At last: Shickshinny Knights of Malta linked to the Draper/Vonsiatsky Condon ManCand crowds

[John Bevilaqua]

The Vonsiatsky-Molzahn Espionage Trial of 1942

A democracy has no way to deal with people of Vonsiatsky's or GLK Smith's ilk. Vonsiatsky only received a 5-year prison sentence courtesy of Senator Thomas J. Dodd who was the lead prosecutor at Vonsiatsky's trial and a junior prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunals. If Vonsiatsky had been sentenced to life in prison, executed or even deported, JFK would most likely never have been murdered. And yet it appears that Vonsiatsky joined in with those on the Shickshinny Knights of Malta with their full approval as a registered agent to carry out their sinister plot against JFK.
James Hosty, the FBI Agent who was in charge of tracking Oswald had a series of ready-made canned excuses ready for me in order to attempt to exonerate him from any wrongdoing in the JFK plot as if he expected the subject to come up when I called to interview him upon the publication of his book on Oswald and JFK. When I asked him if he had an alibi for Vonsiatsky with witnesses both during the execution of the plot or during the Winnipeg Airport Incident, he just stammered and blubbered and babbled while groping for some logically consistent answer which he could not come close to providing after being so confident that he could convince me of his innocence. He could not give me an answer as to how he reached the conclusion that Vonsiatsky was either incapable of such a crime or that he was innocent of the crime. And the FBI web site had over 25 pages on the Acts of Espionage carried out by Vonsiatsky which they called one of their Top Twenty cases in the entire 20th Century. Something just does not jive here. Richard Condon, in ManCand implies that Vonsiatsky's alter ego in the novel, eventually went to work as an FBI contact or informant. Lou Amjac is his alter ego's name in the novel. Anastase was also in the Army Reserve at the time
having served in the U.S. Army before World War II.

I think someone should subpoena the records of The Shickshinny Knights of Malta on all the characters mentioned on their website who have been identified as JFK murder suspects.



HITLER’S SHADOW IN PHILADELPHIA:
THE GSP FROM THE 1930S THROUGH THE 1960S
On October 6, 1933, 15,000 German Americans gathered at the Pastorius
Monument at Vernon Park in Germantown to celebrate the 250
th
anniversary
of the first German settlement in America. This elaborate, threeday
commemoration of German Day was among the few occasions since
the Great War that had brought Americans of German descent together in
such large numbers. [Figure 5] Anti-German hysteria during and immediately
after World War I had limited public demonstrations of German-
American ethnic pride. But now, eight months after Hitler had taken
control of the Reich, Germans in America celebrated their ancestry publicly,
proud of Germany for its reemergence from the ravages of war and
because it seemed to be weathering the storm of the worldwide economic
depression better than the U.S. Sponsored by well-established cultural
organizations such as the United Singers of Philadelphia and the Philadelphia
Turngemeinde, as well as the German Society of Pennsylvania, the
event was also supported by a new, right-wing Nazi organization, the
Friends of the New Germany.
1
Adolf Hitler and President Hindenburg
sent telegrams.
2
The German Ambassador Hans Luther, however, canceled
his appearance because organizers had refused to raise the swastika
flag. In response to the absence of the highest-ranking diplomat from
the German Reich, GSP board members resolved to send him a letter
expressing their “sentiment.” In it, they objected to the organizers’ lack of
German Day Celebration at Vernon Park, Germantown, October 6, 1933
78 ETHNICITY MATTERS
“decency and tact” that had prevented the ambassador from speaking at
the event.
3
While the GSP continued its dedication to German literary and musical
culture during the 1930s, some leaders and members became key
figures in the American Nazi movement. One board member was even
convicted of conspiring to spy on behalf of Hitler’s regime. It is difficult
to know exactly what most GSP members thought about the Nazis, yet
some outspoken Nazi sympathizers seem to have set the tone at public
events. At the annual charity ball, for example, the swastika flag was
raised. GSP President Louis Schmidt, who led the society from 1923 to
1942, was well-liked; he had united members during the 1920s after the
crisis of World War I. Yet in the last ten years of his presidency, he did not
exert much power.
4
Through action and inaction, the GSP found itself on a treacherous
path in this decade, and it alienated many of its members. Jewish members
were put off by anti-Semitic reading material in the library, for
example, as well as by more covert hostility. In 1938, the society did
publicly condemn Hitler for his military aggression, but the GSP still had
lost a substantial number of its members by the time the U.S. entered
World War II in late 1941. The GSP also heeded the government’s call to
purchase war bonds as a patriotic duty, and so its investments yielded
much lower returns. With reduced membership contributions and low
investment returns, the GSP was more or less ruined financially at the
end of the war.
Although German Americans overall did not experience the kind of
anti-German hysteria they had suffered during the previous war, the GSP
emerged from the Second World War severely weakened. Had it not been
for the renewed influx of German immigrants after the war and a large
monetary bequest to benefit the library, the organization might have
collapsed. New German immigrants who joined the GSP after 1945 allowed
the organization to focus on the plight of German refugees rather
than the German war atrocities or the society’s own fascist sympathies
before the war. The continued problem of declining membership after the
war and through the 1960s can, in part, be explained by the society’s
failure to address this past both among its membership, as well as in
German history generally.
The GSP during the 1930s
As discussed in chapter three, the 1930s began under the shadow of the
Great Depression. Large numbers of Philadelphians were unemployed,
and many people had difficulty meeting basic needs. Philadelphia was
the third largest city in the country with a population of almost 2 million:
HITLER’S SHADOW IN PHILADELPHIA 79
1.36 million were native born, 370,000 were foreign born, and 220,000
were African Americans. German-born inhabitants made up a little more
than 10 percent of the city’s foreign-born population (about 37,000), and
94,000 people had at least one German parent. 50 percent of the city’s
residents were Catholic and 15 percent were Jewish. Philadelphia was
also one of the largest Jewish cities in the U.S.; it had 82,000 Yiddish
speakers.
5
When the Great Depression began, the GSP had finally reached pre-
World War I membership levels again, with around 640 members. Despite
Prohibition, which was opposed by virtually all Germans, “associational
life was in relatively good condition.”
6
The library enjoyed record
readership. Although lectures and other GSP events were not as well
attended as the board might have liked, the explanation apparently lay
not in a general decline of interest in the GSP by German Americans, but
rather in “the rich calendar of events of the local Deutschtum, distractions
through radio and movie theaters and the increasingly unfortunate location”
of the GSP.
7
In 1930, after a fifteen-year interruption, the society
revived its traditional annual charity ball held at the Bellevue-Stratford
Hotel, which came to be heralded as the “highlight of German-American
social life” in Philadelphia by 1934.
8
The ball was held annually through
1941.
Despite this successful annual event, GSP membership declined over
the course of the decade, decreasing steadily from 520 in 1932 to 411 in
1940.
9
The membership records of GSP agent Henry Hoffmann indicate
that at least 300 members resigned or simply stopped paying their dues
between 1929 and 1940. In addition, more than 100 members died during
this period.
