Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig – Book Review: HITLER’S AMERICAN FRIENDS: The Third Reich’s Supporters in the United States
Bradley W. Hart, HITLER’S AMERICAN FRIENDS: The Third Reich’s Supporters in the United States (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2018).
Mark Twain was reputed to have said: “History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes.” Bradley Hart’s book is an excellent (and potentially frightening) example of that, given the latest upsurge in antisemitism within the U.S. (and elsewhere). Of course, “rhyming” means similarity and not identicality – or in the case here, some very close repetitions and a few (thankfully) completely different elements.
The book surveys and analyzes personalities and phenomena in the 1930s and early 1940s that combined antisemitism (in most cases) with unabashed support of Nazi Germany and Hitler (in many other cases) – all with the common denominator of American isolationism, i.e. keeping the U.S. out of the “war in Europe” (quite ironic, as it was the Japanese who led to America’s finally entering the war effort). The types of organizations and institutions ran the gamut: religious (mainstream Protestant and extreme Catholic), political (U.S. Senators), businessmen (Ford et al), students and professors (vs. many anti-Nazi professors), and spies (U.S. citizens mostly born in Germany).
The author clearly is aware of past/present similarities (the book must have been completed in late 2017; it is very up-to-date). I will let him present several of these, explicitly or implicitly. For the latter, all you have to do is substitute a few contemporary names and events:
Page 7 (relating to massive Nazi propaganda in Washington, DC and elsewhere):
“This was… a classic disinformation campaign full of ‘fake news’ and other distortions a new generation of Americans would encounter in the 2016 Presidential election. In the place of stories suggesting that President Barack Obama was secretly a Muslim from Kenya, Americans in 1940 were told that Franklin Roosevelt was secretly Jewish and had changed his name from ‘Rosen-feld’. Rumors about dangerous communists infiltrating the United States in groups of European refugees (‘Refu-Jews Go Back’ was the title of a far-right song of the era) would be replaced by alarmist rhetoric about Syrians decades later. Cries against the ‘liberal’ and ‘left-wing’ media were common to both eras.”
Page 8: “There was even a bold plot by Nazi agents and their American friends to meddle in the presidential election of 1940… . ‘The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact,’ Vice President Henry A. Wallace wrote in 1944.”
Page 69: “In many ways, [Father] Coughlin established the model for the indignant, belligerent, no-holds-barred talk show hosts that hit the airwaves in every American city in the late twentieth century.” [Per capita, probably the largest radio audience the world has ever seen!]
Page 117: “…a cleverly planned but ham-handed attempt by a hostile foreign power to influence a US presidential election.”
Non-paginated photo, opposite page 153: “O. John Rogge’s personal intensity made him a powerful opponent of Hitler’s American friends… . His dogged investigation of American business and political ties to the Third Reich ended abruptly when he was fired for getting too close to the truth. It would be decades before the stunning report he authored would become available to the public.”
Page 162: “Decades before Donald J. Trump adopted an identical slogan for his own campaign, America First represented the idea that issues beyond the country’s borders were dangerous, expensive, and unworthy of American attention.” [At its height, America First had 800,000 members.]
Page 172: “… he [Lindbergh] advised Americans to be skeptical of the news they were hearing from Europe and ‘ask who owns and who influences the newspaper, the news picture and radio’.”
If these similarities are numerous and potentially scary for us contemporaries, the other side of the coin must be noted – which the author commendably does as well. Not only were there several anti-Nazi fighters of note (and effectiveness), but American society was not as gullible or xenophobic as one might imagine. For instance: “A September 1941 poll found 74 percent of Americans agreeing with the statement that ‘if the United States is to be a free and democratic country, the Nazi government in Germany must be destroyed’. An overwhelming majority of Americans consistently told pollsters they would oppose a campaign of oppression against Jewish Americans.” [Page 177]
In short, the Nazi sympathizing effort was massive and widespread, but for several reasons – a few pure luck and others a result of counter-measures by government officials and other institutions – the Nazi supporters did not come anywhere near close to having a significant impact. Chief among them – and the greatest difference between then and now: FDR and Trump.
The former made huge efforts to get America involved in the war (indirectly as in the Lend-Lease program with Britain) or directly (with American entry into the war), and wholeheartedly supported all efforts to stem Nazi infiltration and propaganda within the U.S. As for Trump, not much need be added as a counter-example to FDR; nevertheless, the American socio-political, institutional structure – then and now (so far) – held firm regarding Constitutional principles and action. At least here, the “rhyme” continues to be well done.
Is there anything new in this book? The broad picture has been told before, but based on new evidence from FBI files, several “forgotten” university archives, and especially firsthand participants’ personal diaries and papers, Hitler’s American Friends fleshes out the “innards” of these personalities (Nazi sympathizers and those who heroically fought against them) in great – but not too overwhelming – detail.
The book is highly recommended, not only for its historical detail (and quite fascinating narratives), but especially for its balanced approach. Hart does not offer a “there but for the Grace of God go I”; the attack on the U.S. polity back then was serious but not anywhere close to leading to disaster. Let’s hope that regarding the current “rhyming” situation, we will ultimately be able to say the same thing.
