I thought it was common knowledge that support for Nazis in America was widespread all the way leading to American involvement in WW2.<p>Here's another sample: <a href="http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-ross-nazis-of-los-angeles-hitler-in-la-20171008-story.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-ross-nazis-of-los...</a><p><i>What Lewis did not anticipate is that local authorities would prove indifferent to — or supportive of — the Nazis and fascists.<p>Within weeks of going undercover, Lewis’ network of spies discovered a plot to wrest control of armories in San Francisco, L.A. and San Diego — part of a larger plan to take over local governments and carry out a mass execution of Jews. Lewis immediately informed L.A. Police Chief James Edgar “Two-Gun” Davis of the Nazi scheme to seize weapons and, as Lewis warned in a memo later, to “foster a fascist form of government in the United States.”<p>Lewis was shocked when Davis interrupted him to defend Hitler. The police chief, he noted in the memo, told him: “Germans could not compete economically with the Jews in Germany and had been forced to take the action they did.” The greatest danger the city faced, Davis insisted, was not from Nazis but from communists living in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Boyle Heights. As far as Davis was concerned, every communist was a Jew and every Jew a communist.</i>
There are two sort of contradictory views of nazism that I was exposed to as a child.<p>The first one is the “banality of evil” view. The nazis were nothing special. One of many populist and racist parties. One of many hateful ideologies. The only thing that stands them out is the results. They actually won power through weirdness of politics in that time and place. They actually started a massive war (lucky timing). They actually went on the massive genocidal campaign implied by their rhetoric.<p>Normal people. Normal (if somewhat distasteful) party. Abnormal actions. It’s kind of related to the “one damn thing after another” theory of history.<p>The other (more intuitive, and unavoidable) view is the pure evil view. Hitler & Eichman were uniquely evil people. The SS were evil people. They had an evil doctrine, evil symbols, evil political methods. Evil resulted. Watch out for this sort of thing. Know the devil when you see her. Never Again!<p>Anyway, in 1939 I’m not sure nazism stood out as a unique evil different in some way from domestic far right movements like the kkk. It’s historical perspective that gives it the symbolic meaning that shocks us today.
"If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."<p>-Lyndon Johnson.
A couple of points of context.<p>The rally was organized by the "German American Bund," an organization that Nazi Germany had distanced itself from before the Madison Square Garden rally:<p><i>On March 1, 1938 the Nazi government decreed that no Reichsdeutsche [German nationals] could be a member of the Bund, and that no Nazi emblems were to be used by the organization. This was done both to appease the U.S. and to distance Germany from the Bund, which was increasingly a cause of embarrassment with its rhetoric and actions.</i><p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_Bund" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_American_Bund</a><p>This was not a mass movement by any stretch, but seemed instead to be centered around a group of German-American immigrants.<p>The video depicts a Pledge of Allegiance ceremony that lacks the phrase "under God" because it was added in 1942:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance_(United_States)#Addition_of_.22under_God.22" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pledge_of_Allegiance_(United_S...</a>
And if you heard Chomsky he describes how growing up there were beer parties in US when Paris fell to the Nazis.<p>Those things was quickly swept under the rug later, and not talked about much. Also the involvement of American companies in supporting the Nazi effort including Ford and IBM and probably others.<p>I grew up hearing about Nazis. For the Soviet Union it was _the_ big war, a war of survival basically. Both of my grandfathers fought in the war. One drove them all the way to Berlin. Got wounded by them. I also heard stories from teachers about the horrible atrocities they've experienced. One jarring one was how their Jewish childhood friend was raped, dismembered and buried in the backyard by German soldiers. They watched through the fence in the back of the garden hiding in the bushes.<p>That is why it is grating to hear everyone use "Nazis" like a joke. "You are such a Nazi", "Everyone who doesn't agree with my political views is a Nazi". "The store clerk is a fascist cause they made me wait too long", etc.
Another weird moment in history:<p>Nazis attend the Nation of Islam summit, 1961 - <a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CbcE6rSSouc/WAL8t2PEfHI/AAAAAAAALfQ/Ss8iDFtDQYQDYTxngXc3uLVd4cz_rKBowCLcB/s1600/George_Lincoln_Rockwell_nation_of_islam.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-CbcE6rSSouc/WAL8t2PEfHI/AAAAAAAAL...</a><p>Black nationalists and white nationalists coming together. Bizarre stuff.
(This is a tangent unrelated to the topic)<p>Three years after this rally, Pearl Harbor happens, which results in the US entering into the already-running World War II.<p>Virtually all people of Japanese ancestry are forcibly relocated from the West Coast and incarcerated in internment camps - around 115,000 people, 62% of which were US citizens. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_Americans" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Japanese_America...</a><p>At the same time, "the government examined the cases of German nationals individually, and detained relatively few [11,000 out of the 1.2 Million born in Germany and 5 Million with two German parents]. To a much lesser extent, some ethnic German US citizens were classified as suspect after due process and also detained." <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_Americans" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_German_Americans</a><p>Of the 695,000 ethnic Italians in the US at the time, only 1,881 nationals were detained. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Italian_Americans" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Italian_American...</a><p>The justification of rounding up all ethnic Japanese into camps was "we're at war, we will do anything to protect our country". But that same logic was never applied to the Germans or Italians, even though their countries were bigger threats than Japan.<p>A government commission found the treatment of ethnic Japanese to have been racially motivated, and actually paid reparations to those that were interned. But even so, this practice was never made illegal.<p>I find this especially interesting since a certain US President seems to have some strong feelings toward certain ethnicities and religions. In the event we went to war with a country with such an ethnicity, we would probably see these camps again, because no law has made it illegal, and there is legal and military precedence for it. It's also a near-certainty that no Supreme Court will go against a President during wartime.
I would like to point out that the raised hands / sig heil was normal American reverence to the flag, and had nothing exceptional to do with the event depicted.<p>It was an inspiration to the Nazi Germany sig heil just like a few other aspects of American culture.<p>The ritual around the pledge of allegiance was subsequently changed to simultaneously be distinctive from fascists and communists.
Wow, the swastika besides a giant George Washington is a really impressive image. Sure you can use the words freedom and justice for anything.<p>Who is the guy talking in the lectern? The one who is despised as a demon by the "jewish controlled media"?
When the Pledge of Allegiance is being recited at the beginning, there is no "under God." I knew that it had been added in 1954 but it's interesting to hear it so clearly missing here given that the event occurred in 1939.
<i>it seems amazing that it isn’t a stock part of every high school history class. This story was likely nudged out of the canon, in part because it’s scary and embarrassing. It tells a story about our country that we’d prefer to forget.</i><p>Everyone is outraged that the 5 things they're passionate about aren't taught (enough) in school. The problem is that they're never same 5 things as the next guy.<p>Everything that follows the word "likely" is this guy crafting a narrative that fits his world view and appetite for rage much better than the more realistic answers: teacher's priorities pulled in a million directions at once and schools somehow have to fit as much as possible into an education program bounded by funding, timing, and classroom sizes.
There seems to be some kind of issue with the video between 2:08 and 2:10. You can see the flags going back and forth as if someone rewind the footage. Maybe it's an editing error?