![]() ![]() Messages which were openly praised by attendants who performed Nazi salutes toward three-story tall banners of George Washington flanked by Nazi swastikas. Twenty-two thousand Bund members carried signs and banners with messages such as, “Wake up America! Smash Jewish Communism” and “Stop Jewish Domination of Christian Americans.” Speakers at the rally incorporated antisemitic messages and Nazi propaganda throughout their speeches. Kuhn and other American Nazi leaders called the event a “mass demonstration for true Americanization” and used patriotic imagery alongside Nazi imagery and antisemitic rhetoric. The height of the German-American Bund’s popularity was marked by the February 1939 rally at Madison Square Garden. So much so, that The Washington Post presented Chairman Dies with the “Americanism Award of 1938.” False claims that Khun received orders directly from Adolf Hitler helped to discredit the German-American Bund in the press and in Congress. ![]() During the hearings, the committee successfully painted the Bund as anti-American. Both the Attorney General and the Federal Bureau of Investigation concluded that the Bund was not a threat to American security. In fact, its conclusions were that the German-American Bund was loud and racist, but fell under the protections of the first amendment. The HUAC did not have the ability to arrest any Bund members. ![]() Fritz Kuhn was the first witness called by Dies’ committee. to address the German-American Bund, the Bund family summer camps, and pro-Nazi organizations and individuals in the United States. The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), later made famous by their Cold War Era investigations of suspected communist sympathizers in the United States, was formed in 1938 by Congressman Martin Dies, Jr. Image by University of Southern California.Īs the Pro-Nazi and American Fascist movement grew, so did the interest of the American Government. Men saluting Nazi and American flags at Camp Siegfried, New York on October 1937. ![]()
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