JF Ptak Science Books Post 2700
The “radicalism” that was a menace to America outlined in this slim pamphlet by the attorney Joseph T. Cashman (died in 1936 at 59) launched into the public consciousness in Scranton, Pa., in 1923, was Communism. Communism came in many flavors, and the author, as a member of the National Security League1, outlined some of them finding Commies in the United Mine Workers and the American Civil Liberties Union, to name two. The UMW was taking orders from the Third Internationale, which was also on its way to take over other trade unions. Then there was the larger issue of national security that was the base concern of the National Security League, which evidently went a little overboard with their issues, at one point in 1918 accusing the entire state of Wisconsin of treason.
So, the “asleep” part is the USA not paying attention to the Communists taking over the unions newspapers, and having an influx of immigrants who were not American enough who were destined to cause trouble to our way of life, and for not recognizing that teaching foreign languages in school would lead to division, and so on. For them what was going to save the country was uniformity, obedience, pledges of all sorts (like the Lusk Law in New York where teachers had to swear to their piety, patriotism, an wholesomeness), mandatory military service, and a vast increase in military funding to secure our borders. Welcome to 1923.
In other news, there’s this pamphlet from 1936, a miserable message from a miserable man, telling the U,S, to wake up…and become National Socialists.
Fritz Julius Kuhn was president of the German American Volksbund and a nasty, hateful character who worked in service of National Socialism in the United States. He wound up in trouble and in jail for mishandling funds, and once the U.S. got into the war, he found himself arrested as an enemy alien and sent to spend time in the interment camp on Ellis Island. He was kicked out of the country, and then arrested again by U.S. Occupation Forces and sent to Dachau in 1947 as part of the Denazification effort of Gen. Lucius D. Clay. Of course Dachau wasn’t the Dachau of Kuhn’s idol, so he unfortunately did not experience the camp of his intentions. He died in 1951, and that was that. Provenance: the Library of Congress, the pamphlet being a gift from the Bund.
In 1936 Kuhn wasn’t yet interested in taming the U.S. for the Nazis, though he was interested in protecting it from the greatest evil of mankind–Communism.. Actually, it turns out to be Bolshevism, but the controlling power to this is”the war battalions of the Jewish capitalists of the stock exchange” which was “the international (J)ewish attack of world Marxism”, which he said is what was attacking Germany, presently. There’s a lot more of this rhetoric in the pamphlet…actually, that is all there is in it, this sort of language, written by a non-native speaking chemist walking in Hitlerian glory and not all that smart. He was smart enough though in his rants, and tirades, and his anger was such that he was able to get 20,000 people to attend a rally at Madison Square Garden in 1939 where amidst his adjectival malignancies he ranted against “Franklin Delano Rosenfeld” and his “Jew Deal”, much like the language used in someone else’s beloved Ezra Pound’s traitorous broadcasts from Italy during the war. This was the straw that broke the stinking fascist’s back, though, terminally pissing off Mayor Laguardia who went after Kuhn’s taxes and found fraud and embezzlement. And so off he went. But not before ruining the memories of those people who witnessed their friends become engorged by his wrath and hatred, a ruined man with ruinous ideas who ruined people.
Notes:
1. “The National Security League (NSL) was an American patriotic, nationalistic, nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that supported a greatly-expanded military based upon universal service, the naturalization and Americanization of immigrants, Americanism, meritocracy, and government regulation of the economy to enhance national preparedness. Many of the programs advocated by the NSL, such as a unified national defense agency, an interstate highway system, universal conscription, English as the official language, and a unified national budget, were highly influential. Although the organization had declined before it finally folded in 1942, many of its ideas would become national policy in the United States.”–Wikipedia
Elmer James Rollings’ The Silent Horror (1939) is a two-fisted introduction and appraisal of narcotics published in Wichita, Kansas by the Defender Press, 1939. (It also seems that this pamphlet is pretty rare–there are no copies of the work found in WorldCat.) 
