On Feb. 13, 1938, Harugari Hall at 1257 Genesee Street near Kehr was jam-packed. An SRO crowd of 700 was on hand for a rally staged by the German-American Bund, a pro-Nazi group. But not everyone at the hall that night was there to listen to the speakers’ message of hate. Roughly half the crowd was made up of veterans from the American Legion, Veterans of Foreign Wars and Jewish War Veterans. They had come to bust up the meeting, with their fists.
It happened when the main speaker, Bund propaganda minister G. Wilhelm Kunze, addressing the crowd in his New Jersey accent, was interrupted by former assemblyman Frederick Hammer. Himself a German American, Hammer thundered, “My ancestors left Germany because they did not like the military aggression of that nation!” Someone in the crowd yelled out “Coward!”, and when Hammer asked the heckler to step outside and settle it, the veterans stood up and started pummeling on the Nazis and their bodyguards. The melee lasted for several minutes, emptying the hall before Buffalo police finally restored order—notably, without making a single arrest. But the vets’ goal was met: the pro-Nazi rally was finished, for good.
The fight at HarugarI Hall was merely the climax of a long, fraught episode in the history of Westen New York’s German-American community.
In the early 20th century, German Americans made up an enormous share of Buffalo---anywhere from one-third to one-half of the total population, making them the city’s largest ethnic group, by far. Buffalo’s Germans managed to get through World War I, though, as in the rest of the U.S. and Canada, they’d had to hide their ethnicity to a certain degree. Thus, Germans in the city’s vast East Side Deutschum became more circumspect about where they spoke “Küche Deutsch” (kitchen German), sauerkraut became “liberty cabbage” and the German-American Bank was renamed Liberty National Bank.
However, by the late 1930s German Americans were loud and proud once again… though, disturbingly, a great many of them found encouragement in the rise of Hitler and the Nazis in Germany. Several groups arose in the U.S. in support of the Nazis, many of them openly funded by the German government. One such group, the German-American Bund, was headquartered in New York’s heavily German Yorkville neighborhood— and founded at a 1936 convention at the Hotel Statler in Buffalo, which brought together 60 high-ranking American Nazis who merged their groups to form the Bund. (Don’t blame the Statler; a German shipping line had reserved the hall for a “banquet”).
In Buffalo, it was announced that membership in the Bund was restricted to German Americans only (a ploy meant to escape U.S. prosecution of the Bund as a foreign-led group). A German-born U.S. citizen, Fritz Kuhn, was chosen as Bundesführer. And from the pulpit at the Statler, Kuhn announced the Bund’s ultimate goals: to establish a "socially just, white, gentile-ruled United States” and to create a “gentile-controlled labor union free from Jewish Moscow-directed domination”. (Kunze would repeat the same talking points almost verbatim two years later at Harugari Hall.)
A number of Buffalonians were dead-set against any Nazi presence in the city. A heavy local police cordon at the Statler protected the delegates from protesters. “Many Buffalo citizens opposed this Nazi propaganda,” wrote The New Masses. “But the mayor and the police department suddenly discovered that freedom of assemblage was the inalienable right of those who would destroy every vestige of democracy.”
So it went for the next two years, as the Bund’s national membership grew to as many as 25,000. A large chunk of Buffalonians liked the Bund and were thrilled by its rhetoric spewing hatred of Jews, blacks, communists, socialists, and labor unions. At the same time, a large chunk of Buffalonians hated the Bund and its message… and were ready to take action to shut them up.
They did so at Harugari Hall. It proved to be the last pro-Nazi rally held in Buffalo. But complex feelings remained, as did some pro-Nazi institutions, like the network of about two dozen summer camps across the U.S. that sought to indoctrinate youth. Tanglewood Park on Two Rod Road in East Aurora was identified by Congressional investigators as one such day camp that espoused Hitler Youth-like values.
In August 1938 at Genesee Park (Schiller Park today), six months after the melee at Harugari, a crowd of 50,000 turned out to celebrate German Day---and to hear Emil Pieper, German Consul for Western New York. Amid a heavy police presence, Pieper stood beneath a Nazi flag in his capacity as representative of the German government. “Since 1933,” he said, “many German-Americans have asked themselves, ‘What attitude should I take? How can I, as a German or German-American, best serve this country without giving up my German characteristics, of which I am unusually proud?’ ”
It was a message heavily muted in light of what had taken place just six months before; totally absent was any mention of “Jews”, “gentiles”, “whites”, “communists” or “labor unions”. Pieper concluded tamely by noting that now was a good time for any German Americans who had lost their sense of identity “to bring back to our memories the great deeds of our ancestors, and the many contributions of the German element to American life.”
In his speech, Mayor Thomas L. Holling also offered a muted message. “It’s good that sturdy German Americans have helped us make Buffalo what it is today,” he said innocuously. He followed with a statement that sounded as if it could be wished into being by saying it out loud: Buffalo’s Germans, Holling said, “are noted for their tolerant and sympathetic attitudes toward their fellow citizens.”
The Nazis may have been a spent force in Buffalo, but in New York City they weren’t done yet. One final paroxysm of hate remained… the infamous Feb. 20, 1939, rally at Madison Square Garden. Organized by the German-American Bund, the event drew over 20,000 attendees who cheered to antisemitic speeches and featured a massive stage backdrop that combined the American flag and a gigantic portrait of George Washington alongside swastikas. The rally sparked massive outrage, with tens of thousands of anti-Nazi protesters demonstrating outside and clashing with police.
Seven months later, Germany invaded Poland, the start of World War II. Kuhn was convicted of embezzling thousands of dollars from the Bund and was sent to prison. G. Wilhelm Kunze took over briefly as Bundesführer but fled to Mexico after advising German Americans to evade the draft. Kunze was promptly extradited back to the U.S., where he was convicted of espionage and sentenced to 15 years in prison. One month later, after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. entered the war. The government shut down the Bund.
Any lingering question about the loyalty of German Americans was quickly put to bed by a manifesto, “Christmas Declaration by Men and Women of German Ancestry”, signed by 50 prominent German Americans (including Babe Ruth, Reinhold Niebuhr and William L. Shirer). It appeared in 10 major U.S. newspapers later that same December. "We Americans of German descent,” it began, "raise our voices in denunciation of the Hitler policy of cold-blooded extermination of the Jews of Europe and against the barbarities committed by the Nazis against all other innocent peoples under their sway.”
Cast (in order of appearance):
G. Wilhelm Kunze: Karl-Eric Reif
Frederick Hammer: Chris Jamele
Man in Crowd: Jeff Z. Klein
Narrator: Susan Banks
Script: Jeff Z. Klein
Sound recording: Cameron Taylor
Sound editing: Micheal Peters
Piano theme: Excerpt from “Buffalo City Guards Parade March,” by Francis Johnson (1839)
Performed by Aaron Dai
Produced by the Niagara Frontier Heritage Project
Associate producer: Karl-Eric Reif
Webpage written by Jeff Z. Klein (Niagara Frontier Heritage Project)
Special thanks to:
Kathryn Larsen, vice president, content distribution, Buffalo Toronto Public Media
S.J. Velasquez, director of audio strategy, Buffalo Toronto Public Media
Jerry Urban, senior radio broadcast engineer, Buffalo Toronto Public Media
Councilmember Mitch Nowakowski and the Buffalo Common Council for their generous support