Nazis in New York City: 80 Years Ago Pro-Hitler Americans Staged a Rally at Madison Square Garden February 19, 2019Dave Brooks1
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Amplify originally ran this article in 2016 and is reprinting the story on the eve of the 80-year anniversary of the American Bund Party rally at Madison Square Garden.
“I do not fight fascists because I will win. I fight fascists because they are fascists.”
-Chris Hedges, Wages of Rebellion: The Moral Imperative of Revolt
On February 20, 1939, the eve of World War II, American Nazis and fascist sympathizers staged a huge rally at Madison Square Garden in support of Adolf Hitler. The building was covered in symbols of the Third Reich and the stage was adorned with a giant picture of George Washington, “the original American Nazi” according to organizers.
The rally was for the German-American Bund party, established by the viciously racist German-born American Fritz Julius Kuhn. The Bund Party was to be Hitler’s “Fifth Column” and encourage U.S. politicians not to intervene with the war in Europe. Officials with MSG later said they had instructed organizers not to cover the arena in Swastikas, but apparently the Nazis didn’t get the memo. A banner was hung from the rafters that read “Stop Jewish Domination of Christians.”
Kuhn was a former German WWI veteran who came to America and brought with him a strong hatred of Jews. Kuhn settled in Detroit and worked at a hospital owned by legendary industrialist Henry Ford. The hospital Kuhn worked for, the Henry Ford Hospital, had a policy against hiring Jewish doctors. Eventually Kuhn joined the Friends of New Germany, an American pro-Hitler organization with direct ties to the Nazi party.
The group came under instant scrutiny and congressional hearings threatened to expose the group’s links to the Third Reich, so the Nazi party in Berlin ordered it to shut down. Seizing an opportunity from the power vacuum, Kuhn created the American Bund party and appointed himself Bund Führer.
Fritz Julius Kuhn
The group began to stage pro-Hitler rallies around the United States, culminating in the massive 22,000 person rally at Madison Square Garden, under police guard while demonstrators protested outside. The arena was covered with swatiskas, anti-semetic slogans and a huge poster of the country’s first president.
“There is a reason Washington is up there and not Jefferson or Madison,” explained one scholar on a popular history site. “Fascism was an ideology that emphasized action and heroism over intellectualism and philosophy. This is why Hitler’s ideal Aryan concept was a strong, handsome, and physically fit person rather than someone with a mind for civics. Men of action were the ideal example figures.”
Many in attendance were teenagers who had been trained at Hitler Youth-style camps run by the Bunds on the East Coast. Hundreds of mock-uniformed “storm troopers” paraded to the stage, mimicking the Blitzkrieg-style battalions that would invade Poland months later. Kuhn opened the ceremony with a Heil Hitler salute and gave what has been described as “typical Nazi stump speech” by historians.
His speech was briefly interrupted by a young Jewish-American plumber, who sprung from the audience and ran at Kuhn to attack him, only to be be tackled and beaten by Kuhn’s bodyguards and eventually kicked out by police officers. There is evidence that the protester had links to famed Jewish gangster Meyer Lansky. O utraged by news of the Nazi atrocities, the C hicago Outfit gangster collaborated with other Jewish gangsters like Bugsy Siegel and Murder, Inc.’s Louis “Lepke” Buchalter to break up Bund party rallies with guns, knives and violence.
Meanwhile, outside of Madison Square Garden, throngs of anti-Nazi protesters that included WWI Veterans and weapon-wielding members of Lansky’s gang waited out front, preparing to attack the American Nazis as they left the rally. According to one article, a huge police response of mounted officers “large enough to prevent a revolution,” converged on the arena and prevented what many thought could have been a bloody riot.
After WWII broke out, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ordered FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to launch an investigation of the German-American Bund party. Virginia Cogswell, one of Kuhn’s mistresses, agreed to work with the FBI and began to secretly record her conversations with the Bund Führer. The FBI uncovered that Kuhn was stealing from the German-American Bund Party and he was arrested and sentenced to two years in prison.
Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japanese forces and Hitler’s declaration of war against the United States, the German-American Bund voted to disband itself. Shortly after the war concluded with the Allied Forces defeating the Axis Powers, Kuhn was deported to Germany and died in 1951.
Tags
Who is online
90 visitors
Does this remind you of anyone's 'rallies'?
Yep !
I don't see any Nazi salutes there.
Ditto on what your trying to reference !
That's you're and you're spouting your usual bullshit.
ooooo…. OUCH !
That DIDN'T hurt !
You obviously did not watch the video.
I always make it my mission to read and watch before commenting.
So obviously you didn't watch the video in my first post.
All three of them.
Next ?
No, this one, in my very first post on this seed.
I actually watched that on TV, years ago.
Like the narrator says....it isn't a snapshot of the Majority of People. it was about Anti-semitism, which seems to be a problem with a few narratives put forth by the NEW "Liberals" in congress. I call those Few, "The White Dresses" !
It was Confused New York….what else would you expect ? New York is STILL a confused place !
To my knowledge, that was never on TV
It wasn't just about anti-semitism.
It was about an all white race.
Confused New York? I don't know what you're talking about.
The History Channel is fun to watch !
"It was about an all white race."
Sure.... It was about "Whites" being there, but You didn't listen to what the narrator was saying.
"Confused New York? I don't know what you're talking about. "
That's Okay. Politics can be that way.
yes--Hitler!
More Americans Supported Hitler Than You May ... - Time Magazine
Reminds me of the shitstain in chief's 'rallies'
Do you have a Picture ?
Where is the "Nazi" part in your vids again ?
In every single one.
Don't see it. Sorry !
You could probably see it if you only had your "Hate Trump" glasses on!
Of course you don't !
I'm a mimic. Ain't it great when it comes back around ?
Maybe not ?
Sorry !
I'm just trying to be a good little "Tolerant" !
I'm trying to "Reach across the islands"....dontchyaknow.
If you want to talk to each other - make your own seed.
Otherwise KNOCK IT OFF.
[If the Trolling continues it's vacation time!]
[Removed]
[deleted]
We suffer from anti-intellectualism today
Wild .….. How Trump ALWAYS says he wants Smart folks coming here to this country instead of the dredges of others societies, and yet others try to think? ...…….then say …… Anything they can find Bad about Trump ….. Even imagined …….. for that matter !
Just Fucking Weird !
That's dregs
the dregs of society/humanity
a group of people in society who you consider to be immoral and of no value
Riffraff/deficient/ uneducated/ uninformed/fallacious/invalid !
Those are Trump's core supporters.
Bahahahaha you can't even read your own unnamed source?
Most my friends are college educated, Most as far as I can tell are pro Trump.
I like that you put your faith in polls....Hillaryious Hillary in a landslide.
Get over it, she lost....No collusion.
You should read that again. Your figure applies only to white college graduates. When you factor in all college graduates the percentage flips. Hillary won the popular vote by a wide margin.
Well dregs and riffraff/deficient/uneducated/uniformed/fallacious/invalid describe the turd Rump to a T