Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper looks at the pre-World War II legitimation process of American internationalism in the post-WWII era.

Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: In pre-war Europe, insurance policies were a popular means of saving and investing, and an insurance policy became known as the “poor man’s Swiss bank account.” European citizens purchased policies to insure against injury, loss of life, or destruction of property, among other things. Jewish citizens, a particularly vulnerable ethnic group, perceived insurance policies as a sound and secure means of investing, and Jewish families bought approximately 2.5 billion dollars worth of insurance policies before World War II.
The fate of many Jewish pre-World War II insurance policies is unknown. Countless policies were confiscated by the Nazi regime during the war. After the war, policies were canceled and the money pocketed by the companies because the policyholder or their heirs had fallen victim to the Nazi program of annihilation and did not come forth to claim payment.
In the eyes of European insurers, Nazi racial policy initially had a positive effect on the industry. After Kristallnacht, German insurance companies were saddled with thousands of property damage claims. Through “creative” interpretations of the insurance terms and conditions and through the implementation of anti-Jewish legislation by the Nazi state, the insurance companies were saved from the damaging effects of Kristallnacht.
While collusion with the Axis regimes was, initially, financially beneficial, Nazi anti-Jewish policy became increasingly burdensome. By the early 1940s, confiscation of Jewish assets, including insurance policies, was legalized by decree throughout all of Axis-occupied Europe. Using asset registries that Jews were forced to fill out in all areas under Axis rule, the fascist authorities demanded that insurance companies locate and surrender all Jewish insurance policies. Companies failing to cooperate with the proper governmental authorities were penalized.
However, many companies lessened the effect of the anti-Jewish laws on their operations by using political connections. For example, the general director of Germany’s most powerful re-insurance company was Minister of Finance in Hitler’s cabinet from 1933-1934. In Italy, many Jewish insurance leaders were replaced with loyal Fascists after 1938.
This poster will illustrate the effects of Nazi and Fascist economic and social policies on insurance companies and policyholders. In the first section, entitled “Corporate Complicity and Resistance,” I will feature pictures of European insurance leaders, many of whom appeared publicly in Nazi and Fascist regalia, and will describe their connections to these regimes. In the second section, entitled “The Effect of Racial Policy on Insurance,” I will feature a copy of the property registration form used in Austria and a timeline of confiscation laws implemented in Axis-occupied Europe. In the final section, entitled “The Fate of Holocaust Era Insurance Policies,” I will tell the story of two individuals, Adolf Stern and Jack Weiss, who filed lawsuits in U.S. courts in the last decade regarding unpaid insurance policies. By including images of their pre-World War II insurance contracts and letters they received from the insurers regarding their claims, I will illustrate the fate of many pre-World War II insurance policies held by Jewish individuals.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper examines developments in immigration and citizenship policymaking and politics in Canada and West Germany in the immediate post-WWII era. I argue that key events related to the war and its aftermath led to a reappraisal of prewar attitudes toward race and ethnicity both internationally and within the respective countries. I also demonstrate that this reappraisal was limited by the continuing influence of prewar policy regimes. In line with a key postulate of historical institutionalist theory, policymakers in Canada and West Germany reached back to earlier solutions to the migration-membership dilemma when confronted with the challenge of resuming mass migration to meet postwar labor market needs. Although the most egregiously discriminatory elements of past practices were pruned and offensive language in statutes modified, postwar solutions bore an uncanny resemblance to those enacted in the early twentieth century. Thus, Canada sought to facilitate mass migration while simultaneously endeavoring to limit entry as much as possible to whites, while West Germany resumed temporary labor recruitment and restored its descent-based citizenship regime, effectively shutting the door to national membership for foreign "guest workers" and their descendants.

Critics of postwar policies took advantage of changed normative conditions to frame their protests. Canada and West Germany’s commitment to ascendant liberal democratic principles put policymakers in an awkward position when confronted with evidence of hypocritical conduct. The discrediting of integral nationalism and scientific racism and rise of human rights granted reformers a powerful discursive grammar with which they could phrase challenges. Thus, while the period was marked by evasion and a good deal of policy continuity, it also gave rise to reform initiatives that would ultimately advance very different answers to the migration-membership dilemma. As such, it truly stood between two worlds.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper compares how the United States pursued United Nations Security Council resolutions in 1990 and 2002-2003 opposing actions by Iraq. It addresses the question of why the United States succeeded in building a coalition authorizing the use of force in 1990, but was unable to do so through the Security Council in 2003. The paper focuses on the role of the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations in the policy-making process, evaluating how the United States worked through its Mission at the United Nations to pursue its policy agenda. In the twenty-first century, as the United States works with other nations to advance its foreign policy interests, scholars and policy makers alike need to understand how the United States can operate in the United Nations most effectively.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Twice in the twentieth century the United States government formally established agencies whose purpose was to generate and mobilize public support for war. The Committee on Public Information (CPI) during World War I and the Office of War Information (OWI) during World War II directed extensive wartime propaganda efforts at the American public. While governmental activities to generate public support for foreign policies are not unique in American history, the scope of activities of these official propaganda agencies in times of war represented governmentally directed campaigns of an unprecedented scale in the history of American foreign policy. This paper represents a component of a larger research project that examines the organizational structure and activities of the CPI and the OWI, as well as the role of private agencies in formulating propaganda messages for the home audience during the world wars. In this paper I examine the overall context of American propaganda during World War II with an emphasis on the institutional role and activities of the OWI as well as various private sources of propaganda. A Gramscian theoretical approach is utilized in the analysis which highlights the contribution of World War II propaganda in constructing a domestic consensus in support of an internationalist and interventionist post-war American foreign policy.