Contribution of the American Journalist Dorothy Thompson to the Struggle for the Rights of Foreign Refugees

Abstract

The paper examines the evolution of the views of American political journalist Dorothy Thompson on American and international assistance to foreign refugees before, during and after World War II.

Her published works in American social and political journalism are analyzed, in particular, the article in the Foreign Affairs magazine, which caused public response and was approved by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Cordell Hull.

Particular attention is paid to the book «Refugees: Anarchy or Organization?». In this work, the journalist not only reviewed the contemporary ethnopolitical situation in Central and Eastern Europe, analyzed the complex of reasons that had previously influenced the emergence the fact of European refugees, but also analyzed the threats of the migration crisis and offered personal recommendations on the ways to overcome it. Among them, it was proposed to create an international non-governmental organization that had to coordinate the resettlement issue of forced migrants from European countries. The cornerstone of the implementation of proposed ideas should have been the finding of the sources of constant and large-scale financing. The publicist considered the variants for supplementing traditional at that time charitable funds with the support of the international community at the expense of partial state and private funding. Also, for this purpose, it was proposed to apply a scheme of partial write-off of the First World War «military debt», freezing of German foreign accounts, and so on. Dorothy Thompson also listed potential places of refuge for political refugees. She described the thoughts of American geographers led by Isaiah Bowman about the resettlement opportunities of the uninhabited territories of the world. The possibility of involving the Jewish Autonomous Oblast in Soviet Russia and agrarian communes in the Ukrainian SSR for this purpose was also considered.

She also welcomed the proposals of US President F. Roosevelt to intensify international efforts to assist European political refugees, expressed after the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany. In addition, D. Thompson pointed to potential threats that could lead to the failure of the presidential project and offered her view on ensuring its success.

The author retraces how after the end of the Second World War, D. Thompson swerved from supporting the Zionist movement in favor of helping Arab refugees from Palestine.