Yogerst, Chris. Hollywood Hates Hitler! Jew-Baiting, Anti-Nazism, and the Senate Investigation into Warmongering in Motion Pictures. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2020. 234pp. $25.00 Paperback.

Chris Yogerst’s Hollywood Hates Hitler! Jew-Baiting, Anti-Nazism, and the Senate Investigation into Warmongering in Motion Pictures examines the 1941 Senate investigation and hearings over alleged warmongering by Hollywood leading up to America’s entrance into World War II.  Studying the political climate leading up to the hearings and surrounding the investigations, Yogerst highlights the role of partisan politics in shaping the debate over entry into the war months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.  In particular, the book juxtaposes members of the Senate who were part of the isolationist America First party with leaders of Hollywood studios, many of whom were Jewish and supported the war effort. Yogerst discusses questions of propaganda and belonging which particularly affected Hollywood, where many of the targets were Jewish. Yogerst shows how the investigation and hearings revealed a xenophobic undercurrent in American politics, questioning whether immigrants, particularly Jewish immigrants, could belong in the United States as equal citizens.

Dividing the book into five sections, Yogerst begins with Charles Lindbergh’s infamous 1940 speech in Des Moines, Iowa, for the America First Committee, and his subsequent lesser-known speeches in Hollywood on the same topic. These speeches were part of what led to the 1941 Senate investigation, since the America First Committee included leaders of the investigation. Lindbergh, and other members of America First believed that Jews controlled the media and were dangerous to US society through their ability to manipulate the public. Yogerst explains how Jews and Hollywood, particularly studio heads like Harry Warner of Warner Brothers responded to the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s, up through the summer of 1941. Their response included the release of movies such as Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939), The Mortal Storm (1940), and The Man I Married (1940).  As a result of the America First Committee’s agitation, the head of the New York branch of America First, journalist John Flynn drafted Senate Resolution 152, sponsored by Senator Gerald Nye (R-ND), calling for an investigation into warmongering by Hollywood. The Interstate Commerce Committee formed a subcommittee to discuss the resolution, which was composed of Gerald Nye, D. Worth Clark (D-ID), Bennet Champ Clark (D-MO), Charles W Tobey (R-NH), C. Wyland Brooks (R-IL), and Ernest W. McFarland (D-AZ), at least two of whom were members of America First (xvii). Yogerst’s review of these discussions is amongst his most significant contributions as he focuses on how the Senate subcommittee and its investigation created a conception of “the American people” that excluded Hollywood, and in particular, Jewish Americans. 

The next section details the call for the Senate investigation and the political moment in which the investigation begins. Here, Yogerst highlights the context of American partisanship in 1941 as between Isolationists and those who wanted to join the war against the Nazis, and the studies of media that contributed to this political environment beginning in 1936. 

The next three sections follow the subcommittee investigation, first examining the evidence presented by the senators at the hearings; then that of the media moguls at the hearings, including, among others, Harry Warner and Jack Warner from Warner Brothers and Darryl Zanuck from Twentieth Century Fox; and finally, the testimony of journalists to the subcommittee and the accounts of those who wrote about the investigation.  The senators’ evidence, Yogerst notes, consisted mostly of summaries of movies based on reviews, without them seeing it themselves, with some letters that supported their conclusions. The moguls, in a rare united front, argued about the value of these movies in encouraging patriotism and awareness of what was going on in Europe. 

Yogerst situates this book into a debate on the question of Hollywood (and Jewish) actions to fight the Nazis in the years before World War II. Historians have explored Hollywood’s contribution to the war effort through its anti-Nazi campaigns in the context of World War II, politics, and anti-Semitism (xx-xxi). Peculiarly, as Yogerst notes, the episode of the 1941 Senate investigation and hearings, though mentioned by historians, such as Larry Ceplair and Steve Englund, Bernard F. Dick, Clayton R. Koppes, Donald T. Critchlow, David Welky, and Steven Carr, is not often explored in any detail (xx-xxi). The resulting question, about historical memory and the perception of Jews in the US through the lens of the debate on Hollywood and propaganda is the central theme of this book, supported by Yogerst’s examination of the way in which propaganda, anti-Semitism, anti-Fascist, American immigrant identity collided in the Senate chamber.

Yogerst concludes the book with an examination of the impact of the hearings and investigation, arguing that despite its overshadowing by the McCarthy hearings, the hearings in 1941 indicate correlations between prejudice and flourishing of national platforms that allow them. A few short years later, Hollywood would once again come under investigation for similar issues during the McCarthy hearings and before the House UnAmerican Activities Committee (“HUAC”).  This leads Yogerst to questions of memory, attitudes, and the change in the nation that had occurred with the start of the Cold War. He questions the historical narrative of these investigations, asking why this event has been overlooked by many historians and even by the participants in this drama themselves. Yogerst noted that most of the major players in this drama, including the Warner Brothers, Darryl Zanuck and members of the Senate, chose to ignore this episode when writing their memoirs, though they write about their experience with the HUAC 10 years later. 

