Forbidden History - Nazi Infiltration of America

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

In this episode of Forbidden History, historian Guy Walters joins us to explore the Nazi presence in America, primarily in the build-up to WWII. From the rallies of the German American Bund and the influence of Charles Lindbergh to the agents and saboteurs who tried to bring Hitler’s war to U.S. soil. PATREON LINK HERE: https://patreon.com/ForbiddenHistory?utm_medium=unknown&utm_source=join_link&utm_campaign=creatorshare_creator&utm_content=copyLink Cast List: Eric Meyers: Narrator Guy Walters: Author & Historian Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming Ontario. This spring, Denham gets a softer, lighter, update. Introducing Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg, a new fit that moves with you. It's everything you want denim to feel like for summer. Easy, breathable, and effortlessly cool. With a fit that creates natural movement and a wide leg that feels modern, not overwhelming. Plus, that signature, wait, for this price, moment. Old Navy's drapey denim wide leg. Welcome to the Forbidden History podcast. Our Patreon is now live. Head over and become

a Forbidden Historian to unlock brand new exclusive episodes, including the very first episode in our brand new Patreon series, Forbidden History Inner Circle. In this exclusive episode, we discuss the story of Nazis escaping to Egypt, with me, your host, Eric Myers, joined by published author and historian Tony McMahon. Head over to our Patreon for much more exclusive Forbidden History content. Thanks for supporting the show. It's one of the great myths of the Second World War that America, protected by two vast oceans,

stood safely beyond the reach of Nazism. No panzers rolling across its borders, no Luftwaffe overhead, a nation untouched, but the truth is far more unsettling. Because long before the United States entered the war, the swastika was already flying on American soil, In quiet rural camps, in pack stadiums, at rallies in the very heart of New York City,

and in the minds of thousands of Americans who believed Hitler's ideas belonged not overseas, but here. Behind the reassuring image of an isolated superpower was a shadow network of Nazi front groups, corporate entanglements, clandestine saboteurs landing by U-boat, and an undercurrent of of political sympathy that many Americans preferred not to talk about. Today we're pulling back the curtain on a story rarely told, how deeply Nazism penetrated the United States, and how close the nation came to nurturing a genuine fifth column. It's a story of ideology, espionage, and collaboration.

Joining us to guide this journey is historian and author Guy Walters. Throughout this episode, this episode, Guy will help us navigate the organizations, the operations, and the uncomfortable truths that shaped this hidden chapter of the American story. Welcome to Forbidden History. And this is Nazis in the heart of America. These kids were being taught anti-Semitism. These kids were being taught fascism and they were being dressed in little SS-style uniforms. They were being dressed like Hitler youth. Take the war to the American mainland, blow up railroads, blow up factories, gather as much information as you can. Basically, start making life a bit messy for the Americans, make them realize that they are not safe just because they are thousands of miles away from Europe.

The swastika was in America. When most people picture America during the Second World War, they imagine a nation protected by geography, a country beyond the reach of tanks, bombers, and invading armies. Apart from the shock of Pearl Harbor, the United States appears in the historical imagination as a fortress, distant and untouchable. But that worldview hides a much darker truth. Because while the American homeland may have escaped the physical devastation that consumed Europe, it was far from immune to something far more insidious. Ideology. It's often overlooked that even though, of course, the United States was not invaded during the Second World War, and apart from Pearl Harbor being bombed, the American homeland was largely untouched.

There were Nazis operating in the United States before and during the Second World War. You know, so this whole idea that America was completely untouched by Nazism, it's a slight myth. And I think we really need to re-examine that, because it was a real concerning and definite issue. issue at that time. In small towns and big cities, in community halls and summer camps, in boardrooms and even government circles, the influence of Nazism seeped quietly into American life. Some of it was public, some of it was subtle, and some of it, as we'll discover, was deliberately hidden.

Take for example, you've got an organization like German-American Bund, and this was this association that before the war was, you know, actively promoting Nazi ideology, holding rallies, even in places like Manhattan, advocating, you know, pro-Hitler sentiments. And you've got organizations like that promoting fascist ideals, and you even had these kind of summer camps in which you had the swastika flapping away next to the stars and stripes. You had these summer camps in which the American youth was being indoctrinated into the Nazi way. You've also got some big, big, big American corporations such as IBM and Ford with some very, very troubling links to Nazi Germany.

