The elderly gentleman has just the Horst Wessel song played to him, and now he begins to hum the rhythm of this unspeakable NSDAP hit with childish cheerfulness. And as if that wasn’t unpleasant enough, he now also raises both hands with an increasingly happy face and lets them swing to the beat – according to the motto: Isn’t that a beautiful song?
Objectivity and profound background information are the key currencies in the award-winning ARD documentation The American Guide by Annette Baumeister. But this moment, in all its documentary simplicity, is of such a bizarre remoteness with a high foreign shame factor that you are tempted to turn off the TV and not bother with cranky Nazi sympathizers for the rest of the day.
But fortunately the film continues. And then you immediately understand that no Nazi supporter gets lost in the memories of better times. The exact opposite is the case: it is the son of John C. Metcalfe, who crept into the Nazi scene in the USA as an undercover journalist in the 1930s and took little Howard to events where Horst-Wessel song was sung: “Flags high, ranks tightly closed.” I don’t know the lyrics, says Howard H. Metcalfe. He only knew the beautiful melody.
Just a brief moment in a documentary that is almost 45 minutes long, but one in which the whole ambivalence of an American historical episode is reflected in an exemplary manner. How complex and unspeakable German culture had developed in America after the First World War, what ideological aberrations many German immigrants had taken, and how little is known about it to this day: that is the exciting thing about this documentary – it makes it possible a glimpse into fascist abysses whose dimensions are often unknown.
Fritz Julius Kuhn was a qualified chemist from Munich with a charismatic appearance
What the older gentleman is actually telling about in front of the camera for the first time is his father’s courageous efforts to make the unsuspecting US public, but also the entire political elite, aware of the danger emanating from movements such as the “American German Bund”. : At the center of his research was Fritz Julius Kuhn, a qualified chemist from Munich who immigrated in his twenties with charismatic charisma and a talent for ruthlessly seeking his advantage with criminal activities. Kuhn wants to be the American leader – what? And what did Mr. Hitler say about that? And Mr Roosevelt?
The documentary skilfully assembles original film excerpts, historian classification and Metcalfe’s stories into an entertaining and illuminating lesson about forgotten, hardly noticed German-American fascism. But she manages to deliver much more than interesting information and stories that non-experts were previously unaware of: through copious, but always pointed, never excessively interspersed statements by historians such as Cornelia Wilhelm from the LMU Munich or the American Fascism specialist Bradley W. Hart enables a horizon-broadening classification to understand how things could have gotten to the point where the “Gau America” was officially founded in 1934. That so many NSDAP supporters gathered behind flags with the swastika carried next to the US flag during goose-stepping marches through New York, for example. That Kuhn was able to demand the overthrow of President “Rosenfeld” in front of 20,000 supporters in Madison Square Garden in 1939.
Two politically motivated immigration movements from Germany shaped the USA in the early 20th century. Before the First World War came those who wanted to free themselves from the constraints of the Wilhelmine authoritarian state. They chose democratic America and wanted to become American patriots.
As if nothing had happened: Fritz Julius Kuhn in 1946 with his family.
(Photo: Robert Clover/AP)
After the end of the First World War, however, those who were repelled by the democracy of the Weimar Republic came. They wanted to preserve the real Germany in America. Among these Germans who wanted to remain German was Fritz Julius Kuhn, who went with his wife and two children first to Detroit and then to New York, where he became the leader of the powerful “American-German Bund” in his performances, which were trained in Adolf Hitler’s rhetorical theatrics. becomes. Critically underestimated at first, but soon celebrated as a charismatic figure by the tabloid press. Kuhn is glamorous and high-circulation with an alleged former Miss America.
The film shows how skilfully fascist groups use human needs for their own purposes
The documentary is many things at the same time, which does not make it random, but more interesting: Kuhn’s rise is the character study of a populist and demagogue who uses base instincts to his advantage, as a student Kuhn steals from his fellow students in Munich, goes to prison, the father accommodates him with a Jewish textile manufacturer, whom he also robs. When it all comes out, the entrepreneur persuades Kuhn’s father to refrain from advertising and even gives him money for a new start instead. But such a humane gesture doesn’t stop someone like Kuhn from becoming an anti-Semite.
The film then shows how skilfully fascist groups use human needs for community and nature experiences for their own purposes: holiday camps create a group feeling that is then ideologically charged with inflammatory propaganda and the leader principle. The historians who have their say owe their knowledge of how Kuhn organized it all, how violent and anti-American his goals were, above all to John C. Metcalfe, who rose to become Kuhn’s personal assistant.
This is the second main character of this film, which also tells the story of an investigative journalist who came to America from Germany at the age of ten. Under his original German name, Oberwinder, he infiltrated the scene and eventually triggered the beginning of Kuhn’s end with a single article. All of this has an impressive historical impact that never overwhelms, but rather enlightens. A small stroke of luck, just as the exposure, imprisonment and deportation to Germany of the demagogue Fritz Kuhn, the small American copy of Hitler, was a stroke of luck that goes back to a journalist.
The American Guide, The First, Monday 10:50 p.m.