German American Bund

Section IV. The Zenith and Downfall of the Bund

        A.   The Zenith of the Bund:  Madison Square Garden Rally

 

While the series of legal attacks against the Bund may have drained the group’s financial resources, the publicity they produced for the Bund was invaluable.  Public attention to the Bund reached its zenith on February 20, 1939 when the group held its largest and most publicized rally at Madison Square Garden.  The rally was by all measures a resounding success.  It was officially held in honor of George Washington’s 207^th birthday but it served primarily as a forum for the Bund to propagate its ideology and rhetoric to a much wider American audience.  The rally was held at a most auspicious time for the Bund.  Kuhn’s steadfast Americanization program was beginning to pay off.  The Bund’s image was less foreign-looking and hence less suspicious to many Americans, the organization had been legally vindicated from all charges of espionage and subversion, and now the Bund had the opportunity to hammer the American public with their main message of Americanism, patriotism and anti-Communism.  Madison Square Garden was filled to capacity with an estimated 20,000 in attendance.  The event garnered prodigious press coverage.  The Los Angeles Times called it the “Battle of Madison Square Garden.”[1] Advertised as a “Pro-American Rally, a Mass Demonstration for True Americanism and George Washington Birthday Exercises,” it was the most important opportunity for the Bund to showcase its Americanization and win public support.[2]  The Bund’s newspaper took advantage of the opportunity to gloat over recent Bund victories and sway American public opinion in their favor.  Advertisements of the event called to

ALL AMERICAN PATRIOTS:

            The increasingly violent, malicious and poisonous attempts to silence and cripple the German American Bund by lying press and radio propaganda, by attempted riots and coercion of hall owners, by strikes to force dismissal of Bund Members from their employment  and by fraudulent indictments and convictions…prove that the communistic and other subversive Jewish-Marxistic powers directing these persecutions are in mortal fear of the Bund reaching and enlightening those Americans still in the dark concerning the red scourge! These persecutions prove definitively that the German American Bund IS the most outspoken and uncompromising and therefore the most EFFECTIVE Opponent of all Atheistic Subversion in the Country today!

            The Bund is an Organization of American Citizens unequivocally committed to the Defense of the Flag, Constitution and Sovereignty of these United States and therefore to the Defense of the right and duty to proportionate representation in the conduct of the Nation of more than 100,000,000 Aryan (WHITE GENTILE) Americans, as being the ONLY means of preserving the Independence and the Christian Culture and Civilization of this our Country![3]

  

Indeed this was the moment for the Bund to shine.  Advertisements for the event attempted to woo the American public with tales of the Bund’s success.  Mass rallies at Nordland and Siegfried were attracting as many as 35,000-40,000 supporters. The Bund was growing, albeit modestly, in recognition and support by the American people, despite the fact that the mainstream press refused to report Bund successes and continued to attack the Bund.  Tickets to the event cost from 40 cents to one dollar and ten cents ensuring the event would be a financial success.  Bund advertisements listed the various businesses where tickets could be purchased. 

The Deutscher Weckruf und Beobachter, the Free American, printed a variety of advertisements attesting to the American character of the Bund and its highly anticipated Madison Square Garden rally:

“Why should not a German-American organization engage the Garden to attest its Americanism by honoring the memory of the Father of his Country…? Are not the members of the Bund American citizens?...The German element has become an inseparable part of the blood, bone and sinew of Americanism”[4] 

 

To avoid any confusion about the nature and character of the Bund and its rally, Bund publications addressed the frequently asked question: “why don’t Germans simply go back to Germany if they don’t like the United States?”  The Deutscher Weckruf und Beobachter, the Free American explained:

 The great majority of the members of the Bund who came here from Germany have broken all ties with the mother land.  They have made their homes here, built up a business and raised families of children prepared to do their duty.  The answer is, We don’t choose to go back because as substantial citizens, we have as much at stake in seeing that the United States is justly governed …We therefore choose to stay in order to protect our property, our wives and children from the fate of the Russian people.  Why should we desert and leave the country we love to the mercy of its secret enemies and exploiters?[5]

 

It was evident that the event would be well attended and many anticipated vociferous anti-Nazi demonstrations and even riots.  The New York police commissioner guaranteed 1,300 police to provide security, putting one-tenth of the entire New York City Police Department on duty in the area.  In fact, anticipating a counter-demonstration and violence, a two block perimeter was cordoned off and an additional 700 police were placed on hand to provide the much needed security.  Shortly before the event began, police formed skirmish lines around the Garden.  Surprisingly, out of an anticipated 50,000 anti-Bund demonstrators, only about 300 showed up.  They were boisterous and even attempted to penetrate the police lines but were largely ineffective in stopping the rally.  One protester was arrested for cruelty to animals after he grabbed a police horse’s bridle, injuring the animal.  One block away, a loud speaker blared “Be American and go home!”  