And that raises, of course, big ethical concerns about economic collaboration with what was one of the vilest regimes of all time. And you also had spy rings operating in America before and during the war. The swastika was in America. The German-American Bund, founded in 1936 and led by Fritz Julius Kuhn, aimed to embed the Nazi ideology within the United States under the guise of patriotism. While insisting it was a loyal American organization, the Bunn's official eight-point plan included many things contradictory to the freedom of belief that is held in America.

This included establishing white Christian supremacy, expelling Jews from labour unions and government, outlawing communism, severing relations with the Soviet Union, halting refugee immigration, and preserving German language and culture among German Americans. A German-American Bund is this key organization to understand. It's a pro-Nazi association, and it was very, very active in the United States in the 1930s. And what its aim was, it was to unite any American of German descent under the ideals of the Third Reich. And it was a very, very influential organization. It had these enormous rallies. And I think probably the most notorious of all its rallies took place in 1939 in Madison Square Garden. And 20,000 people turned up at that.

The staging was deliberately theatrical. A giant portrait of George Washington was full. flanked by swastika banners, American flags stood beside Nazi flags, and uniformed Bund members gave Nazi salutes alongside patriotic ones. Speakers declared that if George Washington were alive today, he would be friends with Adolf Hitler, and denounced President Franklin D. Roosevelt as Rosenfeld and a tool of Jew Bolshevism. Meanwhile, the city of New York fortified the venue.

Approximately 1,700 uniformed officers, 600 undercover detectives, and dozens of bomb squad personnel guarded the event after receiving threats. Outside the building roughly 100,000 anti-Nazi protesters gathered, and several attempts were made to breach the police cordon. By the time the United States formally entered the war, the German-American Bund had already lost much of its public credibility. But it was only when America declared war in December 1941

that the organization was outlawed and then collapsed. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the moment the country joined the Allies, the U.S. government banned the Bund outright and the group officially disbanded just days later. And then also you have these summer camps in which the German-American Bund was trying to instill Nazi values in American children. And these kids were being taught anti-Semitism. These kids were being taught fascism.

And they were being dressed in little SS-style uniforms. They were being dressed like Hitler youth. And it's incredible to think that this was taking place throughout the United States. And so the FBI was tasked with investigating the Bund. What they found there, they really didn't like. like at all because they felt that this could easily be a fifth column during the time of war. These people were potentially treacherous. They had mixed loyalties.

They probably worshipped the swastick and more than the stars and stripes. There's only one solution. Disband it and disband it immediately. Across the United States, the Bund ran dozens of summer camps designed to appear innocent and recreational. But beneath the tents and hiking trails was a deliberate program of ideological indoctrination. Campers as young as six were drilled in Nazi-style uniforms, marched in goose-step formations, learned German songs, and recited Nazi slogans beside the stars and stripes.

At the iconic camp on Long Island known as Camp Siegfried, young boys and girls took pledges, practiced target and rifle drills, and were taught in German about blood and honor alongside patriotic American imagery. These camps served a dual purpose, fun-filled summer retreat for German-American families on the surface, and at depth, a training ground for a future ideology-ready generation aligned with Nazism. It's really important to remember that you have a lot of American corporations being involved with Nazi Germany before the war and during the early years of the war. That's certainly until the United States declares war on Germany and the way. of Pearl Harbor. And these are firms, these are household names. These are companies like Ford,

IBM, Standard Oil, doing deals that are helping to enrich German corporations. You are indirectly supporting the Nazi war effort. Take one example. So you've got somebody at IBM, right? You know, some of the technology that IBM supplied to the Nazis help the Nazis organize their data from censuses, and those censuses were later used to target Jewish populations. Several major American corporations maintained troubling ties with Nazi Germany in the years before and during the early phase of the Second World War. Ford Motor Company's German subsidiary, Ford Verker, continued producing vehicles for the Reich well into the war, and Henry Ford's own history of anti-Semitic publications made him a figure of admiration among Nazi officials.

IBM, through its German branch, Deomac, supplied punch card and tabulating machines that helped the Nazi state organize censuses and administrative data, systems later used to identify and track Jewish populations. Standard oil engaged in technology and fuel-related agreements with German firms, including the sharing of synthetic rubber and high-octane fuel processes that the Nazi military, military depended on. While these companies operated within a pre-war legal framework and often justified their relationships as ordinary business transactions, their activities nonetheless provided material or technological support that strengthened Germany's industrial and military capacity during a critical period.

