Hitler in Los Angeles

I'm only halfway through it, but have been struck by (maybe) deja Vu dozens of times. The similarities to the recent 50 years I've been old enough to watch are chilling, reminding me that 90 years was not long ago. In many cases (as one other review says) that was only a couple generations ago. I am reminded that we are only now losing the last of our veterans who fought this across the seas. The persons portrayed here were not much older. Yet we are having to learn again where danger lies (and lies).Maybe a summing up when finished

How anyone could rate this book less than five stars is beyond me.

HITLER IN LOS ANGELES, by Steven J. Ross.Wow. An attempted infiltration of the U.S. West Coast beginning about May, 1933, and the efforts of amateur spy masters to trip it up, with little help from domestic law enforcement and the business press.U.S. domestic Nazis plotted to load up on arms and ammunition (12,000 rounds of rifle ammunition and firearms supplied from a San Francisco armory by two Marine Corps. corporals!), extensive plotting to overthrow the U.S. government, and lots and lots of behind the scenes amateur Jewish-American spies. The book suggests that the American domestic Nazi true believers who acted on their plans were relatively few in number, and the actions of the Jewish spy ring kept knocking the domestic terrorist cells back off their organizing heels through most of the Depression years. The book also makes plain that California local law enforcement and the FBI ignored or downplayed the danger, to the point of sympathizing with the American Nazis' aims to overthrow the Roosevelt New Deal by infiltrating Los Angeles city/county governments and law enforcement, notably by the Silver Shirts in the police department and gangster units, preferring to view local communists as the primary target for surveillance. The Daws Committee generally flipped from attempted American pro-Nazi military sabotage of arms manufacturing and the CA airplane industry to a focus on American Communist (pro-union) organizing (subversive) activities in 1938.German ships with Gestapo agents, crateloads of propaganda, and millions of dollars to pump through the American economy passed through West Coast ports during those years. The German government's primary direct purpose was having Georg Gyssling monitor and massage the CA movie industry's productions away from unfavorable portrayals of the Nazi Regime, which lasted until early 1939, when CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY broke the ban.The book strongly suggests that the effectiveness of the Los Angeles amateur Jewish informers' infiltration of American Nazi terrorist cells circumstantially explains the HUAC hearings coming out of California in the 1948-55 period focused on harassing Hollywood movie studios, popular entertainers, minorities and civil rights advocates as payback for winning the war with Nazi Germany. ...Which resulted in so many earnestly stilted Technicolor Spectaculars and such AWFUL white ASCAP pop music during the 1950s?

USC history professor Steven Ross has written a way too detailed account of how a small group of Jews set up a spying operation on Nazi activity in Los Angeles. The protagonist of his story is Leon Lewis who was a WWI vet, a founder of the Anti-Defamation League and a Chicago lawyer who moved to Los Angeles. He is assisted by Joseph Roos and Joseph Klein. Through Lewis’ involvement with veterans’ organization he was able to recruit non-Jewish German Americans to infiltrate and sew divisions within the Nazi oriented organizations operating in Los Angeles. In this activity he was extraordinarily successful. His work led to the rounding up of Nazi operatives along the west coast when the U.S. entered WW II. He was light years ahead of the F.B.I.Los Angeles was a focus of Nazi activity in the United States because of the importance Joseph Goebbels viewed the propaganda potential of the motion picture industry. Although Hollywood was loaded with Jewish senior executives they did little or nothing to warn the American public of the atrocities committed by the Nazis against the Jews in Germany and Germany’s growing geopolitical threat. Simply put the executives feared the loss of the German market.Enforcing Hitler’s de facto censorship of Hollywood was the German Consul Georg Gyssling. Gyssling was prominent in Los Angeles social circles in the 1930s and was very effective in promoting the “New Germany.” However his real role was to prevent a negative view of Germany in Hollywood’s films. In that task he was extraordinarily successful and as a result there were no anti-Nazi films made until 1939.Although the Hollywood studios kowtowed to Gyssling, behind the scenes they funded Lewis’ spying operation. The key figure here was entertainment lawyer Mendel Silberberg who founded the still very successful law firm of Mitchell, Silberberg and Knupp.Along the way we learn about the “Silver Shirts,” the U.S. equivalent of the brown shirts and we learn about the pro-Nazi sympathies in the Los Angeles Police Department which made cooperation between Lewis and the police difficult.What is new here is that we learned that Gyssling actually had back channel conversations with Morton Klein. Further after returning to Germany Gyssling remained a diplomat and at war’s end he worked with Allen Dulles to arrange the German surrender. Simply put Gyssling was more a patriotic German than a Nazi.What troubled me about the book is that Nazi’s knew about Lewis and viewed him as there most prominent enemy in the Jewish community. Why wasn’t he assassinated? In a footnote Ross believes they feared severe reprisals. To me that does not wash. Perhaps both Lewis and the Nazis overestimated the strength of the Nazis in Los Angeles.Nevertheless Ross presents an interesting history of how and why all too many Americans got sucked into the racist ideology of Nazism. A scary reminder for today.

I bought it and read it, then my father read it.Despite our different tastes, we both heavily enjoyed it.The author can write history with the thrill of a spy novel and the humour of a funny spy novel.I highly recommend it for people who have an interest in Jewish history

A bit "dry" to read, but the details are interesting and is well worth the money

Great

Great read for research