FASCISM AND ANTI-WAR ACTIVISM
IN THE UNITED STATES 1939-45
The following is a chapter from Philip Jenkins, Hoods and Shirts: The Extreme Right in Pennsylvania 1925-1950 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1997).
From Unity to Ruin: Into War 1939-1945
By 1939, the American far Right was a bewildering ferment of groups and ideological tendencies. Though movements were ethnically and ideologically heterogeneous, there were tentative signs of the “Brown Front” so often depicted in the jeremiads of the Left. Over the next two years, the quest for political unity would be a dominant theme on the far Right, and there were some successes. However, this development could not occur in a political vacuum, and the fate of the ultra-Right was conditioned by the wider context, both domestic and international. Initially, the threat of war offered rich opportunities, raising the hope that the Right could project its distinctive interpretation of the drift to war as a manifestation of Jewish political and economic domination. In reality, the dream of a Christian Nationalist crusade was overwhelmed by growing popular hatred and fear of the Axis abroad and its supporters at home. The far Right was riven by the inevitable paradox of attempting to be hyper-nationalist and “Americanist” while at the same time espousing the cause of hostile foreign powers (1).
The Quest for Unity
At least in theory, there were many reasons to see the boundaries between the different sects as insuperable. For example, both the Bund and the Italian Fascists were violently opposed to secret societies like the Freemasons, who were a mainstay of the Klan. The Protestant Klan similarly had little reason to love the Catholic-dominated Christian Front with its Irish leadership, still less the Italian Black Shirts, both exponents of a virulent “inverted nativism” often targetted at traditional Protestant power. On a core issue like Spain, Klan members were generally delighted at accounts of a national rising intended to smash clerical power, seize Church lands and secularize education. While sections of the American Legion and the patriotic societies were attracted by the Bund’s anti-Communism, these organizations loathed German militarism. The anomalous position of Black anti-semites in such a political context needs no further emphasis.
In practice, tactical collaboration between the various groups was always present, and there were repeated efforts to forge closer alliances, a “local Axis”. Pittsburgh offers a typical observation. In August 1938, “Henry Ringler, an official of the Pittsburgh storm troops [the O.D.], stated . . . . that the Italian Black Shirts of Pittsburgh are extremely cordial to the Bund; and that while they have not yet marched openly with them, they were expected to do so in the future. Ringler also stated that the Silver Shirts in Pittsburgh are cooperating with the Bund in that area” (2). There was a sizable overlap of membership between groups, especially the Bund and the Christian Front, and they shared speakers in a remarkably non-sectarian way. Roy Zachary was quite as likely to appear in a meeting of the Bund or the Anti-Communism Society as in a gathering of his own Silver Shirts. The groups shared propaganda and training facilities, so that the Bund’s Camp Nordland was used by Italian Black Shirts and Ukrainian Brown Shirts as well as the Ku Klux Klan (3). Arthur Derounian’s masquerade as an Italian anti-Semite gave him instant entrée to all sorts of other groups: German, Russian, and Ukrainian Nazis, ultra-nativists and Klan, and isolationists (4). In any other political context, this hearty non-sectarianism would have been admirable.
Counteracting the centrifugal tendencies of the extremist fringe, a number of factors encouraged harmony, above all the shared anti-semitism, which provided an all-encompassing social and political analysis (5). By the late 1930s, the groups were united by a common admiration for Nazi Germany, in much the same way that the successes of the Russian Bolsheviks had earlier cemented disparate Leftist movements into common adherence to Communist doctrines. For the American far Right, Nazi Germany clearly worked as a society, and it superseded other models like Mussolini’s Italy. Nazi iconography and symbolism provided a common rhetorical language for domestic fascists, as indicated by the dissemination of the swastika emblem and the Horst Wessel among nativist, Catholic and Slavic groups. German authorities cultivated loyalty with donations of funds and by generous distributions of propaganda packages. These offered non-sectarian pamphlets and papers from the anti-semites of several nations in addition to official Berlin productions.
The interpenetration of ideas is suggested by the case of Klan Grand Dragon Samuel G. Stouch. He owned many Nazi periodicals and pamphlets, including a German-printed volume of Hitler’s speeches, as well as the works of domestic authors like James B. True, Robert Edmondson and Gerald P. Winrod: he subscribed to Industrial Control Reports, the Edmondson Economic Service and the Defender (6). There were character sketches of the Nazi leadership, and leaflets by the emigré “Union of National Socialist Russians.” Stouch read the Bund’s Deutscher Weckruf, and the newsletter Facts in Review published by Goebbels’ Ministry of Propaganda. He assiduously collected the journals and propaganda sheets of all manner of fringe groups, including Ulster Protestants and Orangemen. Coughlin’s Social Justice was notable by its absence, presumably because of its Catholic stance, but Stouch favored the creation of a “Christian Front” coalition. He appeared on A.C.S. platforms, and corresponded with Philip M. Allen and Bessie Burchett; he was close to Silver Shirt leader Harry Sieber; in mid-1938, Stouch applied to join the Bund (6).
In Search of a Leader
The growth of common ideologies seemed to created a potential for a mass party or common front, and attempts to form a central command were apparent from the mid-decade, usually involving the core triumvirate of Edmondson, True and Deatherage (7). In 1936, Asheville, N.C., was reportedly the setting for a gathering of far Right activists, including Pelley, Winrod, Colonel Sanctuary, and the anti-semitic “trinity” (8).
General George Van Horn Moseley was felt to be highly promising as a national leader on whom all could agree (9). A veteran of the Philippines and world war one, Moseley had served alongside Pershing and MacArthur, and he was a good friend of ex-President Hoover. He first attracted attention for political activism in May 1938, while he still headed the Third Army, based in Atlanta. During the public debate over the prospect of renewed mass immigration, the general asserted that future immigrants should be sterilized as a means of protecting the American race. That October, he again echoed the positions of the far Right when he warned that the country was facing dictatorship. After taking retirement in 1938, he was free to begin a speaking campaign for the purpose of denouncing Jewish power, and its effects on America in the New Deal. As he was not known to be associated with any one of the rightist sects, he was an attractive figure to present to a public contemptuous of individuals like Fritz Kuhn, and he was courted to deliver some major public speeches. These presentations were influenced, if not actually written, by Deatherage (10).
In March 1939, Moseley addressed Philadelphia’s Women’s National Defense Committee, meeting at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel. The formal invitation was issued by the umbrella organization representing some seventy “patriotic” groups in the city, a remarkable gesture in light of Moseley’s well-known recent track record of vituperative and controversial addresses (11). The event took place only a few days after the nationally publicized riot at the West Philadelphia YMCA, while other speakers included Coughlin’s intimate Father Curran. Though the content was likely to be inflammatory, even seditious, sponsors included chapters of such reputable groups as the Sons of the American Revolution, the Colonial Dames, the Military Order of the Loyal Legion, the Dames of the Loyal Legion, and the American Legion. Other lesser known “fraternary” groups represented the descendants of the Continental Congress, of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, the Mayflower Pilgrims, and the veterans of virtually every American military conflict. There were seven chapters of the DAR alone: four from greater Philadelphia (Philadelphia, Germantown, Betsy Ross, Independence Hall), and three from suburban counties (Jephtha Abbott, Valley Forge, and Chester County). Though we do not know the exact process by which the sponsors decided to invite Moseley, we can identify several key individuals within these organizations who had demonstrated sympathy for extremist positions, including Mrs David Good, Philip M. Allen, Judge Bonniwell, and Ralph B. Strassburger (12).
About fifteen hundred people attended the speech, a group that included many Coughlinites and other extreme rightists. Moseley did not disappoint his audience in the vigor of his attack on Roosevelt and his foreign policy. He asserted that “The war now proposed is for the purpose of establishing Jewish hegemony throughout the world,” and “it has the support of the man in the White House.” (13). Facing the prospect of Jewish-Communist tyranny, desperate measures were needed. It was necessary to “[exterminate] from the life of this nation all traces of the New Deal, the principal backers of Communism”, the “New Dealers, Brains Trusters, Communists, CIO’s or what not” (14). The New Deal meant “the promotion of class hatred, exploitation of human misery, the promotion of communism, and the sob appeal”. While he opposed foreign “-isms”, he saw little wrong with Fascism and Nazism: “the finest type of Americanism can breed under their protection as they neutralize the efforts of the Communists”.
