Elizabeth Dilling, Mothers' movement, and the Sedition Trial
I've always found it difficult to try to summarize someone's life within a few paragraphs or less, in a way that does them justice, and this is especially the case when it's someone I've come to like or appreciate through the research I've done about them. Often, what it results in can barely even be described as a "summary," if anything, it's a mockery, because it leaves out the essence of who they are or were as a person, it leaves out their personality. Yet if I try to include such information, the article expands infinitely - and that without getting to the main subject of the article - leading me to wonder: "What am I even trying to do here?"
This is where I've found myself with Elizabeth Dilling, a woman that was a Christian, pro-America, anti-Communist, anti-interventionist, anti-Roosevelt, and anti-plenty of other things. How could I leave out the fact that she enrolled in the University of Chicago to pursue becoming an orchestral musician, only to leave the university three years later - without a degree - because she was feeling lonely? Or for that matter, her meeting an Army officer she briefly dated, and whom - when he proposed to her - she rejected? And not because she didn't like him, but because when he gave her several philosophy books to read, he underlined passages stating that women should be dominated and that they only respected men who beat them. The way she rejected him was by reciting a poem that she wrote, mocking his ideas - if that's not funny and relevant to who she was, then nothing is.
Shortly thereafter, Dilling met Albert Wallick, an engineer studying law, and a year later they got married. In 1920, their son Kirkpatrick was born. However, around that same time, she found out that Albert was having an affair. The way she dealt with his infidelity is as follows: She got into the car with her mother - and her mother was carrying a revolver - they drove over to his mistress' home, shattered the front window, made their way inside, and told her to never contact her husband again. She also took all the jewelry he gifted to the mistress, all of which was originally Dilling's, and made him promise to never cheat on her again. He also paid her $100,000 (in 1920s money!) so she wouldn't divorce him. Then, in 1925, their second child Elizabeth Jane was born. During the 1920s they travelled quite a bit; they visited Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East. On their trip to Britain and France in 1923, they encountered people who weren't exactly grateful for America's intervention in the war, who believed that America should have intervened sooner, and who mocked America's navy, which led her to promise that if another war was to happen in Europe, she would oppose American intervention.
But it was their month-long trip to the Soviet Union in 1931 that proved particularly influential on her politics. When they visited Moscow and Leningrad, she was dismayed by what she found: People dressed poorly, decimated by disease and famine, "wild" and abandoned children sleeping on hotel doorways, and kids as young as six begging in English for cigarettes. The stores were half empty, with goods serving solely as display, and with most groceries consisting of black bread, dried herring, and cucumbers. There were also stores catering solely to foreign tourists, offering them items that were looted from their previous owners. When it came to the roads, they were torn up and rutted, and two out of three buses they took broke down, all while Communist officials drove in Rolls-Royces. She was even more dismayed by the state of churches and monasteries they visited, which were turned into atheist museums and had displays mocking Jesus as a bootlegger, Holy Communion as a form of cannibalism, and deriding Christianity as garbage which impeded the Soviet's Five Year Plan. When she saw their plans to tear down a cathedral so they could build the Palace of the Soviet in its place, she thought: "You may hate HIM all you like. I LOVE HIM. I cannot talk here but if I ever get out of here I WILL TALK."
Once home, Dilling began studying communism, dropped out of her church because its pastor was a liberal, and instead became a student of Iris McCord, who taught at the Moody Bible Institute and ran a radio program. McCord arranged for her to speak to the church groups that were interested in anti-communism, and the rest was history. It wasn't long before she found herself traveling America and giving lectures up to five times a week, and by 1932 she published a pamphlet titled: Red Revolution: Do We Want It Here? She further expanded her interests by reading and accumulating books on various topics, from philosophy and law, to foreign policy and revolution, and in 1934 she self-published her first book, The Red Network: A "Who's Who" and Handbook of Radicalism for Patriots. The book was partially based on reports written by the Lusk Committee, and detailed hundreds of "subversive" organizations, Communists, and those sympathetic to them, along with criticizing Roosevelt and the New Deal. The book ended up being fairly influential among those on the right; it was praised by several priests, and The Erie Chemical Company, which manufactured tear gas, bought over a thousand copies and sent them to the National Guard and police departments, arguing that the tear gas they manufactured could be used to control the crowds of Communists.
Two weeks before the election of 1936, Dilling published a book, The Roosevelt Red Record and Its Background, which wasn't nearly as successful as her first book. Then, in 1938 she founded Patriotic Research Bureau, an archive located in Chicago, and launched Patriotic Research Bulletin, which was a newsletter consisting of 25 to 30 pages featuring her political opinions that she mailed free of charge to those who signed up at her speeches. She funded this with the help of her husband. Although she received donations from her readers and supporters, most of them were average people who didn't have a lot of money to spare, with the exception of a few individuals like Henry Ford and Henry B. Joy.
Mothers' movement
In 1939, as World War II commenced, so did the Mothers' movement. The first chapter of the National Legion of Mothers of America (NLMA) was founded by Frances Sherrill, Mary M. Sheldon, and Mary Ireland, who had sons whom they believed could be drafted and sent to fight in an "unnecessary war." Subsequently, the founding of Mothers' movement and its anti-interventionist efforts were publicized by William Randolph Hearst - a former Democrat politician and former Roosevelt supporter, who owned a newspaper chain and sought to prevent the repeal of Neutrality Act, which banned the sale of weapons to warring nations - leading to thousands of women across America seeking to join the movement. One Los Angeles mother in particular skipped her breakfast so she could file a registration, stating: "I have a 21-year-old son and I’m going to fight for him. It was too much trouble to bring him into the world and bring him up all these years to have him fight the battles of foreign nations."
Within a week, over 10,000 women from Los Angeles had joined the Legion, and NLMA chapters sprouted across the country, and so did similar organizations. While the repeal of Neutrality Act was being debated in front of Congress, dozens of women from Mothers of the U.S.A. from Michigan travelled to Washington in order to appeal to Congress to tighten the Neutrality Act. The opposite occurred. On November 4th, 1939, Roosevelt signed the new Neutrality Act which allowed for the sale of weapons to belligerent nations, thus defeating the very purpose of such law.
However, this was just the beginning of the Mothers' movement. By December 1939, NLMA had chapters in 37 states, becoming the largest women's organization in the country. On December 11, 1939, Charles Coughlin endorsed the NLMA and urged women to become its members. Coughlin was a Catholic priest who ran a radio broadcast that reached up to 30 million people during the 1930s. He published the newspaper Social Justice, helped launch several NLMA chapters, advised local leaders, and gave them publicity. But, his criticism of Jewish Bankers and his discussion of their alleged influence in the Soviet's October Revolution of 1917, led to him being labeled an anti-semite, which he denied. When a representative of Jewish Community Council of Detroit - composed of American Jewish Committee, American Jewish Congress, Jewish Labor Committee and B'Nai B'Rith - struggled to find radio facilities to use so they could address Coughlin's "anti-semitism," he offered to them the use his radio network, at his expense, which they declined. NLMA was also endorsed by Chicago Tribune, Gerald L. K. Smith and George Sylvester Viereck.
Then, in January 1940, a famous novelist and newspaper columnist, Kathleen Norris, became the president of the NLMA. Norris, a Roosevelt and New Deal critic who opposed American intervention in World War II, was otherwise fairly liberal, and once she became its president she didn't want the NLMA to be associated with those like Coughlin, which is why she asked him to retract his endorsement - he refused. Dilling, on the other hand, stayed out of Mothers' movement during this time period because she wasn't interested in associating with Norris, since she considered her to be too soft on communism.
1940 proved to be a busy year for Norris. With the presidential election in sight, she campaigned for Wendel Willkie, who was running against Roosevelt. Willkie also had the support of Cathrine Curtis, an actress, lobbyist, investor, and the first female movie producer. In the early 1930s, Curtis ran a radio show on WMCA, Women and Money, which got cancelled over her criticism of Roosevelt's New Deal. In 1939, Curtis founded Women's National Committee to Keep U.S. Out of War. She was also a friend of Dilling's. While Dilling expressed support for Willkie, she was far from enthusiastic about him, and after Roosevelt won, she sneered that the country would get what it deserved.
Norris also fought against Burke-Wadsworth Act, better known as the Selective Service Act. She testified in front of congress that the draft wasn't necessary since no invasion was imminent, and instead, she argued, America should impose a three months long training for men so if the war did break out they would be prepared. Hannah M. Conners, who represented a NLMA chapter from Massachusetts, testified against the bill by stating that the draft wasn't needed because American boys would volunteer, but only to fight for America - not for other countries. A couple of NLMA representatives also gathered outside the Senate chambers, and staged a "death watch."
At the same time, women from the Congress of Mothers of the United States of America gathered on Capitol Hill to protest against the bill, leading to this photo being taken in which they can be seen hanging an effigy of Claude Pepper, a pro-interventionist politician.
When approached by police which told them that they couldn't do this here, some of the women replied: "Who's going to stop us?"
The bill passed the Senate with 58 votes in favor, and 31 opposed.
That same year, Norris also had to face the conflict that was brewing within NLMA, since several chapters were either being led, or have been taken over by the women that were quite further to the right than she was - some of which were Coughlin admirers. One such chapter was from New York, which sought to create Molly Pitchers Rifle Legion, inspired by the woman that armed herself during the American revolution, with the aim of training women so if an invasion of America was to occur, they would be able to shoot down paratroopers. Norris opposed it. In May 1940, Molly Pitchers' quit the NLMA, and urged women to "Buy Christian, Vote Christian, Employ Christian," while also expressing criticism of Jews and Communists. After the New York chapter quit, Norris expelled Boston and Cleveland chapters. However, she still struggled to exert full control over different NLMA chapters which led her to announce her resignation during the first NLMA convention, in April 1941.
In the early 1941, and leading up to the congressional debate over the Lend-Lease bill, membership of Mothers' groups continued to grow, reaching its peak of 5-6 million members across the country. In February 1941, Lyrl Clark Van Hyning - a former teacher and a former member of the Daughters of the American Revolution - founded We, The Mothers, Mobilize for America, with the help of Elizabeth Dilling. Within a short period of time, the group reached 150,000 members. That same February, as the Lend-Lease bill passed the House, the fight to prevent it from passing the Senate commenced. Dilling collaborated with anti-war organizations and spoke at rallies in Chicago and other cities in an effort to gather volunteers, then created a group, The Mothers' Crusade to Defeat H.R. 1776. She also encouraged women to write to Congress in protest over the Lend-Lease bill; they got more mail than on any other bill since the Versailles Treaty.
