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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 6: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer.
Speaker 3: The Nightstalker DTK.
Speaker 6: Every week, another fascinating author talking about the most shocking
Speaker 6: and infamous killers in true crime history True Murder with
Speaker 6: your host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 7: Good Evening. As Adolf Hitler rose to power in nineteen
Speaker 7: thirties Germany, a growing wave of fascism began to take
Speaker 7: root on American soil. Nazi activists started to gather in
Speaker 7: major American cities, and by nineteen thirty three, there were
Speaker 7: more than one hundred anti Semitic groups operating openly. In
Speaker 7: the United States. Few Americans dare to speak out or
Speaker 7: fight back until an organized resistance of notorious mobsters waged
Speaker 7: their own personal war against the Nazis in their midst
Speaker 7: gangland style. In this thrilling blow by blow account, acclaimed
Speaker 7: crime writer Michael Benson uncovers the shocking truth about the
Speaker 7: insidious rise of Nazism in America and the Jewish mobsters
Speaker 7: who stomped it out. Learn about Nazi Town, USA, Mayer,
Speaker 7: Lansky and Murder, Inc. Fritz Kuhn, the vest pocket, Hitler, Newark,
Speaker 7: Nazis versus the Minutemen, and Hitler in Hollywoodland Back with
Speaker 7: surprising little known facts, graphic details, and unforgettable personalities. Gangsters
Speaker 7: Versus Nazis chronicles the mob's most ruthless tactics in taking
Speaker 7: down fascism, inspiring ordinary Americans to join them in their fight.
Speaker 7: The book culminates in one of the most infamous events
Speaker 7: of the Rewar era, the nineteen thirty nine Nazi rally
Speaker 7: in Madison Square Garden, in which law abiding citizens stood
Speaker 7: alongside hardened criminals to fight for the soul of a nation.
Speaker 7: This is the story of the mob that's rarely told,
Speaker 7: one of the most fascinating chapters in American history and
Speaker 7: American organized crime. The book that we're featuring this evening
Speaker 7: is Gangsters Versus Nazis. How Jewish mobsters battled Nazis in
Speaker 7: World War II era America, with my special guest journalist
Speaker 7: and author Michael Benson. Welcome back to the program, and
Speaker 7: thank you for this interview. Michael Benson, Thanks for having me,
Speaker 7: Dan appreciate it. Thank you so much, and congratulations on
Speaker 7: this Versus Nazis. Let's talk about as you do in
Speaker 7: the very first chapter about Jewish the jew titled Jewish
Speaker 7: Gangsters and the Jewish migration to the United States. You
Speaker 7: say began in the nineteenth century, largely from Central Europe
Speaker 7: and many from Russia.
Speaker 8: Just tell us a little bit about how many Jewish people.
Speaker 7: Were in America at that time near the turn of
Speaker 7: the century, and tell us a little bit more about
Speaker 7: the background of Jewish gangsters in America and why.
Speaker 9: Well, the Jewish immigration rates escalated greatly in the first
Speaker 9: part of the twentieth century, largely because Jews did not
Speaker 9: feel welcome in Europe anymore and they're hoping to find
Speaker 9: a better life in America. I love of the players
Speaker 9: in the book were children in Europe and remembered the
Speaker 9: way that Jews were treated in Russia, in particular. I
Speaker 9: think people sometimes think that Adolf Hitler invented anti Semitism,
Speaker 9: but in reality had been going on for thousands of
Speaker 9: years already, and this was the latest wave of it.
Speaker 9: And they came over to America. A lot of them
Speaker 9: got as far as New York and stopped. Others moved
Speaker 9: further into the country, and there were Jewish communities in Minneapolis,
Speaker 9: in the midwestern Chicago, a lot of the major cities
Speaker 9: in the country, all the way out to the West coast,
Speaker 9: where Los Angeles had a Jewish community and probably the
Speaker 9: only industry in the country that was dominated by Jewish
Speaker 9: men was Hollywood. But for most Jews, I mean ninety
Speaker 9: nine point nine percent of them, they had a very
Speaker 9: limited potential for success in America, or I guess it
Speaker 9: was better than it was in Russia because people weren't
Speaker 9: burning down their villages and raping their women. But they
Speaker 9: also weren't allowed to go into a lot of professions
Speaker 9: that Christians were allowed to do. They were regulated to
Speaker 9: being butchers and tailors and things like that. And eventually
Speaker 9: you had ambitious Jewish men who weren't content with playing
Speaker 9: by gentile rules and played outside the roles. They became criminals, gangsters,
Speaker 9: and particularly during Prohibition, Jewish gangsters were among the top
Speaker 9: bootleggers in America. And because they made so much money,
Speaker 9: they were, i mean, next to the moguls of Hollywood,
Speaker 9: the most powerful Jewish people in the country.
Speaker 7: You talk about urging idolization by some Jewish kids and
Speaker 7: Jewish people by and you said, you called them this
Speaker 7: person a Jewish superstar gangster, This Arnold Rostein and the
Speaker 7: veritable who's who crew of future gangsters. Tell us who
Speaker 7: this veritable crew that he basically recruits.
Speaker 9: Well in Brooklyn at that time, there was a little
Speaker 9: pack of juvenile delinquents, you know, shaking down the corner
Speaker 9: stores and things like that, called the Meyer Meyer Bugs Crew,
Speaker 9: and that was Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky, both of
Speaker 9: whom went on to become famous gangsters in their own right.
Speaker 9: And let Key was there, and a lot of the
Speaker 9: boys who would later be members of Murder Ink, who
Speaker 9: play a big part in my book. Rostein's probably most famous.
Speaker 9: Well one thing he's he's fictionalized. I forget the name
Speaker 9: of his fictional character, but he's in the Great Gatsby
Speaker 9: and he's best known, I think for fixed the world
Speaker 9: series the Black Sox scandal of nineteen nineteen, when the
Speaker 9: Chicago White Sox through the world series. That was Arnie
Speaker 9: Rostein buying players. And Rostein also was shot and killed
Speaker 9: in the Sharton Hotel in New York, which happens to
Speaker 9: be the same hotel where generations later Albert Anastasia was
Speaker 9: killed in the barbershop right off the lobby. So if
Speaker 9: you're a gangster, I would suggest to steer clear of
Speaker 9: that particular hotel. Yeah, Lansky and Siegel the leaders of
Speaker 9: their own little crew in Brooklyn. They went to work
Speaker 9: for Rostein and as adults became major players in global economics.
Speaker 9: Lansky in particular was the right hand man of Lucky Luciano,
Speaker 9: another fellow from the neighborhood. Now, I've always been amazed
Speaker 9: how you can have blocks for so many people become famous,
Speaker 9: all being neighbors. Yes, I remember Joe Garagiola and Yogi
Speaker 9: Bearra were both made league catchers in the nineteen forties,
Speaker 9: and they grew up across the street from one another. Wow,
Speaker 9: And garagiolays to joke that, you know, I don't have
Speaker 9: much of an ego for a big league ballplayer because
Speaker 9: when I was growing up, I wasn't even the best
Speaker 9: ballplayer at my block. And that's the way it was. Eventually,
Speaker 9: Myer Lansky is the alpha, but I mean Bugsy Siegel
Speaker 9: and Mickey Cohen and other Jewish ansters are also very
Speaker 9: very powerful men. And after Prohibition ends, the boles That
Speaker 9: Act is repealed, they almost seamlessly shift gears and go
Speaker 9: into gambling and become even richer and more powerful.
