‘That Curious Feeling of Unreality’: Under Cover in Nazi America 1938 - 1943
The first 100 pages of “Under Cover: My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld in America — The Amazing Revelation of How Axis Agents and Our Enemies Within Are Now Plotting to Destroy the United States.”
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“I was about to witness star-spangled murder with American Democracy as the corpse.”—John Roy Carlson, Under Cover, 1943
I recognized the book as special from the moment it was handed to me. The old school plastic cover created to fit the dust jacket. Corners from the soft yellowing pages disintegrate in my hands as I turn each page, like little confetti bits from history. I don’t know what to do with them, so I just pile them together like ashes and keep them near.
I am only 100 pages into Under Cover: My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld in America — The Amazing Revelation of How Axis Agents and Our Enemies Within Are Now Plotting to Destroy the United States. As is my style, I will be writing multiple reports, delivering it to you in pieces. News delayed is news denied, and this book is newsworthy.
The copy I was gifted is the 17th printing, October 1943, the year it was first published. The book is signed by the author John Roy Carlson, not is real name, and that it was given to me on the night of the US election by an ally who understands Resistance is significant.
As someone who spent a good part of my career working undercover, I feel a kinship with Carlson, who was born Arthur Derounian in Southern Greece on the shores of the Aegean Sea. He describes spending afternoons with a pet goat in the peaceful valleys surrounding Alexandropolis, except when the marauders came.
“Alexandropolis was truly a cosmopolitan city—it was plundered by each and every Balkan Army.”
“Hitler and Himmler now rule it,” he wrote matter of factly in the book’s forward.
He opens the book with two quotes, one from Goebbels, one from Walt Whitman. Both are important:
“We National Socialists have never maintained that we were representatives of a democratic viewpoint, but we have openly declared that we only made use of democratic means in order to gain power, and that after the seizure of power we would ruthlessly deny to our opponents all those means which they had granted to us during the time of our opposition.”—Propaganda Minister Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels
“Thunder on! Stride on Democracy! Strike with a vengeful stroke!”—Walt Whitman
As always, the books I read are a smear of highlighter ink, so I can bring you the most important passages, but I have to serve you the entire first two pages of the preface, which is what follows the Goebbels and Whitman quotes.
Author’s Preface…
Under Cover is not so much an exposé of the work of alien Nazi or Fascist agents as it is, ultimately, a warning to America of those factors which have led to the development of nativist, nationalist, American Nazi or American Fascist movement which, like a spearhead, is poised at Democracy.
Defeatist and dissensionist propaganda continues while our country is at war, despite the arrest of nearly all known foreign agents. This is not surprising. The Kuhns and the Vierecks turned the torch over to the Pelleys and Laura Ingallses, and these American-born operatives of a foreign power symbolically relayed it to the thirty-three men and women indicted on charges of sedition.
Unfortunately, the trail that may lead to the destruction of Democracy does not end, but actually begins with these thirty-three men and women. Their missionary efforts and the misguided zeal of a thousand others like them still at large, have permeated deep into the American mind. And after many a refining process by the Kuhns and Vierecks and Shishmarovas have become palatable to many Americans whenever mouthed by neighbors without an accent.
In the course of my investigations, I found that many otherwise fine Americans were propagating the lies and the “party line” originally advanced by Hitler’s agents and doing it sincerely in what they believed to be good Americanism.
This state of mind—the most dangerous obstacle to America’s future Democracy—could become a fatal issue when we are seated around the peace table, and be a factor of influencing us to lose the peace after winning the war.
It was to help illustrate the many facets of this “clear and present” danger of Nazified “Americanism” that I undertook to live, then write Under Cover. I want my fellow Americans to learn to recognize the American Fascist whenever he drapes the flag around himself, and to detect his Nazi mouthings regardless of how subtle the approach.
I have applied the terms fascist, fascist-minded, nationalist, American Fascist and American Nazi to those who, according to the record, have subverted Democracy by morally or financially supporting the racial, political or social doctrines of Hitler’s National-Socialism, Mussolini’s corporate-state Fascism or Franco’s clericalist-Falangism; and have promoted an American species of Axis ideology in the name of super “patriotism” and super “Americanism.” Actual membership in authoritarian regimes is not necessary for an American, native-born or naturalized, to qualify as fascist-minded.
