Review of A Night at the Garden

I was expecting an in-depth examination of the German-American Bund's activities in the 1930s. Instead we get the well-known footage of the Bund's Madison Square Garden rally on Feb. 20, 1939, used time and again in numerous earlier documentaries to demonstrate the influence of native fascists in America's past, or the threat of native fascism to America's present. The film images may shock, but they are nonetheless only pictures. There may have been "20,000" people at the rally, but there's no indication that all were "Nazis" or even sympathetic to the Bund. Some were anti-Nazi protesters, like the man shown rushing the stage and being hauled off by the NYPD before the Bund's goons can further rough him up. The rally was the well-publicized high point for the Bund, a relatively tiny organization (3,000 -- 5,000 hardcore members nationwide, mostly recent German immigrants) that had little influence on U.S. society and politics during its brief existence (1933-41). It's resemblance to U.S. neo-Nazis of the 21st century is superficial at best. The modern right wing in the United States is much more deeply seated in American culture, and its real leaders are not so stupid as to advertise their intentions and goals by waving swastikas and shouting "Sieg Heil!" Those looking for information on the Bund are best served by books by Bradley W. Hart ("Hitler's American Friends") or, if you can find it, Sander Diamond's "The Nazi Movement in the United States, 1924-1941". "A Night in the Garden" is just barely history and serves only to excite and alarm, rather than to comprehend and explain.