Gangsters vs Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters battled Nazis in wartime America by Michael Benson. 2022 295pg

 Benson is not Jewish — he describes himself as a “lapsed Catholic”  24/8/22

By 1933, there were more than one hundred anti-Semitic groups operating openly in the United States, “Judge Perlman thought outside the box.”

Jewish kids had a favorite gangster like Catholics had a patron Saint.

Meyer Lansky was the one who lead the anti Nazi effort. Fascism gained popularity in time of economic crises like the Great Depression. German immigrants about 12 million were second only to the Irish and the German Bund was out to promote Hitler's agenda .

Henry Ford gave out free copies of the Protocols of the elders of Zion and Jews refused to buy Ford cars. Fortune magazine revealed that 1 in 10 Americans wanted Jews deported in the 1930s.

Fritz Julius Kuhn was the leader of the German American Bund. His favorite target was FDR and Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia of NY. Many Germans had no intention of becoming American citizens, and Kuhn was funded by a hand full of American industrialists.

 John Metcalf was in the Anti American Committee who investigated both communists and fascist.   Kuhn admitted  to Metcalfe that he represented a foreign power.

Camp Upton was used in WW1 to train soldiers including Irving Berlin, after the war it was transformed into a school for   immigrants to learn English and abandoned, then taken over as a Hitler youth camp.

Irish mobs and Jewish mobs stuck to their own turf but  Jews and Italians worked well together. Jewish kids were bullied and believed they needed to be tough and stand up and fight. Many were encouraged to take up boxing and a few became professional. Boxing became a big thing within the Jewish community as well as Jewish bookmakers betting on it.

1919  The 18th Amendment brought prohibition which later the Volstead Act enforced by the treasury, repealed in 1933. Meyer Lansky made his money through bootlegging now went into casinos and had an elaborate system of paying off police and politicians. Judge Nathan Perlman and Rabbi Stephen Wise approached him. Now Perlman owed Lansky a favor. However there was a no kill rules and Lansky wanted the Jewish press not to write about what he did. The mafia often didn't do it s own killing but contracted out. For this Lucky Luciano went to Louis" Lepke" Buchhalter. Lansky felt that the Nazi's were for the Jews to deal with, even though the Italians hated Mussolini as he was anti Mafia an forced them out of Italy.

Judd Teller the journalist wrote about anti-Semitism. Undercover he got a list of Bund members in NY and their home addresses and many of them were approached in the streets and mugged.

1904 in East Village of the Lower east side the neighborhood the Lutheran Church  organized  a ride on the Slocum a ferry which caught on fire and 1021 people drowned after that most Germans moved to Yorkville NY. This was the deadliest NY incident till 9/11.

1938 a Bund meeting in NY celebrated Hitler's birthday . The gangster wearing American Legion hats  came in and beat up the Nazi's  afterwards  dumped the hats and fled . The press blamed the American league.

The next meeting in Westchester only a quarter of the number attended. A stink bomb was pushed into a window behind the stage and as the Nazi's fled they were beaten up leaving.

1938 June African American Joe Louis beat German Max Schmeling  at Yankee Stadium. Schmeling was not a Nazi however was Hitler's pride and joy.

The Bund complained to Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia that the Jews were infringing on the Bunds rights. LaGuardia agreed to get the Jewish goons off them but in NY they must not wear uniforms, display swastikas or sing songs and march with drums. He also assigned Jewish police to protect them or German dignitaries visited NY. So the Bund moved across the river to New Jersey.

1936 Father Charles Edward Coughlin a catholic priest spoke on the radio via 46 syndicated channels. He defended Nazi Germany and praised the way Nazis deal with Jews. He knew about Kristallnacht that had been on Nov. 9th 1938. He had 22 million listeners. He wanted to run a Catholic candidate against FDR but could not find one. (The only Catholic presidents have been  Kennedy and Bieden). Eventually he went too far in making mistakes and was dropped by WMCA and the Detroit diocese made clear that his worldview was his own.

