Propaganda Maps: Potential Nazi Supporters, 1938

JF Ptak Science Books LLC   Post 956

In an audacious move Adolf Hitler attempted to unite German-heritage people throughout the world to come to the aid of the Nazi Socialists; it was a vicious piece of propaganda attempting to inflate the number of possible-Nazis into the hundreds of millions, showing a sub rosa infiltration of Nazism throughout the world. 

This map appeared originally in Deutsches Volkstum in aller Welt (Berlin, 1938) and purported to document far-flung German descendants—the map alone was perhaps statement enough to many, striking a deep fear thinking about the 20,000,000 Americans alone whose roots could be traced back to the Vaterland.  As a terror and influence tactic that cost little money, it must have caused the anti-propaganda folks a good deal of worry.  The German/Vaterland (German American Bund, or Deutsch-Amerikanischer Volksbund) movement never really gained much popular ground in the U.S., though there was some significant compliance in business and trade going on at higher levels of industry and banking. 

(I’ve written about the Nazi-American connections in numerous posts on this blog; all you need to do is do a site google under “Nazi” and you’ll find plenty. For the moment I’ll just concentrate on the Henry Ford example.  The man was a monstrous moral figure without an ounce of historical understanding who blamed much of the world’s troubles on the “Jewish Dictatorship”, which somehow, in his mind, spawned WWI.  Long story short, Ford received the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle for his friendship and services to the Nazi state—this friendship extended in form of money and many thousands of military vehicles, and so on.  His was a treacherous business, his Nazi interests folding very nicely in with his astounding anti-Semitism. Ford, by the way, received his medal months after the invasion of Austria, when he really should’ve known better.  I’m not sure if he gave the thing back or not after the war ended.)

But among the masses, the sentiment never grew into strength, though it wasn’t for trying.  The movement had been present in the US since the 1920’s in the form of the National Socialist Party and the Teutonia Society, though the real start of the American Bund seems to have been with Friends of New Germany (1933). Right-Wing groups such as America First were strong sympathizers of Hitler, though they abandoned him once the war began.  (Not so true for Chase Bank, Ford and many others.)  The German American Bund never topped 100,000 members, though it did fill up Madison Square Garden for a meeting in 1939. (One of the main speakers was Avery Brundage, International Olympic Committee Chair. Brundage survived in this role until Munich in ’72, when he ordered the Olympic games to continue, unabated, after the 11 Israeli athletes were murdered by elements of Yasser Arafat’s organizations.)

Amyway, this map was more a propaganda tool than one of true expectation, and I’m sure it did its fair share of damage.