GANGSTERS vs. NAZIS-Michael Benson

gangland style. In this thrilling blow by blow account, acclaimed crime writer Michael Benson uncovers the shocking truth about the insidious rise of Nazism in America and the Jewish mobsters who stomped it out. Learn about Nazi Town, USA, Mayer, Lansky and Murder, Inc. Fritz Kuhn, the vest pocket, Hitler, Newark, Nazis versus the Minutemen, and Hitler in Hollywoodland Back with

surprising little known facts, graphic details, and unforgettable personalities. Gangsters Versus Nazis chronicles the mob's most ruthless tactics in taking down fascism, inspiring ordinary Americans to join them in their fight. The book culminates in one of the most infamous events of the Rewar era, the nineteen thirty nine Nazi rally in Madison Square Garden, in which law abiding citizens stood alongside hardened criminals to fight for the soul of a nation.

This is the story of the mob that's rarely told, one of the most fascinating chapters in American history and American organized crime. The book that we're featuring this evening is Gangsters Versus Nazis. How Jewish mobsters battled Nazis in World War II era America, with my special guest journalist and author Michael Benson. Welcome back to the program, and thank you for this interview. Michael Benson, Thanks for having me, Dan appreciate it. Thank you so much, and congratulations on

this Versus Nazis. Let's talk about as you do in the very first chapter about Jewish the jew titled Jewish Gangsters and the Jewish migration to the United States. You say began in the nineteenth century, largely from Central Europe and many from Russia.

way that Jews were treated in Russia, in particular. I think people sometimes think that Adolf Hitler invented anti Semitism, but in reality had been going on for thousands of years already, and this was the latest wave of it. And they came over to America. A lot of them

got as far as New York and stopped. Others moved further into the country, and there were Jewish communities in Minneapolis, in the midwestern Chicago, a lot of the major cities in the country, all the way out to the West coast, where Los Angeles had a Jewish community and probably the only industry in the country that was dominated by Jewish

men was Hollywood. But for most Jews, I mean ninety nine point nine percent of them, they had a very limited potential for success in America, or I guess it was better than it was in Russia because people weren't burning down their villages and raping their women. But they also weren't allowed to go into a lot of professions that Christians were allowed to do. They were regulated to

being butchers and tailors and things like that. And eventually you had ambitious Jewish men who weren't content with playing by gentile rules and played outside the roles. They became criminals, gangsters, and particularly during Prohibition, Jewish gangsters were among the top bootleggers in America. And because they made so much money, they were, i mean, next to the moguls of Hollywood, the most powerful Jewish people in the country.

Well one thing he's he's fictionalized. I forget the name of his fictional character, but he's in the Great Gatsby and he's best known, I think for fixed the world series the Black Sox scandal of nineteen nineteen, when the Chicago White Sox through the world series. That was Arnie Rostein buying players. And Rostein also was shot and killed in the Sharton Hotel in New York, which happens to be the same hotel where generations later Albert Anastasia was

killed in the barbershop right off the lobby. So if you're a gangster, I would suggest to steer clear of that particular hotel. Yeah, Lansky and Siegel the leaders of their own little crew in Brooklyn. They went to work for Rostein and as adults became major players in global economics. Lansky in particular was the right hand man of Lucky Luciano, another fellow from the neighborhood. Now, I've always been amazed how you can have blocks for so many people become famous,

all being neighbors. Yes, I remember Joe Garagiola and Yogi Bearra were both made league catchers in the nineteen forties, and they grew up across the street from one another. Wow, And garagiolays to joke that, you know, I don't have much of an ego for a big league ballplayer because when I was growing up, I wasn't even the best ballplayer at my block. And that's the way it was. Eventually, Myer Lansky is the alpha, but I mean Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen and other Jewish ansters are also very

very powerful men. And after Prohibition ends, the boles That Act is repealed, they almost seamlessly shift gears and go into gambling and become even richer and more powerful.

known among Gentiles. It wasn't really known in America that there was an attempted genocide going on already in Europe, the Germans trying to wipe out the Jews. But Jewish communities in America had an inkling that this was going on. I'm not sure they visited in the scale that it inevitably ended up being, but they knew that Grandpa got picked up by the Germans and he hasn't come back.

