The Plot to Remove Roosevelt
For many readers, the 1930s evoke images of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. However, this decade of wrenching world economic turmoil involved far more serious events. Events conspired to unleash the horrors of World War II and the unfathomable inhumanity of the Holocaust. WWII shaped the geopolitical scene for the rest of the century. Claims arising from the Holocaust would still be front-page headlines as the world entered the 21st century.
The 1930s was a decade in which Nazis openly paraded, unopposed, in the streets of America, supported by many. Many details about fascism in the 1930s are still shrouded in secrecy. It has been over a half-century since the end of the war, yet news is still surfacing concerning corporate America’s dealings with the Nazis. No one has yet comprehensively exposed the connections between the fascists of the 1930s and today’s American right wing. Many of the events of the decade have been quietly swept under the rug, such as the plot against Roosevelt. The press downplayed the assassination attempt at that time and today, most people have never heard of it.
Just as economic hardships in Germany helped the rise of Hitler, many Americans hit by the Depression joined the fascist ranks. Similarly, the long and deep recession of the 1980s led to a reemergence of fascism, in the United States and worldwide, with the transition from the industrial age to the information age.
In the 1930s, membership in fascist groups expanded, with some claiming more than a million members. This influence extended to the end of the 20th century. Many of today’s far right extremist groups were founded by the pro-Nazis of the 1930s, like the Posse Comitatus established by former Silver Shirt leader Henry Lamont Beach. Others like the World Anti-Communist League, are havens for former pro-Nazis and even Nazi war criminals. The ethnic heritage groups set up by the Republican Party under Nixon are also such havens. The American Security Council, founded in the 1950s by elements from three pro-Nazi groups of the ‘30s, exerted a serious influence on the Reagan administration.
The wild-eyed claim current in militia groups about Russian or UN troops massing on the Canadian border is nothing but recycled rhetoric from past generations of fascists. The 1960s right-wing group, the Minutemen, made a similar claim. Its version had the Red Chinese massing along the Mexican border for an invasion. This, too, can be traced back to the ’30s, when fascists claimed Jews were on the Mexican border.
Except for Russia, Hitler never invaded a country without first unleashing his agents to foment domestic unrest. The United States was targeted too; the Nazi web of intrigue extended far beyond the use of spies and noisy street agitators, such as the Silver Shirts. The Nazis found willing accompanists in the media, the halls of Congress and corporate boardrooms.
Fortunately, the fringe right has always been badly fragmented; indeed, it would be a cause for great concern to see a consolidation today among the various groups. The fragmentation of the 1930s was even greater than it is today. More than 700 different fascist groups existed during the decade. The American National Socialist Party, German-American Bund, Christian Front, the Silver Shirts, America First Committee, the Christian Mobilizer, National Worker’s League and the Committee of One Million were some of the more prominent fascist groups at that time. Many factions of the Mother’s Movement were also openly fascist.
There are many similarities between the fascist groups of the 1930s and today’s far right groups: the intense hatred of minorities and unions, isolationism, and the use of destructive division, nationalism and religion. The Identity religion common to so many of today’s far right groups evolved directly from fascist groups of the ’30s. These parallels are as striking as they are disturbing, and should stand as a warning of the hidden agenda of the right wing in this country. However, the real story of fascism from the ’30s and ’40s is one of traitors and seditionists escaping justice after the war’s end, as seen in the following quote from Facts and Fascism by George Seldes:
Only the little seditionist and traitors have been rounded up by the FBI. The real Nazi Fifth Column in America remains immune. And yet there is evidence that those in both countries who place profits above patriotism - and fascism is based entirely on profits although all of its propaganda speaks of patriotism - have conspired to make America part of the Nazi Big Business system. Thurman Arnold, assistant district attorney of the United States, his assistant, Norman Littell, and several congressional investigations, have produced incontrovertible evidence that some of our biggest monopolies entered into secret agreements with the Nazi cartels and divided the world among them. Most notorious of all was Alcoa, the Mellon-Davis-Duke monopoly which is largely responsible for America not having sufficient aluminum with which to build airplanes before and after Pearl Harbor, while Germany had an unlimited supply. Of the Aluminum Corporation sabotage, and that of other leading companies, the press said very little, but several books have now been written out of the official record.
It is this unbridled corporatism that is the heart of fascism. Notice how the words of George Seldes written in 1943 still hold true today about those who place profits above patriotism. The stated objective of the first Bush administration was to discover which corporations were responsible for supplying Iraq with the equipment to produce chemical and biological weapons, and to bring them to justice. Ten years after the Gulf War, not a single corporation has been charged, and the media has quietly swept that pledge under the rug. As Seldes stated, they are immune.
More odious is Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense in the first Bush administration and the current Vice President, who sold Iraq dual-use equipment during his tenure as CEO of Halliburton. As Secretary of Defense, Cheney awarded several contracts to Halliburton’s subsidiary, Brown and Root Services, for reports about how private companies could provide logistical support to troops in potential war zones. From 1992-99, with Cheney at Halliburton’s helm, Brown and Root was awarded $1.2 billion in defense contracts. Here again is a revolving door between corporate America and government, a door leading to heady profits from corruption for the few and disenfranchisement for the masses. Not a single mention of these deals was made in the press during the 2000 election campaign.
Here we have the heart of the problem of the 21st century: corporate power. Corporations have become so powerful, they openly flaunt our labor and environmental laws. This has reached the point where society now serves the corporations rather than corporations serving society.
In short, as we progress into the new century, the right-wing issues at the forefront of today’s political scene are merely recycled pro-fascist issues of the ’30s. It is an agenda of corporate rule. The GATS treaty currently being negotiated and the now-dead Multilateral Investment Agreement are attempts to go global with fascist corporatism.
Due to the depth of the Depression, the early 1930s were rife with grandiose plots. During the fall of 1933, Americans learned of a sensational plot by Gen. Art Smith and his Khaki Shirts. Smith, a soldier of fortune and raging Judeophobe, had formed a tight-knit band of 30-100 followers. As his reputation grew, so did his ambitions. Smith, whose idol was Mussolini, boasted that a million men would follow him and kill every Jew in the United States. He announced he would march on Washington and seize the government, much as Mussolini had done in Italy. Fortunately, Smith was arrested on a tip to police about an arms cache.
A good place to begin studying the fascism of the 1930s is with the one common factor at the heart of all the fascist groups - the visceral hatred of Roosevelt and liberalism. This was echoed in the 1990s with the Republican attack on President Clinton, which again showed how far right-wing extremists will go to gain power and subvert democracy.
The attempted coup d’état against Roosevelt was financed by Irénée du Pont, J.P. Morgan and a few other wealthy industrialists of the time: Robert Clark, heir to the Singer sewing machine corporation; Grayson Murphy, director of Goodyear; and the Pew family of Sun Oil. During WWII, all three of these corporations aided the Nazi empire. Singer’s plant, located on the east bank side of the Elbe, made machine guns for the Nazis.
Central to the plot against Roosevelt were two groups: the American Legion and the Liberty League. The American Legion was formed and financed by Morgan and Murphy in 1919 primarily to break strikes. Two former state commanders of the American Legion were involved in the plot: William Doyle, and Gerald MacGuire.
Irénée, the power behind the du Pont throne at that time, held a controlling interest in General Motors. He was an avid fascist and supporter of Hitler, closely tracking his career since the 1920s. On Sept. 7, 1926, du Pont gave a speech before the American Chemical Society in which he proposed creating a race of supermen by injecting special drugs into them during childhood. Not every child would receive them; du Pont insisted that only those of pure blood would get the injections.
Throughout the 1930s, the du Ponts invested heavily in Hitler’s Germany. General Motors, controlled by the du Pont family, invested $30 million into IG Farben alone. Wendell Swint, du Pont’s foreign relations director, knew that IG Farben and Krupp arranged to contribute half a percent of their payroll to the Nazi Party. Swint testified before the 1934 Munitions Hearings that du Pont was fully aware that it was financing the Nazis through the Opel division of General Motors. Even more telling is the financial backing the du Ponts provided pro-Hitler groups in the United States. Starting in 1933, du Pont financed the American Liberty Lobby, Clark’s Crusaders (which claimed 1.2 million members) and the Liberty League.
In 1934, Irénée du Pont and William Knudsen, president of General Motors, with friends of the Morgan Bank and others, set in motion a plot to overthrow FDR. They provided $3 million in funding for an army of terrorists, modeled after the French fascist group, Croix de Feu. The objective of the plot was to either force Roosevelt to take orders from this group of industrialists as part of a fascist-style government or to execute him if he chose not to cooperate.
The plotters selected Gen. Smedley Butler, a WWI hero, to head the plot, although Butler overtly opposed fascism and, in 1931, denounced Mussolini as a murderer and thug. The Italian government demanded an apology and President Hoover complied, placing Butler under arrest for court martial proceedings. Roosevelt, then governor of New York, spoke out against the charges against Butler. Roosevelt had been responsible for awarding Butler’s Second Medal of Honor for his service in Haiti. Hoover then backed down and Butler received a mild reprimand for refusing to retract his statement.
The plotters selected Butler because of his great popularity among veterans. Butler had spoken words of encouragement to the Bonus Marchers and was relentless in his pursuit for better treatment of American veterans. Gerald MacGuire and Bill Doyle, both wounded WWI veterans, first approached Butler at his home. The pair played on Butler’s sympathy for veterans. However, Butler was not an easy man to fool. After they exchanged pleasantries and discussed each other’s service in WWI, MacGuire worked up the nerve to present his plan to Butler.
According to MacGuire, they wanted Butler to attend an American Legion convention and give a speech in favor of the gold standard. Butler immediately asked about the bonus for the veterans. The best answer MacGuire could produce was that they wanted the veterans to be paid in gold and not “rubber” money. Butler was suspicious; both MacGuire and Doyle were dressed in fancy tailored suits and they arrived in a chauffeured limousine. With his suspicions aroused, Butler refused to give them an affirmative reply, but he left the door open to learn more.
The plotters failed to realize that Butler was a man of honor who believed in the constitution and democracy. He had a reputation of absolute honesty and was careful how his name was used. Stringing MacGuire along, Butler attended several more meetings with him before he left for Europe. MacGuire was a bond salesman for Clark, who sent him to Europe to study how fascists in Europe used veterans.
On his return, MacGuire once again sought out Butler. More meetings followed, including one in which MacGuire laid out 18, $1,000 bills to prove that he had enough funding and to ease any of Butler’s concerns. At the same meeting, MacGuire wanted Butler to come with 200 friends to an American Legion convention and give a speech in favor of the gold standard. This aroused Butler’s suspicions of ulterior motives, and he refused. Butler also refused MacGuire’s offer of an extra $750 per speech if he would refer favorably to the gold standard on his tour of 20 speeches to the VFW around the country; instead Butler lambasted the American Legion leaders.
In one meeting, MacGuire implied that they had men inside the Roosevelt administration who kept them fully informed. Butler noted that MacGuire had correctly predicted the dismissal of administration officials, the American Legion endorsement of the gold standard, and other events.
In another meeting, MacGuire threatened that if Butler did not accept leadership of the plot, Gen. Douglas MacArthur would take his place. MacGuire claimed the Morgans favored MacArthur, but that he had held out for Butler. Another name mentioned, in case Butler refused to head the plot, was former American Legion head Hanford MacNider of Iowa. MacArthur was extremely unpopular among the veterans for leading the charge against the bonus marchers. MacNider also was unpopular for opposing early payment of the bonus. MacGuire noted this and told Butler that MacNider would soon switch his view on the bonus. Within a week, MacNider did switch.
There were other meetings with Butler, who eventually demanded to meet with the leaders of the plot. Clark then met with Butler and offered him a bribe to read a speech to the American Legion. The speech, again favoring the gold standard, was written by John W. Davis, a former Democratic presidential candidate, and chief counsel to J. P. Morgan. Butler bristled at being offered a bribe. Clark backed off and announced that he was withdrawing his own support from the effort. In response, the plotters brought in Frank N. Belgrano Jr. to head the American Legion. Belgrano was a senior vice president of Giannini’s Bank of Italy that handled Mussolini’s business accounts. Giannini also founded the Bank of America. Belgrano remained an official of Bank of America until after the death of the founder, then went on to found Transamerica.
Eventually, MacGuire had to confess to Butler the plot involved replacing Roosevelt. MacGuire suggested that Roosevelt was tired and needed an assistant to run the country while he attended to ceremonial activities much like the King of Italy, who had relinquished power to Mussolini. Again, Butler bristled at the idea.
In July, the Morgan Mellon-controlled press, including Henry Luce’s Fortune magazine, unleashed a propaganda blitz praising the virtues of fascism. In August, the American Liberty League appeared. As part of the plot, Butler had been informed earlier of this group.
Morgan and du Pont cronies, including John J. Raskob, funded the Liberty league. On its advisory council were Dr. Samuel Hardin Church, who ran the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh; W.R. Perkins of National City Bank; Alfred Sloan, CEO of GM; Joseph M. Proskauer, former New York Supreme Court Justice and the general counsel to Consolidated Gas Co.; J. Howard Pew of Sun Oil and financier of the openly fascist Sentinels of the Republic; and David Reed, the Republican senator from Pennsylvania who remarked on the floor of the Senate in May 1932: “I do not often envy other countries and their governments, but I say that if this country ever needed a Mussolini, it needs one now.”
Fearing the plot was about to climax with the appearance of the Liberty League, Butler wanted to go public with what he knew. However, he knew he would be ridiculed without someone to corroborate his story. Butler had a newspaper reporter he trusted, Paul French, interview MacGuire. In the interview, the talkative MacGuire confirmed what he had told Butler, as well as his ebullience for fascism: “We need a fascist government in this country… to save the nation from the communists who want to tear it down and wreck all that we have built in America. The only men who have the patriotism to do it are the soldiers, and Smedley Butler is the ideal leader. He could organize a million men overnight.”
Once French confirmed the plot, Butler informed the Roosevelt administration. Roosevelt realized that with the backing of such a plot from powerful business leaders, he could not dismiss it as a crackpot scheme. Yet, Roosevelt also was well aware that arresting the leaders of such industrial powerhouses of the day could create a national crisis that could abort the fledgling economic recovery and perhaps trigger another Wall Street crash.
To foil the plot, FDR had news of it leaked to the press, and formed a special House committee to investigate the matter. The McCormick-Dickstein Committee agreed to hear Butler’s story in a secret session that met in New York City on Nov. 20, 1934. In four days, the committee heard Butler and French present the details of the plot and the testimony of MacGuire.
