Original subtitles

Taking this film was dangerous work.

Much of it is badly lighted and uneven.

But I have this film here

and I would like to show it to you.

Ladies and gentlemen,

fellow Americans, American patriots.

(drums beating)

(chanting)

This is Madison Square Garden

in New York City,

not Berlin nor Nuremberg.

They'd never seen anything

like it in New York.

There were estimated to be

100,000 people out there,

1,700 police officers in total.

It was the largest police presence

at any event in New York until 9/11.

That's how big this thing was.

It really looked like a smaller version

of "Triumph of the Will."

The people in the hall are supporters

of the German-American Bund.

At the head of the organization is

a man named Fritz Julius Kuhn.

Kuhn is this figure

who kind of comes out of nowhere,

much in some ways as Hitler does

in the 1920s in Germany,

steps out of nowhere

and becomes the leader

of this political faction.

You all have heard of me

through the Jewish controlled press

as a creature with horns,

a cloven hoof,

and a long tail.

Fritz Kuhn was at the apex of his power.

He thought he was now

the Fuhrer of America.

(screaming)

It seemed like a dangerous

movement that was happening.

It seemed like a Nazi movement

was happening in America.

(screaming)

Ladies and gentlemen,

our national anthem.

(National Anthem playing)

The 4th of July is

America's most important holiday.

It celebrates America's declaration

of independence against Great Britain

in the American Revolution.

And this is many ways is

the most sacred American holiday

from a civic perspective.

And it's a day when Americans

often do things like barbecue

and drink beers together.

It's sort of the ultimate

expression of American patriotism.

So on the 4th of July, 1937,

the German-American Bund decides

that this is a holiday

that they can use

for their own purposes.

At this point, the German-American Bund is

only a year old.

It's founded in 1936.

And it's a very rapidly growing organization.

We don't really know

how many people are directly

involved in this organization

but there's evidence that

there's tens of thousands,

if not hundreds of thousands

of Americans that are interested

in what it has to say.

The speeches on this date are

not about George Washington

and the American Revolution necessarily.

They're about praising Hitler

and calling upon German-Americans

to have a closer

sort of mental relationship

with the changes taking place in Germany.

This minority will be

able to move mountains

and that is just what

our Jewish friends wish to prevent.

They know that the German-American element is

justified to claim political representation

in our government and that the day

will come no matter

who stands in our way.

(cheering)

At this point,

Fritz Kuhn is 41 years old.

He has been the head

of the Bund for a year.

He styles himself its Fuhrer.

So historically speaking,

we don't know many facts about his life

but we know the story he wants

to tell about himself.

Fritz Kuhn was born

on May 15th, 1896 in Munich,

one of several children.

During World War I,

he enlisted in the German army.

He claims to have served

in a machine gun regiment

that wins the Iron Cross

for heroism in battle.

Although the battle that he claims

to have won it in seems

to have changed over time

according to his own account.

Kuhn claims after the first World War,

he becomes a member of

what we might call

the far right milieu of the time.

So he claims like many veterans

to have joined the Freikorps in Munich,

this far right violent organization.

He claims to have brawled

on the streets of Munich with Communists

very much like many Freikorps members.

He then claims to have been

an early member of the NSDAP.

Kuhn claims to have been

a close associate of Hitler.

And he claims to have actually been present

for the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923.

(singing in German)

With stories about Hitler's

failed coup in Munich,

Kuhn presents himself as a fascist hero.

Kuhn tries to actually fashion

his method of speaking

and actually the tactics

he uses directly on Hitler.

He also tries to emulate Hitler's

sort of erratic hand gestures

and very passionate form of speaking.

And you can imagine in an era

where you know comedy troupes

like the Marx Brothers

and Charlie Chaplin are mocking Hitler,

Kuhn himself becomes the object of ridicule

in a lot of people's minds.

But I think that's actually overshadowing

the real danger that he poses.

American law enforcement's knowledge

of the Bund is pretty limited in 1937.

They're much more interested

in Communism and Communist infiltration

of the labor movement.

And so there's this view

that the Bund might be kind

of an object of scorn or ridicule

but that perhaps doesn't

pose a huge threat.

And that proves to be

just a bad mistake.

Unchallenged the Bundists gather

even on America's national day.

In the audience that day

on July 4th, 1937,

there was a 32-year-old man.

His name on paper

at least is John C. Metcalfe.

This is my father.

My father and the people

in his Deutscher Amerika Bund did wear uniforms.

They just weren't quite as military looking.