10
While it is difficult to determine why individual members withdrew
from the society, five major reasons for the general decline are apparent.
First, participation in ethnic organizations lessened in general during the
1930s due to the expansion of alternatives for inexpensive, ethnic amusements.
11
Radio shows and movies offered in German, for example, gave
German Americans opportunities to use their language without joining a
Verein. Second, the economic hardships of the Great Depression might
have made it difficult for some GSP members, especially those who were
small business owners, to pay the annual dues. Third, some German
Americans, remembering the anti-German hysteria of World War I, left
the society by the late 1930s out of fear that their affiliation with the GSP,
or anything German for that matter, would become a liability once again.
This fear became especially pronounced when Hitler’s aggression led to
war.
12
Fourth, the Treaty of Versailles had raised hope among Jews that
they would have their own state in Palestine. This Zionist hope caused a
80 ETHNICITY MATTERS
split between German Gentiles and Jews everywhere.
13
Increasing anti-
Semitism in Germany and in Philadelphia, as displayed in Philadelphia’s
German-language daily, the Herold, led some German Jews to distance
themselves from anything German and from the GSP, where Nazi propaganda
was readily available in the library. Lastly, some non-Jewish
GSP members may not have been comfortable associating with pro-Nazi
members.
The fact that a few GSP leaders and members were among the most
prominent Nazi sympathizers in Philadelphia no doubt deterred new
Jewish immigrants from becoming members. Nearly half a million Jews
entered the U.S. from Austria, Germany, and Czechoslovakia between
1933 and 1945, some of whom stayed in Philadelphia.
14
This number
could have been larger had not both the Hoover and Roosevelt administrations
implemented tighter immigration restrictions, motivated by
notions of alleged “Nordic” superiority, growing isolationism, and
xenophobia in general.
15
Acculturation for the Jewish refugees fortunate
enough to make it to the U.S. was quick: almost all of them conducted
their religious, social, and cultural activities in English soon after arrival.
In short, as historian Herbert Strauss puts it, “these immigrants had few,
if any, organized connections with the German-American community
during the Third Reich and for a considerable time thereafter.”
16
Strauss’s assertion also held true for the GSP, as confirmed by anecdotal
evidence from interviews with members. Some Jewish members
were allegedly told around 1933 that they were no longer desirable members.
On the other hand, former longtime GSP President George Beichl,
who did not join the society until 1964, recalls rumors of Jews using the
GSP library during the 1930s and ’40s.
17
Considering the amount of Nazi
propaganda on display at the library, it is doubtful the Jewish readership
was large. The surviving records unfortunately fail to shed any light on
Jewish membership.
18
Throughout the 1930s, many German Americans celebrated the
newly emerging, stronger Germany.
19
Pride in the new Germany continued
into the late 1930s among Philadelphia’s German Americans.
As many as 1,500 German Americans gathered there to celebrate the
Anschluss, Hitler’s annexation of Austria, on March 13, 1938.
20
They sang
not only the Deutschland Lied, but also the Horst Wessel Lied, the Nazi Party
anthem.
21
Sigmund von Bosse, a Lutheran pastor and prominent GSP
leader, gave a rousing speech, and almost everyone in the audience gave
him the Hitler salute at its conclusion.
Demonstrators increasingly protested these celebrations with anti-
German rallies in Philadelphia and elsewhere.
22
Protestors feared a newly
aggressive Germany, but German Americans rejected such fears as remi-
HITLER’S SHADOW IN PHILADELPHIA 81
niscent of World War I anti-German hysteria. Most of the celebrations
ceased once Hitler invaded Poland, but Pennsylvania’s extreme right did
not disappear completely.
The GSP reacted to the rise of anti-German sentiment in the 30s first
with stoicism and later with a kind of siege mentality. As early as 1933,
after Hitler had come to power, the Women’s Auxiliary and the German
Society complained about the “increasing distress for people of German
descent,” in part due to “anti-German tendencies” in Philadelphia. The
men and women of the GSP vowed to be steadfast and to “preserve the
respect of their fellow citizens through model behavior.”
23
By 1936, newspaper
headlines about Germany’s territorial aggression, militarism, and
national chauvinism increased Americans’ hostility toward Germans in
Philadelphia. Harry Pfund, head of the events committee, voiced his
fervent hope that the community would “remain faithful to itself” at a
time when the Deutschtum needed to “draw closer together” for selfpreservation.
24
When war broke out in September 1939, Pfund remarked
that he was reminded “of the gray days of 1914, except that this time the
slow burning fire of hatred by the press and certain circles against everything
German burst into flames already much earlier.”
25
Although largely only a bystander in world events, the German Society
may have contributed to the anti-German sentiment Pfund perceived.
As we have seen, GSP board members sided with the German
ambassador in his desire to have a swastika flag flying at the German Day
celebration in 1933. They also unanimously voted to send a congratulatory
telegram to the German Führer in 1935 when the Saarland plebiscite
returned the area from French to German rule. They believed this indicated
“the victory of German faithfulness in spite of all insidious attacks.”
26
Notwithstanding this public outburst of German patriotism,
board members were cautious when they merely acknowledged an invitation
to a joint Hitler-Bismarck birthday celebration extended by the
Friends of the New Germany in the spring of that year and did not attend
as a group.
27
Sigmund von Bosse, however, may have persuaded some of his fellow
GSP board members to join in this revival of Pan-Germanism. Although
von Bosse never officially joined the Friends of the New Germany
or its successor, the German-American Bund, he was widely known as
“an open sympathizer” and “a leading figure in later Bund activism.” He
was also the last President of the National German-American Alliance.
28
Right-wing German groups had already emerged in the 1920s and gained
momentum after 1933 when the Association of Friends of the New Germany
was founded in Chicago. When some of its members voiced concern
in 1936 that the organization was too German and thus could be
82 ETHNICITY MATTERS
deterring potential supporters from joining, the name was changed to
German-American Bund. Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, one scholar
argues, permitted “some Americans of German descent to feel their
homeland was being restored to its proper dignity.”
29
Von Bosse was
merely one among several GSP members who felt this way.
Overall, the German-American Bund never had more than a few
thousand members in the entire United States, and these were concentrated
in the Mid-Atlantic region.
30
The Philadelphia chapter of the
Friends of the New Germany thrived quickly: it had over 220 members by
the end of its first year in 1933.
31
The organization had strong ties to New
York Nazis such as Heinz Spanknoebel and sang the Horst Wessel Lied at
the end of its meetings. New members were also required to pledge that
they were Aryans without Jewish or black blood. Like the Nazis in Germany,
Bund members joined forces with members of other associations to
form uniformed paramilitary groups that even conducted regular drills.
In Philadelphia, for example, the hall of the Liedertafel Sängerbund on Sixth
Street, not far from the society’s building, served as the drill room.
32
As an American-born man, von Bosse was in the minority among
Bund sympathizers, as well as members, who consisted mostly of post-
World War I German immigrants.
