On This Day — Nazis in America and Four Freedoms

 

On this day, February 20, — Adolf Hitler secretly met with German industrialists to arrange for financing of the Nazi Party’s upcoming election campaign.

Many had business ties to companies in the United States.

On this day in 1939 — Madison Square Garden Nazi rally: The largest ever pro-Nazi rally in United States history is convened in Madison Square Garden, New York City, with 20,000 members and sympathizers of the German American Bund present.

The event took place two days before George Washington’s Birthday, as a pro- Americanism” rally.

What did these 20,000 people think “Americanism” was?

“A Night at the Garden”

NEW YORK TIMES: February 21, 1939

You can find the full article on the New York Times Time Machine here.

anightatthegarden.com

“When Nazis Took Over Madison Square Garden”

When Nazis Took Over Madison Square Garden

An Oscar-nominated documentary short examines a strange piece of American history that is eerily relevant today

www.rollingstone.com

Listen

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:German_-_American_Bund_Rally_Address_by_Its_Leader_Fritz_Kuhn.mp3

Thank heavens for better news a few years later.

On this day in 1943 — The Saturday Evening Post publishes the first of Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms in support of United States President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address theme of Four Freedoms.

“In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression — everywhere in the world.
The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way — everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want — which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants — everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear — which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor — anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.” — Franklin Delano Roosevelt[