On February 11, Dilling travelled to Washington with one hundred women in tow, where they were joined by roughly 500 women from several different states, including Cathrine Curtis and Rose Farber, the latter of which led Mothers of the United States of America. While Dilling's group usually protested on Capitol Hill, Curtis's group prepared research material and mailed literature regarding the bill - over 1 million in a month - and Farber's group visited senators in groups of two and four, asking them to oppose the Lend-Lease bill, sometimes waiting even a couple of hours for a short audience. There were also some senators who weren't willing to see them at all. One such senator was Scott Lucas from Illinois, who supported the bill. When mothers came to see him, he took his name off his office door and locked the office; most of the women that were in the hall outside his office got ejected, but Dilling persisted and made her way inside. When he offered to met them one at the time, they refused. They discussed the bill with him, there was some yelling, and one women event knelt, took his ankle, and prayed. He wasn't pleased.
Then there was Claude Pepper, who had managed to evade the women for days. When they went to his office and demanded to be let in, they were told that he was on the Senate floor, and they were asked to leave; again, they refused, and chanted "We want Pepper." The police was called and Dilling and her secretary, Jean Lundgreen, were arrested for disorderly conduct. Both of them were released on a five dollars' bail, although Dilling was convicted the day after and given a suspended sentence. On February 15 and February 26, Dilling led a parade down Pennsylvania Avenue where women marched in pair of two, carrying American flags, placards, chest protects, and sung. Their slogan was "Kill Bill 1776, Not Our Boys." Two women also brought a coffin with a skeleton, labeling it "Fruits of Bill 1776."
On February 27, after they heard a rumor that Carter Glass, a supporter of Lend-Lease, was so enthusiastic to get America into the war that he put up a British flag on the corner of his desk, Dilling and a dozen of other women tried to confront him, but they were prevented from going into his office by a policeman. When Glass offered to see them one by one, they refused, and remained within the corridor from which they were told to leave. Dilling was once again arrested for disorderly conduct, and spent six days on trial, while mothers packed the court and picketed outside. She was convicted and fined 25 dollars. Commenting on her conviction, she stated that it was the sort of justice she expected from a Roosevelt judge. During her trial, she took the time to write to Glass and called him a warmonger, a traitor, and described him as "another Benedict Arnold, an overaged destroyer of American youth," to which he responded by asking the FBI to investigate the Mothers' groups for links to foreign governments, and added: "I likewise believe it would be pertinent to inquire into whether they are mothers. For the sake of the race, I devoutedly hope not."
Dilling found his words insulting. She told him to come and meet them and offered to show him the photos of her own children. She also noted that one of the mothers who was with her had 13 children, five of them male and of drafting age. However, by the time Dilling's trial came to an end, the congressional debate on the bill was practically over. They made some more efforts to prevent its passing, such as by trying to deliver letters to Roosevelt, while Elsie Canef got ejected from Senate gallery after she hung a banner over the balcony, which read: "H.R. 1776 means war-vote no," but ultimately, the bill passed the Senate and got signed into law.
Nevertheless, they weren't ready to put up a white flag just yet. Instead, the members of the Mothers' movement worked towards enacting a Constitutional amendment which would have required a public referendum to declare war; they circulated petitions calling for impeachment of Roosevelt; and they planned to create an anti-war party, which would have entered its first candidates in the congressional elections of 1942. But then, after the attack against Pearl Harbor happened, their plans never materialized, and their membership started to fade; many other anti-war groups completely collapsed.
On July 21, 1942, Elizabeth Dilling and dozens of other right-wing figures were indicted for violating the conspiracy sections of the Espionage Act (1917) and Smith Act (1940). The prosecutor was William Power Maloney. The indictment listed dozens of organizations and publications through which propaganda was spread, including America First Committee - a notable anti-war, right-wing group at the time. On January 4th, 1943, a second indictment was brought, superseding the first; it included more defendants and excluded many of the aforementioned organizations. However, a month later after facing pressure from the right-wing, anti-interventionist politicians, including Burton Wheeler, who questioned the charges, the supposed evidence against the defendants, and even suggested that they wanted to pursue congressional investigation, Roosevelt's Attorney General replaced Maloney with John Rogge.
On January 3rd, 1944, John Rogge brought a third indictment which excluded several people and added others, charging them under the Smith Act for conspiring with other defendants, officials of the German government, and the leaders and members of the Nazi party, in an effort to "interfere with, impair and influence the loyalty, morale and discipline of the military and naval forces of the United States," with the goal of overthrowing the democratic American government and replacing it with fascism, and the 30 defendants were brought into Washington D.C. to face trial.
The Defendants
The full list of the defendants in the sedition trial was as follows:
Elizabeth Dilling, one of the two women indicted. She found out about the indictment on the radio;
Gerald B Winrod, an evangelist preacher and a proponent of faith healing, who ran a newspaper The Defender, which at its peak had a reach of 100,000 people;
Eugene N. Sanctuary, a former lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army. While taking part in the operation of the Russian Railway Service Corps - an American military unit formed during WWI that was sent to Russia to repair and maintain the railways - he witnessed the Bolshevik revolution, which led him to become an anti-Communist. Based on his book, Are These Things So? (1934), he also seems to have been anti-Jewish;
George E. Deatherage, an engineer who founded American Nationalist Confederation and modern Knights of the White Camelia. He seems to have been a Nazi sympathizer. He had a son in the American military during WWII;
Edward J. Smythe, who ran the publication Our Common Cause, and a "letterhead" organization Protestant War Veterans which aimed to "combat all -isms, including Nazism and fascism." He didn't have many supporters, and he might have tried fleeing to Canada, since he was found 40 miles from the Canadian border. He claimed he wasn't notified about the trial date;
James C. True, who allegedly created the term "America First" in 1934, and ran Industrial Control Reports, "a weekly business gossip letter." In the early 1930s due to his critique of the National Recovery Administration, which was a part of the Roosevelt's New Deal, he was barred from attending the press conferences run by the head of NRA. He seems to have been anti-Jewish;
Frank W. Clark, who was a member of Silver Shirts and ran the Washington campaign for William D. Pelley, who ran for president under the Christian Party. Eventually they had a falling out;
Lois de Lafayette Washburn, the second woman charged, whose pen name was T.N.T. She claimed to be a descendant of Marquis de Lafayette, the French general who fought for colonists in American revolution. She founded Crusaders for Economic Liberty, served as an executive secretary of the National Gentile League, and with Clark, she ran National Liberty Party and its publication Yankee Freeman;
Garland Alderman, E. J. Parker Sage, and William Robert Lyman Jr. who were a part of National Workers League (they were the only members), which was an anti-union, anti-black, nationalist group. Alderman was also a chairman of Michigan America First Committee chapter; Sage worked a night job in Washington during the trial, but got fired for being a defendant in the trial;
Ernest F. Elmhurst, who wrote The World Hoax - it's not what you think - in 1938, arguing that "world's most cherished institutions, including religion, politics, and science" are hoaxes, serving to control and manipulate the people. During the sedition trial, he worked nights in Washington hotels, but he got fired after media agitated for him to be fired, since he was a defendant in the trial;
Robert Noble and Ellis O. Jones, who ran an anti-Roosevelt, anti-interventionist group Friends of Progress. In December 1941, they held a series of mock trials impeaching Roosevelt. Within the same month, they were arrested and charged for violating Espionage Act of 1917, but the charges were dropped several weeks later. In 1942, they were charged for violating California Subversive Organization Registration Act and Espionage Act of 1917, for libeling and ridiculing General MacArthur, Roosevelt, Churchill and Allies. They were convicted and sentenced to five years in prison; in 1945, the state conviction was overturned for lack of proof, while the federal conviction withstood appeal. Noble had a son in the American navy during WWII;
Robert E. Edmondson, a New York pamphleteer. In 1930s, he was charged for libeling Jews, but the judge ruled a group couldn't be libeled. An article about him from the Jewish Post concerning his prosecution, noted that they found it emotionally pleasing, but they believed that by prosecuting him they could be making a martyr out of him, so several different Jewish organizations supported a motion to dismiss the indictment. He stated that he wasn't against "Jews because of their religion, as a race, a people or as individuals, but because Jewish leadership [i.e., the bankers] is actively anti-American," and that if any other group was to blame, his attitude would remain the same. By the time of the sedition trial, he and his family were so poor that they were dependent on charity;
Howard V. Broenstrupp, pen name Lieut. Gen. Count V. Cherep-Spiridovich, whose specialty was "eccentric occultism." He can be seen in the picture above, standing beside Lafayette Washburn. He wrote for a weekly newspaper Publicity, along with Ellis Jones;
David Baxter, an anti-Roosevelt (former supporter), former socialist, and anti-interventionist, who was also a member of the America First Committee. In 1942, the Sun newspaper described him as a "harmless radical, always taking the leftmost viewpoint on any and all issues." Following the trial, Baxter wrote a memoir about it which can be read here. In the memoir, he says that he became convinced of an international conspiracy that was using America as a pawn, as has been the case in WW1 (see Nye Committee). He says that because he called for negotiated peace after the outbreak of WWII - at a time when many other anti-interventionists either "disappeared" or expressed support for the war - he was thrust into the national prominence by the mainstream media, and in turn, brought to Roosevelt's attention, which "triggered my political demise." He was slandered by the media, and many of the people "who had known me for years were afraid to be seen with me. Quite frankly, I felt depressed and disillusioned." While he was on the trial, he alleges that his wife tried to find a job to support herself and their children, only to get fired when her employer found out to who she was married. Her employer told her that if she divorced, she could have her job back. She refused;
Joe E. McWilliams, an industrial engineer who used a wagon draped in an American flag to publicize his speeches and rallies, most of which were street presentations. He often criticized Roosevelt, communism, capitalism, and international Jews. He tried running for Congress without much success. He found a job during the trial, but after the firm he worked at faced pressure from the Chicago Sun and Jewish organizations, he got fired;
Prescott F. Dennett, who worked as a publicist in Washington and was paid to lead two committees by Viereck. He was brought into the U.S. Army in 1941, but had to face sedition charges;
Charles B. Hudson, an editor of a small bulletin America in Danger. At one point, he was also an advisor of the retired Major Gen. George Van Horn Moseley;
Peter Stahrenberg, a small-time printer in New York City, and a member of the American Labor Party. He was anti-Jewish;
Wilhelm Kunze, Herman Max Schwinn, Hans Diebel, August Klapprott, and Franz K. Ferenz, all of whom were members of the German American Bund. German American Bund was a pro-American, pro-Nazi, anti-interventionist organization, consisting solely of the American citizens of German descent and German immigrants. Since the Nazi government saw Bund as untrustworthy and harmful to German-American relations, they sought to distance themselves from it and on March 1st, 1938, the Nazi government declared that no German citizen should be a member of the German American Bund, and that Nazi emblems and symbols shouldn't be used by the organization. In 1939, Fritz Julius Kuhn who was the leader of the Bund got investigated for embezzling money from the group; while its members didn't seek prosecution, he was prosecuted by the New York district attorney in an effort to "cripple the Bund." Although the Bund disbanded in 1941, a year later dozens of its members were prosecuted and convicted for seeking to violate the Selective Service Act, since they criticized the fact that Bundists were being denaturalized, and told other members that they should refuse service in the military until that was changed. Their conviction was overturned in 1945, but it could be argued that the prosecution succeeded in its aims of destroying the Bund, since several of its members were either denaturalized and deported, or committed suicide;
William D. Pelley, a writer, journalist, activist, and occultist, who led the Silver Shirts organization, which at its peak had around 5,000 members, and when they disbanded in 1940, around 200. Silver Shirts sought to establish "Christian Commonwealth" in America, a government that would combine the principles of theocracy, socialism, fascism;
Elmer J. Garner, an 83 year old man who was the editor of Publicity. After losing the mailing permit for his paper, he lived with his wife from donations, and they had a goat and a couple of chickens;
Lawrence Dennis, who served as a lieutenant of infantry in World War I, graduated from Harvard in 1920, and spent seven years working as a U.S. diplomat. He was married to Eleanor Simon who had Jewish ancestry, and during World War II he tried to join the U.S. Army, but he got rejected after the media ran stories about him. He wrote several books, including Is Capitalism Doomed? which was published in 1932 at the height of Great Depression. In 1941, Life magazine called him "America's No. 1 intellectual Fascist." Dennis was of mixed-heritage, given his mother was African-American. The Chronicle Magazine wrote an article about him, stating in part: "For Dennis to be anointed leader of a racist fifth column in America was just another irony in a life rich with them." After the trial, Dennis wrote a book about it, A trial on trial.