33
Nevertheless, his involvement was
not limited to attending the organization’s gatherings. He also gave passionate
speeches at several meetings. The most famous was the Bund
rally at Madison Square Garden in February 1939, where 22,000 Hitler
supporters cheered him and other speakers on. Ostensibly held in honor
of George Washington’s birthday, the rally was, in reality, a glorification
of Hitler. In his speech, von Bosse explicitly linked the two men: “if
Washington were alive today, he would be a friend of Adolf Hitler, just
as he was of Frederick the Great.”
34
Within days of war breaking out in
Europe, von Bosse used Aryan racial ideology to call “upon all our racial
fellows to stand behind the neutrality proclamation of the President 100
percent,” although he knew it would be difficult “due to the vicious
propaganda” that was being circulated in the press.
35
Less than a month
later, the pastor chaired the German Day celebration, which still drew a
crowd of 2,300. Although overt symbols of Nazism such as the swastika
flag were not on prominent display, highlights of the speech were greeted
with an enthusiastic “Heil” cheer from the audience.
36
Later that year, von
Bosse became the head of the Pennsylvania Zentralbund. In this capacity
he became part of the isolationist movement after Germany invaded Poland.
Like other leaders of the movement, von Bosse called for American
neutrality, framing his argument in anti-Communist, or rather, anti-
Jewish, terms: Jews were generally considered to be radical Communists.
He said, for example, “the main lineup is not democracy versus fascism,
but fascism versus Communism and here our choice is clear.”
37
HITLER’S SHADOW IN PHILADELPHIA 83
To be sure, Sigmund von Bosse was not representative of GSP members,
although he seems to have found sympathy in the organization.
38
In
1935, within a year of his election to the board, GSP leaders commended
von Bosse for his work as the society’s secretary and for his accomplishments
on behalf of “the Deutschtum in general.”
39
A number of GSP
members were associated with the conservative Pan-German movement.
R.T. Kessemeier, who joined the GSP in 1930, was a “leading figure in the
Association of the Friends of the New Germany” and later also a Bund
member. As manager of two German steamship lines in Philadelphia,
Kessemeier offered free passage to German Americans, especially to sympathetic
academics, so that they might see German progress first hand.
Quite a few German-American college professors from Philadelphia-area
schools traveled to Germany through this offer.
40
Theodore Martin, head
of the Philadelphia Bund, was also a GSP member for at least part of the
1930s. Another prominent Bund sympathizer, Fred C. Gartner, had joined
the GSP in 1923. The largely German population of Northeast Philadelphia
elected him to the Pennsylvania State Legislature in 1933 as a Republican
representative and then to the U.S. Congress for one term in
1938. Reverend Erich Saul, pastor of the German Seamen’s Home in
Philadelphia from 1912 to 1942 and GSP member from at least 1923 to
1937, was also a Nazi sympathizer.
41
In addition, in the late 1930s the
German Society lost several members who returned to Germany.
42
These
so-called Rückwanderer had followed Hitler’s call for all Volksdeutsche to
come home to the German Reich. Many of these same members had been
active in the Bund.
By the early 1930s, the 19-member GSP board was dominated by
German-born men and included some recent immigrants, at least one of
whom had served on the German side during World War I. But regardless
of their place of birth or length of time in the United States, all board
members viewed Germany as the victim of the Versailles Treaty. The
provisions of the treaty had been very hard on Germany, not least because
Germany was held to be solely responsible for the war, as dictated
in its war guilt clause. Under its provisions, Germany was forced to pay
reparations, it permanently lost possession of its colonies, the French
occupied the Saarland for fifteen years, and the Ruhr/Rhine River area
was demilitarized.
43
Like most Germans in Germany, GSP board members
believed in the so-called Dolchstoßlegende, or the “stab in the back”
theory, according to which Germany had lost the war because of internal
strife, primarily brought about by Communist agitators and Jews.
44
There were two indicators of this mindset. First, in early 1931, the
board unanimously resolved to purchase five copies of a Thomas St. John
Gaffney’s recently published book, Breaking the Silence.
45
Discussion
about the book itself was unusual: typically reading material acquisitions
84 ETHNICITY MATTERS
were not discussed in detail at board meetings. The librarian merely
submitted a written report including the number of visitors and books
loaned. Written by the former American consul to Munich and based on
his personal experiences, the book is an indictment of the Wilson administration
for not preventing the war and for getting the U.S. involved
in it. Moreover, Gaffney condemns the Treaty of Versailles for a long list
of atrocities. Among them were “the annexation of German provinces
and colonies to the territory of racially heterogeneous and inimical
peoples . . . [and] the occupation of German territory by tens of thousands
of vicious African blacks.”
46
Secondly, Conrad Linke, a prominent GSP
member and artist, left the society several folders of newspaper clippings
and his own writings, which show that he was a leading proponent of the
Germany-as-victim view among GSP members.
47
Periodically, the library sent new book lists to local newspapers or
enclosed them in the GSP annual report. These records reflect the conservative,
middle-class character of the society. They also illustrate a slant
toward a Heimatliteratur that idealized Imperial Germany in much the
same way that “Lost Cause” writings glorified the antebellum American
South after the Civil War.
48
Moreover, the lists reveal that the GSP library
contained more pro-Nazi literature than works by exiled writers by the
1930s. In 1930, the GSP acquired Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. The library
had already purchased a collection of Hitler’s speeches in 1924 within
months of its publication.
49
Over the course of the 1930s, the GSP library
made a variety of Nazi literature available to its readers, ranging from
Julius Streicher’s notoriously anti-Semitic weekly Der Stürmer and the SS
publication Das Schwarze Korps to the more serious, less overtly anti-
Semitic periodical Volk im Werden, published by the pedagogue Ernst
Krieck.
At least some Nazi propaganda came to the GSP through the Volksbund
für das Deutschtum im Ausland (League for Germandom Abroad),
which is listed among the donors of reading material in library reports of
the 1930s.
50
Apparently these were “very welcome” additions to the library.
51
When the Nazis acceded to power in Germany, they increased
their effort to reach all Volksdeutsche, that is, Germans outside of the
Reich. They created the League to send propaganda abroad as part of this
effort. Collections for Volksdeutsche in Germany’s public schools partially
financed this propaganda campaign.
52
At the same time, it is clear that the
GSP ordered books by Joseph Goebbels or Alfred Rosenberg, who had
helped to create Nazi ideology, and subscribed to American pro-Nazi
periodicals like the Herold. The Herold was published by the same company
that printed the anti-Semitic, Nazi paper, Deutscher Weckruf, whose
front-page slogan called for a unified Deutschtum everywhere.
53
HITLER’S SHADOW IN PHILADELPHIA 85
The GSP also established close connections to the German Reich in
the 1930s. The Volksbund für das Deutschtum im Ausland contacted the
GSP to request material for an exhibit on Germans outside of Germany to
be held in Bremen in 1936. The GSP responded by appropriating funds
and selecting and sending photographs.
54
In the wake of the 1936 Olympic
games in Germany, a representative of the German Olympic press
committee brought a German film about the games for GSP members to
enjoy.