So when the German Americans who liked Hitler's attitude in the United States, when they started with the rhetoric of the Jewish problem and the ultimate solution to it, there were Jewish Men who understood where that rhetoric was headed. So committing acts of violence against the American Nazis was not going to bother their conscience as much.

And although you know, ninety nine percent of German Americans saw this as hate speech and didn't listen to it, there was a small number and that counts up to about one hundred thousand. But compared to the number of German Americans, that's a small percentage, and who bought into this and attended rallies and listen to the speeches. And the idea I think in the short term was to get German Americans to vote as a block so that

like minded politicians would be in power. And in the long term, of course, it was the goal to turn the United States into a carbon copy of Nazi Germany. I think that Hitler's original plan was to take over the United States without firing a shot. He thought that if he could take over Hollywood, which was run by Jews, after all, he didn't have to lie about that they

really were in charge in Hollywood. If he could take over Hollywood and have them crank out pro Nazi movies instead of anti Nazi movies, he might be able to win the hearts and minds of Americans without having to go to war with them. What problem was, he didn't really put a strong leader in charge of that plan. He put four or five guys in there who all, instead of cooperating with one another, were competitive. And there was a Jewish lawyer in Los Angeles who caught wind

of this, and the plan was just horrible. They were going to kidnap Jewish movie stars Charlie Chaplin. They were going to kidnap the Moguls, the Louis Vu Mayors, the Joseph Skaggs, and they were going to hang them in public areas and then take over the movies. Now, I don't know how you're going to win the hearts and minds of Americans by performing public executions. I think that's a miscalculation. But that was the plan. And what the

Jewish lawyer did, his name was al Lewis. He put together a team of Jewish people who could pass his gentiles and had them infiltrate the movement. Many of them were women, and they spread rumors about the four guys who were all trying to be in charge. This guy's stabbing this guy in the back, this guy said this about this guy. And pretty soon the effort to take over Hollywood falls apart, and the Nazis that come in later, the German American Bund, they're reduced to trying to recruit

through homeless men. They set up soup kitchens and then is now Los Angeles had a conspicuous homeless problem, and they would gather these guys up, feed them and then inundate them with the disinformation about Jews, and if they started saying, hey, yeah, we should kill the Jews, they got a uniform and they got to go out and

march and have parades. So by the time my book starts, there's rising fascism with a German Nazi bent in many of the major cities in America, and Jewish leaders are starting to get sick of it.

Jesus said, you your work here is not done. You have to go back to You have to go back to Earth and make sure that you wipe out the Jews, because that's what I want, and I think everybody knows why Win Wink wink, and this is his Pelly's story. And he starts recruiting right right wing type men once again, giving them uniforms, although in this case they looked more like boy scouts than army guys. I'm not sure who

designed the uniforms. And because the German American Buddhists were called brown shirts because of their uniforms, he called his men's silver shirts, although the shirts are actually like blue in color. And he said that you know, if you're a Christian, you have to be anti Jew, and you

have to be anti Communist. And one of his strongest mouthpieces was was a Catholic priest who named Father Claughlin, who went on the air in a syndicated show every Sunday afternoon and would say name the father's son, and holy ghost, love Hitler and h Jews and not in so many words. He was cleverer than that. He had a very very soft, caressing voice, so it made the hate speech seem more tolerable. But yeah, by the time the gangsters started fighting the Nazis in my book, anti

Semitism was in the very air. Oh you mentioned kkk KKK was of course down with fighting against the Jews. Father Kaughlin got no help from the KKK at all because he was a Catholic priest and he was on the list of people they hated as well, So that was that was a problem. But KKK got along with

the Silver Shirts just fine. You know, I think after they had finished wiping out the Jews, they would have gone on to other groups as well, certainly any kind of minority, any kind of infirm person, and eventually even new Catholics.