Speaker 7: Talk about the rise in Europe with fascism and what
Speaker 7: was going on in Germany at this time.
Speaker 9: Well, yeah, and by the mid thirties, you know, Adolf
Speaker 9: Hitler was in control of Germany and his armies were
Speaker 9: pushing outward. The attempt was to conquer the world. I
Speaker 9: suspect he was already fighting with Russia. He was knocking
Speaker 9: off the smaller countries of Western Europe as I set
Speaker 9: already on Great Britain, and the Jewish communities of those
Speaker 9: countries were having terrible things happened to them. Really wasn't
Speaker 9: known among Gentiles. It wasn't really known in America that
Speaker 9: there was an attempted genocide going on already in Europe,
Speaker 9: the Germans trying to wipe out the Jews. But Jewish
Speaker 9: communities in America had an inkling that this was going on.
Speaker 9: I'm not sure they visited in the scale that it
Speaker 9: inevitably ended up being, but they knew that Grandpa got
Speaker 9: picked up by the Germans and he hasn't come back.
Speaker 9: So when the German Americans who liked Hitler's attitude in
Speaker 9: the United States, when they started with the rhetoric of
Speaker 9: the Jewish problem and the ultimate solution to it, there
Speaker 9: were Jewish Men who understood where that rhetoric was headed.
Speaker 9: So committing acts of violence against the American Nazis was
Speaker 9: not going to bother their conscience as much.
Speaker 7: Now you talk about that, there wasn't going to be
Speaker 7: bothering some people, and we were alluding to these mobsters
Speaker 7: that get chosen through this very interesting route. But let's
Speaker 7: first talk about how Nazism manifests itself in the United States.
Speaker 7: What's Hitler's plan, what's his depiction of the situation in
Speaker 7: Germany and Europe for America? What's his plan? What do
Speaker 7: you want to convince Americans about.
Speaker 9: Well, America is particularly vulnerable to disinformation in nineteen thirty
Speaker 9: eight because we're almost a full decade into the Great Depression.
Speaker 9: No one has any money. It seems like nobody's had
Speaker 9: any money in a very very long time. So if
Speaker 9: a German Americans stood up on a podium and said,
Speaker 9: the problem is it's the Jews. They have all the money.
Speaker 9: They're all Communists and that's the reason why we're all poor.
Speaker 9: If we get rid of them, we will be richer.
Speaker 9: And although you know, ninety nine percent of German Americans
Speaker 9: saw this as hate speech and didn't listen to it,
Speaker 9: there was a small number and that counts up to
Speaker 9: about one hundred thousand. But compared to the number of
Speaker 9: German Americans, that's a small percentage, and who bought into
Speaker 9: this and attended rallies and listen to the speeches. And
Speaker 9: the idea I think in the short term was to
Speaker 9: get German Americans to vote as a block so that
Speaker 9: like minded politicians would be in power. And in the
Speaker 9: long term, of course, it was the goal to turn
Speaker 9: the United States into a carbon copy of Nazi Germany.
Speaker 9: I think that Hitler's original plan was to take over
Speaker 9: the United States without firing a shot. He thought that
Speaker 9: if he could take over Hollywood, which was run by Jews,
Speaker 9: after all, he didn't have to lie about that they
Speaker 9: really were in charge in Hollywood. If he could take
Speaker 9: over Hollywood and have them crank out pro Nazi movies
Speaker 9: instead of anti Nazi movies, he might be able to
Speaker 9: win the hearts and minds of Americans without having to
Speaker 9: go to war with them. What problem was, he didn't
Speaker 9: really put a strong leader in charge of that plan.
Speaker 9: He put four or five guys in there who all,
Speaker 9: instead of cooperating with one another, were competitive. And there
Speaker 9: was a Jewish lawyer in Los Angeles who caught wind
Speaker 9: of this, and the plan was just horrible. They were
Speaker 9: going to kidnap Jewish movie stars Charlie Chaplin. They were
Speaker 9: going to kidnap the Moguls, the Louis Vu Mayors, the
Speaker 9: Joseph Skaggs, and they were going to hang them in
Speaker 9: public areas and then take over the movies. Now, I
Speaker 9: don't know how you're going to win the hearts and
Speaker 9: minds of Americans by performing public executions. I think that's
Speaker 9: a miscalculation. But that was the plan. And what the
Speaker 9: Jewish lawyer did, his name was al Lewis. He put
Speaker 9: together a team of Jewish people who could pass his
Speaker 9: gentiles and had them infiltrate the movement. Many of them
Speaker 9: were women, and they spread rumors about the four guys
Speaker 9: who were all trying to be in charge. This guy's
Speaker 9: stabbing this guy in the back, this guy said this
Speaker 9: about this guy. And pretty soon the effort to take
Speaker 9: over Hollywood falls apart, and the Nazis that come in later,
Speaker 9: the German American Bund, they're reduced to trying to recruit
Speaker 9: through homeless men. They set up soup kitchens and then
Speaker 9: is now Los Angeles had a conspicuous homeless problem, and
Speaker 9: they would gather these guys up, feed them and then
Speaker 9: inundate them with the disinformation about Jews, and if they
Speaker 9: started saying, hey, yeah, we should kill the Jews, they
Speaker 9: got a uniform and they got to go out and
Speaker 9: march and have parades. So by the time my book starts,
Speaker 9: there's rising fascism with a German Nazi bent in many
Speaker 9: of the major cities in America, and Jewish leaders are
Speaker 9: starting to get sick of it.
Speaker 7: You talk about some other groups as well, the Silver
Speaker 7: Shirts in this relation to the Christian Front and also
Speaker 7: any kind of any connection to the KKK.
Speaker 9: Well, yeah, the German American Bund was strictly we're Hitler's
Speaker 9: army here in the United States. The Silver Shirts, they
Speaker 9: were run by a guy named William Dudley Pelley, who
Speaker 9: is an interesting character. He started out as a scenario
Speaker 9: writer in Hollywood during Silent movies, and he claimed that
Speaker 9: he had a near death experience and had gone to Heaven,
Speaker 9: had to talk with God, talked with Jesus himself, and
Speaker 9: Jesus said, you your work here is not done. You
Speaker 9: have to go back to You have to go back
Speaker 9: to Earth and make sure that you wipe out the Jews,
Speaker 9: because that's what I want, and I think everybody knows
Speaker 9: why Win Wink wink, and this is his Pelly's story.
Speaker 9: And he starts recruiting right right wing type men once again,
Speaker 9: giving them uniforms, although in this case they looked more
Speaker 9: like boy scouts than army guys. I'm not sure who
Speaker 9: designed the uniforms. And because the German American Buddhists were
Speaker 9: called brown shirts because of their uniforms, he called his
Speaker 9: men's silver shirts, although the shirts are actually like blue
Speaker 9: in color. And he said that you know, if you're
Speaker 9: a Christian, you have to be anti Jew, and you
Speaker 9: have to be anti Communist. And one of his strongest
Speaker 9: mouthpieces was was a Catholic priest who named Father Claughlin,
Speaker 9: who went on the air in a syndicated show every
Speaker 9: Sunday afternoon and would say name the father's son, and
Speaker 9: holy ghost, love Hitler and h Jews and not in
Speaker 9: so many words. He was cleverer than that. He had
Speaker 9: a very very soft, caressing voice, so it made the
Speaker 9: hate speech seem more tolerable. But yeah, by the time
Speaker 9: the gangsters started fighting the Nazis in my book, anti
Speaker 9: Semitism was in the very air. Oh you mentioned kkk
Speaker 9: KKK was of course down with fighting against the Jews.
