Re: Neuschwanstein: A fairy tale darling's dark Nazi past
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German American Bund
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Accessed: 9/21/19
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German American Bund
Amerikadeutscher Volksbund
Flag of the German American Bund
Also known as "German American Federation"
Country United States
Leader(s) Fritz Julius Kuhn
Foundation 1936
Dissolved 1941
Preceded by Friends of New Germany
Active region(s) All United States, mainly New York,[1] Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Midwest
Ideology: Nazism, Germanisation, Pan-Germanism, Anti-Semitism, Non-interventionism[2]
Political position: Far-right
Major actions: Embezzlement, Ethnic violence, Sedition
Status Defunct
Size 25,000[3]
The German American Bund, or German American Federation (German: Amerikadeutscher Bund; Amerikadeutscher Volksbund, AV), was a German-American pro-Nazi organization established in 1936 to succeed Friends of New Germany (FoNG), the new name being chosen to emphasize the group's American credentials after press criticism that the organization was unpatriotic.[4] The Bund was to consist only of American citizens of German descent.[5] Its main goal was to promote a favorable view of Nazi Germany.
Friends of New Germany
Main article: Friends of New Germany
In May 1933, Nazi Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess gave German immigrant and German Nazi Party member Heinz Spanknöbel authority to form an American Nazi organization.[6] Shortly thereafter, with help from the German consul in New York City, Spanknöbel created the Friends of New Germany[6] by merging two older organizations in the United States, Gau-USA and the Free Society of Teutonia, which were both small groups with only a few hundred members each. The FoNG was based in New York City but had a strong presence in Chicago.[6] Members wore a uniform, a white shirt and black trousers for men with a black hat festooned with a red symbol. Women members wore a white blouse and a black skirt.[7]
The organization led by Spanknöbel was openly pro-Nazi, and engaged in activities such as storming the German language New Yorker Staats-Zeitung with the demand that Nazi-sympathetic articles be published, and the infiltration of other non-political German-American organizations. One of the Friends early initiatives was to counter, with propaganda, the Jewish boycott of German goods, which started in March 1933 to protest Nazi anti-Semitism.
In an internal battle for control of the Friends, Spanknöbel was ousted as leader and subsequently deported in October 1933 because he had failed to register as a foreign agent.[6]
At the same time, Congressman Samuel Dickstein, Chairman of the Committee on Naturalization and Immigration, became aware of the substantial number of foreigners legally and illegally entering and residing in the country, and the growing anti-Semitism along with vast amounts of anti-Semitic literature being distributed in the country. This led him to investigate independently the activities of Nazi and other fascist groups, leading to the formation of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities Authorized to Investigate Nazi Propaganda and Certain Other Propaganda Activities. Throughout the rest of 1934, the Committee conducted hearings, bringing before it most of the major figures in the American fascist movement.[8] Dickstein's investigation concluded that the Friends represented a branch of German dictator Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party in the United States.[9][10]
The organization existed into the mid-1930s, although it always remained small, with a membership of between 5,000 and 10,000, consisting mostly of German citizens living in the United States and German emigrants who only recently had become citizens.[6] In December 1935, Rudolf Hess ordered all German citizens to leave the FoNG and recalled all of its leaders to Germany.[6]
Bund activities
German American Bund parade on East 86th St., New York City, October 30, 1939
On March 19, 1936, the German American Bund was established as a follow-up organization for the Friends of New Germany in Buffalo, New York.[6][11] The Bund elected a German-born American citizen Fritz Julius Kuhn as its leader (Bundesführer).[12] Kuhn was a veteran of the Bavarian infantry during World War I and an Alter Kämpfer (old fighter) of the Nazi Party who, in 1934, was granted American citizenship. Kuhn was initially effective as a leader and was able to unite the organization and expand its membership but came to be seen simply as an incompetent swindler and liar.[6]
Sowilo rune on the flag of the youth organization
The administrative structure of the Bund mimicked the regional administrative subdivision of the Nazi Party. The German American Bund divided the United States into three Gaue: Gau Ost (East), Gau West and Gau Midwest.[13] Together the three Gaue comprised 69 Ortsgruppen (local groups): 40 in Gau Ost (17 in New York), 10 in Gau West and 19 in Gau Midwest.[13] Each Gau had its own Gauleiter and staff to direct the Bund operations in the region in accordance with the Führerprinzip.[13] The Bund's national headquarters was located at 178 East 85th Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan.[1]
The Bund established a number of training camps, including Camp Nordland in Sussex County, New Jersey, Camp Siegfried in Yaphank, New York, Camp Hindenburg in Grafton, Wisconsin, Deutschhorst Country Club in Sellersville, Pennsylvania,[14] Camp Bergwald in Bloomingdale, New Jersey,[6][15][16][17][14] and Camp Highland in New York state.[18] The Bund held rallies with Nazi insignia and procedures such as the Hitler salute and attacked the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jewish-American groups, Communism, "Moscow-directed" trade unions and American boycotts of German goods.[6][19] The organization claimed to show its loyalty to America by displaying the flag of the United States alongside the flag of Nazi Germany at Bund meetings, and declared that George Washington was "the first Fascist" who did not believe democracy would work.[20]
Kuhn and a few other Bundmen traveled to Berlin to attend the 1936 Summer Olympics. During the trip, he visited the Reich Chancellery, where his picture was taken with Hitler.[6] This act did not constitute an official Nazi approval for Kuhn's organization:
German Ambassador to the United States Hans-Heinrich Dieckhoff expressed his disapproval and concern over the group to Berlin, causing distrust between the Bund and the Nazi regime.[6] The organization received no financial or verbal support from Germany.
In response to the outrage of Jewish war veterans, Congress in 1938 passed the Foreign Agents Registration Act requiring foreign agents to register with the State Department. On March 1, 1938, the Nazi government decreed that no Reichsdeutsche [German nationals] could be a member of the Bund, and that no Nazi emblems were to be used by the organization.[6] This was done both to appease the U.S. and to distance Germany from the Bund, which was increasingly a cause of embarrassment with its rhetoric and actions.[6]
German American Bund rally poster at Madison Square Garden, February 20, 1939
Arguably, the zenith of the Bund's activities was the rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City on February 20, 1939.[21] Some 20,000 people attended and heard Kuhn criticize President Roosevelt by repeatedly referring to him as "Frank D. Rosenfeld", calling his New Deal the "Jew Deal" and denouncing what he believed to be Bolshevik-Jewish American leadership. Most shocking to American sensibilities was the outbreak of violence between protesters and Bund storm troopers. The rally, which attracted 20,000 Nazi supporters, was the subject of the 2017 short documentary A Night at the Garden by Marshall Curry.[22]
Decline
In 1939, a New York tax investigation determined that Kuhn had embezzled $14,000 from the Bund. The Bund did not seek to have Kuhn prosecuted, operating on the principle (Führerprinzip) that the leader had absolute power. However, New York City's district attorney prosecuted him in an attempt to cripple the Bund. On December 5, 1939, Kuhn was sentenced to two and a half to five years in prison for tax evasion and embezzlement.[23]
New Bund leaders replaced Kuhn, most notably Gerhard Kunze, but only for brief periods. A year after the outbreak of World War II, Congress enacted a peacetime military draft in September 1940. The Bund counseled members of draft age to evade conscription, a criminal offense punishable by up to five years in jail and a $10,000 fine. Gerhard Kunze fled to Mexico in November 1941.[7]
U.S. Congressman Martin Dies (D-Texas) and his House Committee on Un-American Activities were active in denying any Nazi-sympathetic organization the ability to operate freely during World War II. In the last week of December 1942, led by journalist Dorothy Thompson, fifty leading German-Americans (including baseball icon Babe Ruth) signed a "Christmas Declaration by men and women of German ancestry" condemning Nazism, which appeared in ten major American daily newspapers.
