Foreign Influence

The Battle for American Hearts and Minds in the 1930s

Foreign Influence

The Battle for American Hearts and Minds in the 1930s

Photo by Unseen Histories on Unsplash

The Players

The American political landscape was a battleground of persuasion years before the start of World War II. Both Italy and Germany tried to sway U.S. public opinion with propaganda. Mussolini’s propaganda was directed at U.S. Italian immigrants, who liked the idea of a strong leader back home. Germany wanted U.S. citizens to support isolationism and keep the U.S. out of the impending war.

Germany worked through the German American Bund, an organization ostensibly created to promote German culture.

But there was another group very interested in American’s growing antisemitic sentiment: Jewish gangsters. They recognized the language from their families’ experiences back in Europe.

The corrupt New York political machine known as Tammany Hall was run by these criminal groups and was part of the system of combat for the gangsters.

Persuasion Tactics

Laws

Attorneys affiliated with the German American Bund advocated for laws to deny American Jews business ownership and property rights. The United States, New York and New Jersey passed laws that forced the Bund to declare itself as an agent of a foreign government.

Cultural Events

The Bund printed pamphlets and newsletters and sponsored cultural events like children’s summer camps, German singing festivals and “German days” to recruit German-Americans to the Nazi cause. 250,000 people were on the German-American Bund mailing list at one time. And they flew the Nazi flag at every event.

Fists

Prominent Jewish gangsters, having escaped pogroms in Europe, knew what was happening. So Meyer Lansky would send his enforcers to beat up Nazi rally attendees. The early American Nazi movement was a specific target of the Jewish mob.

Sunlight

When it became public that the money supporting Nazi events in the U.S. was from Germany, and not from Americans, it severely hurt the effectiveness of the Bund’s propaganda. A law was passed a law to stop foreign funding of these German American Bund events. Then the Bund got American-born citizens of German ancestry to organize the work.

After that, Lansky pushed for the Alien Registration Bill with his Tammany Hall political influence that required the German American Bund to register as foreign agents. The Neutrality Acts, supported by FDR, embargoed weapons and shipping to Nazi Germany which hurt them financially.

An Anti-Nazi law in New Jersey made it illegal to appear in public in a military uniform similar to one of a foreign government. The effect of that law was that “the Nazis couldn’t have their dress-up military and spy training communities for children masquerading as camps.” (see podcast The World Beneath, ep. 13)

Misuse of American Patriotism

All this pushback was raising anti-Nazi sentiment. So the German American Bund tried another tactic.

They connected Hitler and George Washington in people’s minds by saying Hitler did so much for Germany that he was just like George Washington. Now being a Nazi was patriotic and Nazi rallies were held in the U.S. on George Washington’s birthday. Over 20,000 Americans did the Nazi salute to George Washington in Madison Square Garden during one of these events. Speakers started calling Roosevelt “Roosefelt” and accused him of being in the pocket of rich Jews.

Roosevelt’s Fireside Chat of February, 1942

In a rhetorical counter-strike after the U.S. entered World War II, President Roosevelt reminded the nation of George Washington’s moral stamina, and how American that is during his 1942 fireside chat.