Ultra with Rachel Maddow

These are my notes from the 8 episodes of Ultra podcast concerning American Nazism during WWII. The series is extensively documented in the show notes, mostly National Archive, LOC, & FBI files. You can listen to the podcast here: https://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-presents-ultra Also, don't miss A Night At the Garden, a short film on the two 1938/9 SRO Nazi Rallies at Madison Sq. Gardens, NYC. https://anightatthegarden.com --- ## Episode 1 - Trip 19 Late Summer/Fall 1940 - MN Senator Ernest Lundeen, crying uncontrolably in his WDC Office. Taken to airport by secretary still bawling, to go home to give speech - Lundeen & 3 federal agents die in plane crash - in Lundeen's pocket, a ghost written speech by Nazi agent in WDC extolling the virtues of the German Peoples. - Journalist Drew Pearson *"Justice Department agents were attempting to find out the extent to which Berlin was definitely hooked up with any members of Congress when Lundeen's plane crashed."* - MT Senator Burton Wheeler, a leader in the ***America First Committee***, questions the DOJ's prosecution of Nazi sympathizers. ![[lundeen speech.png]]*The speech written for Sen. Ernest Lundeen by a paid Nazi agent. Lundeen was carrying these pages when he died, and they were found near the scene of the plane crash. The speech extolled the great contributions of German culture to American life, and argued that Americans had more in common with the fascist German government than it did with the democracies Germany was busy invading.* (at the Hoover Institution) [[Highlights & Notes - Trip 19]] --- ## Episode 2 - The Brooklyn Boys - Father Charles E. Coughlin. A Catholic priest, a radio preacher based out of Royal Oak, Michigan at the Shrine of the Little Flower. - the most listened-to show in America. - most prominent media figure in America calls for the creation of a militia, armed Americans willing to use violence to get their way. - Redacted FBI file on Coughlin was more than 2500 pages long. That’s as big as the FBI file on the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. - Coughlin wrote fan mail to Benito Mussolini. Coughlin reprinted a speech by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels about how Jews are the real aggressors, and Gentiles everywhere are just victims of the evil Jews. Coughlin translated that Goebbels speech from German into English, then published it word-for-word in his newsletter under his own name. Coughlin organized boycotts of Jewish businesses under the slogan "Buy Christian.” - In 1938, just a few days after Kristallnacht, Coughlin got on the radio to assure his American listeners that they shouldn't be too worried about what they might be hearing out of Germany about Jews being persecuted and Jews being murdered. They shouldn’t be too worried about that because Americans, he explained, should understand that the Jews had it coming. - Father Charles Coughlin— the most listened-to media figure in the whole country— called for the creation of a militia to pursue his aims. He called it ***“The Christian Front.”*** - Near Boston: Browning Automatic Rifles,A dozen cans of cordite, about 1500 rounds of ammunition, were stolen from an armory in Waltham, Massachusetts. ![[nazi2.jpg]] **Madison Square Garden, 1938/9** - Those explosives and that ammo went missing because the commander of a New York National Guard machine gun company took the stuff and gave it to the Christian Front. - "The plot, [Hoover] said, was aimed against Jews generally and involved seizure of key government agencies such as Federal Reserve banks, post offices, and Public Utilities.” - in the immediate aftermath of the arrests, Father Coughlin claimed that he had no idea who these people were. Never heard of 'em. He literally tried to argue that they might be a Christian Front, but they were not his Christian Front. - Coughlin said the whole prosecution was all ginned up just to try and make him look bad. He said, in his words, that it was “a hoax.” [[Highlights & Notes - The Brooklyn Boys]] --- ## Episode 3 - The Day (Der Tag) September 1940 - The U.S. government ordered American munitions factories into overdrive to start churning out the kind of material the U.S. would need if and when we joined the fight. - Hercules Powder Plant in Kenvil, New Jersey, September 1940, when it all blew up. At least nine powder houses blew up this afternoon. - Tracked back to Pro-nazi elements. - La Crescenta, California. They called it Hindenburg Park. ![[the jewish qpuestion.png]] - Hitler Summer Youth Camp - 2,000 person party for Hitler's birthday ![[hitler day .png]] - Pro Nazi speakers and swastika marching paramilitary groups - Nazi Gift shop - Aryan bookstore ![[ayran book shop.png]] - screened Nazi films in on-site theater - San Diego snowstorms: nazi groups would drop threatening leaflets from tall buildings, so the papers would flutter down onto the street - George Deatherage, and ultimately to one guy who just flat out said he wanted