Both McCormick and Dickstein described MacGuire’s testimony as eminently self-incriminating. The committee, which caught MacGuire lying several times, determined that he did have in his possession the thousand-dollar bills and was in the locations cited. George Seldes noted that all the principals in the case were American Legion officials and conservative financial backers. Other administration officials urged the committee to get to the bottom of the case. McCormick indicated that Butler’s evidence was not the first of the plot; in fact, the committee had been in possession of other evidence for five weeks.
With many of the country’s leading papers openly pro-fascist, any coverage of the plot was buried or dismissed as the ravings of a madman. On Nov. 22, the Associated Press struck a low blow at Butler in the headline “‘Cocktail Putsch’ Mayor says.” Mayor LaGuardia had come out against Butler.
However, Butler received fresh support from VFW head James Van Zandt, who told the press that the plotters also approached him. Van Zandt claimed that MacArthur, Theodore Roosevelt Jr., and MacNider had all been sounded out. After announcing that Clark would be subpoenaed to appear before the committee as soon as he returned from Europe, the committee quickly adjourned without calling more witnesses. Not a single name mentioned in all the testimony ever appeared before the committee. Writer John Spivak learned that Frank Belgrano had been called to testify, but never did.
The committee formally dissolved on Jan. 3. No other witnesses ever appeared before the committee. Apparently when one is rich enough, one is immune from the laws of the country, regardless of damning evidence. On Feb. 15, the committee released its preliminary findings.
In the last few weeks of the committee’s official life it received evidence showing that certain people had made an attempt to establish a fascist organization in this country. No evidence was presented and this committee had none to show a connection between this effort and any fascist activity of any European country. There is no question that these attempts were discussed, were planned, and might have been placed in execution when and if the financial backers deemed it expedient. This committee received evidence from Maj. Gen Smedley D. Butler (retired), twice decorated by the Congress of the United States. He testified before the committee as to conversations with one Gerald C. MacGuire in which the latter is alleged to have suggested the formation of a fascist army under the leadership of General Butler. MacGuire denied these allegations under oath, but your committee was able to verify all the pertinent statements made by General Butler, with the exception of the direct statement suggesting the creation of the organization.
This, however, was corroborated in the correspondence of MacGuire with his principal, Robert Sterling Clark, of New York City, while MacGuire was abroad studying the various forms of veterans’ organizations of Fascist character. This committee asserts that any efforts based on lines as suggested in the foregoing and leading off to the extreme right, are just as bad as efforts which would lead to the extreme Left. Armed forces for the purpose of establishing a dictatorship by means of Fascism or a dictatorship through the instrumentality of the proletariat, or a dictatorship predicated on racial and religious hatreds, have no place in this country.
The press muffled Butler’s vindication. The New York Times failed to report the committee’s findings. Instead, it chose to report on the committee’s recommendation of registering all foreign propagandists. Buried deep in the pages of the Times was a brief acknowledgment that Butler’s story had been proven true. It was much the same in the rest of the nation’s newspapers. The press simply did not report it. John Spivak, a veteran Washington correspondent, was told that a Cabinet member decided to censor the report. The implication was that the release of certain names would embarrass the Democratic Party. At least two prominent Democrats who had been presidential candidates had been involved: John Davis, a lawyer for the Morgans, and Al Smith, a crony of the du Ponts. About a week after receiving the tip, Spivak accidentally stumbled across the uncensored report. Spivak copied the uncensored version and then compared it with the official version. The censored portions of the testimony by Butler and French are in The Plot to Seize the White House.
Even more curious is the fact that no one ever faced charges. Spivak went to the Justice Department and was told it had no plans to prosecute. The American Civil Liberties Union issued an angry statement on the lack of justice stemming from the committee’s findings.
The congressional committee investigating unAmerican activities has just reported of a Fascist plot to seize the government ... was proved; yet not a single participant will be prosecuted under the perfectly plain language of the federal conspiracy act making this a high crime. Imagine the action if such a plot were discovered among Communists! Which is, of course, only to emphasize the nature of our government as representative of the interests of the controllers of property. Violence, even to the seizure of government, is excusable on the part of those whose lofty motive is to preserve the profit system...
Obviously, powerful forces were brought to bear on the committee - forces more powerful than the government, forces immune from the country’s laws.
Spivak offered an interesting explanation of why the plot failed:
The takeover plot failed because though those involved had astonishing talents for making breathtaking millions of dollars, they lacked an elementary understanding of people and the moral forces that activate them. In a money-standard civilization such as ours, the universal regard for anyone who is rich tends to persuade some millionaires that they are knowledgeable in fields other than the making of money. The conspirators went about the plot as if they were hiring an office manager; all they needed was to send a messenger to the man they had selected.
Four years after it was formed, the congressional committee released a white paper concluding that certain persons tried to establish a fascist government. Further investigations disclosed that more than a million people had contracted to join the putschist army and that Remington, a du Pont subsidiary, would have supplied the arms and munitions.
As the du Ponts saw their plot crashing in around them, they chose to work within the system to gain power, just as Hitler did after the failed Beer Hall Putsch. In the 1936 presidential race, the du Ponts and the American Liberty League backed Alf Landon.
The fascist groups initially agreed to back Father Coughlin’s third-party candidate, William Lemke. Fritz Kuhn, the leader of the American Bund, then visited Germany before the election and conferred with the leaders of the Nazi Party. At the urging of Hitler’s henchmen, he returned to back Landon, and urged other fascists to do the same.
Republicans, Nazis & Elections
With its pro-business agenda and views of the leaders of corporate America, the Republican Party was soon laden with fascists.
Even before the Nazis seized power in Germany, they were already actively involved in American politics and elections. The shocking twist is that they did not have to infiltrate the Republican Party. Many of them were already employed at high levels in the national or state party organizations.
Nazis were seen working for the Republican Party almost from the start. The earliest known instance came in the 1920 election. George Sylvester Viereck and his Burgerbund campaigned extensively for Harding. Following the election, Viereck demanded a political payoff, but Harding was noncommittal. Viereck would become the man behind the notorious Nazi publisher, Flanders Hall, and later, during the 1940s, was charged with sedition.
In October 1928, Edmond Furholzer, a pro-Nazi publisher from Germantown, N.Y., offered to deliver the German vote to Hoover for $20,000. With his chances looking good late in the campaign, Hoover turned down Furholzer’s offer.
Furholzer was hardly an obscure Nazi. He was a leading figure in the hard right of Yorkville, a predominantly German neighborhood of Manhattan. In 1928, the Republican State Committee adopted many of Furholzer’s proposals. Four years later, when Hoover’s chances were dismal, the campaign gladly accepted Furholzer’s help. In fact, during the 1932 campaign, Furholzer worked endlessly for the Republican National Committee, campaigning tirelessly for Hoover in New York State. He smeared Roosevelt as the new Wilson, the man who destroyed Germany. In 1933, Furholzer returned to Germany.
By 1934, the Nazis had only been in power for less than a year, but already were active in placing their agents or pro-Nazis in positions of power. On Feb. 22, 1934, Sen. Daniel Hastings of Delaware and Rep. Chester Bolton announced the Republican Party had merged their Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees into a single organization, independent of the Republican National Committee. Just before the merger, the two campaign committees hired Sidney Brooks, longtime head of research at International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT). ITT was one of many American corporations that went to extraordinary means to continue trading with the Nazis after war broke out.
Brooks soon made a frantic visit to New York. On March 4, 1934, he went to Room 830 of the Hotel Edison, rented to Mr. William Goodales of Los Angeles, who was actually William Dudley Pelly. The meeting ended with an agreement to merge Brooks’ Order of 76 with the Silver Shirts. Then Brooks stopped at 17 Battery Place, the address of the German Consulate General.
The Order of 76 was a pro-fascist group. Its application form required the fingerprints and certain Bibliographical details of applicants. Brooks’ application revealed that he was the son of Nazi agent Col. Edwin Emerson, and that he chose to use his mother’s maiden name to hide his father’s identity. Emerson was a major financial backer of Furholzer and his paper. The Republican Party was employing Nazi collaborators and pro-fascist groups at a high level.
On Oct. 22, 1936, the New York Post broke the following story:
Nazi Publicist on G.O.P. Payroll
To win votes for Landon and Bleakley, the Republican State Committee is employing on its payroll a staff of propagandists identified with local Nazi organizations, the Post learned today.
On October 30, 1936, New York World-Telegram revealed more details.
U.S. Nazi Attack on Jews Is Laid to Republicans
Anti-Semitic Radio Speeches by Griebl, Others Sponsored by G.O.P.
Fritz Kuhn Among Speakers in Regular Broadcasts Over WWRL
The Republican Party had been sponsoring radio broadcasts by American Nazis to win German votes, it was disclosed today. One of the recent speakers was Dr. Ignatz T. Griebl, a national Nazi leader and pronounced anti-Semitic …
The second quote shows that the Republican Party leadership was willing to promote Nazi racism. In fact, an integral part of the Nazi battle plan was promoting racial riots or division within the United States to weaken or prevent the nation from entering the war. Such collaboration with the Nazis was tantamount to treason. Hitler and his agents in the U.S. must have been very pleased that leaders of the Republican Party were willing to promote and incite civil unrest by spreading anti-Jewish propaganda.
This example of vicious anti-Jewish campaigns by Republican leaders was not an isolated incident. In fact, it was commonplace. In the 1938 Minnesota governor’s race, leading officials of the Republican Party conducted another vicious anti-Jewish campaign to defeat Gov. Elmer Benson of the Farmer-Labor Party.
Benson’s inaugural address on Jan. 5, 1937 had placed him on the left of the New Deal spectrum. FDR endorsed Benson in 1936, and the Republican Party considered this a declaration of war. Among the measures Benson supported were:
- A two-year extension on the mortgage moratorium for farmers
- A technical assistance program to assist and promote cooperatives
- Union wages for state employees
- Creation of a state commission on youth
- Free transportation for rural high school students
- Repeal of the criminal syndicalism laws (Remember the Wobblies?)
- Creation of a state housing agency
- Development of a state-owned cement plant
- Increased benefits for the disabled, people on relief and the aged
- A constitutional amendment enabling the state to produce and sell electrical power to municipalities
- A state liquor dispensary
- New provisions in the state’s unemployment benefits, including striking workers
Few of Benson’s proposals became law, as the state senate effectively blocked his program. Central to Benson’s programs was a restructuring of the tax code, which passed the state House of Representatives intact. Some of the provisions were:
- Complete removal of the state tax levy on homes and homesteads up to the value of $4,000.
- Taxing the net income of individuals and corporations on a graduated basis so state income tax revenues would replace a large share of local school taxes.
- Increased taxes on accumulated wealth, including mining companies, to balance the state budget; increased taxes on chain stores.
Conservatives in the Senate ignored the House tax bill until a few days before the legislative session closed, resulting in a special session. The Twin City press ran article after article denouncing the Farmer-Labor Party, while citing such business leaders as Charles Fowler of Northern States Power, Mr. Montague representing the Steel Trust, Aleck Janes of Great Northern Railroad, and Aaron Youngquist of Minnesota Power and Light. The press acted as a puppet of the business leaders, who were claiming the Farmer-Labor Party was driving business out of the state. Because of the bad press over the Farmer-Labor Party, Benson’s tax proposals failed to pass the Senate, setting the stage for a bitter election campaign the following year.
In 1938, the Republican Party, with Harold Stassen heading the state ticket, ran two campaigns: a high-road campaign by Stassen, and a dirty campaign headed by the old guard in the Republican Party. Led by Ray P. Chase, this second campaign set new lows. Chase’s vehicle for running it was the Ray P. Chase Research Bureau. Financing his efforts were some of Minnesota’s business elite: George Gillette, president of Minneapolis Moline; J. C. Hormel, the meat packer; James Ford Bell, Northwestern Bank; Col. Robert McCormick, owner of the Chicago Tribune; and George Belden of the Citizens Alliance.
To achieve his goal, Chase used both legal and illegal methods. Files were stolen from the State Relief Department and Farmer-Labor members were scanned for communist activity. Dean Edward Nicholson supplied data about left-wing student organizations on the University of Minnesota campus. One of the students labeled as a dangerous radical was Eric Sevareid. Chase produced and distributed the Red-baiting pamphlet, Are They Communists or Catspaws. In it, Chase launched into a vicious anti-Jewish attack about an alleged conspiracy, equating Judaism with communism and Gov. Benson’s role in it.
Chase’s attack went beyond Minnesota. Using the services of Cyrus McCormick, Chase managed to get U.S. Rep. Martin Dies to hold hearings in late October on communist influence in the Farmer-Labor Party.
To understand how the Republican Party could run election campaigns based on intense and vicious racist platforms, one needs to understand the attitude in the country toward Jews at that time. A few days after Kristallnacht, Roosevelt expressed his anger and horror publicly. A Gallup poll that month revealed that 94 percent of the people disapproved of the Nazi treatment of Jews, but 97 percent of the people also disapproved of the way Nazis treated Catholics. A Roper poll that same month revealed the depth of anti-Semitic views in America. The poll found that only 39 percent of the people believed that Jews should be treated as everyone else; 53 percent believed that Jews were different and should be restricted; and 10 percent believed Jews should be deported. In the winter of 1938-39, many had denounced aid for “refu-Jews.” Polls revealed 71 percent-85 percent opposed an increase in immigration quotas; 67 percent opposed admitting any refugees, and 67 percent opposed a one-time admission of 10,000 refugee children.
Turning away the refugees aboard the St. Louis was a low point in the Roosevelt administration and arguably indefensible because of the Holocaust, but Roosevelt hardly acted in a vacuum. Public opinion was decisively against admitting Jews. One can only guess how much of the Judeophobia prevalent at that time was the direct result of the various campaigns conducted by the Republican Party, which often equated Judaism with communism, as in the example of the 1938 Minnesota election.
The pattern of collaboration between the Republican Party and the Nazis extends further. On Nov. 23, 1937, executives of General Motors and other corporate and political leaders met with Baron Manfred von Killinger and agreed on a total commitment to the Nazi cause. The secret agreement also called for replacing Roosevelt, preferably with Burton Wheeler of Montana. It was leaked to George Seldes who published it in his newsletter In Fact. The entire text of the agreement can be found in Facts and Fascism. Here is an excerpt:
The substance of the German suggestion amounts to changing the spirit of our nation as expressed by recent elections. That is possible but by no means easy. The people must become aware of the disastrous economic effects of the policies of the present administration first. In the wake of reorientation of the public opinion a vigorous drive must start in the press and radio. Technically it remains a question as to whether this drive may center on the Republican National Committee.
Farsighted businessmen will welcome conferences of this kind. A tremendous inspiration might come out of them. There is no reason why we should not learn of emergencies similar to those prevailing in our own country and the methods by which farsighted governments were trying to overcome them. It is also clear that manufacturers, who usually contributed to the campaigns of all candidates, must realize that their support must be reserved to one, in whose selection they must take an active hand.