City and hated the German American Bund. But the last straw came in nineteenth early nineteen thirty eight when he went to a ceremony in Bowling Green, which is a little section of downtown Manhattan right by the southern not far from the World Trade Center now, and it faces the US Customs Building, which is a great, big building

with pillars and gorgeous building. And there was a ceremony by the US Maritimes people on the front steps of the Customs Building, and there were American flags and the pledge of a legions singing the Star Spangled banner. And during the ceremony up marches a parade of the German American Bund with their hate signs and their chanting, you know, kill the Jews and love Hitler. And there was a standoff.

It looked like there was going to be a big fight, but eventually the Maritime people moved inside the building, held their ceremony inside, and it just stuck in Judge Peerlman's crawl, the fact that good Americans had been forced to retreat because you know, the garbage people were out there saying the things they were saying. He didn't know what to do, so he went to a bar as he usually did, and he was sitting over a cocktail when he had an idea. So, what these guys need is a good

butt weapon. Yeah, he needed an army, but he didn't have one. So he's going to have to get when he was got to be a Jewish army because they were the only ones who are going to be emotional enough about this stuff to actually fight. Had to be an army of guys who didn't mind breaking the law because they were going to have to punch people and

you'd be comfortable with that. So he The next day in his chambers, he picks up the phone and he calls Meyer Lansky, who he knows from some previous relationship. And I suspect it had more to do with one being a drinker and the other being a bootlegger than it did with anything to do with one being a judge and one being a criminal. I'll be anything to do with the justice system, but he knows Meyer Lansky.

He says, I need to have a meeting. Says sure, come on over, and Pearlman brings Rabbi Stephen Wise with him, just in case he needs to lay some guilt on Lansky. Do what he wants, and it boils down. He says, you know, Meyer, these anti Semites, they're organized, they've got newspapers backing them up. Something needs to be done. And Lancey says, you know that bugs me too. I think we're on the same side there, Judge, he says, do you have some boys who might want to punch a Nazi?

And Lancey says, well, sure, but to be honest with you, Judge, Rabbi, we can do better than punch, at which point the Rabbi is no, no, no, no, no no. There must be no killing. They're the killers, We're not killers. And Lansky sees the wisdom and it's always better not to shoot, and Judge promises, yeah, just but teach them that it can be dangerous to be a Nazi in America. Teach them that we're not soft. We're not just going to

take it. The Jews can be tough, and if they want to say this stuff about us, they better expect some blowback. So that's the deal, and they make an agreement. The only thing Lanski asked for is please make sure you keep my name out of the newspapers and just just find it. And the judge throws in. You know, if any of you get arrested, you know we'll be there for you. Don't worry about any of that, he said, ohlor,

we're pretty good at avoiding police anyway. So the next time that the German American Bun's going to get together is a big rally at the Yorkville Casino on East eighty sixth Street in Manhattan. And they've been having these rallies fairly regularly, and they used to parade up and down eighty sixth Street. See photos of it. It's just chilling. It looks like Macy's Thanksgiving parade, except there's sig hiling and goosetepp being going on, and there are Nazi flags

being next to American flags. So Lansky does some exercises in team building. He takes the Jewish members of Murder Ink, whose people who don't know what murder Ink is. Those were there was a separate organization from the five Families of the New York Mafia, and if anyone needed somebody killed among those five families, it would be a vote from the bosses, the commission, it was called, and if they said okay, then the job to kill the guy was farmed. Out to murder ink and they would go

out and do the job. And they represented none of the five families. There were a separate entity. And the idea was to prevent civil wars from breaking out, the wars between families from breaking out, which is what happened when anybody was allowed to kill anybody. So it was an orderly fashion and it was working. And he had guys who knew how to use guns, but not necessarily guys who knew how to use their fists. Some of them did because they'd been juvenile delinquents and been a