Speaker 9: Father Kaughlin got no help from the KKK at all
Speaker 9: because he was a Catholic priest and he was on
Speaker 9: the list of people they hated as well, So that
Speaker 9: was that was a problem. But KKK got along with
Speaker 9: the Silver Shirts just fine. You know, I think after
Speaker 9: they had finished wiping out the Jews, they would have
Speaker 9: gone on to other groups as well, certainly any kind
Speaker 9: of minority, any kind of infirm person, and eventually even
Speaker 9: new Catholics.
Speaker 7: Let's introduce us congressman, former US Congressman and Special Sessions
Speaker 7: Judge Nathan Peerlman.
Speaker 8: You say he was born in poland tell us who
Speaker 8: he is.
Speaker 9: Well, Judge Perlman is the hero of the book. He
Speaker 9: was a former congressman. He was among the among the
Speaker 9: congressmen to repeal the voles That Act and bring legal
Speaker 9: alcohol back to the United States, for which he was
Speaker 9: a hero, considered a hero by drinkers everywhere. He used
Speaker 9: to walk into a bar and say, you know, I
Speaker 9: was one of the guys that voted to end prohibition,
Speaker 9: and everybody wanted to buy him a drink. And he
Speaker 9: was a judge sitting on the bench in New York
Speaker 9: City and hated the German American Bund. But the last
Speaker 9: straw came in nineteenth early nineteen thirty eight when he
Speaker 9: went to a ceremony in Bowling Green, which is a
Speaker 9: little section of downtown Manhattan right by the southern not
Speaker 9: far from the World Trade Center now, and it faces
Speaker 9: the US Customs Building, which is a great, big building
Speaker 9: with pillars and gorgeous building. And there was a ceremony
Speaker 9: by the US Maritimes people on the front steps of
Speaker 9: the Customs Building, and there were American flags and the
Speaker 9: pledge of a legions singing the Star Spangled banner. And
Speaker 9: during the ceremony up marches a parade of the German
Speaker 9: American Bund with their hate signs and their chanting, you know,
Speaker 9: kill the Jews and love Hitler. And there was a standoff.
Speaker 9: It looked like there was going to be a big fight,
Speaker 9: but eventually the Maritime people moved inside the building, held
Speaker 9: their ceremony inside, and it just stuck in Judge Peerlman's crawl,
Speaker 9: the fact that good Americans had been forced to retreat
Speaker 9: because you know, the garbage people were out there saying
Speaker 9: the things they were saying. He didn't know what to do,
Speaker 9: so he went to a bar as he usually did,
Speaker 9: and he was sitting over a cocktail when he had
Speaker 9: an idea. So, what these guys need is a good
Speaker 9: butt weapon. Yeah, he needed an army, but he didn't
Speaker 9: have one. So he's going to have to get when
Speaker 9: he was got to be a Jewish army because they
Speaker 9: were the only ones who are going to be emotional
Speaker 9: enough about this stuff to actually fight. Had to be
Speaker 9: an army of guys who didn't mind breaking the law
Speaker 9: because they were going to have to punch people and
Speaker 9: you'd be comfortable with that. So he The next day
Speaker 9: in his chambers, he picks up the phone and he
Speaker 9: calls Meyer Lansky, who he knows from some previous relationship.
Speaker 9: And I suspect it had more to do with one
Speaker 9: being a drinker and the other being a bootlegger than
Speaker 9: it did with anything to do with one being a
Speaker 9: judge and one being a criminal. I'll be anything to
Speaker 9: do with the justice system, but he knows Meyer Lansky.
Speaker 9: He says, I need to have a meeting. Says sure,
Speaker 9: come on over, and Pearlman brings Rabbi Stephen Wise with him,
Speaker 9: just in case he needs to lay some guilt on Lansky.
Speaker 9: Do what he wants, and it boils down. He says,
Speaker 9: you know, Meyer, these anti Semites, they're organized, they've got
Speaker 9: newspapers backing them up. Something needs to be done. And
Speaker 9: Lancey says, you know that bugs me too. I think
Speaker 9: we're on the same side there, Judge, he says, do
Speaker 9: you have some boys who might want to punch a Nazi?
Speaker 9: And Lancey says, well, sure, but to be honest with you, Judge, Rabbi,
Speaker 9: we can do better than punch, at which point the
Speaker 9: Rabbi is no, no, no, no, no no. There must
Speaker 9: be no killing. They're the killers, We're not killers. And
Speaker 9: Lansky sees the wisdom and it's always better not to shoot,
Speaker 9: and Judge promises, yeah, just but teach them that it
Speaker 9: can be dangerous to be a Nazi in America. Teach
Speaker 9: them that we're not soft. We're not just going to
Speaker 9: take it. The Jews can be tough, and if they
Speaker 9: want to say this stuff about us, they better expect
Speaker 9: some blowback. So that's the deal, and they make an agreement.
Speaker 9: The only thing Lanski asked for is please make sure
Speaker 9: you keep my name out of the newspapers and just
Speaker 9: just find it. And the judge throws in. You know,
Speaker 9: if any of you get arrested, you know we'll be
Speaker 9: there for you. Don't worry about any of that, he said, ohlor,
Speaker 9: we're pretty good at avoiding police anyway. So the next
Speaker 9: time that the German American Bun's going to get together
Speaker 9: is a big rally at the Yorkville Casino on East
Speaker 9: eighty sixth Street in Manhattan. And they've been having these
Speaker 9: rallies fairly regularly, and they used to parade up and
Speaker 9: down eighty sixth Street. See photos of it. It's just chilling.
Speaker 9: It looks like Macy's Thanksgiving parade, except there's sig hiling
Speaker 9: and goosetepp being going on, and there are Nazi flags
Speaker 9: being next to American flags. So Lansky does some exercises
Speaker 9: in team building. He takes the Jewish members of Murder Ink,
Speaker 9: whose people who don't know what murder Ink is. Those
Speaker 9: were there was a separate organization from the five Families
Speaker 9: of the New York Mafia, and if anyone needed somebody
Speaker 9: killed among those five families, it would be a vote
Speaker 9: from the bosses, the commission, it was called, and if
Speaker 9: they said okay, then the job to kill the guy
Speaker 9: was farmed. Out to murder ink and they would go
Speaker 9: out and do the job. And they represented none of
Speaker 9: the five families. There were a separate entity. And the
Speaker 9: idea was to prevent civil wars from breaking out, the
Speaker 9: wars between families from breaking out, which is what happened
Speaker 9: when anybody was allowed to kill anybody. So it was
Speaker 9: an orderly fashion and it was working. And he had
Speaker 9: guys who knew how to use guns, but not necessarily
Speaker 9: guys who knew how to use their fists. Some of
Speaker 9: them did because they'd been juvenile delinquents and been a
Speaker 9: lot of fights, but some didn't. So what Lansky does
Speaker 9: He takes them to Glease in his gym, which at
Speaker 9: that times in the Bronx. It's in the dumble section
Speaker 9: of Brooklyn. Now it's moved a few times, and Gleason
Speaker 9: himself teaches these guys how to throw a few combos,
Speaker 9: and so by the time the next rally takes place
Speaker 9: at the York Hild Casino, the boys are ready and
Speaker 9: they split up into three sections. One goes in the
Speaker 9: front door, one hangs out outside, and one climbs up
Speaker 9: a fire escape and goes into an upstairs window. And
Speaker 9: the murdering guys are just shocked by what they see.
