[3] However, one academic researcher has asserted that Geist largely acted to block the granting of visas to Jewish immigrants between 1933 and 1939, in line with the policy adopted by U.S. Foreign Service Officers in Germany at the time.

[18] Following Kristallnacht, he warned the Assistant Secretary of State George S. Messersmith in a private letter in late 1938 that Jews in Germany were being "condemned to death".

[19][20] The next year, in April 1939, he reported Franz Halder telling him that the German Army feared that Hitler would throw them into a war for which Germany was unprepared.

[23] As late as April 1939, Geist wrote in a letter to a colleague that the consulate should continue limiting the issuance of visas to German Jewish applicants.

... By juggling the number of visas available to various consulates, he was able to make full use of the 27,370 slots in the quota for the first time during the Nazi era in the fiscal year 1938–39.