Largely business men at that time, of course, could always justify their actions. These are economic transactions. We're not at war with these people. America has got no dog in this fight and so therefore a war in Europe is not our business and that isolationist strain you see manifested by Charles Lindbergh, the famous aviator who was always popping over to Germany and saying what a great place it was. So the links between American industry and Nazi German industry are very disturbing. But I think it's also important to remember at the time these businessmen could actually say with some justification if we're not at war I'm a

entitled to do business. If we're at war, then I'll stop doing it, and that is, of course, what happens. Charles Lindberg, the famed aviator and national hero, became one of the most prominent American voices expressing open admiration for aspects of Nazi Germany in the late 1930s. After several visits to Germany, where he was shown advanced aircraft and hosted by senior officials, Lindbergh praised the Luftwaffe's technological achievements and warned warned that the United States could not match German air power. He accepted a medal from Herman Goering in 1938, a gesture that later drew widespread condemnation.

As a leading figure in the America First Committee, Lindberg argued fiercely against U.S. involvement in the war, framing Britain and the Roosevelt administration as warmongers, while suggesting that Jews exerted undue influence over American policy. These comments sparked national outrage. Though he insisted he was merely advocating neutrality, Lindbergh's rhetoric and associations placed him uncomfortably close to pro-German sentiment at a time when Nazism was becoming impossible to ignore.

Some people suspect there were some Nazi sympathizers within the US government and there's no concrete evidence that you've got high-ranky officials, you know, directly supporting the Nazis. But there were certainly individuals, in government, of course, in American businesses, who did hold very pro-German views, some were even a little bit pro-Nazi, or views that were very isolationist and thought, you know, the Third Reich's not our problem. And that's especially so before America enters the war. And so you've got this committee called the America First Committee, and that includes

very sort of illustrious figures like Charles Lindberg. And Charles Lindberg was far from the only prominent American, whose views drifted uncomfortably close to admiration for Nazi Germany. Behind the public debates about neutrality and isolationism were business leaders, public figures, and influential voices whose sympathies or convenient blind spots aligned far more closely with the Reich than most Americans realized. One such figure was James D. Mooney, a senior executive at General Motors, whose close dealings with Nazi officials raised serious concern in Washington. Mooney traveled repeatedly to Germany in the late 1930s,

met high-ranking members of the regime, and publicly praised aspects of its efficiency and organization. His speeches warning against opposing Germany, combined with his role in managing GM's German subsidiary Opel, led critics to label him a Nazi sympathizer. That committee is arguing very strongly against US involvement in this war that's broken out in 1939. What it takes is that attack by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor to make these isolationist elements quickly melt away and realize actually this has become a global war and there's no way that

America can avoid it. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, a climate for any pro-Nazi or openly German-aligned organization in the United States changed overnight. What had previously operated under the cover of free speech, cultural clubs, or Americanized patriotism, was now viewed as potential treason. Federal authorities moved quickly. Groups like the German-American Bund were shut down,

their activities outlawed, and their leaders arrested or interned under wartime powers. Public tolerance evaporated. political support melted away, and even mild expressions of German sympathy became socially and legally dangerous. In the space of a few days, organizations that once held mass rallies and ran summer camps found themselves dismantled, monitored, or driven underground as America mobilized for total war. In December 1941, the U.S. government used broad and harsh powers to detainees the detained

people of certain ancestors. Through Japanese-American internment, approximately 120,000 people of Japanese descent, two-thirds of whom were U.S. citizens, were forcibly removed from the West Coast and placed in remote camps under Executive Order 9066. At the same time, although to a lesser extent, German Americans and German nationals in the U.S. also face scrutiny, registration under the end. Enemy Alien Act, internment, and deportation. As the United States moved from uneasy neutrality to open war with Nazi Germany, the stakes shifted dramatically. What had once been an ideological battleground inside America between isolationists, sympathizers,

and those warning of a growing threat, changed. It suddenly became a matter of national survival. The country was no longer debating whether Nazism could reach American shores. It was now confronting the reality that Germany would try. And as the US mobilized for war, the shadowy presence of Nazi agents already inside the country took on an entirely new urgency. Historian and author Guy Walters explains more. Nazi Germany knew the idea of actually invading the United States during the war was

a bit of a long shot. But that didn't mean that the Germans didn't try to do what they could. One of the things they did was try to plant spies in the United States and deliver them by U-boats onto the East Coast of the United States. And I think probably one of the most notorious operations was one called Operation Pastorius, in which, you know, German saboteurs were sent by U-boats and their jobs were to not only gather intelligence, but also to carry out sabotage. Blow up railroads, blow up factories, gather as much information as you can. Basically, start making life a bit messy for the Americans, make them realize that, you know, they are not safe just because they are thousands of miles away from Europe.