The last defendant in the trial was George Sylvester Viereck, a German-American poet and journalist who was pro-American and pro-German. He was perhaps the most prominent defendant in the trial. In 1910, Viereck wrote a best-selling book Confessions of a Barbarian, and co-founded a literary and arts magazine called The International, with contributors including his close friend Blanche Shoemaker Wagstaff and the British occultist and poet Aleister Crowley. He was friends with Nicola Tesla - Tesla dedicated the poem Fragments of Olympian Gossip to him - and an acquaintance of Theodore Roosevelt, whom his father helped elect.
As World War I commenced, and because most of the foreign news in America came from English sources, he founded The Fatherland, a weekly magazine aiming to present the German point of view and to advocate for American neutrality in the war. However, he also accepted money from the German government to print pamphlets and booklets. When America entered the war, he renamed his publication to Viereck's American Monthly, and changed its tone to align with the American goals. At one point, his briefcase which contained German government documents was stolen by a federal agent, and its contents were sent to the media which published it, showing a list of American citizens who received money from the German government. All of this, including his previous anti-interventionist stance, tarnished his reputation; he was expelled from several social clubs and organizations including the Poetry Society of America, fell out with Blanche (they eventually reconciled), and a lynch mob showed up at his home.
After the war, Viereck sought to revive his career as a writer and public figure. He wrote a book on popular science which caught the attention of Freud, and he interviewed him. During the 1920s, he also interviewed Ferdinand Fosch, the Supreme Allied Commander during WWI, Queen Elisabeth of the Belgians, Oswald Spengler, Benito Mussolini, Magnus Hirschfeld, and Albert Einstein, among others. Another person he interviewed was Adolf Hitler. When he tried to get the interview published, none of the newspaper editors demonstrated interest in it; they believed the interview wasn't newsworthy. On the other hand, Viereck thought: "If he lives, Hitler for better or for worse, is sure to make history." And thus he published the interview in his own journal.
While Viereck was involved in politics, he stated that he was far less interested in ideology, and more in the personality of the leaders. He thought Hitler was a genius, one that was perhaps neurotic about Jews. In 1932, he started working with a public relations firm Carl Byoir and Associates, which was owned by a Jewish man, to serve clients in Germany. This led to him having to explain himself in front of the newly-formed Un-American Activities Committee, whose findings eventually led to the establishment of Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Viereck also set up his own publishing house, Flanders Hall, through which he earned between $5,000 and $10,000 for each book he published. In 1939, motivated by his pro-German sentiment, Viereck started working as an editor for the German Library of Information and became a correspondent for a Munich newspaper. In the letter through which he accepted the job, he stated:
In the ... remote contingency of a break between the United States and Germany, we are both automatically released from any obligation flowing from this agreement ... I shall not be asked to prepare or edit any matter derogatory to the United States, or to undertake any editorial assignment which could possibly conflict with American laws and my duties as an American citizen.
After taking the job, he registered as a foreign agent. While working for the Library, he edited and mailed Facts in Review, which discussed contemporary issues from a German point of view, and contained information on the German employment levels, culture, speeches of German politicians, and scientific innovations. He also associated with some politicians and used their franking privilege to mail out "hundreds of thousands of reprints" from Congressional Record, espousing policies and slogans like "No convoys, no war!" and "Europe for the Europeans; Asia for the Asiatics; America for the Americans." While working for the Library, he believed that the organization shouldn't associate with opponents of the Roosevelt administration, or any anti-war organizations so as not to sully their reputations. In mid 1941, before American involvement in the war, Viereck broke off connections with his German employers; shortly afterwards he was indicted and convicted for failing to disclose all of his activities under FARA. However, in 1943, the Supreme Court overturned this conviction, with one of the judges noting that much of what he published was "undertaken by the defendant in his own behalf, rather than as a part of his work for those he represented as an agent, and that there was nothing in the law at that time (it has since been amended) requiring the disclosure of those activities."
He was tried for the second time, but the trial resulted in a mistrial. Third time proved to be the charm, as he was found guilty and sentenced to 1-5 years in prison;
Before I proceed any further, a small break: This is Father Charles Coughlin whom I brought up earlier in the article.
The people and the organizations behind the trial
It would be quite difficult to name each and every person that called for or was involved in bringing about the sedition trial, especially since I don't have the access to all the first hand information necessary. However, while doing research on the subject, several key figures and organizations have emerged.
One such figure was President Franklin D. Roosevelt. On multiple occasions, Roosevelt exerted pressure on his attorney general, Francis Biddle, to prosecute his critics and those who were opposed to the American intervention in the World War II. From Biddle's own words:
The president began to send me brief memoranda to which were attached some of the scurrilous attacks on his leadership, with a notation: "What about this?" or "What are you doing to stop this?" I explained to him my view of the unwisdom of bringing indictments for sedition except where there was evidence that recruitment was substantially being interfered with, or there was some connection between the speech and propaganda centers in Germany ... He was not much interested in the theory of sedition, or in the constitutional right to criticize the government in wartime. He wanted this anti-war talk stopped ... he began to go for me in the Cabinet ... When my turn came, as he went around the table, his habitual affability dropped ... "When are you going to indict the seditionists?" he would ask; and the next week, and every week after that, until the indictment was found, he would repeat the same question.
He also sent Biddle clippings from anti-interventionist publications like Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, and the Hearst newspapers, asking him to prosecute them for sedition and suggesting that they were being funded by Italy and Germany; Biddle analyzed the papers and concluded that these publications weren't echoing the propaganda of either of those countries, so he took no further action.
Another underlying reason for the prosecution was that most defendants were guilty of some form of an -ism. William Power Maloney, who was supposed to prosecute them before he got replaced, had allegedly told his friends that:
Once started, the prosecution must never stop - until the whole story has been told to the American people and the guilty ones punished. If we don't, these people will have been made into martyrs and given a license to preach hatred of every kind. Anti-Semitism, anti-Catholicism, anti-everything will be worse than it was before.
This was further echoed in Rogge's (prosecutor's) book published almost two decades after the trial, where he quotes his memorandum which he wrote in 1946, lamenting:
Back again, too, are the sleazy pamphlets and 'weekly bulletins' attacking the Jews, the Catholics, the [blacks]—any handy minority ... denouncing our war allies and our peace objectives; screaming that Pearl Harbor was a deliberate plot by Roosevelt, the Communists, and 'international Jewry'; spreading hatred and distrust; and promoting, now that 'Fascist' is an ugly word, the 'nationalist' cause ... In spite of the grim nature of the picture I have presented, legal remedies, especially under Supreme Court decisions of the last two terms, are as inadequate and ineffective as the picture is disturbing. It is difficult in this country, under Supreme Court decisions, to be guilty of sedition.
Before moving on to other people and organizations, it's worth noting that at the time, the government has been targeting people across the political spectrum, and in different ways, depending on the case by case basis. One such person was William Dudley Pelley, who was also a part of the sedition trial.
Pelly had been publishing criticism of Roosevelt for a while, which bothered Roosevelt. In 1938, Pelley questioned Roosevelt's family claim to Hyde Park, leading Roosevelt to ask J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, whether it would be possible to prosecute Pelley over it. The next year, when Pelley accused Roosevelt of embezzling funds from a foundation, Roosevelt again called for action against him; his attorney general was willing, but told him that Pelley might subpoena him to testify. No further action was taken. In 1942, after America entered World War II, when Pelley published allegedly false statements about the war and was prosecuted under the Espionage Act of 1917, resulting in a conviction. Regarding the prosecution, Roosevelt stated: "Now that we are in the war, it looks like a good chance to clean up a number of these vile publications."
In his appeal, Pelley argued that these were his opinions; the court stated that while his statements were generalities that were difficult to refute, none of the readers of his publication - which was a few thousand people - were informed that his articles were a matter of opinion, and not fact. One of the claims that Pelley made was that government was bankrupt; the way government refuted this was by bringing a banker to offer his expert opinion. Another claim was that the country wasn't united behind Roosevelt, so the government brought a traveling salesman to testify what he heard as he traveled the country. Thus, Pelley went to prison on a 15-years long sentence. He was paroled after 8, under condition to not engage in politics anymore.