to be known as America's Adolf Hitler. “I intend to overthrow the U.S. government.” - Hitler has the Brownshirts, Mussolini has the Blackshirts, and now America will have the Silver Shirts. ![[jew riot.png]] - The Silver Shirts ultimately had thousands of members across the country all declaring their allegiance to William Pelley, all united in his stated aim of installing Nazi-style fascism in the United States. (Silver Shirts matching uniforms: blue pants, standard issue matching ties, and indeed a silverish shirt with a giant red “L” across the chest, which supposedly stood for Legion, as in Silver Legion.) - They don’t call themselves right-wing fanatics. They’re patriots who are saving America from the Communist-Jewish threat. - Naval intelligence agents did arrest Marines who were stationed in San Diego. Those Marines had been illegally trafficking government firearms – military guns – to Silver Shirts in San Diego. [[Highlights & Notes - The Day|Transcript: The Day]] --- ## Episode 4 - Bad Angle - Norma Lundeen, widow of the Senator who died in the plane crash. - Picture of Ernest Lundeen standing under a swastika banner emerge - Norma Lundeen: *"A number of photographs of my husband were taken while he was speaking. One of those photographs was taken at such an angle as to convey the impression that my husband was standing beneath the swastika. As a matter of fact, he was standing under the stars and stripes."* (why was he onstage with a swastika under any circumstances?) ![[bad angle.png]] - 48-hours after her husband dies, she goes to his office to collect: The Viereck files. (not pictures and personal effect. Just the files related to George Sylvester Viereck). - Senator Ernest Lundeen and George Sylvester Viereck were old friends. - Viereck is a spy for the German government - Francis Moran, the leader of the Christian Front in Boston. The thousands and thousands of Nazi propaganda books and leaflets and pamphlets that he disseminated all over Boston and the Northeast was material supplied to Francis Moran by George Sylvester Viereck. ![[wake up.png]] - Lundeen would take them (Viereck's Nazi propoganda) and read them verbatim on the floor of the Senate. - So Viereck would get pro-German speeches from the Hitler government, from the German embassy. Senator Ernest Lundeen would then deliver those speeches on the floor of the Senate, enter them into the Congressional Record. Viereck would then order Lundeen’s staff to print off gazillions of copies of those speeches, which would then be sent in pre-paid government envelopes to unwitting members of the public. - Nazi propaganda to unsuspecting Americans and it's "not costing us, German Nazis, a single reichsmark. American tax payers were paying for Nazi propaganda with American tax dollars." - Looking around the publicist's (Viereck's) apartment that day in Washington--after his arrest--William Power Maloney took in the sight of hundreds of documents and envelopes bearing the names of all sorts of members of Congress: - Republican Congressman Stephen Day of Illinois, - Democratic Congressman Martin L. Sweeney of Ohio, - Democratic Senator David Worth Clark of Idaho, - Republican Congressman George Tinkham of Massachusetts, - Republican Congressman Jacob Thorkelson of Montana, - Republican Senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota - [[Highlights & Notes - A Bad Angle]] --- ## Episode 5 - Shut It Down - Subeona served on Viereck's apartment for the next day at Grand Jury - that night, sacks of material cleaned out of apartment in middle of the night - reporter with tip-off follows the truck to US Capitol, drops off some bags - Drops off remainder at WDC HQ of America First Committee. - contents of AFC bags burned in alley - Capitol bags dropped off at office of Representative Hamilton Fish: "I have no patience with those Americans who tremble every time Hitler sneezes or get jittery every time he opens his mouth." - In 1933, just after Hitler became chancellor in Germany, Congressman Hamilton Fish had contributed to a book about how Hitler and the Nazis had had saved Germany from Communism. How Hitler and the Nazis had done the world a big favor. - Fish rented one of his apartments in New York City to a Nazi government official, a nice place on East 77th Street. - In 1938, Congressman Fish headlined a big pro-Germany rally at Madison Square Garden in New York. They played the Nazi anthem, there were swastika flags, the crowd did the Hitler salute, and Republican Congressman Ham Fish was the honored guest and main speaker. - The year after that, in 1939, Congressman Fish flew to Germany. He met with senior officials from Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The Nazi foreign minister, von Ribbentrop, loaned Congressman Fish his official government plane, in which the congressman then flew around to different countries in Europe, basically urging them to accommodate Hitler and Germany, and not fight them. When Congressman Fish was on that trip in 1939, he spoke with reporters from Berlin. He told them, quote, "Germany's cause is just." - *Nazi leaders on trial for war crimes after the war would later explain that Congressman Fish* had given them great advice on that trip he took to Germany. Great advice for what sort of strategy the Nazis should take toward the United States. ![[adolph hitler street.jpg]] *Yaphank, NY on Long Island.