While Kuhn was in prison, his citizenship was canceled on June 1, 1943.[24] Upon his release after 43 months in state prison, Kuhn was re-arrested on June 21, 1943, as an enemy alien and interned by the federal government at a camp in Crystal City, Texas. After the war, Kuhn was interned at Ellis Island and deported to Germany on September 15, 1945.[24] He died on December 14, 1951, in Munich, Germany.
See also
• Fascist League of North America, a group similar to the German American Bund, of pro-Fascist Italian Americans that supported Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime in Italy
• Free Society of Teutonia, one of the two predecessor societies alongside Friends of New Germany that formed the German American Bund
• Camp Nordland, the largest German American Bund camp
• Friends of New Germany
• Silver Legion of America
• Christian Party (United States, 1930s)
• Christian Front (United States)
• America First Committee
• Neo-Nazism, for pro-Nazi groups in North America, Europe, South Africa, and Asia seeking to revive Nazism post-World War II
• Neo-Nazi groups of the United States, post-1945
• American Nazi Party, prominent pro-Nazi group formed in the 1950s
References
Notes
1. Federal Bureau of Investigation. "German American Federation/Bund Part 11 of 11". FBI Records: The Vault.
2. "American Nazi organization rally at Madison Square Garden, 1939". Rare Historical Photos. February 19, 2014.
3. "German American Bund". Holocaust Encyclopedia. July 2, 2016.
4. Erik V. Wolter, Loyalty On Trial: One American's Battle With The FBI. (iUniverse, 2004) ISBN 9780595327034. p. 65
5. Van Ells, Mark D. (August 2007). Americans for Hitler – The Bund. America in WWII. 3. pp. 44–49. Retrieved May 13, 2016.
6. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 24 January 2018. Retrieved 2 March 2011.
7. IMDb Biography
8. Chip Berlet, Matthew Nemiroff Lyons (2000). Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. Guilford Press. ISBN 978-1-57230-562-5.
9. Shaffer, Ryan (Spring 2010). "Long Island Nazis: A Local Synthesis of Transnational Politics". 21(2). Journal of Long Island History. Archived from the original on June 21, 2010. Retrieved November 19, 2010.
10. Investigation of un-American propaganda activities in the United States. Hearings before a Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Seventy-fifth Congress, third session-Seventy-eighth Congress, second session, on H. Res. 282, to investigate (l) the extent, character, and objects of un-American propaganda activities in the United States, (2) the diffusion within the United States of subversive and un-American propaganda that is instigated from foreign countries or of a domestic origin and attacks the principle of the form of government as guaranteed by our Constitution, and (3) all other questions in relation thereto that would aid Congress in any necessary remedial legislation
11. "Fritz Kuhn Death in 1951 Revealed. Lawyer Says Former Leader of German-American Bund Succumbed in Munich". Associated Press in New York Times. February 2, 1953. Retrieved 2008-07-20. Fritz Kuhn, once the arrogant, noisy leader of the pro-Hitler German-American Bund, died here more than a year ago – a poor and obscure chemist, unheralded and unsung.
12. Cyprian Blamires; Paul Jackson (2006). World fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1. ABC-CLIO. p. 270. ISBN 0-8223-0772-3.
13. Cornelia Wilhelms (1998). Bewegung oder Verein?: nationalsozialistische Volkspolitik in dem USA. Franz Steiner Verlag. p. 167. ISBN 3-515-06805-8.
14. "German-American Bund". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved February 5, 2012.
15. "German films about Camp Bergwald, the Bund Camp on Federal Hill, Riverdale, NJ". Motion Picture, Sound, and Video Branch (NWDNM), National Archives. Retrieved February 5, 2012.
16. Jackson, Kenneth T. The Encyclopedia of New York City. The New York Historical Society, Yale University Press, 1995, 462.
17. David Mark Chalmers (1987). Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan. ISBN 1-57607-940-6. When Arthur Bell, your Grand Giant, and Mr. Smythe asked us about using Camp Nordlund for this patriotic meeting, we decided to let them have it ...
18. Birchall, Guy (September 12, 2017). "Inside Hitler's terrifying AMERICAN summer camps where US boys were taught twisted Nazi ideology and trained to shoot, march and salute". TheSun.co.uk. Retrieved September 12, 2017.
19. Patricia Kollander; John O'Sullivan (2005). "I must be a part of this war": a German American's fight against Hitler and Nazism. Fordham Univ Press. p. 37. ISBN 0-8232-2528-3.
20. "Nazis Hail George Washington as First Fascist". Life. 1938-03-07. p. 17. Retrieved November 25,2011.
21. "Bund Activities Widespread. Evidence Taken by Dies Committee Throws Light on Meaning of the Garden Rally". New York Times. February 26, 1939. Retrieved 2015-02-19. Disorders attendant upon Nazi rallies in New York and Los Angeles this week again focused attention upon the Nazi movement in the United States and inspired conjectures as to its strength and influence.
22. Buder, Emily (10 October 2017). "When 20,000 American Nazis Descended Upon New York City". The Atlantic. Retrieved 6 December 2017. In 1939, the German American Bund organized a rally of 20,000 Nazi supporters at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
23. Adams, Thomas (2005). Germany and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History: A MultiDisciplinary Encyclopedia. G – N, volume 2. ABC-CLIO. p. 631. ISBN 1-85109-628-0. Retrieved January 11,2011.
24. "Fritz Kuhn, Former Bund Chief, Ordered Back to Germany". The Evening Independent. September 7, 1945.
Further reading
• Allen, Joe, "'It Can't Happen Here?': Confronting the Fascist Threat in the US in the Late 1930s," International Socialist Review, Part One: whole no. 85 (Sept.-Oct. 2012), pp. 26–35; Part Two: whole no. 87 (Jan.-Feb. 2013), pp. 19–28.