Another person that Roosevelt administration had gone after was Charles Coughlin, the Catholic priest with perhaps the largest audience among the critics of the Roosevelt administration and American involvement in the war. Beyond being a critic of Roosevelt's policies, Coughlin previously helped to defeat Roosevelt's attempt for United States to join the World Court. In 1939, after the start of World War II, Coughlin used his radio broadcast to appeal to his audience to travel to Washington "as an army of peace," to prevent the repeal of the Neutrality Act. For this, his critics accused him of "incitement bordering on civil war," and the National Association of Broadcasters created a code to limit the sale of air time to "controversial" individuals. Although several of the networks that carried his broadcast initially opposed the code, they ended up adopting it. On September 23, 1940, Coughlin announced that his radio program was shutting down, and stated that his decision was a result of "those who control circumstances beyond my reach."
Following this, Coughlin relied on his Social Justice publication to reach his followers. In 1942, unsatisfied with only his radio program being shut down, Biddle wrote to the Postmaster General suggesting to remove Coughlin's mailing privileges; he did. Biddle defended his actions by claiming that Social Justice violated the "false statement" provision of the Espionage Act of 1917. In turn, Coughlin responded with a letter to Biddle, which he released to the press, offering to appear at any time before a grand jury to testify to the truth of the statements he made in Social Justice.
With Biddle worried that this could lead to Coughlin becoming a "martyr," and that a criminal prosecution could throw the country "into a rift that would do infinite harm to the war effort," he asked a banker and a Roosevelt appointee, Leo Crowley, to offer a deal to the Archbishop: If he closed Coughlin's publication and stopped all of his political activities, the Department of Justice wouldn't prosecute Coughlin. Subsequently, the Archbishop ordered Coughlin to do so, with the alternative being a federal indictment and a suspension from active ministry. Coughlin complied. Later, Biddle noted in his book that this "was the end of Father Coughlin," and added that Roosevelt "was delighted."
Following this, dozens of other publications faced similar treatment, including The Militant, with the Post Office Attorney stating that "[I]t does not make any difference if everything The Militant [says] is true. We believe that any one violates the Espionage Act who holds up and dwells on the horrors of war with the effect that enlistment is discouraged by readers."
J. Edgar Hoover, the director of the FBI, will become more relevant later. He also played a role in various trials around the same time period and with similar justifications. Starting with 1938, he expanded the FBI intelligence investigations of "subversive" activities, which he stated should be done with the "utmost secrecy in order to avoid criticism or objections which might be raised to such an expansion by either ill-informed persons or individuals having some ulterior motive." One of the groups FBI targeted was Christian Front, which was inspired by Coughlin and consisted mostly of Irish-Americans that criticized warmongers, Jewish international bankers, and Roosevelt. Thomas Molloy, a bishop, was one of its more prominent supporters. Addressing the notion that the organization was "anti-semitic," he wrote in a newspaper: "Well what of it? Just what law was violated?" In 1940, dozens of them were arrested, with Hoover claiming that they planned to "knock off about a dozen Congressman" and "blow up the goddam Police Department." Back in the real world, the evidence to support such charges simply wasn't there; for several defendants, the result was a hung jury, while thirteen others got acquitted. When the Attorney General which prosecuted them got replaced with another, the federal government dropped its charged, and the new Attorney General noted that the charges against them were "a bit fantastic." Nevertheless, it could be said that the goal of the government was achieved. According to one historian, "The trial revealed the Christian Fronters to be a group of unbalanced cranks and successfully discredited the entire movement." One person also committed suicide.
Another person that made the sedition trial possible was Walter Winchell, a newspaper gossip columnist and radio news commentator, who was a grandson of a Jewish-born Russian Rabbi. He was a friend of Hoover's, a staunch supporter of Roosevelt, the New Deal, and civil rights for African Americans (wait-for-it). Winchell came to prominence, perhaps ironically, thanks to the Hearst newspaper chain syndicate, and during the 1930s he regularly slandered right-wing figures and eventually called for the prosecution of those who ended up on the sedition trial. The brilliance of how he went after the right-wing figures can't be understated; he referred to Gerald L. K. Smith as Gerald Lucifer KKKodfish Smith, to Charles Lindberg as The Lone Ostrich, and to countless others as, simply, "Nazis." He could do this without any fear of being sued for slander or libel, because for most of his career, the contracts he had with his employers required of them to not hold him liable for any damages that they incurred from such lawsuits.
Winchell's most important source of information on the "radical right" was Arnold Forster, the New York counsel for the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). According to Neal Gabler, a journalist and author of Winchell's biography, Forster ran "one of the best intelligence-gathering operations in the country, with spies everywhere." Winchell sent his information on possible subversives to Hoover, who in turn funneled information to Winchell, in "long plain white envelopes." His radio producer, Paul Scheffels, remembered how proud Winchell felt about it, telling him: "Look at this. You know who this is from? This is right from the Bible," since if it came from Hoover, "there was no question of its accuracy or veracity." Shortly after Ernest Cueno got appointed as an associate general counsel for the Democratic National Committee, Cueno began acting as a liaison between Roosevelt and Winchell, and even wrote political articles for Winchell's column.
According to William Sullivan, the Assistant Director of the FBI who led COINTELPRO and got forced out of the FBI by Hoover: "Winchell was probably the first nationally known radio commentator developed by the FBI. We sent Winchell information regularly. He was our mouthpiece."
Winchell also associated with the mob, although the full extent of his associations isn't known. He was friends with Owney Madden, an Irish-American gangster; he knew Charles "Lucky" Luciano, who - after Winchell was once attacked by someone - vowed to "even things up" for him if he found the perpetrators, and assigned him a personal bodyguard; he interviewed Capone thanks to his mutual friend; he knew Frank Costello, and in 1951 had an interview with him; and he was responsible for "capturing" Lepke Buchalter, who contacted Winchell to offer his surrender in exchange for the promise that he wouldn't be shot while doing so. Winchell also assured him he'd get no more than 10 years in prison. When he got 14, he was far from pleased, and Winchell feared retribution.
To briefly digress from the overall subject: During the late 30s, Nathan D. Perlman, a former congressman and a New York judge at the time, requested aid of the Jewish mob to hunt down "anti-semites," including members of the German American Bund. Some of the Jewish mobsters he sought help from included Capone's associate Jake Guzik, Abner Zwillman, Meyer Lansky, and Bugsy Siegel, whom he told: "I want you to do anything but kill them." In turn, these mobsters got a list of the "Nazi bastards" from Judd Teller, a Jewish journalist, and they began ambushing them, beating them up, and harassing them for months. While this was ongoing, some of the people within the American government and the law enforcement decided to look the other way, since they believed that these Jewish mobsters were "doing a job that was both risky and critically important."
Perlman went on to serve as a senior official at the American Jewish Congress.
No story that mentions World War II and Nazis is ever fully complete if spies are left unmentioned, and that's the case with the sedition trial as well. Let's talk about William Stephenson. Stephenson was a Canadian soldier, businessman, and a spymaster, who served as the senior representative of the British Security Coordination (BSC), set up by MI6. In 1940, he was sent to America to covertly coordinate efforts with the FBI, but he got rebuffed by Hoover. Instead, Stephenson turned to Ernest Cueno, and Cueno became the liaison between the British intelligence and the FBI. He was also tasked to do everything that couldn't be done by the overt means, in an effort to make sure sufficient aid came to Britain, and to bring America into the war.
Winchell was the key to this covert operation; on one hand Cueno was feeding him information from the Roosevelt administration, and on the other, British intelligence and propaganda, some of which aimed to attack and discredit anti-interventionists. From that point forward, Cueno noted, "Winchell became the firepoint. His rolling barrages could and did clear the way for the President and the preparation of war." Unsurprisingly, Winchell supported Roosevelt's re-election in 1940, and wrote articles advocating for him, which led to him becoming closer to the president after the election and visiting him frequently in the White House.
In June 1941, after Stephenson found out that the Hearst syndicate - whose owner was an anti-interventionist and owned roughly 28 newspapers and magazines - owed $10.5 million to the Canadian paper manufacturers, he devised a plan to bring about the liquidation of his newspapers. While his plan was referred to the British Treasury, they were unwilling to provide the funds necessary. He also allegedly took part in manipulating public polls, saying: "Great care was taken beforehand to make certain the poll results would turn out as desired. The questions were to steer opinion toward the support of Britain and the war... Public Opinion was manipulated through what seemed an objective poll."
Another spy that was active around the same time was Samuel Dickstein, a Democratic Congressional Representative from New York. Dickstein helped to establish McCormack-Dickstein Committee that later became the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which he used to attack right-wing figures and "fascists," aiming to "eradicate" them - all while being paid $1,250 a month by the Soviets.
Books
There were several books that were published preceding the indictment/trial, which assailed and smeared anti-interventionists, right-wing figures, and members of the Mothers' movement. One such book was Sabotage! The Secret War Against America, published in 1942 and written by Michael Sayers and Albert E. Kahn, the latter of which was a member of the American Communist Party, although years later he ended up changing his views and opposing the party. Another book, Under Cover - My Four Years In The Nazi Underworld Of America, was published on January 1, 1943. Under Cover was written by John Roy Carlson, whose real name was Avedis Derounian, and it was heavily promoted by Winchell and the leftist media, selling more than 600,000 copies.
During his covert investigative work, Derounian was employed by Council Against Intolerance, which was founded by the Jewish author, lecturer, and art dealer James Waterman Wise. Wise was also a treasurer for the League for Peace and Democracy, an organization formed by the Communist Party USA. The co-chairman of the Council Against Intolerance was George Gordon Battle, who later became an FBI agent, and who eventually got convicted for burglary, conspiracy, and illegal wiretapping over his role in the Watergate scandal. Derounian was also employed by Friends of Democracy, an anti-Nazi group founded by the Unitarian minister and humanist, Leon Birkhead. During the 1920s, Birkhead was in conflict with Gerald Winrod; in early 1940s, he sought public donations for a "publicity campaign [to] brand Charles A. Lindbergh as a Nazi," to whom he referred to as an "American Hitler"; after Coughlin's publication was shut down, he said he had met the Archbishop and argued for it to happen; and when the sedition trial was announced, he expressed support for it.