These attempts were largely stymied because the agents and operatives were mostly pretty useless, poorly trained, their planning was very poor, the FBI was absolutely on them, and a lot of these operatives were arrested before they could carry out their missions. But you know what, Nazi espionage, you know, was a threat throughout the war. Operation Pastorius was Nazi Germany's most ambitious attempt

to infiltrate the United States with trained saboteurs during the Second World War. In June 1942, two German U-boats delivered eight agents, four landing at Amagansett, Long Island, and four at Pontevideo. Beach, Florida, with orders to destroy key American infrastructure, including rail networks, aluminum plants, hydroelectric facilities, and bridges critical to the war effort.

Equipped with explosives, cash, and false identity papers, the men were expected to blend into American life and strike targets deep inside the industrial heart of the country. When the first group landed at Amagansett Long Island in June, June 1942, they came ashore at night in rubber boats from a U-boat, wearing German uniforms, so that if they were caught on the beach they'd technically be soldiers, not spies. They quickly changed into civilian clothes, buried their uniforms and explosives in the sand dunes, and then ran straight into a U.S. Coast Guardsman on patrol, seaman John Cullen. They tried to bluff him, first posing as harmless fishermen, and then, when that didn't quite

convince, switched to outright bribery, offering him cash to forget what he'd seen. Cullen played along, pretended to accept, then immediately reported the encounter to his superiors. A patrol was sent back to the beach where they found footprints, buried equipment, and, crucially, evidence that something much bigger was going on. The real twist, though, is George John Dash, the leader of the Long Island group. After making it off the beach, Dash essentially lost faith in the mission. Instead of executing the sabotage plan, he traveled to Washington, D.C., checked into a hotel, and spent days trying to get someone, anyone, in the U.S. government, to listen to him.

Dash phoned the FBI and said he was a German saboteur. At first, they thought he was a prank caller. It took him physically turning up at FBI headquarters, demanding to speak to senior officials and producing cash, codes, and details of the plan before they finally realized he was telling the truth. Once Dash started talking, the entire operation unraveled in days.

Using his information, the FBI tracked down and arrested all eight saboteurs. But the saboteurs of Operation Pasterius weren't the only Germans who would eventually find their way to America. Once the war was over and the Reich had collapsed, a very different kind of migration began. One made not by trained agents landing from U-boats, but by former soldiers, collaborators, and lesser-known Nazi affiliates, looking to disappear into new lives. The US government takes a whole idea of Nazi infiltration on American soil very seriously and it was the job of the FBI under Jay Edgar Hoover to keep an eye on Nazi sympathizers,

mount counter-espionage operations, arrest spies bring them to trial. Some of these guys are either go to prison or they're executed. Now, it's well known that a lot of Nazis after the war escaped to places like Argentina, the Middle East and places like that. What also happened to a lot of Nazis, not senior Nazis, but more junior kind of Nazis or people involved in war crimes at a level of being a soldier rather than as a Nazi bigwig. A lot of them flee to the United States and Canada after the war under false identities with forged documents. And for decades, many of these men live completely blameless lives in America. They start whole new lives, you know, with American wives and American children, and their dirty little secret is the fact that perhaps in Belarus in 1943 they helped shoot a load of Jews. These are kind of ordinary men, if you like, who've committed extraordinary horrific crimes,

and they're trying to live out their days in the United States, unmolested and completely free. One of the most infamous cases was John Demiagnuk, a quiet, auto worker living in Cleveland, who had slipped into the United States in 1952, claiming to be a displaced Ukrainian farm laborer. For decades, he lived an ordinary American life, raising a family, working for Ford, blending into the post-war immigrant landscape. But in the 1970s, survivors of the Holocaust recognized him in wartime photographs, identifying him as Ivan Damianuk, a Troniki trained guard who had served at the Sobibor extermination camp. The discovery triggered years of legal battles, during which Damianuk was stripped of his

U.S. citizenship, deported, and eventually convicted in Germany in 2011 for his role in the murder of thousands of Jews. In the 1970s, an organization called the Office of Special Investigations, and that was eventually run by Eli M. Rosen. And it is Eli and his team at the OSI who tracked down many, many scores, if not maybe over 100 former Nazi war criminals living on US soil. They'll be going through the archives and I'll be working out, hang on, that name matches the name of this guy living in Ohio.

