Intro

Clips

Jake:
[0:05] Welcome to Hub history, where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston. The hub of the universe.
This is Episode 215: Literal Nazis. Hi, I’m Jake.

[0:22] They stockpiled guns and ammunition. They built homemade bombs.
They had a hit list of a dozen members of Congress who were targeted for assassination.
They believed themselves to be patriots, with soldiers and police officers among their ranks.
They rallied under the motto of America First, but they planned to overthrow our constitutional government and install a fascist dictatorship.
Believe it or not, I’m not talking about the insurrection that took place on January 6th, but instead a plot that the FBI uncovered in January 1940.
The resulting investigation threw a spotlight on a group called the Christian Front that made its headquarters of Boston’s Copley Plaza Hotel,
promoting violent attacks on Jewish Bostonians while accepting covert funding and support from a Nazi spymaster based on Beacon Hill.

[1:15] But before we talk about the Christian front, I just want to pause and thank the Patreon sponsors who make the show possible.
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And now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

Literal Nazis

Clips

Jake:
[2:03] On January 15th, 1940 The Boston Globe put out a special edition with an enormous headline reading G Men Nick Revolt, Plot Arrest.
18 members of Christian Front alleged uprising against US planned The main conspirators.
The Zip tie guys of their era were all members of the New York chapter, with the Globe story beginning,
a terroristic gun and bomb plot to overthrow the United States government, assassinated dozen congressmen and seized the stronghold of the army was charged tonight after 18 members of the Christian Front were arrested and accused of conspiracy to create a revolution.

[2:41] The 18 men, including New York National Guardsmen and one member each for the naval and marine reserves, were accused by Hoover of conspiring to bomb and shoot their way to power and to set up a government like Hitler’s dictatorship over Nazi Germany.
A small arsenal was unearthed in New York City by FBI agents, Hoover said, including bombs, ammunition, rifles and the makings for explosives in various stages of completion.
In 1940 pamphlet called Inside the Christian Front, Theodore Irwin said,
this little group was accused of planning to bomb selected buildings, sees public utilities blast bridges, terrorized Jews appropriate Federal Reserve gold, assassinate 14 congressmen and set up a dictatorship.
Thes front Er’s, almost half of whom were active or former members of the National Guard or other branches of the armed forces were about to undergo a practice course in bombing.

[3:39] Another report said that at least 40 members of the group were NYPD officers.
In 2003, Stephen Norwood published an article titled Marauding Youth in the Christian Front.
Anti Semitic Violence in Boston and New York during World War Two, appearing in the journal American Jewish History. It’s one of the most widely cited pieces on the Christian front.
In it, he makes a very explicit link between the coup plot and the group’s fundamental anti Semitism writing.
The FBI charged that the arrested men plan to bomb the offices of the New York Jewish newspaper, the Forward, as well as other Jewish owned businesses and to assassinate Jewish members of the U. S. Congress.
The FBI claimed that the plotters hoped this violence would precipitate the emergence of a mass anti Semitic movement leading to a dictatorship that would remove Jews from the United States.
10 of the 13 arrested Christian Front members were Irish Americans, the F B. I believe that they imitated IRA techniques and manufacturing explosives.

[4:43] Press coverage of the failed coup attempt brought increased in unwanted attention to the Boston chapter of the Christian Front.
The initial reporting on the plot continues. Contents of the arsenal, discovered in a six month investigation ordered by Attorney General Frank Murphy and conducted by the FBI, included rifles and pistols,
thousands of rounds of ammunition and powder and chemicals used in the making of bombs.
It also contained one long sword through the use of cameras equipped with telescopic lenses.
The FBI agents made records of their spying on various drills and the use of firearms in leadership and in maneuvers at a camp which Hoover said was at nah Roseburg, 100 miles upstate from New York City, they discovered.
Also, Hoover said, that the front’s leader answered to the name of Fuhrer and the half raised arm salute of the Nazis.

[5:39] That if you’re ER, who ran a terrorist training camp In insisted on being greeted with a stiff armed salute was John F. Cassidy, the leader of the Brooklyn chapter of the Christian Front.
A curious Boston Globe reporter decided to ask Francis P. Moran, the founder of the Christian Front and head of the New England chapter, about Cassidy and reported Moran said last night that he knew Cassidy very slightly.
Unfortunately for Mr Moran’s credibility, he had climbed on stage at the Boston Arena about three months earlier and enthusiastically introduced Cassidy to a crowd of at least,
4000 as part of a rally in support of free speech after virulently anti Semitic radio programs by aviator Charles Lindbergh,
and founder of the America First Movement father Charles Coughlin have been taken off the air in some markets.
Francis Moran may have been the grand poobah of the Christian Front, but Father Coughlin was there spiritually.
North Star, founder of the right wing newspaper Social Justice and early advocate of the rabidly xenophobic and anti Semitic America first philosophy,
Coffin was a genuine star with a radio program that was carried from coast to coast.

