Stephanie Hinnershitz:
On February 20, 1939, George Washington's birthday, over 20,000 people packed New York City's Madison Square Garden for a quote, "Pro-American Rally." A giant portrait of the first president hung on the main stage, framed by two American flags and two banners bearing swastikas. Though framed as mass support for patriotic ideas and American values, attendees that evening were treated to antisemitic rants from one of the nation's most ardent and outspoken Nazi sympathizers: German-American Bund leader Fritz Kuhn.

Speaker:
Introducing the next speaker. I do so with a feeling of personal affection. We love him for the enemies he has made. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Fritz Kuhn.

Fritz Kuhn:
Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Americans, American patriots … We, the German-American Bund, organized as American citizens with American ideals and determined to protect ourselves, our homes, our wives and children against the slimy conspirators who will change this glorious republic into the inferno of a Bolshevik paradise. They'll surely accuse their far-reaching ambition unless you Aryans, Nordics, and Christians wake up and not only speak out in [?] tongues to the men that our government shall be returned to the American people who founded it.

Stephanie Hinnershitz:
I'm Dr. Stephanie Hinnershitz, fellow with The National WWII Museum's Jenny Craig Institute for the Study of War on Democracy. Fritz Julius Kuhn, the self-styled American Führer, was a German immigrant who became a US naturalized citizen in 1934, a citizenship that would be canceled by 1943 after being at the helm of the German-American Bund. Here to help us delve deeper into this appalling character and his organization is Dr. Bradley W. Hart, historian for The National WWII Museum and author of Hitler’s American Friends: The Third Reich’s Supporters in the United States.

Bradley Hart:
The German-American Bund was founded in 1936. The primary mover in its foundation was a man named Fritz Julius Kuhn. During World War I, Fritz Kuhn had actually fought in the German military, of course, on the side of Germany, and won the Iron Cross. After the war, he immigrated to the United States by way of Mexico. He ends up coming to the US in the early 1920s and actually working for the Ford Motor Company at one time in the Detroit area. Kuhn has more of an interest in politics seemingly than furthering his career. He'd been trained as a scientist, as a chemist in Germany. He actually loses his job at the Ford Motor Company and the Ford Hospital where he'd been working, supposedly for practicing political speeches on the job.

And one thing that's important to realize here is that this is not sort of the standard political speeches you might hear in the US of the early 1930s. This is actually speeches relating to Kuhn's interest in Nazism and actually the emerging ideology in the Third Reich. So in 1933, after Adolf Hitler takes power, Fritz Kuhn, who of course has this background in extremist politics in Germany, becomes the regional leader of a group called the Friends of the New Germany. Now, the Friends of the New Germany is a group that supposedly is interested in helping build political ties and social ties with the changes taking place in the Third Reich and with people in the Third Reich itself.

The Friends of the New Germany kind of breaks down because actually the German government is afraid that it's going to get the Germans in trouble in the United States. It's afraid that actually it will create an impetus for the US to declare war on Germany, which Hitler and his lieutenants definitely do not want to have happen in the mid-1930s. And so the German Embassy actually orders it shut down, but the organization that replaces it is called the German-American Bund. And Fritz Kuhn becomes the Bund's first national leader.

The Bund was headquartered in New York City. Much of its membership was concentrated in the Upper Midwest in the Detroit and Milwaukee areas, which had a large German American community and still actually does to this day. Many of the Bund's members were actually themselves fairly recent immigrants to the United States from Germany, much like Kuhn himself. Some of them were or saw themselves as political refugees from the Weimar Republic, from the liberal changes taking place in the 1920s. And from the repression of the early Nazi Party after the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923.

So, many of them are attracted, many of these immigrants from Germany are attracted to the Bund for a couple of reasons. The first one being that much like the Friends of the New Germany, the German-American Bund is in some ways about cultural ties and cultural connections. It has picnics where people are speaking German and drinking German beer and celebrating German holidays, which actually we should note in this period includes things like celebrating Adolf Hitler's birthday in the late 1930s. But the Bund really presents a way for recent German immigrants to keep in touch with their German heritage.

