The Southern Press and the Holocaust

World War II permanently changed the world. The devastation and scope of the war was previously unmatched in human history. Great and terrible new technologies brought the ability to kill to new levels. But what made World War II unique was the racial aspect. Both Germany and Japan fought to expand empires with which they hoped to populate with the great “Master Race.” All inferior races were in the way, and therefore, must be eliminated. The efficiency with which this was attempted continues to haunt the human psyche. This aspect of the war also had one of the most profound impacts on humanity. The idea that racism was a “bad thing” was writ large by what the world saw coming out of places like Auschwitz, Dachau, and Buchenwald. 

Not even the American South was immune to this phenomenon. In a land where racial segregation and white supremacy was enforced at every level of society, the old order looked strangely different to many people when viewed through the prism of the Holocaust. As Pete Daniel asked, “Was the Nazi stance a mirror of the South? Did not peonage, lynching, and everyday violence and hatred based on race parallel Hitler’s racial policies?” Added to this dynamic was the fact that thousands of Southerners were moving into the cities and into the urban age. All of a sudden, “the problem of race was no longer a Southern rural problem, or even a Southern urban problem; it was a national concern.”