I get the sense that our pop-culture narrative is that people didn't really know until the war was over. (I realize no one who studies history thinks that...)
I don't actually know our pop-culture narrative! I have always had the impression that the camps were a known factor in the U.S. from before its entry into the war, partly because of the part they play in movies of the time; it was the extent and organization of the killings that came as a surprise, and I think of that news as blowing wide open after the liberation of the death camps in 1944–45. I have made no systematic study of this history, however, and therefore should find some sources. [edit] According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the State Department got news of the "Final Solution" in 1942 and later that year the Allies issued a joint statement on the subject; details of the genocide were not, however, necessarily front-page news. After 1945, it starts to become much more publicly known and real, as opposed to reported and horrifiedly disbelieved. I have not yet seen Orson Welles' The Stranger (1946), but it's famous for being the first commercially available film to include documentary footage of the camps. Previously, I think that specific visual information had been limited to newsreels or documentaries and at least one of the documentaries was shelved until 2014.
no subject
I don't actually know our pop-culture narrative! I have always had the impression that the camps were a known factor in the U.S. from before its entry into the war, partly because of the part they play in movies of the time; it was the extent and organization of the killings that came as a surprise, and I think of that news as blowing wide open after the liberation of the death camps in 1944–45. I have made no systematic study of this history, however, and therefore should find some sources. [edit] According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the State Department got news of the "Final Solution" in 1942 and later that year the Allies issued a joint statement on the subject; details of the genocide were not, however, necessarily front-page news. After 1945, it starts to become much more publicly known and real, as opposed to reported and horrifiedly disbelieved. I have not yet seen Orson Welles' The Stranger (1946), but it's famous for being the first commercially available film to include documentary footage of the camps. Previously, I think that specific visual information had been limited to newsreels or documentaries and at least one of the documentaries was shelved until 2014.