And there were many such cultural heritage organizations in this period, but there's actually a political angle to the Bund as well that many of these other groups obviously don't have. Kuhn makes it very clear that he sees the Bund as a Nazi-esque type organization. And in fact, when the Bund is first founded, there's a newspaper interview he gives where he says that the German-American Bund is not Nazi in orientation, necessarily, but Nazi in outlook. So, in other words, it may not be an official Nazi organization, but is a Nazi-esque organization in terms of its beliefs.

Stephanie Hinnershitz:
Father Coughlin's radio addresses during the height of the Great Depression lent inspiration to antisemitic groups like the Christian Front that accused communists and Jews of undermining American free enterprise. These groups also appealed to Nazi sympathizers like the German-American Bund.

Bradley Hart:
We can't talk about the German-American Bund without talking about its politics. One thing we often forget about this era is that there was actually a movement to boycott Nazi Germany in the early 1930s in the United States. Now, much of the impetus for this boycott movement came from the political left, from people who were deeply concerned about the changes taking place in Germany and the antisemitic oppression that was becoming widespread after Hitler had taken power. And so this effort to boycott German imports was actually seen as a way for Americans at the grassroots level to really show their displeasure with what was taking place in Germany, with their concerns of the emerging political situation, and as a way to even try to pressure the Roosevelt administration to take formal action, something like what we might consider to be a sanctions package today.

Fritz Kuhn uses the existence of this boycott movement as a way to build support for the early German-American Bund. There's actually a business division of the Bund where German American business owners can actually sign up to do business with the Bund itself. They actually make money selling uniforms to the organization, providing beer for certain events, and actually providing other concessions for the Bund's large sort of public events. But also there's this aspect of what we almost might consider a form of sort of racketeering today, to some extent.

One of Fritz Kuhn's innovations in the German American Business League, as it's called, is to try to convince these business owners to subscribe to a complicated sort of script system where members of the Bund would buy script directly from the Bund itself and these businesses would then honor that script at a discount. And you can already imagine sort of the financial machinations this led to, where the Bund was actually taking some of the profits from these business members of the league and pocketing it for themselves. And so Kuhn really, I think, has this shrewd understanding of how to push the buttons of the German American immigrant community in this period.

And the politics of Nazi Germany, which again, many people in the Bund had had personal firsthand experience with because they were recent immigrants from Germany or relatively recent immigrants in this period. But also this idea of defending German Americans from boycott movements and from what was seen as anti-German prejudice really creates a lot of appeal, I think for some in the German American community who were attracted perhaps to the Bund, not for political reasons themselves, but for cultural reasons. But this idea of fighting back and resisting and creating a support network against anti-German boycott movements really was a way that Kuhn was able to recruit a lot of people into this movement.

It's important to also notice that Kuhn really has this antisemitic orientation within the Bund's ideology from its earlier days. Kuhn blames this boycott movement on American Jews and claims it actually is part of a wider Jewish international conspiracy, which is a very common antisemitic trope targeting Germany on a much wider basis.

Stephanie Hinnershitz:
This was a disturbing trend to some who watched the Bund's activities, but this front man, Fritz Kuhn, was generating more and more members with this cult of personality.

Bradley Hart:
So, Fritz Kuhn think it's fair to say, is a really fascinating figure in a lot of ways in the America of the late-1930s. This is a man who really comes out of nowhere in 1936 when he becomes leader of the Bund and goes from being a nobody to a name that at least in certain parts of the country is almost a household name. And by that I mean especially in these areas where the Bund has really a large presence. These are largely large East Coast cities; New York is where the Bund is headquartered, and the Bund actually has a very large presence even physically on the streets of New York with these very distinctive uniforms that they were marching in the mid-1930s.

Kuhn also becomes fairly famous in the Upper Midwest where there's a lot of Bund members in the Detroit-Milwaukee area where there's large German American populations. So, this is a man who's becoming fairly well-known by the late-1930s. He's also a man who's cultivating a particular reputation for himself as actually something of a party animal, which seems fairly strange for a man who has couched himself as the future American Hitler, or the future American Führer. But Kuhn actually has this sort of larger-than-life personality.

