Finding Americans Sympathetic to Nazis of Germany

 Nadene Goldfoot                                           

Bradley W. Hart, PhD, writer,  currently an associate professor at California State University, Fresno who previously completed a PhD in history at Cambridge University in Cambridge, England under the supervision of Sir Richard J Evans and an M.Phil in Modern History at the University of St Andrews.  His new book exposes Americans that were sympathetic to Nazis at the beginning of WWII.  

 He said that Americans who remember World War II reminisce about how it brought the country together. Popular mythology of the period holds that all Americans were patriotic and supported the war effort, but this was far from the case. From the German American Bund to sketchy American businessmen and the most dangerous of all – the America First Committee – the United States was deeply divided before Pearl Harbor.

Bradley W. Hart is a writer who started researching the history of Nazi -type groups, or Nazi sympathy in the USA a few years ago.  His book is titled Hitler's American Friends:  The Third Reich's Supporters in the United States.  

He found that the threat of Nazism in the USA before WWII was greater than we generally remember today.  This is brought out by learning that the history of the "America First" slogan was born in pre-WWII times and later reborn as a slogan for now-former President Donald Trump.  

The most noteworthy leader of the "America First Committee" was Charles Lindbergh, who sympathized with the Nazis and whose rhetoric was characterized by anti-Semitism and offensive stereotypes, including assertions that Jews posed a threat to the U.S. because of their influence in motion pictures, radio, the press, and the government.

"The undercurrents of anti-Semitism and bigotry that characterized the America First movement — including the assumption that Jews who opposed the movement had their own agenda and were not acting in America’s best interest — is fortunately not a major concern today,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, ADL CEO. “However, for many Americans, the term ‘America First’ will always be associated with and tainted by this history. In a political season that already has prompted a national conversation about civility and tolerance, choosing a call to action historically associated with incivility and intolerance seems ill-advised."

Not that there's anything wrong with putting America first.  We know that mankind puts his family first, then the life of others, and this is natural.  We all are going to dodge the bullet when in danger if we can.  It's a rare man who throws himself on a hand grenade to save the lives of his fellow soldiers and takes a special situation to cause such behavior.  But the slogan itself has brought back negative memories of the 1930s, when Nazis developed in Germany.  It brings back the idea of being an isolationist, only considering our country and not the others of this planet of which was a very popular concept.  After experiencing WWI that ended in 1918, no one was ready to another world war. World War I/ the First World War,  and referred to by some Anglophone authors as the "Great War" or the "War to End All Wars", was a global conflict which lasted from 1914 to 1918, and is considered one of the deadliest conflicts in history. 

 Germany started attacking Jews by 1933 seriously, only 15 years after the end of WWI.  Following several backroom negotiations – which included industrialists, Hindenburg's son, the former chancellor Franz von Papen, and Hitler – Hindenburg acquiesced and on 30 January 1933, he formally appointed Adolf Hitler as Germany's new chancellor. Probably the only American Jews aware of this were ones like my new uncle Werner, who as a German Jew, got out of Germany in May 1939 but had to leave his family to Germany's horrors as they didn't have the money to get them all out.  He worried, and had an illegal radio so he could keep abreast of what was happening to his family.  You can bet that those American foreign exchange students didn't know what was going on with the Jewish population or even kept an eye on Hitler. 

There is a "German belt" that extends all the way across the United States, from eastern Pennsylvania to the Oregon coast. Pennsylvania, with 3.5 million people of German ancestry, has the largest population of German-Americans in the U.S. and is home to one of the group's original settlements, Germantown (Philadelphia), founded in 1683 and the birthplace of the American antislavery movement in 1688, as well as the revolutionary Battle of Germantown.

"With an estimated size of approximately 43 million in 2019, German Americans are the largest of the self-reported ancestry groups by the United States Census Bureau in its American Community Survey. German Americans account for about one third of the total population of people of German ancestry in the world."  Donald Trump's grandfather, Fred Trump, was born in Germany.  Frederick Trump (born Friedrich Trump,  March 14, 1869 – May 30, 1918) was a German-born American barber and businessman. He was the patriarch of the Trump family and the paternal grandfather of Donald Trump, the 45th President of the United States.  For decades following World War II, Trump concealed his German ancestry (instead claiming Swedish heritage) to avoid associations with Nazism in light of the Holocaust. He also supported Jewish causes. During Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, reports of Fred Trump's arrest at a 1927 Ku Klux Klan parade resurfaced, although there is no direct evidence that he supported the organization. As president, Donald repeatedly and falsely claimed that his father was born in Germany.

