Swastika Nation

The full title: Swastika Nation: Fritz Kuhn and the Rise and Fall of the German-American Bund

Author is Arne Bernstein

This is a fascinating book about the Nazi movement in the US in the 1930s. These weren't neo- anything. These were the real thing. Dyed in the wool Nazis - anti-Catholic, anti-Jew, anti-Gay, anti-everything non Aryan.

I don't have any real context for just how prominent this movement was, but some of the reports of their activities are astounding. A string of summer camps throughout the US for youth indoctrination. A 30,000+ person rally at Madison Square Garden. Regular events with thousands turning out. Marches and demonstrations by Nazi uniform-clad men, women, and children.

What is remarkable, of course, is that this went on.

What is also notable is that what we're seeing today - the tea partiers, the neo-confederates, etc. - behave in the same way and say the same things as those in the Nazi movement in the US 75 years ago.

What I think would be interesting, if maybe a bit onerous, would be to track the descendants of this Nazi leadership and see where they've ended up.

The book is a bit tedious at times, and the writing is not especially disciplined. These are annoyances, but they could have been avoided with a little better editing.

I would also have appreciated, as I said, more context. Sure, references to columns by Walter Winchell certainly indicate that this movement caught the attention of the American populace. And references to a number of what seemed to be notable events - demonstrations, riots, etc. - would give the impression that this was front page news for the better part of the decade, especially 1935 until the US entry into the war in 1941. But I would have liked to see more time devoted to putting these events into the greater context of everyday life in the US during this time.