What happened at Madison Square Garden in 1939?
On February 20, 1939, American Nazis gathered at Madison Square Garden for a mass rally for “true Americanism.” Top Image: German American Bund rally New York, Madison Square Garden, February 1939. Image courtesy of the Department of Defense. The birth of American fascism is nearly impossible to identify within the context of history.
What happened to the Bund rally at Madison Square Garden?
The enduring Nazi and white supremist ideologies and rhetoric in the United States remains a lasting and dangerous legacy of the 1939 German-American Bund Rally at Madison Square Garden and the larger American Nazi Movement of the 1930s. This article was co-authored by Adam Foreman of The National WWII Museum and Dalya Meyer of Tulane University.
What was the German-American Bund?
Before World War II, the German-American Bund was one of the most successful pro-Nazi organizations in the United States. On February 20, 1939, American Nazis gathered at Madison Square Garden for a mass rally for “true Americanism.” Top Image: German American Bund rally New York, Madison Square Garden, February 1939.
Where did the German-American Bund rally take place?
The culmination of the German American Bund’s work would be a February 20, 1939 rally at Madison Square Garden in Midtown Manhattan where 22,000 members gathered amidst a flurry of American and Nazi imagery. Fritz Kuhn, Bundesfuher of the German-American Bund.
What was the Bund in the 1930s?
The largely decentralized Bund was active in a number of regions, but attracted support only from a minority of German Americans. The Bund was the most influential of a number of 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).