Trudy Gold
The USA and the Rise of Nazism
Trudy Gold - The USA and the Rise of Nazism
- Well, good evening everyone, and today’s presentation is about America and the actual rise of Nazism in America. But before I do that, I want to give you a couple of statements that perhaps we can talk about in the question time. This is from one historian, Robert Wistrich. “By 1939, the anti-Semites in America had two causes: Keeping America out of the European War and keeping European Jews out of America.” Two most famous champions, Lindberg and Ford. And of course, we looked at Lindberg and Ford last week. What I’m going to be talking about today though, is the actual rise of a Nazi party in America. And I’m also going to be talking about Joseph Kennedy, who was not a Nazi, but he was certainly an anti-Semite and he was certainly an isolationist. So, but before that, this is from Susan Dunn. “Isolationists came in all shapes and all sizes. Ideological, ethnic, anti interventionist, farmers, union leaders, wealthy industrialists, students, newspaper publishers, wealthy Patricians, newly arrived immigrants. They were Democrats, they were Republicans, they were socialists, they were communists, they were anti-communists, they were pacifists, and they were simply FDR haters.” Now, as I’ve said to you many times: When do people become insecure? When do they begin to hate? And we’ve already looked how in America, the land of immigration, there’s a turn beginning around the end of the 1900s, when gradually, this influx of immigration made people question: What is the nature of America? And it’s exacerbated, of course, after the first World War.
And yesterday I talked about the repatriation of Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, along with 247 other radicals, anarchists, communists. And also, the fear of communism became a very potent story in America. 1924, you begin to see the quotas issued. And it’s not just against Jews, there’s prejudice, of course, we, when we deal with the Afro-American situation, it’s another issue altogether. But also, later on, it’s going to be terrible prejudice against Japanese, fueled of course by the war, and the interment of Japanese, and also, the prejudice against Chinese, et cetera, et cetera. So out of the so-called melting pot, there were many ethnicities and ethnic conflicts. And it, of course, was exacerbated by the events of the 20s. The polarisation of America, liberalism, prohibition, and the Wall Street crash, if you like, really, was the lining on that particular cake because as a result of the Wall Street crash, you had economic misery. So, there is social, economic, and political unrest, which is later going to be, of course fueled by what? Fueled by extremism in Europe. Bear in mind that so many of the countries involved in that, they had many of their people already living in America. And let’s start with having a look at some pictures of the German American Bund. This is the German American Bund. And it doesn’t take that name until 1936, but in 1924, it begins with something called the Society of Teutonia. Think about the Aryan myths, the Teuton myths.
It was founded by German immigrants, it recruited, the society actually recruited ethnic Germans, who supported right wing nationalism. The headquarters were in Chicago. They also functioned, it functioned first of all as a social club, but gradually their activities were taken over by extremists, and it was become modelled as the 20s develop, it’s very much modelled on the SA in Germany. It becomes increasingly anti-Semitic, increasingly anti-communist, it gained a very small following, but a very strong following. Groups grew up in Milwaukee, in Detroit, St. Louis, Missouri, New York City, Cincinnati, New Jersey. And Hitler was its titular leader. They turned to Adolf Hitler for their inspiration. In October, 1932, they changed their name to the Friends of the Hitler movement, and under the orders of a German immigrant and a Nazi party member, unfortunately, I couldn’t find a photograph of him, his name was Heinz Spanknoble. He is running it. He was born in Hamburg. He’s an interesting character. He becomes a minister in the Seventh Day Adventist movement in Wurzburg. He comes to America in 1929 as a minister of religion. He’s a member of the Free Society of Teutonia, which I’ve talked about, and he was employed by the Ford Motor Company. And we’ve already discussed, when we looked at the life of Henry Ford, how anti… Of course, his secretary Liebold, how that was a hotbed of anti-Semitism. One of its earliest activities was to counter the propaganda against the, remember after Hitler came to power in 1933, there was a Jewish boycott of businesses, and particularly in the German neighbourhood of Yorksville, this organisation led by Spanknoble, was really fighting the Jewish boycott.
There was an internal struggle for leadership, he was actually deported in October, 1933, as he’d failed to register as a foreign agent. What happened to him? And back in Germany, he became a director of propaganda for Germans living abroad. After the Soviet occupation, he was arrested by the NKVD and held in captivity. He actually died of starvation in a prison. Now, can we go on please. Now, Rudolph Hess. In 1933, Rudolph Hess had the society dissolved, and he appoints, and as a result of this, the organisation consists until the mid 30s, there’s a membership about 10,000, and in 1935, Hess ordered all German citizens to lead the organisation, and its leaders were record to Germany. Why did he do that? Because he wanted, if you like, an American, homegrown American Bund, that was associated with Germany, but in a much more loose way. And on March the 19th, 1936, the German American Bund was established as a follow-up. It’s first established in Buffalo, New York. The Bund elected a German born citizen, and can we see him please? Let’s go on a bit and have a look at the rally. Now the German Bund is going to, is going to attract a huge following, and that’s one of their rallies in Madison Square Garden in 1935. And if that doesn’t give you a strange feeling, I don’t know what what else will. That is Madison Square Garden in 1935. Can we see the next slide, please? This is German Day celebrations in 1935, again in Madison Square Garden. Huge, huge, huge. Can we go on please?
