In September of 1939 Germany invaded Poland, setting off World War II. Prior to that, on February 20, 1939, the German American Bund, held a rally at New York City’s Madison Square Garden arena. The Bund was a pro-Nazi organization headquartered in the United States that promoted Hitler and his ideals. Nazi leader Fritz Julius Kuhn addressed a crowd of 20,000 Americans during the rally.
During Kuhn’s speech a 26-year-old-plumber, Isadore Greenbaum, ran on stage to protest. He was thrown from the stage and beaten up. The crowd cheered. He was then arrested for disorderly conduct and fined 25 dollars.
“A Night at the Garden” was released in 2017 and was directed by Marshall Curry. It is a historical documentary short. The entire video, including credits, is only about six minutes long.
The German American Bund was known in German as the Amerikadeutscher Volksbund. Bund stands for union or league. The organization was made up of German Americans who liked Hitler’s views. Two years later, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the United States entered WWII, the Bund was ultimately disbanded.
The footage for the short was assembled by archivist Rich Remsberg at the behest of Marshall Curry. Remsberg gathered clips and any scraps of footage he could find on the event from anywhere he could find them, including the National Archives as well as UCLA’s archives. There wasn’t much available, but Curry took what Remsberg found and edited everything together to create the short. Curry purposely did not include any narration into the film in order to give the short as much visual power as possible.
Who knows what American sentiment would have been if Roosevelt had not been elected president or if Japan had not bombed Pearl Harbor. The isolationist feelings in America could have given the Nazi party the foothold it wanted.
Kuhn became a naturalized American citizen in 1934. In 1943 his citizenship was revoked due to him being a foreign agent and an embezzler. He was in prison for a time but was then deported back to Germany in 1945. He died in 1951.