{"id":296597,"date":"2025-06-16T07:18:13","date_gmt":"2025-06-16T07:18:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/som2nynetwork.com\/american-history\/americanstudies-june-16-2025-american-nazis-madison-square-garden\/"},"modified":"2025-06-16T07:18:13","modified_gmt":"2025-06-16T07:18:13","slug":"americanstudies-june-16-2025-american-nazis-madison-square-garden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/som2nynetwork.com\/?p=296597","title":{"rendered":"AmericanStudies: June 16, 2025: American Nazis: Madison Square Garden"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\n

[In the summer
\nof 1945<\/a>, Nazi scientists began arriving in the United States, recruited to
\nwork in the US government and eventually
\nits space program<\/a> as part of Operation
\nPaperclip<\/a>. But they weren\u2019t the first nor the only American Nazis by any
\nmeans, and this week I\u2019ll AmericanStudy a handful of others, leading up to a weekend
\npost on an interesting and fraught recent cultural representation of Paperclip.]<\/p>\n

On three
\ntelling sides to a <\/span>February
\n1939 Nazi rally<\/span><\/a> in New York City.<\/span><\/p>\n

1)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Organizers: Thanks to prominent individual figures
\nlike the three on whom I\u2019ll focus tomorrow (Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and
\nFather Coughlin), I think Americans have a general sense that there was <\/span>support
\nfor Nazis in 1930s America<\/span><\/a>. But that support was also organized, and one
\nof the chief such national organizations, the <\/span>German American
\nBund<\/span><\/a>, was the force behind the Madison Square Garden rally. While the
\nBund was paralleled by other pro-Hitler organizations in the period like the <\/span>Free Society
\nof Teutonia<\/span><\/a> and the <\/span>Friends of
\nthe New Germany<\/span><\/a>, it seems to me that the Bund were also singular in their desire
\nto wed these pro-Nazi Germany sentiments with direct appeals to mythic images
\nof American identity and patriotism (on which more in item 2). And the rally\u2019s
\ntwo keynote speakers reflect the Bund\u2019s own multi-national, immigrant origins
\n(not unlike America\u2019s, if far more fully European): Bund leader <\/span>Fritz Julius Kuhn<\/span><\/a> was a
\nGerman immigrant who had become a naturalized American citizen in 1934; while
\nBund secretary and Kuhn\u2019s right-hand man <\/span>James Wheeler-Hill<\/span><\/a> was a
\nRussian (Latvian) national and recent immigrant known as \u201cthe boy orator of the
\nBund.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

2)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>George Washington: The rally\u2019s February 20th<\/sup>
\ndate was chosen very specifically\u2014it was George Washington\u2019s birthday, and the <\/span>stage featured<\/span><\/a> a
\nportrait of Washington flanked by both American flags and Nazi flags\/swastikas.
\nAfter the rally opened with a performance of \u201cThe Star-Spangled Banner,\u201d
\nWheeler-Hill\u2019s <\/span>introductory
\nspeech<\/span><\/a> proclaimed that \u201cIf George Washington were alive today, he would
\nbe friends with Adolf Hitler.\u201d In my book <\/span>Of Thee I Sing: The Contested History of
\nAmerican Patriotism<\/span><\/i><\/a>, I argue that celebratory patriotism (like
\nthe communal ritual of standing for and singing the anthem) has throughout
\nAmerican history too often turned into mythic patriotism, the creation of myths
\nabout our history and identity that are generally used to exclude particular
\ngroups from the America being embraced (and to define those groups as un- and
\neven anti-American). So it\u2019s no coincidence that in Kuhn\u2019s concluding speech,
\nhe argued that \u201cThe Bund is open to you, provided you are sincere, of good
\ncharacter, of white gentile stock, and an American citizen imbued with
\npatriotic zeal.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

3)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0
\n<\/span><\/span><\/span>Protesters: That speech of Kuhn\u2019s did not go
\noff smoothly, however\u2014it was interrupted when <\/span>Isadore
\nGreenbaum<\/span><\/a>, a 26-year-old Jewish American US Navy veteran from Brooklyn,
\ncharged the stage; Greenbaum was attacked by Nazi guards, pulled away by
\npolice, and charged with disorderly conduct (for which he paid a $25 fine to
\navoid a 10-day jail sentence). He wasn\u2019t the least bit apologetic, <\/span>later stating<\/span><\/a>, \u201cGee,
\nwhat would you have done if you were in my place listening to that s.o.b.
\nhollering against the government and publicly kissing Hitler’s behind while
\nthousands cheered? Well, I did it.\u201d Nor was he alone, as an estimated 100,000
\nanti-Nazi protesters <\/span>gathered outside
\nthe Garden<\/span><\/a>, dwarfing the 20,000 or so Nazi sympathizers inside. The
\nprotesters featured World War I veterans, members of the Socialist Workers
\nParty, and countless other organizations and communities. This inspiring group
\nin no way mitigates the troubling realities of the rally and its reflection of
\nwidespread American support for Hitler and the Nazis; but it does remind us
\nthat 1930s American patriotism, like every other element of our society and history,
\nwas deeply contested. <\/span><\/p>\n

Next
\nNaziStudying tomorrow,<\/span><\/p>\n

Ben<\/span><\/p>\n

PS. What
\ndo you think? Other histories or stories you\u2019d highlight?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[In the summer of 1945, Nazi scientists began arriving in the United States, recruited to work in the US government and eventually its space program as part of Operation Paperclip. But they weren\u2019t the first nor the only American Nazis by any means, and this week I\u2019ll AmericanStudy a handful of others, leading up to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12032],"tags":[204,13299,1858,6128,20605,36954,647],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-296597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-american-history","tag-american","tag-americanstudies","tag-garden","tag-june","tag-madison","tag-nazis","tag-square"],"yoast_head":"\nAmericanStudies: June 16, 2025: American Nazis: Madison Square Garden - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/som2nynetwork.com\/?p=296597\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"AmericanStudies: June 16, 2025: American Nazis: Madison Square Garden - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"[In the summer of 1945, Nazi scientists began arriving in the United States, recruited to work in the US government and eventually its space program as part of Operation Paperclip. 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