lot of fights, but some didn't. So what Lansky does He takes them to Glease in his gym, which at that times in the Bronx. It's in the dumble section of Brooklyn. Now it's moved a few times, and Gleason himself teaches these guys how to throw a few combos, and so by the time the next rally takes place at the York Hild Casino, the boys are ready and they split up into three sections. One goes in the front door, one hangs out outside, and one climbs up

a fire escape and goes into an upstairs window. And the murdering guys are just shocked by what they see. I mean, it's Hitler's birthdays. There's a celebration going on. They're singing Happy Birthday to Hitler. There are American flags again next to Swastika flags. Up on the stage. There is a portrait of George Washington next to a portrait

of Adolf Hitler. And all of this is because the first attempt to start a pro Hitler organization in America was called the Friends of New Germany, and they got shut down for being anti American. So the new edition is now called The German American, but says American even

in the name. We're talking about on America. So that I think that the last thing that is said at the rally is and the Jews were possible for the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, at which point the fights start and the closest the gangsters ever came to breaking the no kill rule, and Lanski himself was part of this is they did. They dangled a particularly loudmouthed Nazi out the second floor window, so should we should we?

Eventually they dropped him and if he the landed on his head, he'd have been dead, but he lands on one leg and breaks his femur instead, and the fight

last two three minutes tops. And the reason we have the details we do is because I'm Jewish journalist by name of Jedd Teller is there, right, he was, he was, He was in on it, so he was there to write about it later in retrospect, although not really at the time because nobody in this, nobody in the room during the fights, wants their name in the paper the next days the next day. Nobody wants to be known as a as a hitler lover, and nobody wants to

be known as a as a gangster. So and one of the smart things that Lanski does before the fight starts is he opens up a box of brand new American Legion hats. So before all the gangs go into the York Field casino, they put on the American Legion hats. They fight with the hats on gets knocked off during the fight, okay, but if you still have it on by the time you're leaving, toss it on the sidewalk and sure enough, you know. The next day the newspapers say,

well there was a riot. We think there was American Legion guys against against the Nazi guys. The American Legion didn't mind being blamed too much because a lot of them had fought in World War One and didn't like the idea of Germans becoming aggressive again. And it was a trick that Lanski learned from Albert Anastasia, who used to put Chicago hats hats made in Chicago on his

hit teams before they'd whack somebody. Then they'd lose the hats on the way out, and the police wouldn't bother looking for the crew that did it because they were probably halfway back to Chicago already, when in reality the killers were sitting in the back room of a candy store in Brownsville, Brooklyn. So the fight only last two three minutes. It ends with Lansky and the boys chasing three or four Nazis down the street and that's it.

After the fight, Fiarrel Olga, who doesn't like the Nazis any more than Maya Lanski does, makes a new set of rules, so you can't wear uniforms anymore unless it's an American uniform. You can't have any more parades, and what basically happens is the big rallies in Manhattan stop and what they do is they start up again in Newark, New Jersey. They basically they crossed the Hudson River and

started up again in Newark, New Jersey. So Judge Perlman calls Longy's Roman, who's the ex bootlegger who's running the rackets in Newark, and says has a conversation very similar to the one he had with Lanski. And what Zolman says is, you know, we're a little bit ahead of you here. We've we've already got guys ready for this. When they come, we're ready for them. And they're called

the Minute Men. And in Newark by far the biggest number of Jewish men ready to fight as a team to get rid of to rid the town of the Nazis. And they were not just gangsters, they were also professional.

And this we see for the rest of the book is that first of all, there's a blurred line between boxer and gangster in nineteen thirty eight anyway, because boxing is run by gangsters, and a lot of fighters during their careers and after their careers went to work for gangsters doing tough guy stuff that they were bouncers and collectors and whatever whatever we need to be done so

the lot. There's a lot of guys who aren't technically gangsters, but they're under orders from from Longhy's willman after Longe's woman who is a gangster, and they're they're dishing out some serious hurt in the uh the German American Bund meetings in Newark, which are held in places like the Swabenhall, which is fun to.

they're stunned. They try to flee. I mean most of the Germans that these riots uninjured because they ran and they managed to get out of the building and run home or run to their car, depending on where the fight was. So later on, I think that there's more fisticuffs. Of the fact that at no time does anybody shoot anybody is just stunning, you know. I think one of the questions they get most often is could this happen today?