* ![[drinking yaphank.jpg]] *Relaxing at the club in Yakhank, NY* - On the Senate side of the U.S. capitol, the Nazi agent Viereck had set up shop in the offices of Senator Ernest Lundeen. - On the House side of the Capitol, Viereck set up shop with Congressman Hamilton Fish.![[nazi street march.jpg]]*Getting their Nazi Pride on in NY* - George Hill (Fish secretary), Viereck, Laura Ingalls, and 30 other people indicted and charged with sedition & attempting to overthrow the US. - included: Hermann Schwinn, the pro-Nazi organizer who had been involved in the sabotagte plots against U.S. munitions plants, including the **targeting of the Hercules Power Company**. - ![[nazi summer camp.jpeg]]*Parents weekend at NY Aryan Youth Camp* - George Deatherage, the white supremacist former Klansman who’d been **plotting that violent coup** to take place right after the 1940 election. - Senator Burton K. Wheeler, leading light, one of the most prominent figures in the America First movement (There is a famous photo of Senator Burton Wheeler at an America First event in May 1941. He’s standing next to Charles Lindbergh and other America First worthies who are all giving these enthusiastic Hitler salutes.) ![[madison sq wheeler-lindburg.png]] - The federal grand jury has indicted again 28 men and women on charges that they have conspired to establish a Nazi government in the United States. - [[Highlights & Notes - Shut It Down]] --- ## Episode 6 - Bedlam - The Christian Front case. When the FBI and the Justice Department arrested and brought charges against 17 members of Father Coughlin's Christian Front militia in 1940 – the guys who were stockpiling bombs, and ammunition, and U.S. military heavy machine guns, training for a violent takeover of the federal government - The case charged dozens of Americans with trying to violently overthrow the government. That implicated dozens of sitting members of Congress, as well.![[yaphank.jpeg]]*After a hard week in the city, time to relax in Yaphank.* - Christian Fronters were all set free and even given their guns back - Edward James Smythe – who had headlined joint rallies between the Klu Klux Klan and the German American Bund, who had corresponded with the German Government asking their help in propagandizing the American people and targeting Jews – Mr. Smythe, when it came time for him to face trial, he was gone. - caught him about 40 miles south of the Canadian border, and still heading north. - 30 alleged seditionists, 22 defense attorneys, the prosecutors, the judge, the jury pool, reporters – lots of reporters reporters – members of the public, everybody in the same 38-by-40 foot room. - defense attys tried to subpoena Adolf Hitler, Joseph Paul Goebbels, Rudolph Hess, and Winston Churchill to witness the innocence of their clients - The judge allowed defense counsel to ask prospective jurors if they were Jewish, if they had Jewish relatives, or if they read Jewish publications. ![[yaphankjpg.jpeg]] *Gardening is a popular pastime on Long Island. - And it got even weirder than that. Prospective jurors were asked by defense counsel: "What does Jew mean?" "What does international bankers mean?" "What is meant by Mongolian Jew?" "What is zionism?" "Do you think the Jews are an international people?" "Do you think Jesus was a Jew." - The resulting 12-person jury had zero Jewish people, zero African-Americans, and at least three German-Americans. - And now and then, such strident screams from defendants as “that’s a damn lie” or **“I’m a republican, not a Nazi.”** ![[kike killer.png]] *the US patented weapon developed by E. True, president of America First, Inc. and sold through America First literature as "the Kike Killer"* j![[true's tungeon.png]] - Opening Arguments “[The defendants] intended to impose on us a one-party system, just as the Nazis had done before them in Germany. The evidence will show that they intended to abolish the Republican and the Democratic parties. The evidence will show that they intended to abolish freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, freedom from arrest without cause, and all the other civil liberties guaranteed to us by the constitution. Thereafter, the evidence will show they intended to run this country not according to our constitution, but according to the so-called ‘fuhrer’ principle and the Nazi concept of Aryanism The evidence will show that the defendants themselves talked in terms of bloodbaths, or blood flowing in the streets, [or] hanging people from lamp posts, of pogroms. One of the defendants stated that our pogroms in this country would make Hitler’s look like a Sunday school picnic. [[Highlights & Notes - Bedlam]] --- ## Episode 7 - Rinse, Repeat - The governor of North Dakota, Wild Bill Langer, was in trouble. ![[bismarck.png]] *After North Dakota Governor William Langer was convicted on corruption charges, the state Supreme Court removed him from office. Langer's supporters took to the streets of Bismarck to demand that Langer be reinstated as governor.