Biographies of the people who appear in Madison, book five of The Addlestone Chronicles. Apart from the fictional Harcourt-Heath family, their servants, the Sherman family and Gideon Beaumont, every character is historical.
B C D E F G H I J K L M N P R S T W
B
Backhouse, Sir Roger Roland Charles (1878 – 1939) was Admiral of the Fleet. He served in the Great War as a cruiser commander and after the war became Commander-in-Chief, Home Fleet. He died of a brain tumour in July 1939 at the age of 60.
Bell, Arthur Hornbui (1891 – 1973) was an attorney and the New Jersey Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. He wrote the introduction to the publication Klansmen: Guardians of Liberty. He was removed as head of the New Jersey Klan for his overt cooperation with the German American Bund. He died of natural causes at the age of 82.
Blunt, Sir Anthony (1907 – 1983) was a recruiter for the Cambridge Five Spy Ring. He used his role as tutor and Professor of Fine Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge, to recruit undergraduates to spy for the Russian NKVD. (see Lebensborn for more details of his traitorous actions as well as his employment by the Royal Household.) He was publicly exposed as a traitor in 1979 and died of a heart attack in 1983, at the age of 75.
Brecher, Leo (1889 – 1980) was a theatre owner in New York City and purchased the Apollo Theatre in 1934. With his family, he immigrated from Austria when he was ten years old. He went into partnership with Frank Schiffman, whose family had also immigrated from Austria. He died of old age at his home in Hollywood in 1980, aged 91.
Brundage, Avery (1887 – 1975) was a track athlete who eventually became president of the International Olympic Committee. In 1936, he avoided calls for a boycott of the summer Olympics in Berlin to protest against the Nazis’ treatment of Jews. He expressed racist, sexist, and antisemitic views over the years. After the murder of eleven Israeli athletes in the Olympic Village in 1972, he refused to suspend the games uttering the words, “The Games must go on.” He was a staunch isolationist and also a key figure on the America First Committee. He died in Germany at the age of 87.
C
Calloway, Cabell III (1907 – 1994) was an American Jazz singer, songwriter and bandleader whose career spanned over 65 years. He was the master of scat singing and led one of the most popular dance bands in the 1930s and 1940s. He became the first African-American to sell one million copies of a record. His most famous song was Minnie the Moocher, first recorded in 1931. He also recorded such songs as Reefer Man, The Scat Song, Hotcha Razz-Ma-Tazz, The Jumpin’ Jive, and Blues In The Night (My Mamma Done Told Me). In 1994, he suffered a stroke and five months later, died from pneumonia at the age of 86. For anyone who is interested, one can find video clips on YouTube of his band and singing.
Carter, Eunice Hunton (1899 – 1970) was one of New York’s first female African-American lawyers and state prosecutors. A graduate of Smith College, she first worked as a social worker, but decided she could have more impact if she had a law degree. She enrolled at Fordham Law School, got her degree in 1932, and passed the New York bar exams the following year. She was the first Black woman to receive a degree from that school. After that, she was hired by Manhattan District Attorney, Thomas Dewey. As assistant DA, she put together the case against Mafia boss, ‘Lucky’ Luciano. He was convicted of racketeering and prostitution and served ten years and was then deported. She was active in the Pan-African Congress and the United Nations. She also served on the executive committee of the International Council of Women and on the board of the YWCA. In 1970, she died of cancer at the age of 70.
Chamberlain, Neville (1869 – 1940) served as leader of the UK Conservative Party and then Prime Minister between May 1937 and October 1940. Historically, he has been criticised for his central policy of appeasement of Hitler’s ambitions in eastern Europe. This culminated in 1938 with the Munich Agreement, where he agreed to hand over Czechoslovakia’s Sudetenland. Historically, he is regarded as being naïve, believing in Hitler’s sincerity. Like his predecessor, Stanley Baldwin, he failed to adequately prepare Britain for war. His main claim to success was his role in silencing parliamentary dissent.
Cobb, John Rhodes (1899 – 1952) was an English motor racing owner and driver. He held the World Land Speed record on three occasions, setting those at the Bonneville Speedway in Utah in 1938, 1939, and 1947. During WWII, he served as an officer in the Royal Air Force, retiring after the war with the rank of squadron leader. He was killed in 1952 in a jet-powered speedboat while attempting to break the World Water Speed Record on Loch Ness in Scotland.
Cohen, Kenneth Herman Salaman (1900 – 1984) was a British Royal Naval Lieutenant Commander and an intelligence officer with the SIS. Together with Claude Dansey, they ran the Z organisation which was an intelligence network that was deliberately kept separate from the SIS for reasons of security. During the second war, he served as chief staff officer for training and then in 1943 was made controller of Western Europe. He died of old age at the age of 84.
Costello, Francesco (Frank) Castiglia (1891 – 1973) was born in Calabria, Italy and as a child, immigrated to the United States with his parents. He became acting boss of the Luciano crime family when Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano was convicted for pimping and sentenced to thirty years in prison. He became known as ‘The Prime Minister of the Underworld’, retaining power in the New York Mafia throughout his life. He was a member of the Cosa Nostra and the Jewish Mafia. He died of a heart attack at the age of 82.
Coughlin, Father Charles E (1891 – 1979) was a Canadian Catholic priest based near Detroit, Michigan. He was dubbed The Radio Priest, broadcasting to an estimated thirty million people, essentially, a quarter of the US population in the mid-1930s. His radio programme was called The Golden Hour. In his broadcasts he regularly attacked Jewish bankers and subsequently extended this to general antisemitic rhetoric. He was a vocal supporter of many of the policies of Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. His programme was cancelled by the National Association of Broadcasters in 1939 when WWII broke out in Europe.
Curran, Father Edward (1899 – 1974) was the Roman Catholic priest of St Sebastian Roman Catholic Church in Queens. He was a vocal supporter of Father Charles E Coughlin, Generalissimo Francisco Franco, and later, Senator Joseph McCarthy. As an isolationist, he opposed any form of world government. He died of natural causes at the age of 75.
D
Dansey, Colonel Sir Claude Edward Marjoribanks (1876 – 1947) was first a police constable, then a soldier in WWI, and finally an intelligence officer with SIS. He was known as Colonel Z and eventually became responsible for the creation of the American-based British intelligence system. At various times he’d been accused of being anti-American and misogynistic because he wouldn’t hire female agents. It was also credibly suggested that in 1893, he had a sexual relationship with Robert Ross, Oscar Wilde’s friend and lover. He’s also been accused of being a freemason and thus being a traitor to the crown. He died in 1947 as a result of heart disease.
Dennis, Lawrence (1893 – 1977) was a Harvard-educated American diplomat and author. In his first book, Is Capitalism Doomed?, he argued that American capitalism was on the way out. In his next book, The Coming American Fascism, he argued that German and Italian models of fascism were superior to what he termed the corrupt capitalist system. He thought Hitler was unimpressive and reliant on political showmanship, but openly admired the more intellectual Nazis including Joseph Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg, Rudolf Hess, and Hermann Göring. During this time, he was a self-avowed antisemite. In 1944, along with twenty-eight others including Reverend Winrod (see below), he was charged with sedition, but it collapsed when the presiding judge died. He remains something of an enigma or perhaps a hypocrite. He married Eleanor Brunnhilde Simson who had Jewish ancestry and after his death, it was revealed that he was of mixed race and was able to hide that fact during his lifetime. He died of heart failure at the age of 83.