Militant action could come from several directions. “If the administration went too far to the Left and asked our military establishment to execute orders which violated all American tradition, that Army would demur” (15). Suggestions of a coup or mutiny were reinforced by Moseley’s specific recommendations for vigilante action: “Your city fathers must have a definite plan for the protection of Philadelphia, with only Americans on guard at all critical points, such as your waterworks, your electric light plant, and in all those facilities which are necessary to enable your police and fire departments to function . . . It is also the lawful duty of your city officials to be prepared at all times to protect your city and the citizens therein, regardless as to the opinion on law and order of the man sitting in the White House at the moment or in your governor’s chair. If the required number of police officers are not available, the plan should include the deputizing of citizens to be called legally in an emergency . . . Remember, it is the first twenty minutes that count”. Moseley’s reference to the governor’s chair was intended to exploit hatred of the recently defeated George Earle. The general was implying that a putsch or vigilante operation would be needed to resist a leftist assault, which might stem either from Roosevelt or a local satrap. Apart from conditions at state-level, Moseley claimed that he was reacting to events in the city of Philadelphia, where the fall of Mayor Wilson had created conditions in which “the Mayor did not dare enter his office for fear of being served with a warrant for murder. His secretary, who is a Jew, is thus in command of the city and certainly this city has the jitters, and rightly so”.” (16)
Moseley’s remarks were cited on Berlin’s World Service as the words of “the well known American general” (17). Within the United States, Moseley was lionized on the Right as a convincing candidate for an American Führer. In May, he was the guest at a meeting of some fifty individuals at a house on Long Island, a meeting attended by representatives of many groups, including Fritz Kuhn, Mrs Good and Wilhelm Kunze (18). Critics were appalled by his speech, coming so soon after fifth columns and putsches had been prominently reported in news from Austria, Spain and the Sudetenland. There were calls for Moseley’s court-martial, and he faced a lengthy and unnerving interrogation before the Dies Committee that May (19). He was condemned by numerous patriotic organizations, including the head of the American Legion in Pennsylvania, who was embarrassed by the role of some chapters in sponsoring the presentation (20).
Another potential unity figure was Father Coughlin, who attracted support from a number of groups. In the Fall of 1939, an anti-fascist activist in Pittsburgh warned of the danger of “Coughlin our next Führer, with Reynolds, Moseley, Deatherage etc our Goebbels and Goering” (21). However, Coughlin’s Catholic following remained a stumbling block for nativists like the Klan, and by 1940 this had become the outstanding issue preventing a broader coalition. The two sides were brought together by the eirenic efforts of Edward James Smythe of the “Protestant War Veterans’ Association”. He had recently declared that the Catholic church was “a tricky proposition” and that “We, like Hitler, believe that the Roman church should be driven out of political life and out of state affairs” (22). However, Smythe joined Coughlinite protests and demonstrations, and it was through his efforts that in August 1940, the Bund and the Klan allied to promote a “monster anti-war pro-American mass meeting” at Camp Nordland, where 3,500 militants gathered under a flaming cross. The two groups held joint paramilitary exercises, and Stouch’s Klan predecessor Arthur Bell was portrayed shaking hands with uniformed O D leaders. The Bund’s vice-president declared that “The principles of the Bund and the principles of the Klan are the same” (23). There were also representatives of the mainly Catholic movements, the Christian Front and the Christian Mobilizers, who remained patient while Klan speakers lapsed into their familiar invective against “Romanism” and “dumb ring-kissers.” (24).
By 1940, such promising gestures were taking place in a delicate political environment. In response to unflattering attention from Congress and the media, the Bund had been virtually forced underground, and the overt display of sympathy for foreign dictatorships had become controversial. While the Christian Front had some success in assuming the role of a purely domestic group, its violence created public fear and hostility, and a law enforcement reaction that culminated in the January arrests. Left and liberal groups were now taking the fascist threat very seriously, and activist newsletters and magazines now made investigations and exposés freely available to the mainstream press. Intense publicity made it more difficult for Rightists to operate freely, at exactly the time that the foreign situation demanded their involvement.
However, new opportunities raised the prospect that the extremists might still be able to secure a mass audience for their views. The intervention issue was central to national politics from the Fall of 1939, with the lifting of the arms embargo, and subsequent debates over the supply of weapons to Britain, and the Lend-Lease debate of early 1941 (25). Isolationism was the perfect unity issue for the rightist groups themselves, a cause on which all sides could agree. All concurred that pressure for war stemmed from Jewish influence, and thus anti-war sentiment could be mobilized in anti-semitic and anti-Communist directions. Philadelphia Bund leader Sigmund von Bosse framed the war question quite simply: “The main lineup is not democracy versus fascism, but fascism versus Communism, and here our choice is clear” (26). The same themes pervaded Moseley’s speech at the Bellevue Stratford. Christian Front leaflets in Philadelphia advised “Keep America Out of War. Rosenvelt [sic] and his Jewish supporters are trying to have Christians fight their battles” (27). In the Fall of 1939, Christian Front units in Pittsburgh were mobilizing telegrams and letters to oppose repeal of the Neutrality Act. The targets of the alleged Front conspiracy in New York city included those Congressmen who voted for repeal of the arms embargo (28).
From this perspective, Lend-Lease was nothing short of “treachery”, leaving the United States “as helpless as Lenin could have wished” (29). To quote Bessie Burchett, “The men who might defend their homes against communists are being drafted, some are being sent out of the country while locust hordes of aliens are still coming in to take their jobs . . . . Is it not significant that the men who have rushed England into this suicidal war are predominantly not of Anglo-Saxon stock? And that in our own Administration, the men who are pushing us relentlessly towards the same bottomless abyss are not of English or traditional American blood?” (30). This foreshadowed the ruin or extermination of ”the white race, white Christian civilization” (33). The “Draft Bill” was a “Dictator Bill” (31). Roosevelt was plotting to abdicate American sovereignty to British imperial and financial suzerainty (32). Russian entry into the war in June 1941 made matters starker: “If we had only kept clear of England’s war, we should now be clear of England’s evil ally” (33). All this was the consequence of ignoring “the expert advice of our great Colonel Lindbergh” (34).
Moseley, Burchett and von Bosse were normally beyond the pale of acceptable political debate, but in this case their views were echoing those of many mainstream Republicans and conservatives. Conservatives too linked war fears to opposition to the New Deal, and charged that the Roosevelt administration would draw the nation into overseas adventures to distract attention from internal problems. In February 1940, when John M. Flynn made his Presidential address to the P.M.A., he argued that “every major move that the president has made during the last several weeks has been an obvious part of a palpable plan to divert public attention from the vital issues which face the people of this country”(35). He hoped that this was an issue on which the administration could be restrained, “for the American people unitedly have served notice that they are determined to keep out of the war in Europe”. Otherwise, “the President would, consciously or unconsciously, drag us into war”(36).
Philadelphia Congressman Gartner indicated the sentiment of his Republican constituency when he declared in September 1939 that his mail was running a hundred to one against any alteration in the Neutrality Act. At a mass neutrality meeting, he declared that the administration was planning a repeat of the scenario that had proved so successful in 1917. American loans would be needed to maintain war production in the United States, “and then we’ll have to go to war to save the people who owe us that money . . . not only American sympathies but American financial interests will become dedicated to an Allied victory” (37). Governor James urged that America’s policy should “not only be one of isolation but also one of insulation”. In October, Senator Davis told the Philadelphia German Day commemoration that “In effect, we are urged to replace our present form of government with a centralized military government, in behalf of the age-old quarrels of the rival imperialisms of the Old World” (38). Other Republican politicians were equally concerned. In June 1939, two conservative Pennsylvania Congressmen appeared on the executive board of Hamilton Fish’s isolationist “Citizens’ National Keep America Out of War Committee”. These were J. William Ditter, from Montgomery County; and Robert J. Corbett, from the 30th District in the Pittsburgh area (39). In June 1940, Philadelphia Baptist leader Daniel A. Poling wrote of the nation’s crying need to stay out of war as the only means of preserving democracy (40).
Initially, the American Legion was another focus of anti-war sentiment. In 1940, the department convention resolved that “propaganda emanating from the warring nations will have a tendency to develop un-neutrality on our part. . . . Our post proposes that the Legion use its strength and influence to promote and encourage an aggressive counter education program” (41). Pittsburgh posts claimed an upsurge of support as a direct consequence of their neutrality campaign. Smaller veterans’ groups expressed similar views, and in June 1940 the state convention of the Order of the Purple Heart declared opposition to loans or aid to Britain (42). This attitude probably changed over the next year, or at least the interventionists gained the upper hand, but veterans’ groups were by no means as united as the statements of the national organization might suggest (43).
Such opinions had a widespread potential appeal in an ethnically diverse state like Pennsylvania, where there were large communities with little reason to favor Roosevelt’s foreign policy, or his obvious tilt towards the Allies. Apart from the Germans, Italians, and Irish, Ukrainians and Lithuanians had a comparable hatred for the Soviet regime which entered the war in 1941. This event caused serious discontent among conservative Catholics who, though perhaps reconciled to aiding Britain, recoiled at American collaboration with the Communist regime.
Anti-war sentiments were common in the Republican Party at national level, and it was at the 1940 party convention in Philadelphia that R. Douglas Stuart formed the idea of the America First Committee (AFC) an umbrella organization to keep the United States out of war (44). This organization was much maligned at the time as a cover for pro-Axis sentiment, but the overwhelming majority of members had no sympathy wheatever for fascist causes (45). The movement as a whole addressed such fundamental issues as the proper Constitutional role of the presidency in matters of foreign policy, as well as the ethnic basis of political power, and the degree to which the nation had liberated itself from a European and specifically British political orientation. As the Weckruf’s masthead periodically declared, “The USA is not a ‘British’ Nation”. Nor, in retrospect, is it acceptable simply to dismiss the authentic fears about the potential carnage of war, which given technological advances, seemed likely far to exceed the horrors of 1917-18. One did not need to be a crypto-Nazi to oppose any but a defensive war, nor to see Roosevelt’s international policies as reckless buccaneering cynically designed to provoke a war contrary to the overwhelming weight of public opinion.
