Hollywood's spies The undercover surveillance of Nazis in Los Angeles

Laura B. Rosenzweig

Book - 2017

"Confessions of a Nazi Spy may have been the first cinematic shot fired by Hollywood against Nazis in America, but it by no means marked the political awakening of the film industry's Jewish executives to the problem. Hollywood's Spies tells the remarkable story of the Jewish moguls in Hollywood who paid private investigators to infiltrate Nazi groups operating in Los Angeles, establishing the first anti-Nazi Jewish resistance organization in the country--the Los Angeles Jewish Community Committee (LAJCC). Drawing on more than 15,000 pages of archival documents, Laura B. Rosenzweig offers a compelling narrative illuminating the role that Jewish Americans played in combating insurgent Nazism in the United States in the 1930s. ...Forced undercover by the anti-Semitic climate of the decade, the LAJCC partnered with organizations whose Americanism was unimpeachable, such as the American Legion, to channel information regarding seditious Nazi plots to Congress, the Justice Department, the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department. Hollywood's Spies corrects the decades-long belief that American Jews lacked the political organization and leadership to assert their political interests during this period in our history and reveals that the LAJCC was one of many covert 'fact finding' operations funded by Jewish Americans designed to root out Nazism in the United States" --

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Subjects
Published
New York : New York University Press [2017]
Language
English
Main Author
Laura B. Rosenzweig (author)
Physical Description
xiii, 285 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 263-273) and index.
ISBN
9781479855179
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • Part I. Prelude, 1933-1934
  • 1. Nazis in Los Angeles
  • 2. Becoming Hollywood's Spies
  • 3. The McCormack-Dickstein Committee
  • Part II. Undercover, 1935-1941
  • 4. The Proclamation
  • 5. Discovering the Berlin Connection
  • 6. Discovering the Nazi Fifth Column
  • Part III. Resistance, 1935-1941
  • 7. Local Mission, National Calling
  • 8. The Dies Committee
  • 9. The News Research Service
  • Part IV. Legacy
  • 10. The War Years and Beyond
  • Afterword
  • Appendix 1. Partial List of Right-Wing Individuals and Groups Investigated by the LAJCC, 1933-45
  • Appendix 2. Key to Spy Codes
  • Appendix 3. Los Angeles Jewish Community Committee, June 1934
  • Appendix 4. Los Angeles Jewish Community Committee, November 1942
  • Notes
  • Bibliography
  • Index
  • About the Author
Review by Choice Review

Independent scholar Rosenzweig carefully examines the little-known surveillance of Nazis in Depression era Los Angeles. Drawing on government and private archival materials, the author highlights the Los Angeles Jewish Community Committee (LAJCC), the initial Jewish American group to push back against Nazi activity in the US. Hollywood magnates funded LAJCC's operations prior to US entrance into WWII, doing so covertly while providing information to congressional investigative committees, FBI and military operatives, and the Justice Department. Along with like-minded groups across the country, LAJCC helped set up something of an "American Jewish resistance network." According to Rosenzweig, this resulted not from the trepidation historians generally point to, but rather because of courage. This was necessary because the 1930s proved to be the decade when US anti-Semitism most flourished. Potent right-wing groups and demagogues spearheaded nativist drives depicting Jews as alien conspirators while presenting themselves as the embodiment of "Patriotism. Americanism. Loyalty." Generous funding, much of it from Germany, allowed for the setting up of "Aryan" bookstores, the holding of rabid rallies, pamphleteering, and leafleting. Ironically, tactics similar to those employed by the LAJCC would soon be used by red-baiters. Summing Up: Recommended. All collections. --Robert C. Cottrell, California State University, Chico

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

The product of over a decade of research, this book documents the work of the Los Angeles Jewish Community Committee in infiltrating and combating Nazi groups in Los Angeles between 1934 and 1941. Independent scholar Rosenzweig's archival detective work documents how the LAJCC, funded by Jewish film-industry figures and using primarily non-Jewish undercover agents, gathered extensive intelligence on the German-American Bund and other Nazi-infiltrated groups, such as the America First Committee. The LAJCC findings quoted here will surprise readers in showing how extensive and active pro-Nazi groups were in Southern California. The book chillingly recounts how their leaders planned for der Tag ("the day"), a nationwide putsch that would install a pro-Nazi regime in Washington and throughout the U.S. Rosenzweig elsewhere discusses how the LAJCC, in addition to passing along intelligence to local and federal government, engaged in effective counterpropaganda against pro-Nazi materials via radio programs and short films, thus gaining national influence; however, this activity sometimes brought its leadership into conflict with that of other Jewish defense organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League. Rosenzweig has produced a fine, very-well-documented study. (Sept.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

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