DeSapio, Carmine Gerard (1908 – 2004) was an American NY City politician and the last head of Tammany Hall, the powerful Democratic political machine that dominated municipal politics for much of the 19th and early 20th centuries. As a young man in the late 1930s, he rose to become a district captain. Throughout his tenure in Tammany Hall, it had been suggested that he had close links to Mafia mobsters. After convictions for bribery in the 1960s, he retired from public life. He died at the age of 95 from natural causes.
Dickstein, Samuel (1885 – 1954) was born in Vilna in the Russian Empire in what is now known as Vilnius, Lithuania. After law school, he had various NY state appointments. In 1922, he was elected to Congress where he served until he resigned in December 1945. It was later discovered that throughout the late 1930s, he was a paid agent of the Soviet NKVD, receiving $1,250 per month for his services. His Soviet handlers gave him the code name Crook. His final appointment was as a justice on the New York State Supreme Court. His traitorous activities were only exposed after his death at the age of 69.
E
Evans, Hiram Wesley (1881 – 1966) was Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, holding that top position from 1923 until his resignation in 1939. He was a native of Alabama, attended Vanderbilt University, and became a dentist. The Klan’s membership peaked in the mid-1920s with an estimated four million paying members. Its popularity declined due to the economic constraints of the Great Depression. By 1938, its paid membership was estimated to be around 100,000. Somewhat bizarrely, Evans condemned corporate greed, alleging that the wealthy elite’s desire for cheap labour led to increased immigration. Unlike today’s right-wing politicians, he argued that immigration policy should impose restrictions on the entry of unskilled workers, with the exception of those needed on farms. So damaged were the Klan’s finances, that by 1939, Evans had to take a job as a day labourer, nevertheless holding on to his large residence in a prestigious Atlanta neighbourhood. In 1940, he was charged by the state of Georgia along with a member of the highway board for price fixing and fined $15,000. He died of natural causes at the age of 84.
F
Finkelstein, Max (1884 – 1940) was a Captain in the New York City Police Department. Despite apparently having a spotless career record, just before he retired, he was informed he would have to face charges for accepting bribes. Faced with this potential disgrace, he committed suicide in May 1940.
Flynn, John T (1892 – 1964) was an American journalist, best known for his opposition to Franklin D Roosevelt and American entry into WWII. He was a chief advisor to the Nye Committee (see the bio of Gerald Nye cited below). He was a founding member of the America First Committee and publicly accused FDR of lying about his desire to keep America out of any future European War. He also accused him of violating the Neutrality Acts passed in the 1930s as he was continuing to support Britain in, “every way possible”. In 1940, he opposed the newly formed Selective Service Commission. A year later in 1941, he argued against the Lend-Lease programme because it allowed Britain, already close to bankruptcy, to continue to purchase food and arms they needed in the second year of the war against Nazi Germany.
Ford, Henry (1863 – 1947) was an American industrialist and business magnate. Originally from Michigan, he set up the Ford Motor Company in Detroit. He is credited with sponsoring ‘welfare capitalism’ by raising wages for his workers to ensure loyalty and reduced turnover by giving profit-sharing opportunities to his workers. He also introduced the five-day working week and 8-hour days. Having said that, he was adamantly against labour unions and employed people to intimidate workers attempting to organise. In 1932, unemployed Detroit auto workers staged a ‘Ford Hunger March’ to present fourteen demands to Henry Ford. Dearborn police opened fire on the workers, leading to five deaths and sixty injuries. Again in 1937, his security men beat members of the United Auto Workers Union (UAW) with clubs while police were given orders not to intervene. Ford Motor Company was the last Detroit automaker to recognise the UAW. Politically, Henry Ford opposed war, which he viewed as a terrible waste. In 1939, he opposed the US entry into WWII arguing it was a product of ‘greedy financiers’ which was his coded description for Jews. He was an early member and financial backer of the America First Committee and was an ardent conspiracy theorist primarily aiming these at Jews. To counter what he regarded as the Jewish threat from Jazz, he funded square-dancing in American schools. Like many present-day billionaires, he purchased the influential newspaper, The Dearborn Independent and published some ninety-one articles under his own name claiming there was a vast Jewish conspiracy. These were eventually bound into four volumes and published under the title, The International Jew; The World’s Foremost Problem. Until The Dearborn Independent closed in 1927, it had a readership of around 700,000. It closed because of a libel lawsuit initiated by a San Francisco lawyer, Aaron Sapiro. Ford’s lawyers denied that Ford had any knowledge of the content of the articles published even though they were published under his by-line.
Ford’s four books were translated into German. In 1927, Heinrich Himmler described Henry Ford as ‘one of the most valuable, important, and witty fighters’. Speaking to a Detroit reporter, Hitler was quoted as saying, “I regard Henry Ford as my inspiration”. It was well-known that he kept a portrait of Henry Ford on his desk. Ford personally paid to publish and distribute more than half a million copies of the antisemitic fabricated text, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. (See Chapter 14 of Madison and Lebensborn chapter 31 for more details.) Five years later, he also paid for an English translation of Mein Kampf. In the 1920s, he gave substantial sums to the Russian expatriate, Boris Brasol, to finance the recently established Nazi Party in Germany. In 1938, on Ford’s 75th birthday, the German consul in Cleveland presented Ford with the award of the Grand Cross of the German Eagle, the highest medal Nazi Germany could bestow on a foreigner. He died in April 1947, in Dearborn, Michigan at the age of 83, from a cerebral haemorrhage.
Froboese, George (1900 – 1942) was the Midwestern Department Gauleiter of the German American Volksbund. In 1936, he travelled with Fritz Kuhn to the Berlin Olympics, where he was introduced to Adolf Hitler. He committed suicide by throwing himself in front of a New York Central passenger train while on the way to New York to answer a Federal subpoena.
Fuller, Charles Edward (1887 – 1968) was raised a Presbyterian but fell under the influence of the pastor of Moody Church and converted to their Baptist brand of fundamentalism and dispensationalism. That term means he adopted a literal interpretation of the Bible. He held revival meetings up and down the West Coast and in 1930, formed the Gospel Broadcasting Association to support his radio efforts. His Sunday programme, The Old Fashioned Revival Hour, attracted a regular audience of over ten million listeners. It continued for over thirty years, only ending on his death in 1968 at the age of 80.