Speaker 9: I mean, it's Hitler's birthdays. There's a celebration going on.
Speaker 9: They're singing Happy Birthday to Hitler. There are American flags
Speaker 9: again next to Swastika flags. Up on the stage. There
Speaker 9: is a portrait of George Washington next to a portrait
Speaker 9: of Adolf Hitler. And all of this is because the
Speaker 9: first attempt to start a pro Hitler organization in America
Speaker 9: was called the Friends of New Germany, and they got
Speaker 9: shut down for being anti American. So the new edition
Speaker 9: is now called The German American, but says American even
Speaker 9: in the name. We're talking about on America. So that
Speaker 9: I think that the last thing that is said at
Speaker 9: the rally is and the Jews were possible for the
Speaker 9: kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, at which point the fights
Speaker 9: start and the closest the gangsters ever came to breaking
Speaker 9: the no kill rule, and Lanski himself was part of
Speaker 9: this is they did. They dangled a particularly loudmouthed Nazi
Speaker 9: out the second floor window, so should we should we?
Speaker 9: Eventually they dropped him and if he the landed on
Speaker 9: his head, he'd have been dead, but he lands on
Speaker 9: one leg and breaks his femur instead, and the fight
Speaker 9: last two three minutes tops. And the reason we have
Speaker 9: the details we do is because I'm Jewish journalist by
Speaker 9: name of Jedd Teller is there, right, he was, he was,
Speaker 9: He was in on it, so he was there to
Speaker 9: write about it later in retrospect, although not really at
Speaker 9: the time because nobody in this, nobody in the room
Speaker 9: during the fights, wants their name in the paper the
Speaker 9: next days the next day. Nobody wants to be known
Speaker 9: as a as a hitler lover, and nobody wants to
Speaker 9: be known as a as a gangster. So and one
Speaker 9: of the smart things that Lanski does before the fight
Speaker 9: starts is he opens up a box of brand new
Speaker 9: American Legion hats. So before all the gangs go into
Speaker 9: the York Field casino, they put on the American Legion hats.
Speaker 9: They fight with the hats on gets knocked off during
Speaker 9: the fight, okay, but if you still have it on
Speaker 9: by the time you're leaving, toss it on the sidewalk
Speaker 9: and sure enough, you know. The next day the newspapers say,
Speaker 9: well there was a riot. We think there was American
Speaker 9: Legion guys against against the Nazi guys. The American Legion
Speaker 9: didn't mind being blamed too much because a lot of
Speaker 9: them had fought in World War One and didn't like
Speaker 9: the idea of Germans becoming aggressive again. And it was
Speaker 9: a trick that Lanski learned from Albert Anastasia, who used
Speaker 9: to put Chicago hats hats made in Chicago on his
Speaker 9: hit teams before they'd whack somebody. Then they'd lose the
Speaker 9: hats on the way out, and the police wouldn't bother
Speaker 9: looking for the crew that did it because they were
Speaker 9: probably halfway back to Chicago already, when in reality the
Speaker 9: killers were sitting in the back room of a candy
Speaker 9: store in Brownsville, Brooklyn. So the fight only last two
Speaker 9: three minutes. It ends with Lansky and the boys chasing
Speaker 9: three or four Nazis down the street and that's it.
Speaker 9: After the fight, Fiarrel Olga, who doesn't like the Nazis
Speaker 9: any more than Maya Lanski does, makes a new set
Speaker 9: of rules, so you can't wear uniforms anymore unless it's
Speaker 9: an American uniform. You can't have any more parades, and
Speaker 9: what basically happens is the big rallies in Manhattan stop
Speaker 9: and what they do is they start up again in Newark,
Speaker 9: New Jersey. They basically they crossed the Hudson River and
Speaker 9: started up again in Newark, New Jersey. So Judge Perlman
Speaker 9: calls Longy's Roman, who's the ex bootlegger who's running the
Speaker 9: rackets in Newark, and says has a conversation very similar
Speaker 9: to the one he had with Lanski. And what Zolman
Speaker 9: says is, you know, we're a little bit ahead of
Speaker 9: you here. We've we've already got guys ready for this.
Speaker 9: When they come, we're ready for them. And they're called
Speaker 9: the Minute Men. And in Newark by far the biggest
Speaker 9: number of Jewish men ready to fight as a team
Speaker 9: to get rid of to rid the town of the Nazis.
Speaker 9: And they were not just gangsters, they were also professional.
Speaker 9: And this we see for the rest of the book
Speaker 9: is that first of all, there's a blurred line between
Speaker 9: boxer and gangster in nineteen thirty eight anyway, because boxing
Speaker 9: is run by gangsters, and a lot of fighters during
Speaker 9: their careers and after their careers went to work for
Speaker 9: gangsters doing tough guy stuff that they were bouncers and
Speaker 9: collectors and whatever whatever we need to be done so
Speaker 9: the lot. There's a lot of guys who aren't technically gangsters,
Speaker 9: but they're under orders from from Longhy's willman after Longe's
Speaker 9: woman who is a gangster, and they're they're dishing out
Speaker 9: some serious hurt in the uh the German American Bund
Speaker 9: meetings in Newark, which are held in places like the Swabenhall,
Speaker 9: which is fun to.
Speaker 7: Say, what is what is what is a Nazeri reaction?
Speaker 7: What are the the attendees reaction? What is the leadership's
Speaker 7: reaction to these and response? How do they try to
Speaker 7: react to these attacks?
Speaker 9: Well, first of all, especially at the Yorkville casinos, there's
Speaker 9: this complete shock because Judge Perlman was right. The Bunda
Speaker 9: never con that they might be attacked by a Jewish men.
Speaker 9: They thought the Jews were soft, that they would just
Speaker 9: take it. A lot of them had been bullying Jewish
Speaker 9: little boys since they were little boys, and they just
Speaker 9: didn't worry about that. So when these men who come
Speaker 9: in and they're tough guys and they're doing serious damage,
Speaker 9: they're stunned. They try to flee. I mean most of
Speaker 9: the Germans that these riots uninjured because they ran and
Speaker 9: they managed to get out of the building and run
Speaker 9: home or run to their car, depending on where the
Speaker 9: fight was. So later on, I think that there's more fisticuffs.
Speaker 9: Of the fact that at no time does anybody shoot
Speaker 9: anybody is just stunning, you know. I think one of
Speaker 9: the questions they get most often is could this happen today?
Speaker 9: And no, no, because somebody would get shot in the
Speaker 9: first thirty seconds, and that would be that everybody would
Speaker 9: scatter after that. These were more They were more like
Speaker 9: rumbles like you might find between juvenile de linquid gangs
Speaker 9: in the fifties. I think west story, to a certain extent,
Speaker 9: is the story about how we graduated as a combating
Speaker 9: culture from fist fights to using guns. But in nineteen
Speaker 9: thirty eight, you could do it. The only gun that
Speaker 9: it's fired is at the very end of one fight
Speaker 9: in New York where somebody fires a shot into the
Speaker 9: ceiling and that just signals everybody to get out. But yeah,
Speaker 9: it was almost like they were playing by playground rules.
Speaker 9: You don't bring a knife to a fist fight, you
Speaker 9: don't bring a gun to a knife fight, etc. And
Speaker 9: nobody escalated it beyond I mean, the biggest weapons that
Speaker 9: were used were baseball bat, solid off pool chews and
Speaker 9: brass knuckles, and those were specifically okay by Judge Perlman.
