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

by Bradley W. Hart

The entire German objective was to sow enough confusion and discord that the American people would grow weary and simply want to check out of the world events.

Cries against the “liberal” and “left-wing” media were common to both eras.

In the marbled corridors of Washington, DC, a German agent ran an ingenious operation to disseminate shocking quantities of isolationist and pro-German propaganda at taxpayer expense.

“The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact,”

Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”

America First was the culmination of years of Nazi disinformation and propaganda, coupled with the extremism of home-grown fascism.

Looking back from the first decades of a new century that has already seen its share of bloodshed—though thankfully far less than the equivalent decades of the twentieth century—it is worth remembering how easy it can be for an ideology based in hatred to spread widely.

Appeals to fear and prejudice are powerful things.

If nothing else, the example posed by Hitler’s friends should remind us that the maintenance of a free, liberal, and democratic society requires diligence and active confrontation with antidemocratic ideas that threaten the very system that allows them to be discussed in the first place.

It ended with a Nazi character explaining how America could be conquered through a clever use of propaganda “ridiculing democracy” and increasing “racial prejudice.”

The American Jewish Committee noted that he had a remarkable penchant for pivoting to issues he knew an audience would support, including attacks on Catholics, Christian Scientists, and Greeks at different times, in addition to his standard attacks on the Jews. This ability to “attack every organization, group, or development which was in any way open to misrepresentation and abuse” was the key to his success and the danger he presented,

It is little wonder then that in spite of his repeated failures, Pelley has always managed to obtain some sort of following. There is always a sufficient number of discontented, unemployed human misfits, there are always enough fanatics of either a religious or political variety ready to accept demagogues of the Pelley type as their saviors.