G
Galbraith, John Kenneth (1908 – 2006) was a highly influential Canadian/American institutionalist economist. He graduated with a BSc degree from the Ontario Agricultural College and then, in 1934, entered the University of California, Berkeley where he was awarded a PhD in agricultural economics. He became an instructor at Harvard University and then in 1939, taught at Princeton University. In 1937, he became a naturalised citizen of the United States and was therefore no longer a British subject. In that same year, he took a year-long fellowship at the University of Cambridge in the UK where he met and was influenced by John Maynard Keynes (cited below). In 1949, he became Professor of Economics at Harvard University, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During WWII, he served in Roosevelt’s Cabinet as deputy administrator of the Office of Price Administration (OPA) whose team was charged with the task of keeping rents stabilised and inflation from damaging the war effort. This was regarded as necessary due to the threat from the mandated large budget deficits and accompanying liberal monetary policy targets to mitigate the effects of the Great Depression. He was quoted as saying his role was to educate the entire nation on how the economy worked, including the role of big corporations. He advised Franklin and later Eleanor Roosevelt, Hubert Humphrey, Adlai Stevenson, and Presidents John F Kennedy and Lyndon Baines Johnson and in 1972, presidential candidate, Senator George McGovern. His best-selling books, called the American capitalism trilogy were The Affluent Society (1958), The New Industrial State (1967), and Economics and the Public Purpose (1973). After his retirement from Harvard as the Paul M Warburg Professor of Economics, he remained in the public spotlight, writing a further twenty books. In 1977, he completed the script for a major series on economics for PBS and BBC television called The Age of Uncertainty. It was broadcast in thirty-eight countries. In 1966, he was invited by the BBC to present the Reith Lectures, which were broadcast under the title, The New Industrial State. In 1967, he turned this into a best-selling book of the same title. He is responsible for originating the two now commonly used terms, the conventional wisdom, first used in The Affluent Society (1958) and countervailing power, in his 1952 book, Capitalism: The Concept of Countervailing Power. He died in April 2006 at the age of 97 from natural causes.
Gartner, Fred Christian (1896 – 1972) was a one-term US Republican Congressman, elected in 1938, who failed in his re-election attempt in 1940. He was the son of German immigrants and a supporter of the German American Bund. He died of natural causes at the age of 76.
Gavin-Wheeler, Sir Nicholas is a fictional character, who appears in the earlier novels in this series. I introduced him as a retired General, living in Ireland with his family. In the Boer Wars, he was Humphrey’s commanding officer and I had him visiting London to give advice to the Ministry of Defence, the War Office, and the Home Secretary.
Gerry, Elbridge Thomas (1744 – 1814) was the fifth vice president of the United States, serving under President James Madison. Prior to that, he served as Governor of Massachusetts from 1810 to 1812. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence and Articles of Confederation. He died of a severe pulmonary haemorrhage while serving as vice president, at the age of 70.
Gish, Lillian (1893 – 1993) was an American actress known for her work in movies in the silent era. In 1927, she was dubbed the First Lady of the Screen by Vanity Fair Magazine. She was an active member of the America First Committee and consistently and vocally espoused their non-interventionist views prior to Pearl Harbor. She never married nor had children. She died of heart failure at the age of 99.
H
Hart, Merwin Kimball (1881 – 1962) was a Harvard-educated lawyer, insurance executive, and New York politician. He founded the New York State-wide Economic Council which fought against FDR’s New Deal on the grounds it was interfering with the American way of life. For the same reason, he and the Council adopted vocal anti-communist views. As president of the NEC, he praised Franco’s Nationalists. In 1947, the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith cited his National Economic Council along with Gerald K Smith’s Christian Nationalist Crusade and the Ku Klux Klan as being organised anti-Jewish organisations. A life-long Mason, he died in New York at the age of 81.
Hess, Rudolf Walter Richard (1894 – 1987) was a leading member of the Nazi Party. In 1933, he was appointed deputy Führer, Stellvertreter des Führers, to Adolf Hitler. In 1941, he flew on his own to Scotland and attempted to negotiate the UK’s exit from WWII. He was taken prisoner and held in custody by the British authorities until the end of the war. In 1946, he was returned to Germany and convicted at the Nuremberg trials of crimes against peace and conspiracy with other German leaders to commit crimes against humanity. Unlike many other Nazi leaders who received death sentences, he was given a life sentence and served this in Spandau Prison in West Berlin. In 1987, as the last remaining prisoner at Spandau, he hanged himself in his cell at the age of 93. To prevent Spandau becoming a neo-Nazi shrine, the prison was demolished. His grave, bearing the inscription Ich hab’s gewagt, I dared it!, became a site of pilgrimage and demonstrations by neo-Nazis. As a result, in 2011, German authorities refused to renew the lease on the gravesite. His remains were exhumed and cremated and the gravestone destroyed.
Hines, James Joseph (1876 – 1957) was a Democratic Party politician and a powerful leader of New York City’s Tammany Hall, developing close ties with Dutch Schultz in the early 1930s. In 1938, he was charged with violation of the lottery laws and convicted of racketeering. He died at the age of 80 of natural causes.
Hoover, Herbert (1874 – 1964) was the 31st president of the United States. A Republican, he served one term from 1929 to 1933. In 1891, despite failing all but one of his entry exams, he was admitted to Stanford University in its inaugural year. He was a mediocre student who became known around campus for his aversion to the social gatherings of fraternities and sororities. He later worked as a mining engineer, both domestically and abroad and became a wealthy man when he sold his stake in Berwick, Moreing & Co, a mining company that was under investigation for fraudulently selling shares. In 1921, he entered politics as Secretary of Commerce in President Warren G Harding’s administration. In 1928, he won the Republican Party nomination for president, and subsequently defeated the Democratic nominee, Alfred E Smith. His popularity was due to his outspoken support for Prohibition and his commitment to the specific interests of white, Protestant voters who were in the majority. His administration inherited a state of economic prosperity from his predecessors, which quickly deteriorated after Black Thursday, the Wall Street stock market crash that occurred on October 24th 1929. He died in October 1964 from complications stemming from colon cancer, liver failure, and cirrhosis.
Hore-Belisha, Isaac Leslie, 1st Baron Hore-Belisha (1893 – 1957) was a Sephardic Jew and a member of the Liberal Party, later joining the Conservative Party. He was an MP and became Minister of Transport, where he modernised the British road system. In 1937, he was appointed War Secretary, serving from 1937 to 1940. He died in Reims, France at the age of 63.
Hormel, Jay Catherwood (1892 – 1954) was the founder of Hormel Foods, a meat-packing company. He headed the company from 1929 until his death in 1954 at the age of 61. He was a member of the America First Committee, which prior to December 1941 opposed US entry into WWII. After that, he and his company benefitted through the US military purchasing over 150 million pounds of Spam. That product was first introduced in 1937, its name a portmanteau or contraction of spiced ham.
I
Inskip, Thomas Walter Hobart, 1st Viscount Caldecote (1876 – 1947) was a British politician who served as the first Minister for Coordination of Defence. He was not well-regarded. Winston Churchill once said, “he had the advantage of being little known and knowing nothing about military subjects”. In early 1939, he was replaced by Admiral of the Fleet, Lord Chatfield. He died at the age of 71.
Irving, Sir Robert Beaufin (1877 – 1954) was a Scottish officer of the Royal Navy Reserve and the British Merchant Navy who, in 1938, became Commodore of the Cunard-White Star Line. He retired in 1944, returning to his native Scotland. He died in 1954 in a nursing home in Carlisle at the age of 77.
J
Jones, John Paul (1747 – 1792) was a British-American naval officer who served in the Continental Navy during the American Revolutionary War. His nickname was The Father of the American Navy. He later became a Russian rear admiral. He died in Paris at the age of 45 from interstitial nephritis, a form of kidney disease.
