German American Bund

Part One: The German American Bund in Context of the Extreme Right

Section I.  The American Extreme Right vs. the Bund

 

The German American Bund has been popularly regarded as a pathetic and absurd facsimile of German fascism.  However, despite the Bund’s adoration and imitation of Nazism, the German government rejected the group and even forbade its members to utilize German symbols and insignia.  This rejection precluded the Bund from being an outpost of Nazism in America and forced the organization to adopt a more “pro-American” agenda.  However, the group’s flagrantly foreign composition and approach made its “pro-American” agenda look like a ruse.  It was commonly perceived as a “fifth column” in America, a foreign-based, subversive organization which posed considerable danger to the security of the United States. To most in the United States, the Bund was anything but “American.”  The American government and public largely viewed the group with deep suspicion and subjected it to numerous attacks.

With one foot in German National Socialism and the other in extreme “Americanism,” the German American Bund was a political anomaly, ultimately rejected by both America and Germany.  This dual rejection forced the Bund to transform its ideology into its own unique brand of extremism which was neither exclusively American nor Nazi. Although it adhered to much of its Nazi appearance and tenets, as a mechanism for survival, the Bund formulated a new ideology which was more congruent with other right-wing extremist movements in the United States.  Thus, before one can analyze the unique ideology of a group like the German American Bund, it would be helpful to first understand the tumultuous historical and political background from which the group arose. 

 

While the 1930’s was an eccentric decade of right wing extremism in the United States, it is important to note that America’s experience with fascism cannot be viewed solely through the European prism because the circumstances behind the rise of fascism in America were significantly different than those in Europe.  The two continents produced divergent strains of fascism.  The major crisis which facilitated the rise of European fascism was the Great War and its aftermath.  World War One was a cataclysmic conflict which shook the entire moral basis of European society.  The war’s effect on the morale of the middle classes was crucial to the rise of fascism in Europe.  Nearly every expectation of the war was shattered by its brutality and futility.  Many Europeans began to lose their faith in liberalism and democracy. Thousands of soldiers returned home from the front feeling betrayed by their governments and disillusioned by the realities of the post-war world.[1]

The situation in the United States, however, was quite different.  The war simply did not produce the same dislocations here as in Europe.  For America, the war was fought “over there,” a world away, and it was a relatively brief episode.  America experienced significantly fewer casualties than the European nations, and the war did not produce any class of discontented military professionals.  In fact, the war helped shake the nation out of the recession of 1914, and it created considerable economic prosperity for the middle classes who profited from the booming war economy.  American soldiers by and large returned to an atmosphere of prosperity and a relative return to normalcy.   The war did not shock American values or expectations as it had in Europe.  It did not produce a significant cultural crisis to threaten the nation’s dominant liberal values, nor did it legitimize any authoritarian alternatives to democracy.[2]  In a nation which prided itself on its exceptionalism, dynamism, optimism and resilience, the war simply did not traumatize the American population nor shock the nation’s expectations or values as it did so in Europe.

While the Great War did not create a major crisis in America, the United States did experience some of its own political and social crisis in the 1920s.  During this decade, the “proto-fascist” trends of nativism, “Americanism,” intolerance and xenophobia emerged and challenged the nation’s political institutions, ideologies, and social mores. These “proto-fascist” currents were propelled by various events, such as the activism of right-wing patriotic societies, the resurgence of a reinvigorated Ku Klux Klan and anti-Semitism, as well as the popularization of pseudo-scientific racism.  By the1930s, the United States had an abundance of intolerant and xenophobic organizations.[3]

            One noticeable “proto-fascist” trend in the U.S. after 1917 was the burgeoning of patriotic societies.  Patriotic societies like the National Security League, American Defense Association, and U.S. Flag Association directed their energies against enemies who were defined rather broadly: trade unionists, pacifists, progressives, leftists and communists.  Of the several dozen patriotic societies, their combined estimated membership was relatively small at somewhere around 25,000 to 30,000.  But, their impact eclipsed their small numbers.  Patriotic societies published hundreds of thousands of ultra-nationalistic pamphlets and made and their members made speeches to various school and civic groups across the country.   These organizations, however, made no attempts at mass mobilization, nor did they seek to disrupt the American constitutional system, the major parties, or even incumbent politicians.  

