ANNOUNCER: The following program includes
derogatory images and language in historical context
for educational purposes.
Viewer discretion is advised.
♪ ♪
NEWSREEL NARRATOR: In ever-increasing numbers,
the nation's youth has been going away to camp.
This year has seen more boys and girls at camp than ever before.
All of them have enjoyed common experiences, common adventures.
♪ ♪
Building muscle, learning fellowship,
acquiring camp spirit.
♪ ♪
(rifle shot)
ARNIE BERNSTEIN: It looked like any summer camp in America.
It looked normal.
But it wasn't normal.
It was Nazi camp.
In the 1930s, there were these camps all across the country.
SARAH CHURCHWELL: They were indoctrinating centers.
That's what they were for.
As well as for protecting the purity and the health
of your superior breed.
HART: The camps were the creation
of something called the German American Bund.
The Bund's vision was an America ruled by white Christians,
and they thought that Nazism
was entirely consistent with American ideals.
RALLY LEADER: My fellow Americans,
what would George Washington think and do
were he alive today?
Would he not plead
with the thinking, the loyal
and law-abiding people, the true Christian Americans?
LEAH WRIGHT RIGUEUR: The German American Bund is after power,
they're after influence,
within the very fabric of the United States.
They want their ideas to become mainstream,
and they want people to embrace those ideas.
WILLIAM HITCHCOCK: They were against democracy.
And thought that America
would be a kind of star in a constellation
of pro-Nazi governments around the world.
♪ ♪
RIGUEUR: We assume that democracy
is something that all Americans embrace.
But in the 1930s, there were people in the United States
who were ready to try something different.
(crowd chanting)
BEVERLY GAGE: In the 1930s, lots of Americans
thought the whole social order was about to collapse.
Capitalism, democracy, they were done for,
and something else was going
to have to come along
to take its place.
And a lot of people thought
that was going to be fascism.
SINGERS (on radio): ♪ Gave proof through the night that our flag ♪
♪ Was still there ♪
♪ O say does that ♪
♪ Star-spangled banner yet wave? ♪
♪ O'er the land ♪
♪ Of the free... ♪
HITCHCOCK: In the 1930s,
the largest fascist group in the United States
was the German American Bund.
"Bund" simply means organization.
But, fundamentally, this is an American organization.
They believe in a pure nation.
They believe in a strong nation.
They believe that government
is best when it is organized
in a hierarchical way with
a powerful dictator at the top,
and that this would improve America.
We have no time, nor excuse, to be idle,
so march along with the Bund!
GAGE: The popularity of the Bund showed
that there were certain elements of the fascist vision
that had real appeal in the United States.
BUND SPEAKER: We have to fight
for our rights!
CHURCHWELL: When you look at American fascism
in the 1920s and '30s,
the outcome of German fascism
had not yet happened
and was not known.
We have the benefit of hindsight,
but Americans at the time
didn't know where it was going to go.
(crowd singing)
HART: As foreign as this might seem, fascist ideology
tapped into some deep historical realities,
dark realities, in America.
So the United States was fertile ground for groups
like the German American Bund to emerge.
GAGE: The United States in the 1920s
is a place of powerful divisions.
It is a place of deep antisemitism
and it is a place
that has very formal racial segregation.
HITCHCOCK: The separation of races was something
that Americans have been doing for centuries,
but they've been doing it legally
since the end of the Civil War through Jim Crow,
the body of laws, as well as habits and customs,
that kept white and Black people apart in public spaces.
In fact, the whole structure of racism in America
had broad popular support.
GAGE: In the 1920s, one of the biggest organizations
in the United States was the Ku Klux Klan,
which was not only anti-Black,
it was anti-Jew, it was anti-immigrant,
and those weren't marginal ideas.
HITCHCOCK: In 1924, five million people
were in the Ku Klux Klan,
including a couple of dozen senators and congressmen.
The Klan's basic message was a combination
of white Christian nationalism combined with family values,
which was a message that was appealing to millions of people.
STEVEN ROSS: Father Coughlin, Charles Coughlin,
known as the radio priest,
every week went on the air to 14 million listeners,
basically warning the country
that Jews were destroying it.
COUGHLIN (over radio): We are Christian
in so far as we believe in Christ's principle
of love your neighbor as yourself.
And with that principle,
I challenge every Jew in this nation
to tell me that he does not believe in it.
