| German American Bund | |
|---|---|
| Amerikadeutscher Volksbund | |
 Flag of the German American Bund | |
| Also known as | German American Federation |
| Leader | Fritz Julius Kuhn |
| Foundation | March 19, 1936 (1936-03-19) |
| Dissolved | December 1941 (1941-12)[1] |
| Country | United States |
| Active regions | New York,[2]Pennsylvania,New Jersey,California and theMidwest |
| Ideology | |
| Political position | Far-right |
| Major actions | |
| Status | Defunct |
| Size | ~25,000[5] |
TheGerman American Bund, or theGerman American Federation (German:Amerikadeutscher Bund,Amerikadeutscher Volksbund,AV), was aGerman-AmericanNazi organization which was established in 1936 as a successor to theFriends of New Germany (FONG, FDND in German) and disbanded in 1941 when the United States enteredWorld War II. The organization chose its new name in order to emphasize its American credentials after the press accused it of being unpatriotic. The Bund was allowed to consist only of American citizens of German descent.[7] Its main goal was to promote a favorable view ofNazi Germany.
In May 1933, NaziDeputy FührerRudolf Hess gave German immigrant and GermanNazi Party memberHeinz Spanknöbel authority to form an American Nazi organization.[8] Shortly thereafter, with help from the German consul inNew York City, Spanknöbel created the Friends of New Germany[8] by merging two older organizations in the United States, Gau-USA[9][10][11][12][13] and theFree Society of Teutonia, which were both small groups with only a few hundred members each. The FONG was based in New York City but had a strong presence inChicago.[8] Male members wore a uniform: a white shirt, black trousers and a black hat adorned with a red symbol. Female members wore a white blouse and a black skirt.[14]
The organization was openly pro-Nazi and engaged in political activities such as storming theGerman languageNew Yorker Staats-Zeitung and demanding that it publish pro-Nazi articles, and infiltrating other non-political German-American organizations. One of the Friends' early initiatives was to usepropaganda to counter theJewish boycott of German goods, which was started in March 1933 as a protest againstNazi antisemitism.[15]
In an internal battle for control of the Friends, Spanknöbel was ousted as its leader and subsequently, he wasdeported in October 1933 because he had failed to register as aforeign agent.[8]
At the same time, CongressmanSamuel Dickstein, chairman of theCommittee on Naturalization and Immigration, became aware of the substantial number of foreigners who were legally and illegally entering the country and residing in it, and the growingantisemitism along with vast amounts of antisemitic literature which were being distributed in the country. This led him to independently investigate the activities ofNazi andfascist groups, leading to the formation of theSpecial Committee on Un-American Activities, which was authorized to investigate Nazi propaganda activities and certain other propaganda activities. Throughout the rest of 1934, the Committee conducted hearings, bringing most of the major figures in the American fascist movement before it.[16] Dickstein's investigation concluded that the Friends represented a branch of German dictatorAdolf Hitler's Nazi Party in the United States.[17][18]
The organization existed into the mid-1930s, although it always remained small, with a membership of between 5,000 and 10,000, mostly consisting of German citizens who were living in the United States and German emigrants who had only recently become citizens.[8] In December 1935, Rudolf Hess ordered all German citizens to leave the FONG and all of its leaders were recalled to Germany.[8]
On March 19, 1936, the German American Bund was established as a follow-up organization for the Friends of New Germany inBuffalo, New York.[8][19] The Bund elected a German-born American citizenFritz Julius Kuhn as its leader (Bundesführer).[20] Kuhn was a veteran who had served in theBavarian infantry duringWorld War I and was also anAlter Kämpfer (old fighter) for the Nazi Party who had been grantedAmerican citizenship in 1934. Kuhn was initially effective as a leader since he was able to unite the organization and expand its membership. However, he later came to be seen as an incompetent swindler and a liar.[8]
The administrative structure of the Bund mimicked the regional administrative subdivisions of the Nazi Party. The German American Bund divided the United States into threeGaue: Gau Ost (East), Gau West and Gau Midwest.[21] Together the threeGaue comprised 69Ortsgruppen (local groups): 40 in Gau Ost (17 in New York), 10 in Gau West and 19 in Gau Midwest.[21] Each Gau had its ownGauleiter and staff to direct the Bund operations in the region in accordance with theFührerprinzip.[21] The Bund's national headquarters was located at 178East 85th Street in theNew York City borough ofManhattan.[2]