Each section of the document was written by one of the participants. A member of the U.S. Senate wrote the first paragraph of the quote above; a representative of General Motors wrote the second. Once again, it is clear from the first paragraph that leaders of the Republican Party were collaborating with the Nazis. It further establishes the pattern of collaboration between the Nazis and Republicans over several years. Nor would this be the last involvement of Nazis in the Republican Party. In 1940, a group of Republican congressmen accepted money from Hitler for their election campaigns.
The second paragraph above is of paramount importance. The leaders of corporate America did follow the prescription above for subverting democracy.
After the failure of Landon in the presidential race, and in defiance of Roosevelt’s desire to improve working conditions for the average person, Knudsen and du Pont launched a speed-up system at General Motors. The system forced men to work at a horrifying pace, and many line workers died of the heat and pressure.
Irénée du Pont personally paid almost $1 million to hire armed storm troopers modeled after the Gestapo and equipped with gas to sweep through his plants and beat any rebellious workers. He also hired Pinkerton to look through his industrial empire to spy on left wingers, “malcontents” or labor leaders. Concurrently, he started to finance the notorious Black Legion in the Detroit area. He encouraged foremen at General Motors to join this group of terrorists.
The prime purpose of the Black Legion was to firebomb union meetings, murder union leaders and terrorize all workers to prevent unionization. The Black Legion was linked to the Klan and to the even more terrifying Wolverine Republican League. Members of this later group included several big business leaders. The Black Legion murdered at least 50 people, many of them black.
The backers of fascism in the United States were rich industrialists, as were Hitler’s backers in Germany. Corporate America willingly entered cartel agreements, which, in effect, granted them a monopoly. Big business was also attracted to fascism’s extreme anti-unionism. Professor Gaetano Salvemini of Harvard was quoted in the undergraduate daily that a new fascism threatened America - the fascism of corporate business enterprise in this country. He also believed that 100 percent of American big business was in sympathy with fascism. Support for fascism was widespread among industrialists in the U.S., as shown by the remarks of the Ambassador to Germany in the New York Times, cited on p. Error: Reference source not found.
Collaboration between the Republican Party and the Nazis was a continuing effort throughout the 1930s. However, it would not reach epidemic proportions until the 1940 election. With the European continent already embroiled in war, and President Roosevelt espousing pro-British views, the Nazis were desperate to keep the United States out of the war. In a bizarre plot full of intrigue involving Texas oilman William Rhodes Davis, labor leader John L. Lewis, and Mexico, Nazis provided extensive funding to the Republican Party for the 1940 election.
W.R. Davis of Texas Oil had been supplying the German navy with oil since 1936. He was the owner of Eurotanker, a huge German refinery. For the complete story of Davis, the reader should see Dale Harrington’s Mystery Man. Davis had arranged a deal to supply the Nazis with oil from Mexico. Mexico had nationalized its oil fields, including some owned by Davis. Led by Standard Oil of New Jersey, big oil boycotted the Mexican oil market. Therefore, the German deal was vital for the Mexican economy.
The outbreak of war in Europe jeopardized Davis’ road to riches. He used his friendship with John L. Lewis to arrange a meeting with Roosevelt early in 1940, in which he proposed a far-out peace plan. Roosevelt was cool to the proposal and told Davis that any peace plan would have to come through official channels. Davis then traveled to Germany to meet with Goering. Central to his plan was the removal of Hitler; the Nazis would remain in power under Goering. On Davis’ return, Roosevelt refused to meet with him.
Besides the peace plan, the talks between Goering and Davis centered on the upcoming presidential election. The Nazis were desperately seeking the defeat of Roosevelt, although they were less than enthusiastic about the Republican candidates. They agreed the best chance of defeating Roosevelt was to back the Republicans rather than run a third party. Davis knew that Lewis opposed another war and told the Nazis that Lewis had control over the election with his large block of union voters. Lewis was not pro-fascist. Instead, he feared that a new war would lead to a dictatorship and placing the CIO under emergency laws. Because of the Red Scare of 1919, one can hardly blame Lewis for his fears. Talks soon settled on how much money was needed to defeat Roosevelt; the final sum settled on was $5 million.
Joachim Herslet of the Reich Foreign Economic Ministry carried the plan to the United States. To obtain dollars, Goering persuaded the Italians to release money used to finance fascist propaganda and espionage. An Italian courier, Luigi Podesta, delivered the money to the German consulate in New York. Herslet told the charge d’affaires of the German Embassy in Washington of his mission, and that he had $5 million at his disposal. With some of the money from Herslet, Davis opened accounts in the Bank of Boston, Irving Trust, Bank of America, and the Bank of Germany in Mexico City.
On the eve of the Republican National Convention, money from this Nazi slush fund was used in a propaganda blitz for the isolationists. One Republican member of Congress received $3,000 for heading a contingent of 50 isolationists. The Nazi money was well spent, because the convention closed with a party platform plank firmly opposing U.S. involvement in the war. The Nazis were especially pleased to note the platform plank was taken almost verbatim from the full-page German propaganda ads placed in the New York Times on June 25. The Nazis paid Stephen Day thousands of dollars to form the committee publishing the ad. Maloney named Day, a Republican representative from Illinois, as a fascist collaborator. Reps. Samuel Pettingill, Harold Knudsen, John O’Conner and Hamilton Fish, and Sens. Edwin Johnson Bennett Clark, David Walsh, Burton Wheeler and Rush Holt signed the ad. Both Lewis and Democratic Sen. Burton Wheeler, a leading isolationist, spoke before the convention.
With this success behind them, the Nazis then decided to spring a similar effort on the Democratic convention. Davis distributed $100,000 to buy 40 delegates from Pennsylvania to vote against Roosevelt. The Nazi press agent, Kurt Sell, arranged for several other Democratic congressmen to attend the convention on German Embassy funds. Sell also funded several anti-war ads in the Chicago Tribune on July 15.
Although the Nazis were not enthused over Willkie’s nomination, they thought any president would be better than Roosevelt. With their slush fund of $5 million, the Nazis surreptitiously helped Willkie through secret donations to various pro-Willkie clubs. Thomsen, the charge d’affairs of the German embassy, destroyed all receipts, so it may never be known how much money the Nazis funneled into the Republican Party, or to whom. It is not clear if it all was spent. Supposedly, $3 million was found in the embassy when the FBI seized it in December 1941. Nevertheless, the embassy had other sources of funding than Herslet’s funds. In fact, Thomsen did not cooperate with Herslet and ran his own campaign.
Perhaps the best summary of this plot is a quote from a report to the German Foreign Ministry by German Ambassador Thomsen:
Roosevelt’s prospects of being elected a third time have declined... At this juncture John L. Lewis [chief of the CIO] enters the arena with approximately 8 to 10 million votes controlled by him. He is determined to make ruthless use of his influence, and will do so in favor of strict isolationism. Lewis is pursuing that policy not indeed because of any pro-German sentiments, but because he fears that America’s involvement in a war would mean the establishment of an American dictatorship and the placing of his organization under emergency laws. He is negotiating with Republicans at present and will support them in the campaign if Willkie publicly declares himself for keeping America out of all European conflicts. Lewis can throw his strength at will to Republicans or the Democrats, but this much is certain that he surely will not use it for Roosevelt. He may even, as he has already threatened to do, organize a third party of disgruntled Democrats, the Peace party, and in the person of closely allied Senator Wheeler put up a suitable candidate.
While $5 million seems a trivial amount today in a presidential campaign, in 1940, it was significant; the total expenditures by the Republican Party were slightly less than $15 million.
The amount of Nazi funds spent on the Republican 1940 campaign may never be known. From the funds recovered in the embassy raid, it is clear that at least $2 million was spent from the slush fund alone. A major proportion of the Republican 1940 campaign funds came directly from the Nazis. Since the major industrialists were active supporters of the Nazis and also large donors to the Republican Party, more than half of the 1940 Republican campaign funding came either directly from Nazis in Berlin or their sympathizers in the United States.
Davis donated at least $48,000 to Willkie, bypassing the $5,000 federal limit by donating to individual state parties. He also bankrolled the radio address of Lewis on Oct. 21, in which he announced his support for Willkie. In late October, Davis forwarded copies of his documents about his proposed peace plan to leaders of the Republican Party, including Willkie, former President Hoover, Sam Pryor and Verne Marshall. Willkie decided not to use the material, fearing it might backfire. In the end, labor chose to remain loyal to FDR and Roosevelt won the election with 27 million votes to Willkie’s 22 million votes.
Top Republican leaders, including former President Hoover, closely collaborated with high-level Nazi officials in Berlin to bring about Roosevelt’s defeat. Postwar interviews of Goering and Ribbentrop confirm Hoover connived with the Nazis in the 1940 election. Hoover was also a secret member of the fascist America First group, dedicated to Roosevelt’s defeat.
Captured Nazi documents confirm the close association of the Republican Party with the Nazis. In one captured document written in anticipation of defeat, the Nazis expressed hope for a Republican victory so they might achieve an “easy peace.” A short excerpt from the document in Appendix 10 follows:
Right now, the chances for a separate peace with the West are a little better, especially if we succeed, through our propaganda campaign and our confidential channels, to convince the enemy that Roosevelt’s policy of unconditional surrender drives the German people towards Communism.
There is great fear in the U.S.A. of Bolshevism. The opposition against Roosevelt’s alliance with Stalin grows constantly. Our chances for success are good, if we succeed to stir up influential circles against Roosevelt’s policy. This can be done through clever pieces of information, or by references to unsuspicious neutral ecclesiastical contact men.
We have at our command in the United States efficient contacts which have been carefully kept up even during the war. The campaign of hatred stirred up by Roosevelt and the Jews against everything German has temporarily silenced the pro-German bloc in the U.S.A. However, there is every hope that this situation will be completely changed within a few months. If the Republicans succeed in defeating Roosevelt in the coming presidential election, it would greatly influence the American conduct of war towards us.
With the Battle of the Bulge raging in Europe, the Republican candidate, Dewey, lashed out against Roosevelt, saying that his call for unconditional surrender was prolonging the war and costing American lives.
The Nazi involvement in the 1940 election was extensive, including congressional races. Evidence gathered by British intelligence on Americans at Roosevelt’s request also netted information about FDR’s political enemies, confirming that seven U.S. senators and 13 representatives received campaign contributions from the Nazis. Berlin directly financed much of the isolationist wing of Congress.
From at least 1932, the Nazis were deeply involved in the U.S. political process, although the extent of that involvement is still shrouded. Somewhere in the vaults of the United States and England lie incriminating files that will expose the collaboration of many more individuals and corporations with the Nazis.
Fascism and Unions
Wall Street and corporate America built Hitler’s war machine. Once war was threatened and the Roosevelt administration started to build up American defenses, corporate America went on strike. Many of the deals between corporate America and the Nazis border on treason. Most of these were cartel agreements, similar to the establishment of monopolies.
Before U.S. entry into the war, the biggest scandal was in aviation. The government awarded contracts for 4,000 planes in 1940, but by Aug. 9, corporate America had only built 33 planes. General Motors, controlled by the du Ponts, dominated the aviation industry. The press suppressed the real story of a “sit-down strike” by big business and distracted the public’s attention by blaming labor. In fact, it was a capitalist’s strike, and until big business got special tax breaks, it refused to produce planes. For six months, from May to October 1940, corporate America produced no airplanes at all. It was using the aviation industry as a front to thwart President Roosevelt’s plan.
Throughout this strike, the press failed to mention the refusal of General Motors to accept contracts already awarded for planes. The strike by corporate America had the support of the newspaper chains, as well as the War and Navy departments.
During WWI, the automobile industry came close to committing treason. Throughout 1917, the auto companies refused to cut production by 25 percent in the second half of the year, thereby denying the defense industry production space and a substantial amount of iron and coal that was needed for defense production. In 1941, General Motors announced it would produce no new models until 1943. General Motors quickly broke that pledge in 1942.
On March 26, 1942, Sen. Truman accused Standard Oil of treason for delivering the new tetraethyl lead gas additive to both Germany and Japan. Standard was the major supplier of oil to both the Nazis and Japanese. In his appearance before the Senate committee, Farish, the president of Standard, was asked if his company delivered the oil to Japan that made the attack on Pearl Harbor possible. He answered that Standard Oil was an international company. Standard buffed its image with an advertising campaign that promoted the virtues of its products, helped along by the major papers.
Like oil, steel is a highly strategic material, and the one most needed in arms productions. The record of big steel was one of sabotage, as shown in some of the following quotes pulled from Labor, a union magazine published by Seldes:
“Sabotage of war program charged to Steel magnates,” Labor, July 7, 1942. Subtitle: “More interested in keeping monopoly than with beating Axis, declares Senator O’ Mahoney.”
“Truman Accuses Steel Companies of Sabotage,” PM Magazine, June 6, 1942. Subtitle: “Senator Black charges that big corporations hamstring production.”
Labor, April 28, 1942: “It has become clear as the noonday sun that the vicious attack which has been made on the nation’s workers in recent weeks was actually a red herring designed to divert attention from the treasonable sabotage of the nation’s war program by Big Business, which is being exposed by congressional committees and defense agencies. Proof of that statement may reasonably be drawn from the sensational and unbelievably shocking disclosures of a cold-blooded betrayal of national welfare by men whose only flag is the dollar sign.”
“One of the most shameful chapters in our history.”
The Carnegie-Illinois Steel Corp., a subsidiary of U.S. Steel, and the Jones and Laughlin Steel Co. were charged by the War Production Board with having refused to fill government armament orders while diverting iron and steel to favorite civilian customers for nonessential purposes. The result is that shipbuilding and other war construction have been held up.
The President directed the Navy to take over three plants of the Brewster Aero Co., accused of sabotaging the aviation program.
The United States faces a shortage of critical war materials because the outstanding industrial concerns have contracts with German monopolists restricting production here.
One of the necessary war materials hamstrung by these cartel agreements was carboloy or cemented tungsten carbide. Carboloy’s abrasive properties were vital in the machining of hardened steel products. Without it, parts for tanks and other instruments of war were next to impossible to machine. General Electric held the patent, with a cartel agreement with Krupp that limited the production and restricted sales.
As soon as General Electric cemented its deal with Krupp, the price of tungsten carbide jumped from $48 a pound to $453 a pound. With the cartel agreement in place, General Electric used its position to buy out or cripple domestic competition in the abrasive market. General Electric paid royalties to Krupp on every pound of carboloy produced. Not only did this arrangement tell the Nazis how much carboloy America was using in its build-up for war, but the royalties, in effect, ended up in Hitler’s war chest.