Joyce, William Brooke (1906 – 1946) was the British Union of Fascists’ (BUF) Director of Propaganda. He appears in all five Addlestone novels. American born, his parents moved from New York to Ireland where he was raised. In 1932, he joined the BUF and swiftly became a leading speaker at their rallies. In 1934, he was elevated to second in command to Sir Oswald Mosley. His speeches focused on revival through corporatism. This ideology was developed in the 1850s and became one of the tenets of Italian fascism. His many speeches at BUF rallies focussed on antisemitism. In 1937, Mosley sacked him, attempting to reduce staffing due to their lack of paid supporters. Joyce then formed his own organisation, the National Socialist League. In late August, 1939, shortly before the outbreak of WWII, he and his wife fled to Germany, having been tipped off that he was about to be arrested under Defence Regulation 18B. Both became German citizens and he continued to support the Nazis through regular radio broadcasts where he adopted the persona of Lord Haw-Haw. These transmissions, beamed to the UK and British Commonwealth countries, attempted to persuade British troops and the general public to abandon their war effort against the Nazis. After the war, he was arrested and charged with treason. In January 1946, at the age of 39, he was hanged in Wandsworth Prison.
K
Kennedy, Joseph Patrick, Sr (1888 – 1969) was an American businessman, investor, philanthropist, politician, and patriarch of the Kennedy family. He made his money as a stock and commodity speculator. He was a leading member of the Democratic Party and the Irish Catholic community. In 1934, Roosevelt appointed him as chairman of his newly formed Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). He was later appointed as Ambassador to the British Court of St James’s and he served in that position from 1938 through 1940. During that time he supported Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement, twice seeking face-to-face meetings with Hitler. He publicly supported American neutrality, saying, “Democracy is finished in England.” His attitude towards Jews was clear. He habitually referred to them as ‘kikes and sheenies’, stating that as a race they stink, spoiling everything they touch. After disputes with Roosevelt, he submitted his resignation in December 1940, more than a year after WWII began. His son, John F Kennedy described his father as ‘to the right of Herbert Hoover.’ Kennedy maintained close ties and provided funding to Joseph McCarthy, which strengthened his position amongst Irish Catholics. He died at the age of 81 of natural causes.
Keynes, John Maynard (1883 – 1946) has had a speaking role in all four previous Addlestone Chronicle novels. He was a Fellow and Bursar of King’s College, Cambridge where my central character, James Harcourt-Heath, was an undergraduate studying for a degree in Mathematics and Statistics. In 1919, Keynes was part of the British delegation at the Versailles Treaty negotiations. Because of his outspoken views concerning the likely consequences of the stringent reparations imposed on Germany, he alienated British establishment diplomats. He resigned in protest and returned to Cambridge where he wrote the influential pamphlet, The Economic Consequences of the Peace. In July 1944, he was Britain’s lead negotiator at the Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire. At this stage, the Allies were winning the war in the European theatre. The objective of these talks was to liberalise tariffs and remove quotas, thereby increasing world trade following the end of hostilities. The aim was to remove the protectionist policies adopted by Herbert Hoover in the 1930s, which saw world trade drop by around 65%. The conference was successful in establishing the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the system of fixed but adjustable international exchange rates. Those arrangements remained in place for the next 25 years. Keynes died in April 1946 of heart failure.
Kuhn, Fritz Julius (1896 – 1951) was born in Munich and served in the German Army in WWI, earning the Iron Cross as an infantry lieutenant. In 1928, he moved to Mexico and became a naturalised American citizen in 1934. Two years later, working at a Ford factory in Detroit, he assumed control of the German American Bund, whose organisation was based in Buffalo, New York. As its leader, he recruited thousands of German/Americans by using antisemitic, anti-Communist, pro-German, and pro-American rhetoric. Protests were organised against his organisation, some of which became violent. Nazi Germany desired to keep the US neutral in any European war so disassociated itself from Kuhn and his Bund. Nevertheless, Kuhn was re-elected as its leader in 1938. It was Kuhn who organised the largest rally held in Madison Square Garden on February 20th 1939.
If you are interested, you can listen to excerpts from Kuhn’s speech at that rally by going to:
Later in 1939, the Mayor of New York City, Fiorello La Guardia, ordered the city to investigate the Bund’s taxes. It emerged that Kuhn had embezzled $14,548 from the organisation, spending part of this sum on his mistress. He was arrested, convicted, and sentenced to five and a half years in Sing Sing prison for larceny and forgery. His followers continued to support Kuhn, granting him absolute authority in the spirit of the Nazi Führerprinzip which gives a leader absolute power. Kuhn’s citizenship was revoked in June 1943, and his family was repatriated to Germany in February 1944. Kuhn himself along with 74 other ‘unteachable’ Germans were sent to Ellis Island and deported to Germany in September 1945. There, he was immediately interned in Hohenasperg Fortress. After his release in 1949, he died two years later, of unknown causes.
Kunze, Gerhard Wilhelm (1906 – 1973) was a German/American, born in Camden, New Jersey. In 1939, as the Bund’s publicity director, he succeeded Fritz Kuhn as leader of the German American Bund after Kuhn was arrested for larceny and forgery. When the US entered the war, he set up resistance groups to the Selective Service System by counselling young men to oppose military service. In 1942, he went on trial for this and additional charges of espionage. During the trial, he fled to Mexico but was returned and found guilty. He died at the age of 67 of unknown causes.
L
La Follette, Philip (1897 – 1965) was an American lawyer and politician, who twice served as governor of Wisconsin. In April 1938, he formed a national third party, National Progressives of America (NPA). At its inaugural rally in Madison, Wisconsin, some 3,500 people attended. A band played marching music and other patriotic songs and local football players acted as ushers and bouncers. In his speech, he gave his support to European dictators including Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco. He argued that those leaders had brought comfort and security to their respective countries. The emblem adopted by the NPA was almost identical to the swastika. Politically, he was an isolationist. He was a successful businessman on the board of Fairbanks-Morse, which produced industrial machinery and the Hazeltine Corporation, based in Long Island, which manufactured electronic components. He retired to Madison, Wisconsin where he practised law part-time and wrote his autobiography. He died in 1965 of natural causes.
Lanza, Joseph A (1904 – 1968), nicknamed ‘Socks’, was a New York labour racketeer and prominent member of the Genovese crime family. He was born in Palermo, Italy. In the early 1940s, he was convicted of extortion and sentenced to seven to ten years imprisonment. Despite another arrest in 1957 for a parole violation, he still maintained control over the Fulton Fish Market in the lower Manhattan docks, until his death in 1968 from cancer.
Lansky, Meyer (1902 – 1983) was born in Grodno, in what was then the Russian Empire. In his teens he became part of New York City’s Jewish underworld and was primarily associated with gambling enterprises. As a teenager, he became friends with Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel and Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano. He was in charge of shifting gambling and money laundering through Swiss numbered accounts. Prior to WWII, he opposed Hitler’s influence in the United States, using his associates to break up an April 1938 rally held by the German American Bund. Working with Joseph Lanza, he prevented sabotage of US warships on the New York waterfront. He was involved in Las Vegas gambling as well as the casino industry in Cuba. He died of lung cancer at the age of 80.
Lewis, Frederick, 1st Baron Essendon (1870 – 1944) was a British shipping magnate, created a Baronet in 1918, and raised to the peerage as Baron Essendon in 1932. He worked for Furness Withy & Co and in 1919, rose to become a director of that company. In 1932, he became Chairman of Royal Mail Lines. He died of natural causes at the age of 74.