America First was officially established in September 1940, and was funded by sizable corporate donations. It ultimately claimed a membership approaching 800,000, including conservatives but also liberals, religious leaders and pacifists (46). Amos Pinchot was one of many former Progressives in the leadership (47). The Philadelphia chapter of America First was under the highly “proper” chairmanship of attorney Isaac A. Pennypacker, nephew of the earlier governor Pennypacker, and law partner of former Senator George Wharton Pepper. He was also a leading member of Pennsylvania’s Sons of the Revolution (48). Another popular speaker in Philadelphia was former Marine General Smedley K. Butler, who angrily rejected charges of any association with racist groups like the Christian Front, and whose earlier revelations about rightist conspiracies had made him a folk-hero on the Left (49). Ex-Senator David A. Reed was “prime mover” in the Pittsburgh group. Both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh produced thriving chapters, including members prominent in Republican party politics, though Pittsburgh in particular attempted to broaden its left-labor appeal (50). Over the next year, both cities played host to isolationist leaders, including Hamilton Fish, Philip LaFollette, Jacob Thorkelson, Charles Tobey and Verne Marshall (51). Senator Gerald P. Nye was actually addressing an America First rally in Pittsburgh on December 7th, 1941, when the news broke of the attack on Pearl Harbor (52).
The political passions stirred by the isolationism issue are illustrated by the controversy which occurred in Philadelphia in May 1941, when Charles Lindbergh was billed to appear at an AFC rally in Philadelphia, initially scheduled at the Academy of Music (53). However, the Academy refused to rent its auditorium because of the danger of attendance by Nazi and Coughlinite subversives, who had previously disrupted “tolerance” gatherings at this venue (54). The Academy had no wish to encourage a mob of “haters of England and lovers of Germany”, especially at a time when the British cause was in such apparent danger: news headlines at this time were full of the Allied disaster in Crete, and the sea battles which claimed the battleships Hood and Bismarck. The Christian Front disturbances of 1939 had left Philadelphia sensitive about the danger from “lovers of Germany”, and advertising for the May rally was refused by radio stations KYW and WCAU, and by the mass transit corporation PTC (55).
Lindbergh’s speech was rescheduled at the Arena, where it proceeded with a distinguished body of speakers and platform guests that included Massachusetts Senator David Walsh, novelist Kathleen Norris, and Lulu Wheeler, the wife of Senator Burton K. Wheeler (56). The meeting attracted an audience of some sixteen thousand, several thousand of whom listened outside in pouring rain (57). This was in its own right impressive testimony to the degree of public involvement in the ongoing debate, but only the previous night a rival “Save Freedom Rally” in the city had drawn twelve thousand to hear pro-Allied speakers like Ambassador Bullitt and Fiorello La Guardia (58). As there would presumably have been little overlap between the two crowds, that means that some 28,000 Philadelphians took the trouble to participate in the continuing national debate.
America First had great potential as long as it maintained its character as a mainstream pressure group, but it was discredited by the support it received from anti-semitic extremists (59). The extreme Right had to tread a rhetorical tightrope, exploiting isolationist sentiment to the full and employing it as an ideological vehicle, while at the same time refraining from any suggestion that their primary goals were pro-Axis and unpatriotic. They were rarely successful. The great Lindbergh rally at the Arena was at first sight a patriotic gathering of concerned Americans, but Lindbergh’s call for “new leadership” in America was viewed as potentially seditious (60). Moreover, “the hall was packed with members of native fascist, anti-semitic organizations”, with reserved sections for leaders of the Christian Front, the Bund and other German organizations (61). The Philadelphia Record specifically remarked on the attendance of German-American activists Sigmund von Bosse and William Schmidt, Ku Klux Klan leaders Frank Fite and his wife, and a gaggle of Coughlinite Irish priests. Also present was the head of the Hamburg-American line, generally regarded as an arm of German intelligence (62). There were shouted slogans of “Impeach Roosevelt” and “Are we going to let the Jews run this country?” (63).
Reports of this extremist presence in the Philadelphia press damaged the anti-war cause. Even the Philadelphia Inquirer, no friend of Roosevelt, chose a suggestively Nazi-tinged word when it headlined that “16,000 Hail Lindbergh Here” (my emphasis) (64). The Philadelphia Record published a cartoon entitled “An Appreciative Audience”, showing Lindbergh’s speech being heard by a beaming trio of Hitler, Goering and Goebbels (65). Lindbergh was tainted with fascist sympathies long before his notorious anti-Jewish outburst in Des Moines that September (66).
Similarly embarrassing were accounts of the penetration of local America First branches by outright fascists and anti-semites, especially after Father Coughlin commended the movement. The committee of the Philadelphia chapter included Kern Dodge, the associate of the Anti-Communism Society, while Philip M. Allen wrote to Amos Pinchot expressing full support for the work of America First: “everything you write that I’ve seen finds me in such enthusiastic agreement . . . Keep up the splendid work!” (67). In West Philadelphia, the America First organization was run by Mrs Joseph Gallagher, an “active worker” in Coughlinite and other extremist groups (68). Bessie Burchett joined her ”Mothers and Daughters of Philadelphia”, and in October 1941, the group earned notoriety by singing the Horst Wessel at a meeting (69). The Coughlinite “Mothers of America” picketed pro-Allied rallies, bearing placards declaring “No Convoys-No AEF” (70). Another America First leader in Philadelphia was Edith Scott, who extended a membership invitation to the women of a local Nazi organization. Bertha Weber used Philadelphia’s “National Legion of Mothers” as a vehicle to support America First’s neutrality campaign, while at the same time forging close ties with the local Bund (71). In Pittsburgh, a “group of the less desirable Coughlinites” was prominent in the AFC chapter until being expelled en masse in the Fall of 1941 (72). The situation was reminiscent of Brooklyn, where the local chapter was “little more than the Christian Front by another name” (73). Philadelphia rally speaker Senator Walsh was a friend of Coughlin’s intimate, Father Curran (74).
During 1940 and 1941, the old activists of the Anti-Communism Society and the Christian Front focused their rhetoric on the isolationist cause (75). In the Summer of 1940, Thomas Blisard and the C.D.C.R. led a delegation to Washington to protest changes in the Neutrality Act (76). In September 1941, some three hundred attended a “Mothers’ meeting” organized by Joseph Gallagher and Bessie Burchett at the Bethe Bellevue Stratford to protest Lend-Lease, a law “giving our armaments, clothes, food, money and our men to the British; and for what?” Britain herself was a parasite, unwilling to spare its own riches: “Why don’t they give up more of their own wealth? But no, they want ours, and all for nothing”. Bessie Burchett asserted that “Roosevelt is nothing but a Charlie McCarthy because he is nothing but a stooge, even a stooge would know he is used as a stooge” (77).
In the same months, Bund and A. C. S. leader Herbert L. Smith was organizing protests against “Bundles for Britain” and picketing the British consulate. In a significant juxtaposition, he wrote in May that “the anti-war and anti-J[ewish] movement is getting stronger all the time” (78). By that Summer, the Hour listed Smith as one of the most active disseminators of German-produced propaganda in Philadelphia (79). Smith and his colleagues were frequent visitors to the German and Italian consulates in Philadelphia, where they acquired large supplies of free literature. Even after American entry into war, Smith stubbornly continued to hold the Jews responsible for conflict: “Who are the warmongers? Lindbergh told you who they were. Father Coughlin told you who they were. Edmondson has told you” (80).
The isolationist movement was made obsolete by the events of war, as by 1940, European events raised the prospect that the United States might soon have to encounter alone a Germany seeking world domination. Most Americans had by this stage decided that the Axis powers were to blame for the war (81). In 1940, even a supporter of Irish Republicanism like Congressman McGranery spoke in the House about the possibly subversive ties of Hamilton Fish: McGranery voted for Lend-Lease the following March (82). In May 1941, Philadelphia’s Irish Democratic leader John Kelly was one of the organizers of the anti-Lindbergh “Save Freedom Rally”. American military involvement increased sharply during 1941, with growing naval cooperation with Great Britain, with the rearmament campaign, and the introduction of peacetime conscription (83). Vicariously at least, the United States was in all essentials a combatant power for most of 1941.
The ideological impact of war is suggested by the virtual collapse of the Ku Klux Klan in the aftermath of the Camp Nordland meeting. For some time, there had been intense political debate in the old Klan groups in Pennsylvania, especially in the "Rescue" klavern no. 311 in Wilkes-Barre. This was the scene of controversy between pro-Germans like Paul Winter and the more moderate ultra-patriots like Lewis W. Button (84). With war imminent, Winter engaged in what increasingly appeared to be sedition: “In every speech he delivered he showed favoritism for Germany. We feel that our favorite is and should be the United States of America. He claims too that the United States is his first love, but he certainly does not show it . . . [he] has boasted to at least two of our members that he belongs to a German organization whose headquarters are in Germany” (85). His activities horrified the "Americanist" faction of the Klan, as “his stand towards Nazi Germany was doing the Klan a great deal of harm”, but he was not unique. The Nazi faction was also dominant in the Philadelphia klaverns headed by Samuel Stouch, and Philip M. Allen of the Anti-Communism Society urged Stouch not to apologize for the Nordland meetings: “God knows we need them [the Bund and the Klan] these days” (86).
