Hitler's American Friends: The Third Reich's Supporters in the United States [B1567]

2018 PB in nice clean condition. Winner: 2019 German Studies Association Sybil Halpern Milton Book Prize, 2019. 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.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "History sometimes repeats itself. Meticulously researched and well written. Scary though in places, and especially how Chapter 7 (America First) is repeated in today's politics, sometimes in the exact words used in the '30's and '40's!"; "Little known American history. Bradley Hart's truly remarkable exposition of Adolf Hitler's fascist supporters in the United States is wonderfully detailed. From the 1920s, 1930s, World War 2 and post War decades, he names names from citizens to industrial leaders to Congress. I had no idea!"; "A chilling look at those who supported Hitler and the Third Reich. Even more chilling are the parallels between then and what is currently happening in our government. Those who don't read and learn from history will surely repeat it. Without vigilance, things could have gone quite differently."