German American Bund
The German American Bund was a pro-Nazi organization formed in the United States in 1936 under the leadership of Fritz Julius Kuhn. It emerged from the earlier Friends of the New Germany, which had lost favor with the Nazi regime. The Bund aimed to promote German culture and Nazi ideology among German immigrants, featuring rallies adorned with Nazi symbols, anti-Semitic messages, and activities reminiscent of the Hitler Youth. By organizing various events and establishing recreational camps across the U.S., the Bund sought to create a community that embraced Nazi principles. Despite its efforts, the organization never exceeded approximately 6,000 members and was ultimately viewed as ineffective by the German government, which restricted its activities in 1938. The Bund's prominence peaked during a large rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939, but it rapidly declined afterward. Following the United States' entry into World War II, the Bund was banned, and many of its leaders were tried for sedition. Kuhn himself faced legal troubles, leading to his deportation and subsequent obscurity in Germany.
German American Bund
Identification Pro-German organization based in the United States
Date Established in March, 1936
The principal pro-Nazi organization in the United States during the 1930’s and 1940’s, the German American Bund was formed to promote positive views of Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler within the United States. However, the organization had such a negligible impact that even Hitler’s government disavowed it.
A small National Socialist Association of Teutonia existed during the 1920’s but had no influence. After Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, his Nazi Party’s foreign department looked for ways to mobilize Germans abroad. It created an association in the United States called the Friends of the New Germany, comprising mainly immigrants, but by late 1935, the regime found this organization embarrassing and withdrew its support. In March, 1936, the remnants of the organization gathered around Fritz Julius Kuhn to form the German American Bund with him as its national leader.
Born in Munich in 1896, and a veteran of World War I, Kuhn had studied chemical engineering and worked as an industrial chemist in Mexico. After 1927, he worked for the Ford Motor Company in Detroit, Michigan, and became an American citizen in 1934. He joined the Detroit branch of Friends of New Germany, worked his way to its top post, and continued as head of the new Bund. In 1936, he went to Berlin, where he posed for a picture with Hitler, and claimed—falsely—that he had Hitler’s blessing for his American organization.
Kuhn’s group held rallies filled with swastikas, Nazi salutes (at the time similar to the U.S. flag salute), and German songs, and it vigorously promoted anti-Semitism. It established recreational camps on Long Island, New York; New Jersey; Wisconsin; and California and created an American version of the Hitler Youth to indoctrinate children in German language and history and Nazi philosophy. The uniformed organization also had its own goon squad to protect meetings and harass protesting demonstrators.
As exaggerated rumors about the Bund’s growing membership spread, the Federal Bureau of Investigation began monitoring its activities, and the House Committee on Un-American Activities held hearings about it. However, it never had more than about six thousand members. Its high point came during a spectacular rally at New York’s Madison Square Garden in February, 1939.
In 1938, the German government acknowledged the Bund’s ineffectiveness by barring German citizens from joining the organization and forbidding the organization itself from using Nazi emblems and symbols. Afterward, the Bund quickly declined. Kuhn was jailed for embezzling Bund funds, and the U.S. government banned the organization after the United States entered World War II at the end of 1941. In 1944, some of its leaders were tried for sedition.
Impact
Although the Bund was a noisy, attention-getting organization, it had no influence on American policy. Kuhn himself was deported back to Germany where he died in obscurity in 1951, at the age of fifty-five.
Bibliography
Canedy, Susan. America’s Nazis: A Democratic Dilemma—A History of the German American Bund. Menlo Park, Calif.: Markgraf Publications Group, 1990.
Diamond, Sander. The Nazi Movement in the United States, 1924-1941. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University, 1974.
MacDonnell, Francis. Insidious Foes: The Axis Fifth Column and the American Home Front. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Van Ells, Mark D. “Americans for Hitler” America in World War II 3, no. 2 (August, 2007): 44-49.