(cheers and applause)
ROSS: Antisemitism is rife in the United States,
and at this point, it's out in the open.
The most famous antisemite in America
was probably Henry Ford.
HITCHCOCK: Henry Ford was an inventor,
an extraordinary capitalist,
but he used his wealth to promote
some of the most virulent
antisemitic conspiracy theories.
He published a notorious book called "The International Jew,"
and had it distributed widely around the country.
Millions of people might have heard of this book,
but never actually seen it.
Well, Ford took care of that.
CHURCHWELL: At that time,
antisemitic and white supremacist ideas were supported
by a pseudo-scientific movement
that was wildly popular
in Europe and in the United States called eugenics.
What is the bearing of the laws of heredity
upon human affairs?
Eugenics provides the answer so far as this is known.
Eugenics seeks to apply the known laws of heredity
so as to prevent the degeneration of the race
and improve its inborn qualities.
CHURCHWELL: Eugenics said that
white supremacy was biologically determined and could be proven.
As could the identities of the inferior,
you know, so-called inferior races.
It rationalized white supremacism
by apparently giving it a scientific basis.
Laws were based on these ideas.
RIGUEUR: In 1924, the United States passes
the Johnson-Reed Act, which puts a quota system
on people immigrating into the United States from Europe.
Under this new law,
roughly 90% of them are going to come from
northern European countries;
a.k.a., white.
(man shouting commands)
ROSS: All this led right wing groups
like the German American Bund to believe
that they would actually have a receptive audience in America.
Because, look,
Americans had cast themselves as a white nation.
(cheers and applause)
RALLY LEADER: We are decidedly not preaching
un-Americanism or anything basically new.
We have an Asiatic exclusion act,
Jim Crow laws, and a complicated system
of immigration quotas differentiating even between
the various white peoples.
It has then always been very much American.
(cheers and applause)
HART: The leader of the Bund
was a naturalized American citizen named Fritz Julius Kuhn.
Kuhn had some bold ambitions.
He presented himself as an American führer,
and his vision was to become the absolute leader,
the absolute dictator, of this organization he claims
is going to take control of the United States.
Let me welcome you, in the name of our local unit
of the German American Bund of Brooklyn.
And I'd like to tell you a few words
about our purpose and aims.
HITCHCOCK: He imagined that he was going to build
a distinctively American version of Nazism.
Because America's problem is that
it has too many differences,
it has too many races all mingled together,
too many languages.
This country can't possibly survive for a long time
in such a crazy state.
It should be organized, it should be disciplined,
and it should be unified by one charismatic leader.
HART: Kuhn's path to the United States
was somewhat typical for men of his generation
who had lived through World War I...
(explosion)
...only to experience the economic ruin
that Germany went through in the early 1920s.
European society was devastated after World War I,
and Germans, as the losing side of the war,
were especially affected.
You had hyperinflation.
You had unemployed soldiers, unemployed workers,
all desperate.
Everyone was looking for a solution.
(newsreel music playing)
NEWSREEL NARRATOR (in Russian):
♪ ♪
CHURCHWELL: A lot of people thought that communism was the answer.
But others were very, very worried
that revolutionaries were coming.
That property would be abolished
and this infection would spread.
In Europe,
one main ideological counter to communism was fascism.
GAGE: Our association of fascism with the Second World War,
and particularly with the Holocaust,
isn't a set of associations that anyone had
in the 1920s.
HITCHCOCK: People looked at the fascist Italian dictator Mussolini
and said, Mussolini has solved Italy's economic crisis
by suppressing the communists,
by getting rid of parliament,
getting rid of divisive political parties.
And he's basically asked Italians to trust him
and his vision of a united country.
CHURCHWELL: Fascism was a word that was coined by Mussolini
to identify his political movement.
It says that in order to reclaim the strength and the purity
and the nobility of your country,
you need to purify your nation of "the wrong people"
to get back to what the nation is supposed to be.
It's essentially a white nationalist movement,
so a lot of Americans were intrigued by fascism,
at least in its Italian form.
I am very glad to be able
to express my friendly feelings
towards the American nation.
My fellow citizens, who are
working to make America great.
ROSS: In Germany,
Adolf Hitler's Nazi party is first seen
as a very marginal group of thugs.
Hitler rises to power on one promise: to save Germany.
And to save Germany,
he's going to get rid of the communists and the Jews.