He wears a Nazi-esque uniform, we could say that's actually designed and modeled on the Nazi uniforms being seen in Germany in this period. He compels Bund members, male members, to buy this uniform. And so essentially, imagine this man sort of strolling down a street in New York and surrounded by henchmen in Nazi-style uniforms. I mean, this is what Kuhn would do. He was pretty unmistakable. He also had this sort of playboy-ish, we might say, sort of personality as well. He was seen going to fancy nightclubs with a variety of women, apparently much to the dismay of his wife. He was seen leaving these nightclubs and commenting on what was going on in there.

And of course, this is a man who is adhering to an ideology, [who] despises jazz music in particular as morally degenerate. This is a man, I think, who sees his path to political success as running through, cultivating this image of himself as sort of a larger-than-life figure, where if you know him for the uniform and you know him for his politics, whether you agree with it or not, you also see this sort of in some ways fun-loving side to this man, as bizarre and as disturbing as that might seem. This is an era I think that's important to note as well. It's really the era, I would argue, of the first mass-media celebrities.

Let's look at a figure like Charles Lindbergh. So Charles Lindbergh, if we remember him at all today, we remember him often for that 1927 flight across the Atlantic, the first time that anyone had flown nonstop across the Atlantic. Well, after that, Charles Lindbergh becomes this larger-than-life celebrity. He's one of the most photographed men in the world, and he actually can't escape the press, much to his dismay. That interest in Lindbergh of course then creates a media circus, we might call it, around the tragic kidnapping and subsequent death of his son just a few years after that very courageous flight across the Atlantic. And so Lindbergh is really this larger-than-life celebrity.

Father Charles Coughlin, the most listened to radio host in history, this is the era where he's cultivating this huge audience as well. And so I think it's somewhat logical for a figure like Fritz Kuhn to look at these two men, Father Coughlin on the radio, Charles Lindbergh in the visual press and the newsreels, a man who's in the newspapers really every day. Two men who Kuhn sees as ideologically somewhat at least aligned with him. Obviously Coughlin much more so than Lindbergh, at least in this early period. And I think Kuhn sees himself as emulating these men who have really put themselves on the American national stage in a way that, because of technology and because of American society, no one had really been able to do before.

Stephanie Hinnershitz:
Kuhn's admiration for Hitler prompted him to organize a trip to Germany for a group of his most loyal devotees in 1936 to attend the Summer Olympics in Berlin.

Bradley Hart:
So, the 1936 Berlin Olympics are going to be a huge propaganda moment for the new German regime, effectively. Hitler sees this as a big opportunity to really impress foreign visitors, not only with the way that he's rebuilding Germany from the unrest of the hyperinflation period and the Great Depression, but he's going to try to make Germany appear to be a normal country and his regime to be a normal regime. In the weeks before the Olympics, the Nazis actually tell shop owners to take down antisemitic signs from their windows, that actually the Nazi Party itself had encouraged or mandated in an effort to try to downplay the regime's antisemitism.

And this apparently works. There are many accounts from visitors who go to Berlin in 1936 and say, "Well, I've read these accounts of the terrible things happening to the Jews in Germany, and it's just not true. I didn't see anything like this when I was there." And of course, we know that the antisemitic persecution facing German Jews was not at all abated in 1936, and in fact will only accelerate after the Olympics. But for this brief period of time, Hitler sees us as a way to try to fool the world effectively and try to convince them that the things they're reading in the newspaper in fact isn't true.

Fritz Kuhn sees the 1936 Olympics along similar lines. He sees this as a propaganda coup for himself. Kuhn actually makes the journey to Berlin with a fairly large Bund delegation. And the way that he wrangles a meeting with Hitler is that he convinces his followers to make a charitable donation to one of the Nazi Party's supposedly charitable causes. So, Kuhn gathers up this money from his American members. He puts all their names in a golden book, effectively, and goes off to Germany. He gets a meeting with Hitler himself, and he presents this book to Hitler in a sort of meet-and-greet session.