 In Chicago Wilhelm Kunz  said America should emulate Germany as Hitler got employment for 5 and a half million workers. "Sure they are in the German army" when the heckler was attacked by storm troopers it started a riot.

In Chicago "Greasy Thumb" Guzik was the most powerful Jewish gangster and was Al Capones right hand man.

Herb Brin was a gangland reporter. The anti Deformation League here was the only  organization watching the Nazis.

The group that was to meet outside the German club meeting were told to say they were patriots and veterans of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade who fought against Franco in Spain.

 Ernst Wilhelm Meyer a German diplomat in America resigned saying he could not represent the Nazi government as  Hitler had betrayed Germanies interests.

New Jersey this was a period when everyone was poor, possessions were few and everyone's grandma lived with them but she spoke no English. You had horse drawn carts  the iceman , a fish man and a milk man and others delivered.. Writer Phillip Roth and NY mayor Ed Koch came from here. Newark had 65 thousand German immigrants. Longie Swillman was the Jewish gangster in control. The police told him where there were Bund meetings. Nat Arno a boxer was Newark's Fighting Hebrew. Arno set up an army of close to a thousand people and they called them the Anti Nazi Minutemen of America. They also travelled  to Philadelphia and busted the Bund there, when it met at the Turgemeide hall to celebrate the Anschluss of Austria.

Tear gas was first used by the police during the depression and the public were terrified of it as they had heard of the poisonous gasses used in WW1

When Bund speaker bragged about his relationship to Rudolf Hess, the FBI arrested him as an agent of a foreign government.

There was no such thing as illegal hate speech at that time and the right to assemble was protected by the constitution. The Minutemen busted the screening of a recruitment movie aimed at getting German American parents to send their kids to Nazi camps.  At a meeting to celebrate the acquisition of the Sudetenland Czechoslovak sympathizers also congregated outside, while the gangsters did their work, the police to protect the Nazi's advised them to get out of the uniforms. 

When the police raided Camp Norland they found evidence of espionage and weapons violations so the Bund leader had legal woes.

Jewish immigrants arrived in Minnesota directly from Poland , Ukraine, Belarus and Galicia as well as Romania some came from the Eastern cities of the USA. In Minneapolis and St. Paul's the was large German community, here  the most anti-Semitic candidates often received the most votes. The Silver Legion was run by William Dudley Pelley. 

Eric Sevareid was he top reporter for CBS news to  the find out about the Silver Legion.

At this stage municipal  Judge Larson said that the hate mail and speeches caused a deliberate stirring up  of class against class and is indirect opposition to the tolerance of race and religion which our constitution protects. Hate speech was like inciting a riot. No longer was all speech protected as free speech.

Congress kept off father Couglin but The FBI raided the Front finding weapons and ammunition and plans to blow up bridges and power plants. 

 Hollywood was the one place that Germany's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels had an eye on and Nazi infiltration started in 1933. There were thousands arriving in LA every year especially during the depression in 1935 90% of the population had been there fewer than 15 years and there was no sizable German community. Corruption was assumed and the Silver League had a headquarters here. About 70 thousand Jews lived there mostly in Boyle Heights the movie moguls and stars lived in Beverly Hills. There were many down and out German and  dust bowl migrants. 

 1872 Oil boom money started at the Le Brea tar pits. The oil millionaires were big anti-Semites 

1910 movie studios moved there from Brooklyn, Queens 

1938 Hollywood's greatest year with Gone with the Wind and Wizard of Oz. Germany had so many cinemas that a lot money was being made there. Germany loved Hollywood movies.

Leon Lawrence Lewis a Jewish attorney put together a squad to spy on the Nazis. Grace Comfort and her daughter Sylvia  were non Jews and worked as a secretary of the Bund and spied on it. Nazis were planning to lynch 20 film moguls. The Aryan bookstore was the meeting place of pro Hitler propaganda and meetings. 

