Swastika Nation: Fritz Kuhn and the Rise and Fall of the German-American Bund

Inspired by filmmaker Quentin Tarantino’s fictional Inglorious Basterds, this is the fast-paced story of how an obscure German chemist named Fritz Kuhn followed Hitler’s road map to rise to the top of the United States’ most powerful Nazi organization in 1930s and ’40s New York City. Writing for armchair historians, Bernstein (Bath Massacre) shows how an unlikely group of allies thwarted the ambitions of the self-styled Bundesführer (second only, in his estimation, to the Führer) and his stateside sympathizers, who paradoxically revered both Hitler and George Washington. Disgusted local and state government officials joined with Jewish mobsters to blunt the Bund’s influence, while journalist Walter Winchell and the Warner Bros. movie studio swayed public opinion against the group. Bernstein’s narrative deflates with Kuhn’s anticlimactic trials on embezzlement charges (New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia even provided testimony—and comic relief), during which the Bundesführer backtracked and talked around the prosecution’s questions. Like Tarantino, Bernstein manages to present a fresh account of a well-documented era, and the egotistical, philandering, and deluded Kuhn makes a great and detestable star. Agent: Leigh Feldman, Writers House. (Sept.)