In September 1940, following a complaint by the Firth-Sterling Steel Co., the agreement was broken up when the court issued two federal antitrust indictments against General Electric and Krupp. Firth-Sterling had run afoul of General Electric’s price levels as it sought to sell shell-turning blanks to the U.S. Army. The cartel’s hindrance of war production outraged the Senate Committee on Military Affairs.
On Jan. 26, 1947, the trial of General Electric resumed in New York City. Under indict-ment were GE Vice President Zay Jeffries; President W.G. Robbins of the Carboloy Co.; Walter M. Stearns, former GE trade manager; and Gustav Krupp. Krupp was not present; he was under arrest in Germany for war crimes. Ironically, during the trial, Jeffries accused union leaders of having “un-American objectives” and denounced high wages.
Throughout the trial, General Electric’s lawyers fought bitterly against the introduction of captured Nazi documents. In one such document, Walter Stearns was quoted as telling the Germans that while GE intended to fix prices, “this must never be expressed in the contract itself or in any correspondence which might come into the files of GE.” Other documents quoted Jeffries threatening the president of a competitor: “We’ll either buy you out or break you.”
The jury found General Electric, its subsidiaries and company officials guilty on five counts of criminal conspiracy. Ironically, no further charges, such as sedition or hindering the war effort, were leveled. Despite pleas from the Department of Justice for heavy sentences, Judge John C. Knox handed down only minor fines. The court fined Stearns and Jefferies $2,500 each; Robbins, $1,000. Judge Knox fined GE and Carboloy $20,000 each; Inter-national General Electric, only $10,000. Once again, the rich and powerful escaped justice with a mere slap on the wrist.
The fine for General Electric was particularly lax, considering the firm had made millions on carboloy. In 1935 and 1936 alone, General Electric’s subsidiary that made and sold carboloy realized a $694,000 profit. Newspapers failed to cover the trial and the convictions, but found plenty of space on their front pages for General Electric’s charges that members of the Union of Electricians working at atomic energy plants were potential security risks. The union’s UE News was the only paper to report on the trial and convictions.
Aluminum Corp. had an agreement with IG Farben that restricted production of aluminum and magnesium, which hindered building fighters and bombers. The record from that era makes it clear that corporate America was doing its damnedest to sabotage the war effort. Newsweek has reported that at least 300 corporations were doing business with the Nazis during the war.
A career spokesman for native fascist sentiment was Merwin Hart, a Harvard classmate of FDR. His National Economic Council opposed the New Deal. Hart admired Franco, and many big businessmen supported his American Union for Nationalistic Spain, one of many pro-fascist groups he formed. It garnered the support of reactionaries like James Rand of Remington-Rand; Lammot du Pont; A.W. Erickson, chairman of a New York advertising agency; Alfred Sloan, president of General Motors; and J.H. Alstyne, president of Otis Elevators.
Hart wholeheartedly followed the fascist line. He opposed the 44-hour week, fought against the unemployment and the child labor acts and, even more odiously, demanded that only those people not on relief be allowed to vote. According to Hart: “Democracy is the rallying cry under which the American system of government is being prepared for despotism. If you find any organization containing the word ‘democracy’ it is probably directly or indirectly affiliated with the Communist Party.”
Next to the du Ponts and their friends, Henry Ford was the most notorious pro-Hitler backer. In 1919, he first announced, “International financiers are behind all wars. They are what is called the International Jew: German-Jews, French Jews, English-Jews, American-Jews. … the Jew is the threat.”
Again, the same rhetoric is familiar today with many right-wing groups, particularly the Posse Comitatus. The quote above is almost unchanged from the Posse’s rhetoric in the 1980s. They uses code words, such as international bankers to mean Jews. Similarly, they and others still promote The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a malicious anti-Jewish pamphlet based on a known forgery, first published in this country by Ford in his Dearborn Independent.
Ford’s involvement went much further than publishing anti-Jewish propaganda. He was an early financier of Hitler. Getting hard evidence of funding for Hitler is a rarity, but with Ford, it is irrefutable. The most credible evidence comes from Hitler’s treason trial after the failed Beer Hall Putsch, from the testimony of Herr Auer, vice president of the Bavarian Diet (Parliament) on Feb. 7, 1923.
The Bavarian Diet has long had information that the Hitler movement was partly financed by an American anti-Semitic chief, who is Henry Ford. Mr. Ford’s interest in the Bavarian anti-Semitic movement began a year ago when one of Mr. Ford’s agents, seeking to sell tractors, came in contact with Diedrich Eichart the notorious Pan-German. Shortly after, Herr Eichart asked Mr. Ford’s agent for financial aid. The agent returned to America and immediately Mr. Ford’s money began coming to Munich.
Herr Hitler openly boasts of Mr. Ford’s support and praises Mr. Ford as a great individualist and a great anti-Semite. A photograph of Mr. Ford hangs in Herr Hitler’s quarters, which is the center of the monarchist movement.
Like Hart, Ford supported the Nazi agenda, harboring a rabid hatred of Jews and unions. One of the myths that Ford successfully created was that he paid his workers more than other firms. In fact, he paid less; the United Autoworkers printed tables showing that wages for every category of worker were lower than those paid by Chrysler and Briggs (General Motors). The maximum wage paid by Ford was below the minimum wage of the union.
Ford was not known to be generous or supportive of charities, either; he never contributed any large sum to anyone, with one exception: the Moral Re-Armament Movement led by Dr. Frank Buchman, a notorious fascist and a Lutheran minister.
Buchman preached a philosophy of pacification of labor through the use of force. Followers of Buchman read like a who’s who in the anti-union movement, such as Harry Chandler, the reactionary publisher of the Los Angeles Times, and Louis B. Mayer. With his program for pacifying labor, Buchman rabidly opposed communism and praised Hitler: “I thank heaven for a man like Adolf Hitler, who built a front line of defense against the anti-Christ of Communism.”
While many of his apologists claim Hitler deceived him, Buchman never renounced fascism or changed his fascist views of labor. The main reason the Moral Re-Armament group has persisted to the present, despite its controversial views, are the pro-business and anti-labor stance, and the support it received from such leaders as Ford. Buchman also was the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous.
To deal with labor, Ford employed Harry Bennett, who had one of the largest spy and thug services in America, which battered, killed and otherwise intimidated workers. Wherever Ford located a plant, there was a long record of murders and beatings of workers at the hands of Bennett’s thugs. Ford even went so far as to fire workers who took part in the 1932 hunger march. Bennett employed Father Coughlin, the rabid fascist radio priest, to undermine the efforts to unionize Ford. Coughlin bribed United Auto Workers leader Homer Martin to betray the workers by pushing for a company union rather than join the AFL or CIO.
The plight of the American worker during the ’30s is hardly imaginable today. Working conditions were so intolerable that numerous congressional committees held hearings on the issue. Employers routinely used spies, and hired stool pigeons, thugs, gangsters and murderers. They were well equipped with arms, including Thompson machine guns and “poisonous gas,” the term at that time for tear gas. The visceral hatred of labor and unions by employers is documented in the many volumes of the La Follette reports on corporate America. George Seldes lists the following seven facts from the reports:
1. American business employs a vast espionage system whose purpose is to fight labor.
2. 200 agencies employ 40,000-50,000 spies in industry.
3. $80 million a year is spent by big corporations in fighting labor, employing spies, buying gas and guns, hiring gangs.
4. Almost all the great corporations are in the spy racket, including Ford, General Motors, U.S. Steel, Bethlehem Steel, Consolidated Edison, Weir, Frick, Coke, etc.
5. 2,500 companies comprising what Sen. La Follette called the “Blue Book of American Industry” are part of the American Gestapo.
6. The National Association of Manufacturers, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Merchants and Manufacturers Association, National Metal Trades Association are the chief organizations engaged in native fascism.
7. The American press still gives its front pages and its approving editorials to smears, exaggerations and falsehoods of the Dies Committee. And similar committees that employ reporters to attack labor, especially those labor unions which are progressive and militant and put up a strong fight for the rights of labor, suppressed almost all the hearings and findings of the La Follette Committee, which constituted an exposure of fascism in American industry.
Here is the heart of fascist ideology of the 1930s and of the far-right, corporate rule today. It is the basis for the visceral level of hate for unions, fueled by the corporate elite and their propaganda organizations. There is no better example to show the power of the pro-fascists in the United States than to compare the plight of the American worker with his counterpart in the rest of the industrial nations. In every category, the American worker comes up short. For example, the American worker earns 44 percent less than his German counterpart and 15 percent (1994 figures) less than his Japanese counterpart. While the average American worker is lucky to receive a two-week vacation, his European counterpart typically enjoys five weeks vacation and a list of benefits the U.S. worker can only dream about. An exception is the UAW, one of the most successful unions in gaining workers’ benefits; nonunion workers and members of other unions in America earn far less.
Nor has the plight of the worker seeking to unionize changed much from the 1930s-1940s. Today, corporate America outsources security to private, non-union companies, which can be used as hired thugs and union busters. Although muggings and factory death squads are not as great a threat today, corporate America still has no qualms about murdering union organizers in other countries. A recent report revealed that Coca-Cola hired right-wing death squads to murder union organizers in Columbia. The United Steel workers union filed suit in Miami alleging that Coca-Cola and Panamerican Beverages, its principal bottler in Latin America, waged what union leaders describe as a campaign of terror, using paramilitaries to kill, torture and kidnap union leaders in Columbia.
The intensity of workplace spying is greater today than in the 1930s and 1940s. Workers and job applicants are routinely forced to take drug tests. Their financial and medical records are open books to employers. In a recent case, Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway was found to have ordered genetic testing of an employee as a follow up to his surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome. There is no gene for carpal tunnel syndrome. The employee was not informed of the testing and did not give permission for it. Such information could be used to deny promotions, or to trigger firing the employee because he had a predisposition to cancer or other inheritable disease.
Even more onerous are the private blacklists. The American Security Council was formed in the late 1950s to provide member companies with background checks on employees or applicants, particularly those believed to foster anti-free enterprise views. It is directly linked with the pro-fascists of the 1930s, and had a great influence on the Reagan administration. Another such group, the Church League, was founded in the 1930s. Indeed, almost every right-wing group keeps some sort of blacklist to deny employment to anyone holding unacceptable views on such topics as union activism or leftist politics.
The standard tactic of fascists like the du Ponts was to finance a legitimate group that would be widely accepted, like the American Security Council, then use it to further their aims by focusing media attention on it. Another good example was the American Legion in the previous chapter.
In some regards, labor has advanced. But overall, labor has lost the high ground of the 1950s that coincided with a peak in union membership. Today, it is commonplace to hear of raids on sweatshops, where workers are held virtually at gunpoint. Child labor is now a bigger problem than it was in 1900. The nation’s largest retailer, Wal-Mart, is notorious for demanding employees work off the clock. Wal-Mart has also been found guilty of keeping evening employees locked in at the end of their shift when no supervisor is around to unlock the front door.
The wide differences in pay and benefits between U.S. workers and their European counterparts reflect not only greater unionization abroad, but also political systems that are friendlier to unions and workers. Many anti-union laws were passed since WWII through the efforts of fascist groups. The wide disparity in wealth in the United States is one result. No other highly developed nation has such a wide gap between rich and poor.
In the secret 1937 agreement between U.S. corporations and Baron Manfred von Killinger calling for a total commitment toward the Nazi cause, the section written by a General Motors executive declared:
We must just as well recognize that business leaders of this country must get together in the present emergency. By now they must have realized that they cannot expect much from Washington. We will have to resort to concrete planning. We can agree that it is desirable to convince our business leaders that it is a good investment to embark on subsidizing our patriotic citizens’ organization and secure their fusion for the common purpose. Unified leadership with one conspicuous leader will be a sound policy. We will be grateful for any service our German friends may give us in this respect.
This agreement is essentially a call to subvert and destroy democracy in favor of a total commitment to the Nazis. Note the “patriotic organizations” referred to, groups like the Silver Shirts and Black Legion. As already noted, many of the pro-fascist groups received financial support from the backers of the plot against FDR. By 1942, the plan of corporate America was in full force.
The Press Sells Out to the Nazis
Besides funding pro-fascists groups like the Silver Shirts, corporate America sponsored several other groups that preserved a semblance of respectability. One such organization that figured prominently in spreading the propaganda was the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM). Its first president was Samuel Bush, father of Prescott and grandfather of George H.W. Bush. Organizations like NAM served as bridge groups between the rich corporate owners and the public.
NAM and the National Industrial Information Committee picked up the banner of du Pont’s free enterprise dogma. It was Fulton Lewis Jr. who became the mouthpiece for NAM, his former employer. Using his radio program on the Mutual Network, Lewis spread NAM propaganda to 3 million people daily. Lewis denied the truth put forth by the La Follette and Truman committees, and instead aired NAM’s propaganda under the guise of “Your Defense Reporter.” At its 1942 convention, NAM went on record in support of du Pont’s Free Enterprise. The convention adopted a plank of full support for free enterprise, even if it hindered the war effort. In contrast, the 1942 CIO convention went on the record for winning the war first, ahead of any union issues. In other words, labor was willing to make the sacrifices needed to win the war, while big business put profits first.
The Chamber of Commerce and the American Legion served to bridge the gap between workers and the American elite during the 1920s. NAM served a similar role from the 1930s into the 1950s. The top officials of the John Birch Society in the 1950s were all former NAM officials. The Birch Society also acted as a bridge group.
The media were overtly pro-fascist during the 1930s, especially the major newspaper chains. Hearst admired Mussolini and even paid him to write articles for his upstart United Press wire services. Mussolini received $1,750 for each article, an amount equivalent to about $17,000 today. The articles were poorly written by Margherita Sarfatti, Mussolini’s mistress.
Hearst attempted to hire Hitler to write for him, too. According to U.S. ambassador to Germany Dodd, Hearst met with Hanfstangel and Rosenberg, two of Hitler’s most trusted propagandists, in September 1934 at Baden Baden. After leaving Baden Baden, Hearst traveled to Berlin, where he met personally with Hitler. A deal was sealed between Hearst and Goebbels worth $400,000. After receiving the money, Hearst quickly ordered all of his writers for his International News Service to present all events in Germany in a friendly manner. Following the agreement, Hearst papers printed uncensored propaganda from the Nazis throughout the 1930s. The Hearst press consisted of 25 daily newspapers, 24 weekly newspapers, 12 radio stations, and two world news services. The other major newspaper chains owned by McCormick and Scripps-Howard also presented pro-fascist views.
Many members of the National Publishers Association were also members of NAM. William Warner, publisher of McCall’s and Redbook, was the head of NAM. P.S. Collins represented the Curtis Publishing Co., publisher of the Saturday Evening Post and the Ladies Home Journal. Collins also was a spokesman for W.D. Fuller, a NAM president. The Luce family publications of Time, Life and Fortune were closely associated with NAM.