The Camp Nordland incident made the schism within the Klan irreparable, and Stouch was directly implicated as New Jersey fell within his three-state realm. Lewis Button led the "Rescue" klavern out of the Klan, and denounced the "disgusting debacle from true Americanism . . . . Wrong rules the Klan, and waiting justice sleeps.” In turn, Winter's pro-German clique expelled Button from the group: we still have the letters of both men, appealing to Stouch for support (87). The Fiery Cross denounced the Nordland meeting for acts which had “shocked and horrified the nation”, and urged that the whole affair be referred to the Dies Committee. It condemned Europe’s dictators, not least for their suppression of the Masonic orders (88).
The Klan had no option but to purge the leaders who had arranged the entente with the Bund, but it was too late to prevent remaining klaverns from falling apart across the region. In Stouch’s New Jersey territories, “Americanist” Klansmen were in schism from “Hitler’s Nazi henchmen.” (89). In October 1940, it was presumably a "patriotic" Klan faction who burgled Stouch’s Germantown home and appropriated the complete Klan archives dating back to the early 1920s, “several hundred pounds of material”. They handed this embarrassing material over to the State Police, to help them build a full list of likely traitors and fifth-columnists. In June 1941, the Pennsylvania State Police noted that the stolen Klan archives would be a useful source in case the “Legion of Death” became as active as the “Black Legion” had some years ago. By the end of 1941, the Klan was unable to find a newspaper that would advertise its meetings, even in a once-safe haven as loyal as Uniontown (90).
The Mothers’ Movement
For some Rightist groups, the coming of war not only faild to dampen their ardor, it actually opened a new range of propaganda opportunities. They exploited tensions resulting from the war, notably hostility towards Jews who were supposedly failing to participate fully in the struggle. The most influential of the continuing groups was the “Mothers’ Movement”, a confederation of local societies, variously titled the “Crusading Mothers of America”, “United Mothers of Cleveland”, the “Mothers and Daughters of Philadelphia”, “We, the Mothers”, and “We, the Mothers, Mobilize for America”. The movement claimed to represent the collective interests of American mothers whose sons were placed at risk in foreign wars.
This was an ironic reversal of the customary fascist use of the rhetoric of motherhood, which exalted women’s role in producing children to serve the fatherland in war and peace. Conversely, it was on this occasion leftist and liberal critics who employed traditional anti-feminist and anti-suffragette rhetoric against Rightist women, who were derided as “the thundering herd”, “frowsy, belligerent . . . very poor and ignorant . . . These poor women must have been hirelings of someone”. The Mothers were condemned for their unfeminine aggression, and told condescendingly that their authentic feminine role was at home, caring for their families. A typical jibe suggested that if these were indeed the Mothers of America, one trembled for the future of the race: other critics asked whether such old and unattractive women could indeed be mothers (91). On both sides, the isolationist debate produced odd alliances and arguments.
Like local Communists, Philadelphia anti-semitic movements had long had a substantial female membership, and in 1939 it was noted that the attendance at A.C.S. meetings was often equally divided between men and women (92). In late 1939, Father Coughlin announced the creation of a “National League of Mothers”. That November, the “Mothers of America” invaded the US Capitol at the time of the neutrality debates, blaming Jewish influence for the perceived American drift to war (93). In the fall of 1940 a “Mothers’ March on Washington” was planned to urge the impeachment of President Roosevelt (94). Philadelphia’s contingent was led by Catherine Veronica Brown of Darby, in Delaware County, who took the opportunity to visit the Japanese and German embassies to apologize for American provocations, and to plead for peace (95).
Though initial “Momist” claims were pacifist and isolationist, groups were opposed specifically to wars carried out against the Axis, and in their view the world’s chief war-mongers comprised the sinister alliance of Roosevelt, the British government, and the Jewish financial conspiracy (96). National leaders included extreme rightists like Robert Edmondson, Elizabeth Dilling and Philadelphia’s Mrs. David Good (97). Local organizers had been active in the Christian Front and related groups, and Catherine V. Brown was one of many Catholics in the Mothers’ leadership.
The campaign gained momentum on the outbreak of war, with its appeal to women whose sons and husbands were absent in the armed forces. In 1945, the “Mothers’ Movement” in Philadelphia was said to be “fast turning the City of Brotherly Love into the City of Motherly Hate”. The main group was led by Catherine V. Brown and Lillian Parks (98). Beginning as the “Crusading Mothers”, this group soon adopted a number of aliases, including the “Current Events Club” and the “National Blue Star Mothers of Pennsylvania”, the latter title deliberately intended to cause confusion with reputable “Blue Star Mother” groups (99). The Washington representative of the Philadelphia unit was Agnes Waters, a well-known Coughlinite and anti-semitic lobbyist, who successively campaigned against causes like Lend-Lease and the invasion of Normandy (100). Catherine V. Brown herself was a close friend of Gerald L. K. Smith (101). This was for her a “Jew war”, “the Jew international bankers’ war”, started by “Jew Roosevelt” to destroy Christian civilization and set up a Communist World Government. The group circulated “vicious defeatist leaflets” parodying pro-Allied slogans like “Bundles for Britain” (102). One depicted a corpse, and asked women “Will this bundle be your son?” (103).
The National Blue Star and other “Mothers” groups tracked families whose members had become military casualties, and then wrote the relatives to explain that these misfortunes were the result of schemes by Jewish or British interests, of the “Jew bankers and Washington bureaucrats their sons and husbands died for” (104). One example, sent in error to a Jewish mother, asked “How long are we going to permit our men to be slain to save the Jewish empires all over the world? Did you know that certain Jews by the hundreds are being trained to follow the armies and to be the ARMY OF OCCUPATION (sic), with all the prostrated nations under their control” (105). The letter-writing campaign continued at least until the German surrender in 1945.
Leaflets distributed on the streets were addressed to “Christian Mothers”. Citing the most recent total for US casualties, they asked “Is this the price you are paying for Jewish revenge?” . . . ”Must we have another million Christian casualties just to make Stalin the world dictator instead of Churchill or Roosevelt?” (106). “National Blue Star” literature claimed that the war was fought for Jewish interests, and constituted a “Jew Holy War”, in which gullible Christians served as footsoldiers. Jews rarely served in the armed forces, and the only Gentiles who received preferential treatment were Blacks, whose units had received special warning of Axis assaults (107). The situation clearly bore out the warnings of the movement’s greatest hero, Congressman McFadden, about the conspiratorial Zionist elite.
A Fifth Column?
In May 1940, Roosevelt warned in a radio speech of “the Trojan Horse. The Fifth Column that betrays a nation unprepared for treachery. Spies, saboteurs and traitors” (108). Though anti-war and pro-Axis propaganda undoubtedly continued through the war years, it is not clear how far right wing extremists were either willing or able to make good on the vocal threats they undoubtedly did make about armed revolution or terrorism in the United States. Was there a genuine fifth column?
The authorities took the danger seriously. In 1939, for example, the king and queen of England visited Canada and the United States. The royal couple were to travel from the Midwest to the East Coast by train, and it was believed that the German government had mounted an assassination conspiracy, involving I.R.A. activists led by Sean Russell and Joseph McGarrity (109). Though the train was only intended to pass through Pennsylvania, the State Police were conscientious about surveillance of the route, and the preparations for this visit were far more intense than those for any other celebrity for decades before or since. Though the mobilization of police and military personnel does not seem excessive in retrospect, it was amazing by contemporary standards. As the royal train made its way, Pennsylvania State Police and National Guard mobilized over a thousand officers. Every bridge and culvert was placed under constant guard, with officers on the alert “for the throwing of a bomb or hand grenade by someone standing in a crowd or someone passing in an automobile . . . for someone sniping from a hillside with a rifle or someone in a crowd firing at the trains . . . placing a charge of explosives on or under any bridge or subway” (110).
If fascist groups were planning serious subversive activity, then Pennsylvania was vulnerable as a critical center of the military build-up in 1940-41, and of subsequent war production. At the height of the war, the Philadelphia Navy Yard alone would employ seventy thousand workers: fifty fighting ships were built here, and over a thousand more were repaired or serviced. For potential saboteurs, Philadelphia also offered the Frankford Arsenal, the Quartermaster Depot and the Baldwin Locomotive Works. Elsewhere in the state there were Ordnance Works near Williamsport and Meadville, the Navy supply depot at Mechanicsburg; the Letterkenny Ordnance Depot, and the Sun shipyards at Chester. By mid-1940, war production was in full swing in a dozen middle-sized Pennsylvania cities, including York, Lancaster and Pottstown (111).
Would the munitions industries of the Delaware Valley be subjected to clandestine attacks of the sort believed to have disrupted American production prior to the first world war, symbolized by such incidents as the Kingsland and Black Tom explosions? (112) These attacks were cited as likely precedents for German clandestine warfare in the future war (113). In December 1939, the FBI announced the strengthening of the Philadelphia office in order to combat potential tampering with shipping along the Delaware waterfront (114). The new Pennsylvania Turnpike was seen as another obvious target: in September 1939 a dynamite attack came close to destroying a bridge in Bedford County. Charges of railroad sabotage and line-tampering were numerous through 1940, and there was an upsurge in patriotic vigilante societies seeking to prevent such activities (115).
Throughout the war, critics complained that anti-semitic and anti-war leaflets were distributed freely in Philadelphia within sight of some of the nation’s most sensitive defense installations, and this in a city with some ninety thousand registered aliens (116). Coincidentally or otherwise, Camp Deutschhorst was located close to the factory manufacturing gauges for the armed forces, and Bund rallies here were said to have attracted workers from the Navy Yard and the Frankford Arsenal (117). A Bundist said to be a member “of nearly every German club in Philadelphia”, was employed at a factory making landing gears for bomber aircraft. Another man, an active official in the Kyffhäuserbund, worked for the aircraft department of a Philadelphia defense plant (118).