Lindbergh, Charles Augustus (1902 – 1974) was an American aviator who rose to fame in 1927, by being the first person to fly solo nonstop across the Atlantic. He flew from New York to Paris in thirty-three and a half hours. In 1927, Time magazine named him its first Man of the Year. President Herbert Hoover appointed him to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics in 1929, and in 1930, he received the Congressional Gold Medal. In 1932, his first-born infant child, Charles Jr, was kidnapped and murdered. This was called the ‘crime of the century’ and as a result, kidnapping became a federal crime if the perpetrator crossed state lines. In 1935, Lindbergh and his wife and three-year-old son, Jon, moved to Europe, first staying in Sevenoaks, Kent before eventually moving to a small four-acre island off the Breton coast of northern France. Shortly before the opening of the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, he and his wife were entertained by Hermann Göring and other top Nazi staff. Also in 1938, Hugh Wilson, the American ambassador to Germany, hosted a dinner with Lindbergh and Generalfeldmarschall Göring on behalf of Führer Adolf Hitler. There, he was presented with the Commander Cross of the Order of the German Eagle. This was a few weeks before the Nazi Party carried out the Kristallnacht anti-Jewish pogrom which is considered the event that initiated and justified the Holocaust. After war broke out, he was encouraged to return the medal, but refused. He said, “I do not understand these riots on the part of the Germans. It seems so contrary to their sense of order and intelligence. They have undoubtedly had a difficult Jewish problem.”
He planned to move to Berlin and rent a house in Wannsee, south west of Berlin. His Nazi friends discouraged him from signing the lease as it was owned by Jews.
Diplomatically, he sided with Germany by exaggerating the size of the Luftwaffe to the French cabinet and warning that a military response by Germany and France to Hitler’s violation of the Munich Agreement would ‘be disastrous’. Following Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia and Poland, he opposed sending aid to countries under threat, writing, “I do not believe that repealing the arms embargo would assist democracy in Europe.” He equated such assistance with Jewish profiteering. Lindbergh returned to the US, giving speeches for the America First movement in May 1941 at Madison Square Garden. Also at Chicago’s Soldier Field, and at the Des Moines Coliseum in September 1941, where he accused three groups of ‘pressing this country toward war; the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt Administration’. In October 1941, again at Madison Square Garden, he addressed a capacity crowd, repeating the accusation that the Roosevelt administration was leading the country towards war through subterfuge. He had a long-term friendship with Henry Ford who published the antisemitic newspaper The Dearborn Independent. Along with the Catholic radio priest Charles Coughlin (cited above), he served as the lead spokesperson for the America First Committee.
He expressed his beliefs regarding the white race in a 1939 article in Reader’s Digest where, echoing Mein Kampf, he wrote, “We can have peace and security only so long as we band together to preserve that most priceless possession, our inheritance of European blood, only so long as we guard ourselves against attack by foreign armies and dilution by foreign races.”
In 1942, Lindbergh attempted to be recommissioned into the Army Air Forces. The Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson opposed this due to Lindbergh’s long record of potentially traitorous public comments.
Although still married to Anne Morrow, beginning in 1957, Lindbergh was involved in lengthy sexual relationships with three women. He fathered three children with hatmaker Brigitte Hesshaimer, had two more with her sister Mariette, and had a daughter and son with Valeska, a private secretary living in Baden-Baden, Germany. All seven children were born between 1958 and 1967 and none knew of their half-siblings’ existence as he used an alias when contacting them. Lindbergh retired to the island of Maui, Hawaii and died of lymphoma in 1974.
Long, Leonard Henry, ‘Leo’ (1915 – 2001) was a member of the Communist Party as well as the infamous Cambridge Five espionage ring. He was recruited by Anthony Blunt, his tutor at Trinity College, Cambridge. Long worked for MI14 which specialised in German intelligence during WWII, passing handwritten intelligence notes to his superiors in Moscow. He died at the age of 76. Details of cause of death and location are still classified by the British government.
Luciano, Charles ‘Lucky’ (1897 – 1962) was an Italian-American Mafia leader and was the first official boss of the Genovese crime family. Called capo di tutti i capi (boss of all bosses), he controlled New York gambling, betting, loan sharking, drug trafficking, and extortion. In 1936, he was convicted of pimping and sentenced to thirty years in prison. He continued to run the family business from his cell in the Clinton Correctional Facility in New York through his second-in-command, Vito Genovese. Through negotiations with the US government during WWII, he was allowed a measure of freedom of movement. Upon his release, he moved to Naples, Italy. In 1962, at the age of 64, he died of a heart attack.
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Markmann, Rudolf (1905 – ?) was born in Germany and became a permanent US resident in 1937. As Eastern Department leader of the German American Bund, he was a speaker at the Free America Bund rally at Madison Square Garden on February 20th, 1939. In 1943, he was subject to the denaturalisation process and fled back to Germany. Because of post-war chaos, no exact place or date exists for his death.
McCarthy, Joseph Raymond (1908 – 1957) was a Republican politician and lawyer, who served as US senator from Wisconsin from 1947 until his death in 1957. While running for the post of the 10th District circuit judge, he got the reputation of making false claims about his opponents. Later he gained fame for giving speeches that variously claimed the State Department had been infested with communists, alleging the number was 57 and then 205 card-carrying members. President Harry Truman characterised McCarthy as the “…best asset the Kremlin has.” He further alleged that the Voice of America had been taken over by communists. An increasing number of Republicans saw him as a liability to the party. In December 1954, the Senate voted to condemn and censure McCarthy on two counts of failing to do his job. After this, both his popularity and health declined, having become addicted to alcohol and morphine. He died at Walter Reed Hospital from cirrhosis of the liver at the age of 48.
McCormick, Robert R (1880 – 1955) was a publisher, lawyer, businessman, and member of the Republican Party. He was the owner and publisher of the Chicago Tribune which opposed the New Deal. He was a prominent member of the America First Committee and through his paper, opposed the US entering WWII, because the goal was meant to ‘rescue the British Empire’.
McCrae, John (1872 – 1918) was a Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel and physician/surgeon during the Second Battle of Ypres, in Belgium. He was also a poet who wrote the war memorial poem In Flanders Fields. He died at the age of 45 of pneumonia near the end of the Great War.
Mencken, Henry Lewis (1880 – 1956) was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, and scholar of American English. His satirical reporting of the Scopes Trial, which he dubbed the Monkey Trial, has entered the language through appearing in multiple dictionaries. He was influential with his writings where he actively opposed American entry into both World Wars. He has also, but perhaps unfairly, been described as racist and antisemitic. He did not support the changes brought about by FDR and his New Deal. In 1948, he suffered a stroke and, while fully conscious, was unable to write or speak. He died in his sleep in 1956 at the age of 75.
Menzies, Major General Sir Stewart Graham (1890 – 1968) fought in WWI and was injured in a gas attack in 1915 during the Second Battle of Ypres. After the war, he entered MI6, also known as the Secret Intelligence Service or SIS. He was a member of the British delegation at the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference. Within MI6, he became assistant director for special intelligence. When its director, Admiral Sir Hugh Paget Sinclair, died in 1939, he was appointed Chief of the SIS. He expanded the wartime intelligence and counterintelligence departments and supervised successful codebreaking efforts at Bletchley Park led by Alan Turing. During the war, he kept Winston Churchill supplied with daily Ultra reports on the progress of the war. In addition to having a long-standing affair with one of his secretaries, he was thrice married. He died in London of natural causes at the age of 78.