CHURCHWELL: Fritz Kuhn was involved
in the early days of the Nazi party.
He claimed that he had been part
of Hitler's failed coup attempt in 1923.
HITCHCOCK: Kuhn is emblematic of this generation
of young German men who feel
that they are the victims
of the outcome of the First World War.
They want unity,
they want comradeship, but most of all,
they want employment.
ROSS: So in 1924, he decides to do what many other Germans do:
leave the country and come to America.
HART: German Americans and their descendants
had been in the United States for a long period of time
at this point.
There were actually multiple waves
of German immigration to the U.S.
BERNSTEIN: So Kuhn went to Detroit and got a job
at the Henry Ford Hospital as an X-ray technician.
It was a hospital
that had a policy of no Jewish doctors.
CHURCHWELL: It's an era of deep antisemitism,
of legalized racism,
of growing inequality
across the United States.
And then
the Great Depression begins.
♪ ♪
RIGUEUR: In October 1929,
the stock market crashed
with the subsequent onset of a massive depression.
GAGE: The stock market lost about
90% of its value.
In places where you had a largely foreign-born,
industrial, working-class population,
as many as 80% of those workers were out of work.
CHURCHWELL: In the depths of the Depression,
a great many Americans started to ask themselves whether
the American experiment was failing.
ROSS: In one poll of conservative professionals,
something like a third of them said it was time
for a revolution; some kind of change.
Whether it was going to be democracy,
whether it was going to be communism,
whether it was going to be fascism,
all these ideas were finding supporters.
(cheers and applause)
(crowd clamoring) (whistle blowing)
RIGUEUR: The 1930s is a period
that can be characterized by fear.
Fear of the other.
Fear of want.
Fear of losing everything.
ROOSEVELT: The only thing we have to fear
is fear itself!
HITCHCOCK: Franklin Roosevelt comes into the White House
in March of 1933
in the midst of the biggest economic
and social crisis since the Civil War.
My most immediate concern is in carrying out
the purposes of the great work program
just enacted by the Congress.
RIGUEUR: His solution is to introduce
a series of programs that come to be known as the New Deal.
There has not been another president
that has introduced more legislation
than Roosevelt did in his first 100 days.
♪ ♪
CHURCHWELL: American right-wing groups
were rabidly opposed to Roosevelt's New Deal,
which they saw as a communist plot,
as a redistribution of property,
and began calling it "the Jew Deal"
because they said that Roosevelt was being manipulated
by Jewish financiers who were pulling the strings.
GAGE: 1933 was also the year
that Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany.
So there was a sense not only that there was
a crisis at home, but that fascism
was really beginning to take root around the world.
HART: Hitler puts Germany on what appears
to be a very successful course.
Inflation is under control,
and according to the Nazis' official figures,
unemployment has all but disappeared.
Americans who see their own system in crisis
are looking at fascism and Nazism
as perhaps models that could be emulated
in the United States.
So extremist groups pop up all over the country
inspired by what's going on in Europe.
There was the Order of '76,
there was the Black Legion,
there was the Liberty League.
There were the White Shirts,
the Black Shirts, and Brown Shirts.
There were the Silver Shirts.
PAPERMAN: Free speech stopped by Jew riot!
CHURCHWELL: They just proliferated.
♪ ♪
HITCHCOCK: In its earliest expressions,
fascism was thought by many Americans
to be a suitable answer
to America's problems.
But there were others who opposed fascism
from the beginning.
CHURCHWELL: Dorothy Thompson was one of the first female
foreign correspondents for American newspapers
and was working in Europe during the rise of fascism.
She could see the danger that it posed
and she was very outspoken
about it from very early on.
She had the honor,
I think, of being the first American foreign correspondent
to be ejected from Germany after Hitler came to power.
There seems to me to be a certain misunderstanding about,
about the antisemitic end of the Hitler movement.
A great many people didn't believe
that if they came to power they would carry this,
carry this program out,
but as a matter of fact they are doing what they have said
for 13 years that they would do if they came to power.
HITCHCOCK: Another one of the great public figures of that era,
Rabbi Stephen Wise,
steps forward and says we are going to act.
We're going to mobilize against Nazism.
ROSS: Wise called for a boycott of all German products
until Hitler stopped persecuting all minorities;
not just Jews, but all minorities.
It led to a big decline in German imports.