A second “proto-fascist” trend in America was the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, revived in 1914 and reinvigorated during the 1920s.  At its height in the 1920s, the Klan had between three and six million members.  It has been calculated that in America in the 1920s, one in every three or four white, adult, Protestant American males was a Klansmen.  The resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan epitomized America’s movement to revive old nativist traditions and ethics in a society undergoing industrial and racial change.  Its main impetus was not so much racial as it was moral.  It was more of an evangelical attack on modern immorality and a desire to return to “normalcy.”  Its nationalism stressed conformity rather than revolution.[4]  This nativism was a major inspiration for the fascist movements which soon developed in America.  Like European fascists, the Klan saw itself as a movement of cultural purification, but the differences between the Klan and European fascism are fundamental. While some of the major characteristics of the Klan (racism, chauvinism, and the mystique of violence), are congruent with European fascism, the Klan did not seek to challenge the foundations of the American political system and therefore it can not necessarily be described as “fascist.”  It was a secret organization that ran counter to the American political tradition and was a sharp contrast to European fascists who never disguised their revolutionary intent, even if they did prefer the trappings of legality in attaining power.

            The third proto-fascist current in America centered on Henry Ford in his anti-Semitic crusade.  His periodical, the Dearborn Independent, did more to introduce rabid Nazi-like anti-Semitism to American audiences than any other publication. With its circulation of up to 500,000 between the years 1920-1926, the Dearborn Independent was filled with stories of the “Jewish Peril,” and it brought Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the world’s most infamous and widespread anti-Semitic tract, to American audiences.  Sued for libel, Ford was forced to end his anti-Semitic campaign and he settled out of court with the stipulation that he publicly denounce the Protocols as a forgery fabricated in tsarist Russia.  Nevertheless, obsession with the “Jewish menace” became more popularized in America and it remained a central theme to many right wing extremists throughout the next two decades. 

            The last proto-fascist trend in America in the 1920s was the “scientific” racism which prevailed in the intellectual and progressive mainstream during the decade.  The new anti-Black and anti-Indian racism mobilized the educational elite who feared a less and less homogeneous America.  Racist intellectuals began to classify races as the “superior Nordic” or “Anglo-Saxon,” as opposed to the biologically “inferior” blacks and immigrants from southern or eastern Europe.  This “modern” or “scientific” racism led to the eugenics movement which was far more widespread in the United States than it was in Germany or Austria prior to the rise of the Nazis.  While fundamentally inconsistent with American democratic faith, “modern” racism and eugenics, with its scientific presumptions and promises of a better future, became more acceptable in the wake of the turbulence created by the Great War and the Red Scare. The discriminatory immigration laws of 1921 and 1924 marked the hallmark of this new xenophobia and “scientific” racism in America.[5] 

Pseudo-scientific racism did not, however, lay the foundation for American fascism as it had in Nazi Germany largely because of its rapid and unexpected disintegration shortly after its successes of 1924.  Limiting immigration certainly had a great effect in assuaging fears of alien races in America, and having attained the goals of blocking undesirables from America, the interest in “scientific” racism and eugenics waned considerably.  Under orders from Hitler to establish contacts with American anti-Semites, Karl Ludecke, a roving ambassador of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, made a poignant observation of the American right.  After investigating the nature and influence of the anti-Semitism espoused by Henry Ford and the nativist ideals of the Ku Klux Klan, Ludecke concluded that America “suffered from peculiar dietary deficiency” which precluded the formation of a Nazi-type organization in the U.S.[6]  Ludecke’s perception, like many other fascists in Europe, was that America did not possess the right circumstances or national character necessary for an effective fascist movement to take root.  It was simply not fertile ground for European-style fascism. 

In the 1930s, extreme right wing groups were moving further towards becoming bona-fide fascist movements. The Depression and the policies of the New Deal unleashed profound anxieties in America which manifested itself in the rise of a host of right wing extremist movements. American liberals and leftists in the 1930s were quick to label assorted populists, crackpot groups and anti-Semites as “fascists.”  The pervasiveness and broad spectrum of those considered “extreme right” in America in the 1930s shows that they were not merely marginal fringe groups with little impact on politics and policy.  The House Committee on Un-American Activities, the chief government agency charged with investigating subversive and extremist movements during this period, referred to at least two hundred right-wing extremist groups.[7]  Although these radical political organizations never held any little real power or posed any significant threat to American democracy, American perceptions were often quite different.  This host of extremist groups in the 1930s garnered an enormous amount of attention from the American government, press and public. 

