Fiorello La Guardia
Fiorello Henry La Guardia (11 December 1882 – 20 September 1947), born Fiorello Enrico La Guardia, was an American politician, most known for being the mayor of New York City from 1934 to 1945.
Leftist Wikipedia claims that he "is acclaimed as one of the greatest mayors in American history" and states that he "was ranked first among the nation's mayors in a 1993 poll of historians and social scientists". This may be related to his leftist views, being half-Jewish, opposition to National Socialist Germany, and support for immigrants and ethnic minorities, notably Italians and Jews. Wikipedia claims that he "helped clean out corruption", despite admitting that he supported President Franklin D. Roosevelt and that "in turn Roosevelt heavily funded the city and cut off patronage for La Guardia's enemies."
He was an opponent of the pro-National Socialist Germany German American Bund. "New York City's mayor, Fiorello La Guardia, bent upon imprisoning Bund leaders under any pretext, established an antisubversive squad in the city's police department and launched an investigation into Bund finances. The young and aggressive New York District Attorney, Thomas Dewey, secured a conviction of Fritz Kuhn, head of the Bund, for misuse of Bund funds, and sent him to Sing Sing Prison for two and a half years in December, 1939."[1]
La Guardia was the director general for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) in 1946. "UNRRA policies were, of course, coordinated with the unconditional surrender dictate and the Morgenthau Plan, which the American church historian Richard Solberg, who was present in postwar Germany, called "vengeful." Solberg points out that while the plan was never officially adopted, it was nevertheless largely carried out. With the occupation of Germany, UNRRA, headed first by Herbert Lehman and then by Fiorello La Guardia, continued to serve as an arm of Allied military policy. UNRRA enforced a policy that all material aid was to be provided to the displaced persons [mainly Jews], or D.P.'s, first, and specified that Germans and Finns could not be considered D.P.'s."[2]
See also
References
- ↑ Not Just Japanese Americans https://codoh.com/library/document/not-just-japanese-americans/en/
- ↑ Imposed German Guilt: The Stuttgart Declaration of 1945 https://codoh.com/library/document/imposed-german-guilt-the-stuttgart-declaration-of/en/