This presents a challenge to Berlin,
which is "How do we improve our reputation in the United States
"while also pursuing our policies
against the Jews here in Germany?"
ROSS: Rudolf Hess, the number two Nazi leader,
was looking at the American situation
and saying, "How are we going to offset this?"
And so he helped create the Friends of New Germany.
NEWSREEL NARRATOR: The membership card in the Friends of the New Germany.
Note the American emblem, and over it the Nazi swastika.
ROSS: People join the Friends of New Germany
in the same way you would join
the Masons, or the Odd Fellows, or the Elks.
HITCHCOCK: So Kuhn joins the Friends of New Germany
and becomes the head of the Midwest district.
ROSS: It was one thing for Americans to say,
well, Hitler's doing great things for Germany,
um, from a distance.
But Americans didn't actually like
seeing swastikas in their neighborhoods.
This began to turn American public opinion
against the Friends of New Germany and against the Nazis.
BERNSTEIN: In the 1930s,
there was a very strong Jewish presence in the mafia,
and they had an army of Jewish prizefighters,
guys who knew how to work their fists.
ROSS: At the time,
about a third of professional boxers were Jewish.
And many of those Jewish boxers
were very proud of their heritage
and they had Stars of David on their trunks.
BERNSTEIN: They saw it as their duty
to take on the Friends of New Germany.
In New Jersey, this army of boxers was called
the Minutemen-- because they could be there in a minute.
ROSS: They would burst into open meetings
of the Friends of New Germany
and they would beat the stuffing out of them.
In Newark, New Jersey,
they were so angry there was a massive brawl
that lasted for hours until
the police were able to get it under control.
The government in Berlin starts to feel
that it's more of a problem than it is an asset,
and in late 1935
they disband the organization.
The Friends of New Germany was no more,
and Fritz Kuhn saw his opportunity, and seized it.
He said, you know, we have to re-form this group.
We have an infrastructure already in place
with chapters all over the country.
HITCHCOCK: So in early 1936,
Fritz Kuhn founds the German American Bund.
And Kuhn was trying to sell it as an American organization.
ROSS: What you begin to see in 1936
with the creation of the Bund
is what I would call
the beginning of star-spangled fascism.
The German American Bund is a patriotic,
law-abiding and honor-bound fighting organization
of loyal Americans of German extraction,
fighting to exterminate Jewish, international,
atheistic Bolshevism.
RIGUEUR: The German American Bund
starts very deliberately cloaking itself
in the explicit symbols of Americanness--
George Washington, the American flag.
HART: You have these bizarre mixtures
of American symbols with the symbols of Nazism.
People dressed as Minutemen from the American Revolution
standing on stage next to these Bund members
in their own uniforms,
or a man dressed as a Native American chief.
HITCHCOCK: Kuhn is trying to change the conversation a little bit
by saying, "You can be a patriotic American
and you can be proud of the Nazi government as well."
So he is going to try to square the circle,
which is to make Americans and American citizens
a part of an organization that is
basically designed to propagate Nazism.
(people chattering)
ROSS: The National Bund establishes its headquarters
on the Upper East Side of Manhattan
in the Yorkville neighborhood.
German was spoken in the streets.
The shops had signs in German.
If you walked through Yorkville in 1936,
you could think you were in a German city.
The Bund also had a fairly extensive business arm.
New York City had beer halls where its members would gather,
and these were often owned and operated by the Bund.
(singing in German)
(singing continues)
CHURCHWELL: Nationally,
most German Americans were not supporters of the Bund,
but the German American Bund had a great presence in New York,
so it was deliberately provocative
for the Jewish community
because they were literally holding parades
in front of Jewish people's homes.
We are American citizens
and we demand our rights
to be American citizens!
ROSS: Like Hitler, Kuhn wanted to establish
a Reich that would last for a thousand years.
So he gets to work expanding the group.
HITCHCOCK: In 1936 and '37, the Bund has a period of real growth.
There were three big districts of the Bund in America,
but there were 45 regional districts
and then 80 smaller little branches.
They're all over the place in the West Coast,
Midwest, and East.
HART: At its peak, the Bund attracts as many as 100,000 members.
And there were thousands of people
who were also sympathetic to the Bund
who were attending its events.
RIGUEUR: One of the best ways to get people on board
is to target their children.
People can say, "Well, this is a good organization.
"It teaches them about the beauty of nature.
