Support for Nazism in a post-World War I-weary America was far more extensive than previously realized. In his new book, Hitler’s American Friends: The Third Reich’s Supporters in the United States, Bradley W. Hart reveals the sizable network of Nazi sympathizers, spies and supporters in the US during the 1930s and early 1940s.
Using newly available archives, Hart, an assistant professor at California State University, Fresno, reveals how key figures in US government, business, academia and the priesthood – along with German Americans – aspired to bring Nazi ideology to the US and keep the country out of World War II. Hart pores through unsealed archives and personal papers to tell the story of Hitler’s domestic advocates. Prominent isolationist groups – the German American Bund, the Friends of the New Germany, the Silver Legion and the America First Committee – politicians, corporations and universities, plus leaders such as industrialist Henry Ford, famed aviator Charles Lindbergh and celebrity priest Father Charles Coughlin, endeavored to advance Nazi ideology and cultivate support for the Third Reich in America. These individuals and entities not only pushed for isolationism and neutrality, they also distributed German propaganda, some with assistance from the German Embassy in Washington and German agents within the US.
Between 1933 and 1935, the Friends of New Germany – with an armed wing that engaged in brawls and painted swastikas on Manhattan synagogues – recruited 5,000 members, established two newspapers, and founded branches in five cities. After US authorities targeted the group’s leader for deportation, the group’s prominence was replaced by the German American Bund, with members largely drawn from recent German immigrants.