Public outcry in the United States and Britain over the news that the Nazi regime was systematically murdering European Jewry provided the impetus for the Bermuda Conference of April 1943. Although ostensibly designed to solve the refugee problem caused by Hitler's genocidal policies, the conference is regarded as the pinnacle of Allied efforts to stonewall rescue operations.

Pre-conference negotiations limited the topics open to discussion in Bermuda, which virtually guaranteed the conference's failure. British and American officials decided beforehand to downplay the Jewish part of the problem and insist that Jews were only one of many victimized groups during the war. The decision demonstrated the unwillingness of Britain and the U.S. to seriously consider plans to rescue European Jews from the clutches of the Nazi regime. A myriad of additional problems doomed the entire enterprise.

Designed to deflect an aroused public opinion, the Bermuda Conference failed completely. In the words of Myron C. Taylor, the principal American representative at the Evian Conference of 1938, "The Bermuda Conference was wholly ineffective...and we knew it would be." The British and American governments' indifference to the tragic plight of European Jewry was plain for all to see.