Now, this might seem like a big accomplishment. I mean, Hitler is obviously a major world leader in this period, but this is also the 1936 Olympics. Hitler is taking basically every meeting that he can with visiting dignitaries. And so Hitler does take this meeting in 1936. He has this sort of meet-and-greet with Kuhn and some of his lieutenants. He receives this book, and there's actually some pretty awkward photos that are snapped that you can find online of this meeting where Hitler's back is sort of halfway to the camera. It almost looks like a paparazzi shot or something. And Kuhn is sort of there and is kind of blurry in almost the background of this shot. It's certainly not the type of highly posed photographs that we often see of Hitler meeting with these major dignitaries.

So, I think the fact that this photo is not nearly the quality level that the propaganda ministry in Germany often demanded, Hitler himself frequently demanded, I think shows the low level of importance that Hitler put on this meeting and the personal misgivings that he had about taking this meeting at all. Well, regardless of the actual quality of the photograph or the substance of the meeting, Kuhn sees this as a major propaganda coup. He actually takes this somewhat blurry photograph back to the United States and puts it on the front page of the propaganda newspaper that the Bund itself publishes and distributes on street corners, especially in places like New York.

And so this is a photo that receives quite a bit of press attention. Kuhn also says that in that meeting with Hitler, Kuhn was explaining the goals of the Bund and explaining who he was, I think to some extent, to Hitler. And Hitler says something supposedly along the lines of, "Well, go back and continue your fight or continue your struggle," which seems almost like a kind of throwaway line, and given, again, Hitler's own misgivings about this meeting and lack of interest in it, it's probably him sort of trying to move on to the next thing. But Kuhn takes this as Hitler's endorsement. He presents this as, "Well, Hitler himself has endorsed me to become the Nazi Führer of the United States," which is probably not at all what Hitler had intended to do in this meeting, but Kuhn uses this as a big propaganda moment.

And so after 1936, you see Kuhn constantly referring back to this meeting with Hitler, this supposed endorsement that Hitler has made of the Bund and this kind of blurry photograph of this meeting during the 1936 Berlin Olympics. These all become sort of the cornerstones of Kuhn's claim to have a legitimate endorsement from the Nazi regime.

Stephanie Hinnershitz:
Kuhn's trip to Germany, and unabashed admiration for the Nazis, drew scrutiny from German Americans who wanted to distance themselves from the Bund, but also drew attention from Congress and the American public.

Bradley Hart:
So by 1937, we begin to see the Bund making a big splash on the national stage. Obviously in the areas where the Bund has thousands of members, we should mention that Kuhn's estimate at one point is that they have upwards of 100,000 members nationwide. Historians think that number is much lower. I mean, I think it's probably around 20 to 30,000 at any given point in history, but it's kind of tough to know. The Bund actually destroys many of its membership records and people float in and out of membership over the course of its existence. So, it's difficult to know how many people were actually involved with this at really a membership level where they were actually paying dues. But by 1937, regardless of how many members there are actually in the Bund, we begin to see it receiving national attention.

This first happens because of infiltration that takes place of the organization, not in fact by law enforcement, but by enterprising reporters. So, there are two brothers who are German American themselves. They actually fit the profile of the German-American Bund's membership in a lot of ways. Their Americanized names are John and James Metcalfe. Their original German name that was changed apparently when they immigrated to the US was actually Oberwinder. So, the Metcalfe brothers joined under their original name of Oberwinder, and they rise to leadership levels actually within the New York Bund.

John C. Metcalfe is actually a leader in Kuhn's central organization in New York City. And his brother James Metcalfe actually joins the sort of armed division, what was called the Ordnungsdienst, in the Chicago Bund. And so both of these brothers, and this is really fascinating, they’re actually exchanging telegrams and letters with one another while they're essentially undercover in this organization talking about what they are finding. They also keep extensive journals and diaries about the Bund members they're encountering. And in late 1937, these stories begin to appear in the American press. So, John Metcalfe, actually writing under the Metcalfe name, because this is not the name he's joined the Bund with, begins publishing these exposés in a Chicago newspaper.