I regard as blasphemy the stunt of those “super-patriots” who seek to whitewash their native Nazism by falling back on ancestors who died in order that Democracy might live… Democracy like fascism is a state of mind, not of physical boundaries or hallowed ancestry.
My criterion for true patriotism is found in Elihu Root’s definition:
“True love of country is not mere blind partisanship. It is regard for the people of one’s country and all of them; it is a feeling of fellowship and brotherhood for all of them; it is a desire for the prosperity and happiness of all of them. The essential condition of true progress is that it shall be based upon grounds of reason, and not of prejudice.”
This definition differs so radically from the “patriotism” of American Fascists that if I know them at all, I am certain they will eventually brand Elihu Root either as a Jew, a Communist, or both. They will manage it somehow. I anticipate the same compliment myself.
All that has changed in 81 years is the weapon’s delivery system — social media, television — and where it reads “Hitler’s agents” we can now insert Putin’s agents.
The Evil That Men Do
“The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.”—William Shakespeare
Throughout the beginning of Book One, which opens with the above Shakespeare quote, I feel we have met these people before — instead of German Americans, we now have Russians or US Putinists. As for the Christian supremacists he introduces, only the names have changed but the words and techniques used to indoctrinate people into racist submission are all the same.
Born in 1909, Carlson explains why he went under cover. He was a patriot.
America represented new hope for his family, who left their pillaged land aboard the Greek Ship Meghali Hellas and arrived in the New World on April 2, 1921. They lived on Long Island, and as an Armenian American, Carlson said he suffered no racism and fell in love with democracy. He loved learning and loved his teachers:
My first teacher in America, a short, plump, red-cheeked little bundle of sympathy and kindness, kept me after school and patiently tutored me in English and spelling night after night.
He went on to graduate Mineola High School with honors in 1928, and four years later graduated from the New York University School of Journalism, working for local Long Island newspapers and then traveling throughout the US, hitchhiking and getting to know his adopted country.
I had no conception at that time of the forces of evil already at work to undermine the tolerance and freedom which had been the peculiar heritage of America.
It was in the late ‘30s when a brutal stabbing of an Armenian church leader alerted him to “perverted nationalism” and as a reporter, he decided to go under cover, ultimately infiltrating dozens of Nazi and Christian Nazi groups.
He began his under cover work by following an address from a leaflet he found on a New York subway printed “on cheap gray newsprint” and including “four pages of bitterly anti-Semitic quotations.”
The date was October 14, 1938, when he walked into an old tenement building, with a barber shop on the ground floor. That’s where, posing as an anti-Semite and passing as Italian, he met the publisher of the Nationalist Press Association.
His descriptions are as good as vintage Raymond Chandler. Here he describes editor and publisher Peter Stahrenberg:
…A tall, blond man in his late twenties, with blunt features and a course-lipped brutal mouth. He wore a khaki army shirt and a black tie. His tie pin was a pearl-studded swastika.
“You ought to read the Protocols. It’ll give you the truth of what’s really going on today,” Stahrenberg tells him.
Carlson knew about that bunkum but humored him, pretending to be George Pagnanelli from Brooklyn.
Pete handed him copies of his “pro-American newspaper” and said: “We’re publishing a paper for real one hundred per cent Americans.”
What follows are weeks and months of passing as a fascist Italian, willing to do any job for the Nazi cause. He pushed propaganda leaflets on street corners, attended Nazi meetings and rallies, and finally got a telegram from Fortune, agreeing to publish his reporting.
I was about to witness star-spangled murder with American Democracy as the corpse.
That line above was written about his attendance of the Madison Square Garden “Mass Demonstration for True Americanism” staged by the German-American Bund on February 20, 1939, on George Washington’s birthday.