Most people can reach informed and just decisions if provided with a balanced view. However, Seldes pointed out that during the 1930s, with only three or four exceptions, all the large newspaper columnists and radio commentators were right-wing reactionaries.
In their effort to propagandize the American people, omissions were more important than the pro-fascist views the media expressed. For example, the press failed to mention the Senate report investigating airpower. The report concluded: “It is apparent that American aviation companies did their part to assist Germany’s air armament. It seems apparent also that there was not an adequate check on the foreign shipments … .”
Part of the evidence included a letter from the president of Curtiss-Wright to his sales agents:
We have been nosing around in the bureau in Washington and find that they hold as most strictly confidential their dive-bombing tactics and procedure, and they frown upon our even mentioning dive-bombing in connection with the Hawks, or any other airplanes to foreign powers.
It is also unwise and unethical at this time, and probably for some time to come, for us to indicate that we know anything about the technique and tactics of dive-bombing.
It may be alright … to put on a dive-bombing show to show the strength of the airplanes - but to refer in contracts to dive-bombing or endeavor to teach dive-bombing is what I am cautioning against doing...
Curtiss-Wright demonstrated its dive-bombing planes in air shows in Europe, helping the Nazis to develop the Stuka. In the first six months of 1933, Pratt & Whitney’s sales jumped to almost $1.5 million, as the Nye report exposed the company as one of the largest smugglers of planes to Hitler. Other suppliers of aircraft parts to Hitler in the early years included Curtiss-Wright and Douglas.
Another scandal left unreported was the sale of defective wire by Anaconda. One notable newscaster of the time who failed to report the story was Lowell Thomas. Pew, owner of Sun Oil, sponsored Thomas’ broadcasts. Thomas had also worked for NAM.
The St. Louis Star-Times accused U.S. Cartridge Co. of producing defective cartridges and had submitted its findings to the Office of Censorship. The AP wire failed to pick up the story and, thus, it went unreported outside the St. Louis area.
The capitalists’ strike to delay and reduce war munitions production was blamed on labor. The press made no mention of the Tolan Committee. Testifying before the committee, the United Autoworkers president stated that of 1,577 machine tools, 337 were not in use, and he urged coordination. The autoworkers secretary reported 64 percent machine tool idleness, labeling it a crime against civilization and democracy. These idled tools could have been turning out war material. Any shortage of war material was not the result of a shortage in labor or equipment, but the result of corporate fraud.
The press certainly did not report on the profiteering by corporate America. James Hayes, general counsel for the ILWU Dispatcher, testified before the Congressional Merchant Marine subcommittee, giving proof of the obscene profiteering in shipping. Due to the sit-down strike by corporate America, the government was forced to lease private ships. The American Foreign Steamship Corp. made a profit of $895,974 on two voyages. The American Export Line made a profit of $1,572,144 on ships worth only $232,350. The American President Line made a profit of $814,242 on ships worth $307,828 in three trips.
The situation remains unchanged in the 21st century. Columnists and radio mouthpieces are almost all hard right in their views. The news fails to report on the health risks and costs of on-the-job injuries and disease. Whenever new laws are proposed, media coverage comes from the Chamber of Commerce or another pro-business organization. The costs discussed are those to the corporation; no mention is ever made of the costs to the worker.
Today, the media is even more consolidated than in the 1940s; six corporations control more than 80 percent of the airwaves and press. Republicans have repeated the lie that the media are biased to the left so often that many people buy into the mantra, even though the reverse is true. In fact, corporations censor the media. Two-thirds of editors questioned reported that their advertisers threatened to withdraw because of the content of news stories. In a 1992 survey, 75 percent report that large advertisers have tried to influence the content of news stories.
In 1965, a Procter & Gamble executive testified to the Federal Communications Commission that his company would only sponsor programs meeting strict standards: “There will be no material in any of our programs which could in any way further the concept of business as cold, ruthless and lacking all sentiment or spiritual motivation.”
At $7.6 billion, P&G’s yearly advertising budget is the world’s largest.
The anti-union coverage of some of the major strikes in the late 1990s should come as no surprise. Coverage of the UPS strike focused only on how the strike was hurting various businesses. The press made no comments on the cause of the strike, the use of excess part-time workers and the attempted money grab of the union’s pension fund, nor on the way corporations have raided pension funds and left retired workers holding an empty bag.
During the GM strike, coverage focused on how the strike was hurting car sales. The press didn’t mention how GM violated the terms of the union contract by sneaking the stamping dies out of the plant in the middle of the night over the Memorial Day holiday.
It was thanks to the pro-fascist press and trade organizations that du Pont succeeded in creating an illusion of free enterprise as a freedom to be upheld. Bennet and others in the Ford empire openly boasted to Rimar, a former member of the Ford Gestapo, that no newspaper would print his version of the truth during his trial. Indeed, none did and no publisher would take his book Heil Henry!-The Confession of a Ford Spy, which contained these statements.
For years I have been one of the key men in the Ford Gestapo. Within the Ford’s domain I soon found there was no liberty, no free speech, no human dignity … the vast power of Ford extended into the courts, schools, prisons, clubs, banks, even into the national capital, enveloping us all in a black cloud of suppression and fear.
Our Gestapo covered Dearborn with a thick web of corruption, intimidation and intrigue. The spy net was all embracing. My own agents reported back to me conversations in grocery stores, meat markets and restaurants, gambling joints, beer gardens, social groups, boys’ clubs, and even churches.
The quote points out the extent of Ford’s anti-union activities and the willingness of corporations to use any means available to spy on and intimidate their workers.
Corporations are now able to access more information than ever about their employees. In this country, corporations are allowed to read the private e-mail and search lockers of employees. Some corporations even maintain the right to search employees’ cars parked in a company lot. In effect, American workers must give up all their constitutional rights, including the right to privacy, free speech, and the right to assemble, the minute they walk through the corporate door seeking a job.
Media that are subservient to their advertisers and media divisions owned by defense contractors have helped promote public anti-union sentiment. When OSHA sought to set new workplace standards to prevent repetitive stress injuries, the media aired the views of the Chamber of Commerce, but no information from doctors. No union data was presented to reveal the extent of the problem, the debilitating effects of this menace to employees forced to work at ungodly speed.
In the 60 years following WWII, the Republican Party and far right-wing extremists have adopted the philosophy at the heart of fascism - corporate rule. It is the basis for the intense hatred of unions and working people. In the entire eight years of the Reagan administration, the minimum wage was not raised once, although inflation raged through the early ’80s. When he fired the striking PATCO workers, Reagan sent a signal to corporate America that he would not seek prosecution of union busters. The situation improved slightly under President Clinton. However, under George W. Bush, the plight of workers has become acute. He threatened injunctions against unions planning to strike.
An insight into the plight of labor in the ’30s comes from the Robert La Follette committee:
The committee found that purchasing and storing arsenals of firearms and tear and sickening gas weapons is a common practice of large employers of labor who refuse to bargain collectively with legitimate labor unions, and that there exists a large business of supplying gas weapons to industry... During the years 1933 through June 1937, $1,255,392.55 worth of tear and sickening gas was purchased by employers and law enforcement agencies, chiefly during or in anticipation of strikes … all of the largest individual purchasers are corporations and their totals far surpass those of large law-enforcement purchases. In fact the largest purchaser of gas equipment in the country, the Republic Steel Corp., bought four times as much as the largest law-enforcement purchaser.
This was during the Depression, when a new car sold for less than $1,000.
Failing physically to beat labor into submission, the fascists turned to legal tactics, such as the anti-union right-to-work law. Those laws are still highly regarded in right-wing circles today, but few know that the fascist group, Christian America, first sponsored it in the early 1940s. The forces behind the Christian American group were wealthy Texans tied to the Kirby family. Vance Muse formed Christian America after Kirby’s death. Both Kirby and Muse had a long history of opposing the New Deal and supporting racism. Muse was an associate of Gerald Smith.
Another member of the Christian America was Lewis Ulrey, who took over the distribution of Gerald Winrod’s propaganda, in which he openly advocated a 12-hour workday. Ulrey penned the following for Gerald Winrod’s Defender:
Into this bedlam and chaos in Germany Adolf Hitler injected himself as a new … messiah to lead ORDERLY GERMANS from political confusion to SYSTEMATIC UNITY.
Hitler put it up to the Germans to decide between the Jewish ownership and domination of the country or DOMINATION AND OWNERSHIP BY THE NINETY NINE PERCENT OF THE GERMAN POPULATION.
HUMAN NATURE BEING WHAT IT IS, IT IS NOT STRANGE THAT THE GERMANS DECIDED AGAINST THE JEWS AND IN FAVOR OF HITLER.
OUR PRESIDENT HAS SENT TWO INSULTING MESSAGES TO HITLER AND A NUMBER OF HIS PINK CABINETEERS HAVE MOST BLATANTLY AND VIOLENTLY BROADCAST SILLY INSULTS TO THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT.
The Christian America group was the leading lobbyist for right-to-work laws throughout the South and Midwest in the early 1940s. It was well funded and prone to use heavy-handed lobbying tactics on state legislatures. Perhaps the best summary of their tactics comes from a remark by Arkansas Rep. Chambers from Columbia, Ark. On the day of voting for the right-to-work law in that state, he pointed to Val Sherman, the associate director of Christian America, and said, “I’m not branding Mr. Sherman as a disciple of Hitler, but he’s a graduate of his school. Hitler would be glad to charter a submarine to Texas and solicit his services.”
Others associated with Christian America were Alfred Sloan, CEO of GM; the du Ponts; bankers George and Joseph Widener; and Wall Street lawyer Odgen Mills.
It is a common misconception that after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the pro-fascists folded their tent and went home quietly. Instead, they went underground. In fact, Archibald MacLeish, Librarian of Congress, accused the pro-fascist press, represented mainly by Hearst, Scripts-Howard, McCormick and Patterson, of treason in a speech before the American Society of Newspapers. Even though the speech was broadcast, newspapers failed to cover it, or when they did, they censored it heavily. Although MacLeish did not name anyone, he mentioned treason twice. The follow-up in The New York Times deleted those two paragraphs. In many other reports, the mention of treason was deleted and the articles were buried in the back pages.
The 1942 American Newspaper Publishers Association convention voted for a “second front now” and went on to denounce the fascist appeasement forces in America, naming the McCormick-Patterson chain, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Daily News, The Washington Times-Herald and the Hearst chain. It accused the American press of anti-unionism, suppressing and slanting the news to fit the publisher’s views. William Green, president of the AFL, confirmed the depth of this support for fascism:
Recently a bitter campaign of malicious propaganda to poison the public’s mind against organized labor has been carried on by the subsidized press which is composed of reactionary daily newspapers controlled, through ownership and advertising, by exploiting profiteers and union haters. Together with the bourbon politicians, idle rich and anti-labor columnists, they are the real parasites of our country... By peddling falsehoods about labor, the subsidized press is creating factionalism, disunity and class hatred. If Hitler were not so busy running away from a victorious Russian army he would take time to pin medals on the editors and columnist who are misleading the public. The reactionary editors of the newspapers are doing just what Hitler predicted he could accomplish here through his agents.
Congressman Elmer Holland of Pennsylvania characterized Joseph Patterson, owner of the New York Daily News, and Eleanor Patterson, owner of the Washington Times-Herald, as America’s No. 1 and No. 2 exponents of the Nazi propaganda line.
In 1942, The Chicago Tribune and part of the McCormick chain were on trial for betraying secrets to the Japanese by publishing the names and locations of the ships in the Battle of Midway, a clear case of treason. The Tribune got the information through one of its war correspondents, Stanley Johnson, who was sailing aboard the New Orleans en route to Hawaii and had seen a decrypt of JN25 (a Japanese naval code) on the captain’s desk. It revealed what the U.S. Navy knew of the Japanese fleet deployment and strategy. The headline in the Chicago Tribune published three days after the battle read “Navy Had Word of Jap Plan to Strike at Sea.” The Tribune avoided conviction by claiming that part of the article was false and much of it had been faked. Roosevelt and the Justice Department were hamstrung and could not prosecute the case fully. In a rigorous trial, the government would have had to reveal that it had indeed broken the Japanese naval code. Protecting that secret and the lives of American GIs was worth far more than bringing the traitors to justice.
Tribune owner McCormick was a leading isolationist and vicious Roosevelt hater. He had published the Rainbow 5 top secret battle plans just before Pearl Harbor, in an effort to embarrass Roosevelt and paint him as a war monger.
Congressmen & Seditionists
A common misunderstanding about Roosevelt and the 1930s is lack of awareness of the opposition Roosevelt faced. While he enjoyed tremendous popularity among the electorate, he had many powerful and influential enemies, both in and out of the government.
When it comes to enemies, the Roosevelt and Clinton administrations have several similarities. Clinton was plagued by the vicious smears inspired by Richard Mellon Scaife, while it was Irénée du Pont hatching the plots against FDR. Both leaders faced a hostile press and bitter opposition from Republicans. Neither enjoyed much bipartisan support.
The Republicans, many of them openly pro-fascist, opposed Roosevelt’s efforts to prepare for the coming war. Roosevelt had many bitter enemies in Congress. Throughout the 1930s, the German Nazis sought a cause that would ignite the native fascists in America and keep the United States out of the war. They mistakenly believed all Americans of German ancestry would rally behind the American Bund and the fascist cause.
The American Bund’s connection with the Third Reich was complex. Hitler’s top priority was to keep the United States neutral and to preserve at least amicable diplomatic relations. High officials in Berlin were embarrassed by the Bund’s rallies, with their bellicose speeches and storm troopers attacking anyone challenging the organization. Most Americans regarded the Bund as financed by and controlled by Berlin.
Hitler banned the Bund from receiving aid from Germany. Nevertheless, funding continued because the Bundesleiter, Fritz Kuhn, proved adept at pitting one Nazi organization against another. Hans Dieckhoff, the German ambassador to the United States and brother-in-law of von Ribbentrop, was one of the Nazis who viewed the Bund as a hindrance to German-American relations. Acting on instructions from Berlin, Dieckhoff ordered all German citizens to withdraw from the Bund in an effort to improve diplomatic relations. He was infuriated to learn that Kuhn got funds from SS Lt. Gen. Werner Lorenz’s organization, Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle. At its peak, the Bund probably consisted of no more than 6,500 activists and another 20,000 sympathizers. About 1.5 million Americans were German-born. While the Bund remained a force, it was largely ineffectual as a rallying point for German-Americans, who chose to be loyal to their adopted country.