This is their leader, Fritz Julius Kuhn. He becomes the Bundesfuhrer. He was a Nazi veteran. He’d actually served in the Bavarian interest in infantry. He was one of the old guard, he was an Alter Kampfer. These were individuals who had fought with Hitler in the 1923 putsch. He comes to America and he becomes an American citizen in 1934. And he divided the organisation into three groups: East, West, and Midwest. There were 69 local groups, 40 in the East, 17 in New York alone, 10 in the West, and 19 in the Midwest. Each had its own Gauleiter and staff headquarters were on East 85th Street, those of you who live in New York. They held training camps, they held rallies, they showed their loyalty to America though, they displayed the Nazi flag along with the American flag. And their policy, they were anti-Roosevelt, they were anti all Jewish groups, they’re violently anti-communist. They are anti the trade union movement because they said it’s mainly directed by Stalin. And of course, above all, they were against the American boycott of German goods. Now, can we see the next slide please? Kuhn and his followers attempted the… They actually went to the Berlin Olympics. They visited the Chancellory and there is a picture of Kuhn taken with Hitler. Now it’s at this stage, and it’s very interesting, because the German ambassador to America, Hans-Heinrich Dieckhoff, he expressed disapproval of the group to Berlin, and it causes a rift.
He said, listen, what we want is to keep America neutral and we don’t want to cause too many ripples. So, there’s no, from then on, there’s not going to be any financial aid from Nazi Germany. And in 1938, Congress passed the Foreign Agents Registration Act. And on March the first 1938, the Nazi government actually decreed that German nationals couldn’t join the Bund, and no Nazi emblems were to be used. And this is done, basically, to appease America and to distance themselves from an organisation that was becoming increasingly an embarrassment. However, they had one huge rally in Madison Square Garden in 1939, where 20,000 people attended. Can we see the rally? There you see the rally in 1939. And it criticised Roosevelt. They called him, he’s called Frank D. Rosenfeld. They called the New Deal, the Jew Deal. And they denounced the Bolshevik Jewish leadership. Now, how he was brought down. The New York tax investigation, it’s fascinating, that’s how they brought down in the end, that’s how they brought down so many of the mafioso. They investigated his affairs and they found that he’d embezzled over $14,000, which is about $300,000 in today’s money. But the group said, we are not going to prosecute him because we use the Fuhrer Principle. The Fuhrer Principle, which was a principle in Germany itself, which is absolutely fascinating, the principle that the Fuhrer is always right. But the New York District Court didn’t agree, and he was sentenced to five and a half years in imprisonment. And that’s what really caused the downfall of the Bund. And ironically, can we see the next slide, please?
There you see the more- There you see Dickstein and more pictures of the rally. Interestingly, the Chairman of the Committee on Naturalisation and Immigration was a man called Samuel Dickstein. Can we see him please? Now, Samuel Dickstein’s a fascinating character. He’s actually got a street named for him in New York. He was born in Vilnius in 1885. His family came to America, very much the usual pattern of Jews leaving Eastern Europe because of the pogroms, and in 1887 they settled in New York where his father became a rabbi. He graduated in 1903 from the New York Law School and he’s admitted to the bar. He joins a law firm. He was always interested in politics, and through contacts, he becomes the Deputy Attorney General of New York, 1911 to 1914. He becomes a member of the Board of Aldermen, and in 1918, he gained a seat on the New York State Assembly. He was a bit of a, he was a real, very zealous in his fight for Jewish rights. This will interest you because I know it’s still a problem. In 1922, he authorised New York City’s kosher food law, which set the standard for similar legislation in other states. He also initiated the New York Sabbath law, which allowed Jewish merchants to remain open on Sundays. And throughout his tenure, he fought to improve housing, improve rentals. In return, what he really wants to do was to benefit New York City East side tenements. So basically, he’s fighting for rights.
And in 1922, he’s erected as a Democrat to the House of Representatives. He’s assigned to the House Committee on Naturalisation. Now, his, by the way, his, the street named for him, it’s a block in lower Manhattan, the Samuel Dickstein Plaza, in 1963, it was named in his honour. However, there’s another side to this character, another side, again, that would make a movie. There’s been documents released over the past few years under the Freedom of Information Act that also showed that he was in the payroll of the Soviets. Now this is one of the problems: You’ve got to remember for many people, in America, in Britain, all over the world, in the 20s, in the 30s, with the polarisation of politics, many of them did turn to the Soviet Union. And, he… In the 30s, he’d become famous for pursuing Nazi sympathisers. In 1934, he hosted a delegation of communists at his own. But, the document showed that from 1937 onwards, he’d been paid $1,250 a month by the Soviets. Whether he actually delivered any important intelligence on the US fascists is unclear. The Soviet, but this is where it all gets a bit complicated because the Soviet documents, after the fall of communism, you’ve also got the documents from the other side, according to their documents, they offered him $500 a month, he wanted two and a half thousand and settled on 1,250.
They caught, you know, they thought basically, that he was a thief. Ironically, in their book, “The Haunted Wood”, Alan Weinstein, and the espionage agent, Alexander Vassiliev, who was a retired Russian agent, portray an America where some of the richest and the brightest of the New Deal actually did spy for Stalin. In the book, Dickstein emerges as a very jaded and cynical character, but the other side of him, he was desperate to fight anti-Semitism. And when in December, 1937, in a radio address, he set out his case for the Special Commission on Un-American Activities, he stated he’d unearthed enough evidence of German infiltration as the most dangerous threat to our democracy that has ever existed. Now basically, this is the man behind what became HUAC. And ironically, he was a Soviet agent. And the man he went to work with, of course, let’s see, the next slide, was Martin Dies, but in fact, there’s going to be a lot more about him when we have the presentation on HUAC from Judge Dennis Davis. Now, before I turn away from Dickstein, having given him to you as a very complex character, nevertheless in the House of Representatives, he passed a resolution. He had them pass a resolution on June the ninth, 1944, an appeal to the people of Hungary to hide Jews. Don’t forget that Hungarian Jewry was not attacked until the spring of 1944, because Hungary had been allied to Germany. And it was only when Admiral Horthy tried to pull out of the Hungarian Alliance that the Nazis rolled in.
