United States to remain neutral in any dispute involving Germany and the Allied powers. Despite their foreign roots, Bund enthusiasts portrayed themselves as the truest and purest Americans, defending the country against such perils as Communism, miscegenation, and jazz. The movement reached a rowdy climax at Madison Square Garden in February 1939, when Kuhn spoke to an amped-up crowd of twenty thousand. To shouts of “Sieg Heil,” he gleefully mocked President Frank D. “Rosenfeld” and his “Jew Deal.”
The GAB encountered stout opposition from mainstream German-American organizations, trade unions, Jewish activists, and at least a few gangsters. “The stage was decorated with a swastika and a picture of Adolf Hitler,” recalled notorious mob boss Meyer Lansky of one Fascist rally. “The speakers started ranting. There were only fifteen of us, but we went into action. We threw some of them out the windows. Most of the Nazis panicked and ran out. We chased them and beat them up. We wanted to show them that Jews would not always sit back and accept insults.” Given the connection with the underworld, it seems appropriate that the career of Fritz Kuhn ended not in an act of violence but—as with Al Capone—in a prison sentence for tax evasion and, in Kuhn’s case, an added conviction for embezzling GAB money to support a mistress.
In hindsight, it is tempting to dismiss every Fascist of this era as a thoroughly bad guy or a lunatic, but that is too easy, and by inducing complacency, also dangerous. Fascism is not an exception to humanity, but part of it. Even people who enlisted in such movements out of ambition, greed, or hatred likely either were unaware of, or denied to themselves, their true motives.
Oral histories from the period testify to the hope and excitement that Fascism generated. Men and women who had despaired of political change suddenly felt in touch with the answers they had been seeking. Eagerly they traveled long distances to attend Fascist rallies, where they discovered kindred souls keen to restore greatness to the nation, traditional values to the community, and optimism about the future. Here, in this crusade, they heard explanations that made sense to them about the powerful currents that were at work in the world. Here were the chances they had sought to participate in youth groups, athletic organizations, charity drives, and job-training activities. Here were the connections they needed to start a new business or take out a loan. Many families that had stopped after bearing two children, thinking that number all they could afford, now found the confidence to bear four or five or six. In the congenial company of fellow Fascists, they could share an identity that seemed right to them and engage in a cause that each could serve with gladness and singleness of heart. These were prizes, they believed, worth marching for and even giving up democratic freedoms for—provided their leaders could do as promised and make their fantasies real.
For a long while, it appeared that those leaders could do exactly what they pledged. Throughout the 1920s, Mussolini had the look of a winner, and so, after 1933, did Hitler. They—more than any other European statesmen—were trusted to deliver where conventional politicians fell short. They were the trailblazers, the visionaries firmly in touch with the disturbing yet exhilarating zeitgeist, the spirit of the time.
In Cabaret, there is an electrifying moment at a beer garden when a young Nazi rises to his feet and, joined by most but not all of those present, belts out an anthem of promise and horror:
The branch of the linden is leafy and green,
The Rhine gives its gold to the sea.
But soon, says a whisper: “Arise, arise,
Tomorrow belongs to me.”
Oh Fatherland, Fatherland, show us the sign
Your children have waited to see.
The morning will come when the world is mine.
Tomorrow belongs to me.
Tomorrow belongs to me.
Fascism caught on because many people in Europe and elsewhere saw it as a mighty wave that was transforming history, that was owned by them alone, and that couldn’t be stopped.
Podĕbrady, January 1942. People here are sad and everyone is taking the war with difficulty. This includes Aryans and non-Aryans, to use this rather peculiar naming into which God’s creation are now divided. We wear stars as you know, some proudly, some hide them even though you are not allowed to … We live in strange times and are viewed by some as members of a less valuable race. Of course, blacks are also underrated and yet the world is quiet about that, even Jews. When God enlightens our brains and we understand that we are all equal before God, it will be better.
THE SENTENCES ABOVE ARE FROM THE JOURNAL OF RŮŽENA Spieglová, a widow living alone, mourning her daughter’s recent death, and observing from within the shackles that—during the severe winter of 1942—tightened around Jews in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia.
Her words illustrate the capacity of an ordinary person living with extraordinary stress to feel empathy toward men and women she has never met and to seek comfort in the conviction that all humans are of equal worth. This generosity of spirit—this caring about others and about the proposition that we are all created equal—is the single most effective antidote to the self-centered moral numbness that allows Fascism to thrive. It is a capacity that can be found in most people, but it is not always nurtured and is sometimes, for a period, brutally crushed.
Podĕbrady, April 1942: We were taken for departure and categorized for work. There were four health gradations. I was in the second category which means that my health is pretty good. Now they are saying that we will soon be moved out of Podĕbrady and that is why all Jews are leaving by train to Cologne for registration … It is possible that the troubles, which await us, I will survive. Perhaps, we will see each other, dear ones, who are abroad. May God give you health. When I come back (I hope I will, a person never knows), I will write down what it was like in Cologne. [Journal ends]
On June 9, 1942, Růžena Spieglová was one of a group of Czechoslovak Jews sent by rail transport to the Nazi concentration camp in Terezín. On June 12, they were transported farther east to a destination we do not know for sure, probably a forested area in occupied Poland. There were no survivors from that transport. My maternal grandmother was fifty-four years old when she was murdered.
IN THE SUMMER OF 1940, AFTER LESS THAN A YEAR OF DECLARED war, the Third Reich held sway over Austria, all segments of a divided Czechoslovakia, half of Poland, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, and much of France. Between April and June, it had seized 400,000 square miles of Europe, taken control of air bases from the North Sea to Marseille, secured access to a bounty of oil and other strategic minerals, and, on the continent at least, wiped out the only significant armies that opposed it. Nothing on earth appeared equal to the Nazi juggernaut, but, contrary to all expectations including his own, Hitler would not again know such a high point.
The