55
The GSP also aimed to update members on the latest views in
Germany by hosting lectures mostly by pro-Nazi speakers. One was a
lecture in 1936 by Colin Ross, who offered a self-professed National-
Socialist view of Germans’ role in American history in his book Unser
Amerika, published in Germany. German Americans, Ross explained, had
“experienced their own Versailles and the heavy weight and humiliation
of defeat.” But just as in Germany, Germans in America had emerged, he
argued, “with enormous pride and undefeatable strength.”
56
Harry
Pfund, head of the events committee, later approvingly remembered
Ross’s lecture as a “brilliant speech defending today’s Germany” and as
“an attack against all powers whose aim it is to prevent an understanding
of the true situation in the Third Reich through false and distorted reports.”
57
By January 1938, however, the GSP publicly disavowed its Nazi sympathies.
58
Twenty-two German-American associations in Philadelphia including
the GSP joined the German-American league of Culture at this
time, whose purpose was to “expose the dangerous roles the Nazis [were]
playing in numerous organizations throughout Pennsylvania.”
59
Within
a year, the number of German Vereine in the league had increased to
nearly 100. Led by Raymond Ruff, who had begun to publicly denounce
Hitler and his policies as early as 1936, the league clearly opposed the
“theory of militarism and racial hatred” of the Nazis without relinquishing
their “pro-German” ideals. Ruff called on the member organizations
to advertise “the dominant role Germans have played in the development
of this country,” which was, of course, something the society had already
been engaged in for at least fifty years. Yet it was hard for pro-Nazi
members to break old habits. At the GSP annual charity ball in February
1938, only a month after the society had joined the league, Ruff personally
tore down a swastika flag.
60
This awkward situation was not mentioned,
of course, in the glowing account of the event in the society’s annual
report.
Nazi sympathizers now came under attack in Philadelphia. Protestors
marched in large demonstrations by the thousands, picketed German-
American Bund meetings, and some even beat up Bund members.
61
Two
Nazi sympathizers in the GSP also came under attack. The home of
Dr. Richard Gerlach, GSP director and physician for the German Consul-
86 ETHNICITY MATTERS
ate, was bombed in September 1938. No one was injured in the blast, but
damage to the front of the house was severe. Anti-Nazi protestors had
recently demonstrated outside the German Consulate against Hitler’s
plan to annex the Sudetenland. Yet Gerlach refused to acknowledge that
there could be any connection between the two occurrences.
62
Another
GSP member, William Graf, the publisher of the Herold and the Bund’s
Deutscher Weckruf, reported that his print shop on Germantown Avenue
had been bombed.
In this climate of anti-Nazi violence, the German-American Bund
basically became defunct and then officially dissolved after the Japanese
attack on Pearl Harbor. The Bund’s disappearance was more a strategic
move than a real indication that it had lost all support. New organizations,
such as the America First Committee, which led the neutrality
campaign in which some GSP members were involved, were much more
effective at a time when overt Nazism and its symbols had become untenable.
While most German Philadelphians appear to have rejected
Hitler by 1939, some continued to work covertly for the German cause.
For example, the Kyffhäuserbund, a German veterans’ association with
Nazi connections, called for charitable contributions to assist German
POWs held in Canada. Instead of going to German soldiers imprisoned in
Canada, however, the money collected was diverted through a German
steamship company and went to Germany in support of the Nazi regime.
63
Although there is no evidence that there was a united “Fifth Column”
as Roosevelt and others warned, there were some suspicious explosions
at various defense plants in the Mid-Atlantic region that suggest that
some German Americans sought to undermine American forces in the
war. The most sensational sabotage story was a plot that was never
carried out. In the summer of 1942, eight German agents who had landed
by submarine in Florida and on Long Island were arrested for conspiring
to destroy several military installations and strategic logistical support
stations. The plan was named “Operation Pastorius” in honor of the
founder of the first German settlement in America—an honor the GSP as
well as other German-American Vereine could have done without.
64
After 1938, the GSP avoided overt connections with Nazis abroad.
This does not mean, however, that it repudiated Nazi sympathizers
within its ranks. Prominent society members who were also Philadelphia
Bund supporters, such as Sigmund von Bosse, Fred Gartner, and Kurt
Molzahn, remained very popular among members even as late as 1939.
Von Bosse was approvingly characterized as “an undaunted man,” Gartner
was the guest of honor at the society’s 175th anniversary celebration,
and Molzahn continued to be a valued director of the poor relief program.
65
At the same time, the society invited an exiled German writer for
HITLER’S SHADOW IN PHILADELPHIA 87
a lecture in 1940. Although not overtly political, Hamburg novelist
Joachim Maass left Germany in 1939 and found employment as a lecturer
through the Carl Schurz Foundation. His brother Edgar Maass, author
of the World War I novel Verdun, also lectured at the GSP that same
year.
66
In the political arena, however, the GSP did not get involved in any
way during the summer of 1940 when German aliens were required to
register under the Alien Registration Act.
67
After the Japanese attacked
Pearl Harbor and Germany declared war on the U.S. a few days later, the
fear of subversive aliens suddenly became so great that thousands of
them across the country were arrested overnight. Few Americans noticed
at the time that 10,905 German legal resident aliens were interned during
World War II, and since then, the government, the general public, and
most scholars have forgotten.
68
Some GSP members had their homes
searched, and a few were arrested and interned.
69
INS facilities at Ellis
Island housed hundreds of detainees, and the immigration center closest
to Philadelphia, Gloucester, New Jersey, became the temporary home of
dozens of Germans suspected of subversion. FBI officers interrogated
suspected Nazi sympathizers. They often asked detainees whether they
would be willing to shoot their brothers or other close relatives fighting
for Germany and used photographs of Hitler and other Nazi paraphernalia
as evidence of their un-American activities.
70
The GSP did not officially
receive any pleas for legal assistance from Germans affected by
FBI investigations in the 1940s, as it had during World War I. GSP board
member Kurt Molzahn, however, did visit some internees in Gloucester
in his capacity as a clergyman.
71
A Nazi Spy?
Pastor Kurt Molzahn was a man whose German nationalism turned into
fascism in part because of his experiences during World War I. After four
years of fighting on the Russian front in the German cavalry, Molzahn
attended the Kroop Seminary to pursue his lifelong dream of becoming a
minister. He then emigrated to the U.S. in 1923. Soon he was able to send
for his fiancée, and by 1929, he was appointed as the minister at St.
Michael’s and Old Zion Evangelical Lutheran Church, the oldest German
Lutheran congregation in the country.
72
Within weeks of arriving in the
city of brotherly love, Molzahn joined the GSP, and his wife became a
member of the Women’s Auxiliary.
73
He also quickly became involved in
other German organizations and preached in his capacity as a clergyman
and German war veteran to a gathering in commemoration of the armistice
of World War I veterans from both the American and the German
sides.
74
Although the speech had nothing to do with his GSP member-
88 ETHNICITY MATTERS
ship, the GSP annual report for 1930 favorably noted Molzahn’s involvement.
A year later, he was elected to the GSP board of directors and
served until his arrest for conspiracy to commit espionage in 1942.