Overall, the rally was executed in a relatively peaceful and organized manner.  Police did arrest thirteen protesters who disturbed or attempted to disturb the rally, and those arrested were fined between two and ten dollars.  The only major interruption during the rally itself was when Isadore Greenbaum, a Jew from Brooklyn, rushed the speaker’s stand in a misguided attempt to attack Kuhn.  The incident was captured on video and witnessed Greenbaum accosted and beaten by OD men before police hustled him away.  Greenbaum was charged with disorderly conduct. 

The event itself was a smashing success and represented a high water mark for the Bund.  The Garden was elaborately decorated with both American and Bund flags and a massive thirty-foot tall full body portrait of George Washington dominated the stage.  Flanking Washington’s portrait were banners reading “Americans-Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America” and “Smash Jewish Communism.”  The aisles were lined with uniformed OD men and the evening opened with a parade of 3,000 uniformed OD men marching to a heavy drumbeat.  When all were assembled, the crowd recited the Pledge of Allegiance, starting with the words, “I pledge undivided allegiance to the flag,” followed by the singing of the Star Spangled Banner.[6]  The Bund’s national leadership was present and the keynote speakers included J. Wheeler Hill, the Bund’s National Secretary, Reverend S.G. Van Bosse, a prominent minister from Philadelphia, George Froboese, Mid-Western Department Leader; Rudolf Markmann, Eastern Department Leader, G. Wilhelm Kunze, National Public Relations Director, and lastly, Fritz Kuhn, Bundsfuehrer.  All of the speeches were given in English.  As if on cue, the crowd cheered when Roosevelt was referred to as “Rosenfeld” and rose to a clamor each time a speaker shouted “Free America!”  Mention of Father Coughlin and Charles Lindbergh also received enthusiastic applause. 

The speeches began with the keynote address by Wheeler who opened with “My Fellow Christian Americans!” and proceeded to set the theme for the five speeches to follow.  His speech rang of traditional American nativism.  He began by quoting Washington’s Farewell Address in order to demonstrate how such admonition was totally disregarded by Roosevelt’s New Deal.  He asked, “What would George Washington think and DO if he were alive today?” and concluded with a summary of the Bund’s American ideals:

My Fellow Countrymen!  WE German Americans are unequivocally committed to the defense of the Flag, Constitution, and Sovereignty of our United States.  WE STAND BEFORE YOU- loyal and law-abiding to be here dedicated together with you, to the great task of national and social reconstruction, and resolved as you are resolved to restore America to true Americans, and to the ideals and principles given expression in the great farewell address of George Washington.  FREE AMERICA!”[7]

 

The next speaker was Markmann.  In a speech entitled, “Reasons for the Bund’s Existence,” he defended the Bund against the slew of “slanderous lies” by the group’s detractors and the biased press.  To discredit the ceaseless charges that the group was a Nazi-directed organization with the aim of overthrowing America, he attempted to clarify the true purpose of the Bund:

“We have never claimed to be and are not “Nazis” knowing very well that “Nazism,”  German National Socialism, is reserved for Germany and has no place in our Country, the United States of America!  The German Chancellor has proclaimed to the world many times that National Socialism is not for export! 