Yogerst’s conclusion dwells on continuity and proximity to events, agendas and what people choose to remember, reminding people of the struggles between what actually happened and how those events are remembered. Hollywood and the members of the Senate forget this moment.  Many historians briefly touch upon it. Yogerst chooses to make this moment front and center to emphasize that prejudice reflects questions of identity and to remind the reader that as seen in this episode, prejudice often rises, with some people finding platforms to support it, while others find platforms to combat it – and the media plays an important role in pushing the story forward.  

Nicole Siegel
Fordham University

Nicole Siegel is a PhD Candidate at Fordham University studying American Jewish History.

Savelsberg, Joachim J. Knowing About Genocide: Armenian Suffering and Epistemic Struggles. Oakland: University of California Press, 2021. 264pp. $34.95 Paperback.

“A Meaning Which Overflows the Object’s Use”: Joachim J. Savelsberg’s Knowing About Genocide

In Knowing About Genocide: Armenian Suffering and Epistemic Struggles, Joachim J. Savelsberg (2021) explicates what contemporary Turkish media has derogatorily identified as a “recognition virus” vis-à-vis the Armenian genocide enacted in the Ottoman Empire in the early 20^th century (101). To do so, he assumes the role of facilitator, assembling a much-needed dialogue between the sociology of knowledge and the historiography of collective memory and trauma in genocidal contexts. Savelsberg positions the act (or refusal) of genocide recognition as central to his study; he is specifically concerned with the internal and collective processes through which recognition of the Armenian genocide is performed by Armenians, Turks, and diasporic actors at the micro and macro levels. Using the Armenian genocide as a tool, Savelsberg prods the joints of this interdisciplinary discourse. Prioritizing group conflict over unity, the instability of collective knowledge, and epistemic power imbalances, Savelsberg exposes new perspectives on traditional sociological concepts (3). His own positionality as a German born in the post-WWII generation affords him sensitivity in navigating the mnemonic complexities of genocide knowledge and substantiates his reliance on analogical bridging central to his rhetorical approach.

Savelsberg’s agenda is multi-faceted and hard to summarize. In his view, the sociology of genocide knowledge is inherently linked to the construction of ethnic and national identity. Savelsberg explores how Armenian consciousness has metamorphosed from denial to acknowledgement while Turkish cultural memory has followed the inverted path. He claims that temporal distance, cultural processing, and independence from the Soviet Union has allowed Armenians to caulk intergenerational knowledge gaps and transcend their victim identity through recognition. Savelsberg then unpacks how the Turks, hoping to both cleanse their historical narrative of incriminating evidence and reconcile their own traumas (successive losses in the Ottoman-Russian and Balkan Wars followed by a fight for independence) seek national legitimacy through genocide denial. The Armenian-Turkish split is subsequently extended to the diaspora. This, in turn, demonstrates how international context and power dynamics necessarily color national epistemologies, particularly in the contemporary age of “human rights hegemony” (186).

Throughout the book, Savelsberg sidesteps notions of objective truth and evidence so fetishized by historical research. In plaiting analyses of sources like memoirs, media representations, interviews, ethnographic studies, and diary entries taken from myriad sociocultural positionalities and time periods, Savelsberg progressively decouples the Armenian genocide from temporal, spatial, and cultural fixity. Offering sweeping interpretations by synthesizing disparate studies, Savelsberg effectively exemplifies one of his main theses: while collective memory is constructed and sedimented into knowledge repertoires, such sedimentation remains vulnerable to coeval turbulence (208) necessarily stirred by what Maurice Halbwachs terms “presentism” (55).

As a sociologist, Savelsberg demonstrates how the simultaneity of multiple epistemic realities challenges positivist understandings of knowledge formation. In doing so, he situates knowledge about the Armenian genocide and its application by Armenians, Turks, and their diasporic communities as always “in the process of becoming,” (McKemmish 1994, 202), constantly shifting through time and space. Repeatedly evoking instances of what he identifies as “analogical bridging,” specifically the processes through which both the Armenians and Turks conflate Armenian genocide memory with that of the Holocaust, Savelsberg underscores this “process of becoming.” A particularly astonishing example serves as an emblem of this motif: Savelsberg introduces the Turkish word soykirim as applying to “both the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide, suggesting an equalization of both events” (215) in the collective conscience of contemporary Turkish denialists who attempt to dilute Turkish wrongdoing by upholding asynchronous European culpability. 