Now, of course, under Horthy they’d been mistreated, and some who were not Hungarian citizens, about 20,000, had been involved in labour battalions and most of them were murdered, but there were 900,000 Jews in Hungary, and they were the only community in Europe at that stage that was allied to Germany, or not occupied by Germany, that was still intact. When the Nazis rolled in the deportations began, at the end of April, beginning of May, 1944, by which time it’s an open secret. There was a minute silence in the House of Commons and in the State Department for the murdered Jews of Europe. When, this is The Inter-Ally Declaration on December the 17th, 1942. We’re now in June the ninth, 1944, and that’s when he actually, he put this motion before the House of Representatives, begging the people of Hungary to hide Jews. And this is when, also, he was behind 46 rabbis, Orthodox conservative reform, who were trying so hard to bring the world’s attention to it. Also with a group that I’m going to talk about when I talk about Ben Hecht, Peter Bergson’s group, the Irgun, who were also sponsoring. So the point is this man, Dickstein, is incredibly controversial, but on the other hand, he did a lot to alert the American public to what was going on in Europe.
Now, Martin Dies Jr, he’s going to become Chairman of the Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities, and as I said, there’s going to be a lot more about him later. Now, can we come to the next slide, please? There was an extraordinary woman who tried to disrupt the Madison Square Garden rally that I’ve just shown you a picture of. Her name was Dorothy Celine Thompson, and I’m sure she is well known, particularly to those of you who are listening from America. She was an American journalist and a radio broadcaster. She was the first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany, and one of the few women radio broadcasters. She was known as the first woman of American journalism. And in 1939, Time Magazine called her and Eleanor Roosevelt, the two most influential women in America. And as I said, she tried to disrupt that rally in 1939. She had a brilliant career. She was the first woman given the, when women were first given the right to vote in America in 1920, she sets off for Europe, and in 1921 she got her first scoop. She was a real investigative journalist. Posing as a Red Cross nurse, she actually infiltrated the castle of King Carl, who was a Hapsburg, and he was trying to seek to become King of Hungary. And of course it was on his, he was unsuccessful, but she got the interview. And then she became the the Vienna correspondent of the Philadelphia Public Ledger, which became much more important because it shared coverage with the New York Evening Post, which gave her a very, very wide audience. And as a result, she was alerting the American public to the rise of Hitler, from the 20s. Later on, she married the novelist Sinclair Lewis. She herself actually interviewed Hitler in 1931, and she wrote a book called “I Saw Hitler”. And she said the interview was very difficult. He speaks always as if he was addressing a public meeting.
And it was Hitler, who personally ordered her to leave in 1934. As I said, she was the first American journalist to be kicked out of Germany. Goebbels, who was in charge of propaganda and culture in Germany, he looked after the Press Corps, and you’ve got to remember, he wanted to keep America neutral, that’s why the American, the German ambassador to America had watered down the German Bund. But, the Press Corps in Germany, they were monitored and Hitler had an absolute aversion to her. And, this is what she wrote. “There is a reigning cult in Germany, who says Mr. Hitler is a messiah sent by God to save the German people.” Now, what she did in Madison Square Garden, was she laughed during the speeches that were extolling Germany and screaming for isolationism. And she had to be recognised, and she actually had to be, she was recognised and she had to be rescued by the police. She passionately denounced fascism in her radio broadcasts, her radio broadcasts were called “On the Record”. And her biographer said she would quote, she was the leading American voice in the war against fascism and one of the inspirations for her husband’s novel, “It Can’t Happen Here”. She also very much was involved in the issue of refugees. As you know, and as I’m going to deal with in more detail when I look next week at the ship the St. Louis, there was an issue in America, of course, of letting in refugees from Europe. And, she very much bought all her resources to bear to try and get America to lift the quota.
And she said they could bring to a new country, resources of skill which would increase its wealth and trade. And what is so ironic, particularly about the German and Austrian immigration, both to Britain and to America, cultural historians will tell you, and I know Patrick often talks about this, they totally enrich both British and American culture. And when I look at the film business with you, we’ve already begun to discuss it, and of course there’s an awful lot more to say on that, because it did enrich it and that’s what she said. And in May, 1938, in- No, beg your pardon, in November, 1938, she was particularly interested in the story of Herschel Grynszpan. And of course, this is the story of a terrible event that led to Kristallnacht. Herschel Grynszpan was a young Jew working in Paris, when his family, who were of Polish descent… Hitler had said. in the German Workers Party manifesto, he always said that he was going to expel all Jews who had been, had come to Germany after 1914. And after the Evian conference, which I’m going to talk about next week, where the allies, well basically the countries of the free world, decided not to do anything about, to relieve the plight of German and Austrian Jewry, they’re not going to open their doors, Herschel… What happens is, that Polish Jews are then exiled to the Polish border. You have the German shooting one way, the Poles not letting them in, it was a terrible, terrible situation. And that was Herschel Grynszpan’s family. And when he heard about it, he went into the German embassy in Paris and he shot vom Rath.
That’s another story in itself, because it seems there was a relationship between the two of them, but the point is, and that shooting led to Kristallnacht, the first real state organised pogrom in Nazi Germany. And what she did, she told the Herschel Grynszpam story, and she raised money for his defence. And she raised a lot of money, and she said, “They are holding every Jew to ransom.” And basically, she was a huge fighter for rights. And let’s come on to, I wanted to intersperse this dark talk with some heroes and heroines, and she was certainly a hero. Or heroine, depending on what language you want to use. Can we come on to the next slide please? Because, apart from the German Bund, there were other forces at work, American grown forces, that equally added to the dark depression. One of them was that of Charles, the words of Charles Edward Coughlin. And of course he’s going to have an important radio station. He was born in Ontario. He was the only child of an Irish Catholic family. He lived in a working class area. His modest home, it was situated between a Catholic cathedral and a convent. His mother had actually wanted to be a nun and regretted it. She was the most dominant figure in his home, and instilled him a deep sense of fundamentalist Catholicism. And after a basic education, he attended St. Michael’s College in Toronto, which was run by something called the Congregation of St. Basil, a society of priests that were dedicated to education. And after graduation, he entered the order, he prepared for holy orders and he is ordained in Toronto in 1915. In 1923, there’s a reorganisation of his religious order.