By 1937, Molzahn had become an indispensable leader not only for
the GSP but also as an overt propagandist of the Nazi regime. He had
reportedly “done everything in his power to win over the people in his
congregation for the Third Reich.” The Volksbund für das Deutschtum
im Ausland sent materials to Molzahn, and he was in close contact with
officials in Berlin through the German Consul in Philadelphia, Arno
Mowitz.
75
According to numerous scholars, the pastor had become a
German secret agent. He allegedly “had recruited several V-men for
the Abwehr [German intelligence service], and, after the outbreak of
the war in September 1939, he worked as a producing spy under registry
No. 2320.”
76
Molzahn was allegedly “one of the most energetic and productive
agents in the United States.”
77
Supposedly, he became involved
with Gerhard Kunze, a Philadelphia Bund member and Abwehr agent, in
an effort to raise money and to devise a way to communicate secretly
with Berlin, so that German officials could find ways to pay known Bund
members indirectly.
By 1938, Molzahn allegedly had found a reliable source of funds in
Count Anastase Andreyevich Vonsiatsky, the leader of a Ukrainian anti-
Communist exile group. In December 1940, Kunze supposedly arranged
for Molzahn and the Ukrainian Count to meet in Chicago, where they
agreed on “an operations plan for sabotage of war installations.”
78
Although
it is not clear whether the plan ever resulted in any real damage,
the group did collect sensitive information about US military fortifications
on both coasts, which Molzahn allegedly delivered to a man at the
German embassy.
79
The spy ring was discovered when Vonsiatsky confided
in a supposedly reliable fascist priest, Alexei Pelypenko, who
turned out to be an FBI agent. On June 10, 1942, a federal grand jury
indicted Molzahn, and he was arrested the next day.
80
While three of his
co-defendants pleaded guilty “to conspiracy to transmit to Germany and
Japan information relating to the national defense,” and the Ukrainian
count was declared mentally ill, Molzahn did not. A three-week trial,
however, resulted in a guilty verdict and a ten-year prison sentence.
81
The pastor was released after three years due to heart disease.
In a church trial after his release, Molzahn was deemed fit for the
ministry despite his criminal conviction. He became an associate pastor at
a Philadelphia church and headed his own congregation at Germantown’s
St. Thomas Lutheran Church by early 1949. In 1956, President
Eisenhower pardoned Molzahn fully and unconditionally. The legal effect
of a pardon is to eliminate both the punishment and the guilt asso-
HITLER’S SHADOW IN PHILADELPHIA 89
ciated with the crime.
82
Although it might be a little surprising to people
in the twenty-first century that the president of the United States would
thus remove the stigma from a felony conviction for spying, it was a
strategic move in 1956: the U.S. needed all the allies it could get in the
Cold War against the Soviet Union and Communism at home. Perhaps
granting a pardon to a former Nazi spy seemed harmless and ultimately
meaningless in a world that was faced with a new foe. Pastor Molzahn
was, of course, relieved.
83
In his biography published in 1962, Molzahn denied all charges. Refusing
to acknowledge his public propaganda activities on behalf of Germany’s
Nazis, Molzahn claimed that he “tried to maintain a neutral position”
during the 1930s.
84
Molzahn devoted most of the book to the story
of how he survived prison, but he did address his arrest and conviction
as well. His version of events suggests that an overly paranoid FBI concocted
a fantastic tale. Molzahn claimed that he had never heard of the
Ukrainian Count Vonsiatsky, although he acknowledged that he met
Wilhelm Kunze several times. Still, he “had not seen or talked to him
since 1938—before he became headline material as national leader of the
Bund.”
85
Molzahn did admit to a visit by the Ukrainian priest Pelypenko
but placed the encounter in a harmless, albeit convoluted, context.
Molzahn also differentiated between knowing about a conspiracy and
actually participating in it. Molzahn’s son suggests that his father was
aware of Kunze’s and others’ activities and plans but did not participate
in the plot.
86
Upon his arrest, the Lutheran minister and his wife disappeared
overnight from the records of the German Society without any explanation
or comment. Most people in his congregation, which included some
GSP members, did support Molzahn for a while and raised $25,000 for his
bail. They only hired a new pastor when Molzahn’s last appeal was
denied in June 1943. His wife Nina and their three children stayed in the
parsonage until December 1942. They relied on the $30 a week Nina
earned working for the American Friends Society, as well as the proceeds
of a Friday night poker game friends donated every Saturday morning.
However, most German-American friends and acquaintances, among
them many GSP members and leaders, stayed away from the Molzahn
family. Associating with the relatives of a convicted spy could only bring
suspicion upon them.
87
Once the pastor was released from prison and
transported by ambulance to Lankenau Hospital, the staff initially refused
to treat the man who had once been a member of its board of
directors.
But life for the Molzahns improved quickly thereafter. Within months
of Molzahn’s release the family bought a house “with the help of generous
friends.”
88
He did not appear again in official GSP records until 1954,
90 ETHNICITY MATTERS
when he gave the benediction at the Pastorius Day celebration at Vernon
Park in Germantown. It must have been quite strange for Molzahn and
other society members to be at the monument again twenty-one years
after the jubilant celebration of 1933.
89
In 1957, Molzahn’s name appeared
in GSP records listed among the guests at its Herrenabend (Gentlemen’s
Evening).
90
His wife Nina frequented the GSP library and was a member
of the Women’s Auxiliary for at least part of the 1950s. Although longtime
society members recall seeing Molzahn at various other Society
events, he never rejoined the GSP officially before he died in 1979.
The GSP Beyond World War II
By the time Molzahn was arrested for espionage, the GSP had already
drastically reduced its cultural programming. To save money, the GSP
decided to publish its annual report in 1941 in abbreviated form. Then it
did not send out an annual report again until 1950. By the spring of 1942,
President Louis Schmidt announced that the war prevented the society
from planning “many events.” But he hoped that if members continued
to work “in the same patriotic ways as in the previous 177 years,” they
would be able to preserve what they had inherited from their predecessors.
91
At the same time, the GSP attempted to publicize its patriotism. In
January 1943, the board ordered agent Henry Hoffmann to buy a “Service
flag” to demonstrate GSP patriotism. Intended to have 150 stars (in the
end the flag only had 120 stars, one for each service member associated
with the society), the flag was to be installed “on the stage or at the
window of the hall.”
92
Eugene Stopper, the new president, urged society
members to remain active and to work hard to ensure that the society
would survive the war. He warned that “any organization that closes its
doors now will never open again.” Stopper spurred members on to attract
new members and to publicize members’ and the society’s involvement
in the war bond drive. As part of this demonstration of patriotism, the
GSP also invited a former member’s daughter to give a lecture on Thomas
Jefferson from her recently published book.
93
Beyond the issue of American
loyalty, however, the society recognized that members wanted to
help loved ones in Germany. Thus, members were reminded that donations
to the Red Cross would also benefit German POWs.
94
The GSP
donated $1,000 to the Red Cross, an amount unmatched by any other
German-American organization in Philadelphia.