Let's go there and see, you know, if he's that criminal. And, you know, they often were. And this was an organisation that had a lot of resources put into it. And the US Justice Department with the OSI tracked these people down and deported them back to the countries from where they had came, where hopefully they were to receive justice. You can't call it a Nazi infiltration in the United States, but you've got a lot of suburbs of American cities or a lot of small towns in which that guy could well have been a war criminal. Rosenbaum's work combined meticulous archival research with relentless field investigation, cross-checking names, signatures, and tiny fragments of testimony against millions of documents scattered across Europe and the former Soviet Union.

Under his leadership, the OSI pursued more than a hundred suspected war criminals living quietly in American suburbs, securing denaturalization and deportation orders in many of the most high-profile cases. Rosenbaum's philosophy was simple. Time passing did not lessen the severity of the crimes, and age did not erase responsibility. His work exposed just how many men who had once served the machinery of the Third Reich

had spent decades hiding behind American citizenship. As successful as the OSI was at catching these hidden Nazis, that was only part of the story. story. Because while investigators were digging through archives and unmasking fugitives who had slipped into American suburbs, a very different operation was unfolding inside the US government, one that wasn't hunting former Nazis, but recruiting them. After the war, there was a huge rush by the Allied nations to gather not as much intelligence as possible about what the Germans were up to, but also to

harness German scientific expertise. Germany was well ahead technologically in many respects with chemical and biological warfare. Its rocket tree, of course, was fantastic. And so basically the French, the British, the Russians, the Americans, all went around Nazi Germany and trying to round up as many German scientists as they could. So every nationality was doing this. Now, the one carried out by the Americans, was probably the most famous of the lot, it was called Operation Paperclip. And that went around, recruiting is not the right word, almost basically kidnapping German scientists who had worked for the Nazis to lock them up, put them in a room and listen to them and work out what they knew about German scientific advances. And then, if they seemed useful, they would

then ship them to the United States where they'd be made to work for the benefit of the United States. And it wasn't just America doing that, as I say, the Brits were doing it, the Russians are doing it. French were doing it. Everybody was wanting a piece of the scientific action. The most famous recruiter course is Verna von Braun, who developed the V1 and V2 German rockets. And of course, it was a development of the V2 by Vernar von Braun that leads to his development of the Saturn 5 rocket that sent Americans to the moon. So Vernar von Braun is a really key figure, and he, of course, was technically a criminal because he had employed slave labor. He had been in the SS. but this is why paperclip was so controversial.

American intelligence quickly realized that Germany's scientific community had survived the collapse of the Third Reich, and that its discoveries were years ahead in fields that would define the coming Cold War. The Germans had pioneered advanced rocketry, jet propulsion, chemical and biological research, and early missile guidance systems, technologies that could tip the balance of global. power if they fell into Soviet hands. For Washington, the choice was stark.

Allow the USSR to seize this expertise or bring the scientists to America first. In a world suddenly divided between two superpowers, their knowledge wasn't just valuable, it was strategic, urgent, and potentially decisive. Capturing that talent became a matter of national security, and it set the stage for one of the most morally complicated operations of the 20th century. Every side was employing people who had direct ties to Nazi war crimes. As soon as the Cold War is starting off, those moral qualms, they're put to one side. You know what?

If you are trying to recruit scientists to develop whatever weapons program you want to beat the enemy, you're going to need these guys. As the Cold War hardened, the moral lines that had seemed so clear in 1945 began to blur. For American intelligence agencies, defeating the Soviet Union mattered more than prosecuting every individual who had served the Nazi regime. Scientific ability became a currency of power, and men who had a face trial for slave labor, SS membership, or wartime atrocities, were instead judged on what they could offer to America's military and technological ambitions.