Derounian was, undoubtedly, a journalist in the proper sense of that word, one that was merely concerned with the rise of fascism within the world and the U.S. One form of fascism that he found perhaps the most perilous, was the book publishers which refused to publish his book:
Those bastards that turned down the book, those sons of bitches who sip their cocktails and minimize things are the real fifth column. They are the ones spreading the poison of complacency. These bastards ought to be shot at sunrise, maybe well have some action against the Nazi fifth column.
Commenting on those who accused him of slander, he said that if his "book was untrue, why was I not sued for libel?" He was, a few times in fact. One such lawsuit came from George W. Robnett, an executive secretary of the Church League of America. When the trial came and Derounian was put on stand, he admitted that many of the things he said about Robnett were false, pure fabrication. He was found guilty of libel, although the jury awarded Robnett only $1,00 since they didn't believe he suffered any damages, and Derounian's book publisher was ordered to pay for the cost of the lawsuit.
As for the judge that presided over the trial, he had a few chosen words to say about him:
This book charges the plaintiff was disloyal, anti-Semitic, and a Nazi agent. During the entire course of the trial I never heard any evidence to sustain any of these charges. I think this book was written by a wholly irresponsible person who would write anything for a dollar ... I wouldn't believe this author if he was under oath and I think he and the publisher are as guilty as anyone who was ever found guilty in this court.
During the trial, Derounian also stated that while he was working on his book, he was also "employed by the Anti-Defamation League in New York."
Anti-Defamation League
According to Dennis Lawrence, one of the defendants in the trial, ADL was "one of the most important Jewish organizations behind the sedition trial." David Baxter, who claimed to have obtained investigation records of his activities from the FBI through a FOIA request, stated: "In a great many cases, it wasn’t the FBI that conducted the investigation but the Anti-Defamation League, with the FBI merely receiving the reports of ADL investigators."
This shouldn't be too much of a surprise, given Winchell was sharing information with Hoover which he obtained from ADL's counsel, Forster. But this wasn't the only means through which ADL's information reached FBI: ADL has been regularly sending its newsletter to the FBI and law enforcement, in which they reported on various right-wing figures, including some of those who ended up on the trial. From a few newsletters I saw, they discussed Dilling, Pelley, Windrod, Noble, Dennis, Coughlin and others. In one newsletter following the indictment of the defendants, ADL stated:
Among the 28 individuals indicted by the US government for a conspiracy to obstruct and defeat the war effort, readers of the newsletter will recognize many individuals exposed by the ADL long ago. This indicates the need for continued vigilance by such agencies as the League ... those under indictment comprise a "Who's Who" of the native American fascist movement.
On October 30, 1941, when America First Committee was holding a rally at the Madison Square Garden, one of the detectives present at the rally noticed a photographer and a man that was with him were acting in a "provocative manner towards America First sympathizers," so he escorted them both out for questioning. The photographer was carrying a Police Press Card. After he was handed over to the Criminal Alien Squad, he was questioned and admitted that the Police Press Card he carried wasn't his; he stated that he borrowed it. When informed about the serious consequences of the fraudulent use of such card, he seemed unconcerned. At this point, the man that was with him introduced himself as Arnold Forster, and stated that he was the one that gave him the Police Card. However, when he was asked how and from who he obtained the card, he refused to answer the question and "became quite abusive."
Three days after the incident, Winchell published an article stating that there was going to be a "shake-up" in the Alien Squad after the election, "because so many are not so Americanishy..." Shortly thereafter, they discovered that this article was planted by Forster and another person whose name is redacted, and that Forster had been investigated and questioned by the Alien Squad months prior. When he was previously questioned, he alleged that some of the detectives questioning him were sympathizers of the Christian Front, and with the help of Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League To Champion Human Rights, and another person whose name is redacted, they "launched stories to that effect in various columns."
A couple of days after the Police Card was turned over to the Police Commissioner John Seery, the Anti-Defamation League brought "tremendous pressure to bear" onto him, in an effort to get him to drop the Forster incident; he refused and promised a full investigation. Subsequently, another person was approached to "intercede" in the matter; when he refused, they offered to "make it worth" his while if he got Forster off.
Unfortunately, this is where the FBI reports end, and I haven't been able to find any further information about it.
In 1942, Assistant Director P.E. Foxworth warned the FBI director that informants for the ADL and Anti-Nazi League were engaging in "shake downs" of individuals who were possibly loyal and innocent, while also quoting another person who was previously employed with the Anti-Nazi League, claiming that both of these organizations were "interested only in their own material benefit and their work is directed more in the line of persecution and of framing their enemies."
Another relevant organization was the aforementioned Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League To Champion Human Rights (SANL), previously known as "American League for the Defense of Jewish Rights." Initially, the organization served to promote economic boycott of the Nazi Germany, but after being taken over by a new leader in 1938, its attention turned inwards and they investigated, slandered, and called for prosecution of various right-wing figures and organizations, including many of those on the sedition trial. One of their chief investigators was Richard Rollins, also known as Isidore Rothberg, who previously worked as an investigator for the committee run by Dickstein, the Soviet spy.
One such figure was Edward Rumely, a friend of Theodore Roosevelt. In 1915, he bought a newspaper with a loan from an American living in Germany; the loan had to go through the Germany government, and when America entered WW1, he was convicted for violating the "Trading with the Enemy Act" over it, although his sentence was reduced by the President Coolidge to a month, who also pardoned him.
In late 1930s and early 1940s, he served as a secretary for Committee for Constitutional Government (CCG), which was founded to oppose Roosevelt's court packing bill, and later expanded to oppose New Deal policies, and promote a constitutional amendment to limit taxes on gifts, incomes, and inheritance to 25%, all while steering clear of foreign policy - although Rumely personally supported America First Committee. The amendment was adopted by 16 states. In turn, the efforts made by CCG led to three investigations by Congress which suspected they were engaging in lobbying activities, while SANL and Friends of Democracy tried to discredit Rumely. SANL also planted a mole within CCG, who passed documents and other information to the committee that was investigating them, but none of the documents proved incriminating. Derounian, meanwhile, described Rumely in his book as an "agent of Imperial Germany."
Rumely was twice indicted for Contempt of Congress; the second time he appealed all the way up to the Supreme Court and he got cleared.
Congress of Industrial Organizations, which was influenced by the Communist Party, called for and supported prosecution of the defendants. It later joined American Federation of Labor to form AFL-CIO.
Dillard Stokes
Dillard Stokes was an "award-winning" journalist who worked for Washington Post. Using his aliases "Jefferson Breem and "Quigley Adams," he solicited publications from the individuals whom he believed held anti-Jewish and anti-government beliefs, and had them mailed to his residence in the District of Columbia. In turn, he handed everything he received to the Department of Justice. This led to the 30 defendants in this trial, who were subsequently charged with sedition, to be tried under the jurisdiction of District of Columbia despite the fact that some of them have never even been to Washington their entire lives. The newspaper Time labeled him as "Sherlock Stokes" because of this.
Meanwhile, Burton Wheeler, a right-wing, anti-interventionist politician commented on Dillard's actions, stating: "You are nothing but a stooge for the Department of Justice, a little newspaper spy; it's a dirty business you are in and the time will come when you will all regret it."
The trial
The trial started on April 17, 1944, with the jury selection lasting a month, partly because the first jury panel had to be dismissed after they were "inadvertently" prejudiced by the prosecutor, John Rogge. The judge was Edward Eicher, a New Deal liberal.
There were thirty defendants, seditionists - conspirators, in total, with 23 lawyers, four of whom were paid, while the rest of them were assigned by the court and unpaid (yes, really). Many of the lawyers were liberal, they weren't particularly sympathetic towards the defendants, and one of the lawyers, Henry H. Klein was Jewish. Elizabeth Dilling's lawyer was Albert - now her ex-husband, since she discovered he was cheating again - who chose to defend her during the trial. A few of the defendants chose to represent themselves, such as Ellis O. Jones and Dennis Lawrence, the latter of which used a lawyer to prepare for the "routine of the trial procedure," before dismissing him after a week.
Before the trial had even properly commenced, it spelled peril. As the jury was being selected, the judge allowed ten peremptory challenges for the thirty defendants. When the defense was supposed to exercise its challenges, Ira Chase Koehne, a 75 year old lawyer who represented Howard Victor Broenstrupp, slowly rose and "solemnly" informed the court that he was challenging the "three twenty-ninths of the upper anatomy of juror number three," since he wanted to reserve some of his challenge for another juror. Most of the people in the court laughed. So did the jurors. But the judge wasn't amused and he fined Koehen $50 for contempt.
Then there was James Laughlin, who represented Robert Noble. The jury selection was briefly brought to a stop after he filed several motions, one of which included a petition to impound the records of Anti-Defamation League, SANL, Friends of Democracy, and the Communist party, to "show [that] these groups had engaged in a conspiracy to besmirch the names" of a general and several politicians, by connecting them with the defendants. The judge deemed his motions irrelevant, and charged him with contempt. He was tried under a different judge, found guilty, and fined $150. However, this proved to be merely the beginning of the disorderly behavior by the defense, and the Nazi tactics they were willing to use. As the jury selection was about to be completed, one of the defendants, Elmer J. Garner, evaded justice. To put it more plainly, he died in his sleep.
On May 17, 1944, exactly one month after the beginning of the trial, Rogge delivered a shocking opening statement: These thirty-- twenty-nine defendants were conspiring with each other, the officials of the German government, and the leaders of the Nazi party, to cause insubordination and disloyalty among the members of the armed forces. They were part of a worldwide Nazi movement seeking to violently or forcefully overthrow democracy, and replace it with fascism.
Rogge stated that they had a Fuhrer in mind, one which would be supported by "subordinate fuhrers," and together they would take over the country, abolish the Republican and Democratic parties, freedom of speech, press, assembly, and other civil liberties, and impose a one-party system. They would run the country according to the "Fuhrer" principle and the Nazi concept of Aryanism. Further, he added: "The evidence will show that the defendants themselves talked in terms of blood baths, or blood flowing in the streets, of hanging people from lamp posts, of pogroms."
"The evidence will show," Rogge would say over and over again, as he brought up each and every defendant, and discussed their anti-Communist, anti-Democratic, anti-Jewish, and isolationist beliefs, and the role which they played within the worldwide Nazi movement. His opening statement lasted for over two hours. At the beginning of the trial, it was being covered by forty reporters.
