German American Bund

B. The Downfall of Fritz Kuhn and the German American Bund

The downfall of Fritz Kuhn and the Bund began while Kuhn was basking in the glory of the Madison Square Garden rally.  As Kuhn was boasting about 20,000 Bund members operating out of forty seven American states, Martin Dies was conducting his third HUAC investigation of the Bund in five years. But while dismantling the Bund came about through a strong concerted effort between government agencies, New York County District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey was at the forefront of the effort.  Dewey was riding the tide of victory in a series of highly publicized trials and was aiming for a gubernatorial or even presidential run.  A victory against the Bund in another highly publicized trial was exactly what he needed.  On May 2, 1939, the New York District Attorney’s office raided Bund headquarters at Third Avenue and Eighty-Fifth Street.  After scrutinizing Bund records, they presented to a grand jury facts warranting a trial against Kuhn on the charges of grand larceny.  In June 1939, Kuhn was indicted for embezzling nearly $15,000 from the Bund.  The money was allegedly used to pay for the medical bills of Kuhn’s mistress, Virginia Cogswell, a former Miss America, and to ship some of Cogswell’s furniture of from Los Angeles to New York and then to Cleveland. 

While leading Bund detractors in the U.S. government decried the organization as un-American, the methods they utilized to destroy the Bund can be seen as dubious as best, if not un-American.  Kuhn’s trial was besieged by questionable legal practices and characterized by a marked lack of objectivity and fairness.  In the first of the rather unusual court procedures, bail which was initially set at $5,000 was suddenly raised to $50,000 without explanation.  When the money was raised, it was then announced that the entire amount would not be returned when Kuhn appeared in court because there was now a two percent city tax on bail money.  Thus, win or lose, the Bund would be fined at least $1000.  Moreover, after the trial began on November 9, 1939, the state of New York charged Kuhn with embezzling $5,641.24.  The sum was later reduced to $4,424.22 and then reduced once again to a mere $674.83.  The presiding judge, Judge James Garrett Wallace, also dismissed five of the ten counts of larceny as the trial proceeded.  Kuhn also faced “trial by newspaper” as the press derided Kuhn and other Bund leaders in their coverage of the trial.[1]

Kuhn’s defense argued that the state not only erred on the amount allegedly taken, but there was no evidence that any moneys were taken at all.  Further, even if money had been taken, according to the Bund’s constitution and by the organization’s interpretation, the Bundesfuhrer was entitled to use Bund funds in any way he saw fit.  Two of Kuhn’s top lieutenants had even testified to the truth of this statement during the trial.   In other words, there was no injured party.  Nevertheless, after eight and one half hours of deliberation, the jury found Kuhn guilty on all the remaining counts of larceny.  On December 5, 1939, Kuhn was sentenced to two and a half to five years’ incarceration at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York.[2]  The Bund cried out injustice, and while most in America were happy to see the last of Kuhn, there were others who questioned the lack of objectivity in the trial.  Wendell Wilkie, the Republican candidate who ran against FDR in the 1940 presidential election, wrote of the trial, “in the case of Kuhn…legal processes were abused for political purposes.”[3]  The American Civil Liberties Union agreed.  The ACLU declared that Kuhn’s sentence was excessive and they expressed fears that this case could establish the dangerous precedent of states utilizing criminal statutes for ulterior political purposes.[4]

As Kuhn was carted off to prison, he appointed Wilhelm Kunze as leader of the Bund and instructed him to carry on Bund activities.  However, the heyday of the Bund was over, and throughout the next two years, the enemies of the Bund, utilizing every legal device available, attacked the organization incessantly.[5]  The group’s last hurrah came in August 1940 when the Bund held a massive joint Americanism rally at Camp Nordland with the Ku Klux Klan.  Although the New York Times reported that “Several hundred sheeted Ku Klux Klan mingled with seven hundred Bund members,”[6] the event was dominated by the Klan.  No Bund members were featured at the keynote speeches.  The joint Klan rally was little more than a pathetic attempt for the Bund to receive some “American” credibility by associating with such a large and notorious white supremacist and extremist group like the Klan.  The Free American, as the Bund newspaper was now officially called, cited the Klan rally as the start of a new cooperative coalition between the Bund and other true white American groups.[7]  It called for an alliance with other white American groups to “maintain the reestablishment of the original American institutions.”[8] In reality however, most Bund members, including Kunze, disliked cooperation with the Klan.  Kunze’s opinions of cooperation with the Klan mattered little for shortly after the event he and other leaders were arrested for violating a 1935 hate law.  Leaderless and practically bankrupt, the Bund was all but extinguished as a political movement.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor put an end to the Dies investigation.  It also marked the end of the existence of the Bund as a functioning political movement.  The official demise of the Bund came on December 11, 1941, three days after Congress declared war on the Axis forces. The federal government seized the Bund’s assets and arrested the remaining Bund leaders. From this point on the German American Bund existed only in the American courts.  With the outbreak of war, five million Americans of German, Italian and Japanese descents were forced to register with the State Department under the Alien Enemy Act.  Federal agents arrested thousands of presumed “dangerous aliens.”  Ten thousand German-Americans, of whom ten percent were German American Bund members, were confined to internment camps for the duration of the war.  Of the more than forty internment camps, the largest was in Crystal City Texas.  After serving his prison term, Kuhn was sent to Crystal City where he joined with hundreds of other Bundists who continued their political activity behind prison walls.  Unsure what to do with these radicalized German-Americans, many were shipped to Ellis Island and held in custody well into 1948.  What to do about Fritz Kuhn was another major dilemma faced by the American government.  Kuhn’s citizenship was revoked and he became the first German internee to be deported to Germany after the war.  Kuhn died in poverty and obscurity in Germany in 1951.