Hillcrest was a Jewish country club as other LA  clubs had restricted membership. The moguls were called to a secret meeting and were prepared to donate money anonymously. Lewis was able to sow disinformation and conflict within the Nazi community, and after Pearl Harbor he had a list of Nazi's to give to the FBI.

1935 Sinclair Lewis wrote the anti fascist novel "It can't Happen Here"

1939 Feb20th the Bund had a rally in Madison Square Garden to hear Gerhard Kunze who call Roosevelt Frank D Rosenfeld and the New Deal Jew Deal denouncing the Jewish Bolshevik leadership and resulted in extreme violence with protesters led by the gansters. The police  1,700 was the largest force in NY history. 2017 documental by Marshall Curry called Night in the Garden.  

The Bund now moved its headquarter to Mexico city. Kuhn was accused of stealing from his organization.

When war came Kunze was arrested under the Selective Service Act

By the time of  Pearl Harbor the Bund was through and Dudley Pelley's Silver Shirts were on the run, not only from angry Jews but the Un American Activities Committee also. He was convicted of sedition and in jail till 1950. Most America Nazis went far underground and disappeared. Germans conscripted were sent to the Pacific. Many German American changed their names and said they were Swedish. In Chicago the Germania club got the name Lincoln Club.

With Lucky Luciano's help the docks were protected from infiltrators and for the invasion of Sicily, Luciano supplied all the information about Sicily and it coastline and arranged the American troops would be welcome there.

1938 Nazi Perverts and Thieves- the morality of the Bund leaders was questioned. Propagandist Winterscheidt was arrested for a child sex crime. He was secretly paroled in 1940  when he turned state witness about falsified applications for US citizenship. Thomas Dewey the NY District Attorney found the Bund had fraudulent tax returns. Several Bund officials returned to Germany. Kuhn's citizenship was revoked and he was arrested as an enemy agent once the US was at war, he was deported to Germany in 1945 but arrested again under the de-Nazification laws.

 Most of those Jews that fought the Nazis volunteered to go to war. The gangsters also did a lot for Israel.

Meyer Lansky was investigated by the IRS for tax evasion, but was never convicted as he had compromising photos of J.Edgar Hoover and his "close aide Clyde Tolson. Lansky died in 1983 aged 80. 

After Pearl Harbor FDR shut down Coughlins radio program and forbade his periodical Social Justice from being distributed. The Bishop forced him to get out of politics to remain in the Church.

The Jew Store : a family memoir by Stella Suberman 1998 297pg

A typical history of a Jewish family living in the southern states in the1920s /30s 15/8/22

I  found this interesting as I can compare it with Jewish life in rural South Africa the I was aware of in the 1950s.    In 1995 Stella went to visit the Tennessee which she had last seen in 1933 when her family left the town she named here Concordia.  Her parents got there by horse cart in 1920 with her brother Joey 7 and sister Miriam 5.At the time the town had a population of 5318 whites and  negroes. These town were steadily loosing population. What was called a" Jew store" was part of every town. The mother was not keen to leave her NY family but Nashville had a Jewish community, she looked back, while  he looked to the future.

When the arrived there the Medlin boys told them to go to Bookie Simmons who was a wealthy spinster and wanted company she was the daughter of Coco Cola wealth. "I child shall lead you" Isaih11.6 quoted T.

Late 1800s  a typhoid plague claimed Aaron's fathers mother, father and grandmother so grandfather brought him up in Podolska near Kiev. His only education was what he got from his grandfather in the evenings enough for his bar mitzvah. He worked in the grandfather business but with the pogrom's the business deteriorated  and took steerage from Hamburg  to NY. Amongst his jobs was delivering coal on a wagon. Paid a bribe and got recruited to  job in Miami but left the ship in Savanah where he worked for a Jewish store. Avram Plotchnikoff became Aaron Bronson.

 In the south Jewish stores opened on Saturdays unlike NY. Savannah had more blacks than whites, he got involved in a service league and girlfriends taught him to read and write English Palmer script and improve his speech and now became a US citizen but he wanted to marry a Jewish girl so returned to NY.

