20,000 Americans Hold a Pro-Nazi Rally in Madison Square Garden in 1939: Chilling Video Re-Captures a Lost Chapter in US History

Our country’s bipar­ti­san sys­tem ensures that every elec­tion will give rise to a win­ning side and a los­ing side—and depress­ing­ly, a siz­able group who refrained from cast­ing a vote either way.

There are times when the divide between the fac­tions does not seem insur­mount­able, when lead­ers in the high­est posi­tions of author­i­ty seem sin­cere­ly com­mit­ted to reach­ing across the divide….

And then there are oth­er times.

Ear­li­er in the year, the Women’s March on Wash­ing­ton and its hun­dreds of sis­ter march­es gave many of us rea­son to hope. The num­bers alone were inspir­ing.

But his­to­ry shows how great num­bers can go the oth­er way too.

With many Amer­i­can high school his­to­ry cur­ricu­lums whizzing through World War II in a week, if that, it’s dou­bly impor­tant to slow down long enough to watch the 7 minute doc­u­men­tary above.

What you’re look­ing at is the 1939 “Pro-Amer­i­can Ral­ly” (aka Pro-Nazi Ral­ly) spon­sored by the Ger­man Amer­i­can Bund at Madi­son Square Gar­den on George Washington’s 207th Birth­day. Ban­ners embla­zoned with such slo­gans as “Stop Jew­ish Dom­i­na­tion of Chris­t­ian Amer­i­cans,” “Wake Up Amer­i­ca. Smash Jew­ish Com­mu­nism,” and “1,000,000 Bund Mem­bers by 1940” dec­o­rat­ed the great hall.

New York City May­or Fiorel­lo LaGuardia—an Epis­co­palian with a Jew­ish mother—considered can­cel­ing the event, but ulti­mate­ly he, along with the Amer­i­can Jew­ish Com­mit­tee and the Amer­i­can Civ­il Lib­er­ties Com­mit­tee decreed that the Bund was exer­cis­ing its right to free speech and free assem­bly.

A crowd of 20,000 filled the famous sports venue in mid-town Man­hat­tan to capac­i­ty. 1,500 police offi­cers were present to ren­der the Gar­den “a fortress impreg­nable to anti-Nazis.” An esti­mat­ed 100,000 counter-demon­stra­tors were gath­er­ing out­side.

Police Com­mis­sion­er Lewis J. Valen­tine bragged to the press that “we have enough police here to stop a rev­o­lu­tion.”

The most dis­turb­ing moment in the short film comes at the 3:50 mark, when anoth­er secu­ri­ty force—the Bund’s Ord­nungs­di­enst or “Order Ser­vice” pile on Isidore Green­baum, a 26-year-old Jew­ish work­er who rushed the podi­um where bun­des­führer Fritz Julius Kuhn was fan­ning the flames of hatred. Valentine’s men even­tu­al­ly pulled them off, just bare­ly man­ag­ing to save the “anti-Nazi” from the vicious beat­ing he was under­go­ing.

Report­ed­ly he was beat­en again, as the crowd inside the Gar­den howled for his blood.

The uni­formed youth per­form­ing a spon­ta­neous horn­pipe in the row behind the Bund’s drum and bugle corps is a chill­ing sight to see.

Direc­tor Mar­shall Cur­ry was spurred to bring the his­toric footage to Field of Vision, a film­mak­er-dri­ven doc­u­men­tary unit that com­mis­sions short films as a rapid response to devel­op­ing sto­ries around the globe. In this case, the devel­op­ing sto­ry was the “Unite the Right” white nation­al­ist ral­ly in Char­lottesville, which had occurred a mere two days before.

“The footage is so pow­er­ful,” Cur­ry told an inter­view­er, “it seems amaz­ing that it isn’t a stock part of every high school his­to­ry class. But I think the ral­ly has slipped out of our col­lec­tive mem­o­ry in part because it’s scary and embar­rass­ing. It tells a sto­ry about our coun­try that we’d pre­fer to for­get. We’d like to think that when Nazism rose up, all Amer­i­cans were instant­ly appalled. But while the vast major­i­ty of Amer­i­cans were appalled by the Nazis, there was also a sig­nif­i­cant group of Amer­i­cans who were sym­pa­thet­ic to their white suprema­cist, anti-Semit­ic mes­sage. When you see 20,000 Amer­i­cans gath­er­ing in Madi­son Square Gar­den you can be sure that many times that were pas­sive­ly sup­port­ive.”

Field of Vision co-founder Lau­ra Poitras recalled how after meet­ing with Cur­ry, “my first thought was, ‘we need to put this film in cin­e­mas,’ and release it like a news­reel.”’  The Alamo Draft­house cin­e­ma chain screened it before fea­tures on Sep­tem­ber 26 of this year.

The Atlantic has pho­tos of the “Pro-Amer­i­can Ral­ly” and oth­er Ger­man Amer­i­can Bund-spon­sored events in the days lead­ing up to WWII here. Also read an account that appeared in a 1939 edi­tion of The New York Times here.

The Inter­na­tion­al Social­ist Review cov­ers the counter-demon­stra­tions in many eye­wit­ness quotes.

via Pale­o­Fu­ture

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Edu­ca­tion for Death: The Mak­ing of Nazi–Walt Disney’s 1943 Pro­pa­gan­da Film Shows How Fas­cists Are Made

Philoso­phers (Includ­ing Slavoj Žižek) and Ethi­cists Answer the Ques­tion: Is It OK to Punch Nazis?

Helen Keller Writes a Let­ter to Nazi Stu­dents Before They Burn Her Book: “His­to­ry Has Taught You Noth­ing If You Think You Can Kill Ideas” (1933)

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.