• Bell, Leland V. In Hitler's Shadow; The Anatomy of American Nazism, 1973
• Canedy, Susan. Americas Nazis: A Democratic Dilemma a History of the German American Bund Markgraf Pubns Group, 1990
• Diamond, Sander. The Nazi Movement in the United States: 1924–1941. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1974.
• Grams, Grant W.: Gustav Hittler, Bund Organizer in Montreal and Return Migrant to Germany, Kevin Christiano (ed.) Quebec Studies Journal, 2016
• Jenkins, Philip. Hoods and Shirts: The Extreme Right in Pennsylvania, 1925–1950 University of North Carolina Press, 1997
• MacDonnell, Francis. Insidious Foes: The Axis Fifth Column and the American Home Front Oxford University Press, 1995
• Miller, Marvin D. Wunderlich's Salute: The Interrelationship of the German-American Bund, Camp Siegfried, Yaphank, Long Island, and the Young Siegfrieds and Their Relationship with American and Nazi Institutions Malamud-Rose Publishers, November 1983(1st Edition)
• Norwood, Stephen H. "Marauding Youth and the Christian Front: Antisemitic Violence in Boston and New York during World War II" American Jewish History, Vol. 91, 2003
• Schneider, James C. Should America Go to War? The Debate over Foreign Policy in Chicago, 1939–1941 University of North Carolina Press, 1989
• St. George, Maximiliam and Dennis, Lawrence. A Trial on Trial: The Great Sedition Trial of 1944 National Civil Rights Committee, 1946
• Strong, Donald S. Organized Anti-Semitism in America: The Rise of Group Prejudice during the Decade 1930–40 1941
• Van Ells, Mark D. (August 2007). Americans for Hitler – The Bund. America in WWII. 3. pp. 44–49. Retrieved May 13, 2016.
External links
• Home Grown Nazis - A 13 part series for the Chicago Times in Sept. 1937 on Nazi activities in Chicago based on undercover reporting of Chicago Times reporters.
• Collection of articles in the Mid-Island Mail related to Bund activity in Yaphank, New York (1935–1941) (Longwood Public Library)
• Mp3 of National Leader Fritz Julius Kuhn address at the 1939 Madison Square Garden rally (from Talking History: The Radio Archives)
• What Price the Federal Reserve? – Illustrated anti-Semitic pamphlet issued by the Bund
• Free America – A collection of the speeches from the infamous Madison Square Garden rally in February 1939
• Awake and Act – Pamphlet listing the purposes and aims of the German American Bund
• German-American Bund.org
• U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum article on German-American Bund
• "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 24 January 2018. Retrieved 2 March 2011. – Article by Jim Bredemus
• FBI Records: German American Federation/Bund
• Materials produced by the Bund are found in the Florence Mendheim Collection of Anti-Semitic Propaganda (#AR 25441); Leo Baeck Institute, New York.
• "A Night at the Garden". Field of Vision. 11 October 2017. Retrieved 6 December 2017.
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Quotes from "Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States: Appendix, Part IV: German-American Bund: Three Documents on the German-American Bund, by Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives
The three documents which are presented in this report speak for themselves…..
They attest the ruthless efficiency of the military set-up which characterizes Hitler's machine in Germany….
The discipline to which members of the German-American Bund are subject is clearly reflected in the endless rules and regulations which extend to the minute details of the Bund members' lives. The documents speak of "absolute loyalty" and "blind obedience."…
The German-American Bund organization clearly anticipates violence by its assertion that "the OD man gives assurance that our movement will, at the sacrifice of life if necessary, remain the inexorable opponents of Jewish Marxism….
According to Document #3, "anyone who is not filled with this unshakable faith and courage and cannot march along as a fanatical fighter does not belong in the OD; to have embraced the National Socialist view of things means definitively breaking off all ties with liberal halfway measures" (p. 1611). This is a clear espousal of the totalitarian, as opposed to the democratic, way of life….
The following quotations indicate something of the religious bigotry of the Germany-American Bund: "All OD men and OD Leaders in particular are required to procure a certificate of Aryan blood" (p. 1610). "We are looking for men who enter our organization not in order to procure personal advantages or to be allowed to play soldier pleasantly, but who intend with their whole power to eradicate the red Jewish pestilence in America"…
the defensive and offensive movement of the national consciousness of American Germanism dedicated philosophically (Weltanschaulich), national-socialistically, and politically to the service of an actually independent, aryan-governed United States of North America"…
Document #1 reveals the keeping of systematic records on "enemies" of the German-American Bund….Hitler explained to Rauschning his system of keeping just such a card file on "friends" and "enemies."….
Document #1 specifies the manner in which a meeting of the Bund shall be closed, as follows: "To a free. Gentile-ruled United States and to our fighting movement of awakened Aryan Americans, a three-fold rousing 'Free America! Free America! Free America!"….
These Nazi activities in the United States are traceable to and linked with Government-controlled agencies in Nazi Germany…
the official newspaper of the German-American Bund has had advance information on what was about to transpire in Germany and gave every evidence of intimate knowledge of events to come….
all of the Nazi activities here are on lines identical with those used abroad….
the German-American Bund can muster within its own ranks a uniformed force of 5,000 storm troops and it was testified that in time of necessity this force could be augmented with "strong-arm" detachments of allied groups, such as Italian Black Shirts, Silver Shirts, Ukrainians, White Russians, and similar organizations…
this storm-troop division of the Bund is patterned after the Hitler storm troops and its members are the political soldiers of a Hitler-inspired movement in the United States….
from the manpower of this force the Bund, working hand in hand with the German Government, can draft men for a sabotage, machine and spy net….
members of that organization in all parts of the United States have privately admitted that they are not American citizens but are German citizens and in many cases have boasted that they never intend to become American citizens….
elections were conducted along the lines of recent European plebiscites where everything is under such control that no one dares vote against the machine…
crews of German warships have been entertained by the storm troops of the Bund. German World War veterans are active in storm-troop ranks and help train and drill the men….
Members of the Nazi groups have been found to be working in some of the great aviation manufacturing companies of the United States. They were found working in the United States Navy shipyards where they had succeeded in securing positions which placed them in direct possession of secret plans for the construction of United States Navy battleships of the latest type. They have even been assigned to trial runs on the latest type of these ships…
the Foreign Institute of the Nazi Government at Stuttgart was one of the instrumentalities used in assisting the German-American Bund in spreading propaganda in this country…
German consulates in the United States have been the clearing houses for much of the Nazi activity here…
the groups operated in this country are directed by organizations in Germany which get their support and direction from the German Government itself….