Dad wore basically a short tie,

a brown shirt, and black pants.

(singing in German)

Boom, boom, boom.

I know the music.

I don't know the words.

I don't know the German or American words.

But I mean I could hum the whole thing

right now if you wanted.

I mean it's embedded.

(singing in German)

There was a time during this period

that Dad actually took me to a meeting.

There were a lot of flags mixed in

like a mass of flags of swastikas

and the American flag.

Now I was told always

not to say my name to anybody ever.

John Metcalfe took his son

with him as a cover.

John Metcalfe is an investigative journalist

for a Chicago newspaper.

And his entire tactic is

to essentially go undercover

to infiltrate the groups and organizations

that he is writing about.

This takes an immense amount

of courage in the 1930s.

For several decades, John Metcalfe's records

from this period lay untouched

in the Hoover Library in Stanford, California.

I was one of the first scholars

to really, really dig into these notes.

These were one of

the most remarkable accounts

I had ever seen

of what it was like within one

of these extremist groups in the 1930s.

(dramatic music playing)

Well, I guess my father got

into the Bund fairly easily simply

because of what perfect German,

just like he spoke perfect English,

but of course he always spoke

perfect German in the Bund.

My father's real name wasn't John Charles Metcalfe.

It was Hellmut Siegfried Maria Oberwinder.

John Metcalfe immigrated from Dresden

to America with his mother

and siblings in 1914

at the age of 10.

Before the first World War,

20 million Americans had German roots.

They are one of

the most visible immigrant groups

and shape the country's

economic and cultural life.

(singing in German)

But with the first World War,

the lives of German born Americans

in their new homeland change.

(speaking German)

People no longer dare

to say certain things.

They no longer dare

to speak German in public.

And there was such

strong pressure to conform socially.

When Dad and his mother and brother

and sister came to this country,

they still had the name Oberwinder.

They decided at some point

they would start using

his mother's name Metcalfe

and thereby avoiding the prejudice

that was rampant

in this country at the time.

Dad was just totally patriotic.

He became totally 100% American

even when he joined the Bund

under, you know, false pretenses.

As a member, Metcalfe has access

to the Bund offices.

The undercover journalist manages

to learn more about

the so-called Bundist Fuhrer.

Fritz Kuhn went to the University of Munich

and he received what was the equivalent

of a master's degree in chemistry.

However, Kuhn does conceal

one point in his curriculum vitae.

During his studies, he stole coats

and wallets from his fellow students.

They arrested him and he went to prison

for about six months or so.

As a result of this,

when he got out in 1924,

his father arranged for him

to have a job with Reinhold Spitz,

a Jewish clothing manufacturer.

Spitz noticed after some time

that the bolts of cloth

were coming up short.

So Spitz started looking

and eventually he caught

that Kuhn was cutting off sections

of the bolts of cloth and smuggling

them out of the factory

and selling them on the black market.

Now he faced another prison time.

Kuhn's father went to Spitz

and said, "Please, can you do something?

Please have mercy on him."

Spitz was generous.

The factory owner,

not only refrains from pressing charges

but also gives Kuhn money

to start a new life.

Kuhn initially tries to move

to the United States and is rejected

so he's unable to get a visa

to enter the U.S.

He then actually moves to Mexico.

So Mexico has much less stringent

immigration restrictions in this period.

Kuhn has a plan.

He wants to immigrate

to the U.S.A. via Mexico.

I think what's remarkable

about Fritz Kuhn is

that this is a man

who always finds a way

to get what he wants seemingly.

When he encounters an obstacle,

he seemingly always finds

a way to go around it.

Kuhn's plan works out.

In 1927, after three years in Mexico,

he immigrates to the U.S.A.

with his German wife

and their two children.

They move to Detroit.

The car manufacturers there place

high value on well-educated Germans.

Kuhn applies to the anti-Semitic entrepreneur, Henry Ford.

Kuhn got a job working

at the Henry Ford Hospital.

Given his background in chemistry,

he got a job working

in the x-ray department.

He was one of 400,000 Germans

who came to America

between 1919 and 1933.

The immigrants before 1918

and those after 1918 differed

mainly in the perception

of America and democracy.

The pre-1918 immigrants

left the authoritarian German empire

to start a new life in liberal America.

They considered themselves Americans.

Many fought against Germany

in the first World War.

And now in the 1920s and 30s,

we have a new wave of immigration.

They see themselves as people

who are fighting for Germany's true soul

in the place of this sort

of liberal regime that they see

as being imposed upon them

at the treaty table of Versailles.

