Americans who remember World War II reminisce about how it brought the country together. The less popular truth behind this warm nostalgia: until the attack on Pearl Harbor, America was deeply, dangerously divided.

Bradley W. Hart's Hitler's American Friends exposes the homegrown antagonists who sought to protect and promote Hitler, leave Europeans (and especially European Jews) to fend for themselves, and elevate the Nazi regime.

Some of these friends were Americans of German heritage who joined the Bund, whose leadership dreamed of installing a stateside Führer. Some were as bizarre and hair-raising as the Silver Shirt Legion, run by an eccentric who claimed that Hitler fulfilled a religious prophesy. Some were Midwestern Catholics like Father Charles Coughlin, an early right-wing radio star who broadcast anti-Semitic tirades. They were even members of Congress who used their franking privilege—sending mail at cost to American taxpayers—to distribute German propaganda. And celebrity pilot Charles Lindbergh ended up speaking for them all at the America First Committee.

We try to tell ourselves it couldn't happen here, but Americans are not immune to the lure of fascism. Hitler's American Friends is a powerful look at how the forces of evil manipulate ordinary people, how we stepped back from the ledge, and the disturbing ease with which we could return to it.

Purchase your copy of Hitler's American Friends here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250148957

Attribution For The Opening Speech Source: In 1939 the Nazis Held a Rally at Madison Square Garden | Topic

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eq9yst4W-6c&t=243s

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In this series Doctor Craig Coenen guides us through the fascinating and terrifying history of Auschwitz.

But in this series we don't start with the camp and the foreboding train tracks of terror, instead we start with a town in the Medieval world.

Taking us back to the Middle Ages Dr. Coenen will take us through the history of this town as we watch a variety of peoples attempt to settle it while various powers fight to control it. From social harmony to vicious antisemitism we see a complicated history that in a way is telling of the horror that is to come and especially as we approach the birth of the twentieth century.

Song Attribution: "Schindler's List " - Yerushalayim Shel Zahav ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92UaUyJZ6ZE

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Music Attribution: Beethoven - Symphony n°9 - Berlin / Furtwängler 1942

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_AI9kp02eq0

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