In fact, the Foreign Institute at Stuttgart is being conducted by one Fritz Gissibl, a former leader of the Nazi group in this country and whose brother even now is a member and leader of the Nazi group in Chicago….
every effort is being expended by the bund's high command to instill in these boys and girls, most of whom have never even been outside the United States, the doctrines of racial and religious hatreds preached under the pagan German kultur …
a worship of Hitlerism is inculcated in these youthful unsuspecting minds….
Health, Hitler, Heils, and Hatred are the "4-H's" used by United States Nazis…
They must learn to speak fluent German and to understand the Nazi ideology. They listen to lectures on the Hitler philosophy and the policies of the Third Reich….
the camps are completely Nazi Germany….
The scouts eat, sleep, talk, and dream nazi-ism with the same fervor of the regimented youth of Germany. They are taught to avoid outside "contaminating influences."…
Youngsters are thrust into the Jungvolk organization when only 5 and 6 years old. They wear uniforms of brown and blue shorts or skirts, white blouses with Hitler-brown scarfs. Older boys wear brown shirts with Sam Browne belts, military trousers and boots, and are armed with long hunting knives and spears.
Youths graduate into the "Ordnungs Dienst," the storm-troop organization of the bund, and are trained mentally and physically to lead the troops when the often predicted "trouble" comes. Scouts are told they must be prepared to withstand the onrush of the coming "red" revolution….
At Siegfried and at other eastern bund camps, separate tent encampments for boys and girls are set back in the woods, away from the main building and cottages where their parents drink beer and dance…. Visitors — even parents of the scouts — are not permitted in the youth camps proper. Scouts on duty in the camps must come to the entrances to visit with their parents….
Commands and conversations among the scouts are entirely in German…
Heels click together and the right arm goes out in a Hitler salute when a scout, boy or girl, is addressed by a youth leader or any storm trooper in uniform….
the signs over Nazi youth camps: "You were born to die for Germany."…
Nazi propaganda was slyly worked into the public schools of that city in recent months under the guise of summer German-language classes; that ostensibly, the plan was to simply teach the German language and sing German folk songs, but before very long it became apparent this was not at all the real purposes of the classes. Instead, instructions drifted into Nazi doctrines….
After every Saturday class, trucks picked up some 50 of the children and carried them 55 miles to a Nazi camp near Stanton, Mo. This camp site is operated by the Deutsch-Amerikanische Berufgemeinschaft and is under the direction of Eberhard von Blankenhagen, former Consul Secretary of the German Embassy in Washington….
So closely related is the youth movement of the German-American Bund to that of the Hitler youth in Germany that they even sing the songs of the Hitler youth and reprint them in their song books…
One of the most alarming ways of Nazi propaganda along this line has swept through the ranks of exchange students to universities….
Take, for instance, the case of the Committee on American Youth Camp in Germany. This committee arranges trips and stays for American youths in Germany….
Dr. Colin Ross is a Nazi propagandist who spends his time between Germany and the United States. He has been one of the outstanding speakers for the German-American Bund and has been a writer for the Weckruf, official organ of the bund….
children six years old were shown with the swastika, regulation German Army steel helmets and spears…
Denials to the contrary notwithstanding, this committee was greatly impressed with the evidence presented showing that there is a relationship existing between the German Government and the German-American Bund through the activities of Nazi consuls in this country.
Fritz Kuhn, leader of the German-American Bund, informed this committee's investigator at a time when the latter was disguised as a storm trooper that not only did he have power over the Ambassador and consular set-up in the United States but that he also had a special secret arrangement directly with Adolf Hitler, of Germany.
Ramifications of this "arrangement," Kuhn declared, also included a secret relationship between the German-American Bund and Dr. Hans Heinrich Dieckhoff, present German Ambassador to the United States, and German consuls throughout the country. (See vol, 2, p. 1149.)
In his executive office on the second floor of the bund national headquarters at 178 East Eighty-fifth Street, New York City, on the night of August 16, 1937, this committee's investigator testified that he spoke with Kuhn concerning a trip he had made to the Pacific coast and told him of the difficulties the Los Angeles Post had had with the German consul there….You see, I have a certain special arrangement with Hitler and Germany that whenever any of our groups have trouble with the consulates in their districts that they are to report it to me in full detail. I then take it up with the Ambassador. Germany is not to be troubled with it unless I get no satisfaction from the Ambassador.
That is exactly why there is a new Ambassador to the United States, and that is exactly why many consuls have been and still are being removed. All the new consuls are National Socialists and are under special instructions to give us the fullest cooperation in every way.
It should be pointed out that Dr. Hans Heinrich Dieckhoff, present Ambassador, was sent to the United States, May 14, 1938, to replace Dr. Hans Luther, whose policy, bund leaders said, did not coincide with those of the bund and the Nazi Party in Germany. There have been numerous consulate changes during the last 2 years, and bund leaders a year ago predicted that more would follow….
Consul von Killinger was also reported as stating that the activities against certain religious groups in this country, as practiced by the German American Bund, are "for the good of America."
The committee had before it evidence (vol. 2, p. 1151) that certain American citizens residing in California had made trips to Germany for the purpose of being schooled in the art of Nazi propaganda and enlightenment. In one instance the father of one of these men (vol. 2, p. 1151) told this committee's investigator that his son's expenses to Germany had been paid through a secret arrangement between the German-American Bund and the Nazi Government….
American Citizens have received Nazi propaganda by mail in packages carrying the imprint of the Nazi consulate at St. Louis…
Propaganda direct from the German Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment is distributed by bund officials and evidence was introduced showing definitely that printed propaganda material was shipped from Germany to United States citizens directly. These packages contained, according to the testimony, considerable Nazi propaganda which was printed in Germany for distribution in the United States, considerable Fascist propaganda which was printed in Great Britain for distribution here, and much material of antiracial and antireligious character which was printed here, shipped to German Government agencies, and then reshipped to the United States for distribution in this country….
The packages coming here from abroad contained printed material from the pen of Ernst Goerner, of Milwaukee, Wis.; pamphlets from the Knights of the White Camellia, an organization founded by George E. Deatherage, of Charleston, W. Va.; leaflets from the Russian National Union; and issues from the Christian Free Press, printed in Glendale, Calif….
many Germans living in the United States go abroad and take an oath of fealty to the Fuehrer of Germany…
Repeatedly we have been told that there is no connection between the German-American Bund and the Nazi Government or its political subdivisions, repeatedly we have been told that no allegiance to Adolf Hitler is required, and yet here we have an officially inspired newspaper published in Germany telling us that an oath of fealty was taken….
A target range was set up at Camp Siegfried, Yaphank, Long Island, and on one occasion Herman Schwarzmann, head of the Astoria, Long Island, group, announced that the men were to be "trained to shoot and to take care of guns"…
Bund fuehrers informed storm troops that the various German World War veterans in their ranks would train the younger men in the use of arms….