You can imagine the impact that seeing photographs of men with swastika armbands saluting the German national flag on American soil and accounts of men training with firearms legally, seemingly for some future perhaps Nazi Revolution, as is implied in some of Metcalfe's stories. You can imagine the impact that this has on American readers at this point in American history, while they're seeing very similar images coming out of Germany in the newsreels they're seeing on a regular basis every time they go to the theater. And there's also sort of this dark implication that Metcalfe begins putting forward in some of his articles, that the Bund is waiting for some future day that in German is called der Tag. It literally is just “The Day.”

What “The Day” is, Metcalfe is implying, is the day that the Bund is preparing to somehow take power in the United States. And so how could someone like Fritz Kuhn really expect to become some sort of American dictator? We have to remember that the idea of [foreign language 00:21:37] is not necessarily about an armed coup against the government or seizing power by force. It's more about the idea that the government itself is going to collapse and that the Bund is going to step into some kind of void that's going to emerge through a collapse of the American political system.

One recurrent theme that we see in Kuhn's speeches is this idea that the German American element, as he calls it—that is, Americans with German American ancestry, no matter how far back in history that might be—that the German American element is going to unite and take its proper place, as he puts it, in governing the United States. And when the German American element Kuhn claims will take that spot, that prominent spot in leading the country, then they will lead the fight against supposed Jewish domination of labor unions and Jewish domination as Kuhn sees it, of the Roosevelt administration itself.

And so these Metcalfe articles in 1937, they extend actually for months. You can imagine the impact these have. They really begin to open American's eyes. So, we begin to see increasing interest from the FBI, which also seemingly infiltrates the Bund or cultivates contacts within. But the FBI can't find any crimes to necessarily charge Kuhn or the Bund's membership with. In 1938, Congress actually steps into this when the House votes to create a committee to investigate what it calls quote-unquote "un-American activities."

This committee will become somewhat notorious later on in the 1950s for its investigation of communists and the far Left. But in 1938, ’39, it actually is interested in investigating the Bund and other extremist groups with pro-Nazi views in addition to supposed left-wing infiltration of labor unions and the government as well. And so by 1938, we not only have interest from the press and interest from the American public, but also very much increasing interest on Capitol Hill as well.

Stephanie Hinnershitz:
Kuhn's fervent pro-German programs and events, including a German Day festival at Camp Siegfried on Long Island that drew nearly 40,000 attendees to celebrate German American culture, and of course, Hitler's Germany, designed to attract support for his organization worked almost too well. In 1938, the newly formed special committee on un-American activities began an investigation into the Bund in response to Hitler's growing power in Europe and his antisemitic policies. The chairman of that committee was Martin Dies Jr.

Martin Dies Jr.:
You and I are naturally concerned with what is happening across the waters. We cannot view with indifference the tragedy that is being enacted over again. Naturally, we are sympathetic with the forces of democracy and the struggle of democracy to preserve itself. What are more immediate concerns to us are the enemies within our own country and the threat within our own midst to our own institutions.

Bradley Hart:
The chairman of the committee is actually Congressman Martin Dies Jr. of Texas. Martin Dies Jr. is a really interesting guy. His father had been a congressman from Texas, Martin Dies Sr. He himself is a Roosevelt ally on some issues and a critic of Roosevelt on other issues. And as chairman of the committee, Martin Dies really tells Americans who are skeptical as to what he's doing, investigating the political orientations of various groups. He tells Americans, "I'm against every ‘ism’ except Americanism. I'm against fascism, I'm against communism, and the role of this committee is to investigate any form of ism that isn't Americanism."

So, with this very strong orientation towards investigating both fascism and communism, which we often forget about the House Committee investigating un-American activities in this period, the Metcalfe scoops that come out in 1937 are really the impetus for Martin Dies to open an investigation of the German-American Bund and some of the other extremist groups of this period as well. The Silver Legion being another example, an equally extremist group that in some ways was seen as even more dangerous than Kuhn and the Bund.

