Ezra's Bookshelf

Hitler’s American Friends

by Bradley W. Hart · 304 pages

Bradley W. Hart examines the extensive network of Americans who supported Nazi Germany in the 1930s, from the German-American Bund to influential figures in business, politics, and society who admired Hitler's regime. Hart, a historian, shows that Nazi sympathy was not limited to fringe groups but extended into elite circles that saw fascism as a bulwark against communism and admired its economic achievements. He traces how American corporations maintained profitable relationships with Nazi Germany even as evidence of persecution mounted, how aviation hero Charles Lindbergh became the face of isolationism with antisemitic undertones, and how the America First movement drew support from those who saw Hitler as a European problem irrelevant to American interests. The book examines how the Roosevelt administration navigated domestic Nazi sympathy while moving toward intervention, and how Pearl Harbor transformed public opinion almost overnight. Hart shows that the Nazi threat to American democracy came not only from foreign adversaries but from Americans who believed fascism represented the future. The history illuminates how easily democratic societies can harbor authoritarian movements and how economic and ideological interests can blind people to moral catastrophe.