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'They Didn't Just Go Away': Historian Talks About NYC's 1939 Nazi Rally
'They Didn't Just Go Away': Historian Talks About NYC's 1939 Nazi Rally
BY JAKE OFFENHARTZ IN NEWS ON AUG 14, 2017 4:50 PM
German American Bund parade on East 86th St., New York City, October 30, 1939 (Library of Congress)
In the aftermath of this weekend’s chaotic, deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, several commentators have identified the event as the largest gathering of American White Nationalists and neo-Nazis in decades. But as Jelani Cobb and others have pointed out, the event was “not the first time this country has witnessed the mass mobilization of Nazis.” From George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party to the attempted neo-Nazi march in Skokie, the vision put forth by Hitler has survived in pockets across the United States long after the Third Reich crumbled.
The largest and best-funded of the American Nazi groups, according to most historians, was the German American Bund. Founded in Buffalo, New York in 1936, the group existed to promote the German Nazi party among Americans, and was led by German-born American citizen Fritz Kuhn. The Bund was the ideological successor of Friends of New Germany, and within a few years of its founding the group boasted 25,000 members, with as many as 20 youth training camps across the country.
In February of 1939, the group hosted it’s largest ever rally at Madison Square Garden, bringing upwards of 20,000 Nazi-supporting Americans into the heart of Manhattan, where they were greeted by some 100,000 angry New Yorkers. According to Arnie Bernstein, historian and author of Swastika Nation: Fritz Kuhn and the Rise and Fall of the German-American Bund, that confrontation was a defining moment for the emerging fascist and anti-fascist movements in the United States.
On Monday, we reached out to Bernstein to better understand what the American Nazis then can tell us about American Nazis now.
....
BY JAKE OFFENHARTZ IN NEWS ON AUG 14, 2017 4:50 PM
German American Bund parade on East 86th St., New York City, October 30, 1939 (Library of Congress)
In the aftermath of this weekend’s chaotic, deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, several commentators have identified the event as the largest gathering of American White Nationalists and neo-Nazis in decades. But as Jelani Cobb and others have pointed out, the event was “not the first time this country has witnessed the mass mobilization of Nazis.” From George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party to the attempted neo-Nazi march in Skokie, the vision put forth by Hitler has survived in pockets across the United States long after the Third Reich crumbled.
The largest and best-funded of the American Nazi groups, according to most historians, was the German American Bund. Founded in Buffalo, New York in 1936, the group existed to promote the German Nazi party among Americans, and was led by German-born American citizen Fritz Kuhn. The Bund was the ideological successor of Friends of New Germany, and within a few years of its founding the group boasted 25,000 members, with as many as 20 youth training camps across the country.
In February of 1939, the group hosted it’s largest ever rally at Madison Square Garden, bringing upwards of 20,000 Nazi-supporting Americans into the heart of Manhattan, where they were greeted by some 100,000 angry New Yorkers. According to Arnie Bernstein, historian and author of Swastika Nation: Fritz Kuhn and the Rise and Fall of the German-American Bund, that confrontation was a defining moment for the emerging fascist and anti-fascist movements in the United States.
On Monday, we reached out to Bernstein to better understand what the American Nazis then can tell us about American Nazis now.
....
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