It led to his departure. He leaves for the states, settling in Detroit, and he becomes part of the Archdiocese of Detroit. And after various parishes, he’s assigned from one parish to another, he was assigned to the newly founded Shrine of the Little Fire, Little Flower, a congregation of only 25 Catholic families in a mainly Protestant area, in Royal Oak, Michigan. He was a powerful, powerful preacher. He was a demagogue. And it led to huge expansion of his community. He was very disturbed by the Ku Klux Klan. Remember the Ku Klux Klan was not just anti-black and anti-Semitic, it was also anti-Catholic. There’d been church burnings on, there’d been cross burnings on his church grounds, and… He became gradually, and unfortunately, he was unable to pay the the loan that when he’d set up, there’d been a loan to the diocese, which he’d paid for his church, and in order to make the money, because you can imagine the cross burning, et cetera, in order to create the money, he begins broadcasting sermons from his local radio station. And, in it he denounces the KKK, he appeals to a Catholic audience and he becomes a very, very powerful radio speaker. The local radio station was acquired by something called Goodwill Stations in 1929. Its owner encouraged him to focus more and more on politics, and gradually, his broadcasts become more and more extreme.
And in 1930, his broad programme was picked up for national broadcast, and in January, 1930, this is when he becomes even more political. He begins, remember you’ve had the Wall Street crash, he’s a man of the people, he comes from a modest background, he’s a very strong Catholic. The Catholic church at this time, unfortunately, was going through a very anti-Jewish, anti-communist period. The church has always been horrified of communism. And he begins his attack against communism and socialism. He criticises capitalists. Quote, “whose greed made communist ideologies more attractive to the poor.” He said, “Let not the working man be able to say that he is driven into the ranks of socialism by the inordinate and grasping greed of the manufacturer.” He refused to allow the network to review his scripts, and several affiliates began to object to him, but with backers, with Catholic reactionary backers, he establishes his own privately financed network. It’s called the Golden Hour of the Shrine of the Little Flower. He had 25 stations by August, 1932, and by 1938 he had 58 affiliates. It becomes the largest independently run radio network in America. He moves more and more to the right. In fact, in a study of 2021, the American Economic Review actually stated that a Coughlin’s influence reduced Roosevelt’s share of the 1936 election. By 1934, his audience reached tens of millions. He received something like 10,000 letters a day. In 1933, this is the Literary Digest, “Perhaps no man has stirred the country and cut as deep between the old order and the new as Father Charles E. Coughlin.” By the late 30s, he had 30 million people listening to him every week. He began… Not only is he anti-communist, he’s deeply anti-Semitic.
He expressed an isolationist view, he begins to talk about conspiracy theories, Jewish conspiracy, which resonated with many Americans. He criticises the New Deal, and it’s at this stage that Roosevelt sent Joseph Kennedy to see him. The two are going to become friends, and Kennedy on one level backed Roosevelt, but I’m going to talk about him in depth in a minute. But in August 16th 1936, the Boston Post article Joseph Kennedy said, “The shining star…” He said that Joseph Kennedy was the only shining star among the dim lights of the administration. He actually, Coughlin actually expressed sympathy for fascist governments as a antidote to communism. He believed that Jewish bankers were behind the Russian revolution. He backed all the conspiracy theories. Remember, we are into the territory of “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. In fact, the Anti-Defamation League actually contacted Trotsky, who was in Mexico. Trotsky of course was the brilliant orator who’d been exiled by Stalin and had finished up in Mexico with Frida Kahlo and her partner. And in Mexico, in the end, he’s going to be hunted down by Stalin, but he’s still this brilliant orator, and the ADL actually contacted him and said, “Will you go into debate with this man?”
But he of course refused. But Coughlin is talking about Jewish bankers on Wall Street in collusion with the communists in Russia, and of course the reality was, that once Stalin took power, he was, many of the old Jewish commissars were removed. Was Stalin an anti-Semite is another question. How you deal with a man who was responsible for the death of 40 million people, I have no idea, but certainly he hated Trotsky, and he used anti-Semitism against Trotsky, and of course Trotsky was assassinated because of him. But Coughlin, this notion that all Jews are communists, all Jews are capitalists, you see no reason in it. But this brilliant demagogue… The little people, he is the champion of the little people. He is camp champion of the pious Catholics. Don’t forget that in 1933 the Catholic Church signed a deal with Hitler. It was the man who was later to become Pope Pious the 12th. In July, 1933, the deal was simple: You leave the Catholic church alone and we’ll leave you alone. And that deal was signed by the Papal Nuncio for Foreign Affairs, Cardinal Roncalli, who later became Pious the 12th. Now Coughlin also becomes publishing Social Justice. And his publication in 1938, it reprinted “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion”. That nasty little book, which… Norman Cohn in his brilliant book, “Warrant for Genocide”, actually calls it that, that “The Protocols” are the warrant for genocide. He received indirect funding from Germany, and the New York Times reported that Berlin was identifying Coughlin as the German hero in America, but he distanced himself from the Bund. Two weeks after Kristallnacht, Coughlin referred to the millions of persecuted Christians, referring to millions of Christians killed by communists.
