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

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

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.