Savelsberg’s incorporation of contemporary developments in the sociology of Armenian genocide knowledge also injects “presentism” into the past and swells the Armenian genocide’s semantic radius. Just as the French Constitutional Council’s decision in 2012 not to criminalize genocide denial was believed by many prominent French Armenians to be indicative of broader political, economic, and international interests (159), the United States’ Griswold v. Driscoll defendants were primarily interested in “free speech issues, not in a statement about the Armenian genocide,” (176). By demonstrating how particular historical events are inevitably refracted into matters of universal and tangential importance, Savelsberg molds the Armenian genocide from a century old artifact into a cultural signifier. Ultimately, he discusses the sociology of Armenian genocide knowledge as a case study through which he examines how “the applicability of [the sociology of knowledge] to the social and cultural processing of mass violence” contributes to and is influenced by shifting trends in human rights epistemology on a broader scale (6).

In a contemporary sociopolitical climate that breeds essentialism, often reflected in academic scholarship, Savelsberg’s application of the sociology of knowledge approach is particularly refreshing in that it adamantly refuses to reify (the Armenian) genocide. As Roland Barthes argues in The Semiotic Challenge (1988), “there is always a meaning which overflows the object’s use,” (182). Indeed, when handled by Savelsberg, the Armenian genocide overflows its isolated importance, becoming a metaphysical record of the ever-changing international consciousness. 

To help tether the reader to the confines of the book, Savelsberg presents the “epistemic circle” (5). This successful mnemonic device makes visible the intermixing of everyday interactions among the masses and epistemic manipulation by “knowledge entrepreneurs” that constitutes knowledge formation. However, while Savelsberg effectively addresses the epistemic power of “knowledge entrepreneurs,” such as heads of government or organizations, at the macro level, he often gets carried away by this broad scope and fails to illuminate the day-to-day interactions, inner reflections, and stratified experiences of the ordinary people affected most by the Armenian Genocide. Savelsberg chooses to analyze sources that center the perspectives of government elites, intellectuals, and privileged Westerners, ignoring how knowledge is often mediated by factors such as gender, age, class, and rural-versus-urban. When outlining the role of rituals in constructing genocide knowledge, for example, he dedicates ten pages to a nationwide Armenian festival cycle attended by George Clooney and David Ignatius while spending only one paragraph discussing the “local rituals that supplement[ed] grand national events,” (128). The absence of intersectionality and bottom-up historiography in the book sometimes renders Savelsberg’s analysis biased.  

Despite this oversight, Knowing About Genocide impressively manages to pin down the sociology of Armenian genocide knowledge while simultaneously overflowing its specificity. To an unpracticed reader, the cadence of this discourse is rapid: a map of terminology begging for a legend. The book is best suited for students or scholars in the fields of memory studies, sociology, genocide studies, anthropology, and history who seek to contextualize the ways in which memory of the past is processed and honed in service of contemporary ethnic and national interests. The book will also interest readers of the general public who hope to better understand how issues of “fake news” and conflicting epistemic narratives develop and undermine contemporary mutual understanding. By establishing how knowledge repertoires are socioculturally constructed, Saveslberg persuasively contextualizes what Karl Mannheim (1954), founder of the sociology of knowledge, calls “talking past each other”: for members of different social groups, argues Mannheim, a concrete issue has “a more or less different meaning because it grows out of the whole of their respective frames of reference,” (251). It is only by recognizing these frames of reference, as Savelsberg encourages his readers to do, that challenges to contemporary genocide denial can be imagined.   

Emily Benoff is a Candidate for the Masters in Library and Information Science (MLIS) degree at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. She specializes in archival studies, with research interests in critical archival theory, community archives, and the relationship(s) between archives and place. 

Bibliography

Barthes, Roland. The Semiotic Challenge. New York: Hill & Wang, 1988.

Mannheim, K. (1954). Ideology and Utopia: An Introduction to the Sociology of Knowledge. Harcourt, Brace, & Co., Inc.

McKemmish, Sue. “Are Records Ever Actual?” In The Records Continuum: Ian Maclean and Australian Archives First Fifty Years, edited by Sue McKemmish and Michael Piggot, 187-203. Clayton: Ancora Press, 1994.

Savelsberg, Joachim J. Knowing About Genocide: Armenian Suffering and Epistemic Struggles. Oakland: University of California Press. 2021.

McConville, Brendan. The Brethren: A Story of Faith and Conspiracy in Revolutionary America. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 2021. 304 pp. $29.95 Hardback.

As historians seek to uncover the diverse voices of the American Revolution, many have turned their attention to the role of religious identity in the American war for independence. While scholars of American religion have identified the Great Awakening as a source of revolutionary sentiment among colonists, few have addressed the differences between different Christian traditions, especially among lower-class farmers.

