . . . could be counted on to stand up for democratic ideals and human rights."-Jerusalem Report

"a carefully detailed and devastating written indictment of many of our nation's college leaders."-Les Kinsolving, WorldNetDaily

"Stephen H. Norwoods The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower: Complicity and Conflict on American Campuses massively demonstrates how these professors...were themselves made respectable in America during the Nazi regime's formative years by the faculty and administrators of major American universities and colleges." -Edward Alexander, Chicago Jewish Star

"The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower depicts in stunning detail how, in the 1930's, when the Nazi regime was intent on winning international legitmacy, it received a significant boost from America's leading academic institutions..." -American Jewish History, Deborah E. Lipstadt

"In this thoroughly researched work on the nature and extent of sympathy with Nazi Germany at American universities during the 1930's, Stephen Norwood helps readers understand pre-World War II conditions from an international perspective." -Jewish Book World

"Professor Norwood's book should be assigned in every college in America."-Rebecca Bynum, New English Review

"Norwood's tome, which shows how influential many American universities were in creating sympathy for Nazi Germany, helps explain the shocking survey among incoming freshmen at Princeton University in New Jersey in 1938 in which Hitler polled as the 'greatest living person." -Hadassah Magazine

"make[s] a compelling case that [university] presidents dozed, dithered, and ducked during the great and gathering storm of Nazism."-Boston Sunday Globe

"Professor Norwood . . . provides a comprehensive recounting-and persuasive indictment-of the reprehensible behavior of American colleges and universities and their leaders during the Nazi era."-Jerold S. Auerbach, Society

"Stephen H. Norwood . . . traces, in his compelling The Third Reich in the Ivory Tower, a chilling pattern in the Ivy League and the Seven Sisters, as well as in some state universities and Catholic colleges. From callous indifference to the rise of Hitlerism . . . to concrete instances of complicity with the Nazi regime . . . Norwood provides an indictment of Hitler sympathizers in power at the heart of American education. . . . fascinating to the general reader. . . . [and] an invaluable resource to scholars as well."-Forward

Book Description

This is the first systematic exploration of the nature and extent of sympathy for Nazi Germany at American universities during the 1930s. Norwood contrasts the significant American grass-roots protest against Nazism that emerged as soon as Hitler assumed power with campus quiescence.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 350 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 1 edition (May 25, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 052176243X
• ISBN-13: 978-0521762434
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #278,869 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Not So Ivory Tower June 4, 2009

By Henry D. Fetter

Format:Hardcover

This is an important and highly original study, based on extensive research in previously unexploited archives. It documents in compelling detail American academia's belated, and all often grudging, recognition of the true nature of Nazi Germany and of the impossibility of maintaining relations with that regime's academic institutions while retaining their own moral legitimacy and scholarly integrity. At a time when American universities vie with each other to curry favor and secure funding from foreign dictatorial regimes, Professor Norwood's sobering investigation into the past is pointedly relevant today.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The shock and the shame November 11, 2009

By Shalom Freedman HALL OF FAMETOP 1000 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

This book is a telling indictment of American university complicity and silence in relations with Nazi Germany. It also tells the story of discriminatory policies of these universities against Jews, and failure to stand up for fundamental human rights and freedoms. Much of the focus is on Ivy League schools including Harvard and Columbia. Norwood gives the background to the rise of the Nazis, but the heart of his book is on the examination of the behavior of those within the American university world. There may have been much apathy and indifference but there was also a great deal of very conscious anti- Semitism at work. Considering the powerfully transformative role exiled intellectual European Jews were to play later on in making America's universities the best in the world , there is something extremely ironic in the whole story. The 'best and brightest' at that time were the slowest and most reluctant in realizing the threat presented to Western civilization as a whole by the Nazis.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Were American Universities Asleep at the Switch? March 29, 2010

By Ronald H. Clark VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

This is the first book I have seen devoted to the topic of whether some American universities were too touchy-feely with the fascist regimes prior to the Second War. This is certainly the concluson reached by the author, who is professor of history at the University of Oklahoma. This extremely well-researched study first addresses Germany's reversion to the "dark ages" to give the reader a sense of what unfortunate developments were occurring in the Third Reich. The core of the book, however, are individual chapters on Harvard (1933-1937); Columbia (1933-1937); the Seven Sisters Women's Colleges; the University of Virginia Institute of Public Affairs Roundtables (1933-1941); and the German language departments of various universities (1933-1941). There is an additional chapter devoted to Catholic Universities, principally in reference to Mussolini's Italy. Finally, the author discusses the post-Kristallnacht (1938) period when the attitudes of many, but not all, of these institutions changed.

At this point in time, more than 70 years after the fact, it is difficult to draw firm conclusions about what was going on at these campuses. The author's position, I believe, is that many university administrators were at best uninformed, or at worst simply clueless or didn't care, about what was going on in Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. He also suggests that anti-Semitism may have played a role in all this. But I think several considerations need to be factored into this argument. First, I don't think universities can be held to the same standards as other institutions since a primary norm of universities is to interact with each other, to serve as places for the discussion of sometimes controversial ideas, and to bridge cultural differences. Universities are not agents of foreign policy but educational institutions with different priorities. Moreover, many of the activities to which the author points (such as conferences, junior years abroad, and banquets and speeches) are just the daily "meat and potatoes" of academic life, especially at such major institutions as Harvard and Columbia. Finally, I doubt whether whatever these institutions did had any effect on general American opinion about Nazi Germany or Italy.

Nonetheless, the author makes an imposing case that something was amiss at these institutions. It is an interesting topic and the author's extensive research has unearthed a number of fascinating developments. There are 54 pages of helpful notes supporting the text and an imposing 11-page bibliography. Reading this book cannot help but get the reader to start thinking about this issue; and that is its greatest strength I believe.