Within the past year one section of the Gestapo, service section No. 2, under the direction of Colonel Nicolai, has added three new departments, Nos. 23, 24, and 25, all three specifically devoted to espionage in the United States.
Department 23 specializes in economic espionage — the obtaining of American manufacturing and industrial secrets.
Department 24 specializes in military intelligence.
Department 25 specializes in Nazi propaganda….
the German-American Bund receives its inspiration, program, and direction from the Nazi Government of Germany through the various propaganda organizations which have been set up by that Government and which function under the control and supervision of the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment….
In 1936 Fritz Kulin accompanied a large delegation of bund members to Germany ostensibly for the purpose of visiting the Olympic games. The group paraded in uniform of the Orderly Division (storm troops), and the parade was reviewed by Adolf Hitler. Following the parade, Fritz Kuhn and other officials of the German-American Bund were received by the German Fuehrer…
It was established through the testimony of Fritz Kuhn that the bund had worked sympathetically with other organizations throughout the United States and cooperates with them. Kuhn testified that some of these groups are the Christian Front, the Christian Mobilizers, the Christian Crusaders, the Social Justice Society, the Silver Shirt Legion of America, the Knights of the White Camellia and various Italian Fascist, White Russian, and Ukranian organizations. Kuhn testified that some of the leaders of these groups had addressed meetings sponsored by the bund and that representatives of the bund in turn frequently appeared as speakers at meetings and gatherings sponsored by the above-named groups. It was also established that the bund cooperated with some of these organizations and their leaders by exchanging literature and publications with them and by publishing material emanating from them in the official organ of the bund. Numerous articles have appeared in the bund newspaper expressing the bund's approval of the activities of the organizations already mentioned….
the following are standard reading in bund camps: Hitler's Mein Kampf, Pelley's booklets and publication, Liberation, the books of Julius Streicher (German propagandist), and the Rev. Charles E. Coughlin's publication, Social Justice….
uniforms worn by the members of the youth groups, their camps and program of activities were similar in every respect to those of the Hitler youth movement, and that the Nazi salute was the accepted gesture of greeting….
a group of 15 boys and 15 girls from various parts of the United States who were selected by the bund to be sent to Germany for special training….
there is a political agent on all German ships and that these political agents maintain contact with the Nazi representatives in foreign countries. They are intermediaries for transmission of instructions to the bund leaders in the United States and they receive reports from these leaders concerning the bund's activities, according to the witnesses….
German agents engaged in espionage activities, contacted bund leaders in the United States and sought and received their cooperation. This witness also testified that he had heard discussions among bund leaders with reference to the manner in which the bund, through its members in various industrial plants, could effectively carry out a program of sabotage in case such action became necessary….
members of the bund had assisted German agents whose arrests were sought by officials in the United States in avoiding apprehension and had helped get them out of the United States with the cooperation of German ships….
Nazi propaganda agencies, through officials of the German Government in the United States, have attempted to propagandize educational institutions in this country. It was testified that a German consul general had offered, on behalf of the German Government to subsidize German departments in American universities provided the professors were "acceptable'' to the Nazis….
in August 1938 a so-called anti-Communist convention was held at the bund headquarters in Los Angeles…
the following persons participated in this convention:
Kenneth Alexander, Southern California leader of the Silver Shirts; J. H. Peyton, of the American Rangers; Chas. B. Hudson, of Omaha, Nebr., organizer and leader of America Awake, who accompanied General Moseley when he appeared before the committee; Mrs. Leslie Fry, alias Paquita Louise De Shishmareff, mysterious international figure who has since fled the country, then leader of the Militant Christian Patriots; representatives of Italian Fascist and White Russian organizations; and a number of others of similar point of view….
Bund literature mingled with that of William Dudley Pelley, Robert Edmondson, Mrs. Fry, and George Deatherage on the tables of this convention.
It is clear to the committee that this convention was in no real sense an anti-Communist convention but rather another of a series of attempts to unite some of the various forces of intolerance, racial hatred, Naziism and Fascism in order to achieve greater influence in the United States….
Allen went to Atlanta, Ga., to attempt to "buy the Ku Klux Klan" for Mrs. Fry for the sum of $75,000. He testified that he talked to Hiram W. Evans, head of the Klan, but that Evans "was not interested in the idea."…
-- Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States: Appendix, Part IV: German-American Bund: Three Documents on the German-American Bund, by Special Committee on Un-American Activities
German American Bund
Amerikadeutscher Volksbund
Flag of the German American Bund
Also known as "German American Federation"
Country United States
Leader(s) Fritz Julius Kuhn
Foundation 1936
Dissolved 1941
Preceded by Friends of New Germany
Active region(s) All United States, mainly New York,[1] Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Midwest
Ideology: Nazism, Germanisation, Pan-Germanism, Anti-Semitism, Non-interventionism[2]
Political position: Far-right
Major actions: Embezzlement, Ethnic violence, Sedition
Status Defunct
Size 25,000[3]
The German American Bund, or German American Federation (German: Amerikadeutscher Bund; Amerikadeutscher Volksbund, AV), was a German-American pro-Nazi organization established in 1936 to succeed Friends of New Germany (FoNG), the new name being chosen to emphasize the group's American credentials after press criticism that the organization was unpatriotic.[4] The Bund was to consist only of American citizens of German descent.[5] Its main goal was to promote a favorable view of Nazi Germany.
Friends of New Germany
Main article: Friends of New Germany
In May 1933, Nazi Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess gave German immigrant and German Nazi Party member Heinz Spanknöbel authority to form an American Nazi organization.[6] Shortly thereafter, with help from the German consul in New York City, Spanknöbel created the Friends of New Germany[6] by merging two older organizations in the United States, Gau-USA and the Free Society of Teutonia, which were both small groups with only a few hundred members each. The FoNG was based in New York City but had a strong presence in Chicago.[6] Members wore a uniform, a white shirt and black trousers for men with a black hat festooned with a red symbol. Women members wore a white blouse and a black skirt.[7]
The organization led by Spanknöbel was openly pro-Nazi, and engaged in activities such as storming the German language New Yorker Staats-Zeitung with the demand that Nazi-sympathetic articles be published, and the infiltration of other non-political German-American organizations. One of the Friends early initiatives was to counter, with propaganda, the Jewish boycott of German goods, which started in March 1933 to protest Nazi anti-Semitism.