[6:54] In a 2001 thesis for Boston College.
Note from the editing room It was actually BRANDEIS.
Jennifer Goldstein summarized his outsized influence across the United States and in Boston, in particular with an appealing radio voice. He presented his sermons every Sunday afternoon for years from his church shrine of the little flower.
Between 30 and 45 radio stations broadcasted Coughlin’s weekly sermons.
Millions of Americans listen to his views regarding economic and social issues.
Churches around the country rescheduled Sunday services so they would not interfere with Coughlin’s radio broadcasts.
Coughlin’s influence expanded as the international scene during the 19 thirties grew darker.
His newspapers, social justice increasingly reported on the Nazi rise to power in Germany.
A few days after Kristallnacht, Father Coughlin minimized German atrocities committed that night.
He justified the Nazi caused by saying German Jews were responsible for the Weimar Republic’s economic and social problems.
Coughlin also reprinted copies of the fraudulent protocols of the Elders of Zion in his newspaper.

[8:07] In November 1938 The New Republic claim that there was almost no editorial difference between the Nazi weeklies and Coughlin Social justice.
Coughlin proposed to enact social justice through the reorganization of the American government using Italy as a model.
In short, he wanted to introduce fascism in America.
In addition to his radio broadcasts and newspaper, Coughlin spread his radical views through the Christian Front organization,
as part of his crusade to eliminate communism, Father Coughlin called in the May 23rd 1938 issue of Social Justice for the establishment of the Christian Front to unite believers.
The Christian Front had chapters in 12 American cities but received the most attention in Brooklyn. In Boston, where about 90% of its members were Irish Catholics, Coughlin’s influence in Boston and America was profound.
Historians estimate between 20 and 40 million Americans listen to it.

[9:09] Francis Moran was happy to borrow a cup of Coughlin’s famous. He climbed to prominence.
Serving is the local host from mass meeting of Father Coughlin Social Justice Movement at Boston Arena on September 8th, 1939 he used.
This is a chance to introduce the Christian front to a sympathetic crowd announcing This is not a Christian front meeting, but if you’re interested in the Christian Front as I am, come to Room 204 the Copley Plaza.

[9:40] Copley Square would be the headquarters of the Christian Front. But as Theodore, or ones, Pamphlet explained, units of the Front have been formed in Arlington, Air, Belmont, Springfield and Worcester.
Last December, Social Justice reported that in Worcester and Springfield, plans are underway for the Organization of Rifle men’s groups in units of 100 men each.
Hitler due to his movement, people from the lower middle class and the unorganized rag tag, and Bobtail, the frustrated the fanatic that gullible the opportunists.
The front er’s are basically the same in composition. Down to the neighborhood hooligans, the unemployed longshoremen that politically disgruntled dominant are the young toughs and the elderly bigots.
Irish Catholics and Nazi sympathizers dress up some of them, or a billion units in brown uniforms, and they would be barely distinguishable from the S s core in the special edition of the Globe for the coup attempt.
There was some reporting on the local chapter of the Christian Front.

[10:42] The Christian Front in Massachusetts was described by the radical squad of the Boston Police Department today as a loosely knit organization, which is violently anti Semitic and anti communist, but not connected with the alleged revolutionary plot.
The Radical Squad gave its information on the Christian Front to Superintendent Edward W. Fallon this morning following the arrest of 17 members in New York who are allegedly plotting an armed insurrection in New York and throughout the country.
The report was made by lieutenants Benjamin Goodman and William Goldston Wow, local group that’s already under surveillance by the Radical Squad and is tied to a violent insurrectionists plot to turn the United States of fascism.
That sounds like something the police might want to look into right, the Globe article continues.
The Boston police do not plan any investigation into the group in this city.
The governor and Attorney General Paul A. Deaver were considering such action, they announced today, but said they would take no positive action until they had gathered all the facts.
The G men and the local Bureau of Federal Investigation, it was learned, have already investigated the Christian Front here.
They found no connection between the local group and the revolution, which apparently was hatched in the New York headquarters.

[12:02] Well, that sounds about what, in the months after the failed coup attempt, Francis Moran and other leaders of the Boston Front would be subpoenaed to testify before a congressional committee about the front activities in Boston.
Moran claimed that his organization was an open book, telling a Globe reporter, I welcome this opportunity of appearing before the DS committee in order that any misunderstanding of the organization’s work in this section may be cleared up.
I personally wrote to J. Edgar Hoover, head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and to representative Martin Ds, requesting them to send an investigator here to learn the true facts of the Christian Front activities in New England.

[12:47] Moran may have put a warm and fuzzy face on fascism when the press was around, but he was an entirely different man. Behind closed doors in 1943 book Undercover.
My four Years in the Nazi Underworld of America. Armenian American journalist Arthur Do Rooney in describes how he infiltrated multiple far right organizations in the U. S.
Among the many groups he exposed was the Christian Front.
Describing here one of his candid conversations with Moran, Moran sat at the desk tight lipped, coarse, textured fanatic.
He represented a new type of Christian front purer. He neither gushed out with Christianity, nor did he heap abuse on the Jew.
He was a calculating and cold blooded propagandist, he said.
You can’t win this fight with terrorism with STORMTROOPERS air just by yelling Jew, you’ve got to lay the groundwork first.
You’ve got to be subtle about it. They can’t pin down anti Semitic or fascist labels on you.
The people are conservative around here, and you’ve got to give it to them in gradual doses. You got to take it easy with, um.

