I Woke Next to the Corpse by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Page 96

When I got a little older I saw things differently; more clearly. There was no way the Galupos were making a living by selling little fish for nineteen cents apiece, especially with the declining market value for the floaters. The place was a money laundering operation for the mob. Logical, inevitable, well-positioned, yet still on my stupidly depressed days, a suitable candidate for protracted and painful Galupo death if I could only figure a foolproof way not to get caught.

For all I knew, this rural area and cabin to which Margie had brought and dumped me could have been the home of a Bund Camp.

Most people think that they were a bit before my time, but there

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are still some around in out-of-the-way places, like here. This chest I opened near the window had some clippings which brought back some things. It was like a scrapbook with the material yet to be secured in place on the empty pages.

Previously, I had learned that on March 19, 1936, the German American Bund was established as a follow-up organization for the Friends of New Germany in Buffalo, New York. The Bund elected a German born American citizen Fritz Julius Kuhn as its leader; titled Bundesführer. Kuhn was a veteran of the Bavarian infantry during World War I and an Alter Kämpfer (old fighter) of the Nazi Party who, in 1934, was granted American citizenship. Kuhn was initially effective as a leader and was able to unite the organization and expand its membership but eventually came to be seen simply as an incompetent swindler and liar. Many think that he was used as a sap by the Fed G-men whose mission it was to discredit him, his only crime an over-trusting of the saboteurs who positioned themselves close to him.

The administrative structure of the Bund mimicked the regional administrative subdivision of the Nazi Party. The German American Bund divided the United States into three Gaue: Gau Ost

- East, Gau West and Gau Midwest. Together the three Gaue comprised 69 Ortsgruppen (local groups): 40 in Gau Ost, 17 in

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New York and New Jersey, 10 in Gau West and 19 in Gau Midwest.

Each Gau had its own Gauleiter and staff to direct the Bund operations in the region in accordance with the Führerprinzip.

The Bund's national headquarters was located at 178 East 85th Street in the New York City’s Manhattan. Some Gau Ost documents were signed by a murky Fed operative, using the moniker Benito Galupo.

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, Pennsylvania, Camp Bergwald in Bloomingdale, New Jersey, Camp Highland in Windham, New York, as well as many smaller camps throughout the US, generally in rural outposts. The dope at the time indicated that 1/3 of the US population supported the bunds, while 1/3 were opposed, and the final 1/3 didn’t know what a bund was.

The Bund held rallies using Nazi insignia and procedures such as the Hitler salute and attacked the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jewish-American groups, Communism,

"Moscow-directed" trade unions and American boycotts of German goods. The organization claimed to show its loyalty to America by displaying the flag of the United States alongside the flag of Nazi Germany at Bund meetings, and declared that George

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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, he visited the Reich Chancellery, where his picture was taken with Hitler. This act did not constitute an official Nazi approval for Kuhn's organization. Perhaps aware of the Fed infiltration, 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. In response to the outrage of Jewish war veterans, Congress in 1938 passed the Foreign Agents Registration Act requiring foreign agents to register with the State Department.

On March 1, 1938, the Nazi government decreed that no Reichsdeutsche [German nationals] 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 US and to distance Germany from the Bund, which was increasingly a cause of embarrassment with its media stated rhetoric and actions; no doubt a propaganda campaign.

Arguably, the zenith of the Bund's activities was the rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City on February 20, 1939.

I Woke Next to the Corpse