Photo of the Day

It is September 6, 1939.

German aerial bombardment of Poland, September 1939.

Five days have passed since Germany invaded Poland, sparking war in Europe.

Berlin, 1939. Poster says: 'War relief organized for the German Red Cross.'

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt is writing to her old school friend, Carola von Schaffer-Bernstein, a German citizen living in Berlin who supports Hitler.

The Allenswood Academy, in Wimbledon, near London, in 1902. Eleanor Roosevelt began attendance at the private girls finishing school when she was age fifteen, in 1899, and left the school in 1902.

“Dear Carola:

All of us are appalled at plunging the European continent into war, but I do not think there is any bitterness toward the German people in this country.

Berlin, c. 1940.

There is an inability to understand how people of spirit can be terrified
by one man and his storm troops to the point of countenancing the kind of
horrors which seem to have come on in Germany,

Storefront of a Jewish-owned shop destroyed during Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass," Berlin, November 9-10, 1938.

not only where the Jews are concerned, but as in the case of the Catholics and some of the liberal German Protestants.

German war refugee and his daughter.

I say this with knowledge, because I have actually seen many of the people
who have reached this country from concentration camps.

Hitler speaks at the Reichstag on September 1, 1939.

I listened, knowing enough German, to Mr. Hitler's speech to the Reichstag.

Polish troops, August 1939.

He never mentioned that there was a God, nor did he show the slightest sympathy for the people whom he had plunged into war.

Left: Hitler reviews the German invasion force. Right: Hitler watches the bombardment of Warsaw.

There was a certain triumphant note through the whole of it which was never heard from the leaders of other nations.

Hitler addresses a Nazi party rally at Nuremberg.

You who believe in God must find it very difficult to follow a man who
apparently thinks he is as great as any god.

US Army maneuvers in Louisiana, 1940. The exercises demonstrated that horses were unworkable in modern warfare.

I hope that our country will not have to go to war, but no country can exist free and unoppressed while a man like Hitler remains in power.

Eleanor Roosevelt with children suffering from polio, January 1940.

I shall be thinking of you and yours with great sympathy until these horrors are passed.”

I’ll see you tomorrow.

— Brenda

The letter has been edited for brevity.