By 1939, 30,000 intellectuals and radicals were exiled from Europe, and 80% were Jewish. These dramatic events sent many of the greatest minds of the 20th century into exile in the United States. The scores of émigrés, fleeing the upsurge of European fascism, briefly transformed Southern California into one of the capitals of world culture, and profoundly altered the horizons of American music, literature and the arts.