Steven J. Ross
Autor/a de Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America
Sobre l'autor
Steven J. Ross is professor of history at the University of Southern California and director of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life. He is the author of Hollywood Left and Right, recipient of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Film Scholars Award and mostra'n més nominated for a Pulitzer; Working-Class Hollywood, nominated for a Pulitzer and the National Book Award; Movies and American Society; and Workers on the Edge, He lives in Southern California. mostra'n menys
Obres de Steven J. Ross
Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America (2017) 128 exemplars
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With this as background, Ross looks in some detail at Hitler followers who were plotting against Jews and Communists in California and elsewhere. The German-American Bund was one paramilitary group with tens of thousands of members supportive of Nazi practices. Another group was the Silvershirts, founded by a sometime Hollywood screenwriter, William Pelly. Sounding eerily similar to some political sentiments of today, Pelly pushed an "America First" movement. Television wasn't available at the time, so Pelly didn't complain about the Media, but he did become critical of Hollywood movies. He also labeled movie moguls as rapists and perverts, and blamed them for hiring hiring Jewish actors and writers, complaining that they took good jobs from Gentiles. His Silvershirts, partially funded by German agents, armed themselves, were dedicated to Christian beliefs, keeping America White and Christian, and to political change. Pelly looked at himself as being the "American Fuhrer".
With Hitler oppressing Jews in Europe, there was concern that pro-Nazi groups active in the United States would do the same. Jewish leaders especially became fearful that some of Hitler's pre-war pogroms against Jews in Germany could lead to violence against Jews in the U.S. Given how ineffective resistance to Nazi persecutions of Jews in Europe appeared to have been, some in the American Jewish community felt the need to stand up to and resist anti-Semitic groups.
And that is the main focus of Ross' book. The leader of this Jewish resistance in the U.S. in the late 1930's was Leon Lewis, a Jewish lawyer in Los Angeles. Ross discusses Lewis and the activities of his tiny group, and what steps they took to prevent American anti-Semitic groups from adopting and fostering Nazi attitudes in the U.S. Lewis organized an informal spy network to infiltrate American Nazi groups, mostly in California. Lewis and his small group was surprisingly effective in identifying anti-American groups and individuals, and disrupting their activities. If not for Lewis and his group, political extremism and Nazi attitudes in California and the U.S. could have been much worse.
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