"It teaches them vital skills in life.
"And it's family friendly and family oriented.
"By the way, we hate Jews,
we hate Blacks, we hate Catholics."
(singing in German)
(singing in German continues)
(song ends)
CHURCHWELL: You get kids out of unhealthy city environments
and put them into these summer camps.
It's all about making sure that your superior breed
is kept separate from pollutants--
people of inferior races and ethnicities.
HART: Children are essential to the future of the movement.
They have to be physically primed to become
the leaders of this Nazi Reich.
So there was a camp in upstate New York,
Milwaukee, Chicago,
Los Angeles, San Francisco, the Pacific Northwest.
There were camps located all over the country.
♪ ♪
BERNSTEIN: The grand opening for Camp Norland
was July 18, 1937,
and it was an event to be seen.
♪ ♪
There were more than 10,000 people there.
And this was in New Jersey,
60 miles outside of Manhattan.
♪ ♪
MAN (over speaker): I call upon all of you to join us in the battle
for a socially just,
financially independent,
and Jew-free America.
HITCHCOCK: The biggest camp
that the Bund built
was Camp Siegfried,
in Yaphank, Long Island.
It was a destination for lots of people
from the New York area, not just during summer camp,
but for rallies and picnics
and gatherings throughout the year.
BERNSTEIN: There was a train every Friday
direct from Penn Station to Long Island
called "The Siegfried Special,"
and it would be packed with
people getting away for the weekend.
♪ ♪
HITCHCOCK: Camp Siegfried was so popular,
the Bund created a front organization
called the German American Settlement League,
which bought property so that
they could establish, not only camps,
but actual planned communities.
And at Yaphank, they did build a German-American settlement
called German Gardens.
CHURCHWELL: The town that they set up
named streets on Long Island after prominent Nazis.
So there was Adolf Hitler Street and there was Goering Street.
They had laws on the books restricting ownership.
So, unsurprisingly,
this community was not willing to
admit Jewish homeowners.
♪ ♪
HART: It was designed around the idea
of creating an idealized sort of Nazi town.
♪ ♪
In the late summer of 1936,
President Roosevelt calls J. Edgar Hoover,
who's the head of the FBI,
asking him to look into the activities
of Nazis in the United States.
One of the first things
that the FBI sets out to investigate
is the German American Bund.
Sieg... CROWD: Heil!
GAGE: Ultimately, the FBI produces
a thousand-page report which really lays out
some of the more outrageous aspects of this organization.
The pro-Nazi imagery,
the pro-Hitler sentiments,
the antisemitism-- all of it's there,
but Hoover was not terribly interested
in taking this on.
Why is Hoover sitting on his hands
doing nothing with the Nazi fascist threat?
The answer is actually pretty simple.
It's because he was a rabid anti-communist.
HOOVER: The Communist Party of the United States
is not a political party.
It is a way of life,
an evil and malignant way of life.
HITCHCOCK: Like many Americans,
Hoover thought "Well, I don't really like fascism,
but I do like its anti-communist credentials."
So, people tolerated
organizations like the German American Bund
that were explicitly anti-communist.
RALLY LEADER: We stand beside you as Christian soldiers
in your valiant fight against Jewish communism.
(applause)
There is a movement to stop hate speech.
And, in fact, the New Jersey legislature
passes the race libel law.
You can't libel somebody
because of their race, their religion, their color.
HART: This is, in some ways, a novel concept in law.
The problem with this is that groups
like the ACLU immediately become involved
and raise the obvious constitutional objection
of how can you possibly outlaw speech
that is offensive to a particular group.
For all of the kind of horror
of the idea of pro-Nazi forces
acting in the United States,
it's really not clear that they were breaking
any particular federal law
that existed at that point
by engaging in the activities they were engaged in.
HART: Ultimately, the big test for the race libel law
comes because of Camp Nordland,
the German American Bund camp in the state of New Jersey,
because of speeches that were defamatory
towards the Jewish community.
RALLY LEADER: We know that the Jew is most concerned
with maintaining his stranglehold
on the financial systems of the world.
(crowd cheering)
HART: Ultimately,
there is a conviction of nine Bund members
for violating the race libel law,
but that's struck down
by the New Jersey State Supreme Court.
In the end, the ACLU publishes a pamphlet
defending their decision to defend the free speech of Nazis.
RIGUEUR: This is the double-edged sword of the First Amendment.
