“A Night at the Garden” contains archival footage of a 1939 “Pro-America Rally” held by the German-American Bund, in conjunction with demagogue Father Charles Coughlin’s Christian Front.  An almost capacity crowd of 20,000 was in attendance that night at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

The main speaker is Hitler knock-off Fritz Kuhn, a naturalized German immigrant and head of the Bund. He brings a populist message, demanding that the government be returned to the American people who founded it. He rails against the “Jewish owned” press.

The man rushing the stage and subsequently beaten by guards is 26 year old Isadore Greenbaum. The crowd roars in approval as his pants are pulled down.

New York in 1939 was considered a bastion of liberalism.  But as Fritz Kuhn observes, he clearly did not come to that place as a complete stranger.

 

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