German-American Bund
Encyclopedia : G : GE : GER : German-American Bund
American Nazi organization established in the 1930s. Formed from the merger of two 1920s organizations, the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) and the Free Society of Teutonia were small groups with only a few hundred members. NSDAP member Heinz Sponknobel eventually consolidated the two groups into the Friends of New Germany. Its main goal was promoting peace and friendship between the United States and Germany, and preventing another war.
Soon after their formation, the Friends came under attack from two fronts. The first was a Jewish boycott of German goods in the heavily German neighborhood of Yorkville on the Upper East Side of New York City. The second problem for the German-American Bund came from Jewish Congressman Samuel Dickstein (D-N.Y.), who headed an investigation against them.
The Friends tried to counter this boycott with their own propaganda . An internal battle was fought for control of the Friends and in 1934, and Sponknobel was ousted from the leadership. At the same time, the Dickstein investigation concluded that the Friends supported a branch of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party in America.
After the investigation, Hitler advised all German nationals to withdraw from the Friends. On March 19, 1936, Hitler placed US citizen Fritz Kuhn at the head of the party, hoping to gain some degree of American favor. The Friends' name was then changed to the German-American Bund.
After taking over in 1936, Kuhn started to attract attention to the Bund through propaganda film strips which outlined the Bund's views. Later that year, Kuhn with some 50 fellow Nazis boarded a boat to Germany, hoping to receive official recognition from Hitler during the Berlin Olympics. Unfortunately for Kuhn, he was probably the last person Hitler wanted to meet, because Hitler wanted them to remain non-aggressive and work quietly. The Bund enjoyed the climax of its influence in February 1939, when its members gathered at Madison Square Garden on the premise of celebrating George Washington's birthday. 20,000 members attended. Despite the high number, estimates of its total membership never exceeded 25,000.
The Bund was one of many German American heritage groups, however, it was one of the few to express Nazi ideals. As a result, many considered the group anti-American. In 1939, a New York tax investigation determined that Kuhn had embezzled money from the Bund. The Bund operated on the theory that the leader's powers were absolute, and therefore did not push prosecution.
However, in an attempt to cripple the Bund, the New York district attorney prosecuted Kuhn. New Bund leaders would replace Kuhn, most notably Gerhard Kunze, but these were only brief stints. Martin Dies and the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) were very active in denying any Nazi sympathetic organization the ability to operate in the U.S. during World War II.
With the start of World War II most of the Bund's members were placed in internment camps, and some were deported at the end of the war. The Bund itself failed to become a major force in American politics and eventually it died out. However, its influence is still felt on a number of American neo-Nazi groups.
References
- Philip Jenkins; Hoods and Shirts: The Extreme Right in Pennsylvania, 1925-1950 University of North Carolina Press, 1997
- Francis MacDonnell; Insidious Foes: The Axis Fifth Column and the American Home Front Oxford University Press, 1995
- Stephen H. Norwood; "Marauding Youth and the Christian Front: Antisemitic Violence in Boston and New York during World War II" American Jewish History, Vol. 91, 2003
- James C. Schneider; Should America Go to War? The Debate over Foreign Policy in Chicago, 1939-1941 University of North Carolina Press, 1989
- Maximilian St.-George and Lawrence Dennis; A Trial on Trial: The Great Sedition Trial of 1944National Civil Rights Committee, 1946, defendants' point of view
- Donald S. Strong; Organized Anti-Semitism in America: The Rise of Group Prejudice during the Decade 1930-40 1941
See also
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