The Capitol Dome

Summer 2016

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30 THE CAPITOL DOME ings, and its glorious results . . . . In the year 1933, there came to power in Germany the clique of ambi- tious and unscrupulous politicians whose . . . entire program and goal . . . was nothing more than the overthrow, throughout the earth, of the great revolu- tion of human liberty of which our American Bill of Rights is the mother charter. . . . We will not, under any threat, or in the face of any danger, surrender the guarantees of liberty our forefathers framed for us in our Bill of Rights. . . . We are solemnly deter- mined that no power or combination of powers of this earth shall shake our hold upon them. As the historian Michael Kammen has observed, the new status of the Bill of Rights after 1941 required a reorientation in American thinking that "must be considered nothing less than a sea-change in U.S. constitutionalism." 23 With World War II won, in 1946 William Coblenz, the assistant director of public information at the Justice Depart- ment and the son of Russian immigrants who were prob- ably Jewish, had an idea. Why not put some captured Nazi documents and, for contrast, documents related to the Bill of Rights, on a special train and send them around the coun- try for Americans to view? Coblenz got the support of the National Archives. Attorney General Tom Clark, a loyal New Dealer, not only gave the idea his blessing but soon took over the leadership of the celebration. He invited Rosenbach to lunch to discuss the "far-reaching national educational campaign for the building of a deeper respect and under- standing of the intent of the Bill of Rights and other priceless documents that have implemented our heritage of liberty." The concept changed during the year, and by the time the red, white, and blue striped, seven-car Freedom Train hit the rails in 1947, the Nazi documents were not aboard but the Fig. 6. Franklin Delano Roosevelt with poster by Howard Chandler Christy (1942) DANIEL STERN

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