Brendan McConville complicates our narrative of Christianity in early America with his study The Brethren: A Story of Faith and Conspiracy in Revolutionary America. McConville focuses on the yeomanry of coastal colonial North Carolina and the murderous conspiracy against a revolutionary government rule that went against the farmer’s religious values. These yeoman farmers saw their new American leaders seeking aid from the Catholic French and practicing a form of Christianity influenced by the Enlightenment, which removed mysticism from Scripture. As revolutionary leaders in North Carolina began allying themselves with the “heretical” Catholics and publicly questioning the legitimacy of the Bible, they became targets for protestant farmers. These farmers formed the “Brethren” and conspired against the state government. McConville argues that the Brethren’s coalition reflected how the understanding of liberty evolved from a moral pursuit into a strictly political one during the American Revolution.

McConville combs through colonial legal records and newspapers to piece together the experiences of the yeoman farmers and their beliefs, focusing on their perspective  rather than the rich political leaders of North Carolina. While many historians consider the zealous practices of Christianity at this time to either be overstated or isolated to a few communities, McConville reveals that these groups were a force large enough to inspire fear in local political leaders. Additionally, these men actively shaped local politics by expressing their beliefs and threatening violence. Analyzing this group of North Carolina farmers through the lens of politics and religion reveals a more complicated story about the founding of the United States.

McConville tells the story of the Brethren through ten short chapters. The first five contextualize the growing distress of ordinary farmers and their suspicion of revolutionary leadership. Due to a crashing economy and the individualization of religion, the yeomanry became sensitive to the social changes brought by the revolution. Growing republican sentiments and compulsory military service challenged the lifestyle of small farmers. The establishment of the Fifth Congress, which consisted of men with “heretical” beliefs, irritated an already unstable society. Destabilized by the war and a new government, North Carolina became contentious and unstable.

In the last five chapters, McConville traces the rise and fall of the Brethren. Examining depositions, legal petitions, and personal papers, McConville documents how the Brethren quickly gained followers on the eastern side of North Carolina. In 1777, their conspiracy gained traction among other yeoman farmers and became a growing concern for political leaders. The author highlights the significance of the Brethren’s uprising in chapter six. He contends that “they created the preconditions for a clash over the meaning of the Revolution itself in the summer of 1777 ” (126). Quickly after their rise, the Brethren reached the turning point of their conspiracy. In a plot to murder North Carolina delegates, John Lewellen planned a slave uprising as a diversion. The small number of yeomen farmers who relied on slave labour and greatly feared retaliation by enslaved individuals, went to the authorities and warned them about the plan. McConville proposes that this event reveals the yeoman farmers’ dedication to the racial hierarchy of their society, even above their religious convictions.

The threat of a slave rebellion was the downfall of the conspiracy, resulting in the swift punishment and dissolution of the Brethren. Lewellen was captured by the North Carolina militia and released on parole in 1777. The author argues that through the punishment of the yeomanry, North Carolina established a government based on values of the enlightenment and pushed its inhabitants to adopt “American” identity. Citizens of the state were to accept a separation between their religious values and the state. Disobedience would no longer be tolerated and patriotism was expected. In the end, he concludes that colonial culture was much more varied than historians have suggested, and that the Brethren serve as an example of how Protestantism complicated the development of a new nation.^[1]

McConville’s study is the first to uncover the history of the Brethren, bringing this fascinating story to light. McConville contributes to the historiography of religion in colonial North Carolina, which has focused mostly on other protestant traditions such as the Quakers and the Moravians. Although the author is treading on new territory with neglected sources, his analysis only briefly mentions race and hardly discusses women at all. A budding historian may see an opportunity to elaborate on this interesting event through these lenses. If  scholars consider the experiences of farmer’s wives, we would likely see a complicated response to the rebellion. Women may have supported the Brethren when the war threatened to force their husbands and sons to enlist, but some may have been discontent with their husbands participating in violent activities that could endanger their families. By analyzing the experiences of women, we may see a more complex story of the Brethren.

The Brethren is a great example of how scholars can use sparse sources and some imagination to craft a compelling narrative and argument. As McConville shows, there are plenty of hidden stories in the archives.

Savannah Flanagan

Virginia Tech

Savannah Flanagan is a graduate student in the history department at Virginia Tech. She is currently researching Moravian Women in the 18th century North Carolina Piedmont. Follow Savannah on Twitter @savflanagan.

^[1] Claude Van Tyne, The Loyalists in the American Revolution (New York: Peter Smith, 1929); Gerald W. Thomas, Rebels and King’s Men: Bertie County in the Revolutionary War (Raleigh, N.C.: Office of Archives and History, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, 2013); Jeffrey J. Crow, “Tory Plots and Anglican Loyalty : The Llewelyn Conspiracy of 1777,” North Carolina Historical Review 55, No. 1 (Jan. 1978).