* - He was involved in a scheme in North Dakota politics in which he was raising money for himself and his political party by effectively extorting the state’s employees, requiring a monthly "subscription fee" to a newsletter. - in trouble because state highway employees get federal funds, too. - sentenced to 18 months in federal prison, removed from office. - Langer refused to go. - declared martial law - barricaded himself in his office - activated the national guard - declared North Dakota independent from US federal government - eventually left when starved out - Got his conviction overturned on appeal, so GOP put him forward as US Senate candidate - After he won, the senate took a year to seat him permanently: “continuous, contemptuous, and shameful disregard for high concepts of public duty.” - His supporters argued that the voters of North Dakota knew who he was, they knew what they were getting, and they voted for him anyway. ## Are You a Jew or a Jewess? ![[jews jury.png]] *Sample of the 3-page Jury Questionnaire allowed by the Judge* [[read more]] (<https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/23271139/221107_ultra_ep6_juror-questionaires-for-web.pdf)> - **Back in WDC, Judge Edward C. Eicher had lost control of his courtroom**. He was seven months into this trial that he was presiding over, the biggest sedition trial in U.S. history, and things had pretty much descended into total chaos. - the defendants were variously: - on a run to the Canadian border - one on a run to the dentist, - Defendant Joe McWilliams, who was nicknamed Joe McNazi in the press, the judge allowed him to take up a regular factory job instead of coming to court for his trial each day. - The judge allowed another defendant, Elizabeth Dilling, to resume her day job as well. - Her day job was touring the midwest with a pro-Nazi preacher who was running for President on the banner of something called the America First Party. At his rallies, it was Elizabeth Dilling's job to lead the crowd in singing antisemitic songs. The judge in the sedition trial let her leave court to go do that job during the middle of the trial. - show up in the courtroom in a blue satin nightgown saying that her clothes had been stolen. - Defendant Edward James Smythe, when he made it to court, he was believed to regularly show up drunk. - defendants were stuffing Congressionally Franked envelopes during trial, rom the office of a Republican U.S. Senator: William Langer of North Dakota with letters of Langer's speeches extolling the Nazi party, protesting the trial, and the unfairness of it all. Printing and postage paid for by the American public. - The other Senator from North Dakota, Senator Gerald Nye, was known to host weekly meetings in his Senate offices for the lawyers for the sedition case defendants. "*We would like to ban the Jews and emphatically burn them out. The Jews control the White House, the President is a Jew, his wife a Jewess, and Jews are running Washington and the nation. To get rid of the Jews, we will have to burn and kill them off." He was now a defendant at the sedition trial, but he had previously been the leader of the Pontiac, Michigan chapter of the America First Committee*" - Judge Eicher went home, he had dinner, and then he **died** in his sleep that night. - By the time that day arrived, Judge Edward Eicher had already ruled on more than 500 defense motions for a mistrial. He had heard 72,000 objections made by counsel in the case - Meanwhile, one defendant had died, three others had been granted separate trials, hundreds of mistrial motions had been admitted by defense attorneys, some of the defendants had wandered away and hadn’t been seen in the courtroom for weeks. - **Mistrial** --- And as American soldiers advance toward Berlin, they’re recovering reams of previously secret Nazi documents — documents that, it turns out, **detail from the German side the Hitler government's plot to undermine American democracy.