Rumors about sabotage at military plants had been circulating for years, and in 1938 there was an abortive investigation of possible tampering with shell production at the Frankford Arsenal (119). As war grew more likely, claims about fifth column activity became abundant, with some sources depicting as suspicious virtually every fire and explosion that could be linked, however tenuously, to the war effort. Sayers and Kahn report dozens of such incidents in Pennsylvania between 1940 and 1942 (120). In reality, all industrial facilities will have a quota of accidents, and not all acts of sabotage are politically motivated. However, some events appeared more plausible than others, such as the three near-simultaneous explosions in munitions plants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, a coincidence which as Secretary of War Stimson remarked “might suggest Teutonic efficiency” (121). In 1940, the Philadelphia papers headlined a series of sabotage attempts at the Sun Shipyards in Chester (122). In 1941, there were fires in the Philadelphia Navy Yards and the Frankford Arsenal (123). The Philadelphia Yards had been mentioned as a specific target of the Christian Front plotters arrested in January 1940 (124). While the FBI denied that sabotage played a role in any of the incidents, some modern writers have asserted that German rings were active, operating through either Ukrainian or Irish agents (125)
The height of concern about sabotage activity came in June 1942, with the arrest of eight German agents landed by submarine in Florida and on Long Island. Most of the group had spent time in America, and had been Bund members. They were assigned a number of critical military targets, which in Pennsylvania included a Philadelphia cryolite plant producing the materials essential for the manufacture of aluminum. Also listed was the horseshoe curve near Altoona, the destruction of which would paralyze the production and transportation of coal, and delay troop movements to the East Coast. The scheme bore the appropriately Pennsylvania-oriented name of Operation Pastorius (126).
Though the German Nazis and Italian Fascists were the best-publicized among the various rightist movements, other ethnically-based organizations were available to enemy intelligence services. Between 1940 and 1942, a number of eastern European groups attracted intense concern, American representatives of minority nationalities like the Lithuanians and Croats, who had allied with the Axis powers to secure their national aspirations (127). Pittsburgh had a Croat nationalist community that welcomed the German overthrow of the Yugoslav state in 1941, and a leading activist here was Ante Doshen, publisher of the ultra-Rightist journal journal American Slav (128). White Russian emigrés were mobilized by the pro-Nazi Prince Anastase Vonsiatsky (129).
Much the most important group was the Ukrainians, who were well represented in Pennsylvania (130). In 1930, some six thousand foreign-born Pennsylvanians claimed Ukrainian as their mother tongue, with the largest communities in Philadelphia (two thousand), Pittsburgh (one thousand) and Scranton (seven hundred). There was also a thriving cultural network, with several newspapers and magazines. Philadelphia was the center of the Ukrainian Catholic church in North America, and there were some 24 Ukrainian parishes in and around Pittsburgh, both Catholic and Orthodox (131).
Most Ukrainian expatriates were militantly anti-Communist. During the 1930s, rightist sentiment had been exploited by new groups closely affiliated with German Abwehr intelligence, for whom they undertook terrorist attacks against Polish and Soviet targets. These movements included the OUN, Organizace Ukrajinska Nacionalistov, headquartered in Rome, and the pro-Nazi ODWU, the Organization for the Rebirth of the Ukraine (132). All were active in the United States in the 1930s, where ODWU militants were involved in kidnappings in New York city. Pennsylvania provided a critical power base, and until 1938, the president of ODWU in the United States was Gregory Herman, of Wilkes-Barre, an officer in the US Army Reserve (133). As with the Germans and Italians, fascist groups infiltrated and sought to annex older-established nationalist and cultural groups, especially the Ukrainian Nationalist Association. Another target was the Ukrainian Catholic church, which was influenced by a pro-ODWU priest named Monsignor Ivan Buchko, who declared that the organization represented “the flower of the Ukrainian nation”. By 1940, some publications of the Ukrainian diocese of Philadelphia were expressing support for ODWU positions. After the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, the Philadelphia Ukrainian paper America called for the establishment of a pro-Nazi Ukrainian regime headed by one of the exile organizations (134) .
Ukrainians participated in the emerging Brown Front. In Chicago in 1938, “Ukrainians in greenish-brown shirts marched with white- and silver-shirted American Nazis at the Bund’s German Day celebration” (135). A critical go-between was the White Russian leader Vonsiatsky, who was close to native American fascist leaders like Pelley, Edmondson, and Henry Allen, and was also linked to Wilhelm Kunze (136). Vonsiatsky’s contact to the Ukrainian fascists was Alexei Pelypenko, the covert FBI informant (137). Also linking German and Ukrainian interests was Captain Leonid Klimenko, “a fascist Ukrainian emissary from the German war office” with extensive contacts in and around Pittsburgh (138).
At least from 1934, the Ukrainian fascists actively organized for violent confrontation and sabotage in the United States. Initially, this was undertaken under the guise of an “Ukrainian Aviation School” in New York state. Pittsburgh was the movement’s center of weapons training, and also for espionage activity that included photographing industrial facilities throughout Pennsylvania. In early 1941, a US army captain of Pennsylvania Ukrainian origins was court-martialled for betraying information to a foreign agent (139). The Hour warned that Ukrainian fifth columnists were spreading across the country, targeting centers like “virtually the whole of Pittsburgh, with its mills, railroad yards and river barges” (140). In March 1941, Ukrainians were suspected of having sabotaged the Pennsylvania Railroad’s Cleveland to Pittsburgh express train, which crashed near Ambridge in Beaver County, killing five (141). Railroad authorities were certain that tampering had been involved, but the political motive was less apparent. The Hour reported that the real target had been another train which had passed the same spot some minutes earlier, carrying over forty members of a Soviet delegation (142).
The Ukrainian networks offered a potential subversive threat quite comparable that of any of the more conspicuous groups, though here too fascist influence was waning before the outbreak of war. Within the Ukrainian Catholic church, pro-fascist activities were prohibited by Philadelphia’s Bishop Constantine Bohachewsky, who reprimanded the pro-ODWU Buchko (143). Buchko left the US in late 1941 (144). In the Fall of 1940, ODWU was condemned by the mass membership Ukrainian fraternal associations like the Workingman’s Association of Scranton (145), the National Mutual Aid Society of Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia’s Provident Association, as well as the influential Scranton paper Narodna Volya (146). By the end of the year, the Scranton and Philadelphia fraternal groups were demanding the exclusion of fascist sympathizers from future Ukrainian-American gatherings (147). In 1941, the fascist Hetman organization abandoned its US operations, and ODWU dissolved into several factions (148).
The Sedition Trials
When war broke out, there were extensive raids on German and Italian offices, shops and social clubs, and signs of an incipient panic reminiscent of that in 1917. In the week following Pearl Harbor, perhaps three thousand Germans and German agents were arrested and interned nationwide, and federal authorities in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh also seized Italian and Japanese aliens. Two hundred “potentially dangerous aliens” were interned at the nearby Detention Center in Gloucester, NJ (149). The American Legion helped find and intern Bund sympathizers, and maintain surveillance on suspected Nazis (150). Camp Deutschhorst was a prime target for an FBI raid (151). The atmosphere of the times is suggested by the letter of a German from Emmaus, PA., to the Philadelphia Weckruf: “Kindly do not send the paper anymore, as this is a small town, and we have had enough trouble and more as always since we’re up here” (152). To forestall a witch-hunt, the German-American League of Culture orchestrated a patriotic demonstration in Philadelphia on December 12, pledging full support for the war effort. The main spokesman was Raymond Raff, whose impeccable anti-Nazi credentials gave credibility to patriotic declarations (153). Even the Herold urged German-Americans to unite “100 percent for America. At a time like this, there can only be one country for all - America” (154).
Law enforcement authorities arrested prominent rightists as real or potential spies and fifth columnists. Kunze fled to Mexico, hoping to be picked up by a German submarine. However, he was arrested and extradited in 1942, to serve most of the following decade in a federal penitentiary (155). The destruction of his ring also involved Vonsiatsky and Pastor Molzahn (156). In late 1942, the FBI arrested several Silver Shirt leaders near New Galilee in Beaver County, including Pelley’s daughter Adelaide Pearson, as well as Victor Hoye, and H. Victor Broenstrupp, who was under indictment for sedition (157). Pennsylvania produced other smaller fry (158) In 1943, Constance Drexel of Philadelphia was indicted for making pro-Axis radio broadcasts from Berlin, together with a list of fellow defendants that included Ezra Pound. Pittsburgh’s pro-German propagandists included a “Gertie from Berlin” who broadcast to American forces in Sicily (159). Pro-Axis propaganda came under attack within the United States, and in April 1942, the federal authorities barred Social Justice from the mails, effectively killing the publication. The Philadelphia Herold was attacked at the same time (160). In response to invasion fears, Roy Zachary and other Silver Shirt leaders were prohibited from residing near the Pacific Coast for the duration of the war.