During Rogge's opening statement, the defense once more engaged in Nazi tactics: "Mistrial!" they would interject, "Does this court believe in constitution?" they would wonder out loud - and several times federal marshals had to intervene to restore the order. When Rogge suggested to the court to be allowed to speak without any interruptions, they loudly whispered, "This is Moscow." Nevertheless, the court ruling had little effect on their behavior, and their interruptions continued; they would boo, catcall, and offer remarks such as "This isn't true!" and "That's a lie!" thus making a mockery of the American justice system. Then came the opening statements of the defense. When the judge ruled that each defendant would be limited to 30 minutes, with exceptions, several defense attorneys protested, protested, and, well-- protested. Klein was fined $200 for continuing to argue after Eicher had declared him out of order; Jones was fined $100 when he said "This is persecution not a prosecution. I wish to take exception to your arbitrary--"
Then to the fore came Dennis, to whom Rogge had previously referred to as "the Alfred Rosenberg of the movement in this country" in his opening statement. One of the first things Dennis had done during the trial, was to ask the court to have all of the defendants, including himself, be given a sanity test. When this was denied by the court, he sought to have three specific defendants examined for sanity, stating that he "had an interest in co-defendants' sanity since it would be highly prejudicial to him to be tried along with defendants who might be insane." Typical Nazi tactic. His motion was once again denied, but it left the judge visibly annoyed by the fact it was even made.
Beginning his opening statement, which he was allowed to deliver first by several other defense lawyers, Dennis returned the favor by dubbing Rogge "Vishinsky" - the state prosecutor for Stalin's Moscow show trials - to which Rogge objected, and had the court remove it from the records. As he continued, Dennis argued that the facts didn't fit the law nor the charges - he believed that the government had no case, that its historical narrative of how Nazis came to power, which according to Rogge they were seeking to replicate worldwide, was nonsensical and ahistorical, and that everything defense needed to know was to be found in Rogge's opening statement. He believed as much because before he was indicted, he had a six hour long conference with Rogge in the Department of Justice, during which Rogge disclosed his prosecution theory.
By July, Laughlin once again managed to earn Judge Eicher's ire; he filled a petition with the House of Representatives seeking impeachment of the judge, where he alleged that the "judge has been promised a higher judicial post by the President if he were to secure a conviction at the trial." Subsequently, Laughlin was excluded from the trial by the judge, and although he appealed his exclusion, the Court of Appeals ruled against him 3-2. And thus, Noble, the defendant, was left without his lawyer with whom he had spent months preparing for the trial. When he asked to be allowed to defend himself, the judge refused and ordered him to find a lawyer, or be assigned one by the court. Noble believed this was impractical, as the new lawyer would have to get caught up with everything during the trial - so he was assigned one. However, he refused to consult with his new lawyer, and whenever his lawyer rose to defend him, he would rise as well to repudiate him. After a couple of days of such behavior, the prosecutor moved to sever Noble from further participation in the trial. Shortly afterwards, Baxter was also severed from the trial since he was growing deaf and couldn't hear the judge, while James True was removed because he became sick.
Meanwhile, Henry Klein, the Jewish lawyer who was representing Eugene Sanctuary, decided to flee. Literally. He picked up his things, left the trial, and refused to return. After a couple days of Klein being absent, the judge issued a warrant for his arrest for contempt of the court, and ordered to bring him back to Washington. He refused. During his hearing, he stated why: "I don't want to be tossed into a cell and murdered." He also referred to "an odorless, tasteless poison which is known to those on the inside of the present administration." Perhaps Klein had a good reason for his fear. Earlier during the trial, Klein claimed that the prosecution of the defendants was started to "cover the enemies of the Government," and to protect Communists. Further, one night when two of the defense lawyers were driving home, their car was shot at and the bullet passed right through their windshield, in line with their heads. Another lawyer was beaten up by "five Jewish thugs in Chicago" and had to stay in the hospital for four days, while a different lawyer lost his twelve year law association for representing McWilliams.
After three months, Klein was brought back in front of the Judge Eicher with handcuffs on his wrists, and found guilty of contempt. He was sentenced to 90 days in jail, but with a caveat: Once he had served a week in the District jail, the rest of his sentence would be commuted if he chose to rejoin the trial. He refused. Laughlin filled an appeal for him, but the judge sent him to jail on a $10,000 bond, where he spent the night, before Laughlin got the bond lowered to $1,500 and got him released. After that, he left Washington and never rejoined the trial; on appeal, his conviction was overturned. During those three months, Sanctuary was represented by a lawyer appointed by the court, and his lawyer regularly noted that he was defending his client without his consent and cooperation.
However, there was a turning point in the trial, starting when the government began presenting its evidence, which consisted of pamphlets, articles, posters, news clippings, letters, books, along with Ni newspapers, speeches by Hitler, Mein Kampf, and so forth. As the defense lawyers observed the evidence, they realized that there was a small issue with it: It neither matched the law nor the charges that were made against the defendant, the very thing Dennis claimed during his opening statement. When the prosecution continued to introduce more of such evidence, and more, and-- well, more, one of the lawyers starting objecting to its inclusion, and referred to it as "trash." It wasn't long before other lawyers joined him; the quote bellow illustrates quite aptly how it usually went by that point:
After the prosecution would present a bit of evidence, either a statement from a witness or a document, what followed was:
"'We object' shout anywhere from two or three to a dozen defense attorneys, whereupon follows half an hour to half a day in their outlining of objections.
"'Objection denied,' finally rules the court.
"'Exception,' demands some defense lawyer.
"'Exception may be noted!'
"'For all defendants,' cry a few more defense counsel.
"'For all defendants,' rules the court and the rigmarole starts all over again."
If you're anything like me - and I initially didn't plan to include much about the trial in the article, so I skipped most of the opening statement in Dennis' book which, together with the commentary, stretched for 170 pages - you might be feeling slightly confused. How did we get here? Yeah, the trial might have been a set up, and many people and organizations worked to bring it about in the first place, but-- didn't Rogge assert that these anti-Communist, anti-Jewish, anti-Democratic, isolationist people were part of a worldwide Nazi movement? Surely he wouldn't make such a claim if he had no evidence to prove it? Also, didn't he claim that they were seeking to cause insubordination in the military and violently or forcefully overthrow democracy and implement fascism?
Well, the answer here is surprisingly simple: While it's definitely true that majority of the defendants were anti-Communist and anti-interventionist, and that some of them were anti-Jewish and anti-plenty of other things, and that a few definitely harbored some Nazi sympathies, like the Bund or Viereck did, none of them were indicted on the basis of their beliefs, since there was no law forbidding people from holding or advocating for a particular set of beliefs that the government wasn't fond of. Furthermore, with exception of Viereck, none of them had anything to do with the German government. Instead, they were indicted for violating the Smith Act (1940), and more specifically, for conspiring to interfere with, impair, and influence the loyalty, morale and discipline of the military and naval forces of the United States.
Those were the charges. And those charges were something the evidence couldn't support. As Dennis wrote in his book, if the government possessed any such evidence - and this was the third indictment in as many years, suggesting the lack of it - it could have presented it and convicted them for trying to cause insubordination in the military. There were other people around the same time who were convicted for sedition or over similar charges, so they wouldn't have been the first nor the last, although some of those convictions were eventually overturned because, as Rogge stated in his book years after the fact:
It is difficult in this country, under Supreme Court decisions, to be guilty of sedition.
Instead, what Rogge had decided to do was to weave a grand narrative, a worldwide conspiracy of which defendants were a part of. And once the narrative was set - and ideally remained unchallenged by the defense lawyers - the jury was expected to assume that everything the defendants have said, wrote, or done, was done in pursuit of such goals: to cause insubordination in the military, in an effort to violently or forcefully overthrow democracy and replace it with fascism. These people were Nazis. And that's what Nazis do - it's that simple. At least in theory. And Dennis saw right through it from the beginning.
This came as a surprise to the prosecution. During the recess one time, when the lawyers, defendants, and some of the reporters discussed the case, Rogge's assistant said: "But how the devil were we to know that the defendants were going to infect all the lawyers with their spirit?" This was especially true as most of the lawyers were unpaid, and more than few had wives and children; they had mouths to feed. The longer the trial dragged on, the worse it was for them. However, the court eventually tried to accommodate them to an extent by scheduling the trial between 1 and 6 pm, so they could earn a living during the mornings.
When government witnesses were introduced, things didn't go much better for the prosecution, since they were often brought to admit that the key aspects of Rogge's grand narrative were incorrect. Consider the German witness, Hermann Rauschning, a former member of the Nazi party:
[Question]: Well, now, I read you from page 1887, a statement of the prosecutor that "The Nazis had destroyed the social structure in Germany, and they had to such an extent undermined the loyalty of the Reichswehr to the Republic that if the President had wanted the Reichswehr to put down the Nazis, the Reichswehr would have refused to act.
Do you believe the Reichswehr would have refused to put down the Nazis if Hindenburg had ordered them to do so?
[Hermann]: If Hindenburg would have ordered, I think the Reichswehr would have followed.
Another defense counsel had him acknowledge that Hindenburg wasn't afraid of Hitler, that Hitler came to power through legal means, and that if the "Reichspresident had ordered Hitler shot, the Reichswehr would not have hesitated to execute the order." A few years prior, Hermann had published a book Conversations with Hitler, whose authenticity has more recently been brought into question by historians.
Then there was Henry D. Allen, a government witness who once was a member of Pelley's Silver Shirt, who not only contradicted parts of the government narrative, but undermined government's attempts to present "anti-semitism" as evidence of the conspiracy. But the main aspect of his testimony was him recounting how he and his son were beaten up in a clothes shop by "Jewish Communists," leading to his son losing his eye; and to the witness to cry. Immediately, his daughters came to hug him, and together with his testimony, it brought tears to the jury. It was followed by a 10 minute recess so everyone could collect themselves. As Dennis noted, "Seldom does a criminal trial furnish a scene as poignant and affecting ... the defense could never have found as good a witness to justify or excuse the violent anti-Communist and anti-Semitic utterances of certain defendants as the government obligingly put on the stand in Henry D. Allen." Another lawyer commented on his testimony: "The government’s case is dead. All it needs now is to be buried."