Now after this, ‘cause he’s completely denying what’s happening as of any importance, in Kristallnacht, what he’s interested in is the millions of Christians who’ve been persecuted by the Communists. And of course to him, all communists are Jewish. And after this speech, three radio stations did drop him on the grounds of racial prejudice. Now he counted by saying that they are under the spell of the Jews. December 1938, thousands of his followers picketed the studios, the radio stations that had dropped him, and posters, “Send the Jews back where they came from.”, “Wait until Hitler comes over here.”, and these protests lasted for several months. The Catholic church was actually split over Coughlin, because, let’s be careful, not too many diatribes against the Catholic church, because there were some very decent Catholics who loathed the growth of anti-Semitism and racism, both in America and in Europe. And in 1938, the Archbishop of Chicago issued a formal condemnation, saying he is not authorised to speak for the Catholic Church, nor does he represent the sentiments of the church. After the outbreak of World War II, Coughlin made an honour appeal for listeners to travel to Washington in an army of peace to stop the repeal, that he wanted the repeal of the Neutrality Act. Also, what he wanted now, was to keep America after the war. And in fact, leading opponents accused him of trying to stalk up a civil war in America.
Now, he’s finally forced off the air on September the 23rd, 1940, saying, “This is those who control circumstances beyond my recall.” He wrote in his newspaper, Social Justice, he’s off the air, but he’s still writing. By mid 1942, of course, America enters the war. Five days after Pearl Harbour, Germany declares war on America. By mid 42, pressure’s such that Catholic authorities actually order that he stop all political activities and confine himself to his duties as a parish priest. He had to comply, but he was able to remain a pastor at the Shrine of the Little Flower until he retired, completely unrepentant, in 19… Let me just check that date. Yes, it was in 1966 when he finally retired. And now let’s come on please to the next slide. And now you see him, Joseph Patrick Kennedy Senior, the father of JFK, and one of the most infamous anti-Semites in American Jewish history. He was born in East Boston, the son of Mary Hickey and Patrick Joseph Kennedy. He attended Boston Latin School, he was of course Catholic. He was brilliant at sports, baseball. He becomes class president before graduation. He goes to Harvard, he’s admitted to the prestigious Harvard Pasty Pudding Club. He gets a BA in economics. He marries into another Catholic family, he marries Rose Fitzgerald, the elder daughter of the mayor of Boston, and the couple settle in Brookline. So he’s become part of the Catholic aristocracy. He has a brilliant business career.
He makes a huge fortune in commodities and stock investments. He then reinvests in film studios. He’s involved in property and shipping lines. Was he involved in bootlegging during prohibition? His father was in the whiskey import business, but scholars dismiss this claim. It’s often put about by his detractors that he was in the bootlegging business but the scholarship is actually against this. In 1957, Fortune Magazine published its first list of richest in the American country, Kennedy was listed at 200 million to $300 million bracket, which is equivalent to about three and a half billion today. He very much was sceptical. He was against American involvement in World War I. He did though participate in wartime production and he became very well acquainted with Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who at that time, was assistant secretary to the Navy. He’s a very wealthy man. He’s mixing in high society. Let’s have a look at, can we come onto to the next slide please? His mistress was Gloria Swanson for a couple of years, until she finished it because he sent her an expensive present, which he actually had debited from her account. So can you go back to Joseph Kennedy? He loved being the head of a studio. He later claimed that he knew that rampant stock speculation would lead to the crash, and he actually managed to, he managed to avoid the horrors of the crash. And during the depression, he very shrewdly invested his wealth. And by 1935, he had enough capital to establish million dollar trust funds for each of his nine children. He reorganised and refinanced studios in Hollywood. He boasted to a friend, “Look at that bunch of punch presses in Hollywood making themselves millionaires, I could take the business away from them.”
He took one small studio, the Film Bookings Office of America, FBO, it specialised in cheaply produced westerns, its owners were in financial difficulties, so he formed his own group of investors and bought it for $1.2 million. He loved Hollywood, and as I said, he had many mistresses, including Gloria Swanson. And soon as it was legal again, he went into the liquor importing business, high priced scotch. At the start of the Roosevelt administration, he went into partnership with James Roosevelt II, the eldest son of F. Delano Roosevelt. He himself, he was completely against drinking. He offered his sons a thousand dollars each if they promised not to drink until they were 21. So he makes an absolute fortune. In 1932, he did support FDR’s presidency and gave him quite a lot of money. He, in 1934, Congress established the Independent Securities and Exchange Commission to enforce the law against market manipulation, and Kennedy was considered the best option for chairman. And he sought out brilliant lawyers. And so, he’s becoming a very important, he’s the probably the most important Catholic in America and he’s got a very, very important position.
He resigned from that in September 35. Roosevelt’s campaign, he did actually, although he’s later going to quarrel with Roosevelt over a lot of issues, nevertheless, they had a deal, and he explained why the business community should support the New Deal. And after his reelection, in response to the help that Kennedy gave him, both financially and with the Catholic voters, Roosevelt appointed him Chairman of the US Maritime Commission. Now, as I’ve already told you, Coughlin was the most prominent Roman Catholic spokesman on political and financial issues, and in 1934, Coughlin, as you already know, has broken with Roosevelt, who became a bitter opponent and target, and Roosevelt sent Kennedy to try and tone him down. And despite, he had public disputes with Kennedy over this, but nevertheless, Coughlin was a close friend of his. And in 1938, in return for all the good will, Roosevelt appoints him ambassador to America. And Kennedy dreamt of himself succeeding Roosevelt in the 1940 elections. He and his family, he comes to London, and… In fact, he and his family did retreat to the country during the bombings, which actually damaged his reputation with the British. Randolph Churchill, Churchill’s son wrote, “I thought my daffodils were yellow until I met Joseph Kennedy.” During his stay he was very much the darling of British high society. In the spring of 1938, he was actually asked by George the V and Queen Mary to come to- Beg your pardon, not George the V, what am I talking about? It would’ve been, it would’ve been his son, his second son, George VI. George VI and Queen Mary entertained him. He hobnobbed when Queen Elizabeth, it’s George- Beg your pardon, let me get this straight. George V was married to Queen Mary, he died in 1936. By the time Kennedy is in London, he actually was entertained by his son, the Queen, Elizabeth II’s father, George VI and Queen Elizabeth.