Sensitivity to rightist plotting raised hopes among liberals and leftists that finally, there would be a real purge of the far Right that would involve a clean sweep of powerful fascist sympathizers. In July 1941, a Grand Jury was convened in the District of Columbia under prosecutor William Power Maloney, with the goal of examining foreign espionage and propaganda in the United States. This body called hundreds of witnesses and explored possible criminal violations as serious as sedition and espionage as well as the failure to register as an agent of a foreign power, and abuses of the Congressional franking privilege. The Jury indicted thirty or so rightists in January 1943, but at this point the removal of Maloney began a controversial series of events that entered the mythology of the Left. One view was that Maloney had been “kicked upstairs” for his excessive zeal in pursuing powerful traitors whose prosecution would be embarrassing (161). A reconstituted Grand Jury pursued the investigation and indicted a somewhat different cast of characters, leading to a notorious sedition trial in 1944 (162).
The defendants included some well known names, including True, Edmondson, Pelley, Deatherage, as well as Lawrence Dennis, Elizabeth Dilling, Joe McWilliams, H. V. Broenstrupp and Edward James Smythe, on a variety of charges concerning the distribution of propaganda intended to undermine the morale of US armed forces. Leftist critics of the prosecution produced a far longer list of those who they believed should have been listed, and who had certainly been investigated as potential targets for prosecution. Most conspicuous among the absentees were Father Coughlin and his leading associates in New York, Boston and Philadelphia, or indeed of anyone from the Christian Front networks. Of all the numerous Pennsylvania activists, the only one indicted was G. W. Kunze. Among groups cited as agents of German propaganda, the glaring omissions included a large majority of the isolationist clubs and leagues, and most of the “Mothers” movements which were becoming the leading force in anti-war agitation. Not only were no Italian Fascist groups or activists prosecuted, but the omission was scarcely mentioned by critics. Nor were Klansmen represented.
The administration was unwilling to explore possible subversive activities by organizations closer to the political mainstream. A singularly delicate issue here was the group of twenty or so isolationist members of the US Senate and House who had cooperated with German-sponsored propaganda and intelligence services, permitting mass mailings of pro-Axis literature to be distributed under their Congressional frank (163). The Left would have liked a roster of sedition defendants to include such political names as Hamilton Fish, Burton K. Wheeler, Robert Reynolds, Gerald Nye, Clare E. Hoffman and (ideally) Charles Lindbergh. In the event, this hope was dashed (164). Subsequent trials focussed not on the most influential leaders of the pre-war Right, but on a second tier of outspoken individuals.
While political fears influenced the selective nature of the prosecutions, federal authorities were nervous about the strength of their cases in such a seldom tried area of law, and the 1940 Christian Front trial in New York city had been a disaster. The lesson would thus be to focus on the strongest and most blatant cases, but even here the sedition trials were unproductive. When the trials finally got under way in 1944, the prosecution cases proved unwieldy and confusing, and were based on the difficult task of attempting to prove lengthy chains of association and influence. Defense lawyers were well prepared, and portrayed the charges as a gross attempt to muzzle free speech and discussion (165). Meanwhile, ultra-conservative politicians like Clare Hoffman and John Rankin were depicting the whole prosecution as a red smear directed by the White House and the CIO, to renew the “fifth column” scare in time for the coming November elections. In this view, prosecutor O. J. Rogge was a tool of prosecutor O. J. Rogge was a tool of a Communist conspiracy which also included fellow travelling puppets like Walter Winchell and John Roy Carlson (166). The case was further complicated by a series of legal decisions during 1944 in which the US Supreme Court overturned unrelated convictions for sedition and espionage, raising questions about the state of the law and the criteria necessary for successful conviction (167). The affair was closed by the untimely death of the judge, and a mistrial was declared. In 1946, the Justice Department dismissed Rogge, who had engaged in what proved a quixotic campaign to reopen the trial, and to include some of the elusive political figures (168).
These anticlimactic events marked the end of the long-feared threat of Nazi subversion within the United States. From the mid-1940s, law enforcement attention turned rather to the alleged threats from the Left, and investigations of the far Right declined sharply. This shift of public attention gives the misleading sense that the movements and opinions described here came to a sudden end with the collapse of the organizational structure, but there was some continuity. While Pearl Harbor marked a catastrophe for the extreme Right, it did not terminate the history of those movements.
Notes to Chapter Eight
(1) Robert E Herzstein, Roosevelt and Hitler (New York: John Wiley, 1994); Geoffrey S. Smith, To Save a Nation: American Counter-Subversives, the New Deal, and the Coming of World War II (New York: Basic, 1973).
(2) Investigation of Un-American Activities (The Dies Committee) (1938-1940), vol. 2, 1215.
(3) Ibid., vol. 2, e.g. p. 1192, 1210.
(4) John Roy Carlson, Under Cover (New York, The World Publishing Co., 1943).
(5) Leonard Dinnerstein, Anti-Semitism in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).
(6) P. S. A., Klan Archives, H. M. Alexander Hartmann to Samuel Stouch, October 3, 1939.
(7) O. John Rogge, The Official German Report (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1961), 208; “The Defendants in the Washington Sedition Trial,” The Facts (Anti-Defamation League), 3(1), January 1948.
(8) Strong, Organized Anti-Semitism, 133-137.
(9) Herzstein, Roosevelt and Hitler, 262-270.
(10) Charles Higham, American Swastika (New York: Doubleday, 1985), 83. The George Van Horn Moseley papers in the Library of Congress contain a substantial corpus of anti-semitic ephemera, as well as extensive evidence of Moseley’s connections with far-right theorists like Winrod, Edmondson, Deatherage, and Reynolds, ties which endured well into the 1950s.
(11) “Legion Leader Asks Patriotic Group to Repudiate Moseley,” Philadelphia Record, March 30, 1939.
(12) Annual Proceedings: Pennsylvania Society of Sons of the Revolution 1934-35 and List of Members (Philadelphia, PA: Society of Sons of the Revolution 1935).
(13) Investigation of Un-American Activities (The Dies Committee) (1938-1940), vol. 5, 3584-85; 3634-38.
(14) Ibid., vol. 5, 3634-35.
(15) Ibid., vol. 5, 3636.
(16) Ibid., vol. 5, 3637. Library of Congress, George Van Horn Moseley papers, Moseley to Tiffany Blake, March 30, 1939.
(17) Rogge, The Official German Report, 285; H. L. Trefousse, Germany and American Neutrality 1939-1941 (New York: Octagon Books, 1969), 46-49.
(18) Investigation of Un-American Activities (The Dies Committee) (1938-1940), vol. 5, 3553-3560.
(19) N. A., Bund Archives, General Records, Box 18, folder 247; Investigation of Un-American Activities (The Dies Committee) (1938-1940), vol. 5, 3545-3704.
(20) “Legion Leader Asks Patriotic Group to Repudiate Moseley,” Philadelphia Record, March 30, 1939.
(21) Annette Thackwell Johnson, “The Christian Front in Pittsburgh,” Equality, November 1939, 30-31.
(22) “Klan-Bund Rally Addressed by Coughlin’s Friend” The Hour, 59, August 24, 1940, 1-2.
(23) Carlson, Under Cover, 153; Marcus, Father Coughlin, 150; “A Wedding at Wedding of Klan and Bund,” Philadelphia Record, August 20, 1940; “The Klan Meets the Bund” Free America and Deutscher Weckruf August 1, 1940; “The Klan Strikes at its Enemies” Free America and Deutscher Weckruf August 15, 1940. For Arthur Bell, see Investigation of Un-American Activities (The Dies Committee) vol. 14, 8307-8313.
(24) Carlson, Under Cover , 152-153.
(25) Kenneth S. Davis, FDR: Into the Storm 1937-1940 (New York: Random House, 1993); Herzstein, Roosevelt and Hitler.
(26) Sager “Swastika Over Philadelphia,” 6.
(27) “Coughlinites in Philadelphia Prepare for Christmas” The Hour, December 9, 1939, 4.
(28) “G-Men Smash Plot to Overthrow US, Murder Congressmen,” Philadelphia Inquirer, January 15, 1940.
(29) Burchett, Education for Destruction, 151.
(30) Ibid., 33.
(31) Ibid., 144.
(32) Ibid., 28-30.
(33) Ibid., 168.
(34) Ibid., 58.
(35) J. Roffe Wike, The Pennsylvania Manufacturers’ Association (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press 1960), 94.
(36) Ibid., 173.
(37) “Gartner’s Mail 100 to 1 for Ban,” Philadelphia Record, September 27, 1939.
(38) “Navy Pioneer Honored,” York Dispatch September 11, 1939; “No Signs of Bund as 2300 Observe German Day Here,” Philadelphia Record, October 7, 1939.
(39) N.A., Bund Archives, Records of Other Organizations, “Isolationist Organizations;” Henry R Hoke, It’s a Secret (New York: Reynal and Hitchcock, 1946).
(40) Gordon Brooks, “The Church vs. War Hysteria,” Equality, September 1940, 11.
(41) Radtke, The History of the Pennsylvania American Legion, 55-56.
(42) Congressional Record, May 1, 1941, 3488.
(43) Pencak For God and Country, 306; compare “Veterans Parade to Freedom Rally,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 29, 1941.
(44) Justin Doenecke, In Danger Undaunted: The Anti-Interventionist Movement of 1940-41 (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1990); Bill Kauffman, America First! Its History, Culture and Politics (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1995); compare “William A. White Forms Group to Aid Allies,” Philadelphia Record, May 20, 1940.