[14:01] This tight lipped propagandist may have said that he would welcome an FBI investigation, but I doubt he wanted anyone to uncover the shadowy figure behind the throne,
who supported the Christian Front with money, propaganda materials and political inspiration.
1940 Profile in Time magazine described Maranz Puppet Master.
The head of the consulate, who presumably dictates its policies, is a 6 ft hefty blond young Nazi socialite, Dr Herbert Schulz, reputedly a one time member of Hitler’s personal bodyguard.
He was, for a while, first secretary of the German Embassy in Washington, in charge of press relations then he was German council in New Orleans before he went to Boston in 1938 as consul in Boston.
One of his first acts was to move his office from the Dowty building, a thin occupied in the business district, and take over a handsome brick home on Beacon Hill, where he discreetly entertains Boston’s Bram intellect.

[15:04] That handsome home on Beacon Hill stood on the corner of willow and chestnut streets, one house away from a corn, the most photographed block in Boston and one long block in one short block away from John Kerry’s house in Louisburg Square.

[15:19] In a shocking juxtaposition, a picture from the era shows the stately brick row house with its bay windows. And in the late autumn there are no leaves on the trees to block the view down to Charles Street.
There are also no leaves to cloak the giant Nazi flag, flying proudly from the flagpole about the front door.
The Reich service flag has a red field with an imperial eagle in the upper corner holding a small swastika.
And then there’s a huge black swastika on a white circle in the center of the banner.
The consul Schultz, also happened to be a stunned Artan, purer or colonel in the SS, and one profile I read described him as one of the best and most effective German spies in America.
A PhD thesis laid out how he recruited an M I T engineering dropout to go to Halifax and report back on Allied shipping.
Then go to spy school in The Hague and returned to New England as a master of espionage, where he turned himself into the FBI in just one week.

[16:20] Another potential recruit, George Armstrong of England, made the mistake of reaching out to Schultz in writing, offering to gather information for the Germans and his role is a military aircraft inspector.
Unfortunately, he was detained by immigration authorities. His belongings were searched, and they found one of his unsent letters to Schultz.
He was sent from the East Boston immigration station to the Deer Island Prison to Wandsworth Prison in London, where he was the first person to be hanged under the New Treachery Act of 1940.

[16:55] Most of Moran’s work for Schultz consisted of distributing anti war, isolationist and anti Semitic propaganda, like the Flyers and leaflets that shoppers might get along with their receipts at many Boston stores and restaurants.
As Stephen Norwood describes Bostonians, shopping or dining out during World War two often encountered Christian front propaganda inspired by the front.
Many Boston restaurants during the war printed anti Semitic statements on their menus, and many stores handed customers anti Semitic pamphlets with their purchases.

[17:30] When undercover journalist Dirani in asked Moran how he continued to get the newsletter, Social Justice and other far right publications into Boston after they’ve been declared seditious and band. Moran responded.
Mr Schulz and I worked it out together.
Who is Mr Schulz? I asked. Dr.
Herbert Schulz is the German consul in Boston, he said, and through the good graces of the Nazi console, Moran sponsored showings off Zig Invest in,
the Nazi propaganda film whose purpose was to cow Americans before the invincibility of the Nazi war machine.
The airing of Zig Invest in or Victory in the West raised a lot of hackles in Boston.
Both the City Sensor and the State Sunday Sensor issued public statements saying that since the film was shown in a private venue, it was outside their jurisdictions.
Even so, some of the most graphic footage of dead American allies have been cut. As Moran told the Boston Globe.

[18:33] According to Maran, he had great difficulty getting permission for the showing of the film from the Massachusetts Department of Public Safety and from the city authorities, but was finally successful.
Though the state authorities cut out certain sections of the film showing the British dead at Dunkirk, he also admitted that he had great difficulty securing a motion picture machine operator.
He said he was showing the film to prove the hopelessness of this country’s fighting the powerful German army.
And he argued that instead of aiding Britain and China, America should rearm and become so strong that,
eight years hence, when Hitler has conquered all other nations and is in a position to invade America, the two nations will be in the mood to cooperate with each other.

[19:19] From a 2021 perspective, this vocal and unwavering support of Hitler seems unthinkable.
The U. S war effort after Pearl Harbor was a society wide affair, lifting the country out of the Great Depression in forming a central part of our current national identity.
Even now, over 75 years after the war ended, those of us whose fathers or grandfathers fought remember their service with pride.
The great struggle against Hitler looms large is one of the last moments of true national unity before the civil rights movement and the violent reaction against it ignited the culture wars that still rage in America.
However, at the time, there were plenty of Americans who believe that we entered the war on the wrong side, that the Nazis could be a valuable ally against Soviet Russia,
and that the anti Semitism of the Nazi regime was a value to be emulated here.

[20:16] That helps explain how Moran, Father Coughlin, Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford and the other prominent Nazi apologists found such broad audiences.
It also helps explain how someone like Moran could justify working directly with the Nazi spy.
After revealing that he relied on spymaster Schultz to provide him with propaganda materials, Moran strongly hinted that he was also on the Nazis payroll. With the Rooney in writing.
I spoke with Moran in this home in West Roxbury by his confession. Unemployed for several years while engaged in voluntary work for the Christian Front, Moran had just purchased a sturdy three story home.
I could not ask him a source of income. Instead, I asked if he was still active in the movement after his appearance before the Washington grand jury.
Whatever I do now, he said, I do alone. I know I’m being watched just the same. I keep in contact with what is going on.
I still control them all in Boston.