He describes the first speaker as a Russian-born Bund secretary, followed by US Nazi leaders. He said Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, and Reverend Charles E. Coughlin’s name received “ear-splitting applause”, while the US President — Franklin Delano Roosevelt — was booed and hissed.
Carlson wrote that the crowd went wild for “bowlegged, bull-necked” Der Bundesführer Fritz Kuhn, who “acknowledged the applause with the Nazi salute.” As Kuhn railed against the usual suspects — “it vas the Joos” — wrote Carlson phonetically — an anti-Nazi youth rushed the stage, before the O.D. (Ordnungs Dienst) storm troopers beat him up, and Carlson witnessed his battered body being carried out.
He said investigating these people intent on destroying every vestige of freedom became civic duty in that moment. Documenting these scenes for him was an “opportunity to repay America in a humble way, for her kindness and generosity,” he wrote.
He had to become a convincing actor, as he was always under intense scrutiny, so he moved into an Italian neighborhood and learned to dress the part.
His initial education in the ways of Nationalist Americanism occurred in the rear of that tenement barber shop, but he quickly got connected to other movements. He got his hands on copies of Action, with the slogan Britain First, published by Sir Oswald Mosley, leader of the British Black Shirts. He read fascist party newspapers from Canada, Rome, Holland, and Paris, all arriving regularly at Nazi Pete’s office.
He wrote:
The American “patriotic” press was represented by The American Vindicator, published by North Carolina’s Senator Robert Rice Reynolds; Liberation, published by Silver Shirt leader William Dudley Pelley; Father Coughlin’s Social Justice; Reverend Gerald B. Winrod’s Defender; James True’s Industrial Control Reports; Robert Edward Edmondson’s Vigilante Bulletin; Colonel EN Sanctuary’s, Merwin K. Hart’s and Mrs. Elizabeth Dilling’s leaflets…
I realized with a shock that fascism could be produced by any nation—under proper “educational” guidance.
He learned about Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic publications and was mentored by sidewalk propagandists, who explained to him:
“You got to create terror to get somewhere!”
His descriptions of the people coming in and out of the Nationalist Press office, remind me of the Russian riff-raff coming in and out of Cambridge Analytica’s London headquarters.
Carlson wrote of the “pamphleteers, crackpots, petty politicians, and racketeers of patriotism” who frequented Pete’s printing press office.
Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Chris Wiley wrote of CA’s office: “The firm became a revolving door of foreign politicians, fixers..and businessmen with their scantily clad private secretaries..many were associates of Russian oligarchs who wanted to influence a foreign government (&) seeking help to stash money somewhere discreet.”
Although Father Coughlin’s open anti-Semitism was good for business, Nazi Pete the publisher turned against him because of the Christianization. He told Carlson: “My religion is National-Socialism. That’s the only religion I believe in. Christianity is the bunk.”
But Carlson documented how the “pattern of American fascism in the making was inspired by Nazi sources, it was taking many courses moving deep into the fibre of our society, digging at our flesh on many fronts.”
He said it started with Nazi agents, laboring night and day printing “patriotic” literature based “completely on Nazi-manufactured lies and distortions… a dissolvent of national unity and a weapon to serve Nazi aims.”
Again, I ask you to insert “Russian” to see how this parallels our current situation.
He said next ingredient required was a “group of politically uninformed working men and women who are exposed to fanatic speakers.”
It starts with a few embittered wealthy old ladies, a gang of thugs, a crew of slick propagandists. It dignifies itself by calling on the support of churchmen and duped public officials. In every level of society it sets up organizations to spread the word of hate. It develops a potential weapon of destruction, mixed fear and hate and blind rage.
The fascists are not really attacking Communism. They are attacking a self-created image which includes anyone who is even mildly liberal.
Carlson, who had no love for Communism, wrote that there “is an intelligent and democratic way” to deal with it through Congress, the FBI, the Army, and Navy Intelligence Services that does not require “private armies of patriots.”
He was witness to unscrupulous men using it as a weapon to build a fascist state.
A speaker for the Crusaders of Americanism told Carlson: “Our idea is to sell nationalism (alias fascism) to the people first. It’s easier that way. Once we sell it to the mob, then the big boys will swing around.”
