When 22,000 Nazis Gathered At Madison Square Garden
Trump admires Hitler, studies Hitler's speeches, regularly quotes Hitler, uses Nazi symbols in his merchandising, wants absolute power like Hitler, and will hold his own Nazi rally at MSG tonight.
Donald Trump has been obsessed with holding a rally at Madison Square Garden for years. He gets his wish tonight — with fewer than 10 days remaining before American voters will make a simple, stark, and extremely consequential choice for the direction of their country: Democracy or Fascism?
Numerous historians and journalists have noted the infamous 1939 Nazi rally, which was also held at Madison Square Garden — although back then, MSG was a different building at a different address. (The current MSG opened in 1968.)
Here is the New York Times’ reporting on the 1939 event:
“A Night at the Garden” contains seven minutes of video from the event. You can watch it here.
“How This Hero Risked Life at MSG’s Other America First Rally” recounts the story of Isadore Greenbaum — 26 years old, plumber’s assistant, hotel worker, cab driver, and waiter from Brooklyn — who attended the event and ended his evening by being arrested for attempting to attack Fritz Kuhn, leader of the German-American Bund aho dreamed of becoming an American Hitler.
According to his grandson, Brett Siciliano, “He just lost it. My grandfather was not a violent guy, but he didn’t take much shit, either. . . . [He wanted] to shut the guy up. He grabbed the mic wires, and when that was not working, he kept going to the podium [yelling “Down with Hitler!”].”
Stormtroopers in Nazi uniforms threw Greenbaum to the ground and began beating and kicking him. NYC police eventually rescued Greenbaum, his nose broken and clothes ripped, and arrested him for disorderly conduct.
Der Angriff, the German newspaper controlled by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, offered an exaggerated report, claiming “a Jew” had attempted “to assassinate Kuhn”.
Before pleading guilty, Greenbaum stated: “I went to the Garden without any intention of interrupting. But they talked so much against my religion and there was so much persecution that I lost my head, I felt it was my duty.”
The judge gave Greenbaum the choice of a $25 fine or 10 days in jail. His supporters, which included the arresting officers (and perhaps the judge), collected money to pay the fine.
Greenbaum enlisted in the Army after Germany invaded Poland six months later. “It’s good to be fighting against the hated Nazis again,” he said during the war. “If we had stopped them earlier when we had the chance there would be a lot less bloodshed in the world today.”
After the war, he and his family settled in California. Greenbaum died in 1997 at the age of 84.
The Socialist Workers Party organized a protest of the 1939 rally — and Greenbaum was one of several hundred protestors.
Only two years later, an “America First” rally was held at the Garden on May 23, 1941. Rachel Maddow describes that event in Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism, her deeply-researched, well-written, and eye-opening examination of the popular pro-fascist movement in the US during the late 1930s and early 40s. At its peak, this movement included more than two dozen members of the Senate and Congress, many of them paid directly by Hitler and the Nazi Party to promote Nazi propaganda in speeches and mailings.
A “German Day” celebration, complete with swastikas, was held at Madison Square Garden on October 6, 1934.
27 Photos — In Focus
In the years before the outbreak of World War II, people of German ancestry living abroad were encouraged to form citizens groups to both extol “German virtues,” around the world, and to lobby for causes helpful to Nazi Party goals. In the United States, the Amerikadeutscher Volksbund, or German American Bund, was formed in 1936 as “an organization of patriotic Americans of German stock,” operating about 20 youth and training camps, and eventually growing to a membership in the tens of thousands among 70 regional divisions across the country. . . . As World War II began in 1939, the German American Bund fell apart, many of its assets were seized, and its leader arrested for embezzlement, and later deported to Germany.
Great post. Thanks.