Right-wing extremism in the 1930s was in many ways the outgrowth of the patriotic societies and the nativism of the 1920s.  Two key examples of evolving fascistic groups of the early 1930s were the Black Legion and the Defenders of the Christian Faith.  Both groups, to a certain extent, imitated elements of Nazi fascism and moved towards a fascist direction.  They thus represent a sort of missing link between classic American nativism and fully developed fascism.  For instance, while its roots were with the Klan, the Black Legion took their radicalism much further. Under the leadership of the minimally “charismatic” leader Virgil Effinger, the Black Legion was authoritarian in structure (adhering to something of the Fuhrerprincip), and fiercely nationalistic. The Legion shared the fascists’ penchant for symbolism, torch-lit ceremonies and violence.[8]  It believed in an authoritarian state and preached revolution and government overthrow. 

Similarly, the Defenders of the Christian Faith became overtly pro-Nazi after its leader, Gerald B. Winrod, visited Germany in 1933.[9]  The Defenders of the Christian Faith movement was viciously anti-Semitic.  Its members subscribed to the conspiracies outlined in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and endorsed a Hitlerian view of anti-Semitism. In addition to decrying alleged Jewish plots, Winrod’s movement was anti-Catholic, anti-Negro, anti-communist and anti-international finance capitalism.  Winrod’s nativism, however, differed from traditional nativist patterns of bigotry in that, like the Klan, its real focus was on moralistic fundamentalism. 

            What is sort of odd about the re-emerged nativist impulse of the 1930s is that there were no emerging immigrant population groups and no burgeoning ethnic groups of any kind during this decade.  Immigration had been substantially curtailed by new immigration laws and the Depression had a large impact on dissuading immigrants to come to America.  Nativist movements of the 1920s focused on identifiable ethnic groups, and nativist conspiracies were aimed at abstract concepts like the Catholic or the Jew or the alien, distinct from the concrete Catholics, Jews and aliens.  But in the 1930s, with the lack of real Catholic and Jewish immigrants arriving to America and the status of ethnic identity disappearing, the pattern of nativism changed.  As ethnicity itself had become more undefined, nativism became more generalized and ideological in nature.  Status identification was no longer old-fashioned Protestantism with its select membership, but old-fashioned Americanism.[10] In fact, “Americanism” became the critical characteristic of a host of extremist groups in America during the 1930s, including the German American Bund.   

Hitler’s seizer of power in 1933 and the media coverage concerning the collapse of democracy in Germany further heightened fears of fascism in the United States.  The 1932 Bonus March to Washington demonstrated how mass discontent could be harnessed to challenge the nation’s political and industrial establishment.[11]  This event inspired imitators who sought to mobilize the unemployed and desperate to overthrow the democratic system.  For example, one strange episode of an attempted American fascist coup involved Smedley D. Butler, a retired general of the Marines and winner of two Congressional Medals of Honor.  In 1933, Butler testified to a House committee that a Wall Street broker named Gerald C. MacGuire had propositioned him to lead a European-style fascist revolution in America.[12]  Events such as this coupled with the growing visibility of right wing extremist groups served to exacerbate the already existing fears of fascism in America.

In the early 1930’s, there were quite a number of extremist groups in America that acknowledged their ideology and inspiration from the Nazis. Perhaps the two groups in America in the 1930s which most resembled European fascism were the “shirt groups” which crudely imitated European models of fascism.  The first shirt group was a Philadelphia based organization popularly known as the Khaki Shirts although it called itself the U.S. Fascists.[13]  Led by self proclaimed “General” Art J. Smith, the group planned a fascist coup of the American government in 1933.  Smith’s group was comprised largely of Italian-American veterans who were the remnants of the Bonus Army which marched on Washington in 1932.  Inspired by Mussolini’s March on Rome, Smith plotted but failed to carry out his own on March on Washington (on Columbus Day 1933), with a supposed one million and a half veterans.[14] 

  The second and most infamous “shirt group” was the Silver Shirts, a radical fascist group whose initials stood for its admiration for the Nazi SS, Hitler’s elite body guard.  Led by William Dudley Pelley, it attempted to bridge Nazism and nativism, and the group proclaimed to represent “the cream…of our Protestant Christian manhood.”[15]  The Silver Shirt publication, Liberation, was a strange mixture of astrology, spiritualism, anti-Semitism and Nazism.  Obsessed with the idea of an international Jewish conspiracy, the group’s primary goal was the forcible removal of Jews from American public office.  Pelley became the nation’s most infamous figure on the paramilitary far-right, and was largely acknowledged as the inspiration for the fictional dictator Buzz Windrip in Sinclair Lewis’ It Cant Happen Here, a  highly influential and popular novel about an American fascist coup.