The Nazis were also unable to exploit the great racial and ethnic differences in America enough to keep the U.S. out of the war, in spite of some successes in provoking Judeophobia and even race riots after the Bund and Klan united. The one cause the German Nazis did find to unify the opposition behind was “Get Roosevelt.”
Many but not all of Roosevelt’s opponents in Congress were pro-fascist. However, some members of Congress left little doubt of their support for fascism by their actions.
Two of Roosevelt’s greatest enemies in Congress were Republican Sen. Gerald Nye from North Dakota and Democratic Rep. Martin Dies from Texas. Both headed congressional committees vital to war preparation. Burton Wheeler of Montana was a close third. All abused their franking privileges, mailing propaganda against the war or even from pro-fascist groups to thousands of constituents.
Nye opposed all major defense measures in the Senate. He led the fight against Lend-Lease, and openly collaborated with many groups seeking appeasement, regardless of their political leanings. On the floor of the Senate, he charged that British - not German - submarines had sunken the Robin Moor; only later did he withdraw the baseless charge. He started a probe of Hollywood, but the investigation failed after he admitted that he had not seen the movies that he labeled “war propaganda.” He arranged for a Bund member to air his defeatist views before the Senate and later used his congressional frank to mail copies of the speech to thousands. He was one of the biggest boosters of the America First Committee, and praised the virulent Judeophobe Gerald Smith for publishing The Cross and the Flag.
Dies, the first chairman of the Committee on Un-American Activities, immediately set out to sabotage the investigations of subversion by pro-fascist groups. His first chief investigator, Edward Sullivan, was exchanging confidential messages with the German High Command in 1938, the year of his appointment. Sullivan was high in the ranks of the Ukrainian-American fascist groups. He greeted members of the Bund with a “Heil Hitler,” and denounced FDR’s administration as a Jewish Communist plot. He was a former labor spy for the Railroad Audit and Inspection Co. J.B. Sullivan was replaced by Matthews, another right-wing extremist, and on leaving the Dies committee, he immediately rejoined a fascist Ukrainian group.
Instead of examining pro-Nazis, the committee investigated and compiled an extensive blacklist of liberals and antifascists. Throughout the war, the committee carried on a vicious attack on the Roosevelt administration, charging that Reds packed various agencies, and denouncing America’s fighting allies.
An example of the opposition Roosevelt faced can be found in the fight over the draft. Nye led the battle and succeeded in greatly reducing what FDR had envisioned. Originally, Roosevelt had planned on two years of universal service for all Americas, in the armed forces or in government agencies. To be fair, support for the draft was bipartisan, as was opposition, which came mainly from the Midwest and northern plains. The bill, passed on Sept. 16, 1940, approved the draft for one year only. The following year, the bill to extend the draft passed the House by a one-vote margin, with 182 Democrats and 21 Republicans voting for, 65 Democrats and 133 Republicans voting against the draft.
One fascistic Congressman was Republican Rep. John Schafer from Wisconsin. His congressional record was one of complete opposition to any defense measure. In an interview with Carlson, an investigative reporter posing as a pro-fascist, Schafer spoke of a revolution against democracy: “The bloody kind. There will be purges and Roosevelt will be cleaned right off the earth along with the Jews. We’ll have a military dictatorship to save the country.” He belonged to the Steuben Society, a German-American ethnic association.
Republican Rufus Holman from Oregon openly praised Hitler on the floor of the Senate.
I doubt if the right is all on one side among the present belligerents. At least Hitler has broken the control of the international bankers and traders over the rewards for the labor of the common people of Germany.
In my opinion it would be advantageous if the control of the international bankers and traders over the wages and savings and the manner of living of the people of England could be broken by the English people, and if the control of the international bankers and traders over the wages and savings and the manner of living of the people of the United States could be broken by the people of the United States.
Holman also inserted several pro-Nazi propaganda pieces into the Congressional Record. As Oregon’s state treasurer, his praise for Hitler’s sterilization program resulted in amending the state’s sodomy law in 1935 to include all moral degenerates and sexual perverts, whether they committed a crime or not. Oregon at that time used castration rather than vasectomy.
Republican Sen. Thomas Schall from Minnesota entered material in the Congressional Record from James True, a notorious Jew baiter and inventor of the infamous Kike Killer, a nightstick.
Republican Rep. Louis McFadden of Pennsylvania also supported True. McFadden believed in the international Jewish conspiracy, and that Jews were not being persecuted in Germany under Hitler. He was virulent in his opposition to Roosevelt’s plan to allow 200,000 Jews to immigrate to the United States. He believed the plan’s supporters, like Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins, were part of the conspiracy by the “Jewish-controlled administration.” McFadden believed Perkins’ real name was that of a Russian Jewess, Matilda Wutski.
Another pro-fascist was Sen. Robert Reynolds, a Democrat from North Carolina, who also openly praised Hitler on the floor of the Senate. Reynolds was a resident of Asheville, the home of Pelly’s Silver Shirts. Reynolds spoke glowingly about fascism:
The dictators are doing what is best for their people. I say it is high time we found out how they are doing it, and why they are progressing so rapidly. Hitler has solved the unemployment problem. There is no unemployment in Italy. Hitler and Mussolini have a date with destiny. It is foolish to oppose them so why not play ball with them.
Reynolds was friends with Gerald Winrod and the American Nazi George Deatherage. Backed by Burton Wheeler, he rose to become chairman of the Senate Committee of Military Affairs. In April 1940, Reynolds provided Nazi agent Simon Koedel with detailed confidential information about French ports, an act of treason.
Reynolds believed that aliens were at the heart of all of America’s problems, and he organized a posse of youths aged 10-18 called the Border Patrol, to catch alien crooks. He kept his position in the Senate until 1944. By then, the Democratic Party had enough of the fascist infiltrator and chose another figure popular in North Carolina to run for his seat. Rather than face certain defeat, Reynolds retired.
Another fascist supporter in Congress was Democrat Sen. Rush Holt from West Virginia. Holt was the youngest person ever elected to the Senate. He won election in 1934 as a backer of the common man and the New Deal, but soon thereafter, he began criticizing the New Deal, and eventually became one of the harshest critics of FDR. By the end of his term, he was a supporter of fascism. In the 1940 primary, Holt faced two other challengers for his seat after losing support from the Democratic National Committee, and finished third.
The examples of Holt and Reynolds provide a stark contrast between the Democratic and Republican parties. The Democratic Party tried to purge fascists from its ranks in the primary, unlike the Republican Party, which made no such attempts, and even encouraged the Nazis with anti-Jewish campaigns.
Contrary to popular belief, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor did not fully unite the country. On Jan. 27, 1942, with the memory of Pearl fresh in everyone’s mind, Rep. Clare Hoffman, Republican from Michigan, delivered a vicious attack on Roosevelt. His address to the House was titled “Don’t Haul Down the Stars and Stripes,” better known as “Roosevelt is Judas.” Hoffman, long an outspoken critic of Roosevelt and a member of the Impeach Roosevelt Committee, ordered 145,000 copies of his speech, and used his congressional frank to mail 105,000 copies.
The best evidence showing that several members of Congress had ties to the Nazis came from a Department of Justice investigation that led to the bungled sedition trial of 1944. There is a fine line between free speech and sedition. Simple opposition to war is not sedition, but accepting funds from the enemy to conduct espionage or to spread propaganda clearly steps over the line of free speech.
Grand jury investigations conducted in 1940 produced abundant evidence that several members of Congress received funds from Nazi sources. The sedition trial stemmed from three separate grand jury investigations. The special assistant to the Attorney General William Maloney convened the first on which finished on July 21, 1942, indicting 28 individuals and listing 30 publications and 26 organizations.
Because of intense pressure from several sides, including from Sen. Burton Wheeler, the Justice Department removed Maloney from the investigation. Wheeler used his position as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee to exert extreme pressures on Attorney General Biddle for Maloney’s removal.
Maloney called several of the pro-Nazi members of Congress to testify before the grand jury. One of the suspected representatives was Ernest Lundeen, the populist senator from Minnesota. Hoover had an FBI agent tailing Lundeen. On Aug. 31, 1940, Lundeen and the FBI agent died in a plane crash. Lundeen’s secretary, Harriet Johnson, reported later that on the day of his death, the congressman had arrived unusually early and was clearly distraught. Lundeen told her that he had gone too far and there was no turning back. She sensed he was referring to his Nazi connections. He also told her that, despite a storm, he had to fly back to Minneapolis at once to see his wife.
Johnson then drove Lundeen to the airport, and reported that several times he cried. FBI agent J.J. Pasci followed the pair to the airport and boarded the same plane. Johnson said that after Lundeen boarded, she saw several passengers in a struggle with him. Shortly after takeoff, the pilot lost control of the plane in the storm and crashed just 36 miles west of the capital.
The day after his death, Johnson opened the representative’s locked files and discovered many documents that revealed that Lundeen was in the direct pay of the Nazis. The next day, Lundeen’s widow arrived and asked by name for the Viereck files. Harriet Johnson then reported it to the FBI, which forwarded it to Maloney.
Maloney only had a partial view of the Nazi connections. He determined that seven senators and 13 representatives had been bribed, or acted in collusion with Nazi Germany, aiding and encouraging them, and that four more members of Congress were guilty of collaboration. These congressmen had used their franking privileges to distribute isolationist speeches, many written or edited by Viereck. Those whom Maloney listed as collaborators with Viereck were Stephen Day (Republican, Illinois), Hamilton Fish (Republican, New York), Rush Holt (Democrat, West Virginia) and Ernest Lundeen (Farmer-Labor, Minnesota).
The remaining 20 were: John Alexander, R-Minnesota; Philip Bennett, R-Missouri; Usher Burdick, R-North Dakota; Worth Clark, D-Idaho ; Cliff Clevenger, R-Ohio; Henry Dworshak, R-Idaho; Clare Hoffman, R-Michigan; Edwin Johnson, D-Colorado ; Bartell Jonlman, R-Michigan; Harold Knutson, R-Minnesota; Robert La Follette, R-Wisconsin; Gerald Nye, R-North Dakota ; Robert Reynolds, D-North Carolina; Paul Shafer, R-Michigan ; Henrik Shipstead, R-Minnesota; William Stratton, R-Illinois; Martin Sweeney, D-Ohio; Jacob Thorkelson, R-Montana; George Tinkham, R-Massachusetts; and Burton Wheeler, D-Montana
The congressmen Maloney listed as dupes of the Nazis have several interesting characteristics. First, members of the Republican Party dominate the list. This should not be surprising because the Republican Party employed known Nazis in election campaigns. Two of the Democrats on the list, Holt and Reynolds, were removed by party leadership.
Most of these members of Congress came from the upper Midwest, especially Minnesota and Michigan where there were strong anti-union movements, and several ministries that preached the Nazi line of hatred of Jews.. The Teutonia Association, founded in Detroit on Oct. 12, 1924, was something of a forerunner of the American Bund.
Viereck was the highest-ranking Nazi agent arrested during the two world wars. He was a V-agent or “Vertrauensleute” (confidant) for the Abwehr. Following the war, another exposed V-agent was William Rhodes Davis, the Texas oilman. Very little is known about Viereck and the network of V-agents because the Nazis destroyed most of their files. Documents on most known V-agents suggest they were employed to spread propaganda.
What is certain is that Viereck received more than $500,000 from the charge d’affairs of the German embassy, Thomsen, to bribe, corrupt and undermine members of Congress, and spread propaganda. Viereck also received funds from Hansen Sturm, chairman of the Romanoff Caviar Co., and from General Aniline and Film. Thomsen had valuable friends in high places, including Assistant Secretary of State Breckinridge Long and Ambassador to France William Bullitt. Long had publicly approved Mussolini’s invasion of Ethiopia.
Lundeen was secretly pro-Nazi, and received money directly from Viereck, the German Board of Trade and the Steuben Society. Maloney determined that other members of Congress had accepted Nazi money in deals to publish books through the notorious Flanders Hall, a fascist publisher closely associated with Viereck: Burton Wheeler of Montana, Gerald Nye of North Dakota, Jennings Randolph and Rush Holt of West Virginia, and William Stratton of Illinois.
On June 13, 1940, Thomsen reported to Germany that it was necessary to take literary countermeasures against Roosevelt. In this plan, Thomsen contacted New York literary agent William Lengel and proposed a series of five books. One by Theodore Dreiser was to warn of the dangers of intervention, another by Sylvia Porter was to provide a woman’s perspective about what the war would mean. The other three were to be written by journalist George Creel, novelist Kathleen Norris and publicist Burton Rascoe. Pearl Harbor preempted the deal before any were written.
In September 1941, Maloney convened a grand jury to investigate the Congressional Nazi connections. The results of the grand jury were classified for years. Viereck was indicted, as was George Hill, a mailroom aide to Hamilton Fish. Maloney was deeply annoyed that he could not get indictments against any congressmen. Once again, the little, expendable people were prosecuted, while the powerful were protected. Many of the congressmen Maloney subpoenaed managed to avoid testifying until after Pearl Harbor. After the attack, public interest was directed to the war effort, and prosecution of the pro-fascists was neglected.
Maloney successfully prosecuted George Hill and was getting ready for Viereck’s trial when Judge Allen Goldsborough suddenly told Maloney he only had two weeks to prepare. Goldsborough was associated with the extreme elements of the right wing. Maloney was successful in having Goldsborough replaced after swearing out an affidavit giving details of their meeting and the demand by Viereck’s attorney, Daniel Colahan, that Goldsborough handle the case. He also successfully prosecuted Viereck, who received a prison term of two to six years. On March 20, presiding Judge Letts reduced Hill’s sentence. One year later, the Supreme Court reversed Viereck’s conviction, and both he and Hill were set free.
Although no charges were brought against the pro-Nazi members of Congress, their plot was exposed. Nonetheless, they continued to use their franking privileges to spread pro-Nazi propaganda. After Pearl Harbor it was not possible for them to do so directly, and they used organizations like the Republican Nationalist Revival Committee, the National Economic Council, or Western Voice, edited by fundamentalist minister Harvey Springer from Engle-wood, Colo. Springer, “the cowboy preacher,” praised fascist Gerald Smith as a real man of Christ and denounced the Federal Council of Churches as dominated by communists. He was also a vicious Judeophobe, but is still highly regarded as a theologian in Baptist circles.
One of the more striking aspects of the history of fascism in the United States was the removal of people like Maloney from office. Maloney was relentless in his pursuit of native fascists. After getting indictments on July 21, 1942 against 28 suspects, he was depicted as a stooge of the International Jewish bankers by Joe Kamp, a pro-Nazi propagandist. Sen. Burton Wheeler demanded that Attorney General Biddle remove Maloney. When Biddle objected to such pressure, Wheeler announced he would blow the whistle on the Department of Justice. It is unknown what leverage Wheeler had on the Department of Justice, but Biddle immediately dismissed Maloney and made it clear that he could not act even as a consultant to his successor. His successor, John Rogge, was a capable and able prosecutor who handled the sedition trial in 1944. He also was abruptly removed.