So these are people

that see themselves as more German

than Americans in many cases.

These immigrants set up

their own cultural and political associations.

One group was called Teutonia.

They felt like a vanguard

of true German sentiment

in a hostile America.

Teutonia had its headquarters in Chicago.

John Metcalfe also lived there.

My father decided to do

some private investigations just on his own

to see what was going on with

the German immigrants to this country.

The anti-Semitic factory owner, Henry Ford,

tolerated the sale of Hitler's "Mein Kampf"

outside his factory gates.

The Teutonia members donated the proceeds.

They wanted to honor Hitler

so they pooled some of their money

and they sent it to Germany

as a birthday gift for Hitler.

He wrote back to them thanking them.

And he prophesied

that he would soon need them.

We don't really know

what Kuhn's involvement

with a group like Teutonia is.

We know that he loses his job

at the Ford Motor Company

because he is apparently practicing

political speeches on the clock.

I think here again

we see Kuhn biding his time

waiting to see what's going to happen

and waiting to make his move.

(ominous music playing)

We know that Hitler's knowledge

of the United States is actually pretty limited.

We have to remember

that Hitler never visits the U.S.

He never leaves Europe.

(marching)

Hitler's view of America is divided.

On the one hand,

the so-called Jewish threat

also emanates from there.

On the other, he admires

the racism toward the blacks.

He's impressed by the country's economic power

but at the same time he fears it.

He's seen firsthand in World War I

what happens when the U.S. enters a war.

Whatever side the U.S. is fighting on is

going to win simply because

of the industrial capacity

that it brings to the table.

So Hitler is desperate

throughout the 1930s and 40s

to keep the U.S. neutral,

keep it out of any conflict

that's going to emerge.

Shortly after the seizure of power,

national Socialist minded U.S. clubs

such as the Teutonia contacted Hitler.

Naturally, the NSDAP was very keen

to build up a network of confidants

and supporters in the U.S.A.

What Hitler and the German foreign ministry

are looking at is the fact

that there's 20 million Americans

of German-American descent

that certainly are a political force

to be reckoned with.

Officially Gau U.S.A. is founded

and a new association,

Friends of the New Germany.

(speaking in German)

Within a very short time,

the association has 5,000 members,

almost all of them with German passports.

Fritz Kuhn joined the Friends of New Germany,

Detroit chapter in November of 1934.

And he'd become an American citizen by this point

and pledged his loyalty to America.

(singing in German)

And as a member

of the Friends of the New Germany,

he also swears allegiance to Hitler.

(singing in German)

Officially, the association is

dedicated to cultural work.

Its aim is to promote a good image

of the new Germany in America.

Keep in mind at this point,

America still was trying

to figure out Hitler

and figure out can we work with him?

So April 1st, 1933,

the Nazi party announces a boycott

of Jewish shops in Germany.

This is not the type of moderation

that many people had

hoped Hitler would begin demonstrating.

It also sparks an immediate

backlash around the world.

There are Jewish groups

that call for boycotts of German shops

and the the removal of German goods

from major department stores

especially in cities like New York.

They're afraid of the members

of the Friends of the New Germany

because Nazi propaganda is

suddenly appearing in U.S. cities.

The Friends of the New Germany are

also a distribution network for propaganda

which since 1933 has mostly landed

in large quantities mainly New York,

by the ships of Norddeutscher Lloyd

and other German ships.

And it spread from there.

The American Government was not pleased.

It felt it was a serious interference

in international political affairs.

The U.S. Government

around President Roosevelt protest in Berlin

and threatens diplomatic consequences.

This actually might end up accomplishing

what Hitler doesn't want

which is drawing the U.S. deeper into Europe.

It could actually potentially

in the worst case scenario

create the pretext for a war

if FONG begins operating

as an American arm

of the Nazi party, so to speak.

Hitler reacts and orders

that all German citizens must leave

the Friends of the New Germany.

Berlin and Washington assume

that this has solved the problem.

What they believe is

that the Nazi party itself has

enough authority over its followers

to order them to simply cease their activities.

And that proves to be

just a bad mistake.

So in 1936, the Friends of the New Germany,

the surviving chapters come together

in Buffalo, New York

to discuss the future of the organization.

Is this group simply going to shut down?

Is it going to disappear?

Kuhn saw his chance

and decided he was going

to fill the vacuum.

John Metcalfe is also in Buffalo

and witnesses Kuhn winning over the audience.