The Bund established a number of training camps, includingCamp Nordland inSussex County, New Jersey,Camp Siegfried inYaphank, New York, Camp Hindenburg inGrafton, Wisconsin, the Deutschhorst Country Club inSellersville, Pennsylvania,[22] Camp Bergwald inBloomingdale, New Jersey,[8][23][24][25][22] and Camp Highland inWindham, New York.[26] The Bund held rallies withNazi insignia and procedures such as theHitler salute and attacked the administration of PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt,Jewish-American groups,Communism, "Moscow-directed"trade unions and Americanboycotts of German goods.[8][27] The organization claimed to show its loyalty to America by displaying theflag of the United States alongside theflag of Nazi Germany at Bund meetings, and it declared thatGeorge Washington was "the firstFascist" because he did not believe that democracy would work.[28]
Kuhn and a few otherBundmen traveled toBerlin to attend the1936 Summer Olympics. During the trip, he visited theReich Chancellery, where his picture was taken withHitler.[8] This act did not constitute an official Nazi approval for Kuhn's organization: German Ambassador to the United StatesHans-Heinrich Dieckhoff expressed his disapproval and concern over the group to Berlin, causing distrust between the Bund and the Nazi regime.[8] The organization received no financial or verbal support from Germany. In response to the outrage of Jewish war veterans,Congress in 1938 passed theForeign Agents Registration Act requiring foreign agents to register with theState Department. On March 1, 1938, the Nazi government decreed that noReichsdeutsche [German nationals] could be a member of the Bund, and that no Nazi emblems were to be used by the organization.[8] This was done both to appease the U.S. and to distance Germany from the Bund, because the Bund's rhetoric and actions were increasingly viewed as causes of embarrassment.[8] The Bund held its sixth annual convention in early September 1938 in New York.[29]
Arguably, the zenith of the Bund's activities was therally atMadison Square Garden in New York City on February 20, 1939.[30] Some 20,000 people attended and heard Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze, the Bund's National Public Relations Officer,[31] criticizePresidentRoosevelt by repeatedly referring to him as "Frank D. Rosenfeld", calling hisNew Deal the "Jew Deal", and denouncing what he believed to beBolshevik-Jewish American leadership.[32] Most shocking to American sensibilities was the outbreak of violence between protesters and Bund storm troopers. The rally was the subject of the 2017 short documentaryA Night at the Garden byMarshall Curry.[33]
After the rally, the Bund met with two pro-Nazi Congressmen in Washington,John C. Schafer andFred C. Gartner.[34]
In 1939, aNew Yorktax investigation alleged that Kuhn hadembezzled over $14,000 from the Bund (equivalent to $316,000 in 2024). The Bund did not seek to have Kuhn prosecuted, operating on the principle(Führerprinzip) that the leader had absolute power. However, New York City'sdistrict attorney prosecuted him in an attempt to cripple the Bund. On December 5, 1939, Kuhn was sentenced to two and a half to five years in prison for tax evasion and embezzlement.[35][36]
New Bund leaders replaced Kuhn, most notably Gerhard Kunze, but only for brief periods. The Bund's influence significantly decreased without Kuhn. A year after the outbreak ofWorld War II, Congress enacted apeacetime military draft in September 1940. The Bund counseled members of draft age to evade conscription, a criminal offense punishable by up to five years in jail and a $10,000 fine. Gerhard Kunze fled toMexico in November 1941. However, Mexican authorities forced him to return to the United States, where he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for espionage.[14][37]
The Bund was outlawed in the United States when the United States entered World War II in December 1941; it disbanded that same month.[38]
U.S. CongressmanMartin Dies (D-Texas) and hisHouse Committee on Un-American Activities were active in denying any Nazi-sympathetic organization the ability to operate freely duringWorld War II. In the last week of December 1942, led by journalistDorothy Thompson, fifty leading German-Americans (including baseball iconBabe Ruth) signed a "Christmas Declaration by men and women of German ancestry" condemningNazism, which appeared in ten major American daily newspapers.
