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organization. “The tradition of the American nation, the American national ideology, is really built upon the concept of the amalgamation of races, the dissolving of racial segments into the great American whole,” he wrote. “Anything which would give rise to the impression that this development was to be stopped or completely reversed would encounter strong antagonism on the part of the government and the people.” The various functionaries in Berlin responsible for cultural outreach to Germans living in foreign countries fell in line, fully aware that the Reich
was
more interested at this point in keeping America out of Europe’s affairs than in developing a public movement of German Americans to prepare for any eventuality.
    In response to Dieckhoff’s concerns, a directive of two sentences was released to the German news agency, DNB, which instructed Reich citizens who were members of the German American Bund to “immediately give up their membership.” Since German nationals represented the core of the organization, Bundesführer Fritz Kuhn saw the order as “tantamount to the destruction of the Bund.” But Yorkville’s Little Hitler had no intention of relinquishing his rightful place at the head of the Nazi movement in America. He had become a genuine celebrity, a boldfaced name in an era of tabloid excess who frequented non-Teutonic hot spots in midtown (Leon and Eddie’s, El Morocco, Kelly’s Stable) with pretty fräuleins while his loyal hausfrau minded the two children in their top-floor apartment in a brick-fronted row house in Jackson Heights, Queens. He was determined to remain the unchallenged proprietor of a handful of Bund entities that were collecting dues from members and allied businesses, selling newspapers and pamphlets, hosting celebrations in the city and in the pure air of the country, and soliciting donations to pay increasingly sizable lawyers’ fees necessary to fight charges brought by municipalities looking for any legal pretext to take down those damn Nazis. To his followers, Kuhn delivered the fraudulent news that he had spoken with Göring and Goebbels and both had assured him that his rule was smiled upon favorably by the regime. In defiance of Berlin’s directive, he established auxiliary divisions that were open to “any worthy Aryan” who expressed solidarity to the Bundist cause “by paying regular donations of money.”
    US congressman Martin Dies, a racist and xenophobic Democrat from the hill country of east Texas who had turned against Roosevelt and the New Deal, took advantage of the headlines about Hitler’s bellicosity to introduce legislation to restart a tribunal (the Special Committee on Un-American Activities Authorized to Investigate Nazi Propaganda and Certain Other Propaganda Activities) that had examined mostly domestic Nazis for a few months in 1934–35. By a vote of 191 to 41, the House of Representatives removed the reference to Germany and set up the Special Committee to Investigate Un-American Activities and Propaganda in the United States. Although Martin Dies’s committee would make its name with innuendo- and insinuation-laden expeditions to prove that the Roosevelt administration and its allies in labor unions, Popular Front groups, Hollywood, and New Deal agencies were serving the Communist agenda, it couldn’t help but slip in testimony every once in a while against the German American Bund, which was seeking to establish “a powerful sabotage machine” and “a vast spy net,” according to testimony. Two weeks after the creation of this early version of HUAC, Congress followed up by passing the Foreign Agents Registration Act (or FARA), which strengthened a 1917 law that required anyone engaged in political activities on behalf of a foreign power to register with the State Department. Congressman John McCormack said, “The spotlight of pitiless publicity will serve as a deterrent to the spread of pernicious