He was entertained at Windsor. And he evidently said, “Well, Rose, this is a long way from East Boston.” And on May the sixth, his daughter Kathleen married Willie “Billy” Cavendish, the Marquess of Hartington and the eldest son of the Duke of Devonshire. Actually Joseph Kennedy wasn’t that happy about it because he was an Anglican. Tragically he was killed in action. And you all remember than another one of the Cavendishes in fact married Adele Astaire, Fred Astaire’s sister. Throughout 1938… During the… When Hitler’s anti-Jewish persecutions in Germany at a height, Kennedy tried to arrange an appointment with Hitler. He was very pro-German. In September, 1940, he again sought a personal a meeting with Hitler, without the approval of the American State Department, he wanted to bring out a better understanding between Germany and America. He is totally against America coming into the war. He is… He admires Hitler, and he, of course, Kennedy’s support for neutrality is going to become more and more against Roosevelt’s efforts to provide UK aid. He actually wrote, “Democracy is finished in England.” And he stated in, this is, he stated this in the Boston Sunday globe. He regularly stated that war was not about saving democracy. His views become increasingly isolationist. Josiah Wedgewood, who was a great friend of the Jews in the British Parliament and also a great Zionist, “We have a rich man untrained in diplomacy, unlearned in history and politics, who is a great publicity seeker and is apparently ambitious to become the first Catholic president.” Gradually, he becomes more and more attracted to Hitler’s Germany, Hitler knows how to control his people, and his anti-Semitism becomes more and more vocal. According to one of his aides, he constantly refers to Jews as “kikes” and “sheenies”.
He said, “As a race they stink, they spoil everything they touch.” This is from his aide a Harvey Klemmer. When Klemmer returned from Germany and reported on the treatment of Jews, Kennedy’s response to him was, “Well, they brought it upon themselves.” On June the 13th, 1938 Kennedy met with Herbert von Dirksen, the German ambassador to America, who replaced Ribbentrop, and Kennedy told him “it was not so much the fact that we want to get rid of the Jews that was so harmful to us, but rather the loud clamour, with which we accomplished it.” He said basically, you shouldn’t have made such a noise, just get rid of them. Kennedy, then he, this is what, this is what von Dirksen said. “Kennedy fully understood our Jewish policy. His main concern about Kristallnacht was that it generated bad publicity.” This was a concern that he also communicated to Charles Lindbergh, who was a friend of his. So basically what Kennedy is saying, he agrees with Hitler’s policy, but you are making too much noise about it. He was also very close to Lady Astor, and of course their correspondence was replete with anti-Semitism. And what is also interesting, his son, Joe Jr, who he dreamt of making President of America, his letters to his son, are also replete with anti-Semitic rhetoric. And both he and his son, and Lady Astor, and also Lindbergh, were fiercely, they’re all fiercely anti-communist, which they see as a Jewish disease. Remember that quote of, of Simon Dubnow, which he said at the time of the revolution, “the Trotskys and the Uzitksys have done more damage than anything else could.” Because remember those communists who’d been involved in the revolution, they throw away their Jewishness, but their anti-Semitism, they engendered so much anti-Semitism because communism was seen as a Jewish disease.
And now in this time before America enters the war, you have these isolationists pointing to the horror that was communism. And he said this… This is one of, this is one of Nancy Astor’s phrases, and she wrote to him, “We believe Hitler could solve the world’s problems. Kennedy, I expect the Jew media in New York to become a problem. The Jewish pundits in New York and LA are already making noises contrived to set a match to the fuse of the world.” By August, 1940, he warned that Roosevelt’s third term would mean war. This is from Lawrence Lerner in Kennedy, his, in his book “Kennedy Men”, “Joe believed that Churchill, Roosevelt, the Jews and their allies would manipulate America into an approaching Armageddon.” He did support Roosevelt’s third term in return for his promise, if he would support Roosevelt’s third term, not just in terms of money, but in terms of helping him with the Catholic vote, he promised to support Joe Kennedy Jr. in return, for Governor of Massachusetts. So these are the big political machinations. I will support you, says Joseph Patrick Kennedy Sr. to Roosevelt, provided you help ease my son into running Governor for Massachusetts because my long term, is one day he will become President of America. So, to reporter to Joe Dinneen he said this, “It is true that I have a low opinion of some Jews in public office, in private life. That does not mean I believe they should be wiped off the face of the Earth. Jews to take an unfair advantage of the fact that theirs is a persecuted race do not help much.”
When the White House read his statements, it was clear that he was completely out of step and he was actually recalled back to America, but they needed him for the Catholic vote. So, in return, as I said, for Roosevelt supporting his son, he rallied the Irish Catholic voters to him. He used his wealth and his connections to build a national network of support that was going to become the base of his son’s bid for power. Also, he used Arthur Crook of the New York Times, he financed him, he was one of the most influential political columnists of the time. He had a close alliance with Joe McCarthy later on, and strengthened his position amongst Irish Catholics. Now, at Kennedy’s urging, Roosevelt- McCarthy, hired… You see, so Roosevelt is helping, but at Kennedy’s urging, McCarthy hired 27-year-old Robert as a senior staff member, and he’s going to become part of HUAC. In August, 1944, his eldest son, Joe Jr. was shot down over the channel. So as a result of this, he was a totally ruthless man. He shoved his attentions onto his second son, Jack Kennedy, and of course he did become President of America. He had a very strange personal life. The family, they were brutally ruthless. Rosemary Kennedy, his eldest daughter, she was a wild creature. Evidently there had been damage at birth, and in 19, when she was 23 years old, he had her lobotomized, he didn’t even inform his wife until it was completed. He felt that they would be an embarrassment to the family. So consequently, a totally ruthless character. He had a stroke later in life. The Kennedys are a fascinating family, and I’m sure on lockdown we will do more about them. I’ve run out of time, so I couldn’t actually introduce the Silver Shirts to you. I’m going to have to deal with that at a later date. So I think I’ll stop now to see how the questions are going.
