As today is Halloween, I’d like to share with you something I watched that I found truly chilling. Marshall Curry’s powerful documentary, A NIGHT AT THE GARDEN, is just six minutes long. The film depicts a real event that happened in American history, a rally of 20,000 American fascists at Madison Square Garden in New York City on the eve of World War 2.
They were members of the Bund (“federation”), a fascist organization wrapped in the American flag. The main speaker is German immigrant Fritz Kuhn, who demands “our government shall be returned to the American people who founded it” in front of a massive painting of George Washington in the backdrop. The Americans give him the fascist salute. At the end, a woman sings “The Star Spangled Banner.”
When a protester rushes the stage, he’s beaten by brownshirts until police come and take him away, an incident that draws cheers from the crowd. Outside, protesters were being beaten and trampled by police.
Dorothy Thompson, a journalist married to Sinclair Lewis (who would write IT CAN’T HAPPEN HERE), observed the rally. She wrote an article in the August 1941 issue of HARPERS, “Who Goes Nazi?”, in which she proposes a party game of guessing, among guests at a party, who would support the Nazis if they took over. She proposes that Nazism is not so much an ideology as a worldview that appeals to a certain psychology.
While this rally took place, Hitler was building his sixth concentration camp. Seven months later, World War 2 began.
Watch it here:
The fourth episode in the highly acclaimed CRASH DIVE series is 
Chris Glatte’s THE LONG PATROL tells the story of a squad fighting during the Battle of Guadalcanal during WW2. When intelligence produces an opportunity to go behind enemy lines and make contact with native guerillas, the squad ends up on a dangerous and bloody mission that may change the course of the battle and the war.
The story begins in mid-1941. Germany is triumphant in Poland, France and the low countries, and has declared war on the Soviet Union. In Berlin, five friends gather afterhours at a pub to see each other off: Wilhelm Winter, a lieutenant in the infantry bound for Russia; Friedhelm Winter, his younger brother serving in the same platoon; Greta, who has aspirations for fame; Charlotte, an army nurse; and Viktor Goldstein, a Jewish tailor who is Greta’s boyfriend.
I have a confession to make, which is I typically don’t like war movies with women in them, as the female roles often seem grafted on to create a gratuitous love story. In GENERATION WAR, the male and female characters add to the story equally. Greta must navigate the secret police to save her Jewish boyfriend. Charlotte must deal with both the war and her belief in the Reich. The women face no-win ethical choices that are as severe as the men’s, and the results are compelling and dramatic, showing a well-rounded story of these young Germans. 
As for the German characters as a whole, they are also presented as very realistic in an unflinching contemporary view. Wilhelm and Charlotte, in particular, believe Hitler knows what he’s doing, occasionally repeat the slogans they’ve been taught, and overall have faith in the Reich and the Army, which makes their demoralization in the face of reality all the more dramatic. Greta is interesting because one senses she sees it all as a farce but plays along to get what she wants. Friedhelm is the lone objector but over time survival takes precedence over his moral qualms, and like everyone else, he becomes dehumanized by everything around him.
BATTLE STATIONS, the third episode in the popular CRASH DIVE WW2 submarine adventure series, is now available in audiobook!