And no, no, because somebody would get shot in the first thirty seconds, and that would be that everybody would scatter after that. These were more They were more like rumbles like you might find between juvenile de linquid gangs in the fifties. I think west story, to a certain extent, is the story about how we graduated as a combating culture from fist fights to using guns. But in nineteen

thirty eight, you could do it. The only gun that it's fired is at the very end of one fight in New York where somebody fires a shot into the ceiling and that just signals everybody to get out. But yeah, it was almost like they were playing by playground rules.

You don't bring a knife to a fist fight, you don't bring a gun to a knife fight, etc. And nobody escalated it beyond I mean, the biggest weapons that were used were baseball bat, solid off pool chews and brass knuckles, and those were specifically okay by Judge Perlman.

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He is a Jewish journalist and the key to him is that he could pass for gentile. We'll talked a little bit about in Hollywood about how they used spies. And he was contacted by the Anti Defamation League and ben a brit who are also part of this. But the amount of organization between those groups and Judge Perlman's unknown. But Pearlman calls the top Jewish gangster in Chicago, which is Greasy Thumb Guzick. And Guzick is Al Capone's right

hand man. He did some time for tax evasion. Capone was still in prison, so Guzick was calling the shots. And he's right next door to Davey Miller's boxing Jim where the Jewish fighters all trained, and upstairs there's other mayor do well Jewish young men who are about playing pool and hustling and doing that kind of thing. And Herb Brinn knows these guys because he grew up at his dad's store and hung around wasting his childhood away

playing pool. And he's contacted by Anti Defamation League and because he could pass for gentile. I spoke to both of Herb's sons out of him, and don't say he was blonde and blue eyed, because he wasn't. Okay, well, he had sandy hair and brown eyes, but he could pass for gentile, and that was the key part. And he infiltrates the German American Bund in Chicago. And by this time they're not they're not putting up posters saying where the next meeting is going to be because of

the problems in Newark and New York. It's known that if you if you advertise, oppositional show up. So we're at a different stage of consciousness. By the by the Germans, they know there's trouble and they're still keeping themselves as secret as possible. But with Herb Brennett at the meetings,

of course, the word is out immediately. Now. The the actual fighters that Guzik sends are the boys next door, and they include include Barney Ross, who was a multi division boxing champion who was in the last days of his boxing career right and a fellow by the name of Sparky Rubinstein who's a funny little guy, kind of a hustler, kind of he was. He was he was

Chicago's number one ticket scalper. If you went to any sporting event, you would get to see Sparky out front trying to sell tickets for more than their box office price. And then there was Davy Miller. And Davey Miller was not a boxer. He was a referee and had refereed some of the top heavyweight fights. But he goes along too because they're all of one mind once they get the order to go bust up German American bund meetings. And it's an interesting side note is that Sparky becomes

famous later in life completely different context. He changes his name to Jack Ruby, yes, and becomes a nightclub operator in Dallas, Texas, and quite famously commits the first murder on live TV when he shoots alleged JFK assassin Leavey Oswald in the basement of the Dallas Police Department while Oswald is being transferred to the county jail on November twenty fourth, nineteen sixty three, two days after the President

was shot. So Ruby goes on and after Ruby shoots Auswald, I want everybody to know the Jews are tough, and he starts saying, so it comes right out of the Judge Perlman playbook. Yeah, except for one thing is that in nineteen thirty eight they were punching people who wanted to commit genocide, and in nineteen sixty three he was silencing someone who could have cast light on how it is that the assassination came about. So nobody thought of

him as a hero. They thought of him as a guy who was working for the mob and there to cover up whatever had happened to Kennedy. So those are the guys that go to the fight in Chicago, and there's no need to take them to see a boxing coach to teach him how to throw combinations. They know. And by this time the Germans are a little more aware that they're liable to have problems, and they don't react with quite the fear and shock as they had it on the East Coast. But there are no matches