So, Dies actually holds hearings on Capitol Hill. At one point, he subpoenas Fritz Kuhn himself to testify. Kuhn actually has spoken to Dies’s committee investigators previously and told them his whole life story, at least the way that he wants to present it, and the hearings on Capitol Hill become something of a circus. At one point, there's actually a yelling match between Kuhn and a member of Congress. There's some accounts that that member of Congress may have tried to lunge across the table at Kuhn because he felt insulted by the way that he was treating the committee. And so this is really a big kind of press circus, but not much results from this. I think the question for Dies and for the other members of this committee are, what do you really do about Fritz Kuhn?

The only thing they can do actually is try to expose the truth about what's going on in this organization. To that end, in addition to Fritz Kuhn testifying before the committee, they actually bring John C. Metcalfe as well. So, Metcalfe actually testifies before the committee in his Bund uniform, and there's a photograph of him giving Martin Dies Jr. the Nazi salute from the witness table. You can imagine the press furor that this ignites. John Metcalfe over the course of several days presents this very in-depth testimony. Some of it is derived from his newspaper reporting that's already been published. Other confidential reports have not been published, but he presents them to the committee.

And Kuhn is actually so concerned about this that he issues what we might call rapid response press releases, trying to refute parts of Metcalfe's testimony really as it's taking place. And so when these hearings begin happening in 1938, it's undeniable that the Bund is on the national radar in a very big way. It is on the radar of law enforcement in the form of the FBI and local law enforcement as well. It's on the radar of Congress, and we have obviously a great deal of evidence as to what's going on inside the Bund because of John and James Metcalfe's, very courageous, I would argue, infiltration activity.

Stephanie Hinnershitz:
The committee's investigation and the increased scrutiny of the Bund did little to discourage Kuhn's activities. In fact, 1939 would be the most significant year yet for the Bund, with its massive “Pro-American Rally” at Madison Square Garden.

Bradley Hart:
So, on February 20, 1939, Fritz Kuhn is planning what he sees as the biggest moment of his career. He's going to hold an actual rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Now, Madison Square Garden is, of course, a very famous venue today. But in the 1930s, this was a place where presidents, congressional candidates, major league celebrities, major charity functions—all of these events would take place in Madison Square Garden. And it was really the center, I would argue, of American political life in a lot of ways. So, Fritz Kuhn using this very famous stage is a very big statement towards the credibility that he thinks he has with a lot of Americans and the ambitions that he has for his future career.

Mayor [Fiorello] La Guardia of New York City is actually pressured by groups to deny the Bund the permit to have this event, these groups who would say that this is going to be divisive, that it's a dangerous event for especially Jewish New Yorkers. And La Guardia largely agrees with these critiques and believes that actually the Bund is an appalling organization. But he makes a fateful decision to let the rally go forward, and he actually tells an aide something along the lines of, "Let them show themselves to be the fools that they are."

This event immediately becomes a circus, really before it even kicks off. There are protesters who are there, and in fact, by many accounts, the protesters dramatically outnumber the actual Bund members who are there, perhaps as many as three or four to one. There are labor groups that are protesting there. The Communist Party is protesting. There are Jewish groups protesting. There's even things like ladies knitting circles that go to protest this event. And so this really riles New Yorkers of all political persuasions and backgrounds in a lot of ways, who are appalled to see the swastika being carried through the streets of their city. Inside the arena, it's equally a circus in a lot of ways.

So, the event begins with a parade where there's essentially men in Nazi-style uniforms carrying American flags and swastika flags down the center aisle. The American national anthem is sung, and people give the Nazi salute as it is being sung. And there are drummer boys who look like they are literally taken from the streets of Munich, except that they're American, on stage sort of beating out this very martial tune. And so over the course of the evening, we will see the imagery of Nazi Germany really playing out on this very important stage in the middle of New York City, the most important city in the country in this period, culturally, politically in a lot of ways, and also this very important venue in the middle of this critically important city.

On the rafters of Madison Square Garden, there are these giant banners proclaiming the Bund's vision for a free white gentile United States. And one of the Bund's slogans is “Free America,” by which they mean an America free from supposed Jewish control, hearkening back to these classic antisemitic conspiracy theories. On the stage itself, there is a sort of vertical stylized American flag next to a giant, giant banners that have the Bund's own logo, which is a swastika sort of rising from the ashes, almost like a phoenix. These are gigantic banners behind this huge stage in Madison Square Garden.