Her mother left the stetle at age 9 got 2 years schooling in the NY and got a job stuffing cuddly animals. 

Aaron married  Reba when she was 17 and convinced her to come with him south after Joey and Miriam were born. The went to Nashville. Because he was a good salesman his boss took him on a buying trip to St. Louis here , he was introduced to the  merchants who considered him trustworthy for credit.

A shoe factory was being build in Concordia and no Jewish dry goods  store was there. from Nashville the travelled with a wagon in 3 days to Concordia, cheaper than taking a train. The store was to serve working men and farmers as well as the coloreds(who came i the back door. There was suspicion of anybody not a southerner , white and Protestant. To  get a store on the main road  he happed to deal with 2 men who were foes of each other.

The author Stella Ruth was the only one born in Concordia and in the Southern tradition she was called by the 2 names.

What church do you belong to? One could change religion between the Protestant denominations. All life took place on the porch in the south. There was no Catholic church in the south then it came later with Hispanics coming.

1609 Henry Hudson discovery what he thought was the north west passage, Reba remembered the celebration of this in 1909

1914 to 1917John Purroy Mitchel was a very honest mayor of NY  and Reba fondly remembers attending his inauguration as a kid.

Bookie took a liking to Miriam and taught her to play the piano. We later find out that Bookie wanted to marry into a wealthy  German Jewish family but her father would not allow it. The Klu Klux  Klan had a big say here and we don't know why they left this Jewish family alone perhaps because of Bookie or their shop landlord. Workers would not patronize a store without their tacit approval. Saturdays farmers did their business shopping in the morning and personal shopping in the afternoon. 

The school year started late after the Tennessee harvesting season. They had storm cellars in case of tornadoes. They bought a Studebaker car that Joey at the age of 12 drove.  Purple Jesus a cocktail of grapes an moonshine.

1927 Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer was the first talkie movie. In the south you called you boyfriend your beau.

Aaron was part of every possible minority for the rural south  - a shopkeeper, foreign born , a Jew a white and Negroes were the majority in the town. When they were away their neighbours looked after their house and garden as was the norm.

1929 when the Wall Street collapse the shoe factory  was in debt, Aaron got the town leaders raised money to keep it ticking over. Because the factory was the biggest employer in town and workers were receiving IOUs for wages. Bookie insisted that she would loan money to the factory on condition that it stopped child labour, which was considered more reliable and cheaper than hiring Negros.

Reba insisted that Joey be sent away to learn for his bar mitzvah so he spent a year in NY at his mothers father home. When he returned to Concordia he was moved to a higher class but wanted to be in NY and so was returned there. 

Miriam was taught piano by Ms. Bookie and was the top girl in dancing. At 17 she wanted to go off with T but Reba said no and in 1933 they sold the store to a chain stores and came to NY where all 3 married Jewish spouses. Aaron got paid out for the business and 20 cents a $ for inventory as well as the money he had leant to the factory which returned slowly. The days of Jew Stores was coming to an end as chain stores took over  They bought a garage in NY and were able to run it successfully. Stella at arriving at the NY school was sent to speech lessons with foreign kids as her southern accent was considered unacceptable. Reba was the one that mow missed the south the most.

The Johnstown Flood by David Mc Cullough 1968 268pg

 The incredible story behind one of the most devastating disaster America has ever known, 2209 killed mostly at Johnstown.  12/8/22

1889 Memorial Day Thursday May 30. This occurred at the dam of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club in Cambria County, Pennsylvania in the Allegheny Range. This club was owned by the wealthy Steel and Railway magnates to escape the dirt and noise of the cities. This area was settled by Germans and Welsh and those were the most prominent languages spoken, Cambria is another name of Wales.

1794 Washington put down the whiskey rebellion in Pittsburg.

1850 The Pennsylvania Company railroad came through and Cambrian Iron Company founded.

1879 Diphtheria killed 132 children within a few months.

1888 When Golf was first brought to the USA

Johnstown the more this city progressed the more uncomfortable it became to live there.