for these guys. You know, they they raised their fists and they're just you know, they're they're they're buried by you know, one two's, and down they go. It reminds me of the story after the York Fuel casino riot in New York. The next day, there were I think there are seven or eight arrests and all of them

were Germans. And the next day he had the judge of the morning court looks out at the sad, bandaged men that they went from the emergency room to jail, and they're all represented by Jewish lawyers, and the judge says, we'll see. It just goes to show how great America is. I mean, you're spending your time bad mouthing Jews to claiming that you want Jews wiped off the face of the earth, and these Jewish men are are here to

get you out of trouble. And what the judge did is he figured these guys with their with their broken noses, and they're they're, you know, scalps busted open. They've learned their lesson, so he scares them a little bit and then he sends them all home. And sure enough, I would guess that none of those men ever went to another German American bun round. Their wives wouldn't And that as from city to city to city, was how that the plan to get German Americans to vote as a as a block fell apart.

a lie. I mean, he was interviewed by a member of the press and he told the lie that he was he was mad at the Nazis because they had carved up some kid and then hung him from a tree, and this is why they were after the Nazis, as if lying about the Nazis was necessary. But for some reason that Arno did, and then once it was out

of his mouth, he couldn't take it back. So there was there was a suspicion that the actual incident in which the kid was cut and left, of course with Swaska shaped scars, was uh life imitating the lie that Arnold had told. But if anything, it just it made the gangsters fight harder. Not all of the combat between the gangsters, and the Nazis was in large groups. They

weren't all riots. In each city, American Defamation League came up with lists of Nazi sympathizers, probably by taking down license plate numbers outside of meetings and things like that, and in pairs, the gangsters would go out and when these guys came out of their houses, they'd brace them. You punch them in the stomach a couple of times and say, hey, you shut up about Jews. Because the object was not to kill the Nazis. World War too hadn't happened yet, it was there was a horrible thought.

The object was to get them to sh up. And you know, I think that one of the most refreshing things about my book is that in my book nobody gets killed. Although there is mass murder going on in Europe as it takes place, no one gets killed in my book. And the object is not to bury these people, is merely to silence them and teach them that if you want to say these things, you have to expect that somebody is going to punch you in the know.

that anymore. But Davey Berman was the leader of the anti Nazi cruise in the Twin Cities, and one night in nineteen thirty eight, his crew received word that the Silver Shirts were holding a rally at the Elks Club. So Berman contacted his fighting crew and told them to

meet at the Ratison Hotel. The Ratison Hotel was where he had his headquarters, right right on the river there in Minneapolis, and once assembled, Davy handed out some brass knuckles, some fung go bat, you know what that is that's that specifically designed for hitting the ball out of your hand? Sought off pool accues and he said, and I believe this is a quote on the knoxt boys. Hit them

right in their stupid little toothbrush mustaches. So his crew was twelve strong, a thirteen if he counted Davy himself. And they drove in three cars to the Elk Lodge and assembled near the front door. And the meeting was underway, and there was a silver shirt at the podium delivering a speech about this again quote the Jew bastards in

this city. And taking that as there cue, Berman's gang invaded the meeting and for ten minutes they busted Nazi heads, and by the time the beatdown was over, all of the Nazis were either on the floor or they'd managed to find a way out of the building, at which time Berman went to the podium, his suit spotted with Nazi blood, and delivered a speech of his own to the wounded in the room. He said, this is a warning. Anybody who says anything against Jews gets the same street treatment,

and the next time it will be worse. Tell your pal Hitler that it's a dangerous thing being an anti Semite in Minneapolis, at which point Berman pulled his gun because he had one with him, and fired a single shot into the ceiling. And that is the only shot fired by the Jewish fighters in my entire book.

