Economic reasons as to why the US had a delayed impact on The Holocaust

The United states decided not to get involved in the affliction imposed on the European practitioners of Judaism by the fascist states of Nazi Germany during the period we all know as the Holocaust. Economics is study of efficiency and desires at its very core, this is what guides the decision making process of every being on the face of the earth and is the crux to life. Economic analysis of the desires and reasoning of the United States, its president, and its people cant be used in order to explain the actions or lack there of by the United States government during the 1930’s and 40’s that for lack of a better term, and due to how ironic it sounds, cost 11 million people there lives. Anti Semitism has been a trend of ignorant and jealous people for centuries, people have the inability to accept that others make greater decisions than them at times, and by proxy perform better than them. Disdain for members of Judaism wasn’t merely isolated to the abysmal zone Nazi Germany, it was in fact seen all over the world, although in greatly lesser amounts. A considerably large Nazi movement was coming to life in America even during this period of time further complicating matters of how to address this putrid mass overwhelming Europe.

Examination of why the United states should have entered the fray and assisted the tormented Jewish people is simple on a moral level, it is also simple on an economic one as helping out the situation would have had actual positive externalities for the American economy. During the entry to the 20^th century specialized labor wasn’t a very common trend in the United States, most of the country was made up of men who would be going to work in a factory or store and women who would stay at the home during the day and tend for their children, America was still a great exporter of products at this time, this wasn’t a bad thing as much as a different way of life. At this time though members of the Jewish community held a strong belief that education was vital to success in life, this caused members of the Jewish community to have more specialized jobs, and with specialization comes better economic prowess, this put many members of the Judaism into a upper middle class life style and spawned a great deal of disdain for them by many people. By aiding the Jewish people America could have taped into this vast deposit of human capital and allowed America to become more specialized, giving it an arm up on the competition; Due to specialization breeding efficiency and economics being greatly related to the art allocating resources it is easily deduced that this influx of doctors lawyers bankers, and other types of specialized workers would have also made America a better place to live as well as adding to its prosperity. With the aforementioned jobs comes greater salaries too, this would give the United States Government more tax money to use on much needed government expenditures, allowing the government to help greater stimulate the economy through guaranteed expenditures.

All of the possible advantages for going out and rescuing the oppressed Jews via assistance in granting them asylum, or from actual active assistance of the people in concentration camps or other areas of mass killing are great, however the cost was perceived to be too great to warrant action. Getting involved in a war was not something that the American people were about to let themselves be dragged into and this caused a great deal of friction for the president to be able to make any action as his career was in direct jeopardy putting him in his own economic dilemma as he had to decide what he would rather do, nothing and keep the American people happy for the time being, or get involved like he knew he would have to eventually and anger the very people who put him in power? This made an economic issue unlike the prior ones mentioned, this is more of a allocation of scarce resources ( what the president wanted to do ) more than a case of “this will cost us 10 dollars and make us 11, awesome!” this is where politics and economics collide, it is a messy vat of indecision that causes in action and a large part of the reason we didn’t go to war sooner. The American people believed that getting involved in European affairs was not something they should have to do, the value of helping out Europe was not perceived as anywhere near that of the cost of helping them, both in lives and in money. Due to this the American people came to the conclusion that they shouldn’t even consider going to war for a second and wanted a strict isolationist front to be maintained with the rest of the world. This is what they believed benefitted them the greatest so they stuck to this plan until no other option was left, when the Japanese bombed pearl harbor sending the American people into an uproar and causing an almost unanimous want to go to war in order to avenge those who died on ships such as the Arizona, making the benefit of helping sort out Europe’s problems finally exceed the costs we imagined, making it seem ‘profitable’ or ‘worth it’ to get involved, however this took quite some time and many people had already been slain by the Nazi war machine.

In conclusion the United States had both reason to, and not to go to war and or aid the Jewish people in their quest for asylum and rescue, neither answer is completely wrong or right do to the context of the decisions that had to be made, however, there were definitely many reasons we could have used to get involved earlier. Economics helped prove these points as to why we could have wanted to get involved sooner and for the most part it boiled down to ‘no benefit can exceed the cost of life we will incur if we get involved in this great war in Europe’ and also politicians avoiding political sudden death.