It is a fundamental American right to be allowed
to say horrible things,
but the protection of the right to be hateful
is what allows these ideas to proliferate.
♪ ♪
(car horns honking)
HITCHCOCK: In early 1937,
a Chicago newspaper, the "Chicago Daily Times,"
decides it's going to send reporters incognito
into the world of the German American Bund.
♪ ♪
BERNSTEIN: John and James Metcalfe
were brothers, born in Germany,
were both reporters for the "Chicago Daily Times."
They were assigned to go undercover
and infiltrate the Bund.
They had German birth certificates
and they could speak German.
So they had the perfect credentials.
HITCHCOCK: John had a little toothbrush mustache,
if that might be a little familiar,
and looked the part.
He approaches the Bund headquarters in New York
and works his way into the organization.
Metcalfe goes by an alias, Helmut Oberwinder,
and very quickly ingratiates himself with Fritz Kuhn.
♪ ♪
HART: Because he's willing to dedicate himself to the cause,
within just a few months,
John Metcalfe becomes Kuhn's right-hand man.
And Kuhn dispatches Metcalfe as a personal emissary
to local and regional Bund chapters.
So Metcalfe travels all over the country,
visiting with various Bund leaders.
And, all along the way,
he's filing reports back to his paper.
Everything from how a local Bund chapter
might be completely inept--
they were more interested
in having drinking parties than politics--
to Bund leaders scoffing at Kuhn's authority,
all the way to individual rank and file members
talking about their ambitions
to actually overthrow the U.S. government
and establish a Nazi dictatorship.
♪ ♪
HITCHCOCK: In September of 1937,
the "Chicago Daily Times" drops the bomb.
They publish a series of articles
on the German American Bund and they don't hold back.
♪ ♪
ROSS: These stories came out one after the other.
These exposés of how
the Nazis in America are trying
to undermine the American people,
the American government, and the American way of life.
HART: The Metcalfes heard whispers
inside the Bund's inner circle
of something called Der Tag,
which translates to "the day."
The day when the Bund believes
there will be a fascist revolution in the United States.
BERNSTEIN: This would be the day that there would be an insurrection.
They would take over the United States government,
and the swastika would fly above the Capitol.
The Metcalfe scoop really galvanizes
public opinion against the Bund,
and Congress begins to enter the discourse
about what should be done
about subversive groups in the United States.
Congressman Martin Dies, Jr. becomes the chairman
of what will come to be called
the House Un-American Activities Committee,
or HUAC.
Tactics of communists, Nazis, and fascists
are now endangering this country.
America must wake up to its danger.
HUAC PROSECUTOR: To whom were you sending these letters?
I sent that to a list of approximately 150 people.
GAGE: HUAC was very much in the mindset
that there were an array of
subversive organizations that needed to be investigated,
and that a lot of them actually were on the right.
HART: John Metcalfe was the first witness
called before the committee.
And there's incredible images of him giving Martin Dies
and the committee the Nazi salute from the witness table,
and then he showed them photos
of how the Bund was preparing some sort of military coup.
ROSS: What were we going to be as a nation?
Because what the Bund wanted America to be
was a nation that was proud of its white Aryan past.
But there were people who stood up for the right cause,
who stood up for what we think of as American ideals.
CHURCHWELL: Dorothy Thompson had interviewed Hitler in 1931,
and was very clear about the risks that he posed,
and not just to Europe.
THOMPSON: The classical end
of all pure democracy
is the popular tyrant.
And incidentally, all successful
tyrants throughout history
have been popular idols.
CHURCHWELL: In 1938 alone,
she gave more than 50 speeches
about the importance of democracy and fighting fascism.
And her radio broadcasts
reached more than five million people.
THOMPSON: The tyrant, said Machiavelli,
must pose as the friend of the people,
as their champion against
the rich and aristocratic,
as the incorporation
of the people's will.
They must be made to feel that through him,
in his person,
they are actually ruling.
This was the formula of Caesar,
and it's the formula of Stalin,
Mussolini, and Hitler.
Her point was, "Never be complacent."
Her point was, "This can happen anywhere,
and you have to be on your guard."
♪ ♪
ROSS: On November 9, 1938,
in hundreds of cities across Germany,
we have Kristallnacht-- "Night of the Broken Glass."
♪ ♪ (crowd clamoring)
(glass shattering)
For two nights, Jewish businesses are destroyed.