Speaker 7: We're going to talk about Judge Peruman making a call
Speaker 7: to Chicago, but before that, let's use this opportunity to
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Speaker 7: Fiends Now. Michael I mentioned Judge Perlman makes a call
Speaker 7: to Chicago, and one of another important character in this
Speaker 7: book is Herb. Brinn tell us about Herb and the
Speaker 7: situation in Chicago.
Speaker 9: Sure Well, in Chicago, the Jewish neighborhood flanked ken Zi
Speaker 9: Avenue and Brinn's hardware store, Davey Miller's boxing Jim and
Speaker 9: with an upstairs pool hall, and the restaurant next door
Speaker 9: where al Capone used to hold court. We're all within
Speaker 9: a few hundred yards of each other, which this proximity
Speaker 9: comes into play because these are the characters that are
Speaker 9: eventually going to be used to combat the Nazis in Chicago.
Speaker 9: Herb Brin is the son of the owner of Brin's Hardware.
Speaker 9: He is a Jewish journalist and the key to him
Speaker 9: is that he could pass for gentile. We'll talked a
Speaker 9: little bit about in Hollywood about how they used spies.
Speaker 9: And he was contacted by the Anti Defamation League and
Speaker 9: ben a brit who are also part of this. But
Speaker 9: the amount of organization between those groups and Judge Perlman's unknown.
Speaker 9: But Pearlman calls the top Jewish gangster in Chicago, which
Speaker 9: is Greasy Thumb Guzick. And Guzick is Al Capone's right
Speaker 9: hand man. He did some time for tax evasion. Capone
Speaker 9: was still in prison, so Guzick was calling the shots.
Speaker 9: And he's right next door to Davey Miller's boxing Jim
Speaker 9: where the Jewish fighters all trained, and upstairs there's other
Speaker 9: mayor do well Jewish young men who are about playing
Speaker 9: pool and hustling and doing that kind of thing. And
Speaker 9: Herb Brinn knows these guys because he grew up at
Speaker 9: his dad's store and hung around wasting his childhood away
Speaker 9: playing pool. And he's contacted by Anti Defamation League and
Speaker 9: because he could pass for gentile. I spoke to both
Speaker 9: of Herb's sons out of him, and don't say he
Speaker 9: was blonde and blue eyed, because he wasn't. Okay, well,
Speaker 9: he had sandy hair and brown eyes, but he could
Speaker 9: pass for gentile, and that was the key part. And
Speaker 9: he infiltrates the German American Bund in Chicago. And by
Speaker 9: this time they're not they're not putting up posters saying
Speaker 9: where the next meeting is going to be because of
Speaker 9: the problems in Newark and New York. It's known that
Speaker 9: if you if you advertise, oppositional show up. So we're
Speaker 9: at a different stage of consciousness. By the by the Germans,
Speaker 9: they know there's trouble and they're still keeping themselves as
Speaker 9: secret as possible. But with Herb Brennett at the meetings,
Speaker 9: of course, the word is out immediately. Now. The the
Speaker 9: actual fighters that Guzik sends are the boys next door,
Speaker 9: and they include include Barney Ross, who was a multi
Speaker 9: division boxing champion who was in the last days of
Speaker 9: his boxing career right and a fellow by the name
Speaker 9: of Sparky Rubinstein who's a funny little guy, kind of
Speaker 9: a hustler, kind of he was. He was he was
Speaker 9: Chicago's number one ticket scalper. If you went to any
Speaker 9: sporting event, you would get to see Sparky out front
Speaker 9: trying to sell tickets for more than their box office price.
Speaker 9: And then there was Davy Miller. And Davey Miller was
Speaker 9: not a boxer. He was a referee and had refereed
Speaker 9: some of the top heavyweight fights. But he goes along
Speaker 9: too because they're all of one mind once they get
Speaker 9: the order to go bust up German American bund meetings.
Speaker 9: And it's an interesting side note is that Sparky becomes
Speaker 9: famous later in life completely different context. He changes his
Speaker 9: name to Jack Ruby, yes, and becomes a nightclub operator
Speaker 9: in Dallas, Texas, and quite famously commits the first murder
Speaker 9: on live TV when he shoots alleged JFK assassin Leavey
Speaker 9: Oswald in the basement of the Dallas Police Department while
Speaker 9: Oswald is being transferred to the county jail on November
Speaker 9: twenty fourth, nineteen sixty three, two days after the President
Speaker 9: was shot. So Ruby goes on and after Ruby shoots Auswald,
Speaker 9: I want everybody to know the Jews are tough, and
Speaker 9: he starts saying, so it comes right out of the
Speaker 9: Judge Perlman playbook. Yeah, except for one thing is that
Speaker 9: in nineteen thirty eight they were punching people who wanted
Speaker 9: to commit genocide, and in nineteen sixty three he was
Speaker 9: silencing someone who could have cast light on how it
Speaker 9: is that the assassination came about. So nobody thought of
Speaker 9: him as a hero. They thought of him as a
Speaker 9: guy who was working for the mob and there to
Speaker 9: cover up whatever had happened to Kennedy. So those are
Speaker 9: the guys that go to the fight in Chicago, and
Speaker 9: there's no need to take them to see a boxing
Speaker 9: coach to teach him how to throw combinations. They know.
Speaker 9: And by this time the Germans are a little more
Speaker 9: aware that they're liable to have problems, and they don't
Speaker 9: react with quite the fear and shock as they had
Speaker 9: it on the East Coast. But there are no matches
Speaker 9: for these guys. You know, they they raised their fists
Speaker 9: and they're just you know, they're they're they're buried by
Speaker 9: you know, one two's, and down they go. It reminds
Speaker 9: me of the story after the York Fuel casino riot
Speaker 9: in New York. The next day, there were I think
Speaker 9: there are seven or eight arrests and all of them
Speaker 9: were Germans. And the next day he had the judge
Speaker 9: of the morning court looks out at the sad, bandaged
Speaker 9: men that they went from the emergency room to jail,
Speaker 9: and they're all represented by Jewish lawyers, and the judge says,
Speaker 9: we'll see. It just goes to show how great America is.
Speaker 9: I mean, you're spending your time bad mouthing Jews to
Speaker 9: claiming that you want Jews wiped off the face of
Speaker 9: the earth, and these Jewish men are are here to
Speaker 9: get you out of trouble. And what the judge did
Speaker 9: is he figured these guys with their with their broken noses,
Speaker 9: and they're they're, you know, scalps busted open. They've learned
Speaker 9: their lesson, so he scares them a little bit and
Speaker 9: then he sends them all home. And sure enough, I
Speaker 9: would guess that none of those men ever went to
Speaker 9: another German American bun round. Their wives wouldn't And that
Speaker 9: as from city to city to city, was how that
Speaker 9: the plan to get German Americans to vote as a
Speaker 9: as a block fell apart.
Speaker 7: You write about October eleventh, nineteen thirty eight, and Bernard Cohen,
Speaker 7: a nine year old was attacked on his way to school.
Speaker 7: Tell us what this act and the reaction from Americans.