He talks enthusiastically about evenings

with Hitler and Goering

in the Munich Burgerbraukeller.

And claims that he had

to leave Germany because like Hitler,

he was politically persecuted.

He has a certain charisma about him

that I think to a lot of Bund members,

reminds them of a young Hitler,

reminds them of what they potentially

have even seen among

the young Nazi leadership.

Kuhn has a master plan for the Bund.

Why not make

this a German-American organization?

Why not combine the principles

of the Third Reich

and German heritage with Americanism itself?

Kuhn already has a name prepared,

the German-American Bund.

(speaking German)

Metcalfe later notes,

he came on stage as Fritz Kuhn

and left it as an American Fuhrer.

A new life now begins for him.

As the Bundist Fuhrer,

he moves from Detroit to New York.

This is the era

in which tabloid journalism

in the U.S. is really taking off

in the modern sense.

Fritz Kuhn begins appearing in the tabloids,

leaving jazz clubs with

all these beautiful women

rumored to be his mistresses,

including a former Miss America.

If nothing else, Kuhn is

beginning to sell papers

for New York tabloid culture.

And this I think makes

him a almost larger than life figure

in a lot of people's minds.

Keep in mind, Kuhn had a genius

for organization and for business.

Newspaper advertisements,

donations from Germany,

or contributions from companies,

Kuhn makes money this way.

He had members give money from their businesses.

Somebody had to make the uniforms.

This is where the tailors came in.

Somebody had to print their propaganda.

This is where printers came in.

Somebody had to do this,

somebody had to do that.

So he was able to network

all of these people into making

the Bund a money making organization.

As in the NSDAP,

the Fuhrer principle also applies in the Bund.

Kuhn calls the shots.

So Kuhn begins combining

the outward symbols of Nazism with Americanism.

So rather than heiling Hitler, for instance,

they used the term free America.

His trademark was perhaps

also the many recreational camps

he founded all over the U.S.A.,

not only on the East Coast,

but also in California.

Kuhn has life

in the camps filmed for promotional purposes.

A majority of the German immigrants lived

in cities and maybe in,

you know, apartment buildings

and were of a poorer class

than than most of the rest

of the United States.

So for the German-American Bund members,

this was an opportunity

to send your children

or to send your family to the fresh air

of the countryside during the summer

and get out of the cities.

Tens of thousands of boys and girls

spend their vacations in these camps.

So this is now the heyday of the Bund.

Kuhn is enjoying the power he has gathered.

He's enjoying the fact

that he has a nationwide system

of camps that he's setting up.

He's enjoying being pictured

in the tabloids in New York City.

(cheering)

There's one puzzle piece missing

for Kuhn though in mid 1936.

What does Hitler himself

think about this group?

Kuhn decided that they needed

to get the official blessing

from Germany in order to continue.

So they decided to go

to the Berlin Olympics in 1936,

Hitler's Olympics as it was known.

Hitler puts on a good propaganda show in 1936.

He tries to meet with

as many foreign delegations

as possible to humanize himself.

He tries to shake as many hands.

Kuhn takes advantage of this

and sets up a meeting with Hitler

to deliver him this charitable contribution

to the Reich's Winter Help Fund.

Before the agreed meeting,

Bundists march along Unter den Linden.

Afterwards they proceed to the Reich Chancellery.

They were ushered into Hitler's office,

Kuhn and some of his top people,

and they presented Hitler

with the "Golden Book"

and their donation to the Winter Fund.

And this was to be

Fritz Kuhn's shining moment,

shook hands, picture was taken.

Now what's interesting about this photo is

that unlike most of Hitler's photos

that are very carefully staged

and he strikes a pose,

we actually only see half of Hitler.

We only see sort of the right half

of his body and it looks

like almost a paparazzi style snapshot.

This is fundamentally a defeat for Kuhn.

Of course, he would've loved

to have a staged photo with Hitler

or even been presented

in some official context

as the leader of the future American Reich

or something outlandish like that.

But this again, I think shows

Kuhn's marketing genius here.

He has at least

some tangible piece of evidence.

He's got a photograph with Hitler.

Kuhn comes back to the United States,

runs this across the front page of his newspaper.

Other newspapers of course pick this up.

Kuhn claims that Hitler

commissioned him to continue

the fight in America.

The U.S. Government is actually

deeply concerned about this.

Meeting with Hitler is certainly

a pretty bold move

for an American citizen to make

which of course Kuhn is at this point.

The State Department begins

investigating Kuhn to see

what Kuhn's intentions really are.