♪ ♪
Their homes ransacked.
♪ ♪
Synagogues are burned.
♪ ♪
30,000 Jewish men are rounded up
and sent to concentration camps.
HITCHCOCK: Americans now knew that
Nazi Germany wasn't just
a normal country with a fascist dictator.
It was a malevolent force.
HART: In the aftermath of Kristallnacht,
the Bund's tactics are very provocative
in the eyes of most Americans.
Hut!
HART: But rather than disappear from the public eye,
the German American Bund decides on mass provocation.
HITCHCOCK: By the end of 1938,
the Bund made it clear that what they wanted to do
was to show "That we are popular,
"that we are relevant,
"that we're fulfilling our ambition
"of making German Americans into
"good Nazis and Americans at the same time.
How can we do that? Let's have a rally."
♪ ♪
BERNSTEIN: People appealed to Mayor LaGuardia,
and said, "How can you allow this to happen?"
LaGuardia said they have every right to do it,
and he wasn't going to stand in the way.
It was the First Amendment.
ROSS: In those days,
just like today, New York City had the largest
Jewish population in America.
Of course there had been fascist demonstrations before
all around the country,
but the Bund was going to Madison Square Garden
in the center of the Jewish-American world.
(indistinct chatter)
BERNSTEIN: Over 20,000 Bundists were
admitted inside the Garden that night.
Outside were tens of thousands of anti-Bundists
wanting to get inside.
(indistinct shouting)
(drum and bugle corps marching)
(drumming continues)
MAN: O.D.s.
Attention!
I pledge undivided allegiance
to the flag of the United States of America
and the Republic for which it stands,
one nation, indivisible,
with liberty and justice for all.
(applause)
HART: Because of the visibility of this event,
there had been a sort of general assumption
that the Bund speakers
would refrain from their most hateful speech,
especially against Jews.
But that proves not to be the case.
GERHARD KUNZE: The Jew is a thousand times more dangerous to us
than all the others by reason of his parasitic nature.
(cheers and applause)
CHURCHWELL: Also present that night
was the indomitable Dorothy Thompson,
who was furious that this rally was taking place.
And amidst 22,000 fascists,
she started shouting "Bunk!"
BERNSTEIN: Dorothy Thompson didn't hold anything back.
She went there to heckle.
She went there to cause a fuss.
(crowd shouting)
CHURCHWELL: There is footage of Dorothy being hustled out.
Bodily thrown out of Madison Square Garden.
(car horns honking)
ROSS: Inside the Garden,
the final speaker is Fritz Kuhn himself.
KUNZE: We love him for the enemies he has made.
Ladies and gentlemen,
Mr. Fritz Kuhn.
(cheers and applause)
KUHN: Ladies and gentlemen,
fellow Americans, American patriots.
If you ask what we're actively fighting for
under our charter--
first, a socially just,
white gentile-ruled
United States.
Second...
(applause)
gentile-controlled
labor union,
free from Jewish
Moscow-directed domination.
(applause)
(rumbling, indistinct yelling)
Wait, wait! (men shouting)
ROSS: A 26 year-old Jewish plumber named Isidor Greenbaum
can't stand what he's hearing,
and he runs onto the stage.
Stormtroopers grab him and are beating the hell out of him.
(crowd shouting)
They could have killed him,
except the police came in and stopped the fight.
(crowd clamoring)
Be seated, please.
One fanatic don't make any difference,
ladies and gentlemen.
(crowd shouting)
(indistinct shouting, whistling)
HART: So the rally really comes to this violent conclusion.
Outside, there's an almost riotous situation
as protesters clash with the police
and with Bund members.
(indistinct shouting, clamoring)
BERNSTEIN: After the rally,
New York Mayor LaGuardia was furious
that this thing had happened in his city.
So he called his district attorney, Thomas Dewey,
and said, "We can't get Fritz Kuhn for what he says.
But there's got to be another way to get him."
So his office started investigating.
♪ ♪
Thomas Dewey discovered that Kuhn had been using money
from the Bund coffers to pay for his romances.
HART: Throughout his leadership of the Bund,
Kuhn has maintained a network of mistresses across the country.
And he's used some of these funds to not only
pay for his personal expenses,
but also those of his lady friends.
NEWSREEL NARRATOR: The law books a would-be American führer
on charges of grand larceny and forgery.