In an internal battle for control of the Friends, Spanknöbel was ousted as leader and subsequently deported in October 1933 because he had failed to register as a foreign agent.[6]
At the same time, Congressman Samuel Dickstein, Chairman of the Committee on Naturalization and Immigration, became aware of the substantial number of foreigners legally and illegally entering and residing in the country, and the growing anti-Semitism along with vast amounts of anti-Semitic literature being distributed in the country. This led him to investigate independently the activities of Nazi and other fascist groups, leading to the formation of the Special Committee on Un-American Activities Authorized to Investigate Nazi Propaganda and Certain Other Propaganda Activities. Throughout the rest of 1934, the Committee conducted hearings, bringing before it most of the major figures in the American fascist movement.[8] Dickstein's investigation concluded that the Friends represented a branch of German dictator Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party in the United States.[9][10]
The organization existed into the mid-1930s, although it always remained small, with a membership of between 5,000 and 10,000, consisting mostly of German citizens living in the United States and German emigrants who only recently had become citizens.[6] In December 1935, Rudolf Hess ordered all German citizens to leave the FoNG and recalled all of its leaders to Germany.[6]
Bund activities
German American Bund parade on East 86th St., New York City, October 30, 1939
On March 19, 1936, the German American Bund was established as a follow-up organization for the Friends of New Germany in Buffalo, New York.[6][11] The Bund elected a German-born American citizen Fritz Julius Kuhn as its leader (Bundesführer).[12] Kuhn was a veteran of the Bavarian infantry during World War I and an Alter Kämpfer (old fighter) of the Nazi Party who, in 1934, was granted American citizenship. Kuhn was initially effective as a leader and was able to unite the organization and expand its membership but came to be seen simply as an incompetent swindler and liar.[6]
Sowilo rune on the flag of the youth organization
The administrative structure of the Bund mimicked the regional administrative subdivision of the Nazi Party. The German American Bund divided the United States into three Gaue: Gau Ost (East), Gau West and Gau Midwest.[13] Together the three Gaue comprised 69 Ortsgruppen (local groups): 40 in Gau Ost (17 in New York), 10 in Gau West and 19 in Gau Midwest.[13] Each Gau had its own Gauleiter and staff to direct the Bund operations in the region in accordance with the Führerprinzip.[13] The Bund's national headquarters was located at 178 East 85th Street in the New York City borough of Manhattan.[1]
The Bund established a number of training camps, including Camp Nordland in Sussex County, New Jersey, Camp Siegfried in Yaphank, New York, Camp Hindenburg in Grafton, Wisconsin, Deutschhorst Country Club in Sellersville, Pennsylvania,[14] Camp Bergwald in Bloomingdale, New Jersey,[6][15][16][17][14] and Camp Highland in New York state.[18] The Bund held rallies with Nazi insignia and procedures such as the Hitler salute and attacked the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jewish-American groups, Communism, "Moscow-directed" trade unions and American boycotts of German goods.[6][19] The organization claimed to show its loyalty to America by displaying the flag of the United States alongside the flag of Nazi Germany at Bund meetings, and declared that George Washington was "the first Fascist" who did not believe democracy would work.[20]
Kuhn and a few other Bundmen traveled to Berlin to attend the 1936 Summer Olympics. During the trip, he visited the Reich Chancellery, where his picture was taken with Hitler.[6] This act did not constitute an official Nazi approval for Kuhn's organization:
The German-American Bund followed closely the pattern of treason made familiar by the Nazis in such organizations as those of Norway's Quisling, Czechoslovakia's Henlein, Belgium's Degrelle, and Jugoslavia's Pavelic. Operating under the flimsy pretext of cultural objectives and general German-American welfare, the bund was always and everywhere a Nazi agency working for disruption, espionage, sabotage, and treason. The bund's pious pretenses were so shallow that it is impossible to believe that any considerable proportion of its membership was ever truly deceived concerning its objectives....
the committee found the following things:
1. That the bund was characterized by the same ruthless efficiency of the military set-up which characterized Hitler's machine in Germany.
2. That bund members were subjected to "absolute loyalty" and "blind obedience" to the bund's fuehrer.
3. That the bund demanded that its members be "fanatical fighters" for national socialism.
4. That the bund anticipated the necessity of violence in carrying out its program.
5. That the bund was characterized by extreme religious bigotry.
6. That the bund aimed at the establishment of a new kind of government in the United States, one which should incorporate the principle of Nazi religious bigotry.
7. That the bund kept a systematic record of its enemies.
8. That the bund specified that its meetings should be closed with the following declaration: "To a free, Gentile-ruled United States and to our fighting movement of awakened Aryan Americans, a threefold rousing 'Free America! Free America! Free America!'"
9. That the bund was an absolutely secret organization.
10. That the bund looked upon all Americans of German descent as owing loyalty to the Reich.
11. And that the bund was ideologically and organizationally tied to Nazi Germany....
Fritz Julius Kuhn was born in Munich, Germany, on May 15, 1896. According to his own testimony, he received his education in Munich, completing a university course there.
In the First World War Kuhn was a machine gunner in the infantry of the German Army. He states that he served 4-1/2 years with the German forces, and by the end of the war had attained the rank of lieutenant.
Kuhn's brother, Max, was appointed a member of the German Supreme Court by Hitler — sufficient evidence that the Kuhn family stands in well with the Nazi Fuehrer....
Mr. Fritz Kuhn became a member of the Nazi Party in 1921 and was active under the then Munich police commissioner, one of the first leading Nazi officials, Dr. Poehner....
When on November 9, 1923, in front of the Feldherrenhalle in Munich, Bavarian police shot at the Nazis marching under the leadership of Hitler and Ludendorff, Kuhn was among the marching Nazis....
After his entry into the United States, Kuhn proceeded directly to Detroit, where he obtained employment in the Henry Ford Hospital and later as a chemical engineer in the Ford Motor Co. Kuhn's employment in these Ford institutions lasted about 8 years....
In the Deutscher Weckruf und Beobachter, official bund newspaper, the visit of Kuhn and a delegation of German-American Bund storm troopers to Germany was described with obvious pride in both words and pictures. The accounts of this visit, which took place in 1936, are found in the Deutscher Weckruf and Beobachter for August 6, August 27, and September 10, 1936. When these bund storm troopers paraded in Berlin before Hitler himself, the Nazi Feuhrer stood on the balcony of the Chancellory. As Hitler stood there viewing this parade, Fritz Kuhn went to the balcony and, according to the words of the Deutscher Weckruf und Beobachter itself, "Bund Leader Fritz Kuhn reported to him."... It cannot be denied that Hitler in this manner gave the highest official recognition of the fact that the German-American Bund was a Nazi agency and that Bundesfuehrer Fritz Kuhn was a subordinate of Hitler himself. According to the report which was published in the bund's own newspaper, Hitler replied to Kuhn, "Now you go back and continue your struggle."
-- Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States: Appendix, Part VII: Report on the Axis Front Movement in the United States [Excerpt from pp. 59-85], Special Committee on Un-American Activities
German Ambassador to the United States Hans-Heinrich Dieckhoff expressed his disapproval and concern over the group to Berlin, causing distrust between the Bund and the Nazi regime.[6] The organization received no financial or verbal support from Germany.