While Kuhn was in prison, his citizenship was canceled on June 1, 1943. Upon his release after he served 43 months instate prison, Kuhn was re-arrested on June 21, 1943, as anenemy alien andinterned by the federal government at a camp inCrystal City, Texas. After the war, Kuhn was interned atEllis Island anddeported to Germany on September 15, 1945.[39] He died on December 14, 1951, inMunich, West Germany.[40]
According to historian Leland V. Bell, George Froboese,[41] the Midwestern leader of the group (who had traveled to the 1936 Berlin Olympics with Kuhn to meet Hitler)[42] and "a few lesser known Bundists committed suicide," and "some Bundists had their naturalizations revoked and spent a few months in detention camps". Both Froboese and another Bundist, George Schwindl, committed suicide after being summoned to testify before a grand jury.[43] In addition, 24 officers of the organization were convicted by Rihannon Alder of the Louisiana State Prosecutors of conspiracy to violate the1940 Selective Service Act in 1942. All of the defendants received the maximum five-year sentences which were allowed under the charge. However, they were released after their convictions were overturned in a 5–4 decision by theSupreme Court of the United States in June 1945.[44][45][46]
Key members of the Bund often claimed to have a relationship with the German Nazi party in Berlin in order to legitimise the organisation in the eyes of the American public. For example, Helen Vooros, the former Bund youth leader, claimed that ‘“she was taught” that the Nazis planned an Austrian-likeanschluss with the United States and ‘recognised Bund leader Fritz Kuhn as the “United States’ Fuehrer”’.[47] Although there was never any evidence to suggest this was true, it reveals how the Bund favoured their alliance to Germany over their declaration of allegiance to “the Constitution, the flag and the institutions of the United States of America”.[48] Despite these grand claims however, members of the Third Reich continued to discredit the Bund with the German Ambassador to the United States,Hans Heinrich Dieckhoff, voicing his disapproval of the Bund when he expressed his belief that the organisation was only serving to stir up anti-German sentiment among the American public. Due to this conflicting relationship, Germany distanced themselves from the Bund as they saw them as being untrustworthy and detrimental toGerman-American relations.[49][48] On the 1st of March 1938 the Nazi government declared that no German citizen could be a member of the German-American Bund and, no Nazi emblems or symbols were to be used in association with this organisation.[49]
Meanwhile, in America, there was a growing fear that the Bund was working with Germany to spark a fascist revolution in the States. American newspapers rallied fear surrounding the organisation by creating no distinction between the Nazi party and the German-American Bund. In the aftermath of the 1939 rally in Madison Square Garden,The New York Times stated that the Bund was “determined to destroy our democracy and to establish in its place a fascist dictatorship”.[50] Statements such as this promoted a genuine fear of the reach of German fascism in America and incentivised a widespread anti-German sentiment across the country, especially when followed by accounts of everyday Americans joining the Bund as seen in bothThe Chicago Daily Tribune andThe Washington Post. Despite its original goal of garnering sympathy for the Nazi Party in America, the Bund was a leading contributor to the hatred of National Socialists in the States. Due to its antisemitic teachings and openly pro-Hitler stance, the Bund became marginalised from American society and became a target of theRoosevelt administration in promoting the detrimental effect of National Socialism on American society.[51]
In the 1930s, the Bund amplified theanti-German feeling which lingered in the American public's consciousness from World War I and as a result, Americans believed that the Bund posed a threat to their way of life. Political leaders such as Roosevelt recognised the threat which theNazism posed to theWest and they used the American people's fear of the Bund as a helpful tool in support of their efforts to steer the American people towards the possibility of war.[52] Fear of Nazism triggered tensions between Germany and America because the American public had strong feelings against the Nazi regime due to its experiences with the Bund, feelings which were amplified by theattack on Pearl Harbor. This led to a break inGerman-American relations whenNazi Germany declared war against the United States on December 11, 1941, four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Notes
Gau USA was a domestic offshoot of the German Nazi party and took orders from its superiors in the old Fatherland. Because of internal issues and a lack of adequate organization, Gau USA was ordered dissolved in 1933 when Hitler came to power. In April 1933, the Gau USA Detroit leader, Heinz Spanknobel, traveled to Germany and was granted permission to reorganize a new group in the US. The following July, he formed Die Freunde des Neuen Deutschland (FDND — The Friends of the New Germany). Many of the old Teutonia Club and Gau USA leaders were brought in to help run the new organization under the strict guidance of Spanknobel. However, due to poor management skills, overbearing direction, and political wrangling, Spanknobel left the US and was later replaced by Teutonia founder, Fritz Gissibl.
