1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden
On February 20, 1939, a Nazi rally took place at Madison Square Garden, organized by the German American Bund. More than 20,000 people attended, and Fritz Julius Kuhn was a featured speaker. The Bund billed the event, which took place two days before George Washington's Birthday, as a pro-"Americanism" rally; the stage at the event featured a huge Washington portrait with swastikas on each side.[1]
Date
February 20, 1939
Madison Square Garden
Nazi rally
German American Bund
More than 20,000
13
Background[edit]
The German American Bund was a pro-Hitler organization in the United States before World War II. The group promoted Nazi propaganda in the United States, combining Nazi imagery with American patriotic imagery.[2]
The largely decentralized Bund was active in several regions; still, it attracted support only from a minority of German Americans.[2][3] The Bund was the most influential of several pro-Nazi German groups in the United States in the 1930s; others included the Teutonia Society and Friends of New Germany (also known as the Hitler Club). Alongside allied groups, such as the Christian Front, these organizations were virulently antisemitic.[3]
The pro-Nazi organizations in the U.S. were actively countered by anti-Nazi organizations led by American Jews and others who opposed Hitlerism and supported a boycott of German goods. The Joint Boycott Committee held a rally at Madison Square Garden in 1937.[3]
Aftermath[edit]
Shortly after the rally, the Bund rapidly declined. Two months after the rally, the film Confessions of a Nazi Spy was released by Warner Brothers, ridiculing the Nazis and their American sympathizers. The Bund also came under investigation. After its financial records were seized in a raid on the group's Yorkville, Manhattan headquarters, authorities discovered that $14,000 (about $273,000 in 2021) which were raised by the Bund during the rally were unaccounted for, Kuhn had spent them on his mistress and various personal expenses. Kuhn was convicted of embezzlement and sent to Sing Sing prison in December 1939.[2] Kuhn's successor as the Bund's leader was Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze, a spy for German military intelligence who fled from the United States in November 1941. However, Mexican authorities forced Kunze to return to the United States, where he was sentenced to serve 15 years in prison for espionage.[12] The Bund's final national leader was George Froboese, who was in charge of the organization when Germany declared war on the United States. Froboese committed suicide in 1942 after he received a federal grand jury subpoena.[2]
In popular culture[edit]
The rally was featured in The Nazis Strike, the second film of Frank Capra's wartime documentary series Why We Fight.[13]
Actual footage of the rally was incorporated into a fictional newsreel created for the 2004 Star Trek: Enterprise episode "Storm Front," illustrating an alternate history in which the Nazis invaded and occupied the United States with the help of aliens from the future.[14]
Marshall Curry's Oscar-nominated 2017 short documentary film A Night at the Garden is about the rally.[15][16]
A similar rally is depicted in the 2020 HBO miniseries The Plot Against America, which is based on the novel with the same title by Philip Roth.
Another similar rally is depicted in the 2022 film Amsterdam.
The Ken Burns documentary The U.S. and the Holocaust covers the event.