Moses, Robert (1888 – 1981) was an urban planner and former New York Secretary of State. Born to Jewish immigrants from Germany, he became one of the most powerful and influential people in the history of New York City. As Parks Commissioner, his projects transformed the New York area and also the way most US cities were designed and built. He graduated from Yale College and Wadham College, Oxford with a BA and MA in Jurisprudence. In 1914, he earned a PhD in political science from Columbia University. He was responsible for such urban bridge projects as the Triborough Bridge, the Brooklyn-Battery link, Marine Parkway, Throgs Neck, Bronx-Whitestone, Henry Hudson, and the Verrazzano-Narrows. After the publication of Robert Caro’s biography, The Power Broker, his reputation suffered when doubt was cast on the purported benefits of some of his projects. There was also the suggestion he was a racist, because he opposed black WWII veterans moving into a residential complex designed for Vets. He died of heart disease at the age of 92.
Mosley, Oswald Ernald, 6th Baronet (1896 – 1980) was a British Member of Parliament who rose to fame in the 1920s and 1930s when, in 1932, he founded the British Union of Fascists. He immediately sought alliances with Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. His BUF leadership culminated with the Battle of Cable Street in 1936. (See Magdalene for a detailed description of this turning point in British fascist history.) In later life, he developed Parkinson’s disease and died at the age of 84.
Murphy, William Francis (1890 – 1949) was a Democratic politician, lawyer, and jurist who served as Mayor of Detroit, governor of Michigan, United States Attorney General, and in 1940, was named to the Supreme Court of the United States. While Attorney General, he established the Civil Liberties Unit of the Criminal Division of the United States Department of Justice. This unit was designed to centralise enforcement responsibility for the Bill of Rights and civil rights statutes. He was regarded as on the liberal ‘axis’ of the Court offering support to African Americans, aliens, criminals, dissenters, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Native Americans, women, and union and non-union workers. He died in hospital of coronary thrombosis at the age of 59.
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Niemöller, Reverend Gustav Emil Martin (1892 – 1984) was a German theologian and Lutheran pastor who opposed the Nazi ideology. He was arrested on July 1st, 1937 and sent to a concentration camp. He authored the poetic confessional ‘Als sie kamen’ (When they came) or ‘Habe ich geschwiegen’ (I did not speak out). The direct translation from German is as follows:
When the Nazis came for the communists, I kept quiet; I wasn’t a communist.
When they came for the trade unionist, I kept quiet; I wasn’t a trade unionist.
When they locked up the social democrats, I kept quiet; I wasn’t a social democrat.
When they locked up the Jews, I kept quiet; I wasn’t a Jew.
When they came for me, there was no one left to protest.
A version of this speech has been presented by the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and another version by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Niemöller joined Karl Barth and Dietrich Bonhoeffer in founding the Confessional Church, a group of Protestant clergy who opposed the Nazification of German Protestant churches. He died in Wiesbaden, Germany of natural causes at the age of 92.
Nye, Gerald Prentice (1892 – 1971) was an American politician from North Dakota who began his career as a newspaper owner. He was a noted isolationist who entered the US Senate by appointment after the sitting North Dakota senator died in office. He was subsequently elected three more times to the Senate. While there, he was responsible for attempting to curtail US munitions production calling the manufacturers, ‘merchants of death’ and war profiteers, coded words aimed at Jewish businessmen. He tried but failed to nationalise the US arms industry. His pressure resulted in the Neutrality Acts passed between 1935 and 1937 that prohibited private loans and sales of war matériel whenever a state of war existed anywhere. These laws are now generally regarded as having aided the rise of Nazi Germany and were repealed in 1941. He was a founder member of the America First Committee and argued that it was a Jewish conspiracy that pushed the US into war. A lifelong smoker, he suffered from arterial disease. He died at the age of 78 as a result of his doctor treating him by prescribing a drug containing penicillin to which he was known to be allergic.
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Peale, Norman Vincent (1898 – 1993) was the author of the 1952 best-selling book, The Power of Positive Thinking. As a Protestant clergyman, he was outspoken in his opposition to the election of John F Kennedy, simply because he was a Catholic. He is quoted as saying, “Faced with the election of a Catholic, our culture is at stake.” In 1939, he joined Father Edward Curran (cited above) and Fritz Kuhn (cited above). At the February 1939 Bund rally, he delivered the invocation, later claiming he had no idea as to the nature of the rally. He developed a close relationship with Richard M Nixon and Ronald Reagan who in 1984, awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Psychologists and psychiatrists have criticised his books saying such things as, he was a con man and a fraud and there was no scientific evidence or tests of his methods. He died of heart failure at the age of 95.
Pelley, William Dudley (1890 – 1965) was an American fascist, journalist, writer, and occultist who founded the Silver Legion of America and the Christian Party. In 1932, he founded Galahad College which specialised in correspondence courses in ‘Social Metaphysics’ and ‘Christian Economics’. An admirer of Hitler, he called for African Americans to be re-enslaved and Jews to be ghettoised and sterilised. In 1942, he was convicted of sedition and seditious conspiracy and was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He died at the age of 75.
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Ramsay, Archibald Maule, ‘Jock’ (1894 – 1955) was a Scottish Unionist Member of Parliament. After developing strident antisemitic views, he became involved with a suspected spy at the US Embassy in London. In 1939, he formed the explicitly pro-Nazi Right Club and planned a fascist coup, to take place when German troops landed on British soil. As a result, he became the only British MP to be interned under Defence Regulation 18B, and eventually was incarcerated in Brixton Prison. In 1939, he sat in the House of Commons library and wrote a parody of Land of Hope and Glory, which began Land of Dope and Jewry. He died in disgrace at the age of sixty, never recanting his racist and antisemitic views.
Regnery, William Henry (1877 – 1954) was the son of German immigrants who settled in Wisconsin. He was the reclusive heir to a Midwestern textile fortune. Although initially supporting FDR’s New Deal, by the late 1930s he began to object to the expanded role of government in the domestic economy. He was among the founders of the America First Committee, serving on and helping to finance their National Committee. He died at the age of 77 from the effects of cancer.
Robinson, Joan Violet (1903 – 1983) was central to the ‘Cambridge School’ of economists, becoming one of the most ardent Keynesians after he published his magnum opus, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. As a tutor and later a professor at Girton College, Cambridge, she was later elected as a fellow of Newnham College. In 1979, just four years before she died, she became the first female honorary fellow of King’s College. Her own magnum opus was published in 1956, The Accumulation of Capital, which extended Keynesianism into the long run. She died at the age of 79 after a short illness.
Rockefeller, John Davison (1839 – 1937) was an American oil magnate and philanthropist. Even by today’s standards, he was one of the wealthiest Americans of all time, today only eclipsed by Elon Musk. He consolidated his wealth using illegal and unfair business practices which caused his company, the Standard Oil Company to be broken up by federal forces, based on violations of the 1890 Sherman Antitrust Act. Economists call the technique he employed, Regulatory Capture. This is a form of government failure when statutory regulatory agencies, which were formed with the intention and remit to protect the public interest, are subverted by dominant firms through lobbying or bribes. These included cash payments or the promise of more lucrative jobs after they leave public service. Rockefeller was not an isolationist or antisemitic, although, like other wealthy Americans, he supported the Eugenics programmes that were similar to the ones the Nazis operated in Germany. He died in 1937 at the age of 97 of arteriosclerosis.