Fred, Donald's father,   was conceived in Bavaria, where his parents wished to re-establish residency, but Friedrich was banished for dodging the draft. The family returned to New York on July 1, 1905, and moved to the Bronx, where Frederick Christ Trump was born on October 11. Fred Trump's younger brother, John G. Trump, was born in 1907. All three children were raised speaking German. In September 1908, the family moved to Woodhaven, Queens., So like many of us Americans, Donald's grandparents were born in Germany but 

his father was born in the USA.

Roll call for newly arrived prisoners, mostly Jews arrested during Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass" pogrom), at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Buchenwald, Germany, 1938.

"HITLER’S AMERICAN FRIENDS exposes the homegrown antagonists who sought to protect and promote Hitler, leave Europeans (and especially European Jews) to fend for themselves, and elevate the Nazi regime. Some of whom include:

• 1. Americans of German heritage who joined the Bund, whose leadership dreamed of installing a stateside Führer
  

  Nearly 1,000 uniformed men wearing swastika arm bands and carrying Nazi banners parade past a reviewing stand in New Jersey on July 18, 1937. The New Jersey division of the German-American Bund opened its 100-acre Camp Nordland at Sussex Hills. Dr. Salvatore Caridi of Union City, spokesman for a group of Italian-American Fascists attending as guests, addressed the bund members as "Nazi Friends." #

The German American Bund, or the German American Federation (German: Amerikadeutscher Bund; Amerikadeutscher Volksbund, AV), was a German-American Nazi organization which was established in 1936 as a successor to the Friends of New Germany (FoNG, FDND in German).  The Bund was allowed to consist only of American citizens of German descent. Its main goal was to promote a favorable view of Nazi Germany.

• 2. Members of the Silver Shirt Legion, run by an eccentric who claimed that Hitler fulfilled a religious prophesy

The Silver Legion of America, commonly known as the Silver Shirts, was an underground American fascist and Nazi sympathizer organization founded by William Dudley Pelley and headquartered in Asheville, North Carolina.  Pelley was a former journalist, novelist and screenwriter turned spiritualist who, by 1931, had begun to promote antisemitic views, asserting that Jews were possessed by demons. William Dudley Pelley (March 12, 1890 – June 30, 1965) was an American writer, occultist, spiritualist and fascist political activist.

He came to prominence as a writer, winning two O. Henry Awards and penning screenplays for Hollywood films. His 1929 essay "Seven Minutes in Eternity" marked a turning point in Pelley's career, earning a major response in The American Magazine where it was published as a popular example of what would later be called a near-death experience. His experiences with mysticism and occultism drifted towards the political, and in 1933 Pelley founded the Silver Legion of America, a fascist paramilitary league. He ran for president of the United States in 1936 as the candidate for the Christian Party.  (That shows you that some of these people were able to go very far in the USA, which is frightening.)

He formed the Silver Legion with the goal to bring about "spiritual and political renewal", inspired by the success of Adolf Hitler's Nazi movement in Germany.

A nationalist, fascist group, the paramilitary Silver Legion wore a uniform modeled after the Nazi's brown shirts (SA), consisting of a silver shirt with a blue tie, along with a campaign hat and blue corduroy trousers with leggings.

Legion leader Pelley called for a "Christian Commonwealth" in America that would combine the principles of nationalism and theocracy, while excluding Jews and non-whites. He claimed he would save America from Jewish communists just as "Mussolini and his Black Shirts saved Italy and as Hitler and his Brown Shirts saved Germany."

• 3. Midwestern Catholics like Father Charles Coughlin, an early right-wing radio star who broadcast anti-Semitic tirades
  
  Charles Coughlin, born October 25, 1891  in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

After making attacks on Jewish bankers, Coughlin began to use his radio program to broadcast antisemitic commentary. In the late 1930s, he supported some of the fascist policies of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. The broadcasts have been described as "a variation of the Fascist agenda applied to American culture". His chief topics were political and economic rather than religious, using the slogan "Social Justice". After the outbreak of World War II in Europe in 1939, the Roosevelt administration forced the cancellation of his radio program and forbade distribution by mail of his newspaper Social Justice. Coughlin largely vanished from the public arena, working as a parish pastor until retiring in 1966. He died in 1979 at the age of 88.