And I think most provocatively of all, there's this gigantic, and we're talking 30-, 40-foot-tall, portrait of George Washington right in the middle of this stage. Now, why George Washington? Well, Kuhn has coordinated this rally to correspond with Washington's birthday, and he has couched it as a George Washington birthday celebration. So, this is really a provocative moment, really for Kuhn. It's not just that he's having this sort of Nazi-style rally in the middle of Madison Square Garden in the middle of New York, but that he's directly proclaiming in a lot of ways that his movement and by extension Nazism itself, is consistent with American ideals.

And that, of course, is an idea that is ludicrous in so many ways because of the direct opposition between Nazi ideals and Nazism with the ideals of America. But Kuhn's entire point is to try to argue to his audience that that's not the case. That one can be a loyal American and be loyal to the tenants of Nazism at the same time. Outside the arena, there are tens of thousands of protesters. They're actually clashing with the New York City Police Department that has been deployed en masse to prevent the outbreak of violence. There are actually Bund members who haven't been able to get into the arena or who have chosen to stay outside to fight with these protesters. So, we have really a violent scene unfolding.

Fritz Kuhn:
The larger minority elemented to United States, the German Americans that they persecuted in every field of endeavor. Why? Because the common enemy of all of us who stand up for the Americanism, which the founder of our government implanted in the nation, is realizing that if ever we can get together in a united political front, this minority will be able to move mountains. And that is just what our Jewish friends wish to prevent.

Bradley Hart:
So, as Fritz Kuhn himself takes to the stage at the end of this rally, he begins delivering this really antisemitic stemwinder. He begins hurling invective towards Jews in the United States and all over the world, making these outlandish claims about Jewish conspiracies involving really all of the classic antisemitic tropes, financial control, Jewish infiltration of labor unions, all of the stuff that was common, unfortunately, to antisemitism in the 1930s. But as Kuhn is sort of unleashing this invective upon his audience, there is a man who begins making his way towards the stage.

And he's one of these figures that I think for too long has been a forgotten figure. He's one of the most courageous figures I argue in my work in 1930s America. His name is Isadore Greenbaum. Isadore Greenbaum by background is a plumber or a plumber's apprentice, depending on what source you read. He has been in the Merchant Marine where he has learned how to be a plumber, and he's grown up in New York City in pretty grinding poverty by some accounts. He actually is adopted. He has been raised in a series of foster homes, and Greenbaum has a wife and small children at this point, but he's struggling in the darkest days, really, of the Great Depression.

Greenbaum is of Jewish descent, although according to many of the sources, and according to family members I've spoken to, he's not particularly religious in this period, but he takes a great deal of pride in his Jewish ancestry. Greenbaum has gone to Madison Square Garden that night, largely out of curiosity, apparently. He had seen flyers and heard about this rally and wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Certainly did not hold any sympathies for the Bund. But according to his own account, as the evening goes on, he hears this becoming increasingly antisemitic, as the antisemitic vitriol really increases.

And when Kuhn takes the stage and he begins hearing all of these things said about Jews, Greenbaum really I think begins to lose his cool. By his account and by his grandson's account, he begins making his way towards the stage. And when he gets to the floor of the stage, his grandson told me actually that he began seeing people that he recognized from his neighborhood who were respectable members of society, local dentists, for instance, who were giving the Nazi salute and cheering this antisemitic rhetoric coming from the stage.

So, Greenbaum, I think to some extent, is deeply disturbed by this rhetoric and feels that something has to be done. And so he takes a bold, and indeed, I think foolhardy in some ways, step. He actually rushes the stage to try to interrupt Kuhn's speech. He yanks out the microphone cables that connect Kuhn's microphone to the in-house audio system, and by some of the press accounts turns to the crowd with the microphone cables in his hands and shouts, "Down with Hitler," which you can imagine how that was received in an audience full of more than 20,000 people, most of whom were Hitler enthusiasts or sympathizers at this moment.

