Snakes in the Garden
That One Time Nazi’s Posted Up at Madison Square Garden
On February 20th, 1939, Nazi’s rallied at Madison Square Garden, in an attempt to restore a declining movement. The organization, started by a minority of German Americans and German immigrants, was known as the German American Bund. There were 20,000 in attendance that night. Everyone at the event paid a price of admission to attend the fascist fundraiser, all except for a young Jewish American plumber from Brooklyn, who in an unanticipated act of courage found himself rushing toward the stage. 100k protesters gathered outside the event. Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia ordered one of the largest display of police force ever to be implemented by NYPD in anticipation of a riot. Though the event was meant to gain public support, the Bund’s popularity declined rapidly, as the American people began to despise the Nazi’s, and Germany declared war.
The Bund didn’t just appear out of nowhere. There were earlier organizations like the ‘Free Society of Teutonia’, led by Fritz Gissibl, formed in 1924, but with only 500 members who gives a shit. They later merged with ‘Friends of New Germany’ aka the Hitler Club, but Rudolph Hess decided all the leaders needed to come home and all the members had to leave the group and start a new one, hence the American German Bund. There was also a far-right organization known as ‘Christian Front’ that had a faction aligned with the Bund’s antisemitic message, but no one’s at all surprised.
On the flip side, most people considered these groups to a be a bunch of losers, but with 20,000 members you got yourself a threat. Thankfully there were anti-Nazi organizations. One such organization, the Joint Boycott Committee, held a rally at Madison Square Garden 2 years prior to Bund’s rally, in support of an American boycott of German goods.
In preparation for the event, Mayor LaGuardia dispatched 1,700 police officers to patrol the area. He had 600 detectives go undercover within the rally. 35 firefighters, equipped with a big ass hose, were on stand-by in case of riots resulting in a fire, and a week prior, LaGuardia had received notice of a threat that timed explosives were set to go off when the event began. At 8pm, instead of timed explosives, something else happened.
From an article in the New York Times:
“One of the most mystifying disturbances came from a blaring speaker set up on the second floor of a rooming house — Shortly before 8 o’clock it began blaring out a denunciation of Nazis and urging “Be American, Stay at Home” — the room was found untenanted: the voice of these ‘denunciations’ came from a record, timed to go off at 7:55pm.”
20,000 members packed into the Madison Square Garden. The display was a mix of “Triumph of the Will” meets a high school graduation ceremony. There was a giant portrait of George Washington, center stage, with swastikas to his left and right. A Nazi American sandwich, if you will. It occurred 2 days after George Washington’s Birthday. (Does that mean it was a Nazi-themed George Washington birthday party? Who can say?) The “pro-American rally” called for white, Jew hating, clean cut, American patriots to join them on the wrong side of history…come, join the ‘Aryan’ death march, onward, into the gaping yawn of oblivion, spun out on amphetamines, marching behind a drugged-out narcissist who can’t control his farts.
Back outside the venue, police and protesters play a game of red rover. Three attempts were made to break through police linking arms. The 1st attempt was made by veterans of World War 1. They wrapped themselves in Stars and Stripes and bravely stormed the thin blue line. They failed. Next, a “burly man carrying an American Flag” tried his hand at it, but can’t get it in. The Trotskyists of the “Socialist Worker’s Party” wanted to hammer and sickle their way through but couldn’t pull it off. Of the 100,000 protesters, only 13 men were arrested for a handful of crimes. George Mason, 19, apparently ran through a glass window at a restaurant after seizing a policeman which I find hilarious. The real hero here is Isadore Greenbaum but we’re not there yet.
Inside the event, a fascist choreography of swastikas, with marching men in matching uniforms, sing Volkish folk songs. The Hitler youth drummed their little hearts out. Then Margarete Rittershaush opens the ceremony with a very German ‘Star-Spangled Banner’. James Wheeler-Hill, national secretary of the Bund, opens with a weird thing to say, “if George Washington were alive today, he would be friends with Adolf Hitler.” The Nazi myth making propaganda machine was at work. Wheeler-Hill called for his fellow Bund members to restore America to its ‘True Americans’. By that he meant ‘white people’. He criticizes the U.S. Secretary of the Interior, Harold L. Ickes, for calling Lindbergh and the America First Committee, “Hitler’s Unconscious tools.” Then he passes the mic to George Froboese. Froeboes just starts ranting about “Jewish world domination”, Karl Marx, and communism. Hermann Schwinn adds to the antisemitism theme, hollering about Jews controlling Hollywood and the news industries. For the finale, Bund’s key speaker, Fritz Julius Kuhn, tries to one up everyone by calling President Roosevelt, ‘Rosenfield’, and Mayor LaGuardia, ‘Jew Lumpen’, implying they were put in power through the invisible hand that guides a Jewish conspiracy to control America, and the world. Where have I heard this before? Oh yea.
Isadore Greenbaum, a young man from Brooklyn, had been quietly observing the event for hours. He didn’t have a ticket, so he snuck in. Full of anger and rage at the blatant antisemitism being cheered on by a crowd of 20,000 idiots, he found himself walking toward the stage, pulling the microphone cables out, and silencing Kuhn. Greenbaum then rushed the stage screaming, “Down with Hitler!” The Bund’s droogs immediately came at him with fists and boots. The police quickly seized Greenbaum, possibly saving his life, and placed him under arrest in what would result in a 25 dollar fine. In 1989, Greenbaum was interviewed about the incident, which he addressed:
“I went down to the Garden without any intention of interrupting, but being that they talked so much against my religion and there was so much persecution I lost my head, and I felt it was my duty to talk…Gee, what would you have done if you were in my place listening to that s.o.b. hollering against the government and publicly kissing Hitler’s behind — while thousands cheered? Well, I did it.”
Kuhn continued his speech and closed the event with these words:
“The Bund is open to you, provided you are sincere, of good character, of White Gentile Stock, and an American Citizen imbued with patriotic zeal. Therefore: Join!”
20,000 Hitler fans gave Kuhn a thunderous applause, screaming “Free America!”, surely convinced this was going to go viral and Nazism would finally catch on in the States. They were wrong. The following two months saw a rapid decline in membership. Then, Warner Brothers released “Confessions of a Nazi Spy” a film that made fun of Nazi’s and the American’s who supported them. To make matters worse for the organization, their financial records were seized in a raid at their Manhattan headquarters. It was discovered that Kuhn had spent 14,000 dollars (250,000$ today) of the organization’s money on luxuries for his lady friend and himself. Kuhn was convicted of embezzlement and sentenced to Sing Sing Prison in December of 1939. The Bund passed the torch over to Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze, but it turns out he was a German spy, so he fled the U.S. in November of 1941, only to be found a year later hiding out in Mexico. He was sentenced to 15 years. With numbers dwindling in one last act of desperation, they hired George Froboese to take a shot at leading the organization. Unfortunately for them, Germany had just declared war on the U.S., and after receiving a federal grand jury subpoena, Froboese decided to do the right thing and suicide by train’d himself, courtesy of New York Central Railroad. Thus, the American German Bund was at an end, and America’s involvement in World War 2 had begun.
Conclusion: I believe it was best summed up by the American punk band, Dead Kennedy’s, when they said, “Nazi Punks Fuck Off!”