There was much anger in Berlin too.

Diplomats from the foreign office are furious.

How could Hitler have allowed himself

to be photographed with Kuhn?

Hitler justifies himself saying

he did it during the Olympics

as he did with many others.

This does not reassure the diplomats.

What if Roosevelt decides

to expel the German ambassador

or even potentially start a war

over the Bund's activities?

I think there's a great deal

of ambiguity in terms

of how the Reich reacts to this.

They're not entirely sure

what to make of Kuhn.

Is he simply a showboat emulator of Hitler?

Is this a man

who has real political influence?

Hitler plays the tactician.

Officially, he's distanced himself from the Bund.

Unofficially, he's allowed high NSDAP

functionaries to contact Kuhn.

Kuhn continues to dissimulate.

We don't get any orders

or any money from Germany.

We're American citizens and we demand our right

to be American citizens.

They march through the streets

of New York with the Nazi flags

in goose-stepping in formation.

All over America new chapters form.

It looked scary.

It was intimidating

which is what they wanted to do.

They wanted to frighten people.

John Metcalfe also marches undercover

through New York doing the goose step.

Metcalfe has a very abrupt career

in the German-American Bund

and he actually meets Fritz Kuhn himself.

And Kuhn is favorably impressed with Metcalfe.

This is a man who knows

how to write reports.

Of course, what Kuhn doesn't know is

that he's a professional reporter.

He seems to be loyal

as far as the Bund can tell.

And so he very quickly

becomes Kuhn's right-hand man.

Kuhn's first assignment for Metcalfe,

he is to visit all the chapters.

Kuhn's idea is that Metcalfe is going

to provide him with intelligence

as to what's going on

with these far flung chapters.

Are they actually buying their uniforms?

Are they actually paying their dues?

Are they actually sending

their dues to New York?

Metcalfe, the undercover journalist,

thus gains insight into the world of the Bundists.

What Metcalfe very quickly finds is

that the Bund is a complete hodgepodge.

There are some membership chapters

that apparently don't even

bother to collect dues.

There are some that haven't

bought the regulated uniforms

or have modified them in certain ways.

But Metcalfe also discovers though

there's a very different set of expectations

among Bund members nationwide.

Some chapters are in close contact

with other extremist U.S. groups

such as the Ku Klux Klan.

What all Bund chapters have in common is

anti-Semitism, anti-Communism

and this view that in the future,

German-Americans are going to

in some way rise up.

(singing in German)

They had something they had

that they talked about called der Tag

which meant "The Day."

And this would be the day

that they would rise up and defeat

the Jews in America.

In some places Metcalfe finds

that the Bund is ready for action immediately.

What Metcalfe also hears,

and this is what troubles him particularly,

is they don't necessarily think

that Fritz Kuhn is going

to be the man who seizes power.

Rumors are circulating

that a famous U.S. American will soon

take over the Bund,

Charles Lindbergh, the transatlantic flyer

and self-confessed Hitler admirer.

And what Metcalfe realizes is

a Bund is really the kernel

of a future movement.

It's not the movement itself.

He sees it as as building

towards something even bigger.

(dramatic music playing)

Metcalfe decides to go public.

Metcalfe's scoop finally hits

in the Daily Times.

So it runs under the headline,

"Secrets of Nazi Army in U.S.A."

by Times man who joined it.

It's a sensational scoop.

And in the days to come,

actually Metcalfe's stories

get picked up by

a ton of newspapers across the country.

This becomes a national story overnight.

After the stories were out

and Dad was out lecturing about

his experiences in the Bund,

he was driving to the next town

that he was going

to give the lecture in,

somebody shot at him

and it was rapid fire.

So we assumed that it was

some kind of an automatic weapon

but it was aimed at the car.

And Dad just drove as fast

as he could and got away.

Metcalfe will not be intimidated.

In uniform, he addresses all Americans.

One of the most disturbing things

I found in the American Nazi movement was

the Hitlerizing of American boys and girls.

He sees that these camps are

not all about having

a good time in the summer.

He sees children doing hard work,

training with weights,

being forced to do manual labor.

And the Bund explains this

or he's told by the camp's leadership

that this is about

making strong young Germans.

There was one teenager

who was a leader of the girls.

Her name was Tilly Koch.

She stood outside the girls' bunks at night.

Now it was cold and it was rainy.

She caught pneumonia and they refused

to take her to a doctor.

They said, "No, no,

you're a strong German young woman.

You don't get sick."