[21:22] In the summer of 1941 Francis Moran in the Christian Front lost their Nazi fairy godfather.
In June, the U. S government froze all German assets held in US banks and announced that all German diplomats will be expelled from the country by July 10th Council. Schultz seemed to be disappointed to leave Boston, telling the Globe.
One of our pleasures and coming to Boston was your cultural advantages. The museums, universities, that delightful Boston Symphony concerts.
My wife and I are very fond of music, and we enjoyed particularly those wonderful performances of Wagnerian opera and the Boston Opera season.
I also I’m very keen on skiing, for which I had no chance when in Washington.
In Boston, I could often weakened at North Conway for winter sports. And you’re sure places air so pleasant in the summer, too.
We shall regret such pleasures when we leave Boston.
We have met many pleasant people here, too, including Bostonians whom we had met previously in Europe.
Scholars and musicians who studied there, or people to whom we had letters of introduction from Americans living abroad.

[22:36] When a reporter stopped by the consulate two days before President Roosevelt’s deadline.
The consulate already left for Germany, and the remaining staff was cleaning.
House Globe reporter sent to the consulate at 39 Chestnut Street on Beacon Hill, was hastily escorted to the door before his forced exit.
He did observe papers burning in the fireplace, an evacuation practice previously condemned by the Boston police when residents complained that sparks from a chimney constituted a fire menace.

[23:09] It’s anybody’s guess how much of the evidence tying Moran to German intelligence agencies went up the chimney that afternoon as a fire menace?

[23:18] What does the tables turned on? Console Schultz. After the US broke off diplomatic relations with Nazi Germany, things went south for the Christian Front.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor on January 4th, 1942 the Boston Police riot squad got a tip.
The trouble was brewing at Hibernian Hall, the Roxbury institution where the Christian Front held meetings, patriotic groups in neighborhood toughs.
It surrounded the building, and we’re threatening to break up the first front meeting since the nation went to war.
The bpd showed up to protect the Christian front, but ended up, rating the hall and seizing 51 books that have been declared seditious.
The next morning, they went to another front office at 7 11 Boylston Caddy Corner across from the BPL, and used a truck to remove over 11,000 books and pamphlets that Moran voluntarily surrendered.
The next day, under pressure from Attorney General Robert Bushnell, who is cracking down on organizations that disrupted the war effort, Francis Moran agreed to shut down the Christian front.
He even offered to start selling war bonds to prove his loyalty.
In April 1942 Life magazine article about voices of defeat in the U. S framed the shutdown of Boston’s Christian Front as a major success and a model for other subversive groups.

[24:45] Boston police and federal agents descended of Moran’s headquarters.
They seized 11,000 pieces of printed propaganda from Flanders Hall, the publishing house which printed the work by George Sylvester V. Eric, convicted Nazi agent and other material, which was forwarded direct from Germany.
Moran admitted that he had bought the’s on a tip that Flanders Hall was going out of business and plan to destroy its stock.
After a talk with Police Commissioner Te multi about this and other matters.
Moran announced that he was disbanding the Christian Front for the duration of the war and offered to prove his Americanism by selling defense box.

[25:25] Boston did to abate. The nuisance of Moran can be done by any other city in the land.
All that’s really required are spontaneous demands by local citizens and their patriotic organizations upon their public officials to silence these discordant voices of defeat.
Already, the Department of Justice is beginning to move nationally against the worst offenders.
But Boston’s example offers an excellent opportunity for other municipalities to deal with this local problem locally.

[25:57] In his book, Undercover Investigative journalist Dirani in described how rather than stamping out Moran and his noxious influence in Boston, this only served to drive the propagandist underground,
he recounted in November 1942 conversation with this wannabe Feur er.
A lot of was being raised right here in Boston. I said, I guess I had something to do with that.
Moran boasted, his thin, bloodless lips barely parting as he spoke.
The only thing you can do now, of course, is to talk about communism and the Jews. You can’t touch the war.
A whispering campaign is the best thing now They’d have all the time tracing it, Mrs Murphy tells Mrs Duffy, and she tells Mrs O. Toole, who tells it to Mrs Smith.
Yes, these women can certainly dish it out. And by the time they end up, they’ve got something which everybody believes.
It’s the safest thing. to work Nowadays, Francis Moran’s influence in Boston wouldn’t fade away entirely until after he was drafted into the U.
S. Army, a decision he appealed and lost in December 1943.

[27:07] All the propaganda and whisper campaigns he initiated had effects in the real world,
not so much in undermining support for the war effort but in turning broad swaths of Americans, Irish American majority against the Jewish minority that was most prevalent in neighborhoods like Roxbury, Mattapan and Dorchester.
Stephen Norwood’s Journal article on anti Semitic violence in Boston ties Maranz efforts directly to the street violence that would follow.
Professor Gordon Allport, chair of the Harvard psychology department and one of the leading scholarly authorities on ethnic and racial prejudice, asserted that the circulation of this anti Semitic literature was inspired by the Axis.
He denounced the material as racial libel and declared that it exceeded the limits of free speech.
Allport considered the anti Semitic literature exceedingly dangerous.
Imperceptibly, it leads to name calling on the street to stone throwing to physical assaults and finally to programs which indeed, they specifically threaten.
Thanks to the efforts of Francis Moran, Father Coughlin and other rabble rousers, anti Semitic attacks spiked during the war years, especially in 1943 44.