The basement meetings of the Christian Front at the Church of Saint Paul the Apostle celebrated that German hero, Father Coughlin, whose Social Justice pages were filled with quotes from Goebbels. Although denounced by the highest levels of the Catholic Church, that didn’t “stop him from gaining spiritual control of hundreds of groups throughout the country dedicated to substituting authoritarian rule.”
His description of the faces in the crowd made me so sad. Many were clearly people just looking for somewhere to belong — the women in particular. When one particularly fervent female Christian crusader was arrested, the judge told her:
“There is no place in this free country for any person who entertains the narrow, bigoted, intolerant ideas you have in your head. You remind me of a witch burner. You belong in the Middle Ages.”
Coughlin’s group actively recruited youth into the US Nazi movement, resulting in Carlson’s encounter with a pimply faced teen, who told him:
“Read Social Justice and loin how to solve the Jewish question.”
“How?” Carlson asked.
“Line them up against the wall and give ‘em the rat-tat-tat,” the youth said.
He was typical of the youth whom Coughlin had corrupted by his feedings of a corrupt species of “Christianity.”
As cops broke up a fight between the Nazi youth and a Jewish passerby, Carlson wrote:
I stood there alone, leaning against a building, stunned by the nightmarish scene. Again I had that curious feeling of unreality. I kept saying to myself: “This is New York. This isn’t Berlin. This is the City of New York in the United States. You are not in Turkey. You are in New York.”
I looked up. The clock atop the Paramount Building pointed to midnight.
Native Fuehrer
“I’d run the country like a factory. I would appoint all the key men, and have absolute control. There will be no opinion but the American Destiny Party opinion. This nonsense about Democracy and equality is through when I’m in power.”—Joseph Ellsworth McWilliams, aka Joe McNazi
In the summer of 1939, Carlson hit a crossroads. Fortune “decided to withhold their proposed series of articles on subversive activity” and he was released from his investigative work.
He could “choose a good income, respectable friends, regular hours, a pleasant social life, or… the harried existence of an independent under-cover man…It meant constant personal danger. (He) could lean on no official agency such as the FBI for help.”
In the fall of 2022, I, too, hit a crossroads. As a campaign manager of a winning candidate, I could go to City Hall and live a life of security with no public profile, or I could continue speaking truth to power as an independent investigative reporter in a time of grave deception.
I choose the latter, because not enough of us are doing this work, and I knew the depth of Russian infiltration and how seriously we were in danger.
Like Carlson, this work puts me in grave personal danger, with no FBI to lean on, but as a patriot, this is my choice.
Carlson continued:
I had no illusions that as an individual I was of any great importance, but I felt that if I could do it long enough to penetrate to the core of fascist operations, I might prove of some help in preserving for America the Democracy I had been denied in Europe.
Most of the persons I knew had no idea of the desperate fight going to breed hatred and dissension in the United States—and some of those who knew did not care. I decided to do my part in helping counteract the Nazi and native Nazi ideology seeping into the daily life on unsuspecting America.
As I read his words on these yellowed disintegrating pages, I feel as if we are not separated by time and space — that eight decades have not passed and that the book time-traveled to the future somehow.
Like me, he doubled down. I built Bette Dangerous typing as fast as I can.
Carlson also built a publication, but his served his under cover mission. The Christian Defender was deliberately designed to be the “one of the coarsest sheets published in New York.”
He got praise from Father Coughlin, and the publication became “his passport to Nazis abroad.” He earned accolades from Germany, and began to receive regular correspondences from the Deutscher Fichte-Bund, named after a German philosopher who taught that Germany was predestined for world domination. He began receiving Hitler’s speeches and was invited to enter a contest sponsored by the Institute for Aryan Studies.
He suspended publication when he received a letter from the Treasury Department inquiring about George Pagnanelli and saw his name listed in the Congressional Record as a Nazi worker.
But he continued to infiltrate.
The new fuehrer in town — Joe McWilliams, aka “handsome Joe McNazi” of the Christian Mobilizers — promised to gather around him “the meanest, toughest, most ornery” bunch of strong-arm men.
