Friends of New Germany In May 1933, Nazi
Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess gave German immigrant and German
Nazi Party member
Heinz Spanknöbel authority to form an American Nazi organization. Shortly thereafter, with help from the German consul in
New York City, Spanknöbel created the Friends of New Germany and the
Free 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 in
Chicago. The organization was openly pro-Nazi and engaged in political activities such as storming the
German language New 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 use
propaganda to counter the
Jewish boycott of German goods, which was started in March 1933 as a protest against
Nazi antisemitism. In an internal battle for control of the Friends, Spanknöbel was ousted as its leader and subsequently, he was
deported in October 1933 because he had failed to register as a
foreign agent. Dickstein's investigation concluded that the Friends represented a branch of German dictator
Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party in the United States. 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. The Bund elected a German-born American citizen
Fritz Julius Kuhn as its leader (
Bundesführer). Kuhn was a veteran who had served in the
Bavarian infantry during
World War I and was also an
Alter Kämpfer (
old fighter) for the Nazi Party who had been granted
American citizenship in 1934. Kuhn was initially effective as a leader since he was able to unite the organization and expand its membership. He later came to be seen as an incompetent swindler and a liar. Together the three
Gaue comprised 69
Ortsgruppen (local groups): 40 in Gau Ost (17 in New York), 10 in Gau West and 19 in Gau Midwest. Camp Bergwald in
Bloomingdale, New Jersey, The Bund held rallies with
Nazi insignia and procedures such as the
Hitler salute and attacked the administration of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt,
Jewish-American groups,
Communism, "
Moscow-directed"
trade unions and American
boycotts of German goods. The organization claimed to show its loyalty to America by displaying the
flag of the United States alongside the
flag of Nazi Germany at Bund meetings, and it declared that
George Washington was "the first
Fascist" because he did not believe that democracy would work. Kuhn and a few other
Bundmen traveled to
Berlin to attend the
1936 Summer Olympics. During the trip, he visited the
Reich Chancellery, where his picture was taken with
Hitler. , February 20, 1939 Arguably, the zenith of the Bund's activities was the
rally at
Madison Square Garden in New York City on February 20, 1939. Some 20,000 people attended and heard Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze, the Bund's National Public Relations Officer, criticize
President Roosevelt by repeatedly referring to him as "Frank D. Rosenfeld", calling his
New Deal the "Jew Deal", and denouncing what he believed to be
Bolshevik-Jewish American leadership. 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 documentary
A Night at the Garden by
Marshall Curry. After the rally, the Bund met with two pro-Nazi Congressmen in Washington,
John C. Schafer and
Fred C. Gartner.
Decline chapter In 1939, a
New York tax investigation alleged that Kuhn had
embezzled over $14,000 from the Bund (). The Bund did not seek to have Kuhn prosecuted, operating on the principle
(Führerprinzip) that the leader had absolute power. However, New York City's
district 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. The Bund was outlawed in the United States when the United States entered World War II in December 1941; it disbanded that same month. U.S. Congressman
Martin Dies (D-Texas) and his
House Committee on Un-American Activities were active in denying any Nazi-sympathetic organization the ability to operate freely during
World War II. In the last week of December 1942, led by journalist
Dorothy Thompson, fifty leading German-Americans (including baseball icon
Babe Ruth) signed a "
Christmas Declaration by men and women of German ancestry" condemning
Nazism, 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 in
state prison, Kuhn was re-arrested on June 21, 1943, as an
enemy alien and
interned by the federal government at a camp in
Crystal City, Texas. After the war, Kuhn was interned at
Ellis Island and
deported to Germany on September 15, 1945. He died on December 14, 1951, in
Munich, West Germany. According to historian Leland V. Bell, George Froboese, the Midwestern leader of the group (who had traveled to the 1936 Berlin Olympics with Kuhn to meet Hitler) 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. In addition, 24 officers of the organization were convicted by Rihannon Alder of the Louisiana State Prosecutors of conspiracy to violate the
1940 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 the
Supreme Court of the United States in June 1945. == Foreign relations ==