[28:23] When Arthur Do Rooney in, returned to Boston in the fall of 1942 he wrote, I found Boston seething with anti Semitism, defeatism and rumor mongering evidence of Christian Front and Coughlan night activity was rife.
The fascist spirit had permeated the cradle of liberty.
It was merely another tongue of flame from Boston’s native fascist fires.
I predict that unless it’s curbed, Boston’s clerical fascists stench will someday caused national nausea.
Even now, Hitler has much to be proud of. In Boston, Norwood describes how the story finally broke in the autumn of 1943 after what he and other critics have called a deliberate cover up by the Boston Press.

[29:12] In October 1943 the New York newspaper PM declared that bands of Irish Catholic youths inspired by the Coughlin Night Christian Front,
had for over a year waged an organized campaign of terrorism against Jews in Boston’s Dorchester district and in neighboring Roxbury and Mattapan.
They had violently assaulted Jews in the streets and parks, often inflicting serious injuries with blackjacks and brass knuckles and a desecrated synagogues and vandalized Jewish stores and homes.
The New York Post stated that the beating of Jews in Boston were in almost daily occurrence.
Many Jews could not leave their homes even in daylight, frightened of being beaten by youths from adjacent,
Irish Catholic neighborhoods like South Boston, Fields Corner and the Codman Square area who deliberately enter Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan to go Jew hunting,
the New York Yiddish daily The day called the anti Semitic violence that had occurred in Dorchester during the previous year.
A Siris of small programs.

[30:19] Jennifer Goldstein’s 2001 thesis described how Boston’s Jewish community came to expect violence at community centers, public schools,
and especially in the city streets that were darkened in fear of enemy air raids and submarine attacks.

[30:36] After the Pearl Harbor attack, Boston blacked out streets, leading to an increase of incidents at night.
Many Irish youth beat up Jewish boys as they left the Heck neighborhood house off Blue Hill Laugh, nicknamed Juhi Laugh.
According to Hecht House reports chronicling the attacks, Anti Semitism occurred in various places.
Occasionally, Irish boys burst into the community center. Irish Catholic youth also waited outside the house.
Others experienced anti Semitism. At Dorchester High School, there were at least 19 reported incidents between July 1943 and September 1943.

[31:19] Now that the story was out in the open, community leaders demanded action, as Norwood describes.
Several Jewish leaders in Boston now spoke up, demanding that city and state authorities take immediate action to terminate the anti Semitic outbreaks.
Rabbi Samuel I. Corfe of Mattapan, charged to the outrages against Boston Jews, have begun three years before we’re organized and were financed by somebody.
They could not be dismissed as isolated, unmotivated hooliganism, though Corfe couldn’t have known so it the time he was right.
The attacks were at least loosely organized by Francis Morons, Christian friend, and they were financed by the Nazi Consulate in Boston.
His was far from the only voice calling out for action, but the Boston Police Department was unconscionably slow to react.
Perhaps this isn’t surprising, given how heavily Irish Catholic the Force Waas and how Maney police officers have been revealed his Christian front members.
When the New York chapter was broken up almost without a doubt, some members of the Boston force would have been sympathetic to the front.
If not, members and others would have been influenced by Father Coughlin’s rabidly anti Semitic radio program and other propaganda that depicted Jews as an internal enemy.

[32:43] Facing nightly violence and unable to rely on the protection of the Boston Police Department, community members in Boston’s most heavily Jewish neighborhoods began taking matters into their own hands.
Norwood’s article describes the self defense patrols that emerged at the grassroots level. Jews and Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan now organized vigorous self defense units to protect residents their property against further assaults.
Rabbi Core pronounced that public officials indifference to Jewish safety would cause Jews to organize their own protective association neighborhood.
Air raid wardens and auxiliary police began patrolling the streets to guard against the Irish American intruders who, as PM observed Rove the area UN molested by police.
A group of Jewish butcher boys banded together to protect Jews returning home from Friday night synagogue services.
The day noted that many Jewish youths and army draftees spurning the advice to hush hush, answered blow with blow.
It compared Dorchester’s Jewish self defense groups to those that Jews had organized in czarist Russia to combat program ists.

[33:57] The combination of street violence, police indifference and organized vigilante groups culminated with an attack that finally helped catalyze official action.

[34:07] On the evening of October 9th, 1943 a Jewish boy was beaten up near Grove Hall.
Later that night, Ah, large group of Jewish teenagers and air raid wardens went out looking for revenge on his Attackers.

[34:23] About 20 bpd officers responded to a trouble call when they pulled up to the corner of Geneva Aven, Columbia Road, just after 11 p.m.
They would later claim that they saw about 60 or 70 people fighting in the street while a crowd of hundreds looked on.
The police broke up the fight, and somehow all the non Jews got away while for Jewish boys were arrested Jacob Hotties and Harvey Blaustein, both 17, and two other miners who weren’t identified in the media.
Ironically, the story about the attack in The Boston Globe ran between a story about an anti Semitic attack on the Northeastern student and a review of a recent address by Father Coughlin.

