When it comes to the time between World Wars I and II, much of American history taught in high school has focused on Nazis in Germany. However, history professor Chris Lovett says there were Nazis in America — and they were active and visible.
Lovett, a longtime history professor at Emporia State who has focused on military history and national security affairs during his post-military career, detailed the rise of the Nazi movement in America during the latest Sundays at the Site presentation at Red Rocks State Historical Site this past weekend. He says Americans were increasingly drawn to communism or fascism as the Great Depression moved into 1932 and 1933, when Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected US president and Adolph Hitler was selected as chancellor of Germany. Lovett says a lot of wealthy Americans saw Roosevelt as a “traitor to his class,” and there was a plot lead a coup against Roosevelt.
Lovett says the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic, isolationist group, gathered a lot of followers and sympathizers — but that wasn’t the only way the movement grew.
Lovett also says there were several spy rings, saboteurs and Congressional influencers who were sympathetic to the Nazi cause or were simply isolationist as World War II approached.
Sundays at the Site details different historical events or trends, especially connections to Emporia Gazette publisher William Allen White and his family. White and his son, William Lindsay White, had differing views of how the United States should approach the growing war in Europe — the elder White pushed for cooperation short of joining the war, while the younger White became convinced war was the only step after reporting from various locations in Europe in 1940.
In case you’re wondering about today’s political climate, Lovett says there are obvious similarities between Nazi sympathizer groups of 80 years ago and groups like the Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, Moms of Liberty and others in place today.