Carlson said Joe kept his promise.
His retinue was a prize collection of cut-throats, convicts, rapists, pimps, burglars, and goon-squad bruisers.
They even beat up policemen.
The meetings had everything. Action! Slander! Terror!
Joe McNazi railed against the Jews, Democracy, Republicans and Democrats:
“Both are rotten. Both useless. We are going to drive them both out and we are going to run the country with an iron hand, the way Hitler runs Germany. We are his fellow fighters in a great world drama. Fellow fighters in an immortal cause. We are fighting for a Christian Aryan America and you men here are part of that revolution. We want soldiers. We want strong men. Men to fight for America’s destiny and link it with the destiny of Adolf Hitler, the greatest philosopher since the time of Christ.”
Another native fuehrer — this one of the American Nationalist Confederation — George E. Deatherage spoke at a McWilliams rally. His group’s symbol was a red, white, and blue swastika.
Carlson wrote:
A sensual-looking man with a fleshy face, Deatherage spoke on Counter-revolutionary Tactics” and spurred the mob against a “Red Revolution”… Deatherage’s speech was a well-planned incitement to revolution.
In it, he:
established the presence of the hypothetical enemy
frightened, then spurred the religious to action
enlisted the family man into action to protect loved ones
established the need for counter-revolutionary action under the guise of self-defense
laid the foundation for secret revolutionary cells
provided for the caching of arms and ammunition
declared the need for a ‘holy war’
Most of you know I have a podcast, RADICALIZED Truth Survives, where my co-hosts and I have been warning for years about radicalization and holy wars in America.
Like Carlson, my podcast partners have infiltrated and reported on the extremist movements in America, they warned about the Nazis on Telegram and Rumble, the holy wars being ginned up by convicted felons and mesmerists, retired military and robed and disgraced churchmen, the PayPal mafia, and an array of cut-throats and grifters.
When I read that list above to them, we all see how the same techniques were used to create foot soldiers for fascism. The names change, but we see these people for who they are and what they represent. They have aligned with a new Axis of Evil, wrapped in the old flag, claiming the same bunk.
Christian New Deal
Of McWilliams, Carlson wrote that he had the uncommon gift of being at home with the illiterate as well as the Park Avenue swells.
In a candid moment, McWilliams told him:
“Between you and me, George, this isn’t my class of people. But you’ve got to have the mob with you in any revolution and this movement of ours is nothing but an American Nationalist-Socialist revolution in the first stages. I don’t believe half of this anti-Jewish stuff I preach, but you can’t talk politics to these people unless you make it simple by bringing in the Jew every time. Hitler made it work and that’s what I’m trying to do here. I want to give the man in the street a Christian New Deal.”
As always when I’m reading books of historic value, I stop to research the various characters I learn about, and it’s important to note that the US government used to prosecute fascists. They stripped them of their citizenship, and incarcerated and deported them. They’d get charged for attempting to overthrow the US government.
Not just the mob members, but the high level Nazis like Fritz Kuhn, the leader of the German-American Bund. Kuhn had his citizenship revoked, he served prison time for larceny and forgery, and upon his release in 1943, he was immediately interned by the federal government as an enemy agent. He was deported and later served additional prison time in post-war Germany.
I’m only up to Chapter VI in Under Cover and will keep reporting my findings as I go.
But join me in encouraging America to prosecute foreign agents again and swiftly.
Bring back the America that recognizes when a foreign agent needs to have his citizenship revoked and be deported.
I do not accept a fascist America. Not now, not ever.
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It’s an odd fact that a parallel story was told during the 50s in the opposite political direction by the TV series “I Led Three Lives” starring Richard Carlson. The character was a stand up citizen, an operative in a Communist cell, and an FBI undercover agent. The show was syndicated when I was a kid in the Camelot years. The rules of propaganda apply whoever wished to use them.
Thank you for your direction. I’m reading a PDF version publicly available (donation suggested) at https://archive.org/details/UnderCoverMyFourYearsInTheNaziUnderworldOfAmerica.