Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones's Blog
July 18, 2020
A parable for our times? The counterproductive efforts of Hitler’s Germany secretly to subvert the United States
In 1938, Hitler described the United States as a “Jewish rubbish heap”. In the 1920s he had expressed a different view, thinking that the Aryan cream of Europe had crossed the Atlantic and built America into a great nation. He especially admired the technical achievement of Henry Ford. When he came to power in 1933, he decided to cultivate the US as a friend and ally.
The Nazis cultivated German Americans, especially through the society known as the Bund, aiming to develop what Hitler’s critics saw as a Trojan horse or Fifth Column within US society and politics. There was a second tranche to Nazi policy, the recruitment of German Americans for the purpose of military espionage. Highly qualified German immigrants worked in the defense industry, and they were prime targets for the Abwehr, Germany’s foreign spy agency.
The totalitarian attempt to subvert American society was counterproductive. Matters came to a head in 1938, when the FBI unmasked the Nazis’ spy ring. To a fanfare of publicity, four German spies were placed on trial and convicted. The media and Hollywood turned on the Bund and on the Nazis, allowing President Franklin D. Roosevelt to reverse the neutrality policy of the mid-1930s. Germany’s diplomats were thrown into a fit of despair, and Hitler wrote off America. A parable, perhaps, for our own times.
The Nazis cultivated German Americans, especially through the society known as the Bund, aiming to develop what Hitler’s critics saw as a Trojan horse or Fifth Column within US society and politics. There was a second tranche to Nazi policy, the recruitment of German Americans for the purpose of military espionage. Highly qualified German immigrants worked in the defense industry, and they were prime targets for the Abwehr, Germany’s foreign spy agency.
The totalitarian attempt to subvert American society was counterproductive. Matters came to a head in 1938, when the FBI unmasked the Nazis’ spy ring. To a fanfare of publicity, four German spies were placed on trial and convicted. The media and Hollywood turned on the Bund and on the Nazis, allowing President Franklin D. Roosevelt to reverse the neutrality policy of the mid-1930s. Germany’s diplomats were thrown into a fit of despair, and Hitler wrote off America. A parable, perhaps, for our own times.