[35:06] On the scene, arresting officers beat one boy with a nightstick, punched another in the mouth for talking back and held a gun on a third boy and threatened to shoot him where he stood.
Jacob Potus would later testify that a sergeant named Bernard Faye had punched him after he complained that another officer was beating one of the unnamed minor, saying, You’re a fine sergeant, letting people beat up a kid like that.

[35:33] Things only got worse. When the four youths were hauled into Station 11, Sergeant Fe separated hostess from the rest of the group, asked if he was the one who called him a very fine sergeant and then took him into an interrogation room.
They asked the other two officers in the room what he should do with Otis, and one of them responded,
You can put him in the ash can for all I care with that, they pulled out a flexible billy club and started working over the handcuffed 17 year old Jacob. POTUS would later testify.
He began to hit me on the elbows. You yellow Jew better, he said. Why aren’t you in the Army?
I tried to explain to him that I was going to pharmacy school so I could join the Navy. Next year is a pharmacist, mate, but he kept beating me.
He smashed me across the knuckles with the blackjack. He hit me on the left leg.
I was getting partially unconscious so I could just barely feel the blows.
When I pitched to the floor, he hit me on the thigh.
After a while I came to, I was shaking.
I got up and was led back to the desk.
Face said, I’ll take the smartness out of you. I was told to take off my neck tie and suspenders, but I couldn’t do it.
One of the officers started to do it for me. Let him do it, said Faye, and he hit me across the cheek with his fist.

[36:58] Then I started to go down a steep flight of stairs to the cells. I had just grabbed the banister when I was kicked from behind.
Hotels tumbled down the stairs and was locked in a cell for about an hour before getting bailed out.

[37:12] At some point during the kerfuffle, Sergeant Fei also punched Harvey Blaustein, another handcuffed 17 year old, hard enough in the mouth that it broke a tooth in half, which fell out on the interrogation room floor.

[37:27] A trial. Both boys were convicted of a fray. The judge denied their attorney’s request to file assault and battery charges against Sergeant Bernard Fe.
As Stephen Norwood noted, the state attorney general had to intervene on the teens behalf.

[37:43] Attorney General Bushnell no press the charges against the convicted Jewish boys, which he considered absurd given that they had been attacked by a mob estimated at between 60 and 300 people.
He considered the crowds assault part of a long series of unchecked outrages against Jews that have been occurring since the United States had entered World War Two.
Bush now declared that sergeant phase beating of hostess was brutal and unprovoked.

[38:11] That certainly wasn’t the only time when Jewish Children in Boston were the victims of a brutal and unprovoked attack.
Throughout the war years, the evacuation day parade in South Boston was a lightning rod for anti Semitic violence, in part because of the isolationist and sometimes nakedly anti Semitic speakers who are invited for the celebration,
Stephen Norwood’s article notes in Boston, Irish American leaders during World War Two continued to stage well attended evacuation day ceremonies in overwhelmingly Irish American South Boston,
to celebrate British forces departure from Boston during the Revolutionary War.
The commemoration, funded by the Boston City government, was strikingly anti British at a time when Britain was a key ally in the struggle against the Axis.
The coincided with ST Patrick’s Day reinforcing its association with Irish American identity.
At the 1943 ceremony, isolationist US representative Hamilton Fish of New York declared that it was an honor and a privilege to speak from the theater of the Great British defeat.

[39:24] Another of these speakers was Father Edward Lodge Curren, a devoted follower of Coughlin who often shared a stage with Moran.
He was against US participation in the war against Germany and had a deep hatred for the Jews as Christ killers.
He was wildly popular among the Irish Catholic population of South Boston.
So a Stephen Norwood noted he was invited back year after year,
speaking with diocese and permission At the March 1944 evacuation day ceremony, current denounced America’s allies Britain and Russia rousing those in attendance, to wild applause, whistling and stamping.
After current whipped the crowd into a frenzy, the parade began, and as the parade wound down, the trouble also began.
Ah, marching band from the molten V. F. W Post was one of the last units of March, so they were near the end of the parade column.

[40:20] Their lines were led by a recently inducted U S Navy sailor named Albert Cohen, who was marching in uniforms as they got near the end of the parade route.
The bandleader heard someone say of Cohen, They’re not fussy, who they get in a uniformed. Now there’s another Jew.
Cohen said that a girl standing nearby, then spat at him while police officer stood by and did nothing.

[40:44] Perhaps emboldened by the lack of law enforcement response, members of the crowd started shoving people in the band, calling them dirty Jews and saying they were going to get UM,
most of the band Broken ran for a streetcar that was waiting to take them back to Malton and the confusion.
A 16 year old was hit in the face with his own trumpet, hard enough to be hospitalized for a possible broken jaw.
A 13 year old was knocked unconscious with a pipe or bad.
A 17 year old was hit in the face with brass knuckles, breaking his glasses and blackening his eyes.
Several more got bloody noses and split lips as they were chased to the trolley and knocked down repeatedly.
Ah, Girl, who was chased said that there were Boston City cops, transit police and members of the Shore Patrol looking on who did nothing.

[41:35] When the mob reached the streetcar, they began breaking out the windows to try and get in, while band members fought them back with their instruments.
In the end, no charges were filed. No police report was written on, the only investigation was conducted by the V. F W.