And Tilly Koch died.

The key to Metcalfe's articles, I think,

is that it wakes Americans

up to the fact that fascism can

happen on their own soil.

This is not just a European problem

or a European phenomenon.

There are groups planning it

in the United States itself.

The Un-American Activities Committee

becomes aware of the Bund

and summons Fritz Kuhn.

He claims innocence and complains

of being unjustly labeled,

"Public Enemy Number 1."

Kuhn was grilled for two days

and at the end he said,

"Are we done?"

And they said, "Yes, you are dismissed."

Kuhn stood up and said,

"Gentlemen, it has been a pleasure."

So in the aftermath

of this increasing pressure

from the U.S. Government

and from the American public,

Kuhn plans his largest demonstration to date.

The Bund rents

Madison Square Garden in New York.

Kuhn and his supporters ostensibly want

to celebrate George Washington's birthday there.

20,000 tickets are sold in advance.

This will be an event

that he believes will propel him

to the next level

of his own fame

and his own political power.

100,000 people gather outside

to demonstrate against Kuhn.

He claims that if George Washington,

this man who is the founding father

of the United States,

in many people's minds,

if Washington were alive today,

he would certainly be a Nazi.

We with American ideals,

demand that our government shall be returned

to the American people who founded it.

He talked about President Rosenfeld,

Franklin Roosevelt, the secret Jew.

He talked about Jewish influence

in the American Government

since the founding of the country

and how awful it was.

But there's another man there too.

His name is Isadore Greenbaum.

Isadore Greenbaum is a plumber's apprentice.

He's a Jewish American

and he is there really

to show his dislike

for the anti-Semitic bile

that Kuhn is hurling from this stage.

He feels so outraged

by these assaults against America's Jews

and against the principles

of the United States

that he feels compelled he says

to rush the stage.

(crowd screaming)

The OD attacked Greenbaum.

They beat him to a bloody pulp.

They were kicking him and hitting him.

And his pants got ripped

off at some point.

But the police finally grabbed Greenbaum.

Greenbaum's actually booked

for disorderly conduct

by the New York City Police Department.

But the local Jewish and labor community

comes together and bails him out.

And there's photos a few days later

of him leaving jail

and kissing his wife,

this sort of newly minted American hero.

When the Greenbaum photos are splashed

across most of the major papers

in the country the next day,

it really becomes this galvanizing moment,

I think where Americans can

no longer ignore that

this is an organization

that is intrinsically violent.

You couldn't get Kuhn

on freedom of speech.

He had the right to be obnoxious.

But there had to be

another way to get him.

They decided to look at the taxes.

Investigators checked the Bund's finances

and make a discovery.

Kuhn is paying his mistresses' private bills

from the organization's coffers.

Now they had a case

against Fritz Kuhn, embezzlement.

And this is what led

to the downfall of Fritz Kuhn,

not his Nazism, not his obnoxious speeches.

He couldn't keep his pants zipped.

On December 6th, 1939,

Kuhn is sentenced to 2.5 years

in prison for forgery and embezzlement.

This also seals the fate of the Bund.

Without a leader, it becomes meaningless.

People in Berlin are relieved.

It's said that Joachim von Ribbentrop,

the German foreign minister, remarks to Hitler

that after Kuhn's trial Kuhn is finished

that his career essentially is over.

Fritz Kuhn is deported to Germany

a few months after the end

of the second World War.

His American citizenship had already been revoked.

A German civilian court

handling denazification initially

sentences him to 10 years in prison.

The sentence is later

reduced to 2 years.

When the sentence is pronounced,

Kuhn declares with a grin

that he will never

found an organization again.

I think Fritz Kuhn was a major threat

to the United States.

His combination of the symbols

of Nazism and Americanism represented

perhaps the boldest attempt

of the time to argue

that Americans had nothing

to fear from Nazism.

He really was.

He is the most incongruous

threat you can imagine.

But he was loud

and he said a lot of scary things.

And in America, if you're loud

and you say a lot of scary things,

people have a way of paying attention.

Fritz Kuhn died lonely

and impoverished in Munich in 1951.

The New York Times reported his death

as a marginal note only months later.

John Metcalfe continued to work

as a journalist, consultant, and speech writer.

Years later, I thought

I should say something.

I was on the phone

to my mother and I said,

"Would you do me a favor

and tell Dad something?

Tell him how proud I am of

what he's done in his life."

And she did.

And then she called me back

a few days later

and said that he almost cried.

(dramatic music playing)