A book examining the strange terrain of Nazi sympathizers,
nonintervention campaigners and other voices in America who advocated
on behalf of Nazi Germany in the years before World War II.
Americans who
remember World War II reminisce about how it brought the country
together. The less popular truth behind this warm nostalgia: until
the attack on Pearl Harbor, America was deeply, dangerously divided.
Bradley W. Hart's
Hitler's American Friends exposes the homegrown antagonists
who sought to protect and promote Hitler, leave Europeans (and
especially European Jews) to fend for themselves, and elevate the
Nazi regime.
Some of these
friends were Americans of German heritage who joined the Bund, whose
leadership dreamed of installing a stateside Führer. Some were as
bizarre and hair-raising as the Silver Shirt Legion, run by an
eccentric who claimed that Hitler fulfilled a religious prophesy.
Some were Midwestern Catholics like Father Charles Coughlin, an early
right-wing radio star who broadcast anti-Semitic tirades. They were
even members of Congress who used their franking privilege—sending
mail at cost to American taxpayers—to distribute German propaganda.
And celebrity pilot Charles Lindbergh ended up speaking for them all
at the America First Committee.
We try to tell
ourselves it couldn't happen here, but Americans are not immune to
the lure of fascism. Hitler's American Friends is a powerful
look at how the forces of evil manipulate ordinary people, how we
stepped back from the ledge, and the disturbing ease with which we
could return to it.