Speaker 9: Well, yeah, this is the fellow who was cut right,
Speaker 9: he was yawatik They held him, Yeah, they held him down,
Speaker 9: and then they carved swastikas into him, which is, you know,
Speaker 9: sickening to think about. But it's weird because nat Arnaud,
Speaker 9: who was the leader on the ground of the Newark
Speaker 9: minute Men who fought the Nazis there, he had told
Speaker 9: a lie. I mean, he was interviewed by a member
Speaker 9: of the press and he told the lie that he
Speaker 9: was he was mad at the Nazis because they had
Speaker 9: carved up some kid and then hung him from a tree,
Speaker 9: and this is why they were after the Nazis, as
Speaker 9: if lying about the Nazis was necessary. But for some
Speaker 9: reason that Arno did, and then once it was out
Speaker 9: of his mouth, he couldn't take it back. So there
Speaker 9: was there was a suspicion that the actual incident in
Speaker 9: which the kid was cut and left, of course with
Speaker 9: Swaska shaped scars, was uh life imitating the lie that
Speaker 9: Arnold had told. But if anything, it just it made
Speaker 9: the gangsters fight harder. Not all of the combat between
Speaker 9: the gangsters, and the Nazis was in large groups. They
Speaker 9: weren't all riots. In each city, American Defamation League came
Speaker 9: up with lists of Nazi sympathizers, probably by taking down
Speaker 9: license plate numbers outside of meetings and things like that,
Speaker 9: and in pairs, the gangsters would go out and when
Speaker 9: these guys came out of their houses, they'd brace them.
Speaker 9: You punch them in the stomach a couple of times
Speaker 9: and say, hey, you shut up about Jews. Because the
Speaker 9: object was not to kill the Nazis. World War too
Speaker 9: hadn't happened yet, it was there was a horrible thought.
Speaker 9: The object was to get them to sh up. And
Speaker 9: you know, I think that one of the most refreshing
Speaker 9: things about my book is that in my book nobody
Speaker 9: gets killed. Although there is mass murder going on in
Speaker 9: Europe as it takes place, no one gets killed in
Speaker 9: my book. And the object is not to bury these people,
Speaker 9: is merely to silence them and teach them that if
Speaker 9: you want to say these things, you have to expect
Speaker 9: that somebody is going to punch you in the know.
Speaker 7: There is a big community of Nazi sympathizers and BUN
Speaker 7: members or future Nazis in Minneapolis. And there is also
Speaker 7: a very important figure in this also, William Dudley Pelly
Speaker 7: that you had mentioned. So tell us a little bit
Speaker 7: about the situation in Minneapolis.
Speaker 9: Well, Minneapolis had an extremely large pro Nazi community. I mean,
Speaker 9: it's German population was probably on the average of other
Speaker 9: cities across the country. But for some reason there were
Speaker 9: more haters there. And I'm not quite sure why that is,
Speaker 9: but these would be particularly Judge Pearlman is aware of this,
Speaker 9: and he calls Davy Berman, whose nickname was Davy the Jew,
Speaker 9: not a nickname you hear that much anymore. So like
Speaker 9: Whitey and like Whitey Ford, we don't use nicknames like
Speaker 9: that anymore. But Davey Berman was the leader of the
Speaker 9: anti Nazi cruise in the Twin Cities, and one night
Speaker 9: in nineteen thirty eight, his crew received word that the
Speaker 9: Silver Shirts were holding a rally at the Elks Club.
Speaker 9: So Berman contacted his fighting crew and told them to
Speaker 9: meet at the Ratison Hotel. The Ratison Hotel was where
Speaker 9: he had his headquarters, right right on the river there
Speaker 9: in Minneapolis, and once assembled, Davy handed out some brass knuckles,
Speaker 9: some fung go bat, you know what that is that's
Speaker 9: that specifically designed for hitting the ball out of your hand?
Speaker 9: Sought off pool accues and he said, and I believe
Speaker 9: this is a quote on the knoxt boys. Hit them
Speaker 9: right in their stupid little toothbrush mustaches. So his crew
Speaker 9: was twelve strong, a thirteen if he counted Davy himself.
Speaker 9: And they drove in three cars to the Elk Lodge
Speaker 9: and assembled near the front door. And the meeting was underway,
Speaker 9: and there was a silver shirt at the podium delivering
Speaker 9: a speech about this again quote the Jew bastards in
Speaker 9: this city. And taking that as there cue, Berman's gang
Speaker 9: invaded the meeting and for ten minutes they busted Nazi heads,
Speaker 9: and by the time the beatdown was over, all of
Speaker 9: the Nazis were either on the floor or they'd managed
Speaker 9: to find a way out of the building, at which
Speaker 9: time Berman went to the podium, his suit spotted with
Speaker 9: Nazi blood, and delivered a speech of his own to
Speaker 9: the wounded in the room. He said, this is a warning.
Speaker 9: Anybody who says anything against Jews gets the same street treatment,
Speaker 9: and the next time it will be worse. Tell your
Speaker 9: pal Hitler that it's a dangerous thing being an anti
Speaker 9: Semite in Minneapolis, at which point Berman pulled his gun
Speaker 9: because he had one with him, and fired a single
Speaker 9: shot into the ceiling. And that is the only shot
Speaker 9: fired by the Jewish fighters in my entire book.
Speaker 7: You moved to Los Angeles, and you had mentioned a
Speaker 7: little bit about Hollywood Land and Hitler's interest in it
Speaker 7: for sheer propaganda purposes. But tell us what the situation
Speaker 7: was in Los Angeles well.
Speaker 9: And in Los Angeles, you know, we have two of
Speaker 9: Lansky's good childhood friends, Bugsy Seedgulling and Mickey Cohen are
Speaker 9: both there. And out of all the stories you know,
Speaker 9: I used as research in my book, the one I
Speaker 9: waxed the most skeptical about is Benjamin Bugsy Siegell punching Nazis,
Speaker 9: and Mickey Cohen claims he did. And we know that
Speaker 9: this is still part of Judge Pearlman's program because Cohen says,
Speaker 9: I got a phone call from a judge back East.
Speaker 9: Doesn't name him because he's not going to rat him out. Obviously,
Speaker 9: judge would be in big trouble found out that he
Speaker 9: was making these phone calls gangsters urging them to commit crimes.
Speaker 9: And that is the weird thing about my book is
Speaker 9: that the good guys commit all the crimes and the
Speaker 9: bad guys don't. Because there were no hate speech laws
Speaker 9: in nineteen thirty eight, So as long as you didn't
Speaker 9: shout fire in a crowded room or say something obscene,
Speaker 9: you could talk about killing Jews all you wanted and
Speaker 9: you weren't breaking the law. But anyway, Bugsy Siegel was
Speaker 9: a gun man, and he was proud of it. I
Speaker 9: saved my hands for the broads, you'd say, which because
Speaker 9: he was a violent man, wasn't always good for the broads.
Speaker 9: But he didn't touch men with his hands. But Mickey
Speaker 9: Cohen said he made an exception in this case. And again,
Speaker 9: these guys did not need to be taught how to fight.
Speaker 9: Nicky Khen was a fighter as a child. That's another
Speaker 9: thing about nineteen thirty eight that's a little upsetting is
Speaker 9: that children were encouraged to box little boys anyway, and
Speaker 9: they every year in big cities they would have the
Speaker 9: newsboy boxing tournament, and grown men would go and watch
Speaker 9: as twelve year olds pummeled each other, and they would
Speaker 9: bet on the matches. And Mickey Cohen came out of this.