95
But the society had problems beyond the war. In 1943, the board
acknowledged that a real divide existed between the leadership and the
general membership, evident in dwindling enrollment and the small
number of people attending quarterly meetings. In an attempt to solve
HITLER’S SHADOW IN PHILADELPHIA 91
the problem, the board decided to publish a newsletter every two
months. To dispel any suspicion, the newsletter was written in English. In
the first issue, the GSP announced that most lectures and other activities
would also be held in English, ostensibly to attract younger people.
96
In
the next Postilion, longtime board member Ferdinand Mostertz took up
the language issue again. He noted that all the worries about using German
could be solved by using “tact and common sense.“ While acknowledging
that it would be “unwise during these wartimes to speak German
in public places,” Mostertz advised that people simply had to “use discretion
as to where to use it and where not to use it.”
97
A stern reminder
not to anglicize German names followed in the next issue. Although
Mostertz was ready to refrain from speaking his native language in public,
he had no sympathy for those who changed their names.
98
The limited
use of the German language in the GSP did not end with the war.
The newsletter served to inform members about GSP history and
internal issues. It tried to instill pride in the past accomplishments
of Germans in the U.S. by including short biographical sketches of
eighteenth-century GSP heroes such as society founder Heinrich Keppele,
founder and printer Henrich Miller, and Revolutionary War hero von
Steuben. The Postilion, however, never addressed fascism, the Holocaust,
or any other events in Europe. Perhaps because of this omission, it did
little to bring people into the society. President Stoppers recognized this
and asked members to suggest other ways to improve sociability in the
organization at the annual membership meeting in 1944.
99
Attendance at meetings did not improve until the society came under
official attack. In 1944, federal officials told the GSP that it was not contributing
enough to charitable causes to qualify for tax-exempt status,
even though members had contributed to five war bond drives in less
than three years and had broken all records as an ethnic group and
organization for effort.
100
The society also came under investigation for
un-American activities.
101
Thirty-five members were present at a meeting
to hear updates on the situation instead of the usual twenty or sometimes
fewer than fifteen. The struggle to regain tax-exempt status took over
three years and required the society to submit financial records from 1933
to 1945. In the end, the society temporarily merged its charitable contributions
with those of the Women’s Auxiliary. In addition, the GSP was
required to sell its real estate mortgages and to invest the money in
federal treasury notes at much lower returns.
102
Picking up the Pieces
The financial losses were felt immediately. By the spring of 1945, the
German Society had invested half of its cash assets in $25,000 of war
92 ETHNICITY MATTERS
bonds. The sharp decline in investment returns by early 1946 caused the
society to operate at a deficit.
103
The fiscal situation did not improve until
1950, when the GSP finance committee sold the last of the war bonds and
invested in the booming stock market instead, resulting in a balanced
budget for the year.
104
A bequest by Joseph P. Horner in 1946 could not have come at a
better time. It was not immediately clear how much money the society
would receive, or when it would receive it, but it was apparent that the
sum would be substantial.
105
In 1962, the GSP at last received an endowment
of $388,000. Horner, a member of the Philadelphia orchestra and a
longtime GSP member, had requested that the interest income be used for
general expenses and the library.
106
The $3,600 annual income from the
Horner estate saved the GSP from running a substantial deficit.
107
Apart
from the endowment the value of the society’s cash assets had dropped
to less than $21,000 in 1965 and continued to decline.
108
At the annual
membership meeting in January 1967, outgoing President Hermann Witte
rightly reminded everyone that Horner’s bequest was “the ‘life-safer’ of
the Society.”
109
In 1946, the society also participated in the bicentennial celebration of
the birth of Peter Muhlenberg, the German-American Revolutionary War
hero. In a remarkable display of revived German-American pride, members
began a campaign to have Mühlenberg’s statue moved from City
Hall to Independence Square, where they felt it “belonged.”
110
Although
the effort failed, it is significant that the GSP felt strong enough as an
organization in 1946 to attempt the transfer. By then, the GSP had
begun efforts to help war-torn Germany. In the summer of that year, the
Women’s Auxiliary began to meet regularly to mend donated clothing, a
warehouse had been rented for storing collected items, and good progress
had been made in obtaining governmental permission to collect
money towards the cause.
Society members’ engagement with aid for Germany helped them to
distance themselves from the recent past by allowing them to focus on
Germans and German Americans as victims rather than perpetrators.
Harry Pfund had shaped this focus in 1944 when the board of directors
asked him to write a short history of the society in celebration of the
tercentenary of William Penn’s birth. In twenty-one pages, Pfund painted
a glowing picture of the society’s history but characterized the last three
decades as “the most tragic” period.
111
Concentrating on cultural highlights
such as a Goethe celebration at the Academy of Music in 1932, the
chair of the library committee left out any reference to the Third Reich
and Nazis in the U.S. or abroad. Pfund instead focused on Germans as the
victims of events in both the New World and the Old. Germans everywhere,
he wrote, were “distressed by the sufferings of one’s kith and kin,
HITLER’S SHADOW IN PHILADELPHIA 93
of those of the same blood, the same language and the same cultural
heritage,” and members of the German Society had borne “this grief in
silence.”
112
Pfund’s essay set the stage for the society’s silence about the
Third Reich.
After the 1940s, the GSP became more American. The society no
longer insisted that most events be conducted in the German language.
Initially due to the war, the society made English its official language, to
the chagrin of some, although there were some exceptions.
113
Later this
policy was continued because fewer people spoke German. The society
also focused on offering more social events to restore a sense of German
Gemütlichkeit to its members, as well as prospective ones, and therefore
sought permission to serve alcoholic beverages. In early 1954, the GSP
acquired a liquor license, which it carefully guards to this day, especially
because serving alcohol is an important part of almost all events.
114
Lastly, a special committee urged the society to move to the northeastern
section of Philadelphia, “where the bulk of our present and future members
live.”
115
Lacking money and decisiveness, the board failed to act on
this recommendation and three years later decided to stay put. The idea
of moving recurred periodically over the next twenty-five years.
116
In the meantime, after a twenty-year interruption, GSP services for
immigrants, ranging from employment referrals to English and citizenship
classes, were once again in demand.
117
Increasing numbers of German
refugees were entering the United States. Conrad and Marion Linke,
two longtime GSP members, were instrumental in effecting a change of
status for incoming Germans. They had moved Congress to revise the
Displaced Persons Act so that new Germans, who were classified as
Expellees and were ineligible for emigration, became refugees. Of the
nearly 600,000 Germans entering the United States between 1946 and the
late 1950s, thousands came to the Delaware Valley.
118
Although many
refugees established their own organizations, a sizable number of the
most active and dedicated GSP members today are former refugees and
their children.
119
These expatriate families had endured terrible hardships
and had little interest in dealing with German atrocities or questions
of culpability. Instead they focused on their own ordeals, which
helped to shape the society for the next sixty years.
120
It was around the time that German war refugees came to the U.S. in
increasing numbers that the German Society decided to keep all Nazi
periodicals and books in a dark and dirty storage room on the third floor
of the building.
121
By the late 1970s, this closet became known as the
Giftschrank.