[41:53] I know it sounds like I’ve just been bagging on Irish Catholic Bostonians. Is it I, Semites and Nazi sympathizers?
But the bad eggs don’t account for the entire community currents. Previous inflammatory speeches on Evacuation Day also provide an opportunity to mention the Boston Irish Catholic anti fascists who also left their mark on the era.
Chief among them was Boston Herald reporter Francis Sweeney, who’s mere presence at the press table for Father Currents.
Address at South Boston High School for Evacuation Day in 1942 was enoughto whipped the crowd into a frenzy of hatred so furious that the Boston Police Department had to eject her from the building for our own safety, they said.

[42:37] Sweeney founded the muckraking political ragged the Boston City reporter in the 19 thirties, but shifted our focus to countering the anti Semitic and pro Nazi propaganda that became common during the war years.
She was doubly offended when this hateful rhetoric came from her fellow Irish Catholics, since they had themselves been an unwelcome minority in Boston.
Not that many years before, when she saw people railing against the Jews whose parents or grandparent’s had faced no Irish need, apply policies she would strike back in the press.
Soon she had a byline in The Boston Herald, where she debunked rumors that might have started his Nazi disinformation and in The Christian Science Monitor, while still publishing the Boston City reporter,
in his book Boston Boy, former reporter for the Boston City reporter and Northeastern News editor Nat Hentoff wrote,
and the Boston City reporter Fran Sweeney asked Cardinal O Connell again and again when he would tell the faithful without equivocation, to stop persecuting the Jews.

[43:41] At last, the cardinal was heard from, he summoned France. We need to his presence.
I had never seen her afraid before, but when she left that morning, she was pale and stiff with foreboding.
O Connell had had enough, however, of this woman hectoring them about the so called weakness of his response to Coughlin and his response to this thing among the faithful about the Jews.
She would not promise to stop what the cardinal called her recklessly irresponsible attacks on the church.
She had gone beyond all permissible, indeed, rational grounds.
The cardinal had told her the facts of the fax, she replied.
Silence is a fact, she added, especially when it comes from on high freezing Lee from a great distance, William Cardinal O.
Connell informed this young woman than if her defiance continued, she could be in peril of excommunication.

[44:36] She ignored his threat and continued exposing the truth behind the churches. Complicity in the rise of Fascism.
Unfortunately, it was an uphill battle. An undercover Arthur Do Rooney in road.
I felt that her efforts in the Boston area, where attended digging in a mountain with a hand spade for whoever was protecting Moran was dedicated to the defeat of the American Democratic tradition and the American war effort.
Unholy race riots to shook Boston on Holy ST Patrick’s Day and Chelsea, Brooklyn and Dorchester Jewish boys and girls were set upon and severely beaten by patriotic bums glowing with Coughlin Night Christianity.
But the matter was hushed up in no action taken, even the Boston press unanimously suppressing any mention of it.
Bostonians remain smug in their patriotism.

[45:31] Unfortunately for anti fascism, Francis Sweeney died in 1944 at just 36 years old.

[45:40] So without Sweeney around to hold the Nazis feet to the fire. What made things get better in Boston after the end of the war?
Well, according to Stephen, Nor would it was a combination of a post World War two awareness of the horrors of the Holocaust, the installation of a better cardinal in Boston and a Jewish flight to the suburbs in the post war years.
Quote. Several factors contributed to a significant decline in anti Semitic violence in Boston after World War Two.
Public awareness of the horrors of the Holocaust resulted in some diminution of any Semitism.
A markedly improved economic climate and better prospects for social mobility, reduced frustration and resentment against other groups.
The movement of many Jews to suburban neighborhoods lesson direct physical contact with hostile Irish Americans on the streets.
In Boston, the relatively liberal Richard Cushing, whose brother in law was Jewish, replaced the arch conservative William McConnell is cardinal in 1944 O.
Connell had been UN interested in taking steps to reduce the anti Semitic violence and had not disciplined Christian front priests.
Cushing, by contrast, initiated a considerable amount of interfaith dialogue and took strong measures in the early 19 fifties against a reactionary anti Semitic movement that had resurfaced in the Boston Archdiocese.

[47:04] There was also a genuine shift of attitude among veterans and their families after seeing the horrors of war and the evil of the Holocaust.
Jennifer Goldstein’s thesis elaborate. It’s ideologically the impact of thousands of young men going to fight a terrible tyrant, and knowing that such tyranny was based upon anti Semitism had profound effects,
according to Monsignor Peter Conley, editor of the pilot and himself, a pastor.
Awareness of the Holocaust demanded reflection and various Christian communities contemplating such thoughts.
Many Christians were forced to examine anti Semitism, the dark side of Christian history.

[47:47] Of course, this gradual improvement didn’t mean that anti Semitic attacks disappeared in Boston after World War two.
Stephen Norwood’s article gives a sample of the violence that continued into the next decade.
Physical attacks on Jews continued to occur in Boston during the post war period, although less frequently there were more than 20 reported assault cases in Boston during 1950 in which anti Semitism was the motivation,
13 of them in Dorchester, Mattapan or Roxbury,
1951.
There were several beatings of Jewish youths in Dorchester, one of whom was a rabbi’s son.