Speaker 9: He fought hundreds of fights as a child and as
Speaker 9: a professional, maybe two three dozen more before he became
Speaker 9: a full time gangster. And one of the most famous
Speaker 9: anti anti anti semi confrontations took place when Mickey Cohen
Speaker 9: was in a holding cell in a La County jail
Speaker 9: and found himself in the same jail cell, probably not
Speaker 9: by coincidence, with two anti semits, and when the guard
Speaker 9: who had just put Mickey in there walked away for
Speaker 9: a moment, conveniently, Cohen just went up to the two
Speaker 9: of the guys that bumped their heads together like Superman
Speaker 9: would do in the fifties TV show Pal And the
Speaker 9: guard comes back and Cohen's sitting there reading a newspaper
Speaker 9: and the other two guys are unconscious with big bumps
Speaker 9: on their heads because I don't know, they've got a
Speaker 9: fight with each other. I don't know it was all about.
Speaker 9: But maybe they might meet a doctor. So La had
Speaker 9: celebrity fighters, I guess is probably it's a very Hollywood
Speaker 9: like that. You would have your movies. The one gangster
Speaker 9: book with movie star good looks is the guy who's
Speaker 9: on the Sunset strip punching nazis.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
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Speaker 7: Now, we did talk about in the very beginning, in
Speaker 7: the opening about the most famous anti Nazi incident, and
Speaker 7: most famous incident in this book is the Madison Square
Speaker 7: Gardens February twentieth, nineteen thirty nine. And we haven't spoken
Speaker 7: about the two characters that keep popping up as noted speakers,
Speaker 7: William Kuhn.
Speaker 8: And I'll get you to pronounce the other.
Speaker 2: That's his name.
Speaker 9: It's Fritz Kuhn. And well, William Kuhn.
Speaker 8: There we go, thank you.
Speaker 9: Very very similar, very similar names. Yes, well, Fritz Kuhn
Speaker 9: saw himself as Americus Hitler, he worked for the Ford
Speaker 9: Motor Company and Henry Ford being a notorious anti semi
Speaker 9: although if that is relevant, we're not sure, but we
Speaker 9: do know Kuhn is fired from his job at the
Speaker 9: Ford Motor Company for one doing his Hitler impressions in
Speaker 9: the photographic dark room and two bothering women. Considered himself
Speaker 9: quite a ladies man, apparently, and he claimed that he
Speaker 9: had been with Hitler during the nineteen twenty three Beer Pusch,
Speaker 9: which was the beginning of the revolution that led to
Speaker 9: the Nazis being put in power years later. First time
Speaker 9: made off Hitler ever got his name in the newspaper
Speaker 9: was in nineteen twenty three, after the beer Pusch, which
Speaker 9: was a fight, and in the fight Hitler but separates
Speaker 9: a shoulder. He needs some medical attention. Kuhn says he's there.
Speaker 9: What we do know for a fact is that there
Speaker 9: is a photo of Kuhn and Hitler shaking hands, and
Speaker 9: he had it blown up and framed and put on
Speaker 9: the wall of his office, and he claimed that he
Speaker 9: was in America by Hitler's orders to take over, and
Speaker 9: to do that first by a democratic fashion, if possible,
Speaker 9: to get German Americans to vote together, and once we
Speaker 9: got some Nazi thinking politicians into into political office, and
Speaker 9: then we work from there. So Kuhn sets up the
Speaker 9: German American Bun with branches all over the country. He
Speaker 9: sets up and this is the thing that bothers me
Speaker 9: most about the entire story. He sets up Nazi youth camps. Yeah,
Speaker 9: not in Germany, but on Long Island, New York, cat
Speaker 9: Skills in New York and just outside of Los Angeles.
Speaker 9: Now across the across the country, usually outside of a
Speaker 9: large populous area where there are German Americans, but far
Speaker 9: enough outside the town so that the city police aren't
Speaker 9: responsible for anything that goes on there. And he would
Speaker 9: recruit boys and girls, and the recruiting pamphlets said nothing
Speaker 9: about Nazis, said nothing about Hitler, said German pride. Your
Speaker 9: kid will learn how to speak better German. Plus they'll
Speaker 9: they'll swim and play baseball and run and play and
Speaker 9: all the things you get at summer camp. And then
Speaker 9: when the children would show up, they would see swastikas everywhere,
Speaker 9: and there would be a nightly lecture in loving Hitler
Speaker 9: hitting Jews, and they were given uniforms and taught how
Speaker 9: to goosstep. It's just just appalling. And then on Sundays,
Speaker 9: the proud parents would get to come out and find out,
Speaker 9: some of them for the first time what's been going
Speaker 9: on in camp, and the kids would have parades for them,
Speaker 9: and American politicians would show up and give speeches, seemingly
Speaker 9: unaware of the fact that being anti Semitic was also
Speaker 9: being anti American. They're just completely oblivious to that. So Kun,
Speaker 9: and this is true. I found almost across the board
Speaker 9: among the Nazis. I guess one point two percent of
Speaker 9: a group belongs to a hate group. You figure, they're
Speaker 9: probably not the best citizens in other ways as well, right,
Speaker 9: But there are a lot of their duells in the bood,
Speaker 9: and Kun was among them. He was an alcoholic. He'd
Speaker 9: drank constantly. He was a loaner. He drove from out
Speaker 9: post to outpost alone in a car, but often terribly intoxicated.
Speaker 9: Twice he woke up with his car hanging off a bridge,
Speaker 9: and after he was eventually arrested for embezzling from his
Speaker 9: own country, from his own his own organization, people would
Speaker 9: send in the money for uniforms and he just keep it.
Speaker 9: They complain about not getting their uniforms. He said, well,
Speaker 9: next time I'm around, I'll bring some. But he was
Speaker 9: becoming a rich man off of spreading the word of Hitler,
Speaker 9: and he wasn't sharing it with his troops. Now Kons
Speaker 9: he was another fellow who was chosen pretty much because
Speaker 9: he could give a rousing speech, and when Kuhn was
Speaker 9: not around, William Cohons would be the headline speaker. But
Speaker 9: most of our photos of him are standing behind and
Speaker 9: to the left of Kuhn, And this seems to be
Speaker 9: a disproportionate number of photos of Kuhn's with a swastika
Speaker 9: right behind his head, so it looks like he's wearing
Speaker 9: a swastika halo. It's a very very odd image. And
Speaker 9: those were the two guys that ran the bud and
Speaker 9: they were breaking no laws. They were protected by the
Speaker 9: First Amendment, of course, until Pear Harbor changed everything. Yes,
Speaker 9: when the Japanese bound pro Harbor, all of a sudden,
Speaker 9: all that free speech turned into sedition, and they were
Speaker 9: all breaking the loft. They said anything that was anti
Speaker 9: American or pro German. And everybody's role changes. The Germans
Speaker 9: who are attending these rallies, a lot of them are
Speaker 9: drafted into the US Army and sent to the Pacific
Speaker 9: where their allegiances will not be questioned. And the Jewish fighters,
Speaker 9: many of them are drafted and many of them enlist,
Speaker 9: and they go to Europe and fight Nazis with guns.
Speaker 9: This time nat Arnoult, the Newark fighter, he was among
Speaker 9: those who invaded on D Day and the beaches of Normandy.
Speaker 9: He marched all the way to Berlin during Europe the
Speaker 9: Hard Way, and claims that on a couple of occasions
Speaker 9: he saw German pow is being marched in the opposite direction. Well,
Speaker 9: he recognized that who recognized him from street fights they'd
Speaker 9: had in Newark, New Jersey. So it really was the
Speaker 9: little war before the Big War.
Speaker 7: As you say, the tide turned and these people were
Speaker 7: on the run, no more bund and these people's missives
Speaker 7: turned into crimes.
Speaker 8: So you further chronicled the fate.