You have heard…our Bund is of sinister character, with the sole purpose of overthrowing the government of the U.S.A…Let me assure you right now that all such accusations are too silly to even require an attempted denial of any of them.[8] 

 

Markmann then continued to explain how the Friends of the New Germany originated and how the Bund continued their fight against Jewish influence in America.  He lamented the paucity of German-descended Americans in important political posts in the United States.  He concluded by professing that the Bund would fight to properly represent this large segment of Americans.  Makmann ended with a resounding, “FREE AMERICA!”[9]

Markmann was followed by Froboese, the Bund’s economist, whose speech in many respects reflected German National Socialist ideals to much greater degree than the speeches of any of the other speakers.  After addressing his “American Compatriots, Bund Members and Friends,” Froboese began with a discussion of the “rights of the people.”  He explained, “We believe that the rights of the individual must stand second to well-being of the community and that the exigencies and requirements of such a community must be subordinated to such of the Nation! This all-embracing thought is our philosophy of a patriotic American Nationalism!”[10]   His speech next turned to anti-Semitism in economics.  The Bund, he declared, was opposed to “Jewish-Marxist class warfare” concocted by the “oriental cunning of the Jew Karl Marx-Mordecai!”  He continued to explain that the Labor movement had failed because of “Jewish-International” interest and “Jewish agitators” who controlled labor unions yet knew nothing of them.[11]  Moreover, the Bund advocated a free trade policy.  Because of Jewish boycotts against German business, German-American trade suffered to the detriment of all hard-working Americans.  He then attacked the internationalist character of the New Deal whose “Ham and Egg plans” were folly to American economics.  America’s financial system, he asserted, was internationally dominated and therefore Jewish dominated.  As such, Froboese railed against the “international super state” while advocating a “National American Financial System.”  He proclaimed, “We know that the Jew is the most concerned with maintaining his stranglehold on the financial systems of the world….I call upon you to join with us in the battle for a socially just, economically stabilized, financially independent, Jew-free America!”[12] 

The next speech was in fact written by Hermann Schwinn, the Bund’s West Coast Leader, but because he was unable to appear, it was read by Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze, the Bund’s public relations director and the man who ultimately replaced Kuhn as Bundsfeuhrer.  The speech was entitled “Religion, Culture,” and it attacked Jewish-liberal-Marxist domination of education and the arts.  He began with a definition of Aryan virtues like “honesty, decency, courage, faith in the almighty, love of home and country, and the will to defend and preserve their foundations.”[13]  He explained that the Bund “take(s) no stand against ANY true church” and yet railed against ministers who aligned themselves with the Left and advocated liberal and Marxist ideologies.[14]  Moreover, “School teachers SHOULD be made to swear to uphold the constitution and at the first sign of any teaching leaning to the glorification of Bolshevism should be THROWN OUT! Jewish teachers should be eliminated from all schools for Gentiles.”[15]  Schwinn then accused American art as being Jewish dominated.  Similarly, Hollywood was little more than an extension of “Jew York” which subtly glorified Jews, gangsters, drinking and high living while ridiculing old-fashioned American ways and ideals.  Lastly Schwinn attacked the press as Jewish controlled and deliberately ignoring the menace of communism. 

Kunze’s speech, entitled “Race, Youth,” demonstrated the clearest connection to the ideas of traditional American nativism and was perhaps the most scathing anti-Jewish diatribe of all.  Kunze opened his speech as a teacher would, baiting his audience with the question, “why are the Jews often seen as the enemies of mankind?”  He then outlined the “law of Nature,” explaining that God created various races.  To “make believe that the profound, ineradicable racial differences between the Aryan and other races is to thwart the will of Nature, and to advocate the mixing of races is “Madness and Blasphemy!”[16]  He then espoused the National Socialist idea that all great civilizations were the product of a particular race, and that history has shown that the decay and fall of all empires was due to race mixing and the adulteration of the genius of the original race.  He declared, “There never has been and there can be no international or interracial culture!  These Unites States also are the product of a particular racial group, the ARYAN!”[17]  Slavs, Celts, and Latins, he posited, all shared a fundamental political, economic, religious and cultural history and tradition with the Aryan, in contrast to the Jew, who was inassimilable and a “parasite on the body politic of our and other Aryan peoples!”[18]   Despite this anti-Semitic harangue, he professed that the Bund was “not preaching race-hatred, but race-recognition and the will to the preservation of our own!” The Bund was not anti-anything and could live in peace with Blacks, Orientals and even Jews provided they kept apart.[19]

