I've just finished reading
Hitler in Los Angeles by Steven J. Ross. The book was a runner up for the Pulitzer Prize in history.
In the 1930s, fascism was a real threat in the US. There were many fascist organizations (even besides the Klan) operating in the US as well as several pro-Germany groups that were either openly Nazi or functioned as apologists for the Nazi regime. Many of the groups were secretly funded by the Nazi government in Germany and several were led by individuals who were taking orders from Hitler's government.
Besides spying on military installations and factories, there were well developed plots to sabotage military production if and when the US entered the war (Hitler was preparing for war even before 1939), plans to assassinate prominent citizens (especially the Jewish heads of the movie studios - Hitler took Hollywood's propaganda threat very seriously), and even plots to initiate and support a fascist coup against the US government.
US counter-intelligence in those days were very primitive and were focused on the East Coast, leaving the West Coast pretty much wide open for subversive activity. They were also focused on Communists.
It was an American Jew named Leon Lewis who recognized the threat that American Nazis posed and single handedly organized a spy ring that successfully infiltrated many of the fascist groups in California. They were successful in using rivalries within the Nazi movement to disrupt their activities and to collect enough information to prevent the assassinations and sabotage as well as leading to the arrest and/or deportation of many of the leaders.
So successful was Lewis' operation that most of the intelligence used to arrest the Nazis and to shut down the spy ring came from his private spy organization.
Very interesting book, and very eye-opening about a subject I knew little about.
I'm writing this post in this thread rather than "Book Nook" because there were several analogies to today's current events.
For a while, Hitler was very successful at using the threat of denying access to the lucrative German cinema market to force the Hollywood studios to water down or eliminate anti-Nazi themes. As I was reading this, I was thinking about Hollywood's (and other media) self-censorship to maintain access to the Chinese market.
Law enforcement and counter-intelligence constantly prioritized the relatively minor threat of the Communists over the clear and present danger of the fascists. In fact, even investigations that began to look into the fascist threat almost always morphed into anti-Communist investigations. This struck me as similar to how most law enforcement today see rightwing terrorist as a greater threat to Americans' safety than Leftwing or Islamic terrorism but are prevented from putting more resources into this because the Right Wing will scream about a "witch hunt".
Finally, the anti-Semitism and sympathies for the Nazis of some of our national leaders at the time reminds me of how racism and pro-Putin sympathies today leads to inflated fears of, say, immigration over the very real threat that Russia and other actors pose to the security of our elections.
For this generation of far-right nationalists, religion is not a question of ethical conduct; it is purely about identity and peoplehood. -- Jan-Werner Müller