Pens and Tongues: Community Resistance to the German-American Bund, 1936-1939

Abstract

Imagery of the swastika most often brings to mind Nazi Germany. In the 1930s, however, Americans confronted swastika-adorned flags in their own communities. This paper focuses on the German-American Bund, a pro-Nazi organization active in the United States between 1936 and 1941, and the reactions of American citizens to the Bund’s activities in their communities. This paper argues that American resistance to the pro-Nazi intrusion started as local and organic movements; that local confrontations increased national publicity of the Bund; and that the increased visibility of the Bund fueled the federal investigations that followed. In 1936, two Bund youth camps- one already established in Yaphank, New York and the other proposed for Southbury, Connecticut- met substantial animosity from their neighboring towns. Examined as case studies, the two communities demonstrate the broader concern of home-grown Nazi organizations throughout the United States in the decade before World War Two. This research will be conducted using several newspaper sources, the town archives of Southbury, CT, Federal Bureau of Investigation files on the German-American Bund, archived newsreel footage, a feature film, and other publicly available documents.