Denis also asked every witness he cross-examined, and that was most of them, whether they could testify to having seen, heard, read, or known if any of the defendants said anything that amounted to advising or trying to cause insubordination in the armed forces, and his question never once elicited an answer to support the charge of the indictment. He noted: "Towards the last few weeks Rogge began objecting to the question. It was too pertinent to the charge to be comfortable for the prosecution!"
As the trial went on, and with the defense challenging admissibility of the evidence and the narrative the government had presented, the interest of the press waned - of the forty reporters at beginning, only a few remained. Even the Washington Post which once championed the trial was reporting on it about once per week, and referred to it as a "farce." Rogge, who initially believed that the trial would last for only two months, thought quite differently by the August of the same year: "It's just impossible to estimate the length of this case. All our estimates seem now like fairy tales." One reporter said that the trial might last a "minimum of eight years, give or a take a fortnight." When the judge gave everyone a two-week long break, one of Rogge's staffers joked: "Will we have a vacation every summer? Most of the journalists placed the blame on the defendants and their behavior; after the trial was over, even the Attorney General described their behavior as "Nazi tactics." But I don't believe that's a fair assessment to make, since the issue was with the ill-fitting charges, evidence, and the grand conspiracy the government had presented - it's not the fault of the defendants for challenging it, nor does doing so make them a Nazi. In fact, one reporter from NYTimes praised the defense for their actions, which he described as "democracy in action."
Meanwhile, some of the right-wing, anti-interventionist politicians who've been mostly quiet during initial stages of the trial, started to speak out against it. One of them was William Langer, a Zionist and an anti-interventionist, who paid a visit to the courtroom and observed the trial for two days, before going in front of the Senate and giving a speech in defense of defendants, and stating at the end: "I submit the Attorney General would be doing a service to his country in the administration of square justice by going into the courtroom and asking the court to dismiss these sedition cases. I pray that he may do so soon."
Then came November 30, 1944. In perhaps fittingly anticlimactic fashion, the trial abruptly ended after Judge Eicher died from a heart attack. Since only one defendant was willing to continue the trial with a new judge, mistrial was pronounced. Regarding his death, Time magazine noted: "No one in Washington doubted that a ludicrously undignified trial had hastened the death of a scrupulously dignified judge."
By the end of the trial, the government had spent $65,000 - around $1 million today - introduced about a fifth of the witnesses, a third of the evidence, and the trial record stretched almost 18,000 pages.
Aftermath
Following the trial, there was a debate in the press and with the administration whether or not there should be a re-trial, and/or if the defendants should be prosecuted individually; more than few newspapers and organizations (such as C.I.O.) called for a retrial. This included B'nai B'rith which stated that the "entire reason for the trial was to educate the public into the ways and means of Nazism, to link Anti-Semitism and other racisms with the Hitlerian movement." Further, they blamed the "uncooperative press" for the trial's failure and demanded a new trial. After a few months passed, the defendants asked the court to set a day for the trial or to dismiss the case, but nothing was done about it. Rogge was certainly interested in having another trial, so much that he went to Germany to procure evidence, where he spent eleven weeks interrogating dozens of Nazi officials, along with examining countless Nazi documents. Once he came back home, he submitted his report to the new Attorney General, Tom Clark, with the report asserting in part: "24 Congressmen either collaborated with or were used by a Nazi agent." However, after he disclosed the contents of his report in a public speech, he was dismissed from the Justice Department by Tom Clark.
Then, in November 1946, the sedition case was dismissed by the United States District Court. In his ruling, the judge wrote:
Under the circumstances, to permit another trial, which conceivably would last more than a year, with new prosecutors and newly-appointed counsel for defendants, with the eventual outcome in serious doubt, would be a travesty on justice.
And added:
I can reach no other conclusion than that there is a serious doubt as to the validity of these cases. More than eight months is an abnormally long time to be required by the prosecution to establish guilt in a clear case.
The Court of Appeals upheld the ruling with a 2-1 vote. And thus, their prosecution was officially over.
Elizabeth Dilling, whom I didn't mention much during the trial, played an important role in the background of it - mainly by bringing food to the defendants who couldn't afford it, especially since the food within the jail, and in the court when they missed their meals in jail, was rather poor and insufficient, to the extent that one of the defendants once rose during the trial and stated that he was being slowly starved to death. During the daily breaks in the trial, many of the defendants, lawyers, and the jury would spend their time in a cafe across the street of the courthouse, and they'd talk and intermingle. Regarding this, Dennis stated: "By that time the members of the jury had come to regard themselves as co-victims with the defendants and the unpaid defense lawyers of a judicial or courtroom farce of interminable lengths. The spirit of comradeship dominated the entire courtroom, except for the judge and the prosecutor." During the trial, Dilling, Winrod, and a few other defendants and defense lawyers, collected some money and gave it to the defendants and their families, including Baxter. Baxter commented on it: "I've never forgotten those two $100 gifts."
While he was in the Washington jail, Baxter read a Bible that was left in his cell. While making notes on contradictions within it so he could write an article about it, he found himself "more and more drawn to Christ," and he became Christian. After the trial, Baxter went to work for Santa Ana Register for a couple of years, paid off all of his family's bills, wrote a syndicated column, studied theology and believed he was done with politics. A couple of years after the trial, a Congressional spokesman, Adolph Sabath, who was a Zionist and an interventionist, was pressuring Justice Department to start a new sedition trial of the defendants. Baxter says that around that time a "friend" visited him to tell him that if he wanted to make his peace with Sabath and avoid further prosecution, he could write a letter to him apologizing for his "anti-semitism"; while he initially rejected the offer, especially since he believed he wasn't anti-Jewish, he was concerned for his wife and children, and so he wrote the letter of apology: "I received a cordial reply. The pressure on the Justice Department stopped as suddenly as it had begun."
Meanwhile, Dilling continued publishing her Patriotic Research Bulletin, and opposed America joining the United Nations. As for the Mothers' movement, several groups - including the group she helped found with Van Hyning - continued protesting after the outbreak of the war and called for negotiated peace; Grace Keefe, a member of the group, testified in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee against joining the United Nations: "When the truth about the merchants of death, the international financiers, the diplomatic schemers, and the war-gouging profiteers stands revealed, wars will end." Unfortunately, once again, heir efforts didn't lead to much success and America ratified the UN charter. Regarding the slander Dilling faced leading up to, and during the trial, Dilling sued the Chicago Star and the Billboard Publishing Company for libel; both of the lawsuits were settled out of court. She also sued the Jewish Sentiel, during which she was defended by her son Kirkpatrick, now a lawyer, who went on to defend other right-wing people. In 1948, Dilling married a lawyer, and in 1964 she published a book The Plot Against Christianity.
While the Mothers' movement was undoubtedly motivated by anti-war/interventionist sentiment, especially since many of the mothers and women within either had sons or husbands who'd be drafted for war, they also had other reasons. Many of them believed that the New Deal Democrats were steering America towards an internationalist foreign policy and towards more war; that American participation in the war would accelerate the New Deal trends towards centralized government; and that war would provide "unprecedented opportunities for unregulated, extra-familiar sexual activity," all of which was contrary to what most of them believed in.
It was one of the largest, mainly right-wing, female-centric movements in the history of the America, which at its zenith had somewhere between five and six million members. Yet, if you were to take a look at its Wikipedia page, it consists solely of six paragraphs; doing a Google search trying to look for the said page offers zero relevant results.
Dennis went on to publish The Appeal to Reason, a newsletter critiquing militarism and the Cold War. He also published a book Operational Thinking for Survival.
After being released from jail, Viereck went on to publish Men Into Beasts in 1952, which chronicled life in prison. During the 1950s, he opposed McCarthy, and described him as a "left-wing anarchist agitator, by an infallible instinct and not 'by accident' subverting precisely those institutions that are the most conservative and organic." He wasn't particularly fond of Buckley either, mainly due to his support of McCarthy. Meanwhile, National Review described him as a "counterfeit conservative." Eventually, Viereck stopped writing about politics and devoted himself to poetry and Russian history.
As for the people and organizations responsible for the trial:
Roosevelt died in 1945, shortly after getting re-elected. During the elections in 1944, Dilling unenthusiastically supported Dewey, and when Roosevelt won again, she thought that if the country was to go to hell, it might as well go there under an expert.
Hoover remained the FBI director until his death in 1972.
Biddle was appointed as one of the judges at the Nuremberg trials.
Rogge opposed the nomination of Tom Clark to Supreme Court, who ousted Rogge years prior from Justice Department. He spoke at the hearing, and accused Clark of conducting "a loyalty witch hunt," and "a cold war against anyone who indulged in independent thinking." Clark was later sworn in as a Supreme Court justice.
Rogge was later hired by the Civil Rights Congress, and he served as one of three defense attorneys appealing the conviction of six African-Americans who were convicted by "an all-white jury" of a murder of an elderly white shopkeeper. He won them a new trial, but he and other lawyers got banned from participating in it by the judge, who stated: "Your conduct throughout has been consistently in violation of one or more of some seven canons of professional ethics." Rogge commented on it, saying that the judge's action "extends the reign of terror imposed on lawyers who defend the unorthodox and the weak." In 1950, he defended David Greenglass, who was charged with passing information about the atomic bomb to Soviet agents. Greenglass confessed his involvement and implicated his sister and brother-in-law, Ethel and Julius Rosenberg, who were convicted of espionage and sentenced to death. Roy Cohn, who prosecuted the Rosenbergs, later wrote: "Without John Rogge there might not have been a successful prosecution. Indeed, it is not too much to say that Mr. Rogge broke the Rosenberg case. Which is the very definition of irony."
In 1951, he joined other lawyers to defend 17 Communist Party members - they were charged under the Smith Act, and successfully convicted, though some of the convictions were overturned by the Supreme Court, and some weren't. Rogge died in 1981, with the NYTimes describing him in the title of their article as an "Anti-Nazi activist."
Stephenson, the spy for the British, advised Roosevelt to put his friend, William Donovan in charge of all U.S. intelligence services. Donovan founded the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which in 1947 became the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Ian Fleming, the writer of James Bond spy novels, wrote about Stephenson: "James Bond is a highly romanticised version of a true spy. The real thing is... William Stephenson."
Dickstein, the spy for the Soviets, went on to serve on the New York Supreme Court.