Q&A and Comments:
Thank you, Rhonda.
Now this is from Anna, “The recently completed Museum of Motion Pictures in LA scarcely mentioned the Jewish men leading Hollywood from the start. They brought the American way of life to the rest of the world, but not the Jewish background. I will not visit this museum because of its snub to the Jews.” Yes, there is certainly a move at the moment to Judaize a lot of things, is they’re not.
And this is from Rita. “Update, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, which opened two years ago in the heart of Los Angeles, has announced plans for its first permanent exhibition, Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capital, which will open during American Heritage Month. The announcement, made an exclusive to The Forward, comes after the museum confronted serious criticism upon its opening, covered by The Forward, for overlooking the significant role of Jews in creating the American film industry.” Let’s see what happens Rita. You see, you can make the case that the movie moguls created the American dream. It’s such an… I mentioned to you the other day, Neil Gabler’s brilliant book, you really must, you really must read it. Hollywood and the creation of the American dream. “A must to understand this period is talking about Rachel Maddow’s "Prequel”, is an absorbing read and made me realise that the fascist inclination in American politics today is not new.“ I’m afraid it isn’t, it’s there. America’s a continent, and it veers between liberalism and opening its arms to the world and isolationism, it veers between the extreme right and the extreme left, and a fear of communism, and you’ve got to remember that the 20s and 30s were a very dark time, and unfortunately, we are going through a dark time again.
Q: "Do you think the German Nazis are waiting for an excuse to join, to launch the Kristallnacht programme? If it hadn’t been Grynszpan, would they have found another trigger?”
A: Yeah, look after Evian, Evian is the real trigger, and I’m going to be talking about that when I talk about the voyage of the St. Louis. So next week I will be doing this in a lot of detail Judith.
Q: “Were not Finnish Jews sent to the camps even they were allied to Germany against the Russians? I thought the Finns did not allow them to be deported.”
A: You are right, and you are right about that Carol, and I believe that the couple were, and the Finnish government later apologised.
And Martin Silk is saying, “Jews fought in the Finnish army side by side with the Germans and three Jewish soldiers were awarded the Iron Cross.” You know, it, you, you’ve got to remember, there are lots of ifs and buts and history is not… History’s complicated. Finland went to war with Germany because of its hatred of Russia, not because it hated Jews.
“Finnish Jews remained safe apart from a couple. Hungarian Jews were saved till the last year of the war.” Let’s be careful. Admiral Horthy was not a benign ruler, but on the other hand, he didn’t allow his Jews to be deported, until the end of April, May, 1944. But the horror of that, is in three months, nearly 450,000 Jews were murdered. In three months. When the world knew. And that is when, of course Dickstein asked for help to, for Hungarians to help Jews. It’s a terrible story.
“I’m surprised Coughlin didn’t have a theory on how Jews were behind the KKK”. You need to be a Mel Brooks to think that one through Shelly.
“Dearborn seemed to play an important part in American anti-Semitism.” Very much so, totally agree with you.
Q: “Do we know whether famous Jewish athletes were affected by anti-Semitism or were they above the hatred? Ironically, Hank Greenberg played for Detroit and Sid Markman played for Chicago, both hotbeds of anti-Semitism. Perhaps there are British equivalents.”
A: That’s a very interesting point David, and I don’t know enough to answer. I’m sure someone does though. Yes, what is true is, at the time of the Berlin Olympics, the American athletes were questioned as whether to go or not. And I believe only one person was against it, who happened to be a Jewish athlete. Oh, the whole sports politics debate is a complicated one.
This is from David, “St. Michael’s College is located in the northeast corner of Bathurst Street and St. Clair Avenue, I believe it had football and hockey teams, which provided players for professional teams. Very recently it was involved in a sex scandal.” That’s interesting.
Yes, Neil, your analysis, “Joseph Kennedy may not have been an Nazi, but he was certainly a Nazi sympathiser and appeaser.” Oh yeah, yeah. Now, it’s interesting, isolationism… Is not isolationism necessarily anti-Semitic? I think it is possible not to want to get involved in an another war without being a Nazi sympathiser, but Kennedy crossed the line. All you have to do is look at his correspondence with Nancy Astor, or some of the things he said to his aides, or his own statements in the press. He hated Jews. So did his son.
“I read that Joe Kennedy did well in the 30s because he sold short.”
“I’m surprised that Gloria Swanson was his mistress. He was known to be anti-Semitic.” Look… Again, the ifs and buts of history. You know, people are complicated.
This is Ronald, “Detroit/Dearborn seems to play an important role in American anti-Semitism. Dearborn is part of the 13th Congressional District, which is represented by Rashida Tlaib. She is rabidly anti-Semitic and anti-Israel. She’s one of the few congressmen who was censured by Congress for anti-Semitic and anti-Israel statements. This week she received the title of anti-Semite of the Year by Stop Anti-Semitism, beating Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh.” Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. You see, this is the problem, anti-Semitism keeps it… Anti-Semitism is a disease that keeps changing its shape. It comes in many shapes and many guises, and it is a coalition of the fascists, extremist Islam, at the moment, it’s fascism, it’s extremist Islam, extremist left, and the history of it is absolutely fascinating. You actually can pinpoint it through history. Ironically, ironically, Ron, one of the strange aspects of the awful disease, is modern anti-Semitism… Stalin backed the state of Israel, never forget that. He thought it was in his interests. By the time Golda visits him and 50,000 young Jews come out to greet her, he realises he has a problem, with anti-Semitism. And then gradually, you have things like the Slansky trials, where of the 13 people put on trial in Czechoslovakia, which was a communist state, of course, for Titoism, Trotskyism, rootless cosmopolitanism, and Zionism. He’s changing tack. It exacerbates after his death because the Arab countries are now more like, the old feudal regimes are crumbling.
