Anti-Defamation League
Delivered November 22, 2019. Contributor: ChristineD
Goals
Determine what the spy network of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) was able to accomplish against the German-American Bund. The information will be used for a media materials.
Early Findings
Anti-Defamation League and the German-American Bund
- During the 1920s, there were several individuals in the US, who are members and supporters of the Nazi Party.
- These people were recent German immigrants who built small organizations in the urban areas where they are residing.
- They are waiting for "der Tag," or their day of return to their transformed German homeland.
- In 1933, when Adolf Hitler rose to power, these scattered Nazi groups rapidly formed a centralized national organization called the "Friends of the New Germany."
- The objective of the group was to promulgate "National Socialism and fascist" notions across the country to get ready for the anticipated "Hitler Revolution" in the US.
- On March 1933, FNG established an Aryan Bookstore in Los Angeles.
- Nazi memorabilia and anti-Semitic printed matters were sold in the bookstore.
- Some of the books in the store were about the Jewish-Bolshevik danger in the US, the potential of National Socialism, and the "Hitler Miracle" in their home country.
- The movement also held public gatherings and hosted weekly sessions to entice new members during the spring and summer of that year.
- Around 50,000 individuals also went to an FNG public event in the Madison Square Garden.
- The group also aimed to attract US veterans to their ideals.
- They contacted the members of the American Legion and other similar groups in the area.
- The initiative to invite American veteran members got the attention of Leon Lewis.
- He is a Jewish lawyer, a veteran, and a former "first national executive secretary of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL)."
- In collaboration with various veteran groups in the city, he rapidly and secretly enticed non-Jewish veterans to penetrate the FNG ranks.
- He set up a rudimentary code for the FNG locations in various cities.
- For example, the Los Angeles base of FNG was code-named as 9-Minus.
- He also established reporting protocols.
- The spy veterans quickly found out about the shady political intentions of the FNG.
- Lewis'spies gave eyewitness reports of clandestine gatherings among FNG leaders and Nazi Party officers.
- These gatherings were done inside German merchant marine ships in the Los Angeles port.
- The spies also found out that there are a huge pile of cash that are being smuggled.
- There is also a report of the secret "importation of thousands of pounds" of Nazi-themed publications from Berlin.
- These printed matters were earmarked for distribution around the US.
- The most devastating discovery was the formation of a secret brown-clad militia training in "urban street-fighting techniques."
- The spies also found out that they held shooting events in the Holywood hills area.
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