The League of Nations and the Refugees from Nazi Germany

In December 1935, James McDonald resigned from his position as League of Nations High Commissioner for the Refugees from Germany. McDonald’s tenure had been a short and unhappy one, lasting for just over fourteen months. He had been charged with supporting the settlement of refugees by working with governments and private organisations as well as securing appropriate funding and addressing the legal status of exiles from Germany. His resignation letter highlighted the impossible nature of the task he had been set. McDonald concluded that it was vital ‘to remove or mitigate the causes which create German refugees’ (p. 161)—but any such action would have certainly exceeded his remit. By tracing McDonald’s activities, Greg Burgess’s monograph sheds fresh light on support efforts for those who suffered persecution by the Nazi regime. Even seminal studies relating to this subject (for example, Carole Fink’s work on international minority protection, and Jean-Michel Palmier’s book on political refugees from Germany) mention McDonald only in passing. They can hardly be criticised for this: after all, his endeavours yielded few tangible outcomes. The High Commissioner received limited backing from the governments that had helped to create his post, and the German authorities proved unwilling to negotiate with him. Yet the scholarly analysis of McDonald’s travails is far from fruitless. Burgess’s book has the merit of showing why a co-ordinated and effective international response did not materialise. His study thus complements a literature that tackles national policies regarding refugees from Nazi Germany, for instance work by Saul Friedman (on the USA), Louise London (on Britain), Vicky Caron (on France) and Daniela Gleizer Salzman (on Mexico)

Foreign policy · German · League · Nazi Germany · Nazism · Persecution · Political science · Politics · Refugee · Settlement (finance · Sociology · European history and politics · French Historical and Cultural Studies · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law