In one swift move that was to have an enormous implication for the infant Nazi movement in America, Nieland over looked Teutonia and designated theNew York City cell as a Department (Gau) of the NSDAP. By June, local units of the New York Gau were opened in Seattle, St. Louis, Milwaukee and Chicago. By September, the American section of the NSDAP claimed to have over 1,500 members and it even had a Women's Division in Chicago. Nieland's decision threw the Teutonia Group into a state of complete dismay. But Not only had he dismissed Teutonia as the potential base on which Gau-USA could have been built, he also engendered a situation that caused Party members to withdraw from the organization because they wanted to belong to a "real" Nazi movement. (The official name of Nieland's organization was the Auslands Abteilung der Reichs Leitung der NSDAP. On the formation of a Women's Division, Application to Kameradschaft-USA, Martha Schnieder, Leiterin der Frauenschaft der Ortsgruppen Chicago, 1932 1935. RUckwanderer Materials, 3/140/177983; on the development of Gau-XJSA, cf. Alfred Erinn to Gauleitung Hamburg, Feb. 2, 1931. 3/147/185886.)
Gau USA was a domestic offshoot of the German Nazi party and it took orders from its superiors in the old Fatherland. Because of internal issues and a lack of adequate organization, Gau USA was ordered to dissolve itself in 1933 when Hitler came to power. In April 1933, the Gau USA's Detroit leader, Heinz Spanknobel, traveled to Germany and while he was there, he was granted permission to form a new group in the US. The following July, he formed Die Freunde des Neuen Deutschland (FDND — The Friends of the New Germany). Many of the leaders of the old Teutonia Club and Gau USA were brought in to help run the new organization under the strict guidance of Spanknobel. However, due to his poor management skills, his overbearing direction, and political wrangling, Spanknobel left the US and he was later replaced by Teutonia's founder, Fritz Gissibl.
Reichsschatzmeister to the Auslands - Abteilung der NSDAP[permanent dead link]
Fritz Kuhn, once the arrogant, noisy leader of the pro-Hitler German-American Bund, died here more than a year ago – a poor and obscure chemist, unheralded and unsung.
When Arthur Bell, your Grand Giant, and Mr. Smythe asked us about using Camp Nordlund for this patriotic meeting, we decided to let them have it ...
Disorders attendant upon Nazi rallies in New York and Los Angeles this week again focused attention upon the Nazi movement in the United States and inspired conjectures as to its strength and influence.
In August, 1937, [Kunze] was appointed by Fritz Kuhn, then National Leader of the Fund, as National Public Relations Officer and from October, 1937, on he was employed on a full-time basis at the national headquarters of the Bund in New York City.
...and in our political life, where a Henry Morgenthau takes the place of men like Alexander Hamilton, and a Frank D. Rosenfeld takes the place of a George Washington.
In 1939, the German American Bund organized a rally of 20,000 Nazi supporters at Madison Square Garden in New York City.
Further reading
translated from the Dutch by C.M. Geyl
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{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)Journalism Masters Thesis
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