As for Anti-Defamation League... during an investigation into the U.S. Civil Service Commission (CSC), the agency which oversaw federal personnel, the investigators found that the CSC filed contained statements discussing political views, opinions, and activities of certain members of Congress and their wives, along with some prominent Americans, many of which never sought a position through the CSC. According to Clare Hoffman, who was responsible for the investigation, much of the information was "largely rumor, hearsay," some of it derogatory, and many - several thousands of the cards - had notations stating that the files were copies of those made by American Jewish Committee, Anti-Defamation League, and Friends of Democracy. They also stated: "The sources of this information must not be disclosed under any circumstances nor be quoted. However, further information concerning above may be secured by contacting offices of Mintzer & Levy."
In January 1968, Hoover sent a memo to the FBI offices, stating:
The Anti-Defamation League, 315 Lexington Avenue, New York City, maintains regional offices throughout the United States. As you know, this organization, like the Bureau, is opposed to groups and individuals espousing bigotry, prejudice and extremism. It seeks to bring the true facts concerning such groups and individuals to light.
In the furtherance of these worthy objectives, the Anti-Defamation League receives considerable information of interest to this Bureau and has been very cooperative in the past in referring such data to us. You are immediately to make certain that you have established liaison with the head of the Anti-Defamation League regional office, in your territory and explain the jurisdiction and interests of this Bureau. For your information, there is attached a list of Anti-Defamation League regional offices.
That same year, ADL's director Adolph Botnick paid KKK members $36,500 to blow up a house of a Jewish business leader. This was a set up which ADL had organized with the local police and the FBI; a schoolteacher and a member of KKK, Kathryn Capomacchia, was shot and killed by police, while Tommy Tarrants, also a Klan member, was shot but survived. This was revealed by Los Angeles Times journalist Jack Nelson, who was encouraged to investigate the case by a local minister. According to the LA Times article, this led to Nelson being placed on "near the top of J. Edgar Hoover’s enemies list." The article also discussed the motivation behind it by the FBI:
Partly, it seems, to protect informants, who had received more than $20,000 in reward money, but mostly because Southern law officials--their ability to enforce the law challenged--wanted to teach the Klan a lesson.
In 1993, ADL was implicated - and investigated - over doing what it has done for decades: Monitoring, infiltrating, and spying on thousands of activists and organizations, although the difference here was that some of such activists and orgs were leftist or liberal. When a journalist discussed this subject with ADL's director Abraham Foxman, noting that Arnold Forster had wrote in his autobiography how he often served as a "source" for the Mossad in tracking down suspected Nazi war criminals, Foxman stated:
ADL does not act as an agent of Israel ... [this is] antisemitism ... I'm sorry if it offends some people. This is far reaching. We see a conspiracy. I see a conspiracy. It's out there ... it's proved itself every day.
ADL was sued over it, and while many of the people dropped their lawsuits after the court of appeals deemed that ADL, as a "journalistic organization," could keep confidential information on people, a few of the people didn't and ADL eventually settled with them.
Arthur Derounian died in 1991 while doing research at the library of the American Jewish Committee.
After World War II, Winchell turned his attention towards Communists and the Soviet Union which, he believed, was effectively going to lead to the repeat of the 1930s. This led to him being criticized by the Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Vishinsky as one of "warmongers," who also described Winchell as the "new American Baron Munchausen, famous as is known, for his utterly absurd lies." Thus, Winchell doubled down: "I believe that America was never in greater peril ... the Third World War is already being fought. The government at Moscow has sworn to destroy us." When he argued that Communist Party shouldn't just be outlawed, but that they should meet with the rifles of the U.S. Marines, he was criticized by NCAAP: "Do you not realize, Walter, that mob violence today against Communists means almost inevitably mob violence tomorrow against Blacks, Jews, labor, or any other minority?" One of the readers asked him: "What the hell are you doing over there with the Hearsts, Patterson-McCormicks and Gerald L. K. Smiths?"
Then, after he was criticized and called a warmonger by a speaker at a Jewish group, he wrote to Forster: "Good Heavens you mean its true what they say that commies and Jews are the same?"
Winchell also supported Civil Rights for African-Americans. However, he once came head to head with Josephine Baker, an American-born French singer, actress, and dancer. While touring America in 1951, Baker - who refused to perform before segregated audiences - visited Stork Club, which allegedly had an "unwritten policy of discouraging black patrons." After being made to wait for over an hour for a meal she ordered, she accused the club of racism, and complained that Winchell, whom she knew and who was present in the club at the time, didn't come to her aid. Winchell was criticized by media over it, received many phone calls from his audience, and the incident became a major scandal. Although he wasn't quite happy that he was being dragged into a dispute that didn't involve him, he eventually figured out why it was happening: It was a Communist plot created by NCCAP for propaganda. He wrote as much, anyway. This displeased everyone involved. Despite attempts by Forster and Cueno to help him let go of the incident, he kept going on the attack, and eventually accused Baker of aiding the Nazi-installed government in France, of being anti-semitic, of refusing to patronize black owned clubs and business, while also arguing that she fomented racial incidents to get attention. The resulting publicity led to her work visa being cancelled, and she sued Winchell for $400,000, but the lawsuit went nowhere.
Winchell often talked about how he introduced Roy Cohn, a Jewish lawyer, to McCarthy. Cohn went on to work for him and assisted him in his investigation of alleged Communists; in turn, he gave Winchell exclusive information about which he often bragged about: "No newspaperman got more 'firsts' than I." Winchell also supported McCarthy, which - together with previous incidents - reflected negatively on his reputation. According to a former FBI agent, Paul Letersky, who worked under Hoover as a personal assistant: "Hoover used Walter Winchell for two or three decades, and Winchell really promoted him in his column ... He and Hoover were very good friends. When Winchell lost his job, he could no longer provide information to Hoover, and he started drinking. When he called, you could tell, his words were all slurred — Winchell was the voice of The Untouchables; that voice was so distinct — Hoover wouldn’t take his calls. As a matter of fact, Hoover told me, 'Don’t even announce the call.'"
Winchell died in 1972. Larry King, who replaced him at Miami-Herald, spoke about him years after his death, stating:
He was so sad. You know what Winchell was doing at the end? Typing out mimeographed sheets with his column, handing them out on the corner. That's how sad he got. When he died, only one person came to his funeral: his daughter.
Addendum
There's several things I've come across that I've found interesting or amusing and wanted to include, but they weren't particularly relevant so I've left them for the end.
Most of the defendants in the trial weren't fond of Eleanor Roosevelt. At one point, when Rogge was solemnly reading off a list of names of individuals who've been attacked by the defendants, Edward James Smythe shouted: "And Eleanor Roosevelt," which led to everyone laughing. As Dennis stated: "Smythe didn’t want Mrs. Roosevelt's name to go unrecorded in the pantheon of villainy." Dilling herself wasn't fond of Eleanor, and she spread a rumor that "FDR caught gonorrhea from Eleanor, who caught it from a Black man."
There's an audio of Dilling discussing the trial in 1964, which you can listen to here. Credit to
who uploaded it.Elmer Garner, the defendant who died during the jury selection, was the sole defendant to whom Rogge would repeatedly refer to as a conspirator during his opening statement.
After the judge held several lawyers in contempt, Albert Dilling formed a group called "Eicher Contempt Club," whose members wore badges made of white ribbons reading "E.C.C." If the members were fined during the trial, they added a star to their badge.
Some of the defendants struggled to find lawyers, and asked ACLU for help; ACLU wanted nothing to do with them since they adopted a policy to not assist anyone accused of sedition. One of the founding members of ACLU was Elizabeth Gurley Flynn. In 1951, she was charged with sedition while being a member of the Communist Party USA and she got convicted.
Rogge was determined to present all of the evidence and witnesses he had, even "if it takes forever." In one of his dreams, the judge simply walked off the bench.
During World War II, both of Viereck's sons served in the U.S. Army, and one of them was killed in action in Italy.
Dr. Seuss, children's author, created a lot of propaganda cartoons trying to discredit anti-interventionists. While much of it is still being echoed by liberals and neo-cons to this day, some of it was actually funny:
Rachel Maddow wrote a book that touches on the trial, called Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism. You can guess how accurate it is.
After retirement, Charles Coughlin published a booklet Helmet and sword in 1968, and Bishop verus Pope in 1969 in which he denounced liberal priests, bishops and "loudmouthed clerical advocates of arson, riot and draft card burning." He was, arguably, both an anti-communist and anti-capitalist.
In June 1940, around two million women who were members of the Mothers' movement voted by mail on three resolutions, and approved them overwhelmingly. The resolutions called for a national referendum before soldiers could be sent overseas; a strong defense; and a permanent committee to investigate un-American activities. One Congresswoman, Jessie Sumner, introduced a bill that would have prevented the use of American troops in conflicts outside the Western Hemisphere without congressional consent, and while the mothers worked towards enacting it, it was defeated.
Every movement has its schizos, and so did theirs: Agnes Waters. I will not elaborate. You can find out more about her in the book Women of the Far Right by Glen Jeansonne.
There was a “Senate Investigation into Motion Picture War Propaganda” focused on Hollywood in 1941, which was created by right-wing, anti-interventionist politicians. Hollywood was accused of using its movies to get America into the war. To defend them, the studios hired Wendel Willkie, a politician and lawyer who ran for President in 1940. The day before the hearings, he sent a 9-page long statement arguing that there was no need for an investigation:
The motion picture industry, he wrote, was "proud to admit that we have done everything possible to inform the public of the progress of our national defense program." By holding hearings on-and presumably attempting to regulate-alleged war propaganda, the subcommittee was heading down a slippery slope toward dictatorship: "From the motion picture and radio industry, it is just a small step to the newspapers, magazines and other periodicals. And from the freedom of the press, it is just a small step to the freedom of the individual to say what he believes."
The investigation, however, went nowhere, and those conducting it were accused of "anti-semitism."
Leo Ribuffo, a historian, described the trial as a "Brown scare," and argued that the prosecution of right-wingers by the Roosevelt administration set the precedent for McCarthy. He also noted that "Except for occasional Socialists like Norman Thomas and the Socialist Workers Party, itself a victim of the Smith Act in 1942, the left expressed few doubts about the sedition case. On the contrary, newspapers from the Washington Post leftward to the New York Daily Worker applauded Special Prosecutor Maloney’s efforts," and they urged the prosecutor to also go after several anti-interventionist politicians.
Lastly, history repeats.
Wow, this is an amazing historical piece! I recommend people put aside the time to read it.