Speaker 7: Of not only some of the Nazis like these two speakers,
Speaker 7: but also some of the heroic mobsters that were enlisted
Speaker 7: by Judge Perlman and their fate.
Speaker 9: Yeah, you know, gangsters do not have long life expectancies.
Speaker 9: And although the heroes of my book were doing heroic
Speaker 9: things from page one to page three hundred, whoever it
Speaker 9: is before the book starts, and after the book's over
Speaker 9: they go back to their day jobs, which is being
Speaker 9: professional killers. They're not good men, and a lot of
Speaker 9: them pay the price. Lanski, who is a rare honest gangster.
Speaker 9: He would make deals with other gangsters and then keep
Speaker 9: his word. In other words, they were illegal deals, but
Speaker 9: they were honest ones. He survives and he ends up
Speaker 9: growing to be old eventually cigarettes to kill him. As
Speaker 9: for the Nazis of William Pelley tends to lands on
Speaker 9: his feet, which is which is interesting he I guess
Speaker 9: he was the survivory. I guess he went back to
Speaker 9: heaven and Jesus said, I was just kidding. But he
Speaker 9: shifts his It's pretty much the same paranoia speech, but
Speaker 9: he shifts from Jews to UFOs, and he's one of his.
Speaker 9: He'd started telling stories about ancient aliens and things like that.
Speaker 9: So he has success after World War Two, but almost
Speaker 9: everybody else comes to a bad end, and nat Arnaut
Speaker 9: becomes a full time gangster after the war, doing what
Speaker 9: he was probably always destined to do. And I have
Speaker 9: had Jewish readers who have said that they object to
Speaker 9: the word gangster, that if these men had been in Palestine,
Speaker 9: they had been called survivors. Also, I've noticed that I've
Speaker 9: given many speeches to a lot of varying crowds. I've
Speaker 9: spoken at synagogues. I spoke through a zoom type arrangement
Speaker 9: to a group at Fort Knox of army soldiers so
Speaker 9: predominantly Jewish and predominantly Gentile. And what I found was
Speaker 9: that your Christian audiences seemed to find this to be
Speaker 9: a little compartment of history, and they're kind of a cute, little, cute,
Speaker 9: little anecdotal story that took place before the big story
Speaker 9: of World War Two, and my Jewish audiences see it
Speaker 9: as just another part of a long story that's been
Speaker 9: going on for thousands of years, right, and is absolutely
Speaker 9: still going on today.
Speaker 7: You also talk about her Brin, Yes, the journalists that
Speaker 7: infiltrated and really was instrumental in gathering information for the cause.
Speaker 7: And he does farewell, doesn't he?
Speaker 9: Oh? Yeah, No. Her Brin is a healthy and happy
Speaker 9: man into his eighties, and he's still fighting anti Semitism.
Speaker 9: As an eighty year old man, he goes into a
Speaker 9: neo Nazi camp and again pretending to start admitting to
Speaker 9: being wish, says he's interested, and he distracts the receptionist
Speaker 9: long enough to go around and rifle through all the
Speaker 9: drawers and stealing documents as many as he can stuff
Speaker 9: into his pockets. And out of this he gets a
Speaker 9: series of articles he writes about the state of the
Speaker 9: Nazi Party in America at that time. He continues being
Speaker 9: a fighter of Nazis right up until old age. It's amazing.
Speaker 7: He also talked right about Judge Peerlman. He becomes a
Speaker 7: consultant to the Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, who is
Speaker 7: appointed by President Truman, ironically fittingly to prosecute Nazi war criminals.
Speaker 9: Yes, yeah, I mean the war against Nazis. Obviously, during
Speaker 9: the spring of nineteen seventy five, d escalates a great
Speaker 9: deal with the surrender of Germany and the occupation of Berlin,
Speaker 9: but it never really stops, it never really completely ends.
Speaker 9: They were some of the most horrible Nazis. Did they
Speaker 9: survive World War Two? They had to be chased down
Speaker 9: and tried later, But like minded people in future generations
Speaker 9: have taken up their cause. And we're still trying to
Speaker 9: puzzle out how to stop hate in the world, and
Speaker 9: certainly hate against Jews. It seems to be disproportionate, certainly
Speaker 9: considering Yeah, I've met thousands of Jews in my life,
Speaker 9: and every single ones it'd be pretty nice. Well, there
Speaker 9: was one.
Speaker 7: But what we didn't what we didn't what we do
Speaker 7: do detail in this book, though, and I think that
Speaker 7: we've not purposely but we've glossed over, is that when
Speaker 7: you hire people of the ilk of murder ink and
Speaker 7: they have an itching to kill, and they would have
Speaker 7: loved to kill these people that were sympathizing with the
Speaker 7: Nazis and spewing this hate, but they did dish out
Speaker 7: some extreme beatings that you do chronicle in this book.
Speaker 7: For all those people that may want to read those
Speaker 7: kinds kind of graphic details, it certainly is filled with
Speaker 7: the details of how much of a beating they inflicted
Speaker 7: on these people.
Speaker 9: Well, right, I think that I made a conscious choice
Speaker 9: while writing the book to translate all of the violence
Speaker 9: into cinema type action sequences, so I think they were
Speaker 9: a little bit easier to absorb without being offended by
Speaker 9: the violent nature of what's actually going on. I was.
Speaker 9: I was afraid of I approached the subject academically, or
Speaker 9: if I started to lay in too heavy to the
Speaker 9: Holocaust and what was going on on the other side
Speaker 9: of the ocean, that the temptation would be to wag
Speaker 9: one against the other. And certainly, what the Nazis were
Speaker 9: doing to the Jews in Europe is thousands, millions and
Speaker 9: infinity infinity times worse anything the Jews were doing to
Speaker 9: Nazis in America. Sorry, a couple of guys got their
Speaker 9: skulls busted, but we're in a world now, We're almost
Speaker 9: every Jewish person has a relative died during Hitler's regime.
Speaker 9: Because they were, you know, there's an attempt to exterminate them,
Speaker 9: and today they're Orthodox Jewish communities who may seem odd
Speaker 9: to Christians with odd rules until you realize that they're
Speaker 9: concentrating on repopulating their own flock. The reason they don't
Speaker 9: want to mix is because, first of all, outsiders aren't
Speaker 9: to be trusted, and there used to be millions of them,
Speaker 9: and now there are thousands of them, and this yet,
Speaker 9: so it's perfectly all right for them to stick to
Speaker 9: their own and marry. They're only their own kind, and
Speaker 9: they have new Jews being born with Jewish mothers and fathers,
Speaker 9: and it makes perfect sense because we don't know what
Speaker 9: it's like to have our tribe almost wipe down. And
Speaker 9: it doesn't matter what unless we're a Native American, which case,
Speaker 9: in which case we would probably have a pretty good idea.
Speaker 9: That's another thing we didn't touch upon, as the Hitler
Speaker 9: got the idea from America.
Speaker 7: Yeah, he had, he had a great example of how
Speaker 7: to decimate a population.
Speaker 9: Yes, yes, yes, anyway, Yeah, so any Americans out there
Speaker 9: feeling like, you know, we're the good guys sometimes sometimes, yeah, I.
Speaker 8: Want to thank you very much.
Speaker 7: Michael Benson for coming on and talking about your latest
Speaker 7: Gangsters Versus Nazis, how Jewish mobsters battled Nazis.
Speaker 8: In World War Two era America.
Speaker 7: It's been a fascinating time spend speaking with you, Michael Benson.
Speaker 8: You have a great evening, and good night, good night,