Thoburn: Lest you think that it can’t happen here
About the writer: Leland Thoburn is a retired business consultant. He has been a writer all his life, but didn’t start writing professionally until 2007. He has had more than 100 articles and short stories published.
Eighty-five years is not a long time. But it is time enough to live, to die, and to bring children and grandchildren into the world. And it is time enough to forget that which must not be forgotten.
Eighty-five years ago, the world was teetering on the edge of World War II. The automobile and airplane were still relatively new. Television was just in the process of being invented.
Motion picture cameras could record history as it happened, though. And they did that day, 85 years ago, when 20,000 Americans rallied in Madison Square Garden to celebrate the Third Reich.
The rally was advertised as a “Pro-American rally.” The stage sprouted a collection of Nazi and American flags, along with swastikas. The crowd enthusiastically snapped Nazi salutes to a portrait of George Washington, who was described as “America’s first fascist.”
Banners draped from the walls proclaimed, “Stop Jewish Domination of Christian Americans,” and “Wake up America, Smash Jewish Communism.”
Appeals were made to American patriotism, and to “the free American.” The crowd sang the Star-Spangled Banner.
Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze, national public relations director for the American Nazis, took the stage to assert that white supremacy was a fundamental American principle. “The spirit which opened the West and built our country is the spirit of the militant white man,” he shouted.
Kunze then proceeded to use the history of racist laws in America as proof that racism was a founding principle. “It has then always been very much American to protect the Aryan character of this nation,” he asserted.
Patrolling the aisles were members of the Ordnungsdienst, or OD, the American Nazis’ vigilante thugs. They dressed in the style of their heroes, Hitler’s SS.
“We, with American ideals, demand that our government shall be returned to the American people who founded it,” thundered Fritz Kuhn, then-leader of the American Nazis.
“If you ask what we are actively fighting for under our charter: First, a socially just, white, Gentile-ruled United States. Second, Gentile-controlled labor unions, free from Jewish Moscow-directed domination. Wake up you, Aryan, Nordic and Christians … (and) demand that our government be returned to the people who founded it!”
The crowd roared its enthusiasm.
For one man, this was too much.
Isadore Greenbaum, a 26-year-old Jewish plumber from Brooklyn, climbed the stage in front of 20,000 Nazis, knocked Kuhn’s microphone to the floor and shouted “Down with Hitler” before being tackled by the OD. To the delight of the audience, he was stripped, beaten and then thrown off stage.
Greenbaum’s bravery cost him a broken nose, a black eye and a $25 fine for disorderly conduct. He would later serve in the Navy during World War II.
Kuhn, meanwhile, would soon be sentenced to two and a half years in prison for financial crimes.
Outside the Garden, protestors had gathered. Seventeen-hundred New York City police were deployed to prevent a riot.
Although it would be six months before Germany would invade Poland, the Nazis had already begun to build concentration camps whose purpose was clear.
The protesters held signs saying, “Don’t wait for the concentration camps — Act now!” and “Give me a gas mask, I can’t stand the smell of Nazis.”
The horrors of World War II soon shouldered aside any memory of American Nazism.
In 2017, however, director Marshall Curry discovered forgotten footage of the rally and released a short documentary, “A Night at the Garden,” which was nominated for an Academy Award. The film can be seen at https://Anightatthegarden.com.
It has happened here. It must not happen again.
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