(45) Wayne S. Cole, America First: The Battle Against Intervention 1940-1941 (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin, 1953), 109.
(46) Herzstein, Roosevelt and Hitler, 385-88.
(47) Gifford Pinchot supported repeal of the Neutrality Act: Gifford Pinchot, “We Are Neutral, We Must Stay Neutral,” Philadelphia Record, November 3, 1939.
(48) Cole, America First, 22, 31.
(49) Jules Archer, The Plot to Seize the White House, (New York: Hawthorn, 1973); “War is a Racket, Says Gen. Butler in Armistice Talk,” Philadelphia Record, November 11, 1939.
(50) Cole, America First 171; “War and Peace,” Bulletin Index (Pittsburgh) May 22, 1941. Pittsburgh leftists produced an isolationist paper entitled the Peace-Gazette, a parody on the well-known Post-Gazette.
(51) Investigation of Un-American Activities in the United States. 77th Congress. Executive Hearings 1942, vol. 6, 2517-2526; Michael Sayers, and Albert E. Kahn, Sabotage: The Secret War Against America (New York: Harper 1942), 203; George Britt, The Fifth Column is Here (New York: Wilfred Funk, 1940), 113.
(52) Cole, Ameri
(52) Cole, America First, 264.
(53) “Academy Bars Lindbergh: Flier Will Speak at Arena,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 21, 1941; “Lindy is Refused Use of Academy for Anti-Aid Talk,” Philadelphia Record, May 21, 1941.
(54) “Academy President Says Nazi Pressure Can’t Stop Forums,” Philadelphia Record, July 2, 1939. For earlier conflicts at this venue, see chapter seven. The Academy also stands adjacent to the Bellevue Stratford, scene of Moseley’s rally in 1939.
(55) Social Justice noted the Jewish name of the WCAU executive who refused the advertisements at that station: “Colonel Lindbergh: A Challenge to Philadelphia” Social Justice, June 2, 1941, 6; “Anti-Lindbergh Rally Issues More Tickets Than Isolation Group,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 28, 1941.
(56) Sayers and Kahn, Sabotage, 197-199; “Lindbergh to Speak in America First Rally at Arena Here Tonight,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 29, 1941.
(57) George M. Mawhinney, “British Flee Crete, Nazis Say; 16,000 Hail Lindbergh Here; Says Roosevelt Seeks World Rule by US,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 30, 1941.
(58) “LaGuardia and Bullitt to Address Big Rally Against Appeasement,” Philadelphia Record, May 24, 1941; George M. Mawhinney, “12,000 at Rally Here Roar for US Aid to Defeat Axis Powers,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 29, 1941; Will Brownell and Richard N. Billings, So Close to Greatness: A Biography of William C. Bullitt (New York: Macmillan 1987).
(59) Dinnerstein, Anti-semitism in America, 129; H. L. Trefousse, Germany and American Neutrality 1939-1941 (New York: Octagon Books, 1969), 46-49.
(60) Cole, America First, 179.
(61) Sayers and Kahn, Sabotage, 197-98.
(62) “16,000 Hear Flyer Condemn FDR, Boo Churchill,” Philadelphia Record, May 30, 1941.
(63) Sayers and Kahn, Sabotage, 197-98.
(64) George M. Mawhinney, “British Flee Crete, Nazis Say; 16,000 Hail Lindbergh Here; Says Roosevelt Seeks World Rule by US,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 30, 1941.
(65) “An Appreciative Audience,” Philadelphia Record, May 30, 1941.
(66) Rogge The Official German Record 274-283. Amos Pinchot stirred intense controversy by his defense of Lindbergh following the Des Moines speech: Library of Congress, Amos Pinchot papers, correspondence September/October 1941. The affair had local ramifications: In Williamsport, PA, for example, one active isolationist engaged in a “heated argument” with a local rabbi about the degree to which war fever was whipped up by American Jews (Amos Pinchot papers, L. Shannon to Amos Pinchot, October 15, 1941).
(67) “Academy Bars Lindbergh: Flier Will Speak at Arena,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 21, 1941; Library of Congress, Amos Pinchot papers, Philip M. Allen to Amos Pinchot, Sept 8 1941.
(68) Sayers and Kahn, Sabotage, 219; compare Cole, America First , 131-154.
(69) Investigation of Un-American Activities in the United States. 77th Congress. Executive Hearings 1942, vol. 6, 2543-4; Sayers and Kahn, Sabotage, 219: October 16, 1941.
(70) “Save Freedom Rally Tickets Going Fast,” Philadelphia Record, May 27, 1941.
(71) “Women for the United States of America,” The Facts, 2(1), January 1947, 7-12.
(72) Cole, America First , 138.
(73) Dinnerstein, Anti-Semitism in America, 129; Carlson Under Cover, 253
(74) Hoke, It’s a Secret, 113.
(75) Investigation of Un-American Activities in the United States. 77th Congress. Executive Hearings 1942, vol. 6, 2544-2546.
(76) Ibid., 2619.
(77) Ibid., 2548.
(78) Ibid., 2521-6.
(79) “Milwaukee Nazi Agent Arrested by FBI Linked to Philadelphia Fifth Columnist,” The Hour, 110, August 16, 1941, 1; “Nazi Activity in Philadelphia,” The Hour, 113, September 13, 1941, 1.
(80) Investigation of Un-American Activities in the United States. 77th Congress. Executive Hearings 1942, vol. 6, 2610.
(81) Herzstein, Roosevelt and Hitler, 364-65.
(82) Sayers and Kahn, Sabotage, 164n.
(83) Correlli Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely (New York: Norton, 1991).
(84) Jenkins, “Klan in Pennsylvania,” quoting Pennsylvania Klan archives.
(85) P. S. A., Klan Archives, Lewis W. Button to Samuel Stouch, October 7, 1940.
(86) Investigation of Un-American Activities in the United States. 77th Congress. Executive Hearings 1942, vol. 6, 2588.
(87) P. S. A., Klan Archives, for example “Rescue Klan #311 to J. A. Colescott,” nd, August 1940.
(88) Investigation of Un-American Activities (The Dies Committee) vol. 14, 8251-8331. “Dictators Dissolve Masonic Lodges in Conquered Lands,” Fiery Cross, September-October 1940.
(89) “Klan Officials Removed from Office Following Alleged Klan-Bund Meet” Fiery Cross September-October 1940; P. S. A., Klan Archives, J. A. Colescott to Samuel Stouch, letters of August 20, 21 and 28, 1940.
(90) Investigation of Un-American Activities in the United States. 77th Congress. Executive Hearings 1942, vol. 6, 2925.
(91) Dinnerstein, Anti-Semitism in America, 134. The damning remarks are from Olive Ewing Clapper, Washington Tapestry (New York: Whittlesey House, 1946), 250-252, and from Carlson, Under Cover.
(92) “Daly Pledges Free Speech Before Meeting of ‘Antis’ ” Philadelphia Record, March 17, 1939; Paul Lyons Philadelphia Communists 1936-1956 (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1982), 87; for women in extremist groups, compare Kathleen M. Blee, Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s, (Berkeley: University of California, 1991).
(93) H. L. Trefousse, Germany and American Neutrality 1939-1941 (New York: Octagon Books, 1969), 46-49; Clapper, Washington Tapestry, 250-252.
(94) “More About the Mothers’ March on Washington,” The Hour, October 19, 1940, 2; Investigation of Un-American Activities in the United States. 77th Congress. Executive Hearings 1942 vol. 6, 2648-2652; “Pacifist Women Stage a Hanging,” Philadelphia Record, August 22, 1940.
(95) Investigation of Un-American Activities in the United States. 77th Congress. Executive Hearings 1942 vol. 6.
(96) Emmanuel A. Piller, Time-Bomb (New York: Arco 1945), 109-120.
(97) “More About the Mothers’ March on Washington;” Glen Jeansonne, Gerald L. K. Smith: Minister of Hate (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press 1988), 85.
(98) Piller, Time Bomb; Carlson Under Cover, 509.
(99) The group’s usual venue was the P.O.S. of A. Hall, North Broad Street.
(100) Hoke It’s a Secret, 172-73.
(101) Piller, Time Bomb, 110.
(102) Carlson Under Cover, 509
(103) Investigation of Un-American Activities in the United States. 77th Congress. Executive Hearings 1942 vol. 6, 2652.
(104) Hoke It’s a Secret 172-174, 182.
(105) Piller, Time Bomb, 112.
(106) Ibid., 113-15.
(107) Ibid., 113.
(108) Britt, The Fifth Column is Here, 1.
(109) Higham, American Swastika, 102-116.
(110) P. S. A., RG 30, Pennsylvania State Police, Bureau of Crime and Traffic Law Enforcement, Records of Special Duty Involving Visiting Dignitaries: Visit of the King and Queen of England. One dangerous section of the route lay between Philadelphia and Trenton, “particularly in and through Bristol, PA. Aliens and foreign-born residents are numerous through the entire area and reside in the vicinity of the railroad”: Bristol had a sizable Italian presence.
(111) Klein and Hoogenboom History of Pennsylvania 469; compare “York Pounds Plowshares into Swords and Becomes Major Munitions Center,” Philadelphia Record, June 6, 1940.
(112) Henry Landau, The Enemy Within: The Inside Story of German Sabotage in America (New York: G. P. Putnam's 1937); Britt, The Fifth Column is Here, 5 -7.