• 4. Members of Congress who used their privilege—sending mail at cost to American taxpayers—to distribute German propaganda

There were several audiences for Nazi propaganda. Germans were reminded of the struggle against foreign enemies and Jewish subversion. During periods preceding legislation or executive measures against Jews, propaganda campaigns created an atmosphere tolerant of violence against Jews, particularly in 1935 (before the Nuremberg Race Laws of September) and in 1938 (prior to the barrage of antisemitic economic legislation following Kristallnacht). Propaganda also encouraged passivity and acceptance of the impending measures against Jews, as these appeared to depict the Nazi government as stepping in and “restoring order.”  

Propaganda type Films in particular played an important role in disseminating racial antisemitism, the superiority of German military power, and the intrinsic evil of the enemies as defined by Nazi ideology. Nazi films portrayed Jews as "subhuman" creatures infiltrating Aryan society. For example, The Eternal Jew (1940), directed by Fritz Hippler, portrayed Jews as wandering cultural parasites, consumed by sex and money. Some films, such as The Triumph of the Will (1935) by Leni Riefenstahl, glorified Hitler and the National Socialist movement. Two other Riefenstahl works, Festival of the Nations and Festival of Beauty (1938), depicted the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games and promoted national pride in the successes of the Nazi regime at the Olympics.                       

This turned violet, captured by Washington Post in 1939 Madison Square Garden Hitler Rally

On February 20, 1939, the Bund held an “Americanization” rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden, denouncing Jewish conspiracies, President Roosevelt, and others. The rally, attended by 20,000 supporters and members, was protested by huge crowds of anti-Nazis, who were held back by 1,500 NYC police officers. As World War II began in 1939, the German American Bund fell apart, many of its assets were seized, and its leader arrested for embezzlement, and later deported to Germany.

Immigration to the United States was controlled by Congress, which in 1924 had passed the Johnson-Reed Immigration Act. The act set “national origins” quotas which privileged immigrants from northern and western Europe, who were believed to be able to assimilate more easily into the United States. After 1929, the act capped overall quota immigration at 153,879 people per year. It also allocated 25,957 slots per year to immigrants born in Germany. This was the second highest quota for any country. There were no specific quotas for Jewish immigrants. 

At the beginning of the Great Depression in 1930, President Herbert Hoover issued instructions banning immigrants “likely to become a public charge” (LPC), meaning those who might not be able to financially support themselves. Immigration fell dramatically as a result of this “LPC” clause being strictly enforced. In 1933, only 8,220 quota immigrants arrived in the United States, a ninety-five percent decrease in immigration compared to the years prior to Hoover’s instruction. Although President Roosevelt liberalized Hoover’s instruction shortly after taking office, 83,013 prospective German immigrants were on the waiting list to enter the United States in June 1934. Most of them did not have the financial resources necessary to prove they would not become a public charge, but wanted to remain on the list in anticipation of the US economy recovering and the restrictions being lifted. These did not include Jews who were in their own catagory of Jews. 

 In 1933, Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, whose department housed the Immigration and Naturalization Service, drafted orders to rescind Hoover’s instruction and give preference to people seeking to escape racial or religious persecution. The Labor Department also planned to allow Americans to place bonds demonstrating financial support for relatives seeking to immigrate, which would have exempted applicants from being rejected under the “LPC” clause. The State Department opposed Perkins’s efforts, however, citing the facts that unemployment was still high, that consular officers were sympathetic to Jews, and that the quotas were still unfilled. President Roosevelt did not intervene in the debate, and none of Perkins’s proposals succeeded. Though 29,456 German-born immigrants entered the United States between 1933–1937, this number represents about 23% of the number of immigrants who could have legally arrived within the existing German quota.

In March 1938, Nazi Germany annexed Austria, launching a refugee crisis, as hundreds of thousands of Jews joined the waiting lists for US immigration visas hoping to escape a worsening situation in Europe.  Recognizing that the plight of Jews under German control had reached a point of crisis, Roosevelt called for an international conference to discuss the refugee problem. Delegates from 32 nations met in Evian-les-Bains, France, in July 1938, but most countries, including the United States, refused to expand their laws to admit more immigrants. Even as the conference was going on, the American press criticized the participants at Evian for their inaction. Time magazine summarized the stance of participating countries as follows: “All nations present expressed sympathy for the refugees but few offered to allow them within their boundaries.”

My uncle had to have a Jewish sponsor in the USA, our great Uncle, who got my father to give Werner a job in his new wholesale meats company.  Werner's father was a sausage-maker.  Both the grea uncle and my father were the responsible parties for my uncle.  The USA wasn't taking any chances.  

