Activities
In December 1935 Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess ordered all German citizens leave the Friends of New Germany (FOTNG), while also recalling all the group's leaders to Germany. In March 1936, the German American Bund (AV) was established as a follow-up organisation for the FOTNG in Buffalo, New York. It elected a German-born American citizen Fritz Julius Kuhn, a veteran of the Bavarian infantry during World War I and an Alter Kämpfer of the NSDAP, as the leader (Bundesführer) of the group. At this time, the Bund established a number of training camps, including Camp Nordland in Sussex County, New Jersey, Camp Siegfried in Yaphank, New York, Camp Hindenburg in Grafton, Wisconsin, Deutschhorst Country Club, in Sellersville, PA, Camp Bergwald, in Bloomingdale, NJ, and Camp Highland, in NY. The Bund held rallies with Nazi insignia and procedures such as the Hitler salute, and attacked the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jewish groups, Communism, "Moscow-directed" trade unions and the American boycotts of German goods. The organization claimed to show its loyalty to America by displaying the flag of the United States at Bund meetings, and declared that George Washington was "the first Fascist" who did not believe democracy would work.
Kuhn and a few other Bundmen traveled to Berlin to attend the 1936 Summer Olympics. During the trip Kuhn visited the Reich Chancellery, where he had his picture taken with Hitler. This act did not constitute an official Nazi approval for Kuhn's organization: German Ambassador to the United States Hans Heinrich Dieckhoff expressed his disapproval and concern over the group to Berlin, causing distrust between the Bund and the Nazi regime. The organization received no financial or verbal support from Germany, and on 1 March 1938 the Nazi government declared that no Reichsdeutsche could be a member of the Bund, and that no Nazi emblems were to be used by the organization. This was done both to appease the U.S and to distance Germany from the Bund, which was increasingly a cause of embarrassment with its rhetoric and actions.
Read more about this topic: German American Bund
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