            Perhaps the two largest movements in the U.S. often cited as fascist or quasi-fascist were the populist Huey Long Share-Our-Wealth movement and the Christian Front movement of Father Charles Coughlin.  Both of these movements had many of the elements and trappings of fascism.  Huey Long’s crusade was indeed impressive with 27,431 clubs and a membership of 4,684,000 at its height in 1935.  While many believed he would have become the forerunner of fascism in America, any speculation was rendered moot after his assassination in 1935.[16] After Huey Long’s Share-Our-Wealth movement, Father Coughlin’s Christian Front movement was probably the best known and widely adhered to quasi-fascist movement.  Coughlin is best known for his anti-Semitic radio broadcasts which reached millions of avid listeners.[17] The Christian Front was vehemently anti-Communist and anti-western liberalism and Coughlin was openly supportive of fascist regimes in Europe.  By 1935 he had become a severe critic of Roosevelt and an open apologist for Hitler, Mussolini and Franco.  His popularity reached its zenith when he played a third role in the election of 1936 wherein his Unionist Party achieved 900,000 votes.[18] However, while Coughlin’s movement was large and widely publicized, it was not nearly substantial enough to seriously threaten the foundations of American democracy. 

Amongst this array of right wing extremists, the German American Bund found a comfortable niche.   Although its roots were solidly Germanic and Nazi, by the 1930s the Bund was genuinely invested in the rhetoric of “Americanism” which was common among most other right wing extremists at the time.  The “Americanism” of American fascists and extremists in the 1930s echoed the patriotic societies of 1920s, and its anti-Semitism harkened to the widely popularized scientific racism and the tradition of nativism.  Despite its initial obvious Nazi imitation, under the leadership of Fritz Kuhn, the Bund gradually adopted much of the ideology and rhetoric emblematic of American fascism and right-wing extremism.  Their program ultimately reflected such typical American characteristics as nativism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism, and most importantly, “Americanism.”  Like the Klan, the Bund championed itself as a movement of racial and cultural purification.  Its anti-Semitic and anti-communist crusade was portrayed as an endeavor to rescue America from alien forces from within, and to return the United States to a romanticized period of domestic conformity.  Like many other American extremists, the Bund fought to prevent the “mongrelization” of America.  In their view, the paucity of effective racial legislation and the influx of immigrants and Jews threatened the racial integrity and thus, the security, of the United States. 

The Bund stood for the political and cultural “purification” of America and it viewed its German composition and character as a vital asset to the American nation.  The group often recalled the contributions Germans made to American society and democracy and it postulated that in order to be good Americans, its members first had to be good Germans.  Bundists asserted that they carried on the noble tradition of German service to America and they represented the most patriotic and best of America’s citizenry. The Bund did not seek to challenge the foundations of the American political system, but rather, claimed that it fought to preserve it.  Like other extremists, the Bund believed that the socialist policies of the New Deal and the influx of new immigrants threatened the integrity of American democracy.  With their fight to return America to the “democracy of George Washington,”[19] their “Americanism” was excessively chauvinistic and harkened to the patriotic societies of the 1920s.  The Bund challenged the changing morals of America and saw itself as the model for a law abiding, culturally and racially pure America.   Like Coughlin, Winrod, Smith, Effinger, Pelley and the Klan, the Bund sought to safeguard the supremacy of white Americans from the perils of international Communism and Jewry. 

            The Bund under Fritz Kuhn certainly shared many characteristics with other right-wing extremists in America.  Yet at the same time, it flagrantly adopted the image and élan of German Nazism.  However, Bundists did not mimic Nazism simply because they were recent immigrants from Nazi Germany, or because they were, in fact, German Nazis.  The Bund’s aping of Nazism was intrinsically linked to a deeply rooted historical and cultural phenomenon which pre-dated the Bund and was globally unique to Germans.  Profoundly embedded in the foundation of the Bund’s ideology was the concept of Deutschtum, the unique cultural characteristics and bonds of German-ness shared among all Germans worldwide.  Because the evolution and the adaptation of the concept of Deutschtum are integral to understanding the ideology of the German American Bund, attention should be turned to the following section wherein the concept is explored in greater detail.