122
This mysterious space is not a closet full of presents, as the
English word “gift” would suggest, but a poison cabinet, because “gift”
means “poison” in German. It is not clear how this forbidden closet came
into being, who named it, or who filled it with “undesirable” materials
94 ETHNICITY MATTERS
from the 1930s: bundled stacks of Nazi periodicals, envelopes containing
small fascist pamphlets, and books written by Hitler, Goebbels, and Alfred
Rosenberg, for example. What is clear is that the “gift” is a poison
that the society decided to keep apart from the rest of its library collection.
By literally and figuratively putting their recent past in a closet,
society members bestowed a general amnesia on the organization.
Instead of addressing their own recent past, longtime GSP leaders of
the 1950s, together with the new postwar refugee members, carefully
resumed their programs celebrating German-American contributions to
American history. Without any reference to the war or the Holocaust,
about 1,000 German Americans gathered in 1951 at the Pastorius Monument
on October 6, 1951, to celebrate “Pastorius Day” instead of the usual
“German Day”. Perhaps organizers intended to acknowledge the recent
war or to distance themselves from the German nationalism that had led
the world to disaster by renaming the celebration. The speeches for the
occasion, however, seamlessly picked up where prewar celebrations had
left off – with the society’s perpetual lament that German-American contributions
to American history were being ignored.
123
Conclusion
The GSP did not turn into a quasi-Nazi organization during the 1930s.
However, some leading American Nazi sympathizers were influential
society members and might have contributed to the decline in membership.
While the GSP tried its best to demonstrate its American patriotism
during the war, it was put on the defensive when the U.S. government
investigated it. With a declining and aging membership, financial problems,
and a divide between leadership and rank-and-file members, the
GSP emerged from World War II with less resolve and support than after
World War I. Only the influx of German refugees, a fortuitous monetary
bequest, and the challenge of sending aid to Germany made it possible for
the society to survive this crisis. New and old members alike, however,
cast themselves as victims of Soviet brutality in World War II and Cold
War politics in the 1950s rather than perpetrators, and this framing of
recent history shaped the society for years to come. Some Americans of
German descent may have been put off from joining the organization
because of its failure to address Germany’s and its own recent past.
Perhaps this partially explains low membership numbers through the
early 1970s. Yet the GSP’s troubles now extended far beyond the membership
in its walls: postwar economic and social changes radically altered
the landscape and politics of Philadelphia and other urban centers,
transforming the neighborhood in which the GSP was located and, therefore,
the GSP itself.
HITLER’S SHADOW IN PHILADELPHIA 95
Notes
1
For a complete list of the sponsors, see “250-jährige Gedenkfeier der Landung der ersten
deutschen Einwanderer und Gründung von Germantown durch Franz Daniel Pastorius
unter den Auspizien des Deutsch-Amerikanischen Zentralbundes von Pennsylvanien und
anderer angeschlossenen Vereinigungen, Zweiter Deutsch-Amerikanischer Kongress, Philadelphia,”
Oct. 6–9, 1933. (Philadelphia: Graf & Breuninger, 1933). GAC Pamphlet AB46.4.
2
Philadelphia Record, October 7, 1933.
3
GSP Minutes, October 19, 1933.
4
Louis Schmidt continued to be well-liked among GSP members during the 1930s, however.
The GSP held a festive dinner in honor of his seventieth birthday. See photo of “Testimonial
Dinner in honor of Capt. Louis H. Schmidt to celebrate his Seventieth Birthday, September
29, 1938, Bellevue Stratford Hotel,” uncataloged.
5
These numbers are based on the 1930 census and were summarized in Jenkins, Hoods and
Shirts: The Extreme Right in Pennsylvania, 1925–1950. (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North
Carolina Press, 1997), 63, 138.
6
GSP Annual Report 1930.
7
GSP Annual Report 1936.
8
GSP Annual Report 1934.
9
The German Society stopped publishing membership numbers on a regular basis after
1929, but membership in the following years can be determined by counting member names
printed in the annual reports. Membership in the intervening years was 461 in 1934, 437 in
1936, and 421 in 1938. Numbers derived from the annual reports of 1932, 1934, 1936, 1938,
1940.
10
“Mitgleider vorgeschlagen seit Amtsantritt des Geschaefts-Agenten Henry Hoffmann,
1923,” GAC uncataloged. The GSP was not the only German organization experiencing
difficulties. The German Club was forced to dissolve due to “the bad times” and donated its
furniture to the GSP. See GSP Annual Report 1937.
11
Lizabeth Cohen, Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago, 1919–1939 (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1991).
12
Several resignation letters from before and after the war broke out in Europe reveal that
some members did not wish to be associated with a German organization. Some members
were rather vague about their reasons for resigning. Rudolph Huebner to Herr Hoffman,
October 12, 1938. But others, such as Rudolph Stüven, explicitly stated that “owing to
conditions abroad which have a certain bearing on me in my community, I find it expedient
to sever for the present at least my connection with the Society.” Rudolph Stüven to GSP,
April 26, 1939. Two more letters that gave no explicit reason for the resignation were
William Hellmann to GSP, May 19, 1939, and J.M. Snyder to GSP, December 11, 1939.
Gesangsverein Harmonie, Box 450, file “Handed over to FBI & returned.” All of these letters
are unusual since few members officially resigned over the course of the GSP’s 240-year
history, and even fewer resignation letters seem to have survived.
13
For a discussion of the Treaty of Versailles’s role in this, see Luebke, Bonds of Loyalty, 322.
14
Herbert A. Strauss, “Transplanted and Transformed: German-Jewish Immigrants Since
1933,” in America and the Germans: An Assessment of a Three-Hundred-Year History, Vol. 2, ed.
Trommler and McVeigh (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), 250.
15
For an overview of U.S. immigration policies, see Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door:
American Immigration Policy and Immigrants since 1882 (New York: Hill and Wang, 2004).
Chapter 3 addresses immigration during the 1930s.
16
Strauss, 261.
17
Based on my interview with Dr. George Beichl at his home on January 26, 2006.
96 ETHNICITY MATTERS
18
Decades later, when the film “Germany’s Road to Israel” was shown at the GSP to a
Jewish audience, a Philadelphia newspaper stated that “most Jewish members resigned
during the Hitler era.” The Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, May 11, 1967.
19
Longtime GSP director and attorney Arno Mowitz was among those rewarded for his
German nationalism when he was appointed Philadelphia’s German Consul in 1932. However,
union leaders of the American Federation of Hosiery Workers charged that Mowitz,
as the Hosiery Manufacturers’ attorney, was bringing Nazi influence and Hitler’s antiunionism
to the factory. See “Warns Workers of Nazi Trend in Hosiery Industry,” Evening
Bulletin, June 6, 1934.
20
The Bund meeting celebrating the Anschluss ended in a riot when anti-Nazi protestors
stormed in. For a description, see Timothy J. Holian, The German-Americans and World War
II: An Ethnic Experience (New York: Peter Lang, 1996), 31–2.
21
Philip Jenkins, Hoods and Shirts, 145.