Denials to the contrary notwithstanding, this committee was greatly impressed with the evidence presented showing that there is a relationship existing between the German Government and the German-American Bund through the activities of Nazi consuls in this country.
Fritz Kuhn, leader of the German-American Bund, informed this committee's investigator at a time when the latter was disguised as a storm trooper that not only did he have power over the Ambassador and consular set-up in the United States but that he also had a special secret arrangement directly with Adolf Hitler, of Germany.
Ramifications of this "arrangement," Kuhn declared, also included a secret relationship between the German-American Bund and Dr. Hans Heinrich Dieckhoff, present German Ambassador to the United States, and German consuls throughout the country. (See vol, 2, p. 1149.)
In his executive office on the second floor of the bund national headquarters at 178 East Eighty-fifth Street, New York City, on the night of August 16, 1937, this committee's investigator testified that he spoke with Kuhn concerning a trip he had made to the Pacific coast and told him of the difficulties the Los Angeles Post had had with the German consul there. According to this testimony, Kuhn exclaimed:My God, what's the matter with them. They know what to do. Why don't they let me know about it? I've heard before of this trouble in Los Angeles. Schwinn talked it over with me.
(This Schwinn is Hermann Schwinn, western leader of the German-American Bund. He is from Los Angeles.)Oh, well, maybe Schwinn took my order of instructions with him to Germany and forgot to send it to his district.
It was at this point that Kuhn made the following statement to the investigator for the committee:You see, I have a certain special arrangement with Hitler and Germany that whenever any of our groups have trouble with the consulates in their districts that they are to report it to me in full detail. I then take it up with the Ambassador. Germany is not to be troubled with it unless I get no satisfaction from the Ambassador.
That is exactly why there is a new Ambassador to the United States, and that is exactly why many consuls have been and still are being removed. All the new consuls are National Socialists and are under special instructions to give us the fullest cooperation in every way.
It should be pointed out that Dr. Hans Heinrich Dieckhoff, present Ambassador, was sent to the United States, May 14, 1938, to replace Dr. Hans Luther, whose policy, bund leaders said, did not coincide with those of the bund and the Nazi Party in Germany. There have been numerous consulate changes during the last 2 years, and bund leaders a year ago predicted that more would follow.
-- Investigation of Un-American Propaganda Activities in the United States: Appendix, Part IV: German-American Bund: Three Documents on the German-American Bund, by Special Committee on Un-American Activities
In response to the outrage of Jewish war veterans, Congress in 1938 passed the Foreign Agents Registration Act requiring foreign agents to register with the State Department. On March 1, 1938, the Nazi government decreed that no Reichsdeutsche [German nationals] could be a member of the Bund, and that no Nazi emblems were to be used by the organization.[6] This was done both to appease the U.S. and to distance Germany from the Bund, which was increasingly a cause of embarrassment with its rhetoric and actions.[6]
German American Bund rally poster at Madison Square Garden, February 20, 1939
Arguably, the zenith of the Bund's activities was the rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City on February 20, 1939.[21] Some 20,000 people attended and heard Kuhn criticize President Roosevelt by repeatedly referring to him as "Frank D. Rosenfeld", calling his New Deal the "Jew Deal" and denouncing what he believed to be Bolshevik-Jewish American leadership. Most shocking to American sensibilities was the outbreak of violence between protesters and Bund storm troopers. The rally, which attracted 20,000 Nazi supporters, was the subject of the 2017 short documentary A Night at the Garden by Marshall Curry.[22]
Decline
In 1939, a New York tax investigation determined that Kuhn had embezzled $14,000 from the Bund. The Bund did not seek to have Kuhn prosecuted, operating on the principle (Führerprinzip) that the leader had absolute power. However, New York City's district attorney prosecuted him in an attempt to cripple the Bund. On December 5, 1939, Kuhn was sentenced to two and a half to five years in prison for tax evasion and embezzlement.[23]
New Bund leaders replaced Kuhn, most notably Gerhard Kunze, but only for brief periods. A year after the outbreak of World War II, Congress enacted a peacetime military draft in September 1940. The Bund counseled members of draft age to evade conscription, a criminal offense punishable by up to five years in jail and a $10,000 fine. Gerhard Kunze fled to Mexico in November 1941.[7]
U.S. Congressman Martin Dies (D-Texas) and his House Committee on Un-American Activities were active in denying any Nazi-sympathetic organization the ability to operate freely during World War II. In the last week of December 1942, led by journalist Dorothy Thompson, fifty leading German-Americans (including baseball icon Babe Ruth) signed a "Christmas Declaration by men and women of German ancestry" condemning Nazism, which appeared in ten major American daily newspapers.
While Kuhn was in prison, his citizenship was canceled on June 1, 1943.[24] Upon his release after 43 months in state prison, Kuhn was re-arrested on June 21, 1943, as an enemy alien and interned by the federal government at a camp in Crystal City, Texas. After the war, Kuhn was interned at Ellis Island and deported to Germany on September 15, 1945.[24] He died on December 14, 1951, in Munich, Germany.
See also
• Fascist League of North America, a group similar to the German American Bund, of pro-Fascist Italian Americans that supported Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime in Italy
• Free Society of Teutonia, one of the two predecessor societies alongside Friends of New Germany that formed the German American Bund
• Camp Nordland, the largest German American Bund camp
• Friends of New Germany
• Silver Legion of America
• Christian Party (United States, 1930s)
• Christian Front (United States)
• America First Committee
• Neo-Nazism, for pro-Nazi groups in North America, Europe, South Africa, and Asia seeking to revive Nazism post-World War II
• Neo-Nazi groups of the United States, post-1945
• American Nazi Party, prominent pro-Nazi group formed in the 1950s
References
Notes
1. Federal Bureau of Investigation. "German American Federation/Bund Part 11 of 11". FBI Records: The Vault.
2. "American Nazi organization rally at Madison Square Garden, 1939". Rare Historical Photos. February 19, 2014.
3. "German American Bund". Holocaust Encyclopedia. July 2, 2016.
4. Erik V. Wolter, Loyalty On Trial: One American's Battle With The FBI. (iUniverse, 2004) ISBN 9780595327034. p. 65
5. Van Ells, Mark D. (August 2007). Americans for Hitler – The Bund. America in WWII. 3. pp. 44–49. Retrieved May 13, 2016.
6. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 24 January 2018. Retrieved 2 March 2011.
7. IMDb Biography
8. Chip Berlet, Matthew Nemiroff Lyons (2000). Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort. Guilford Press. ISBN 978-1-57230-562-5.
9. Shaffer, Ryan (Spring 2010). "Long Island Nazis: A Local Synthesis of Transnational Politics". 21(2). Journal of Long Island History. Archived from the original on June 21, 2010. Retrieved November 19, 2010.