And there's immediately a scuffle that takes place. He's jumped actually by Kuhn's bodyguards, these members, these uniformed members, we should say, of the Ordnungsdienst. And rather than simply remove Greenbaum from the stage, they actually begin beating him up. So, there's video of this really dramatic moment because there's so many press cameras there, but Greenbaum actually takes some punches on stage. His pants are actually ripped off in this scuffle. New York City police officers have to intervene to pull these Bund members off of him, I think, out of fear that he's going to be severely injured or even killed potentially, and they carry him out of the arena on their shoulders.

There's press photographers outside who get shots of Greenbaum being taken out of the arena, and he's pretty beaten up. So, this is a moment of real violence in a very public place. What's perhaps most disturbing of all though is that the crowd is cheering this violence. And so the Greenbaum moment is this moment of incredible heroism by someone who I think really just couldn't listen to this antisemitism anymore in his city coming from this very prominent stage. But it's also this moment I think that exposes really the violent orientation and the violent underbelly that has always existed in the Bund, but that Kuhn and his lieutenants have been able to conceal, I think, or at least downplay in public for quite some time.

Now there's no denying that there is this violence underneath the Bund's surface that really is not that hard to detect. Greenbaum is taken from Madison Square Garden. He's taken first to a doctor, and then he actually is taken to court. Greenbaum is charged with disorderly conduct. And the judge who hears this case in night court actually says to him, "Do you have any idea how many people could have been injured because of the actions that you were taking, rushing the stage?" And Greenbaum actually says to him, "Well, judge, do you know how many people could be harmed because of the rhetoric coming from the stage?"

Paraphrasing, of course. But he turns the judge's question around on the judge and turns it around to the question of how dangerous this antisemitic vitriol coming from Kuhn and his lieutenants could be for America's Jewish community. Greenbaum has instantly become a hero for millions of Americans for standing up to this antisemitism, this antisemitic group that seemingly no one else, including law enforcement or the government, can really do anything about.

Kuhn does get headlines actually overseas as well. Bizarrely, the Nazi propaganda press picks up this incident and writes short stories about it, claiming that Kuhn has nearly been assassinated by an international Jewish conspiracy as they couch it. In the aftermath of this event that has become really a circus in a lot of ways, there are dozens of people injured in the fighting outside. The Greenbaum moment has been incredibly dramatic on the stage of Madison Square Garden. New York City officials decide that something has to be done about Kuhn.

So, Mayor La Guardia, who is personally aggrieved, I think in a lot of ways, he's been shown to be somewhat foolish in the sense that he's given a permit over to this event that's clearly gotten out of hand. He actually orders the city's attorney general, Thomas Dewey, who will become famous later on for running for president in 1944 and ’48, Thomas Dewey launches an investigation of Kuhn and the Bund. They actually raid the Bund headquarters in New York City. They seize their financial records, and after actually a fairly quick investigation, discover that not all of the Bund's money has been, let's say, properly accounted for.

So, Kuhn is actually charged within just a few months of this dramatic event in Madison Square Garden with a host of financial crimes, ranging from embezzlement to other more complicated financial crimes. He is put on trial and actually, most of those crimes, the charges are either thrown out by the judge or they're dropped, but he is eventually convicted of a couple of crimes relating to money that he claims to have borrowed from the Bund's coffers, but never appears to have been repaid.

So, Kuhn, actually this man who at one point had met with Hitler, supposedly, gotten his endorsement to lead an American version of the Nazi Party, who saw himself as a future American Hitler actually goes to Sing Sing Prison before World War II is even broken out. And in fact, after the war, Kuhn will actually be deported to Germany. His naturalized American citizenship will be revoked on the grounds that he has harbored loyalty to another country. And in fact, this man who saw himself as a future American Hitler sits out the war in prison, ends up being deported afterwards and dies in obscurity in Germany in the early 1950s.

Stephanie Hinnershitz:
Though the Bund's rally was one of the strongest outpouring of support for fascist policies in American history, thousands of protesters inside and outside of Madison Square Garden that evening were proof that Kuhn's antisemitic messages would not be met with without a fight. Join us for the next episode where we hear from voices who began to stand up to antisemitism and raise awareness of the atrocities in Europe.