People like Nasser, Nasser might be an ally, and that’s when Russian anti-Semitism, there’s a Department of Sinology in Moscow, and by the way, Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestine Authority on the West Bank, he studied at the Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow, and his thesis was on the connection between the Zionists and the Nazis, by the way, it enters the Arab world, and it’s also fueled by the Nazis, the ex-Nazis, or Nazis who come to Egypt. And then in the 60s, this rubbish spews out into the Trotskyite left. So you’ve got an extraordinary cocktail. Robert Wistrich has written a lot about this and it’s fascinating. It’s evilly fascinating, but it all comes together. And in Forest Hill, which has a pretty big Jewish population, good point.
Q: “Was Charles Lindbergh known to be anti-Semitic?”
A: Yes, he was, and I talked about him last week.
“Yes, Roosevelt was very worried that Joe Kennedy would run against him.” Yes, Marshall. Thank you. Thank you, Marshall, thank you.
Q: “What would Kennedy say about RFK being assassinated, being pro-Israel, by a Palestine immigrant?”
A: Oh… What a complicated family and what a complicated story. I think Joe Kennedy, I wouldn’t say this lightly about many people, but to me, he comes over as a terrible monster, in his personal life as well as in his professional life, and a man who had far too much power. Ruthless, ruthless, ruthless. It’s Neil Gabler’s book. I can’t remember the title. I’m sure someone online will know it. Neil Gabler, look him up, because that is the best book. And there’s also a, there’s a series. It was made into a series on Netflix, or it’s either on Netflix or Prime.
“There’s an excellent book, "Hitler’s Aristocrats” by Susan Ronald, about the secret power players in Britain and America who supported the Nazis.“ Yes, that’s very true.
"Rashida…”, this is from Carol, “Rashida Tlaib is an ethical, honest proponent of justice in life. L'chaim, read more Mr. Marcus.” Ah, ditto on her.
“Please repeat the name of the book on the history of the American War.” I believe that is, can’t remember, can’t find it, sorry.
Q: “Weren’t the Jewish athlete- Weren’t there Jewish athletes who were allowed by the US Committee to compete?”
A: Shelly, I’m not sure. I’ve read about it, but I can’t remember at the moment.
Oh this is, Luis says, “Jeremy Corbin is part of the South African delegation of the Hague accusing Israel of genocide.” I can’t get into that, I will just get too black.
Q: “Would I consider George Soros anti-Semitic?”
A: I’d have to give that an incredible amount of thought.
Paul, “Here in Detroit, my parents used to take an alternate route to avoid passing by the church, even though it was located on the main thoroughfare.”
“Oh, we pronounce the name Coughlin.” Thank you.
Carol’s saying, “Rashida Tlaib, another progressive. Note Biden’s first appointee, a Palestinian American, resigned yesterday articulating its motivation…” Okay, there’s obviously a debate about her. I am not up enough to make a comment. Let me say that very carefully. I will only make comments from a position of strength. So I don’t want to get involved in this. I would have to read up a lot more.
John Gilbert Winant, the ambassador that replaced him. Yeah.
“An Empire of Their Own”, thank you, Susan, thank you. As I said, this is why, and thank you, Arlene. It’s called “An Empire of Their Own” by Neil Gabler. It is a brilliant book. My copy became so well thumbed that I had to replace it because the pages were falling out.
And this is the television series, is the series called “An Empire of Their Own”? I think it’s got another name as well, but it’s brilliant. “We in the US don’t know enough about history because our text books are so dry cleaned that we know about battles but all the facts you’ve spoken about today…” Look, one of the problems is that… history’s an interesting discipline. What is truth? What I try and do… Let me play a game with you. If you all, if you went away and thought about what we discussed today, or even what we discussed in the questions, would you all give me the same answers? What I know is if my watch is correct, it is 12 minutes past six British time, and I know where I’m sitting in my room and I know I’m on lockdown. I have a hunch that every one of you, if you talked about my lecture, you would all come up with different points. So when you are talking about history itself, it’s very complex. What I try and do, there is no such thing as objective history. What I try desperately to do, because I do believe in trying to seek the truth, is I will read, and, read, and read lots of different points of view and make my own opinion. But having said that, I myself, I’m a prisoner of my own past and my own influences, so there is no such thing, objective history. All I can say to you is read, and read, and read, and read biography, because that’s where you… You know I’ve learned an awful lot from lockdown because there are people on lockdown who have experienced so much themselves through their own families that you’ve really added to my knowledge.
This is from Hindi, I’m going to get a bit more knowledge now.
“Martha Green, Toronto was supposed to represent Hungary at the Olympics, but she was taken off the list of competitors. She was well into her 80s now, into her 90s now in Toronto. She was a figure skater.” Well, remember Hungary was allied to Germany. Hungary was dependent on Germany in the 30s. In return for an alliance, Germany had given Hungary back a lot of territory.
“Yes, Joseph Kennedy’s granddaughter, Caroline Kennedy, is married to a Jew.” Schlossberg, yes. “One of the top Jewish swimmers refused to swim in the Berlin Olympics. All her swimming records were obliterated.”
From Deborah. You see, I must find an expert on this 'cause it’s obviously a fascinating field. Thank you. “Hollywoodism: An Empire of Their Own”, that’s what it’s called. Thank you, Neil. If you’ve got time and you want a wallow, a good wallow to take away the darkness of the present, I really recommend it.
That, and Neil has sent us the link. If you can all see it. Anyway, I wish you all a good evening and I will see you next week, when I’m going to be lecturing on the St. Louis, but we’ve got lots of interesting lectures in the meantime, so I wish everybody well. God bless.