Doesn't name him because he's not going to rat him out. Obviously, judge would be in big trouble found out that he was making these phone calls gangsters urging them to commit crimes. And that is the weird thing about my book is that the good guys commit all the crimes and the bad guys don't. Because there were no hate speech laws in nineteen thirty eight, So as long as you didn't shout fire in a crowded room or say something obscene, you could talk about killing Jews all you wanted and

you weren't breaking the law. But anyway, Bugsy Siegel was a gun man, and he was proud of it. I saved my hands for the broads, you'd say, which because he was a violent man, wasn't always good for the broads. But he didn't touch men with his hands. But Mickey Cohen said he made an exception in this case. And again, these guys did not need to be taught how to fight.

Nicky Khen was a fighter as a child. That's another thing about nineteen thirty eight that's a little upsetting is that children were encouraged to box little boys anyway, and they every year in big cities they would have the newsboy boxing tournament, and grown men would go and watch as twelve year olds pummeled each other, and they would bet on the matches. And Mickey Cohen came out of this.

He fought hundreds of fights as a child and as a professional, maybe two three dozen more before he became

a full time gangster. And one of the most famous anti anti anti semi confrontations took place when Mickey Cohen was in a holding cell in a La County jail and found himself in the same jail cell, probably not by coincidence, with two anti semits, and when the guard who had just put Mickey in there walked away for a moment, conveniently, Cohen just went up to the two of the guys that bumped their heads together like Superman would do in the fifties TV show Pal And the

guard comes back and Cohen's sitting there reading a newspaper and the other two guys are unconscious with big bumps on their heads because I don't know, they've got a fight with each other. I don't know it was all about. But maybe they might meet a doctor. So La had celebrity fighters, I guess is probably it's a very Hollywood like that. You would have your movies. The one gangster book with movie star good looks is the guy who's on the Sunset strip punching nazis.

the photographic dark room and two bothering women. Considered himself quite a ladies man, apparently, and he claimed that he had been with Hitler during the nineteen twenty three Beer Pusch, which was the beginning of the revolution that led to the Nazis being put in power years later. First time made off Hitler ever got his name in the newspaper was in nineteen twenty three, after the beer Pusch, which was a fight, and in the fight Hitler but separates

a shoulder. He needs some medical attention. Kuhn says he's there. What we do know for a fact is that there is a photo of Kuhn and Hitler shaking hands, and he had it blown up and framed and put on the wall of his office, and he claimed that he was in America by Hitler's orders to take over, and to do that first by a democratic fashion, if possible, to get German Americans to vote together, and once we got some Nazi thinking politicians into into political office, and

then we work from there. So Kuhn sets up the German American Bun with branches all over the country. He sets up and this is the thing that bothers me most about the entire story. He sets up Nazi youth camps. Yeah, not in Germany, but on Long Island, New York, cat Skills in New York and just outside of Los Angeles. Now across the across the country, usually outside of a large populous area where there are German Americans, but far enough outside the town so that the city police aren't

responsible for anything that goes on there. And he would recruit boys and girls, and the recruiting pamphlets said nothing about Nazis, said nothing about Hitler, said German pride. Your kid will learn how to speak better German. Plus they'll they'll swim and play baseball and run and play and

all the things you get at summer camp. And then when the children would show up, they would see swastikas everywhere, and there would be a nightly lecture in loving Hitler hitting Jews, and they were given uniforms and taught how

to goosstep. It's just just appalling. And then on Sundays, the proud parents would get to come out and find out, some of them for the first time what's been going on in camp, and the kids would have parades for them, and American politicians would show up and give speeches, seemingly unaware of the fact that being anti Semitic was also being anti American. They're just completely oblivious to that. So Kun, and this is true. I found almost across the board

among the Nazis. I guess one point two percent of a group belongs to a hate group. You figure, they're probably not the best citizens in other ways as well, right, But there are a lot of their duells in the bood, and Kun was among them. He was an alcoholic. He'd drank constantly. He was a loaner. He drove from out post to outpost alone in a car, but often terribly intoxicated.

