On This Day in History: February 20

Nazi rally at Madison Square Garden

Subscribers can listen to the audio of today’s post here.

While protesting Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory, Nazi “Proud Boys” wore shirts proclaiming “6MWE,” a reference to the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust that means “six million wasn’t enough.” It should be no surprise that only a few months after a mass murder of Jews in Germany made international news that 20,000 fucking Nazis held a rally at Madison Square Garden.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: February 20, 1939--

It was February 20, 1939, two days before slave-owning George Washington’s birthday. The event had a giant image of Washington behind the stage, with American flags—and swastikas—on either side, because this was a “Pro America Rally.” Never mind that it was organized by the Nazi as fuck German American Federation (GAF) and had as keynote speaker GAF leader Fritz Kuhn, who was later deported for being an enemy agent.

The Federation had its lips firmly affixed to Hitler’s ass and pushed Nazi propaganda across the U.S. using a combination of Nazi symbols alongside patriotic American imagery. They had bookstores and parades and even fucking summer camps to indoctrinate the kids into fascism. Whites only, of course.

The event was jubilant, and without a hint of irony began with the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. Attendees waved American flags with the same limbs that bore Nazi armbands. Signs proclaimed the need to “Stop Jewish Domination of Christian America.” The speeches were antisemitic as fuck. President Roosevelt was referred to as “Rosenfeld” to malign him as a Jewish puppet. The “there takin’ are jawbz” crap about Jewish refugees stealing work from white Christian Americans was spewed. It was a combination of white America is so great mixed with xenophobia.

The mayor of New York, Fiorello La Guardia, was not a fan of fucking Nazis, but he knew the potential for such assfuckery to turn into a riotous shitshow, and dispatched 1,700 uniformed police officers outside the venue and placed another 600 undercover police inside the event in case everything went to excrement. Plenty of other Americans hated fucking Nazis too, which was why there were multiple bomb threats; La Guardia had the bomb squad comb the area for a week beforehand. He had little choice but to let these Nazi cockbags hold their rally but was determined to keep his city safe.

A hundred thousand protestors surrounded the event as Kuhn told those inside to take pride in their racism, saying, “The spirit which opened the West and built our country is the spirit of the militant white man.” The rally was intended to revitalize GAF’s lagging membership but had the opposite effect. Two months later, the film Confessions of a Nazi Spy hit theatres, excoriating fucking Nazis and their American supporters. What’s more, La Guardia, who is considered one the greatest mayors in American history, made it his mission to see Kuhn behind bars, leading a charge that led to Kuhn’s imprisonment for tax evasion. He’d been stealing money from the GAF and spending it on his mistress. Kuhn was deported back to Germany shortly after the war.

Support keeping this daily column free and get access to subscriber only content:

Get the book On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down