Kunze professed that because of their cunning, the Jews have come to dominate much of American society.  The only way that the Aryan could reclaim the nation was through “race-legislation of the United States to the point where those who may rule us, judge us, educate us or in any way direct our minds and souls MAY ONLY BE WHITE MEN!”[20]  He explained that the Bund was not calling for anything new in American race legislation, citing America’s history of intermarriage laws, the Asiatic Exclusion Act,  Jim Crow laws, and immigration quotas.  The Bund was calling for an extension of these existing laws to “protect the Aryan character of our nation!”  He elucidated, “we all, as White Men, have enough in common to build a political United Front, of which the German Element and its German American Bund want only to be a part!”[21]  He explained that the Bund’s adoption of the swastika and the Hitler salute were not out of loyalty to a foreign government but rather, the swastika was a race symbol and the salute symbolic of the Bund’s ideals, which were no different than the salute of a host of other Aryan nations.  “This symbol and this salute represent the sign and recognition and the greetings of Aryans, White Gentiles, each of whom is a Nationalist and undividedly loyal to his own particular country, and in our case that means the United States of America.”[22]  Patriotism, Kunze concluded, was an Aryan virtue which must be taught and fostered in our children.  His final words were:  “White Men, learn what responsibility to yourself and your people’s future mean! Recognize your heritage! Join us! FREE AMERICA!”[23] 

Last came the main event of the evening; Fritz Kuhn.  While each of the previous speakers acted as teachers, each explaining some aspect of the Bund’s functions, Kuhn spoke of action.  He outlined the Bund’s role in contemporary America and explained what it must do to destroy its and America’s enemies.  Kuhn strutted to the podium and offered a calm “Free America!” and prepared to speak.  He began with some humor, “You have heard of me through the Jewish-controlled press and a creature with horns, a cloven hoof and a long tail.”[24]  He then ridiculed the rumors of his connection with Hitler or Goebbels and accusation that came from the ravings of Rabbi Wise, Untermyer and Dickstein. 

Kuhn then proceeded to explain, just as Deutscher Weckruf und Beobachter, the Free American advertisements had, the answer to the question, “why don’t Germans simply go back to Germany if they don’t like it in America?”  Again he explained that the Bund was made of American citizens who have made America their permanent home and sought to protect it from Jews and communists.  The problem with Americans of German descent was that although they were the second largest ethnic group in America, they were silenced by the Great War, receiving treatment “nothing short of persecution and a reign of terror.” Thus, the Bund was formed to give German-Americans their rightful place in American society. 

Kuhn next launched into his tirade against the Jews, wherein he gave a radical revisionist history lesson in order to demonstrate how the Jews have historically been traitors to America.  Kuhn here was not at his best; the speech was a bit long winded and nebulous.  He explained that Haym Salomon and David Salisbury Frank, (Benedict Arnold’s adjutant) two Jews who were commonly glorified as American heroes, were in fact scoundrels.  Salomon never loaned American anything and Frank was a traitor.  Moreover, during the Civil War, General Grant, “in defiance of the powerful influence of the financial Jews in the North, issued a general order on December 19, 1862 forbidding Jews to enter the Union lines.  It forbade Jews to be found within 60 miles of the front.”[25]  Kuhn’s American history lesson next focused on a Jew named Frank Moses, the “worst carpetbagger of them all” who, using black support, ravaged South Carolina and created racial problems which prompted the creation of the Ku Klux Klan.  His last attack was against Bernard K. Baruch who “swindled the United States into the Great War of the side of Britain thereby buying Palestine for the Zionists.”  Kuhn finished his speech by repudiating the “slanderous charges” against the Bund and reiterating the eight point program of the Bund.[26] 

Exiting from the hall, many Bundists returned to Yorkville where they celebrated.  The rally was an enormous success.  Kuhn proclaimed, “All America is speaking of the Bund” and he was right.[27]  The Bund had obtained enormous publicity.  Newspapers reported on the rally and newsreels in theaters around the nation showed highlights of the event.   The Bund believed that Americans would now believe, understand and respect its message of patriotism.  Bundists took faith that perhaps now they could shed the popular perception that they were a subversive alien “fifth column.”  However, this was not so.  Although the Madison Square Garden rally marked the acme of the Bund, it also in many ways marked the beginning of the end for the group as government agencies bent on the destruction of the Bund took even more drastic and desperate measures against the organization.