In this thor­ough­ly researched work on the nature and extent of sym­pa­thy with Nazi Ger­many at Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ties dur­ing the 1930’s, Stephen Nor­wood helps read­ers under­stand pre-World War II con­di­tions from an inter­na­tion­al per­spec­tive. Using a vari­ety of sources, Nor­wood expos­es the utter dis­re­gard demon­strat­ed by admin­is­tra­tors from Catholic uni­ver­si­ties to the Ivy League toward the Jews’ plight in Europe. Nor­wood shows how as Hitler acquired pow­er, uni­ver­si­ty pres­i­dents — and even some stu­dents — wel­comed Nazi offi­cials to cam­pus and glo­ri­fied them, par­tic­i­pat­ed in exchange pro­grams with Ger­man stu­dents, and per­sist­ed in attempts to enhance Nazi Germany’s image in the West.

 In the process, uni­ver­si­ty admin­is­tra­tions com­plete­ly ignored the flip side of the Nazi equa­tion: the immi­nent destruc­tion of Euro­pean Jew­ry. The Third Reich and the Ivory Tow­er high­lights the fail­ure of Amer­i­can schol­ar­ship to rec­og­nize the deprav­i­ty of the Nazi regime. This dis­turb­ing book is a sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tion to under­stand­ing America’s role in World War II. Bib­li­og­ra­phy, index, notes.