Twice he woke up with his car hanging off a bridge, and after he was eventually arrested for embezzling from his own country, from his own his own organization, people would send in the money for uniforms and he just keep it. They complain about not getting their uniforms. He said, well, next time I'm around, I'll bring some. But he was becoming a rich man off of spreading the word of Hitler,

and he wasn't sharing it with his troops. Now Kons he was another fellow who was chosen pretty much because he could give a rousing speech, and when Kuhn was not around, William Cohons would be the headline speaker. But most of our photos of him are standing behind and to the left of Kuhn, And this seems to be a disproportionate number of photos of Kuhn's with a swastika right behind his head, so it looks like he's wearing

a swastika halo. It's a very very odd image. And those were the two guys that ran the bud and they were breaking no laws. They were protected by the First Amendment, of course, until Pear Harbor changed everything. Yes, when the Japanese bound pro Harbor, all of a sudden, all that free speech turned into sedition, and they were all breaking the loft. They said anything that was anti

American or pro German. And everybody's role changes. The Germans who are attending these rallies, a lot of them are drafted into the US Army and sent to the Pacific where their allegiances will not be questioned. And the Jewish fighters, many of them are drafted and many of them enlist, and they go to Europe and fight Nazis with guns. This time nat Arnoult, the Newark fighter, he was among those who invaded on D Day and the beaches of Normandy.

He marched all the way to Berlin during Europe the Hard Way, and claims that on a couple of occasions he saw German pow is being marched in the opposite direction. Well, he recognized that who recognized him from street fights they'd had in Newark, New Jersey. So it really was the little war before the Big War.

they were honest ones. He survives and he ends up growing to be old eventually cigarettes to kill him. As for the Nazis of William Pelley tends to lands on his feet, which is which is interesting he I guess he was the survivory. I guess he went back to heaven and Jesus said, I was just kidding. But he shifts his It's pretty much the same paranoia speech, but he shifts from Jews to UFOs, and he's one of his. He'd started telling stories about ancient aliens and things like that.

So he has success after World War Two, but almost everybody else comes to a bad end, and nat Arnaut becomes a full time gangster after the war, doing what he was probably always destined to do. And I have had Jewish readers who have said that they object to the word gangster, that if these men had been in Palestine, they had been called survivors. Also, I've noticed that I've given many speeches to a lot of varying crowds. I've

spoken at synagogues. I spoke through a zoom type arrangement to a group at Fort Knox of army soldiers so

predominantly Jewish and predominantly Gentile. And what I found was that your Christian audiences seemed to find this to be a little compartment of history, and they're kind of a cute, little, cute, little anecdotal story that took place before the big story of World War Two, and my Jewish audiences see it as just another part of a long story that's been going on for thousands of years, right, and is absolutely still going on today.

Nazi Party in America at that time. He continues being a fighter of Nazis right up until old age. It's amazing.

have taken up their cause. And we're still trying to puzzle out how to stop hate in the world, and certainly hate against Jews. It seems to be disproportionate, certainly considering Yeah, I've met thousands of Jews in my life, and every single ones it'd be pretty nice. Well, there was one.

For all those people that may want to read those kinds kind of graphic details, it certainly is filled with the details of how much of a beating they inflicted on these people.

one against the other. And certainly, what the Nazis were doing to the Jews in Europe is thousands, millions and infinity infinity times worse anything the Jews were doing to Nazis in America. Sorry, a couple of guys got their skulls busted, but we're in a world now, We're almost every Jewish person has a relative died during Hitler's regime.

Because they were, you know, there's an attempt to exterminate them, and today they're Orthodox Jewish communities who may seem odd to Christians with odd rules until you realize that they're concentrating on repopulating their own flock. The reason they don't want to mix is because, first of all, outsiders aren't to be trusted, and there used to be millions of them, and now there are thousands of them, and this yet, so it's perfectly all right for them to stick to

their own and marry. They're only their own kind, and they have new Jews being born with Jewish mothers and fathers, and it makes perfect sense because we don't know what it's like to have our tribe almost wipe down. And it doesn't matter what unless we're a Native American, which case, in which case we would probably have a pretty good idea. That's another thing we didn't touch upon, as the Hitler got the idea from America.