Rothafel, Samuel Lionel ‘Roxy’ (1882 – 1936) was a Jewish American theatrical impresario and entrepreneur. After his death, the Radio City Music Hall kept his name on their resident orchestra. Suffering from angina pectoris, he died from a heart attack at the age of 53.
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Sabini, Charles ‘Darby’ (1888 – 1950) was an English gangster during the interwar years and known as the Godfather of London’s Little Italy. He operated racecourse protection rackets which included extortion, theft, as well as operating several nightclubs. At the outbreak of the Second World War, he was arrested and interned as an enemy alien and later he was sentenced to three years for receiving stolen goods. He died of natural causes at his home in Sussex, in 1950 at the age of 62.
Schiffman, Frank (1894 – 1974) was a prominent theatrical manager and producer. He was the son of Austrian Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants. He began his career promoting and distributing motion pictures in New York City. In 1934, he became the first manager of the Apollo Theatre and shortly afterwards, became the co-owner, retaining the management position until the early 1960s. He died in 1974 at the age of 80.
Schmitt, Carl (1888 – 1985) was a German jurist and political theorist who was critical of parliamentary democracy and liberalism. He opposed the view that there was such a thing as societies where there are universal moral standards, global political structures, or the right to develop cultural expression and tolerance. He published some thirty books, his two most noteworthy publications being Political Theology (1922) and The Concept of the Political (1927/1932). As a member of the Nazi party, he directly influenced and provided justifications for the Nazi ideology in 1930s Germany. His works are still cited today by the ultra-conservative actors in the United States. He died of heart failure at the age of 96.
Schwinn, Hermann Max (1905 – 1973) was Gauleiter (leader) of the West Coast Gau of the German American Bund. Based in Los Angeles, he was a key figure promoting Nazi ideology, antisemitism, and anti-communist propaganda, coordinating with the national Bund leader, Fritz Kuhn. In 1938, he organised a rally to celebrate Kristallnacht during which he blamed Jews for the violence and predicted they would soon be ‘dangling from telephone posts’. He was born in Germany and became a naturalised American in 1932. In 1939, his American citizenship was cancelled. He was subsequently interned as an enemy alien and tried for treason. He was found guilty on all charges, along with twenty-four co-defendants, all of whom were members of the German American Bund. All served two and a half years in prison, but were released when their appeal went to the Supreme Court. It decided by a five to four majority that they had been convicted on ‘insufficient evidence’. He died of natural causes at the age of 68.
Sealy-Clarke, Lieutenant-Colonel James (1863 – 1951) was in the automobile business his entire life, becoming President of the Society of Motor Manufacturers (SMMT) in 1924. He also served on the Royal Automobile Club Committee, eventually becoming its President in 1925. In 1951, he died of natural causes at the age of 88.
Sericold Skeels, Edward Ralph (1869 – 1948) was a right-wing military figure and political candidate who was a member of the twelve-man Executive Committee of the Nordic League. In 1934, he ran for the parliamentary seat for Cambridge, representing the United British Party. He was a former member of the Imperial Fascist League, the Right Club, and the British Union of Fascists. He was known for his pro-Hitler stance, while publicly trying to distance himself from antisemitism. He died at the age of 79 from severe mental problems.
Shipstead, Henri (1881 – 1960) was a Norwegian-American dentist and Republican Senator who represented Minnesota from 1923 to 1947. He opposed the 1930 Smoot-Hawley Tariff as a most vicious isolationist policy, but at the same time favoured policies of non-intervention overseas. He also opposed US entry into the League of Nations and the World Court and called for cancellation of German reparations which he termed vindictive. He was an outspoken ally of Henry Ford (cited above) and Charles Lindbergh (cited above), regularly espousing anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and straightforward bigotry against the Jewish people. He said, he believed every word of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. (See Chapter 14 of Madison and also Chapter 31 of Lebensborn for a fuller explanation of this publication.) He died of natural causes at the age of 79.
Sinclair, Admiral Sir Hugh Francis Paget, KCB (1873 – 1939) was a British naval officer and Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). In 1938, he set up Section D which was dedicated to sabotage. He then purchased Bletchley Park with his own money and established this as the centre for codebreakers, where Alan Turing and his team eventually deciphered the Enigma machine. He underwent an operation for cancer and shortly afterwards, died at the age of 66.
Smith, Reverend Gerald Lyman Kenneth (1898 – 1976) was a clergyman, far-right demagogue, and failed politician. He lived in Kansas, Louisiana, and Georgia. He briefly aligned himself with Huey Long, becoming an organiser for Long’s Share Our Wealth Society. After that, he embraced fascist and antisemitic rhetoric as he tried to run for office, campaigning with Georgia’s white supremacist Governor, Eugene Talmadge. He opposed communism claiming its international mission was to seize the United States government. He falsely claimed he had support from ‘ten million patriots’. In 1943, he formed the America First Party, essentially appropriating the name of the America First Committee which was formed in 1940. In 1947, he formed the Christian Nationalist Party, which, along with the Ku Klux Klan, was an organised anti-Jewish organisation. He died at the age of 78 from complications from pneumonia after which his wife took over his Christian Nationalist Crusade.
Spanknöbel, Heinz (1893 – 1947) was a German immigrant who was never naturalised. (This was as described in Chapter 4.) In 1933, Rudolf Hess authorised him to establish the American Nazi organisation. As a result, he founded the Friends of New Germany. In October 1933, he was removed as its leader and deported back to Germany. By this time, a Congressional investigation had concluded that the FONG was in fact a branch of Hitler’s Nazi Party. Back in Germany, he continued his activism, becoming the director of the Propaganda School for Germans Living Abroad. In 1945, following the occupation by Soviet military, he was arrested in Dresden by the NKVD, the Soviet secret police. He was held in a camp near Mühlberg, Brandenburg, where he died of starvation in 1947.
Speer, Berthold Konrad Albert (1905 – 1981) was a German architect who served as Minister of Armaments and War Production during most of WWII. He joined the Nazi Party in 1931 and soon became part of Hitler’s inner circle. After the war, he was among the twenty-four war criminals charged with Nazi atrocities. At the Nuremberg trials, he was found guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity, principally for using slave labour in his building projects. He denied knowledge of the Holocaust, but was convicted and served 20 years in Spandau Prison. He died at the age of 76, after collapsing in his hotel room in London while visiting his mistress before preparing for an interview with the BBC.
Stanhope, James Richard, 7th Earl Stanhope (1880 – 1967) was a decorated veteran of the Great War and served as First Lord of the Admiralty from October 1938 to September 1939. Before that, he served as Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, and later as Leader of the House of Lords. He died at the age of 86, leaving his country seat, Chevening, to the nation.
Stuart, R Douglas Jr (1916 – 2014) was the son of the co-founder of Quaker Oats Company and the founder of the America First Committee. Other Yale law students, who included Gerald Ford, Sargent Shriver, and Potter Stewart, joined his committee. They asked Robert E Wood (cited above) to become their leader and Charles Lindbergh (cited above) to serve as their spokesman. He worked for Quaker Oats for 38 years as chief executive officer, president, and chairman of the board. He died of a heart attack at the age of 98.