10. Investigation of un-American propaganda activities in the United States. Hearings before a Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Seventy-fifth Congress, third session-Seventy-eighth Congress, second session, on H. Res. 282, to investigate (l) the extent, character, and objects of un-American propaganda activities in the United States, (2) the diffusion within the United States of subversive and un-American propaganda that is instigated from foreign countries or of a domestic origin and attacks the principle of the form of government as guaranteed by our Constitution, and (3) all other questions in relation thereto that would aid Congress in any necessary remedial legislation
11. "Fritz Kuhn Death in 1951 Revealed. Lawyer Says Former Leader of German-American Bund Succumbed in Munich". Associated Press in New York Times. February 2, 1953. Retrieved 2008-07-20. Fritz Kuhn, once the arrogant, noisy leader of the pro-Hitler German-American Bund, died here more than a year ago – a poor and obscure chemist, unheralded and unsung.
12. Cyprian Blamires; Paul Jackson (2006). World fascism: a historical encyclopedia, Volume 1. ABC-CLIO. p. 270. ISBN 0-8223-0772-3.
13. Cornelia Wilhelms (1998). Bewegung oder Verein?: nationalsozialistische Volkspolitik in dem USA. Franz Steiner Verlag. p. 167. ISBN 3-515-06805-8.
14. "German-American Bund". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved February 5, 2012.
15. "German films about Camp Bergwald, the Bund Camp on Federal Hill, Riverdale, NJ". Motion Picture, Sound, and Video Branch (NWDNM), National Archives. Retrieved February 5, 2012.
16. Jackson, Kenneth T. The Encyclopedia of New York City. The New York Historical Society, Yale University Press, 1995, 462.
17. David Mark Chalmers (1987). Hooded Americanism: The History of the Ku Klux Klan. ISBN 1-57607-940-6. When Arthur Bell, your Grand Giant, and Mr. Smythe asked us about using Camp Nordlund for this patriotic meeting, we decided to let them have it ...
18. Birchall, Guy (September 12, 2017). "Inside Hitler's terrifying AMERICAN summer camps where US boys were taught twisted Nazi ideology and trained to shoot, march and salute". TheSun.co.uk. Retrieved September 12, 2017.
19. Patricia Kollander; John O'Sullivan (2005). "I must be a part of this war": a German American's fight against Hitler and Nazism. Fordham Univ Press. p. 37. ISBN 0-8232-2528-3.
20. "Nazis Hail George Washington as First Fascist". Life. 1938-03-07. p. 17. Retrieved November 25,2011.
21. "Bund Activities Widespread. Evidence Taken by Dies Committee Throws Light on Meaning of the Garden Rally". New York Times. February 26, 1939. Retrieved 2015-02-19. Disorders attendant upon Nazi rallies in New York and Los Angeles this week again focused attention upon the Nazi movement in the United States and inspired conjectures as to its strength and influence.
22. Buder, Emily (10 October 2017). "When 20,000 American Nazis Descended Upon New York City". The Atlantic. Retrieved 6 December 2017. In 1939, the German American Bund organized a rally of 20,000 Nazi supporters at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
23. Adams, Thomas (2005). Germany and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History: A MultiDisciplinary Encyclopedia. G – N, volume 2. ABC-CLIO. p. 631. ISBN 1-85109-628-0. Retrieved January 11,2011.
24. "Fritz Kuhn, Former Bund Chief, Ordered Back to Germany". The Evening Independent. September 7, 1945.
Further reading
• Allen, Joe, "'It Can't Happen Here?': Confronting the Fascist Threat in the US in the Late 1930s," International Socialist Review, Part One: whole no. 85 (Sept.-Oct. 2012), pp. 26–35; Part Two: whole no. 87 (Jan.-Feb. 2013), pp. 19–28.
• Bell, Leland V. In Hitler's Shadow; The Anatomy of American Nazism, 1973
• Canedy, Susan. Americas Nazis: A Democratic Dilemma a History of the German American Bund Markgraf Pubns Group, 1990
• Diamond, Sander. The Nazi Movement in the United States: 1924–1941. Ithaca: Cornell University, 1974.
• Grams, Grant W.: Gustav Hittler, Bund Organizer in Montreal and Return Migrant to Germany, Kevin Christiano (ed.) Quebec Studies Journal, 2016
• Jenkins, Philip. Hoods and Shirts: The Extreme Right in Pennsylvania, 1925–1950 University of North Carolina Press, 1997
• MacDonnell, Francis. Insidious Foes: The Axis Fifth Column and the American Home Front Oxford University Press, 1995
• Miller, Marvin D. Wunderlich's Salute: The Interrelationship of the German-American Bund, Camp Siegfried, Yaphank, Long Island, and the Young Siegfrieds and Their Relationship with American and Nazi Institutions Malamud-Rose Publishers, November 1983(1st Edition)
• Norwood, Stephen H. "Marauding Youth and the Christian Front: Antisemitic Violence in Boston and New York during World War II" American Jewish History, Vol. 91, 2003
• Schneider, James C. Should America Go to War? The Debate over Foreign Policy in Chicago, 1939–1941 University of North Carolina Press, 1989
• St. George, Maximiliam and Dennis, Lawrence. A Trial on Trial: The Great Sedition Trial of 1944 National Civil Rights Committee, 1946
• Strong, Donald S. Organized Anti-Semitism in America: The Rise of Group Prejudice during the Decade 1930–40 1941
• Van Ells, Mark D. (August 2007). Americans for Hitler – The Bund. America in WWII. 3. pp. 44–49. Retrieved May 13, 2016.
External links
• Home Grown Nazis - A 13 part series for the Chicago Times in Sept. 1937 on Nazi activities in Chicago based on undercover reporting of Chicago Times reporters.
• Collection of articles in the Mid-Island Mail related to Bund activity in Yaphank, New York (1935–1941) (Longwood Public Library)
• Mp3 of National Leader Fritz Julius Kuhn address at the 1939 Madison Square Garden rally (from Talking History: The Radio Archives)
• What Price the Federal Reserve? – Illustrated anti-Semitic pamphlet issued by the Bund
• Free America – A collection of the speeches from the infamous Madison Square Garden rally in February 1939
• Awake and Act – Pamphlet listing the purposes and aims of the German American Bund
• German-American Bund.org
• U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum article on German-American Bund
• "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 24 January 2018. Retrieved 2 March 2011. – Article by Jim Bredemus
• FBI Records: German American Federation/Bund
• Materials produced by the Bund are found in the Florence Mendheim Collection of Anti-Semitic Propaganda (#AR 25441); Leo Baeck Institute, New York.
• "A Night at the Garden". Field of Vision. 11 October 2017. Retrieved 6 December 2017.