(113) Britt, The Fifth Column is Here, 5 -7; Sayers and Kahn, Sabotage.
(114) “Sears to Head G-Men in City,” Philadelphia Record, December 2, 1939; “Waterfront Guarded Against Sabotage Here: All of US on Alert,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 31, 1941.
(115) “Sabotage Suspected,” York Dispatch Sept. 7, 1939; “Troopers Guarding Penna Super-Road,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 10, 1941; “Railway Official Bares Sabotage Along Its Lines,” Philadelphia Record, June 5, 1940. For vigilantism, see A. J. Foglietta, “2500 Volunteers in State Hunting Fifth Columnists,” Philadelphia Record, May 24, 1940; A. J. Foglietta, “State Session of Legion to Ask Draft Speedup,” Philadelphia Record, Aug. 16, 1940; “John Pew Backs Vigilantes Here,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Sept. 6, 1940; “Hyatt Claims 65,000 Members in Vigilantes,” Philadelphia Record, Oct. 11, 1940.
(116) Piller, Time-Bomb.
(117) “Probe Bund Camp at Sellersville” Philadelphia Record, September 7, 1939; “Sellersville Plant Warns it Will Fire All Bund Members,” Philadelphia Record, September 26, 1939; “Dies Agents Find Nazis and Reds in Navy Yard Here,” Philadelphia Record, November 16, 1940.
(118) “Two Workers Fired at Arsenal for Bund Activities,” Philadelphia Record, October 9, 1940; “37 Seized in Round-Up of Axis Citizens Here; City’s Number One Nazi Held,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 10, 1941.
(119) “Mysterious Tie-Up at Arsenal Halts Shell Fuse Output,” Philadelphia Record, October 16, 1938.
(120) Sayers and Kahn, Sabotage.
(121) “Evidence of Sabotage Uncovered After Blasts in Three Plants Kill Fifteen,” Philadelphia Record, November 13, 1940; Sayers and Kahn, Sabotage, 110; “Survivors Talk of Bund’s Hand in Jersey Blast,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 13, 1940.
(122) “Ship-Sinking Plot Bared at Chester,” Philadelphia Record, January 30, 1940; “Vessels Set Afire, Pipes Cut in Sabotage at Sun Shipyard,” Philadelphia Record, October 2, 1940.
(123) Sayers and Kahn, Sabotage, 112-119.
(124) “Father Coughlin Knows He Lies,” Equality, February 1940, 9.
(125) Farago The Game of the Foxes, 445.
(126) John J. Stephan, The Russian Fascists: Tragedy and Farce in Exile (New York: Harper and Row 1978); Sayers and Kahn, Sabotage, 122-124.
(127) “City Slovaks Hope for Peace: Pledge Loyalty to America” Philadelphia Record, August 27, 1939.
(128) “Arrest of Doshen,” The Hour, 114, September 27, 1941, 3.
(129) “Vonsiatsky and International Nazism,” The Hour, 8, August 15, 1939, 4-5; Stephan, The Russian Fascists.
(130) Alexander Lushnycky, et al, Ukrainians in Pennsylvania: A Contribution to the Growth of the Commonwealth, (Philadelphia, PA: Ukrainian Bicentennial Committee, 1976).
(131) Lushnycky, et al, eds., Ukrainians in Pennsylvania 53, 60.
(132) Investigation of Un-American Activities (The Dies Committee) vol. 9, 5259-5322; Higham American Swastika 117-133; Britt, The Fifth Column is Here 101-103.
(133) Sayers and Kahn, Sabotage, 78-94; Investigation of Un-American Activities in the United States (The Dies Committee) vol. 9, 5314.
(134) “Ukrainian Fascists Meet in New York and New Jersey,” The Hour, 55, July 27, 1940, 2-4; “Ukrainian Fascists in Midwestern Drive,” The Hour, 57, August 10, 1940, 2-3; “Nazi Agent Katamay,” The Hour 104, July 5, 1941, 3.
(135) Investigation of Un-American Activities in the United States (The Dies Committee) (1938-1940), vol. 2, 1209.
(136) Sayers and Kahn, Sabotage, 70-3; Stephan, The Russian Fascists, 248-302.
(137) Higham American Swastika 125-7; Sayers and Kahn, Sabotage, 73; “Vonsiatsky and International Nazism.”
(138) Sayers and Kahn, Sabotage, 3-4.
(139) Sayers and Kahn, Sabotage, 81.
(140) Higham American Swastika 120; “Nazi-Ukrainians Photograph US Industrial Centers,” The Hour, 112, August 30, 1941, 1; “Ukrainian Fifth Columnists,” Ibid. 121, December 13, 1941, 4.
(141) Higham American Swastika, 119.
(142) Sayers and Kahn, Sabotage, 3-4; “Ukrainian Fascists and Pennsylvania Train Wreck,” The Hour, 91, April 5, 1941, 1-2; “Career of Kalina Lissiuk,” Ibid., 93, April 19, 1941, 2-3.
(143) “Buchko Criticized by His Superior” The Hour, 63, September 21, 1940, 2-3. (129) “Buchko Leaves US,” Ibid. 120, November 29, 1941, 3.
(145) “Letter from Ukrainian Churchman,” The Hour, 62, September 14, 1940, 2-3 “Ukrainian Fascists Troubled,” Ibid. 63, September 21, 1940, 2.
(146) “Buchko Criticized by His Superior,” The Hour, 63, September 21, 1940, 2-3.
(147) “Ukrainian-Americans Fight Fascist Elements,” The Hour, 67, Oct. 19, 1940, 2.
(148) “ODWU and Hetman in Retreat,” The Hour, 68, October 26, 1940, 2; “US Hetman to Disband” Ibid. 89, March 22, 1941, 1; “Government Freezes Funds of Ukrainian National Association,” Ibid. 122, December 30, 1941.
(149) Farago The Game of the Foxes, 488; “Germans, Italians, Seized Along With Japanese Here,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 9, 1941; “37 Seized in Round-Up of Axis Citizens Here; City’s Number One Nazi Held,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 10, 1941; “115 Aliens Interned at Gloucester Include Professor at U of P,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 12, 1941; “Nazi Shrine Found by G-Men in Raid on North Philadelphia Home,” Philadelphia Inquirer, Dec. 14, 1941; “Japanese, German, Italian Nationals Rounded Up Here,” Pittsburgh Press, Dec. 9, 1941; “Professor, Attorney, Held in Axis Alien Roundup,” Pittsburgh Press, Dec. 10, 1941.
(150) Radtke, The History of the Pennsylvania American Legion, 56.
(151) “Documents Seized by FBI in Raid on Nazi Retreat,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 13, 1941.
(152) N.A., Bund Archives, Records of the German American Business League Inc (Deutscher Konsum Verband - DKV). Philadelphia Deutscher Weckruf, letter of Willi Gruenenberg, December 11, 1941.
(153) Russell F. Weigley et. al., Philadelphia: A Three Hundred Year History, (New York: W W Norton 1982), 639; “Italians, Germans, Vow US Loyalty,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 12, 1941.
(154) “German, Italian, Papers Continue,” Philadelphia Inquirer, December 12, 1941.
(155) Sayers and Kahn, Sabotage, 121-122; Higham, American Swastika, 130-2.
(156) Stephan, The Russian Fascists, 299-302.
(157) “The Defendants in the Washington Sedition Trial,” The Facts, 3(1), January 1948, 29-30; Hoke, It’s a Secret, 197.
(158) Higham American Swastika, 63; Hoke It’s a Secret, 294 .
(159) Rogge The Official German Report, 310; Constance Drexel, Armament Manufacture and Trade (Worcester, MA: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Division of Intercourse and Education, 1933); “Gertie on Berlin Radio is Former Local Resident,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 24, 1943; “Former Chum, WAVE, Aided Exposé of Gertie,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, August 24, 1943.
(160) “New Issue of Herold Allowed in Mails: Paper Still Faces Action,” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 6, 1942; N.A., Bund Archives, Records of the A. V. Publishing Co., “Final Report of Samuel McK. Perry, Examiner, Acting as a Representative of the Treasury Department,” 1942; “Attorney General to Crack Down on Social Justice,” Social Justice, April 6, 1942.
(161) “The Defendants in the Washington Sedition Trial,” The Facts, 3(1), January 1948; Carlson, Under Cover, 484-486; Hoke It’s a Secret; Leo P. Ribuffo, The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right From the Great Depression to the Cold War (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1983), 178-224; Higham American Swastika .
(162) Rogge The Official German Report , especially pp. 173-218.
(163) Hoke It’s a Secret; Rogge The Official German Report.
(164) Hoke It’s a Secret; Higham American Swastika .
(165) Maximilian St. George and Lawrence Dennis, A Trial on Trial: The Great Sedition Trial of 1944, (New York: National Civil Rights Committee, 1946).
(166) Gabler, Winchell, 333-336; Higham American Swastika; The Sedition Case (Lowell, AZ: Lutheran Research Society, 1953). For Rogge, see Joseph P. Kamp, The Fifth Column in Washington, (New Haven, Conn: Constitutional Educational League, 1940). For Rankin and Hoffman as anti-semites, see “The Political Scene,” The Facts, 3(10), October 1948.
(167) Hoke It’s a Secret 294-295
(168) Albert E. Kahn, High Treason: The Plot Against the People (New York: Lear, 1950, 256-260).