22
One such anti-German demonstration took place on May 10, 1933, in Philadelphia. Several
thousand Jews gathered at Fifth and Washington Streets and paraded to City Hall,
“protesting anti-Semitic actions of Germany’s new Nazi government.” See Fredric M.
Miller, Morris J. Vogel, and Allen F. Davis, Philadelphia Stories: A Photographic History,
1920–1960 (Philadelphia, Temple University, 1988), 88–9.
23
GSP Annual Report 1933.
24
GSP Annual Report 1936.
25
GSP Annual Report 1939.
26
GSP Minutes, January 17, 1935.
27
Bismarck and Hitler were both born in April, yet this joint celebration was unique to the
German-American community and occurred just once. Celebrating both men together
might also indicate how some German Americans viewed Hitler and his place in German
history. With Bismarck as the father of imperial Germany, Hitler seems to have been seen
as the heir of that legacy rather than as the brutal dictator he was.
28
Kazal, Becoming Old Stock, 263–4.
29
Jenkins, 136–7.
30
New York Congressman Samuel Dickstein estimated that Pennsylvania alone had a Bund
membership of 20,000–30,000. See Evening Ledger, March 24, 1937.
31
Active support and membership in right-wing organizations, such as the movement led
by Catholic priest Father Coughlin, Italian Fascists, and the Ku Klux Klan, numbered more
than 20,000 in Philadelphia between 1938 and 1941. Estimate based on Jenkins, 13. When the
Klan reemerged with new vigor during the 1920s, the GSP was actively involved in opposing
new immigration quotas. Thus, it stood in direct opposition to Klan views. However, the
Klan was also a part of the Protestant movement fearful of “new immigration” from Eastern
and Southern Europe, as well as Asia. Although German-born men were not permitted to
join the Klan, naturalized German Protestants did join the American Krusaders, a Klan
affiliate. In part, many German Americans got involved because more recent immigrants
had begun to encroach upon employment territory traditionally reserved for older immigrant
groups from Germany or Great Britain, such as the steel, coal, and textile industries,
but also white-collar industries like retail. Nevertheless, the boom of the Klan in Pennsylvania
was short-lived: after 1925, record membership numbers of at least 250,000 dropped
to 20,000 and less than 5,000 by 1930. Only the pronounced concentration of members in
Philadelphia prevented the Klan from disappearing altogether. White Protestants, especially,
many of them of German descent, reacted defensively to a large influx of African
Americans and Jews in Pennsylvania by joining the Klan. Germantown and also German
neighborhoods in Philadelphia, such as Olney, had hundreds of Klan members. See Jenkins,
73–77. New York Congressman Samuel Dickstein estimated that Pennsylvania alone had a
Bund membership of 20,000–30,000. See Evening Ledger, March 24, 1937.
HITLER’S SHADOW IN PHILADELPHIA 97
32
Jenkins, 143–4.
33
For a discussion of why most Bund members were German-born immigrants who had
arrived after 1918, see Susan Canedy, America’s Nazis: A Democratic Dilemma (Menlo Park,
CA: Markgraf Publications Group, 1990).
34
Qtd. in Geoffrey Smith, To Save a Nation: American Countersubversives, the New Deal, and the
Coming of World War II (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 148. Philadelphia held a similar,
though smaller, rally on the same occasion. Scores of uniformed men from many different
organizations, especially veterans’ groups, came to hail the swastika flag, sing Nazi songs,
and chant “Heil Hitler.” GSP board member and German consul Arno Mowitz was among
those present. To be sure, some mainstream city officials were also at the gathering, which
legitimized the proceedings. Yet those who attended more than one such celebration were
more sympathetic to the right-wing cause than they later cared to remember. Jenkins, 147–8.
35
“Penna. Germans To Remain Neutral,” Philadelphia Inquirer, September 10, 1939.
36
Jenkins, 151.
37
Qtd. in Jenkins, 199. Blaming Jews and Communists for the outbreak of the war was a
mainstream conservative view. Philadelphia’s chapter of America First was led by prominent
and respected figures like Isaac Pennypacker, a prominent GSP member and the
nephew of the former Pennsylvania governor, Samuel Pennypacker. But even more conventional
meetings, such as the widely anticipated speech by Charles Lindbergh at an
America First event in May 1941, were somewhat discredited when extremists such as
Sigmund von Bosse, or Klan leader Frank Fite, showed up. Philadelphia Record, May 30, 1941,
and Jenkins, 203. According to Klaus Molzahn, son of Kurt Molzahn, von Bosse fled to
Mexico sometime in the early 1940s. Interview with Kurt Molzahn, March 25, 2006, Hanover,
PA.
38
A comparison of GSP and Bund membership records still needs to be done.
39
GSP Minutes, January 17, 1935.
40
Later, when real and suspected acts of espionage dominated newspaper headlines, the
managers of these steamship companies “were often accused of espionage and the importation
of contraband or propaganda into the United States.” They worked closely with the
German consulate under the leadership of GSP board member Arno Mowitz. Jenkins, 122,
140, 155.
41
He signed his letters to German sailors during the 1930s with “Heil Hitler” or variations
of the “German Salute.” See Erich Saul, Scrapbook 1903–1952, GAC AM2073. It is interesting
to note that Saul left the GSP sometime in 1938, perhaps because the GSP was at least
publicly denouncing Nazism at that time.
42
GSP Annual Report 1938.
43
The GSP archive contains a thick file of documents relating to the French occupation of
Germany’s industrial area. See Manuscripts Collection, box 501 Deutsch-Americana I;
World War I and Post, Nr. 2. “Didactic Literature—French Occupation of Ruhr and Rhine
Districts.”
44
Philip M.H. Bell, The Origins of the Second World War in Europe (London; New York:
Longman, 1997).
45
GSP Minutes, January 16, 1931.
46
T. St. John Gaffney, Breaking the Silence: England, Ireland, Wilson and the War (New York:
Horace Liveright, 1930), 312.
47
Conrad Linke folder #1, “Scrapbook with items pertaining to the lead-up to WWII, ca.
1917–1940, bulk 1939,” Manuscripts Collection.
48
I am indebted to Frank Trommler for sharing his expertise on twentieth-century German
literature with me.
49
GSP Annual Reports, 1924, 1930.
98 ETHNICITY MATTERS
50
Acknowledgement of these donations ended after 1938, although subscriptions to Der
Stürmer and Das Schwarze Korps continued until at least 1939.
51
GSP Annual Report 1937.
52
My father Klaus Pfleger, born in 1932, recalls being asked regularly to bring money to
school in support of the Volksbund für das Deutschtum im Ausland.
53
William Graf, the owner of a Germantown small business where the Deutscher Weckruf
was printed, later tried to disguise his political sympathies by pointing out that he merely
printed what he was paid for. Graf was also a GSP member and appeared on the membership
lists as early as 1923, the first year the GSP resumed publishing them again after 1917.
Jenkins, 152–3.
54
GSP Minutes, April 16, 1936.
55
GSP Annual Report 1937. The report does not mention if the film was the famous Leni
Riefenstahl film Olympia.
56
Colin Ross, Unser Amerika: De...