Posted by:
steve benson not logged in
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Date: July 18, 2021 04:23PM
J. Reuben Clark was a notorious Jew-hating, pro-Nazi, World War II-opposing First and Second Counselor in the Heber J. Grant Church Presidency. Among other odious acts, Clark was aware of the German concentration camps that were used to collect and gas Jews, but nonetheless hid information on that rancid reality from Grant.
The following information sheds light on:
(1) Clark's relationship with Grant: and
(2) why Clark did nothing of any moral substance to encourage Grant to speak out against Nazi atrocities committed against the Jews.
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--Clark Time as Grant's Counselor in the First Presidency:
Clark became Grant's Second Cpunselor in the Mormon Church First Presidency in April 1933. He worked closely with Grant and relieved Grant of some of his heavy workload.
Grant used Clark's expertise in the areas of business and government to advance the Mormon Church's interests. (Clark had significant connections: He had been Assistant Solicitor in the U.S. State Department starting im 1906, thereafter rising to Solicitor. He held several other U.S. government positions during the 1920s and '30s, including Under Secretary of State during the U.S. presidency of Calvin Coolidge and legal advisor to the Ambassador to Mexico during the term of U.S. president Herbert Hoover.
During Clark's tenure in Grant's First Presidency, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt asked Clark to serve on the American government's Foreign Bondholders' Protective Council. Clark agreed, acting as its General Counsel and eventually as its president, while still retaining his positiopn in the First Presidency. With a worldwide depression raging in the early 1930s, $1 billion dollars in foreign bonds held by U.S. citizens had gone into default. Clark's assignment was to recover the money lost on the defaulted bonds.
In September 1934, Clark became Grant's First Counselor. In February 1940, Grant suffered a debilitating stroke, with Second Counselor David O. McKay becoming seriously ill shortly thereafter. This led to Clark taking over the major administrative leadership of the Mormon Church.
(see "J. Reuben Clark," Wikipedia)
With Clark in charge of the Mormon Church--or at least playing an influential role in the Grant First Presidency--there wouldn't be any sympathy or help shown to the Jews of Europe under Hitler's boot, as will be shown below.
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--Clark and Grant's Shared Aversion to Supporting World War II
"The interwar years [those between WWI and WWII_ . . . transformed President Heber J. Grant from an energetic wartime fund-raiser into a thorough-going skeptic over the purposes of war. His counselors--David O. McKay and especially J. Reuben Clark whose Quaker ancestry and personal orientation strongly compelled him toward pacifism--voiced similar views. Thus, Mormonism during the 1930s joined that generation’s crusade—the crusade for isolationism. . . .
"When war finally commenced in 1939, Mormon churchmen remained aloof. . . . Indeed, a year after the fall of France, Church leaders not only believed that the United States was militarily secure but--if Rirst Counselor Clark’s statements were representative--that the European democracies conspired to have America finance the war for empire. There was even a hint that in case of an American war declaration, Mormons might exercise the right of conscientious objection. Rather than fighting, leaders believed that America could best proclaim its mission by peaceful, moral example. . . .
"By April 1942 already 6% of the total Church population served in the American forces or in defense-related industries and by the conflict’s end, 5,714 LDS men had been killed, wounded or were missing in action. The Church itself purchased over $17,000,000 in government bonds, while President Grant personally donated to war charities and urged his grandchildren to bear arms. As the war progressed. Second Counselor David O. McKay and other General Authorities characterized it as a moral struggle to preserve liberty. The Axis leaders were seen as 'cruel, ambitious warlords' and Hitler, though unnamed, as 'the world’s chief gangster.'
"But the response of Grant and Clark was more guarded. Neither publicly defended the war’s issues, while the First Presidency itself gave, at best, muted support. Its warmest expression called for an allied victory, though 'noble men' and 'more Christ-like nations' were required for a permanent peace."
(Ronald Walker, "Sheaves, Bucklers and the State: Mormon Leaders Respond to the Dilemmas of War," in "The New Mormon History," D. Michael Quinn, ed.)
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--Clark's Record as a Rabid Anti-Semite and Enthusiastic Hitler Supporter
A review of D. Michael Quinn's biography, "Elder Statesman: A Biography of J. Reuben Clark" (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books, 2002), offers this brutal assessment of the man, accurately described as Clark's "seamier side":
"As a Jew, I found his [Clark's] views utterly contemptible: 'There was one group . . . for whom Reuben expressed lifelong dislike and distrust–the Jewish people. In a 1942 letter to Herbert Hoover, he said the Jews 'are brilliant, they are able, they are unscrupulous, and they are cruel.’ Part of this explanation for his anti-Semitism was personal and part political. He expressed contempt for ‘the foul sewage of Europe’ in his 1898 valedictory, yet Mormons had traditionally gotten along very well with the small population of Jews in Utah” (p. 325). He never passed up an opportunity to express his contempt for Jews. After serving more than 10 years in the First Presidency, he wrote, 'I long ago ceased reading his [Walter Lippmann's] stuff, because he veers like a weather-vane, but I am sure always true when the wind blows from Jew-ward' (p. 328).