Without exception, those who sought to expose the fascists and bring them to trial were forced from office or otherwise discredited. Gen. Butler, who exposed the fascist plot against Roosevelt, was mocked in the press in a successful effort to discredit him. Meanwhile openly pro-fascist operators continued to rise in power.
Of the three separate grand jury indictments, the third listed the most organizations and publications for sedition, but certain organizations were dropped from the third list:
The America First Committee
National Committee to Keep America Out of Foreign Wars (a group associated with Fish)
Citizens Committee to Keep America Out of War
Make Europe Pay War Debts (a Viereck committee)
War Debts Defense Committee (a Viereck committee)
Coalition of Patriotic Societies
Crusading Mothers of America
Citizens No Foreign War Coalition
Constitutional Education League
We, the Mothers United
We, the Mothers, Mobilize for America
Those names of those indicted by the three different grand juries also differed.
The common thread among the organizations dropped from the list was association with certain members of Congress. Several of the members listed above, including Fish and Wheeler, and many prominent business leaders were closely associated with the America First Committee. The National Committee to Keep America Out of Foreign Wars was also close to Fish. The two groups associated with Viereck could have opened charges against many of the congressmen above. Wheeler as chairman on the Senate Judiciary Committee brought strong pressure on Attorney General Biddle. A trial would have exposed all those connected to additional charges of sedition. The big fascists had to be protected.
The end to the prosecution of seditionists and Nazi collaborators came with the death of Judge Eicher on Nov. 30, 1944 in the midst of the trial. The next morning, the new judge declared a mistrial. The trial had been delayed and disrupted by the defendants since its start in February.
Rogge, like Maloney, was relentless in his pursuit of Nazi supporters. In spring 1946, he received news from U.S. Army Capt. Sam Harris, a member of the prosecuting team at Nuremberg, of indisputable evidence linking the former Nazi government with leading citizens of the United States. On April 4, Attorney General Tom Clark allowed Rogge and four aides to fly to Germany. Over the course of 11 weeks, Rogge and his team questioned 66 people, including Goering and Ribbentrop, and dozens of other top Nazi officials, including friends of William Davis. Rogge’s findings were decisive and explosive:
Our investigation showed us that we had completely underestimated the scope and scale of Nazi activities in the United States. When I went to Germany I felt that the biggest threat to American democracy emanated from the machinations of persons like the defendants in the sedition trial (i.e. the little fascist crackpots). I found that a far more dangerous threat lay in the inner-connection between German and American industrialists, and that some of the best known names in America were involved in Nazi intrigue.
On returning to the United States, Rogge started preparing a comprehensive report for Attorney General Clark. In July, Rogge submitted the first draft. Clark was clearly distraught over the references linking business and political leaders with the defeated Nazi government. Clark specifically mentioned the links to Sen. Burton Wheeler, a close friend. A Clark aide then asked that he omit all names of American politicians and business leaders. Rogge refused, already realizing the report would never be published.
On Sept. 17, 1946, Rogge submitted the final draft with the explosive recommendation that the Department of Justice open an investigation of collaboration between American and Nazi industrialists before the war. Not surprisingly, Clark refused to publish it. However, to Rogge’s surprise, within days Drew Pearson’s column published portions of his report.
Shortly after, Rogge was granted a two-week leave of absence to make a lecture tour on the fascist menace. Clark was adamant that Rogge not mention his report. Speaking before an audience at Swarthmore College, Rogge revealed some of his discoveries. He stated that Goering and Rubbentrop told him that John L. Lewis, William Rhodes Davis, Sen. Burton Wheeler, former Vice President James Garner, former Postmaster General James Farley, and former President Herbert Hoover had all conspired with the Nazis to defeat Roosevelt in the 1940 election and to keep the United States out of the war.
On Oct. 25, Rogge left from New York on a flight bound for Seattle. Due to bad weather, the flight made an unscheduled stop in Spokane. There, an FBI agent named Mr. Savage handed Rogge a terse dismissal letter from Tom Clark. The day before, Sen. Wheeler had met with President Truman and demanded Rogge be fired. Wheeler was concerned Rogge’s charges would derail his hopes for an appointment to the federal bench. Wheeler never did get the appointment.
Maloney and Rogge suffered the identical fate because of their staunch opposition to fascism. The fascists in the government were too strong to allow an investigation into their treasonous acts. Only a few cries of protest were ever voiced in the press about Rogge’s dismissal. To further discredit the relentless Nazi hunter, the fascists besmirched his brilliant and honorable career by labeling him a communist. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover himself was giving speeches around the country denouncing various Americans as communists, with little or no evidence to back the charges.
There was little attempt to prosecute traitors or Nazi war criminals after the war. A brazen example was that of Martin Monti, one of Father Coughlin’s followers. Monti was drafted and sent to Italy. On Oct. 13, 1944, he stole a P38 aircraft and flew it across German lines, landing in Milan. He surrendered to the Germans and offered to help them. They transferred him to Berlin, where he broadcast pro-Nazi propaganda, often quoting Father Coughlin. After the war, he was court-martialed for desertion and theft of the plane. The normal sentence in such cases was death, but Monti received a 15-year suspended sentence. He reenlisted as a private and by 1946, had risen to the rank of sergeant.
The Allied armies won the war in Europe against fascism, but the United States was losing it at home. In their rabid hatred of communism, the native fascists now plotted the Cold War. Everyone was needed to fight the new menace, and justice for old scores could be sacrificed.
The Pro-Nazis of the 1930s
After the fall of France, a speech by Lindbergh aroused the fiery Secretary of Interior Harold Ickles to form his own investigation committee exposing Nazi propaganda. T.H. Tetens headed this group. The three-member task force soon presented Ickles with shocking evidence that Nazis in Germany were financing far-right groups in the U.S., including the Christian Mobilizers, Silver Shirts, Father Coughlin and others. Ickles presented the evidence to the attorney general and in the next year, these groups found themselves under investigation. FDR knew of Ickles’ plan and encouraged selective leaks to the media and to the FBI.
A good example is George Eggleston. In 1941, he began publishing Scribner’s Commentator, a mass-circulated magazine secretly subsidized by the German embassy. Eggleston had access to laundered funds from the estate of Charles Payson, a millionaire admirer of Lindbergh. He located his publishing headquarters at Lake Geneva, N.Y. There, he received instructions from Germany via short-wave radio for a second publication he undertook, The Herald. It was even more pro-Nazi and smacked of Goebbelsian propaganda. It impressed Thomsen, charge d’affaires of the German Embassy, who wanted to get it into the hands of American soldiers.
Following Pearl Harbor, the America First Committee officially disbanded. However, at a Dec. 17, 1941 meeting in the home of Sibley Webster, a wealthy Wall Street broker, a few key America First members, including Charles Lindbergh, reformed under a new name, Americans for Peace. The following quote from that meeting is from Horace Haase.
It is obviously necessary for the leaders of the America First like Wood and Webster to keep quiet. But the organization should not be destroyed. I have never been in the limelight and have nothing to lose. I can remain active in a quiet way. I should like to offer to keep the files. We must get ready for the next attack which must be made upon this communistic administration.
Four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the National Copperheads, a West Coast group closely associated with the America First Committee, met in Los Angeles. Appearing before the meeting, Ellis Jones stated that “the Japanese have a right to Hawaii. I would rather be in this war on the side of Germany than on the side of the British.”
Thus began the battle for the minds of the people. Similar calls, combined with cries to impeach Roosevelt, were repeated across America. Many followers, sensibilities firmly offended, deserted the pro-fascist groups in droves. However, the hard-core fascists and their leaders resorted to a whispering campaign to destroy the morale of the soldiers and the public. Among the often-heard comments: Our armed forces are weak. The war will bankrupt the nation. The Chinese and British will make a separate peace with Japan and Germany. Stalin is getting too strong, and Bolshevism will sweep over Europe.
Pro-fascist newspaper chains went into overdrive after the Pearl Harbor attack: “This great war seems to be in the hands of inexperienced civilians who have proven uniformly unsuccessful in managing the country’s affairs in time of peace, and are now displaying a more dangerous incompetence in time of war... Of course Russia is not a full partner of the United Nations. She is a semi-partner of the Axis.” (Hearst’s New York Journal-American, March 17, 1942)
But starting in February 1942, the pro-Nazis had their hopes dashed. There was no panic in America, just anger directed at the Axis nations and their conspirators, and fifth column agents inside the country. Beginning that month, the FBI arrested and sent to prison several unregistered agents for Germany, the most notable being Laura Ingalls. By April, the postal service banned Father Coughlin’s Social Justice and William Pelly’s The Galilean newsletters because of seditious content. Special grand juries met across America to investigate propaganda and seditious acts.
The opposition to the war climaxed on July 23, 1942 when the Department of Justice indicted 27 men and one woman for sedition, although the legal process was sabotaged at the highest levels. Some were found guilty and sentenced to jail terms, including Pelly (in another trial). Dilling and others were found innocent. A review of the list reveals that none of the real leaders or financial backers was brought to justice. Those indicted were low-level leaders, or mere noisy gadflies. The only trial that ever charged any of the real leaders was the one previously mentioned against the Chicago Tribune. After 60 years, only a few of the names of those indicted warrant more than a footnote in history.
One of those indicted, William Dudley Pelly and his group, the Silver Shirts, warrant a closer look. Pelly founded the Silver Shirts on Jan. 31, 1933 in Asheville, N.C., the day Hitler took power in Germany. He described it as a Christian militia. Throughout the ’30s and until Pelly’s indictment for sedition, the Silver Shirts were one of the largest and most violent pro-Nazi groups. Pelly was the son of a Methodist minister who believed that Jews were the children of Satan. He acquired his intense hate for Jews from White Russians during his missionary work with the American Expeditionary Force in Russia at the end of WWI. This hatred was later reinforced when Pelly was fired as a Hollywood screenwriter.
Due to their extreme racism and Judeophobia, the Silver Shirts became popular in areas of the country where the Klan was strong during the 1920s, especially in the Pacific Northwest, where they filled the void left after the Klan split apart in Oregon and Washington. The Silver Shirts were openly pro-Hitler, and formed alliances with the American Bund and the Klan.
If not for their lingering influence on fascist groups in America, they would be as forgettable as any of the more than 700 fascist groups from the 1930s. However, many of today’s far-right groups can trace their ancestry to the Silver Shirts. Posse Comitatus founder Henry Lamont Beach was a leader of the Silver Shirts in Oregon. Richard Butler, founder of the Aryan Nations in Hayden Lake, Idaho, was a Silver Shirter and Klansman. Butler still used the Nazi salute at Hayden Lake years after the end of the war.
Gerald L. K. Smith, one of the founders of today’s Christian Identity, was perhaps the most influential former Silver Shirt. Identity religion, the belief that the Aryans are the real descendants of the Hebrew tribes, is a common bond among many right-wing extremist groups today, such as the Posse, the Aryan Nations, and many militias and Klan groups.
Religious fundamentalism, intolerance and blinding hatred of minorities link today’s right-wing extremists to the fascists groups of the 1930s. Much of the hate today goes back to those ministries of hate . Today’s televangelists hark back to the 1930s. The medium may have changed from radio to television, but the style is the same Father Coughlin used. The number of listeners to his radio broadcasts and followers in his organizations reached into the millions. His sermons were filled with virulent hatred of Jews, communism and Roosevelt. Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell or any of the other televangelists follow the same format today. Only today, they carefully disguise their hatred for Jews and substitute hate for gays, welfare, abortion, unions or any other liberal program designed to help the poor or workingman. And, of course, Clinton and other liberals have replaced Roosevelt as objects of their scorn.
Coughlin was the most influential of all the preachers during the ’30s. He commanded the largest following, and was something of a central figure or uniter of the various groups. One such group of followers was the Christian Crusade, whose goal was to establish a so-called Christian government, modeled on the corporate-clerical state of Franco. Other groups associated with him were the Christian Front, many of the various mothers’ groups, and the America First Committee. Politically, Coughlin opposed aid to Britain, the draft and any bill that would be a deterrent to Germany and Hitler. His opposition often bordered on sedition, although he was never charged. His ministry of hate ended with the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Three other ministers of hate from this period deserve special mention - Gerald Smith, Gerald Winrod and Wesley Swift. Swift, who had direct connections to the Nazis, is credited with leading the Identity movement. He also was a member of the Klan. Billy Hargis, who later gained fame in the 1950s and early ’60s, was a Winrod associate.
Both Winrod and Smith were Coughlin disciples. Winrod came close to winning election as a senator from Kansas and, at that time, was often called the Jayhawk Nazi. Smith closely associated with Huey Long and, after his death, tried to take over the governor’s political machine. Smith also was a member of Pelly’s Silver Shirts.
Although Coughlin was the most widely recognized religious figure from the Nazi movement during the ’30s, Gerald K. Smith may have been the most influential in the long term. Smith was well known in the 1930s, and though he did not have as large a following as Coughlin, his influence is seen in many right-wing groups today.
Smith was an assistant in Coughlin’s Christian Front and an associate of Henry Ford. He was an ordained minister in the Disciples of Christ Church and a virulent Judeophobe who gained notoriety by staging a Passion Play in Louisiana. While Coughlin disappeared from the national scene by the end of the war, Smith went on to found the Christian Defense League (CDF), a survivalist offshoot of the Klan. The CDF pamphlet, The Cross and the Flag, was among the first to present the Identity religion.
One of Smith’s assistants in his Christian Anti-Communist Crusade was Wesley Swift, widely regarded as an icon of the Identity religion today. Swift was one of the first to assert a need for paramilitary groups, and he formed the racist California Rangers, a core group of the Minutemen. He also founded the Church of Jesus Christ-Christian in 1946. Later, after a disagreement with Butler, he moved his hate ministry to Hayden Lake, Idaho, where it formed the basis of varied racist groups, such as the Aryan Nations and the former order.
Swift associate Col. William Gale ran for governor of California in 1958 on a pro-segregation ticket, and was a former aide to Douglas MacArthur. He also founded a church based on the Identity religion, the Ministry of Christ. Gale was a founder of the Posse Comitatus. Both Swift and Gale recruited Richard Butler, the head of the Aryan Nations.
This clear line of succession from Smith to the present sets up an irrefutable link between the pro-Nazis of the 1930s and the far-right groups of today.
