Historical documents on how the American and British leadership purposefully abstained from action:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/filmmore/refe...

and

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/holocaust/filmmore/refe...

It seems that World War II was not a war between the humanistic values of western democracies and the Nazi racism. Rather, it looks like the whole world was swept by racism and xenophobia - called "Nativism", in the American case - and thus each nation wanted to win the war and did not care about the fate of non-citizens.

The leaders of western democracies perhaps cynically used the speeches on "freedom" vs. "nazism" as a way to energize their masses and enroll them to the military war effort. Maybe it was an empty rhetoric.