German American Bund: Difference between revisions

Key members of the Bund often claimed to have a relationship with the German Nazi party in Berlin in order to legitimise the organisation in the eyes of the American public. For example, Helen Vooros, the former Bund youth leader, claimed that ‘“she was taught” that the Nazis planned an Austrian-like ''[[anschluss]]'' with the United States and ‘recognised Bund leader Fritz Kuhn as the “United States’ Fuehrer”’.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Thrall |first=Minna |date=2020 |title=“What For is Democracy?”: The german American Bund in the American Press, 1936-1941 |url=https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1134&context=vocesnovae |journal=Voces Novae |volume=12 |pages=11 |via=Digital Commons}}</ref> Although there was never any evidence to suggest this was true, it reveals how the Bund favoured their alliance to Germany over their declaration of allegiance to “the Constitution, the flag and the institutions of the United States of America”.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal |last=Thrall |first=Minna |date=2020 |title=‘“What is For Democracy?”: The German American Bund in the American Press, 1936-1941,” |url=https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1134&context=vocesnovae |journal=Voces Novae |volume=12 |pages=7 |via=Digital Commons}}</ref> Despite these grand claims however, members of the Third Reich continued to discredit the Bund with the German Ambassador to the United States, [[Hans-Heinrich Dieckhoff|Hans Heinrich Dieckhoff]], voicing his disproval of the Bund when he expressed his belief that the organisation was only serving to stir up anti-German sentiment among the American public. Due to this conflicting relationship, Germany distanced themselves from the Bund as they saw them as being untrustworthy and detrimental to [[Germany–United States relations|German-American relations.]]<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |last=Bredemus |first=Jim |date=17 January 2024 |title=The Failure of American Nazism: The German-American Bund’s Attempt to Create an American “Fifth Column |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180124131225/http://www.traces.org/americanbund.html |url-status=live}}</ref><ref name=":0" /> On the 1st of March 1938 the Nazi government declared that no German citizenscitizen could be a member of the German-American Bund and, no Nazi emblems or symbols were to be used in association with this organisation.<ref name=":1" />