[48:26] Shortly afterwards, seven young men were accused of attempting to manhandle Jewish citizens in nearby Hyde Park, Ah, heavily Irish American neighborhood.
That year in Roxbury, a man who intervened to assist a Jewish boy being mauled by a crowd of 20 to 30 youths and an anti Semitic attack was himself beaten.
The man recalled that the savage intensity of the beating of the Jewish boy was beyond imagination.
Youths in the crowd repeatedly hit the boy with metal studded belts, sticks and fists until he collapsed, and then they kicked and trampled him, shouting Dirty Jew and other anti Semitic names.
The Boston City reporter noted that had the man not intervened, the Jewish boy might have been mortally injured.

[49:13] By that time, of course, the Boston City reporter was being published by Francis Sweeney, successors,
After she died in 1944 the Bishop Shell School for Social Service in Chicago posthumously awarded her the Pope Leo the 13th medal for outstanding work in combatting prejudice and injustice and in advancing social education,
with a contemporary writer saying Fran Sweeney could not be discouraged, could not be beaten down.
Could not be frightened, could not be put in her place.
She was a one man crusade.
She burned with some of the holiest and most un extinguish a ble passion for social justice that I’ve ever seen.
I se un extinguish a ble because the light that is Fran Sweeney is not put out by your death.
She will remain a symbol. Ah, heroic figure to those of us with less courage, less fortitude, less revulsion against intolerance.

[50:09] You’re given a choice in this life. So be like anti fascist Francis Sweeney, not Nazi stooge Francis Moran.

[50:20] to. Learn more about the Christian front and the rising tide of fascism in Boston.
Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 215 I have tons of Boston Globe articles about Francis Moran, Father’s Current and Coughlin and the Christian Front.
There’ll be links to online editions of Undercover by Arthur D. Rooney in Stephen Norwood’s Marauding Youth in the Christian Front and Theodore Irwin’s Inside the Christian Front.

[50:52] And before I wrap up the show, I have listener feedback to share.
First up is an email from Scott, who appreciates that this podcast helps to create a community of Boston history lovers during the pandemic, when none of us can attend traditional history events.
I’ve been listening to the show. Now I think, a couple of years, I think it’s virtually impossible that we haven’t been in a room together at some point.
I like local history a lot. Back in 2013, I ran a meet up group called Boston Neighborhood Explorers.
It was kind of like Boston by foot, but free.
I would often go to local history talks all around the city. The group kind of died, but I’m still interested in history.
Of course, I’m on a whole bunch of mailing lists at this point, which is how I happened to catch you in the Old North presentation. You did When you go to these talks a lot.
There are definitely some regular faces.
It’s nice. You’ve got the podcast to get some community around. This also is the last thing I think you should look at every episode is a gift to people for today and also the future.
I think it’s 100% okay to just put them out whenever you can. So no worries on dropping the frequency.
Okay. Thanks for all you do, Scott.

[52:09] Next up are a handful of nice tweets, and the first one is from the creators of the Wheel Bearings Podcast.
One of the shows we love to listen to while putting miles on the cars were graciously lint is hub history.
Give them a listen our friends at auto Line and no parking pod keep us rolling, too, and snap judgment is beautifully produced, so engrossing you may miss your exit.
We were flattered. To be mentioned in the same breath or tweet is Snap Judgment, one of the truly great narrative style public radio podcasts in the style of this American life.
We also appreciate the tweet from Nina that looped us into a discussion of Mayor James Michael Curley, saying Carly is such an interesting character from the standpoint of history.
In case you’re interested. Hub history has an episode about when Curly went after the KKK, not likely because he was anti racist, but because it was politically beneficial.

[53:09] Mike could point to a specific and concrete benefit we provided in this next week.
Thanks Toa Hub History for making sure I got this question right and today’s learned League history of Diseases and Pandemics mini league set in November 17 21.
Which Boston preacher had a small bomb hurled through his window with the attached message?
You dog! Damn you!
L inoculate you with this. A pox to you?

[53:37] That minister, of course, was Cotton Mather. If you’d like to hear how the epitome of Puritanism and the African American Manny Enslave drove scientific advances in inoculation check out Episode 1 14,
And last but not least, we have an email from Kent who wrote in about our recent episode discussing burglar alarms and telephones.
I enjoyed your all the bells and whistles episode. I particularly liked hoop skirts helping drive technology because today I was doing something similar. They’re completely different.

[54:13] Have you seen those collapsible sunshades used in car windows? A reflective fabric stretched on Wait for it.
Ah, hoop put it in a parked car window to repel the sun and they collapsed nicely. Would not parked well today I was working on a dismembered component.
The hoop alone to use is part of an amateur radio antenna that I hope will collapse nicely.
I hope my project works. It’s still in progress.
Thanks for all your good work. Can’t be I wrote back to ask what he was building and can’t described it to me, but it was way over my head.
Kents, currently in exile on the West Coast, helping to take care of family members during the pandemic.
Kent. We hope you get back to the Hub before long.

[55:02] We love getting listener feedback, whether it’s about your craft or electronic projects, trivia successes or history. Meet up groups.
If you’d like to leave us some feedback on this show or any other, you can email us at Podcast, a hub history dot com.
We’re hub history on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Or you can go to hub history dot com and click on the Contact US link while you’re on the site, hit the subscribe link and be sure that you never miss an episode.
If you subscribe on Apple podcasts, please consider writing us a brief review.
If you do drop us a line and we’ll send you a Hub history sticker is a token of appreciation.

Clips

Jake:
[55:44] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listening.