He's Fritz Kuhn, Bund leader and friend of Hitler.
But right now, his chief task is to explain
about some $14,000
he's accused of stealing from his followers.
ROSS: Fritz Kuhn is found guilty of embezzlement and tax evasion,
and he's sentenced to
two-and-a-half to five years in prison.
HART: As Kuhn is sitting in Sing Sing Prison,
he learns that Hitler has invaded Poland,
and war has now broken out in Europe
for the second time in a generation.
Debate is raging all over the country
about whether the U.S. should even take sides
in the war in Europe.
CHURCHWELL: There was a coalition of
unlikely bedfellows of people who wanted to keep
the United States out of the war for different reasons.
There were big business interests,
there were pacifists,
and then there were Nazi sympathizers.
So, all of these people
formed this coalition called America First,
and Charles Lindbergh became their spokesperson.
I have been forced to the conclusion
that we cannot win this war for England,
regardless of how much assistance we send.
(cheers and applause)
That is why the America First Committee
has been formed.
HART: Lindbergh had first come into prominence in 1927
when he was the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic.
He's a true national hero,
and one of most famous men in the world in this period.
At its peak in mid-1941,
America First has 800,000 members nationwide, dwarfing
any other nonpartisan political organization of the era.
The imminent danger of war lies in the action
taken by President Roosevelt and his supporters.
I appeal to all Americans,
no matter what their viewpoint on the war may be,
to unite behind the demand for a leadership in Washington
that stands squarely upon American tradition.
(cheers and applause)
GAGE: Lindbergh not only criticizes the Roosevelt administration,
but also begins to really flirt, in pretty overt ways,
with pro-Hitler sentiments, with antisemitism here at home,
and becomes kind of the hero
of the, to some degree, anti-war,
and to some degree, pro-Hitler right.
HART: Another belief of the Bund
was that after the fascist revolution,
after "Der Tag," some leader
will be swept into power on the Bund's political platform.
Now, who is this leader?
Fritz Kuhn might be one option,
but the name that is whispered more commonly
is Charles Lindbergh.
CHURCHWELL: There was talk of him running for president.
And, in fact, the America First Committee
was organizing itself into a political party
when Pearl Harbor happened,
and everything, you know, unfurled differently.
(explosion booming)
♪ ♪
HART: Japan attacks Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941,
and the U.S. declares war against Japan.
A few days later, Hitler and Germany
declare war on the United States.
(booming)
GAGE: With the United States entering the war,
you begin to get new laws that require
non-citizens in the United States
to register with the federal government.
March!
GAGE: You get laws like the Smith Act,
which says that any group that advocates
for the violent overthrow of the U.S. government
can be subject to a whole host of criminal penalties.
ROSS: So after he's released from prison,
Kuhn was then convicted a second time
and given a second jail sentence
for never having registered
as a foreign agent of the German government.
And then, in 1945,
he's stripped of his citizenship
and sent back to Germany.
The Bund as an organization collapsed.
But, of course, the people who were in the Bund
didn't then disappear.
The end of the Bund just meant that
they blended back into American life.
♪ ♪
RIGUEUR: They go on to run businesses.
They go on to be doctors,
and dentists, and police chiefs.
So when we say a group has disappeared,
in a lot of ways that means nothing,
because until the ideas are actually gone,
it's still there.
It's the ideas that matter.
BERNSTEIN: Fritz Kuhn tapped into something that was,
unfortunately,
I wouldn't say just part of the American makeup,
but part of human makeup.
The part that we don't like to look at.
HITCHCOCK: America triumphantly wins the Second World War,
which justifies a sense of pride
and recognition of sacrifices made
by Americans to defeat Nazism.
But there's not so much a reckoning
with the ideology that had motivated
organizations like the Bund.
Those questions go unasked and unanswered
after World War II.
There's this huge wish to simply forget
about the fractious politics of the 1930s.
To think that groups like the Bund
were all something that couldn't possibly
present a serious threat to American democracy.
GAGE: It was unlikely that
an avowedly pro-German organization
was going to become the vehicle through which
fascism came to America.
But it doesn't mean that that can't or won't happen.
♪ ♪
CHURCHWELL: The history of the German American Bund
reminds us that fascism
is ultra nationalist.
In other words,
there's no such thing as foreign fascism.
Fascism is always homegrown.
♪ ♪