Sunday, William Ashley (1862 – 1935) was an American evangelist and professional baseball outfielder, who became the most influential American preacher during the first two decades of the 20th century. At the end of the 19th century, he would travel from town to town in the Midwestern states, first preaching in churches and then as his popularity grew, he pitched rented canvas tents. Over his career, it has been estimated that he preached directly to more than one hundred million people. Because of these meetings, he became wealthy, making $870 a day at a time when the average wage was $836 per year. After WWI, his popularity waned when his traditional followers turned to radio broadcasts and motion pictures. After having a mild heart attack, he continued preaching but died at the age of 72, after delivering his final sermon which had the text, ‘What must I do to be saved?’ He died in November 1935.
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Tarshis, Lorie (1911 – 1993) was a Canadian economist, educated at the University of Toronto and Trinity College, Cambridge. He spent the majority of his teaching career at Stanford University in California. In 1947, he published Elements of Economics and introduced Keynesian thinking into American university classrooms. It was sidelined the following year for an alleged pro-communist slant, that accusation coming from pro-McCarthy activists. The following year, Paul Samuelson published Economics while a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) which also focussed on Keynesian economic principles. This eventually became the standard university text for the next 50 years. While at Stanford, Tarshis served as department chair on several occasions, retiring from teaching in 1978. He died in a Toronto nursing home from Parkinson’s disease at the age of 82.
Thomas, Norman Mattoon (1884 – 1968) was an American Socialist who unsuccessfully ran for President six times. He attempted to inform the American public about the differences between his brand of democratic socialism, communism, and Marxism. After returning from a tour of Europe in 1937, he became an isolationist, forming the Keep America Out of War Congress and sharing the platform with the America First Committee. He died following a stroke at the age of 84.
Trump, Frederick Christ (1905 – 1999) was born in the Bronx to German immigrant parents. He began as a carpenter and in the 1920s, he began working in home construction and sales in a business started by his parents. It later became known as the Trump Organisation and was known for building single-family homes in Queens, NYC. In 1927, he was arrested at a Ku Klux Klan rally. In 1954 and again in 1966, he was investigated for profiteering. In 1973, he was sued by the US Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division for racial discrimination against black people. His son, Donald John, became the 45th and 47th president of the United States. In his later years, Fred Trump suffered from dementia and in 1999, contracted pneumonia and died in hospital at the age of 93.
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Welch, Robert W Jr (1899 – 1985) was an American businessman, political organiser, and conspiracy theorist. He was educated at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He attended Harvard Law School and the United States Naval Academy, but failed to graduate from either. He described himself as a fundamentalist Baptist. In 1922 he formed an ultimately unsuccessful candy business during the Great Depression. He eventually made his fortune working in his brother’s business which produced Sugar Daddies, Sugar Babies, Junior Mints and Pom Poms. In 1958, he founded the John Birch Society (JBS), named after an American missionary killed in a confrontation with Communist soldiers in 1945. Eventually they claimed that the JBS membership exceeded 100,000. Later in the 1960s, Welch came to believe there was a Master Conspiracy which had roots in the Illuminati. He began to refer to the Conspirators as ‘The Insiders’, citing the Rothschilds and the Rockefellers as central to international conspiracies. He asserted such things as that FDR knew about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in advance and he called Dwight Eisenhower a ‘dedicated conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy’. In 1985, he died after suffering a stroke.
Wheeler, Burton K (1882 – 1975) was an attorney and a Democratic Party Senator representing Montana. He supported the America First Committee, though he never joined. He did give speeches at their anti-war rallies espousing his non-interventionist platform. At an anti-war rally thrown by the America First Committee, he and others on the stage were criticised for giving the palm-out Bellamy Salute that children had to use in the classroom when they recited the Pledge of Allegiance. (See the Historical Background endpiece in Addlestone for a further explanation of its history and abandonment, since it was identical to the Hitler Salute being used by the Nazis.) He died at the age of 92 from a stroke.
Wheeler-Hill, James (1903 – ?) was the national secretary of the German American Bund. As their publicity director and acting as emcee, he opened the 1939 Madison Square Garden rally by asserting, “If George Washington were alive today, he would be friends with Adolf Hitler.” He was a Russian-born Latvian national who was arrested and then deported for falsely claiming he was an American citizen.
Winrod, Reverend Gerald Burton (1900 – 1957) was a Kansas-based evangelist preacher, author, and political activist. He formed the organisation the Defenders of Christian Faith, which produced a magazine called The Defender. In it, he promoted antisemitic rhetoric and argued for US allegiance with Nazi Germany. By 1938, it had a monthly circulation of over 100,000. He defended the conspiracy outlined in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an antisemitic essay purporting to argue that Jews planned to take over the world. Henry Ford financed the translation into English and distributed half a million copies in the United States. This publication had been plagiarised from earlier sources and was first published in Imperial Russia in 1903. After that, it was translated into several languages and then in 1924, exposed as fraudulent by the British newspaper The Times and the German newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung. Winrod said that the United States was the chosen land of God, that the Great Depression was the work of Satan, and that Franklin D Roosevelt was the devil linked to this Jewish-Communist conspiracy. He regularly argued that Hitler would save Europe from Communism. He ran for the US Senate in 1938 but came a poor third with 21.4% of the vote. His primary support came from the Kansas Mennonites. In 1942, he was indicted for sedition, but when the judge died during the trial, the government decided not to renew the prosecution. He was a lifelong proponent of faith healing. When he contracted pneumonia in 1957, he refused to see a medical doctor and died the following week.
Wood, Edward Frederick Lindley, 3rd Viscount Halifax (1881 – 1959) was a Conservative politician who served as Foreign Secretary between 1938 and 1940. After Kristallnacht, he pushed Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain to develop a new policy to deter further German aggression by promising to go to war to defend Poland. In 1940, he was appointed Ambassador to the then neutral United States. He died of a heart attack at the age of 78.
Wood, Brigadier General Robert Elkington (1879 – 1969) was an American military officer, who after retirement, became a business executive. In 1919, he became vice-president of Montgomery Ward & Co. Five years later, he left that company and moved to Sears, Roebuck and Co. It was already a successful mail order business, which Wood transformed into the largest retail outlet in the world. He was a Republican and leader in the Old Right American Conservatism movement from the 1920s through to the 1960s. In the runup to WWII, Wood chaired and was a financial backer of the isolationist America First Committee. While there, he encouraged his friends to join the movement, which eventually had a membership of nearly one million. He was close to Charles Lindbergh (cited above) and agreed with him about the need to secure close ties with Nazi Germany. In 1954, Wood funded the Manion Forum, a conservative radio programme hosted by Clarence Manion. He died from natural causes at the age of 90.
Wright, Frank Lloyd (1867 – 1959) was an American architect, designer, writer, and educator. Originally from Wisconsin, he established his workshop in Chicago, Illinois. He was an outspoken pacifist, opposing the US entry in the European conflict and encouraged his architectural apprentices to apply for conscientious objector status to dodge the draft. He died at the age of 91 from what was termed ‘surgical complications’.