1838 the work began on the Water Reservoir to have water for dry summers.

1852 This earth  dam completed.

1879 Dam property taken over by the Pennsylvania Railway.

Trees were cut down to make space for the expanding town and the river channels were being narrowed, and to make it easier to put bridges across, resulting in more and more flooding. in 1885,87,88.

People got tired of hearing of the disaster that never happened

1856 Henry Bessemer, in Sheffield, England invented a blast furnace process for turning iron into steel that was far quicker and cheaper than what had been done at the time and in the 60s and 70s Johnstown was the most lively in the country. Henry Morrell used only American workers training farm boys to master the technology while others were importing English workers familiar with this process. David Morrell later became a member of Congress, he died in 1885.

Morrel wanted a discharge system put on the dam.  The spill way had a grating so that the fish could not escape and this jammed up. Then the dam was lowered so that a 2 lane road could be built on the top.

Heavy rain a logs jammed the bridges arches causing a flood in Johnstown.  A message was sent to East Conemaugh marshaling yard that the dam was liable to burst and prepare for the worst, but took no notice, a total of 3 warning messages were sent down the valley. When the dam burst it emptied in 45 .minutes  and the workers went into the mud with buckets to collect  the fish in the empty dam

.

Every locomotive driver used his whistle giving off his characteristic signal, freight trains used a different tone but a long  whistle with no letup indicated something was wrong., and a drivers whistle that was on for 5 minutes was the only warning that East Conemaugh heard . In Woodvale about 1000 people lived where there was a woolen mill build by Cambria Iron.  Rosensteel tannery  and a streetcar depot  she with 96 horses  that was left flattened.  345 people died here.

Johnstown was hit at 4.07pm. and it was hit harder than anything along the 14 mile route. The devastation was over in 10 minutes. All the flotsam ended up against the bridge and spread out as this formed a new dam and it caught alight with the oil of a derailed tank car.

The next morning people woke up to a silence as no industry was working and no mill whistles or wagons on cobbles or trains and nearly all Johnstown was destroyed. Dead were being found in large numbers. Many who escaped just  left and moved away. Every telephone and telegraph was cut, but farmers from around started bringing food.

Able bodied people crowded the schoolhouse and John Moxham took charge and immediately organized committees. The doctors established a temporary hospital and a police force was sworn in $6000 was recovered from what was left of  the bank. Many of the bodies could not be identified as there were a number of travelling men new in the territory

. The flood had killed 1 in 10 of the population. Millions in donation were give from all over the country both money and supplies like blankets etc, including the magnates. Many had family in Pittsburg and poured into the station , including lost or orphaned children.

A Lynch mob went to look for anyone left at the South Forks Club, in a court case criminal negligence was brought up, nobody was there. It was great wealth that was condemned not technology, and people said that every gain the magnates made people were losing something. They were accused of buying legislatures and cutting wages. The fact that the lake was designed purely for pleasure was unacceptable at the time. The South Forks club had a mortgage and not much money to claim against them. There were also suites against the Pennsylvania Railroad, but the  jury agreed it was a visitation of providence. Nobody had ever seen such a storm and no provision  could have been taken to prevent this. Several small dams build under Daniel J Morell had survived this.

The magnets Pitcairn , Frick and Phipps were named to serve on the Relief committee. Frick never ever made a statement.

1889 Carnegie had been at the Paris World Fair during the disaster, this was the time the Eifel Tower was inaugurated.. Robert Lincoln, Abraham's son was the US Minister in London who he visited. Carnegie later rebuild the library in Johnstown

The dam was a dramatic violation of the natural order. The homes at the dam left high and dry were abandoned and what was left was sold off by Sheriff auction.

1936  American Doctors Odyssey book  by Victor Heiser whose parents died and so he  left Johnstown became a physician and fought diseases all over the world especially the Philippines