In early 1941 the American Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided a camp run by the American Bund at Bergwald, New Jersey. This camp was operated by the German American League, a group of American fascists and based around the idea of the so-called “Nazi Youth” camps in Germany. Among the items confiscated by the FBI to be used as evidence against camp founders was this reel of silent 16mm movies which reveal activities in the camp circa 1937-38, complete with title cards in German. At 3:00 a title card reads “Departure of the young people of New York”. Another at 11:40 states “Washing and tent order.” At 22:24 the American and German flags are shown flying at the camp. At 22:46 a title card declares “Even in winter it goes on” and a separate card says “Leadership training 1937-38”. At 26:26 a card proudly declares “Our Work”. At 36:48 “Our Girls” shows the female side of the camp.
As you can see in the footage, children at the camp were taught Nazi ideology and went through many of the same routines as their German counterparts, including marching, bonfire events, and even Seig Heil’ing and singing of patriotic German songs. The majority of the campers were children or grandchildren of German immigrants and naturalized American citizens who were part of the Bund. This camp and others like it closed after the leader of the German Bund, Fritz Kuhn, was arrested and imprisoned after being charged with embezzlement. The arrest followed an investigation spearheaded by New York’s Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, and eventually it led to Kuhn’s loss of citizenship and deportation to Germany in 1945. He died in Munich in 1951.
The German American Bund (German: Amerikadeutscher Bund), also known as the German American Federation was a pro-National Socialist organization established in the United States March 29, 1936. Often derided in the press as America’s Brownshirts, the organization was the successor of an earlier German American group, Friends of New Germany, which had a large number of non-American German nationals as its members. The Bund had strong ideological ties to the New Germany however there has never been any evidence National Socialist Germany ever financed the group. According to the Justice Department the Bund had its largest membership of 8500 in 1937-1938. Around this same time undercover reporters from the Chicago Daily Times who infiltrated the Bund for six months estimated their membership to be 20,000. One of the Chicago reporters John C. Metcalfe believed 90 percent of German Americans did not support the organization or its activities. The German American Bund slogan was “Free America!”
German-American Vocational League, Inc., also known as Deutsch – Amerikanische Berufsgemeinschaft (DAB), was a German-American social and trade union associated with the German Labor Front in National Socialist Germany. In 1936 the German American Vocational League was created and became a subsidiary of the German American Bund. The DAB grew from the German-American Commercial League, Inc. which was incorporated in New York in 1928. The DAB maintained active branches in Rochester, Newark, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Louis, Kansas City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle. They had 2,000 members throughout the country. These branches were used as propaganda outlets to the American people in praising National Socialism and promoting isolationism. Several of the leaders of the DAB were indicted and later convicted as being in unregistered agents of the New Germany.
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