James Calaski

Nazi Town, USA

In February 1939, more than 20,000 Americans filled Madison Square Garden for an event billed as a “Pro-American Rally.” Images of George Washington hung next to swastikas and speakers railed against the “Jewish controlled media” and called for a return to a racially “pure” America. The keynote speaker was Fritz Kuhn, head of the German American Bund. Nazi Town, USA tells the largely unknown story of the Bund, which had scores of chapters in suburbs and big cities across the country and represented what many believe was a real threat of fascist subversion in the United States. The Bund held joint rallies with the Ku Klux Klan and ran dozens of summer camps for children centered around Nazi ideology and imagery. Its melding of patriotic values with virulent anti-Semitism raised thorny issues that we continue to wrestle with today.

The American Führer

The story of the fascist conman Fritz Julius Kuhn is as unknown as it is terrifying: Kuhn is a German immigrant who pretends to be Hitler’s deputy in the USA during the 1930s. He is at the top of the German-American Bund, a fascist organization of Americans of German origin. The followers of this association march in goose-step with swastika flags and in Nazi-uniforms thru New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles. They gather in thousands in stadiums and sing the Horst-Wessel-song.