The film uses black and white footage from the
1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden from Monday, February 20, 1939. It opens outside Madison Square Garden with shots of the
New York City Police Department reining in
anti-Nazi counter-protesters along with a marquee that lists a "pro-American rally" scheduled on that night, above a
National Hockey League match and a college basketball game later in the week. After a procession of flag bearers to a stage decorated with
swastika-adorned pennants, U.S. flags, and a portrait of
George Washington, a German-accented man leads the audience in the
Pledge of Allegiance. It is
Fritz Julius Kuhn, the leader of the
German American Bund. He steps up to the podium and casually remarks about how he is depicted as a "creature with horns, a cloven hoof, and long tail" by "the Jewish-controlled press." As he begins to outline a program calling for a "socially-just, white, Gentile-controlled United States" and "Gentile-controlled labor unions, free from Jewish Moscow-directed domination," a counter-protester rushes on stage in an attempt to attack Kuhn. It is 26 year old Isadore Greenbaum. He is beaten onstage by the Bund's paramilitaries, and as he is hauled away by the police the footage is slowed to focus on him. The footage ends with a rendition of "
The Star-Spangled Banner" by a German-accented woman, before cutting to a title card noting that the rally occurred when
Adolf Hitler was overseeing construction of
Nazi Germany's sixth
concentration camp and seven months before its
invasion of Poland and the beginning of
World War II. == Background ==