The association between fascism and religion extended beyond the fringe religious hacks of the 1940s and included mainstream religion. For example, the Southern Baptist leader and minister M. E. Dodd of Louisiana made headlines for attending the 1934 Baptist World Convention in Berlin. Dodd was an extreme racist who praised the Nazis. Dodd justified Hitler’s Gestapo tactics by linking Jews with communism. He considered the Jews in Germany to be outside agitators similar to racial agitators in the South. To be fair, some Baptists did denounce the Nazis, but the Alabama Baptists followed Dodd’s views.
Dodd also was the first Baptist minister to preach a sermon over the airwaves on Jan. 5, 1941. With people like Dodd holding leading positions of authority in the South, it should not be surprising that until the 1960s, the churches were a bulwark of segregation. Dodd’s views on Jews may linger on with Southern Baptists, who attended the 1997 Fourth Annual Super Conference of Christian Israel Churches in 1997. Pastor Everett Ramsey of the Faith Baptist Church of Houston, Mo. hosted this conference promoting the Identity religion. This close association with the Identity religion led to the recent announcement by the Baptists to try to convert Jews to Christianity. Jewish leaders have described the proscribed guidelines of this Southern Baptist conversion as insulting and condescending.
Many of the far-right groups today are trying to distance themselves from their racist roots or at least cloak them to attract followers, yet the the common bond of the Aryan Identity religion remains.
There are other sources for today’s racism, including the alliance between the Klan and the American Bund in the 1930s. Some have credited this alliance with the increase in violence in the Identity movement. Nevertheless, the Klan is a mere shadow of its former self. One should not dismiss the threat posed by Klansmen, but from a political point of view, they are marginal now. A Gallup Poll released on July 27, 1970 showed that only 3 percent of the public viewed the Klan favorably, while 75 percent regarded the Klan in an unfavorable light. In the 1980s, that favorable number probably rose slightly with the increase in right-wing extremist groups, but for most Americans, the Klan is still a pariah.
A greater source of concern is the Pioneer Fund, a group that had direct links to Hitler and the Nazis. In 1937, Wickliffe Draper, heir to the giant textile machinery manufacturer, Draper Corp., established the Fund. Draper was an extreme racist and a staunch anti-unionist as early as the days of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial of the 1920’s. Other objects of his hatred were the United Nations, John Kennedy, the Nye Committee and liberals. His hatred for the members of the Nye Committee for trying to charge the du Ponts with war profiteering led to his deliberate persecution of Alger Hiss between 1948-51.
Draper and associate Harry Laughlin created The Model Eugenics Laws in America, which Hitler used to write the Nuremberg Laws. In 1936, Laughlin received an honorary degree from the University of Heidelburg. Both Draper and Laughlin advocated the involuntary sterilization of institutionalized Americans. Twenty-four states adopted such laws that led directly to sterilizing more than 75,000 Americans.
However, the real danger of the Pioneer Fund is in the political clout and financial backing it has to spread racism. Among the original directors of the Pioneer Fund who supported the policies of eugenics was John Marshall Harlan II. Eisenhower appointed Harlan to the Supreme Court in 1957.
On Sept. 12, 1963, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission received notice from Morgan Guaranty Trust Co. that it received an anonymous gift of $100,000 to fight against civil rights. Additional money was forthcoming from the Pioneer Fund and used in a broadside attack on civil rights. The Pioneer Fund also was a source of funding for anti-bussing programs. It is also the source of much of the funding for book titles like The Bell Curve, a piece of racist drivel disguised as science. The Bell Curve is inherently false and used much of the work provided by the Pioneer Fund. One of the chief beneficiaries of the Pioneer Fund has been Roger Pearson, who is closely linked to the Liberty Lobby. In addition, the Pioneer Fund was one of the driving forces behind Proposition 187, the anti-alien measure on the 1994 California ballot. Presently, two noteworthy Republican politicians are linked with the Pioneer Fund: Jesse Helms and Steve Forbes.
After 30 years, it is difficult to find direct links in any political group. People die and ideology evolves, and, at best, one can only show an evolving linkage. Yet in this case, the linkage is direct, with Draper still expounding his racist Nazi views.
The Pioneer Fund was established on racial hate and remains an institution based on hate. An example from the 1930s comes from a member of the Mother’s Movement, Lucinda Benge. Benge charged that white sailors were given blood transfusions from blacks and “Orientals,” making them ill and likely to father black or yellow children.
One of the most influential right-wing political groups today was formed from the remnants of three fascist groups of the 1930s. The American Security Council (ACS) was constituted in 1955 by members of the pro-fascist America First Committee, the American Vigilante Intelligence Federation, and the American Coalition of Patriotic Societies. The American Vigilante organization was the product of the notorious pro-fascist Harry Jung, while the Coalition of Patriotic Societies was closely associated with eugenics and the Pioneer Fund. The American Vigilant Intelligence Foundation, founded in 1927, collected large sums of money from such corporate donors as Sears, A.B. Dick, International Harvester and First National Bank. The person most responsible for establishing the America First Committee and ACS was the reactionary head of Sears Roebuck, retired Gen. Robert Wood.
The America First Committee was the brainchild of a young Yale College student, Douglas Stuart Jr., the son of the first vice president of Quaker Oats. The nut never drops far from the tree, as Quaker Oats was a later member of ACS. One of the founding members of the Church League was a vice president of Quaker Oats. Stuart attended the 1940 Republican Party convention and consorted with the isolationists.
Charles Lindbergh had already shown interest in Stuart’s idea of uniting all opposition to the forthcoming war under one umbrella group. With Lindbergh’s advice, the young Stuart sought aid from Gen. Wood, a strong isolationist and apologist for Hitler. Soon after, the America First Committee incorporated, with Wood at the helm. William H. Regnery was one of the signers of the incorporation.
Big business leaders underwrote the America First group and John Foster Dulles wrote the charter. Eight business leaders supplied more than $100,000 each, including H. Smith Richardson and William H. Regnery. Both Regnery Publishing Co. and the Smith Richardson Foundation played prominent roles in the effort to derail the Clinton administration.
William R. Castle, a former under secretary of state under Hoover, also was instrumental in launching the America First Committee. Castle was a scion of a wealthy family from Hawaii. He believed that only the wealthy should serve in the diplomatic corps. Castle opposed sending any aid to China, despite Japanese aggression there. Former President Hoover remained a secret member of the committee.
The America First Committee was not founded to help the Nazis, but under Gen. Wood’s direction, the group soon let pro-Nazis join, including Dudley’s Silver Shirts and Klan members, and it became the mouthpiece of their propaganda. Even Laura Ingalls, the Nazi agent, was a member. Ralph Townsend, who held a leadership role in San Francisco, also was a paid agent of the Japanese government. Garland Alderman was in a leadership role in Michigan, and was a member of the Nazi-inspired National Workers League. He was later indicted on sedition charges. Dellmore Lessard was the Oregon chairman of the America First Committee, but was forced to resign after it was disclosed he had accepted funds from the Nazi-controlled Kyffhaeuserbund. The America First Committee was successful in bringing many of the pro-fascist groups under one umbrella group.
America First grew quickly, reaching a membership of around 800,000, thanks in part to wealthy founders and slick promotion. It benefited from the publicity operations of Quaker Oats, Sears and Hormel. Thanks to the ties with Hormel, the large advertising firm of Batton, Barton, Durstine and Osborn also contributed to the group’s promotion.
FDR had his own sources of intelligence about America First. One was Walter Winchell, who told Roosevelt learned that Thomas Dewey was negotiating to take over the group. Dewey’s presidential ambitions forced him to back off and distance himself somewhat.
Such background on the America First Committee makes it difficult to defend as a patriotic organization. However, in a venom-laced diatribe in response to former mayor of New York Ed Koch, perennial presidential candidate Pat Buchanan did just that. Buchanan himself has other embarrassing ties to fascism. In his response, Buchanan named four people who signed a recruiting poster for the America First Committee at Yale Law School: Bob Stuart, Eugene Loche, Potter Stewart and Gerald Ford. He also listed three other members: Sen. Peter Dominick, Sargent Shriver and Kingman Brewster.
Brewster later became president of Yale, a university that has employed former Nazi war criminals. At Yale, Brewster appointed Tracy Barnes as a special assistant for community relations. Barnes, an OSS operations officer during the war, resigned from a high-level CIA position to accept the offer. At the CIA, Barnes organized the overthrow of the Arbenz government of Guatemala and selected E. Howard Hunt as his political officer for the team.
William Regnery also was one of the founders of the American Security Council; his son, Henry, later replaced him. The American Security Council had a great influence on the Reagan administration, and on many of the more hotly debated issues of the 1950s-1980s. Regnery and two other isolationists began broadcasting “Human Events” and, in 1947, started Regnery Publishing. Interestingly enough, the first two titles published by Regnery were critical of the Nuremberg Trials. The third was another pro-Nazi book attacking the Allied air campaign. In 1954, Regnery published two books for the John Birch Society. He also was the publisher of William F. Buckley Jr.’s God and Man at Yale. According to Howard Hunt, the CIA subsidized Regnery Publishing because of its pro-Nazi stance.
Henry Regnery and Bunker Hunt funded Western Goals, an organization that is now dead. Western Goals reportedly compiled lists of people judged subversive. In 1986, Reagan appointed Alfred Regnery to help dismantle the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice. In the 1990s, the Regnery publishing house released many venomous smears attacking President Clinton.
Few Americans know about the concerted efforts of the Nazis to create domestic turmoil in the United States. Fewer still know about the fascist plot to overthrow Roosevelt, or understand how the indigenous fascist groups of the 1930s still exert influence on our daily lives and the political climate.
Hitler’s dream of uniting all German-Americans under the fascist American Bund was a resounding failure because most chose to remain loyal to their adopted country. Hitler’s grandiose plan of creating widespread racial strife met with only limited success. The Detroit, Michigan and Beaumont, Texas race riots were both inflamed by the Nazi-affiliated Klan and other fascist groups. Hitler must have been overjoyed to see Republicans conduct vicious anti-Jewish campaigns in several states.
In this brief look at the fascists in the 1930s, fewer than 20 of the more than 700 fascist groups operating in the ’30s have been covered in any depth. Many of these groups received money directly from Nazi Germany and from the same wealthy industrialists who were knowingly building the Third Reich’s war machine.
The fascist influence extends to this day in the form of anti-labor legislation, such as the right-to-work laws and the Taft-Hartley Act. Both have direct connections with fascism. Right-to-work laws were passed largely due to lobbying efforts of the fascist group Christian America. Republican House member Fred Hartley was an open advocate of Japan and Germany in the halls of Congress right up to the moment Pearl Harbor was bombed. Today, the United States is the only major Western government that outlaws a general strike, and is in violation of UN policy on unions and labor. General strikes are commonplace in France and the rest of Europe. This extreme anti-labor agenda is still readily obvious today in the Republican Party.
Hitler’s greatest success in creating domestic unrest came in the halls of Congress. Under the banner of isolationism or pacifism, many conservatives in both parties were openly pro-fascist, and were influential in delaying war production and aid to the Allies. Several pro-Nazi members of Congress received funds directly from Nazi Germany, others indirectly through Viereck and Flanders Hall in the form of royalties for books.
Clear evidence has been established of collusion between the high-ranking officials of the Republican Party and known Nazi agitators in every election year throughout the 1930s.
As John Rogge learned in Europe, the Nazi infiltration was much more extensive than he had believed as prosecuting attorney for the sedition trial. He learned that ex-President Herbert Hoover, a former vice-president of FDR, a United States senator and other high-ranking officials conspired with the Nazis to prevent Roosevelt’s election in 1940.
Earlier, Gen. Smedley Butler suffered the same fate after revealing the fascist plot against Roosevelt. The press labeled him a crackpot for saving the country from fascism. This pattern of dismissal of those who strongly opposed fascism was repeated time and again. By 1943, with the Nazis clearly defeated on the battlefields of Europe, it reached epidemic proportions. Meanwhile, the careers of those who aided the Nazis steadily advanced.
An exhaustive review of all the fascist groups of the 1930s is beyond the scope of any single book. Further review of these groups would only confirm the findings so far and expose more. In this brief chapter, the roots of today’s far right-wing groups have been traced back to the fascist groups of the 1930s. Most notably, the American Security Council that exerted a large influence on the Reagan administration was formed from remnants of three pro-Nazi groups. Other groups, such as the Aryan Nations and the Posse Comitatus, have their roots in the fascism of the 1930s.
Some of the connections made in this chapter may be more embarrassing than ideological, particularly the link between Gerald Ford and America First. Other figures like Regnery consistently confirmed their fascist ideology. The mention of a group does not imply that all its members are fascist ideologues, but that a significant element of the organization is either fascist or predisposed to fascist ideology.
One of the greatest deterrents to exposing further connections is that so much evidence is classified as secret in government vaults. The efforts of Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman to have all documents from that era open to public scrutiny should be applauded.
After passage of the 1998 Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act, three million pages of previously classified documents have been released. Those released in April 2001 included documents on Emil Augsburg, a member of the Wannsee Institute, the Nazi think tank that plotted the massacre of Jews. Augsburg became part of the Gehlen network of ex-Nazis employed by the CIA after the war, when he should have been tried as a war criminal. With each release of additional files, a clearer picture will emerge of the relationship between the CIA and the Nazis, of how vast the fascist network was, and how justice was subverted.
What these documents may reveal is best summed up by the Nazi War Criminals Interagency Working Group, a site maintained by the U.S. government:
Clearly the information contained in these still classified files will prove to be embarrassing to our government. In the name of containing Soviet aggression, many hard-core, high-ranking Nazis were welcomed into the camp of the Western Allies. Men like *General Adolf Heusinger,* who served as Deputy Chief of Operations and Planning for the entire German armed forces. A man so close to Hitler that he was literally standing next to him on July 20, 1944 when the room they were in blew up in what ultimately proved to be a failed assassination attempt. * Nevertheless, Heusinger was welcomed by the Western Allies after the surrender and rose to new heights in the postwar period when, on April 1, 1961, his appointment as Chairman of the Permanent Military Committee of “NATO” with an office in the Pentagon was announced by none other than President John F. Kennedy.
The second deterrent comes from the media itself, both the popular broadcasting networks and the publishers, and their lack of enthusiasm, respectively outright sabotaging of efforts to expose the connections. The Internet has put a dent in the propaganda monopoly of the corporate-owned popular media and press. This is a two-edged sword, with far-right groups quick to adapt to new technologies. Nevertheless, even now there are those who advocate censorship of the Net. We must help fight to keep the Internet free of both government and private censorship.
Hitler did not rise to power in a revolution. As Huey Long once remarked, “Of course we will have fascism in America, but we will call it democracy!”
(Click here for Chapter 4 Bibliographical notes)