"In February 1941, the 'New York Times' reported that Berlin’s Nazi Party newspaper referred to the necessity of 'eliminating all Jews.' This was an echo of the LDS newspaper’s headline in 1938, 'Death for 700,000 Jews Threatened: Semites Must Get Out or Die, Nazis Declare.' Even this stark Utah report gave less than one-tenth of Adolf Hitler’s goal of killing every Jew in Europe. During the balance of 1941 and increasingly thereafter, newspapers in every major American city reported specific examples of the mass execution of Jews throughout Nazi-controlled Europe. In apparent response to such reports, LDS author N. L. Nelson wrote a book against Hitler in the early months of 1941 and referred to the Nazi 'butchery' of the Jews:
"'In his June reply to Nelson’s manuscript, Reuben defended Hitler and added, “There is nothing in their history which indicates that the Jewish race have [sic] either free-agency or liberty. ‘Law and order’ are not facts for the Jews”' (p. 335).
"Clark’s attitudes toward Blacks was equally reprehensible. Along with others of his time, he opposed intermarriage and supported the common practice of segregating blood supplies in hospitals to ensure that no white person would be infused with blood from a Black person, and thus either invalidate his priesthood or disqualify him from future priesthood. But as time progressed, so did his attitude toward Blacks. As the Church extended its missionary efforts into South America and determining blood lines became more difficult, he came to something of an accommodation in the case of some Brazilians, even 'wondering whether we could not work out a plan, while not conferring the priesthood as such upon them, we could give them opportunity to participate in the work certainly of the Aaronic Priesthood grades. (p. 354).' . . .
"Given Clark’s refusal to condemn the attempted extermination of the Jews by Nazi Germany, it seems that his view of 'justice for all humanity' was somewhat constricted."
("Reviews--'Elder Statesman: A Biography of J. Reuben Clark,'" review by Jeff Needle, Association for Mormon Letters," Signature Books)
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--More on Clark's Deep Anti-Jewish, Pro-Hitler, Anti-WW II Attitudes
" . . . Clark had effusive praise for Hitler and the society he was creating. This is in spite of the numerous reports he had concerning Nazi death camps. He even 'suppressed' the anti-Nazi writings of a former mission president to Czechoslovakia which contained pictures of prisoners in a German concentration camp.
"He repeatedly advocated for a negotiated peace with Germany that would have left them in control of much of Europe. He did so after yet more reports from death camps such as Auschwitz. The FBI had secret files which detailed how Nazi agents received the private encouragement of J. Reuben Clark. After a fireside given by Clark one member publicly wrote that is was 'the most reactionary, critical, and near seditious ever delivered in a country during a time of war.'
"After the war was over he condemned the Nuremburg trials while also accusing the Allies of seeking to destroy the German people. Historian D. Michael Quinn recorded that in over 600 boxes of personal papers there is not one criticism of Nazi conduct during the war: 'Clarks only accusation of war crimes was against his own nation’s leaders and armed forces.'"
"He . . . consistently defended Nazis and attacked any form of warfare. He was so strident that he often didn’t garner the support of other Church leaders and was overruled on more than one occasion."
"[Clark's] comments didn’t escape the notice of fellow Church leaders and the rank and file members. . . . After the attack at Pearl Harbor, President Grant disregarded Clark’s description of the war as 'jungle law of beasts' and published a more cautious message. The First Presidency message in April 1942 did not contain any of Clark’s positions on conscientious objectors, though a later letter seemed to be influenced by Clark. In 1945 the First Presidency against softened a message he wrote."
("J. Reuben Clark: Pacifist or Pro-Nazi?," 17 July 2013, at "Wheat and Tares")
For a history of Mormon German support of Hitler and the Nazis, see: "All in Favor, So Manifest by 'Sieg Heil!': Church-Encouraged LDS German Support of the Nazis During World War II," by Steve Benson, "Recovery from Mormonism" discussion board, 10 September 2012)
As Germany rose to a position of regained strength prior to World War II (after its disastrous defeat in World War I as the war's instigating aggressor, whereupon it was punished severely by the Treaty of Versailles), it did not help matters that Clark--a former Undersecretary of State in the Calvin Coolidge administration and a high-ranking General Authority--was such a virulent anti-Semite. Clark eventually passed along some notorious anti-Jewish propaganda to my grandfather, Ezra Taft Benson:
"[On] February 5, 1949, First Counselor J. Reuben Clark recommend[ed] [the] anti-semitic 'PROTOCOLS OF THE ELDERS OF ZION' to Ernest L. Wilkinson, soon-to-be president of Brigham Young University. In December 1957, Clark ma[de] [a] similar recommendation to Apostle Ezra Taft Benson, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture. This may be [the] reason Benson organize[d] secret surveillance of employees (especially Jews) in [the] U.S. Department of Agriculture."
("On This Day in Mormon History (Feb 5)," by "baura," on "Recovery from Mormonism" discussion board, 5 February 2015)
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So, J. Reuben Clark gets BYU's law school named after him; the Jews of World War II get nothing but disdain from him; and Heber J. Grant gets a First Presidency counselor with the love of Hitler in him. Quite a package.