By September, the waiting list for a German quota visa had reached 220,000 people. Even if the State Department issued the maximum number of visas it could have under the existing laws each year, new German- and Austrian-born applicants could anticipate at least a nine-year wait for a US immigration visa.

• 5. Celebrity pilot Charles Lindbergh who ended up speaking for them all at the America First Committee

The America First Committee (AFC) was the foremost United States isolationist pressure group against American entry into World War II. Launched in September 1940, it surpassed 800,000 members in 450 chapters at its peak. The AFC principally supported isolationism for its own sake, and its coalition included many Midwesterners, Republicans, conservatives, socialists, students, and leading industrialists, but it was controversial for the anti-Semitic and pro-fascist views of some of its most prominent speakers, leaders, and members. The AFC was dissolved on December 11, 1941, four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war.

                                             

In the 1930s, celebrated aviator Charles Lindbergh was one of America’s best known heroes, famous for his daring solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean in 1927. However, by 1940, at a time when many Americans feared being drawn into another world war, Lindbergh was also known as a spokesman for the America First Committee isolationist movement.  On September 11, 1941, Lindbergh delivered a speech in Des Moines, Iowa, in which he identified groups that he believed were conspiring to force the U.S. into war against Germany: "The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish [sic] and the Roosevelt Administration."  Many people denounced Lindbergh as an antisemite, and the controversy surrounding his speech irreparably damaged the isolationist cause.  Within three months, however, the question of war was moot. Japan attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and Germany declared war on the United States four days later. Lindbergh remained silent in public throughout America’s involvement in the war.

We try to tell ourselves it couldn’t happen here, but Americans are not immune to the lure of fascism.

A powerful look at how the forces of evil manipulate ordinary people, how we stepped back from the ledge, and the disturbing ease with which we could return to it, HITLER’S AMERICAN FRIENDS reminds us that nothing can be taken for granted when it comes to standing up to evil and dangerous ideologies, and that Americans must constantly be on guard to protect democratic rights and traditions.

Hart, who came to the topic via research on the eugenics movement and the history of Nazi sympathy in Britain, says he realized early on that there was a lot more to the American side of that story than most textbooks acknowledged. Some of the big names might get mentioned briefly — the radio priest Father Charles Coughlin, or the highly public German American Bund organization — but in general, he says, the American narrative of the years leading up to World War II has elided the role of those who supported the wrong side. 

And yet, American exchange students went to Germany and returned with glowing reviews.

 Charles Lindbergh denounced Jewish people for pushing the U.S. toward unnecessary war. In its various expressions, the pro-Nazi stance during those years was mostly focused not on creating an active military alliance with Germany or bringing the U.S. under Nazi control (something Hitler himself thought wouldn’t be possible) but rather on keeping the U.S. out of war in Europe.

So why was that past overlooked for so long?"

 The United States, that narrative says, helped save the world. Rocked by Pearl Harbor, Americans stepped up to turn the tide for the Allies and thus solidified their nation’s place as a global superpower. That narrative doesn’t have much room for the relatively small, but significant, number of Americans who were rooting for the other side.

 (One survey he cites found that in 1938, more Americans thought that communism was worse than fascism than vice versa.) Such people could truthfully insist that they’d always been anti-communist without revealing that they’d been fascists, and their fellow Americans were still so worried about communism that they might not press the matter.

I was born in 1934.  I'm thoroughly disgusted with those Americans who turned against Jews in the early 1930s, of course.  How people could be so obdurate is beyond me. Had they not learned anything in school in the USA?  They certainly had not learned much in their churches, obviously, except to hate Jews.  What they learned came from the propaganda spoken about on the streets and on the radio and early movies.  Far to many were sucked into such rot. 

Resource:

http://bradleywhart.com/about-me/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans

https://newspapers.ushmm.org/events/charles-lindbergh-makes-un-american-speech

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Dudley_Pelley

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_Bund#:~:text=The%20German%20American%20Bund%2C%20or,FoNG%2C%20FDND%20in%20German).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Trump

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans

https://time.com/5414055/american-nazi-sympathy-book/

http://bradleywhart.com/hitlers-american-friends-released/

https://www.bridgemi.com/michigan-government/henry-ford-and-jews-story-dearborn-didnt-want-told;  More found-Henry Ford, anti-Semite

Listen to ULTRA by Rachel Maddow:  

This is an amazing story of 1940 USA and the anti-semitism, pro Hitler movements that existed before we entered WWII. Amazing stuff that I'd never heard before.