Hollywood Anti-Nazi League for the Defense of American Democracy
Hollywood Anti-Nazi League for the Defense of American Democracy was the name of an American citizens' initiative founded in Hollywood on April 23, 1936 by people in the film industry the true character of the fascism that was prevalent in Europe was clarified, served to counteract the spread of such tendencies on the American west coast. The association, known for short as HANL or Anti-Nazi League , was heavily influenced by the Comintern .
Emergence from a need for action
A storyteller heads west
Otto Katz , as he correctly informed the American visa authorities in autumn 1935, had written a book about the failed Nobile North Pole expedition ( Nine Men in the Ice ), but the reason for obtaining a residence permit for nine months was wrong secured, namely research on American North Pole expeditions. The name Rudolf Breda, adopted before his arrival in the film metropolis Hollywood, was also wrong. Whether the creation of an organization like the Anti-Nazi League could be planned or not, Katz was a very suitable person for mobilization purposes: He was the editor of the Brown Books and had received a comprehensive insight into the brutal work of the Nazis , and he was as a former managing director of the Soviet Meschrabpom familiar with the film industry - at least with the European one. Hollywood had not remained unaffected by the global economic crisis - in 1934 there were 350,000 unemployed people in Los Angeles County - but Roosevelt's New Deal was also the artists and benefit for education workers, especially the "red" Greenwich Village in New York offered employment, and sat here Katz on. He contacted the Soviet East Coast espionage network around Harold Ware through Josephine Herbst (who was instructed by Hede Massing ) and received a crash course on conditions in America - the screenwriter Hy Kraft played a special role in this. His first appearance in Hollywood in the fall of 1935 was only one of 40 within three weeks at events organized by anti-fascists . Conservative senators were surprisingly among those with whom he got on well as an interesting guy and with his winning smile. Hardly anyone - apart from Ernst Lubitsch - thought of him as a communist. The great directors, producers and directors, people like Fritz Lang , Peter Lorre , William Dieterle , Billy Wilder and Marlene Dietrich have always been part of his circle of friends, which drew further acquaintances such as those with Norma Shearer , Greta Garbo , Charlie Chaplin , David O. Selznick and Frederic March after himself. Katz 'riding around on the bad social conscience of some Hollywood magnates had the most important success with Fritz Lang, who spontaneously donated a large sum of money and promised support for events in the following year.
Persuasion with a trench coat and a cigarette in the corner of the mouth
For the Comintern, Hollywood was an ideal place to promote underground communist or intelligence activities. The Communist Party in California alone received $ 7,000 a month in membership fees, plus donations. After Katz's return to the West Coast, he told stories that could have been scripts for Hollywood films and was loved by his audience for wanting to be on his side, including the most important of the dream factory. One party after another was given for him, sometimes $ 40,000 was raised at such events, the most important of which was that on April 23, 1936 at the Victor Hugo restaurant in Hollywood. Anyone who was politically not too far to the right and had a name did not miss hearing a lecture by Hubertus Prinz zu Löwenstein , who promoted the cause of his American Guild for German Cultural Freedom . The star of the evening was again Katz / Breda and the desired result was inevitable: Immediately afterwards Donald Ogden Stewart , Dorothy Parker , Frederic March, Oscar Hammerstein and Fritz Lang joined forces to form the Hollywood League Against Nazism , which was soon registered and announced on 23 July 1936 at the Wilshire Ebell Theater was made known as the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League for the Defense of American Democracy , a kind of popular front organization in which "reds" and conservatists came together. They hired paid staff and had an “executive director”. The work of the Anti-Nazi League should take place in small gatherings, disseminate information and raise funds, but also fight against Nazism and Nazi agents. The HANL was affiliated with a national organization in New York, which in turn received instructions from the “International Committee for the Victims of Hitler Fascism”.
The Hanl stands out - and has critics
Vittorio Mussolini felt the headwind quite early and withdrew from Hollywood to Italy , Leni Riefenstahl was not even supposed to gain a foothold in the film city. Hollywood Now , a biweekly magazine, became the journalistic organ of the HANL , into which Melvyn Douglas and Philip Dunne , founders of the Screenwriters Guild , put a lot of work. They organized the lecture The Coming Victory of Democracy by Thomas Mann , thus the climax in the existence of the Anti-Nazi League . The Screenwriters Union had regrouped after six years of agony. Right-wing media then warned against the "Sovietization" of the film studios, and a right-wing paramilitary group, the Hollywood Hussars, found a supporter in Randolph Hearst . Apart from the American imitators of the NSDAP , the local racism of the Ku Klux Klan and the fascism of the cleric Charles Coughlin were noticed . The Anti-Nazi League countered its radio propaganda with its own programs. 10,000 listeners gathered in October 1936 for a lecture The Menace of Hitlerism in America in the Shrine Auditorium , where Oscar Hammerstein and Eddie Cantor spoke. The first anniversary was celebrated at the Ambassador Hotel with a fundraising dinner , which was raised for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War . There were appearances by Lena Horne , Judy Garland and Zero Mostel - the latter, like some other members, was later to be found on J. Edgar Hoover's "Black List" . Spain remained an issue, but by 1940 the FBI held the view that the organization was "a Communist front of the worst kind" and that the funds raised to fight against fascism had gone into communist channels. In the late 1930s, the HANL , together with seven other American Popular Front organizations, had collected the considerable sum of 1 million dollars, and Congress member Martin Dies attacked the Anti-Nazi League in 1938 with the committee named after him because of its facade -Character. She would bring people together for a good cause but hide their dark intentions. He earned mass demonstrations in favor of the HANL . After the Hitler-Stalin Pact , a significant number of those interested in the League who were rather superficially attached to the League withdrew - the leaders Parker, Stewart, Hellman and Hammett stayed, renamed the organization the Hollywood League for Democratic Action and affirmed their loyalty to Stalin even the attack on Poland .
Hearst press sees "Bolshevik propaganda"
The entry into the war in 1941 the United States changed the situation: German were sweeping under suspicion, even Marlene Dietrich was in Hollywood under surveillance by the FBI. But the stories about Katz / Breda were now reflected in the world's largest propaganda machine. In the middle of World War II , almost 30 percent of the regular members of the Screenwriters Guild were Communists. As a result, Lewis Milestone's film The North Star gave the Hearst press reason to denounce it as "Bolshevik propaganda" (the underlying book was written by Lillian Hellman , who was also a member of the Contemporary Historians ). With Hangmen Also Die ( Also Die Henker Die ) by Fritz Lang, the FBI noticed that the word “communist” was not included, but that the anti-fascist underground organization that appeared in the film behaved like a classic communist unit. What was worth correcting about their own American society, "Fellow travelers" and CP members were now able to express through their anti-fascism - Watch on the Rhine (Die Wacht am Rhein) is a prime example of this. The film celebrated typical American values and freed the anti-fascists from the stigma of the Soviet connection.
literature
- Stephen Koch: Double Lives. Spies and Writers in the Secret Soviet War of Ideas Against the West , The Free Press, New York 1994, ISBN 0-02-918730-3 , pp. 220-228.
- Jonathan Miles: The Nine Lives of Otto Katz. The Remarkable Story of a Communist Super-Spy , Bantam Books, London et al. 2010, ISBN 978-0-553-82018-8 , pp. 207-28 and 344 f.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Larissa Schütze: Fritz Lang in Exile. Film art in the shadow of politics , Martin Meidenbauer Verlagsbuchhandlung, Munich 2006, pp. 40–45
- ↑ Stephen Koch: Double Lives. New York 1994, p. 225.