Learn about the 1930s American Bund with these old magazine articles. Find information on Amerikadeutscher Volksbund and the American Fascists of the 1930s New Jersey.
German-born reporter Johannes Steel (1908 – 1988) was not an amateur when it came to identifying Fascists, he could spot them a mile away. In 1946, with Asian and European Fascism soundly defeated, he turned his attention to his adopted homeland and wrote this article concerning his disturbing observations.
Click here to read about Christian Nationalism.
“Hitler’s undeclared war against America includes the attempted wholesale corruption of U.S. youth.”
“Plans worked out over a period of years called for the selection of key Hitler leaders from U.S. youth in various cities and transporting them to Germany to be drilled in subversion…U.S. Nazis with college educations were sent to Stuttgart for a special eight-month course at the Propaganda Center.”
Johannes Kroeger, ex-leader of the German-American Bund was picked up by the FBI in the Fall of 1942 for espionage. Employed as a bus driver on Long Island, New York, Kroeger would regularly carry the employees of the Republic Aviation Company to and from work. When pressed for details, the FBI remarked:
Workers in aviation plants talk too much.
Here is an article from the man who would shortly be America’s premiere spy-master: William Wild Bill Donovan. In this report he examined the Trojan horse tactics of the German Foreign Organization:
Children of Germans naturalized half a century ago are still counted German by Berlin and every effort is made to convince them of the fact… It is safe to say that a very fair proportion of the non-refugee Germans who have become American since Hitler came to power did so with the secret intention of turning free and democratic America into ‘their‘ – that is, Hitler’s – America.
Edward James Smythe, a whisky-guzzling old reprobate whose great sorrow is that Hitler is too merciful toward the Jews, has decided to tell all – if anybody will listen. Smythe called PM‘s city desk the other day and, after establishing his identity as the well-known American-bred tinhorn Fascist, now under indictment with 27 others on sedition charges, said:
‘Remember that joint meeting of the Klan and the Bund at Camp Nordland over in Jersey? Well I organized that…’
In 1937 the elders of New Jersey passed a law that was tailor-made for the thugs of Camp Nordland. Knowing well who the Bundists were, the law clearly condemned
‘the unlawful assembly of three or more persons’ and ‘and the uttering of speeches, the sale of literature, display of emblems and uniforms which counseled… hatred, violence or hostility against groups of persons… by reason of race, color, religion or manner of worship.’
In 1940 the law netted a harvest of the three highest Bund leaders.
This is a wonderful read. Writing under the name John Ray Carlson, the journalist Arthur Derounian (1909 – 1991) went under cover into the seedy world of American fascist organizations and discovered that they all spoke with each other. Having impressed the German Bundists, he moved quickly up the ranks of American fascism and was soon given the task of uniting every antisemitic, anti-democratic, pro-fascist clique in the country. Here is a list of some of the groups he was in contact with during his four years in the underground: America First, the American Vigilant Intelligence Federation, American Nationalist Party, Chicago Patriot’s Bureau, New England Christian Front, National Workers League, Detroit Mothers, American Mothers, Yankee Freeman and Mothers of the United States of America. He finally found himself in the company of Lawrence Dennis, a creepy book-worm who was known in those low circles as the dean of American fascism.
This is a fascinating article not simply for what you’ll learn about Hitler, but for what you’ll additionally learn about the manner in which many Germans tended to view that queerest of hybrids, the German-Americans.
This article was written by Rene Kraus, who had been a German diplomat during the Wiemar Republic and a refugee under Hitler.
Click here to read about the German-Americans who called themselves Nazis.
Click here and you will learn that Kaiser Wilhelm was also bugged by German-Americans.
Sabotage, The Secret War Against America (Harper, 1942), is as exciting as a Hitchcock movie. It is also a tragic story, for it is the factual , documented narrative of the years when this country was the happy hunting ground for our enemies, foreign and domestic.
Similar to the one other piece of W.W. II historic fiction posted on this site, this short story is remarkably brief and to the point. Published weeks before America committed itself to the war, this little ditty was penned by Pat Frank (born Harry Hart Frank: 1908 – 1964) who wished to convey the inherit dangers of allowing the Nazi-sympathizing German American Bund to operate unchecked in the land of the free and home of the brave.
A tight little story succinctly told: print it out and read it.
The other short story is called Nesei Homecoming.
Click here to read about the origins of Fascist thought…
A year and a-half before Pearl Harbor American law enforcement agencies got serious about the domestic fascist groups. This article pertains to a twenty-five page Federal order instructing the FBI and local authorities to tap phones and monitor the movements of all groups sympathetic to Axis philosophies.
With the opening of Camp Nordland (Dorkland?) in Andover, New Jersey, the two streams of American fascism saw fit to convene there and join hands. The Italian side was lead by the American Duce Salvatore Caridi and Yankee Fuhrer Fritz Kuhn stood at the head of the American Bundists.
Amidst much heiling, drinking of imported beer and assorted flag-waving, was celebrated the cementing of the twenty-first link in a chain of camps which has been gradually growing. By car they came and by train, until the countryside was increased by ten thousand inhabitants.
One of the loyal confederates of the American Bund was Anastasy Vonsyatsky (1898 – 1965). It was his sincere belief that Fascism was the only force capable of defeating international communism – and once he conceived of this idea, he was all in: Fascism could do no wrong. Although he worked closely with the American Bund, his true allegiance stood with the Russian Fascist Party in far-off Manchukuo, China
(you can read about Manchukuo here). Vonsyatsky was arrested by the FBI five months after Pearl Harbor and released in 1946.
The Volksbund early identified itself with Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich. Furthermore, its members at times have indulged themselves in parades, Nazi salutes and loud ‘heils’. For these reasons the organization has drawn much criticism for ‘un-American’ activities.
As you can see by glancing at some of the other articles on this page, the Italians and Germans were not the only nations to cultivate a taste for fascism; a franchise office was opened in the United States in the mid-Thirties. This article is essentially a photo-essay consisting of twenty-six images and a brief explanation regarding the American Nazi movement that once existed in New Jersey:
The pictures on these pages were not made in Germany. They may look like accurate shots of a foreign political movement, which they are, but they were made right here in these United States. Almost coincidentally with Hitler’s assumption of power in the Reich, our free democracy began to feel the long paw of Nazi propaganda…
Read about the American reporter who became a Nazi…
Click here to read about an admired American hero who was also attracted to fascist theology.
