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| American Nazi organization rally at Madison Square Garden, 1939. |
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.”
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| Rally poster of a German-American Bund rally at Madison Square Garden on February 20, 1939 |
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.
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.”
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| A banner with an anti-Jewish slogan is displayed at Madison Square, New York, February 20, 1939, shortly before adherents of the German American Bund, an organization largely financed by the government of Nazi Germany, began marching in for a rally. |
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| Scene from Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden. |
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| General view of the huge crowd in Madison Square Garden attending the Nazi rally. |
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.
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| Life. 7 March 1938: The German-American Bund of New Jersey claims George Washington is the first fascist. |
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| German American Bund rally in Madison Square Gardens, February 20, 1939. |
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| Dorothy Thompson, the New York columnist and wife of Sinclair Lewis, the famous American author, interjected the word, Bunk, at the big rally of the German-American Bund at Madison Square Garden, New York, on Feb. 20, 1939, and was promptly escorted outside in the hope that such action would prevent any further demonstration. Later, on her plea that is was her constitutional right to heckle, Miss Thompson was readmitted to the meeting. With a pair of storm-troopers beside her, Dorothy Thompson is escorted from the meeting of the German-American bund at Madison Square Garden, New York. |
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| At the meeting of the German American bund held in Madison Square Garden, New York on Feb. 20, 1939,Fritz Kuhn, national leader of the Bund, uttered imprecations against the Jews. He was the concluding speaker in a Bund programme which was marked by violence, despite a police guard of hundreds. Fritz Kuhn, in full uniform of a storm trooper, delivering his bitter attack on the Jews, at the meeting of the German American Bund held in Madison Square Garden, New York on Feb. 20, 1939. |
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| The crowd responds with a Hitler salute as uniformed members of a German-American Bund color guard march at a gathering in New York’s Madison Square Garden, Feb. 20, 1939. |
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. Outraged by news of the Nazi atrocities, the Chicago 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.
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| A crowd of demonstrators outside New YorkÂ’s Madison Square Garden on Feb. 20, 1939, seize a uniformed member of the German American Bund who had emerged from a Bund rally in the Garden and attempted to enter a taxi. Previously, inside the arena, Nazis had beaten a man who jumped onto the stage and approached Bund Leader Fritz Kuhn. |
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| A mounted policeman strikes with the back of his gloved hand at an unidentified man near Madison Square Garden, New York, during the German American Bund rally Feb. 20, 1939. A force of 1,500 policemen were stationed in and around the Garden to forestall anti-Bund demonstrations. |
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| Mounted Policemen and rabid Anti Nazis battle for an American flag outside Madison Square Garden. The Anti-Nazis were parading outside the Garden in protest of the German American Bund 'Americanization' rally being held there. This was only one of the night's many clashes between the demonstrators and heavy force of policemen who were on hand to preserve order. |
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| Isadore Greenbaum is dragged out of Madison Square Gardens after jumping on stage and yelling “Down with Hitler” at the German American Bund (American Nazi Party) rally held there in February, 1939. He was fined 25 dollars for disorderly conduct. |
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.
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| Fritz Julius Kuhn in CIC interrogation room at internment camp at Asperg, Germany, Nov. 26, 1945 where he is being held. |
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| Fritz Julius Kuhn, former German-American Bund leader in the U.S.A., was released on April 25, 1946, from Asperg Interment Number 76. Kuhn and family meet for the first time in 6 years in Munich, Germany. From left to right: son Walter, 19, Mrs. Kuhn, Kuhn, and Waltraut Kuhn, 22. |
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| Fritz Julius Kuhn waves to American officers as leaves Hohenasperg Fortress, in an American truck, to catch train to his family in Munich after his liberation from internment, April 25, 1946. |
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.