Fritz Julius Kuhn

thumb|right|[[1939 Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden]]

thumb|right|Kuhn appearing on the street after leaving a courthouse in [[Webster, Massachusetts, in 1939]]

thumb|right|Kuhn speaking at a "Bund"-camp-rally

Fritz Julius Kuhn (May 15, 1896 – December 14, 1951) was a German Nazi activist who served as the elected leader of the German American Bund, a German-American Nazi organization active in the years before the United States entered World War II. He became a naturalized United States citizen in 1934, though his citizenship was revoked in 1943 owing to his status as a foreign agent of Nazi Germany. After the war, he joined one of the Freikorps that engaged in street battles against Communists and other left-wingers in Germany; and later graduated from the Technical University of Munich with a master's degree in chemical engineering.

In the 1920s, Kuhn moved to Mexico. In 1928 he moved to the United States, and in 1934, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He worked at a Ford factory in Detroit before assuming control of the German American Bund in Buffalo, New York, in 1936.

Leadership of the German American Bund

A Congressional committee headed by Samuel Dickstein concluded that the Friends of New Germany supported a branch of German dictator Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party in the United States, and the Friends of New Germany disbanded. However, in March 1936, the German American Bund was established in Buffalo as a follow-up organization.

Kuhn, while describing the Bund as "sympathetic to the Hitler government", denied that the organization received money or took orders from the government of Germany. Kuhn also denied that the Bund had any agenda of introducing fascism to the United States.

Kuhn enlisted thousands of German Americans by using antisemitic, anticommunist, pro-German, and pro-American propaganda. One of his first tasks was planning a trip to Germany with 50 American followers. The purpose was to be in the presence of Hitler and to witness Nazism in practice personally.

At this time, Germany was preparing to host the 1936 Olympics. Kuhn anticipated a warm welcome from Adolf Hitler, but the encounter was disappointing. This did not stop Kuhn from fabricating propaganda to his followers once he returned to the United States about how Hitler acknowledged him as the "American Führer".

As his profile grew, so did the tension against him. Not only Jewish-Americans, but also German-Americans who did not want to be associated with Nazis protested against the Bund. These protests were occasionally violent, making the Bund front page news in the United States. In response to the outrage of Jewish war veterans, Congress in 1938 passed the Foreign Agents Registration Act requiring foreign agents to register with the State Department.

Undaunted, on September 3, 1938, the Bund reelected Kuhn, and on February 20, 1939, Kuhn held the largest and most publicized rally in the Bund's history at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Some 20,000 people attended and heard Kuhn mock President Franklin D. Roosevelt as "Frank D. Rosenfeld", calling his New Deal the "Jew Deal" and denouncing what he called Bolshevik-Jewish American leadership. Kuhn also stated: "The Bund is fighting shoulder to shoulder with patriotic Americans to protect America from a race that is not the American race, that is not even a white race... The Jews are controlling everything and the white man is thrown out of his job.... The Jews are enemies of the United States.... All Jews are Communists.... Christ was not a Jew..." There was an outbreak of violence between Bund storm troopers and thousands of angry protesters in the streets. During Kuhn's speech, a Jewish protester, Isadore Greenbaum, rushed the stage and had to be rescued by police after he was beaten and stripped by stormtroopers.

Criminal conviction

Later in 1939, seeking to cripple the Bund, New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia ordered the city to investigate the Bund's taxes. It alleged that Kuhn had embezzled $14,548 from the organization, spending part of the money on a mistress. District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey issued an indictment on May 25, 1939, and won a conviction against Kuhn. On December 5, 1939, Kuhn was sentenced to two and a half to five years in prison for larceny and forgery. The next day, he was sent to Sing Sing. Despite his convictions for embezzlement, followers of the Bund continued to hold Kuhn in high regard, in line with the Nazi Führerprinzip, which gives the leader absolute power.

In 1940, James Wheeler-Hill, the Secretary of the Bund, was sentenced to one to three years in prison after pleading guilty to perjury for falsely testifying that he was an American citizen at Kuhn's trial. Wheeler-Hill had been born in Latvia, and was never naturalized.

Imprisonment and deportation

Kuhn's citizenship was revoked on June 1, 1943, while he was in Sing Sing prison, on the grounds of it having been obtained fraudulently as shown by his ongoing activity as a foreign agent of, and a person with loyalty including oaths of military service towards, Germany and the Nazi Party. They were repatriated to Germany in an exchange in February 1944.

After the war, Kuhn, along with 714 other "unteachable Germans" was sent to Ellis Island and deported to Germany on September 15, 1945. Upon his return, he was interned at Hohenasperg Fortress. Kuhn wanted to return to the United States, but worked as an industrial chemist in a small chemical factory in Munich. The German authorities then decided that he could be tried under Germany's denazification laws, and he was imprisoned in July 1947.

Last years in Germany

Kuhn was held in an internment camp at Dachau, awaiting trial before a Bavarian German de-Nazification court. He escaped on February 4, 1948, by promising a 32-year-old German civilian employee of the US armed forces that he would marry her. Nonetheless, Kuhn was tried in absentia in April 1948, and a jury found him guilty. He was sentenced to ten years in prison. The Associated Press reported that the trial was carried out entirely by the presentation of documents demonstrating Kuhn's close ties with Hitler's Third Reich and his attempts to transplant its ideology into the United States. After an investigation into how he had escaped, the camp director, Anton Zirngibl, was fired. Kuhn told reporters, "The door was open so I went through." While in prison, Kuhn reportedly sent a message to columnist Walter Winchell, who had helped lead media counterattacks against the Bund back in New York City. It read: "Tell Herr Vinchell, I will lift to piss on his grafe [sic]." Winchell died in 1972, outliving the Nazi activist by 21 years.

Death

Kuhn died of unknown causes on December 14, 1951, in Munich, Germany. His obituary in The New York Times said that he died "a poor and obscure chemist, unheralded and unsung." Shortly before his death, Kuhn was asked why he'd followed Hitler. Disillusioned by the collapse of Nazi Germany, he replied, "Who would have known it would end like this?"

References

External links

Talking History Archive – Recording of Fritz Kuhn's speech at the German-American Bund Rally, New York City, Feb. 20, 1939, at the University of Albany
Fritz Julius Kuhn – Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) files
"American Bund: The Failure of American Nazism; The German-American Bund's Attempt to Create an American 'Fifth Column'" Article by Jim Bredemus on Traces.org
Fritz Kuhn: "The American Führer" – PBS documentary