** German government documents that name names: - American businessmen, - far-right American fascists aligned with the Nazi cause, - members of Congress. [[Highlights & Notes - Rinse, Repeat]] --- ## Episode 8 - Ultra Vires ("beyond the powers") ![[official german report.png]] [[read]] (- [The official German report: Nazi penetration, 1924-1942 | Search Results | IUCAT Kokomo](https://iucat.iu.edu/iuk/823683)) - In the 11 weeks that he and his team spent in Europe, Rogge interviewed dozens of Nazis who had been captured by the U.S. military, including high-ranking officials like Ribbentrop, the foreign minister, just before he was hanged; and former Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, who would soon kill himself with a cyanide capsule while he was on his way to being hanged. - Truman essentially decrees that this report should never see the light of day. It is simply too explosive. He orders this report to be classified as secret and essentially forbids Rogge from ever publishing or ever even discussing the contents of what I would argue is perhaps the most explosive political report of the 20th century. - Drew Pearson's columns spelled out what Rogge had found: the Nazis' plan to interfere in the 1940 presidential election, their funding of influential right-wing media in the United States, Father Charles Coughlin writing to the Hitler government and sending an emissary to Berlin to ask the Nazis to help him here in his war at home against Roosevelt and against the Jews. - Rogge by then had faded as a public figure -he had been smeared and attacked as a red, as a communist. - But when Nye ran for re-election during the sedition trial in 1944, he lost his seat -- he very nearly lost in the primary, and then in the general election he just got trounced. - Hamilton Fish III -- good old Ham Fish-- he was also soundly beaten in the 1944 election. - But when Wheeler was up for re-election in 1946, Democrats in Montana threw him out in the primary. They didn't even let him compete to hold his seat in the general election. - Democratic Senator Rush Holt of West Virginia, Illinois Republican Congressman Stephen Day -- both of them had been in lucrative arrangements with Viereck -- both of them were singled out in Rogge's German report as willing collaborators with that Nazi agent. They were both abandoned by their respective political parties, both shoved out of office by voters. - Jacob Thorkelson, the Montana Congressman who had worked with Viereck to mail out thousands of copies of a sympathetic interview with Hitler. Thorkelson was such a Germanophile, he had also adopted what was then the German cultural craze of nudism and nudist camps -- in Montana. Thorkelson, too, was voted out of office in favor of a Democrat who challenged voters to choose the New Deal from Roosevelt, over the Nude Deal from Thorkelson. - Father Charles E. Coughlin from the Shrine of the Little Flower in Royal Oak Michigan, had by then been taken off the radio by the Catholic Church, he was revealed to have a secret overseas bank account stuffed with what would be about $14 million dollars in today's money. Coughlin became a kind of real estate speculator.![[youth camp.jpg]] *Welcome to Aryan Youth Camp, Yaphank.* - George Sylvester Viereck -- the Nazi agent -- he got out of jail after the war in 1947, by which time - his wife had not only left him, - she had sold all his earthly possessions and donated the proceeds to groups helping Jewish refugees. - Viereck’s eldest son -- his namesake, George Sylvester Viereck, Jr. -- had by then been killed in battle, fighting heroically against the Nazis as a U.S. Army corporal. - His father was still in jail as a Nazi agent when he received the news. - Viereck, Sr. went on to advise the National Renaissance Party, which was the first neo-Nazi party in the United States. - American justice returns a verdict of guilty in the trial of William Dudley Pelley, the Silver Shirts Leader. ![[silver shirts.png]] - William Dudley Pelley -- the Silver Shirts Leader -- he eventually faced additional charges of securities fraud because, amid everything else he was up to, he was running a fake stock scheme involving his weird Silver Legion empire. **Pelley’s virulently antisemitic writings are still in vogue; they’re still circulating on the far-right today.** - Norma Lundeen, widow of Senator Ernest Lundeen, went on to marry a Senator who had served alongside her husband, an Oregon Republican Senator who had been a senior member of the Ku Klux Klan. - Gerald L.K. Smith became a pioneer of American Holocaust denial. He preached something called Christian Nationalism - Elizabeth Dilling resumed her antisemitic organizing. She became a Holocaust denier. She claimed that President Eisenhower was a secret Jew. She said just as FDR has pushed the "Jew Deal," President Kennedy was pushing the "Jew Frontier." She opposed Barry Goldwater's run for president because his running mate had been a prosecutor at Nuremberg. - Bizarrely, in 2010, then-Fox News Host Glenn Beck tried to revive interest in Elizabeth Dilling, enthusiastically promoting one of her books to his audience. - ![[deport blacks.png]] - ND Senator Langer actually did have a long career in the U.S. Senate. His proposed legislation to deport Black Americans to Africa was later taken up as a rallying cry by the National States' Rights Party -another early neo-Nazi group, whose members were put on trial for allegedly bombing an Atlanta synagogue in the '50s. Senator Langer went on to advocate -successfully -for the U.S. to grant clemency for at least one convicted Nazi war criminal. [[Highlights & Notes - Ultra Vires]] [[Ultra with Rachel Maddow]] .pdf