Even as Hitler and his Nazi regime ran roughshod over Germany and Europe in the 1930s, there were those in America who championed their rise. And nowhere so much as on Long Island.
Camp Siegfried in Yaphank (a community in the south part of the Town of Brookhaven, Suffolk County) became a focal point for certain German Americans to gather and espouse the Nazi cause.
Building on racial and ethnic biases, lack of trust in government and a dose of conspiracies, the German American Bund was able to contribute to a growing American fascist movement promoting antisemitism, isolationism, and even the overthrow of the United States government.
Fueled partially by Nazi Germany’s financing of propaganda, thousands of New Yorkers embraced the ideals of an American Reich through retreats such as Camp Siegfried, which groomed Nazi sympathizers to be ready for the fascist overthrow of the American republic.
In opposition to Nazism, multiple local citizen groups fought to combat the Bund’s organized efforts to undermine America.
In Nazis of Long Island: Sedition, Espionage & the Plot Against America (History Press, 2025) author Christopher Verga brings to life this often-overlooked history of New York’s World War II era.
Author Podcast Interview
On the latest episode of the Long Island History Project podcast, Christopher Verga untangles the history of the German American Bund, Father Coughlin, the America First movement, and more.
His book documents a time of unrest in the country when militias, foreign agents, and even elected officials actively opposed the American government.
You can hear the episode here.
The Long Island History Project is an independent podcast featuring stories and interviews with people passionate about Long Island history. It is hosted by academic librarian Chris Kretz.
Book Purchases made through this Amazon link support the New York Almanack’s mission to report new publications relevant to New York State.
Nazi Germany had its proverbial black tentacles spread all over the east coast of America during WW2.
Sharp counterintelligence measures by the FBI during the Second World War led to two major successful sting operations against the principal Nazi spy cells operating in WW2 America, specifically against the Nazi Duquesne Spy Ring in late 1941 and against the Pastorius Spy Ring in early 1942.
The FBI’s brilliant thwarting and unveiling of enemy German agents operating on American soil was bolstered from double agents working on the inside of both German spy rings. Controversial FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover spearheaded these very fruitful investigations which led to two successful criminal prosecutions against America’s Nazi enemies.
What was the great failure here? J. Edgar Hoover and the FBI had failed to notice the hostile and secret Soviet operatives spying on America for communist Russia during WW2, such as Alger Hiss and Julius and Ethel Rosenberg.
When the apprehension came for the above mentioned spies, it came too late. The Rosenbergs had already badly infiltrated the Manhattan Project and had succeeded in giving classified atomic secrets to their Russian handlers and Alger Hiss, a top American diplomat and turncoat,
only was sent to prison for two years for committing acts of perjury, not espionage, against the United States.
The Rosenbergs were successfully tried and convicted before being executed for their horrible acts of betrayal, but most of the members of their Soviet spy circle went undetected and free for years afterward. By the time of the Rosenbergs’ execution, Russia was well on its way to achieving a successful atomic bomb program. The FBI had failed America here, and, as a result, America’s enemies pulled ahead.
Hiss’s conviction was a result of too little too late.
Subsequently, American spying efforts against the Soviet Union were very successful, such as in Operation VENONA, where US Army cryptographers superbly (and secretly) intercepted and deciphered Russian coded messages, which resulted in the capture of many Russian spies operating on American soil, especially in NYC and in Washington, DC, in the 1950s.
Long Island was a major hub of virulent Nazi propaganda and anti-American, pro-German sentiment during WW2, with Yaphank, NY as a Bund mainstay. This is a shameful and and a factual reality.
But it also serves historians of America and the world at large that the threats against democracy are perpetual. And these same threats come also from within a democracy, as well as from without.
In order to create and sustain a free society, where all men and women stand equal before the eyes of the law, we must keep our presses and all of our cultural institutions open to every American voice to be counted and to be heard, so things like racism and ethnic violence can be rooted out from their beginnings and the dark veils of oppression and oligarchs can be foiled as well. E PLURIBUS UNUM!
M. M. DeBonis.
Communist Russia created its first successful atomic weapon in 1949, six years before the Rosenbergs’ execution in 1955.
This is an important historical clarification to be made here, w/ respect to my above post. I do apologize to readers.
Thank you for the correction. I don’t know anyone who thinks that Ethel Rosenberg was seriously involved, or that Julius helped the Soviets nearly as much as Klaus Fuchs, who saved the USSR years of experimentation in developing their own bomb.
VENONA decrypts strongly connect both Rosenbergs to relaying America’s atomic science secrets to KGB handlers in a conscientious and direct capacity and on more than one occasion.
There are other numerous and historically factual sources that have demonstrated as much, post-1990s.
I leave it to you to believe what you like.
MM DEBONIS.