In this new geopolitical reality, justice was often sidelined in favor of strategic advantage. The logic was brutal but simple. If the United States refused to use these scientists, the Soviets certainly would. And in that calculation, one driven by fear and the race for global supremacy, expertise outweighed accountability. This ended up leaving behind a legacy that remains deeply troubling to this. day. It's very seductive to think that after 1945, that's it. The whole idea of Nazism and fascism is just expunged. You know, all these extremist groups, you know, inspired by Hitler and

his evil ideology, just disappears. But no, there were Nazi groups after the war absolutely out there trying to form a fourth Reich, the man called George Lincoln Rockwell being one of them. And they continued to use the American free speech laws to promulgate seriously racist, seriously anti-Semitic views. These people still exist today, both in the United States and in Britain, you know, in every country in the world, there are still neo-Nazi groups. And they always have kind of coded names to indicate their Nazism. So Combat 18, for example, the numbers 1 and 8 refer to the letters A and H in the alphabet, which of course stands for Adolf Hitler. Any group that's got 8-8 in it, that stands for H and H. and H. and H stands for Heil Hitler.

So you get a lot of these very nasty, violent, bigoted extremist groups who are still out there, spreading fascist propaganda, trying to revise history, and denying the Holocaust. George Lincoln Rockwell emerged in the 1950s and 60s as the most visible face of post-war American neo-Nazism. A former U.S. Navy officer, Rockwell openly embraced Hitler's ideology, founding the American Nazi Party and marching its uniformed followers through American cities long after the horrors of the Holocaust were known. He blended theatrical provocation with disciplined organization, staging rallies, distributing propaganda,

and exploiting free speech protections to spread anti-Semitic and white supremacist messages. One of the reasons why they deny the Holocaust is because if the Holocaust didn't happen, then you you can say that the Nazis weren't all that bad. And if you can say the Nazis weren't all that bad, then you can say that Nazism isn't all that bad. And if you can say that Nazism isn't all that bad, you can set it up as a perfectly respectable political system to replace the democratic system that so many of us enjoy. So denying the Holocaust is for them a cornerstone of their politics.

It's complete nonsense, of course. There is an overwhelming mass of evidence that supports the fact that the Holocaust has And that is why the only people who deny the Holocaust are seriously nasty. Rockwell framed his movement as a continuation of Hitler's mission, insisting the United States had been corrupted by racial integration, civil rights, and what he called Jewish influence. Even after his assassination in 1967, the groups he inspired, such as violent skinhead cells, military extremists and coded neo-Nazi organizations, all of these groups carried his ideology into the late 20th century, showing how Nazism did not die in 1945, but evolved and resurfaced

on American soil. We can learn a lot of lessons from the Nazi influence in America. First of all, don't be caught napping. Nowhere is safe from Nazi influence, not just in the 30s and 40s, but even today. I think it leaves us a really big warning about the dangers of extremism and propaganda. It tells us we've got to be really vigilant, really watchful against authoritarian ideologues, and we've got to protect our democratic institutions. It's great that Nazi espionage in the US failed,

and it showed that US intelligence agencies were really good at countering threats. But you know what? You can't kill an idea, and the idea of Nazism is still out there, and we've still really got to watch out for it. someone's telling you the Holocaust didn't happen, slap him down. From the broad daylight of summer camps and stadium rallies to the shadowy U-boat saboteurs, corporate entanglements, and hidden fugitives living quiet suburban lives,

the story of Nazism in America is far broader and far closer than most people ever imagine. It reminds us that extremism doesn't always arrive in tanks or uniforms. Sometimes it comes to. dressed as patriotism, wrapped in ideology, or hiding in plain sight behind a neighbor's front door. The FBI dismantled the Bund. The wartime saboteurs were caught, and decades later the OSI hunted down those who had slipped

through the cracks. But the uncomfortable truth is that ideas, no matter how evil, don't vanish with the fall of a regime. Guy Walters has shown us that the United States was never fully insulated from Nazism, militarily, ideologically, or morally. And if there is one lesson to take from this hidden chapter, it's that vigilance is not a relic of the past. The forces that once found footholds in American towns, boardrooms, and political circles have not disappeared. They continue to evolve, to adapt, and to look for places where they can take root again.

Thank you for joining us on this journey into one of America's most unsettling historical shadows. Thanks for exploring the past with us today. If you like this episode, don't forget to leave a comment below, and feel free to leave us a rating or review. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners like you. Thanks for listening.