Fritz Julius Kuhn



Fritz Julius Kuhn (May 15, 1896 – December 14, 1951) was a German Nazi activist who served as the elected leader of the German American Bund before World War II. He became a naturalized United States citizen in 1934, though his citizenship was revoked in 1943 owing to his status as a foreign agent of Nazi Germany. Kuhn served prison time for larceny and forgery from 1939 to 1943 and, upon release, was immediately interned by the federal government as an enemy agent. He was deported in 1945 and later served further prison time in post-war Germany before dying in 1951.

Early life
Kuhn was born in Munich, Germany, on May 15, 1896, the son of Georg Kuhn and Julia Justyna Beuth. During World War I, Kuhn earned an Iron Cross as a German infantry lieutenant. After the war, he joined the Freikorps and later graduated from the Technical University of Munich with a master's degree in chemical engineering. In the 1920s, Kuhn moved to Mexico. In 1928, he moved to the United States, and, in 1934, he became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He worked at a Ford factory in Detroit before assuming control of the Bund in Buffalo, New York, in 1936.

Leadership of the German American Bund
A Congressional committee headed by Samuel Dickstein concluded that the Friends of New Germany supported a branch of German dictator Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party in the United States, and the Friends of New Germany disbanded. However, in March 1936, the German American Bund was established in Buffalo as a follow-up organization. The Bund elected the German-born American citizen Kuhn as its leader.

Kuhn, while describing the Bund as "sympathetic to the Hitler government", denied that the organization received money or took orders from the government of Germany. Kuhn also denied that the Bund had any agenda of introducing fascism to the United States.

Kuhn enlisted thousands of Americans by using antisemitic, anticommunist, pro-German, and pro-American propaganda. One of his first tasks was planning a trip to Germany with 50 American followers. The purpose was to be in the presence of Hitler and to witness Nazism in practice personally.

At this time, Germany was preparing to host the 1936 Olympics. Kuhn anticipated a warm welcome from Adolf Hitler, but the encounter was disappointing. This did not stop Kuhn from fabricating propaganda to his followers once he returned to the United States about how Hitler acknowledged him as the "American Führer".

As his profile grew, so did the tension against him. Not only Jewish-Americans, but also German-Americans who did not want to be associated with Nazis protested against the Bund. These protests were occasionally violent, making the Bund front page news in the United States. 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. The negative attention to the American Nazis was not to Hitler's liking because he wanted the Nazi Party in the United States to be strong but stealthy. Hitler needed to keep the U.S. neutral throughout the coming war and sought to avoid provoking Americans. In contrast, Kuhn was eager to stir media attention. On March 1, 1938, the Nazi government decreed that no German national (Reichsdeutsche) could be a member of the Bund and that no Nazi emblems were to be used by the organization.

Undaunted, on September 3, 1938, the Bund reelected Kuhn, and on February 20, 1939, Kuhn held the largest and most publicized rally in the Bund's history at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Some 20,000 people attended and heard Kuhn mock President Franklin D. Roosevelt as "Frank D. Rosenfeld", calling his New Deal the "Jew Deal" and denouncing what he called Bolshevik-Jewish American leadership. Kuhn also stated: "The Bund is fighting shoulder to shoulder with patriotic Americans to protect America from a race that is not the American race, that is not even a white race... The Jews are controlling everything and the white man is thrown out of his job.... The Jews are enemies of the United States.... All Jews are Communists.... Christ was not a Jew..." There was an outbreak of violence between Bund storm troopers and thousands of angry protesters in the streets. During Kuhn's speech, a Jewish protester, Isadore Greenbaum, rushed the stage and had to be rescued by police after he was beaten and stripped by stormtroopers.

Criminal conviction
Later in 1939, seeking to cripple the Bund, New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia ordered the city to investigate the Bund's taxes. It alleged that Kuhn had embezzled $14,548 from the organization, spending part of the money on a mistress. District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey issued an indictment on May 25, 1939, and won a conviction against Kuhn. On December 5, 1939, Kuhn was sentenced to two and a half to five years in prison for larceny and forgery. The next day, he was sent to Sing Sing. Despite his convictions for embezzlement, followers of the Bund continued to hold Kuhn in high regard, in line with the Nazi Führerprinzip, which gives the leader absolute power.

In 1940, James Wheeler-Hill, the Secretary of the Bund, was sentenced to one to three years in prison after pleading guilty to perjury for falsely testifying that he was an American citizen at Kuhn's trial. Wheeler-Hill had been born in Latvia, and was never naturalized.

Imprisonment and deportation
Kuhn's citizenship was revoked on June 1, 1943, while he was in Sing Sing prison, on the grounds of it having been obtained fraudulently as shown by his ongoing activity as a foreign agent of, and a person with loyalty including oaths of military service towards, Germany and the Nazi Party. Upon his release after 43 months in prison, Kuhn was re-arrested on June 21, 1943, as an enemy agent and interned by the federal government at a camp in Crystal City, Texas. Interned with Kuhn were his wife and 16-year-old son, who were deemed "enemy aliens". Kuhn's family had returned to Germany in 1938, but came back to support him for the trial. They were repatriated to Germany in an exchange in February 1944.

After the war, Kuhn, along with 714 other "unteachable Germans" was sent to Ellis Island and deported to Germany on September 15, 1945. Upon his return, he was interned at Hohenasperg Fortress. A CIC agent who interrogated Kuhn in January 1946 recommended his release, saying he was "discredited and spiritually broken." Kuhn wanted to return to the United States, but worked as an industrial chemist in a small chemical factory in Munich. The German authorities then decided that he could be tried under Germany's denazification laws, and he was imprisoned in July 1947.

Later life
Held in an internment camp at Dachau, awaiting trial before a Bavarian German de-Nazification court, Kuhn escaped on February 4, 1948, but was recaptured on June 15 in the French zone town of Bernkastel, near Trier. He had been sentenced to 10 years of hard labor, having been found guilty in absentia after a five-hour trial on April 20. The proceeding was "made conspicuous by the absence of not only Kuhn but also his lawyer and witnesses. The trial was carried out entirely by the presentation of documents which purported to show that Kuhn had close ties with Hitler's Third German Reich and that he had tried to transplant its ideology into the United States." How Kuhn escaped has never been officially explained, although there was an investigation; the camp director, Anton Zirngibl, was fired. Kuhn told reporters, 'The door was open so I went through.' Kuhn said on June 17 that he considered the ten-year sentence as a "major Nazi offender" unfair and that he intended to appeal.

In 1949, an appellate court reduced Kuhn's sentence to two years of hard labor. He was released on February 22, 1949. While in prison, Kuhn reportedly sent a message to columnist Walter Winchell, who had helped lead media counterattacks against the Bund back in New York City. It read: "Tell Herr Vinchell, I will lift to piss on his grafe [sic]." (Winchell died in 1972).

Death
Kuhn died of unknown causes on December 14, 1951, in Munich, Germany. The New York Times obituary said that he died "a poor and obscure chemist, unheralded and unsung." Shortly before his death, Kuhn was asked why he'd followed Hitler. Disillusioned by the collapse of Nazi Germany, he replied, "Who would have known it would end like this?"