The North Shore Historical Museum welcomed historian Christopher Verga on Sunday for a presentation on homegrown fascism, foreign propaganda and its continued impact on Long Island today.
Titled “Nazis of Long Island: Sedition, Espionage & the Plot Against America,” the presentation examined the growth of the various far-right German nationalist movements active on Long Island, and across America, in the 1930s and ‘40s.
Verga, who teaches at John Jay College of Criminal Justice where he specializes in radicalization, framed his talk as both local history and national warning.
“This is bigger than Long Island,” he said. “These guys were trying to flip the United States. ‘Der Tag,’ ‘The Day,’ that’s what they were trying to go for.”
Attendees from across the North Shore, including New York Assemblyman Charles Lavine, asked Verga questions throughout.
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Drawing on archival research from institutions including the Longwood Public Library in Middle Island and the Suffolk County Historical Society, Verga traced the rise of the German American Bund, or Federation, and affiliated groups across Long Island, the New York metropolitan area, and the entire country in the 1930s.
He began by discussing the work of journalist Dorothy Thompson, who warned early about Adolf Hitler and fascism. Thompson “blew all the whistles, she sounded all the alarms,” Verga said, but was largely ignored as Nazi ideology took root in pockets of the United States.
Verga described a Long Island traumatized by World War I losses, the Great Depression and the 1918 influenza pandemic.
“Most Americans,” he said, “still did not want to get involved in the war.”
Across the country there were approximately 25,000 members of German-American Bund–related groups around the country. He emphasized that fear of another global conflict created fertile ground for isolationist and extremist movements.
Central to his talk was Camp Siegfried in Yaphank, a Bund-run summer camp and community in Suffolk County.
The camp name itself referenced a Germanic mythological hero used in Nazi propaganda. In the myth, retold in composer Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle of operas, the hero Siegfried slays the dragon Fafnir to rescue the warrior-queen Brunhilde, with its roots in pre-Christian Germanic paganism.
Verga adding that the dragon slain in the legend was often used by fascists as an antisemitic metaphor.
Camp Siegfried was part of a broader network that included camps in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, upstate New York and the Midwest. The stated goal was youth indoctrination modeled on the Hitler Youth. Children were trained in weapons use and nationalist ideology, he said, and the Bund promoted what he described as Aryan-only housing policies in the surrounding community.
Verga devoted time to the German-American Settlement, the housing development corporation that operated the Yaphank community surrounding Camp Siegfried. The settlement required proof of German heritage for property purchases until forced to stop by court order in 2016.
Verga said the Bund structured itself through a series of separate corporations, including the German-American Settlement League and related travel and publishing arms, allowing it to dissolve and reconstitute entities as legal pressure mounted. Publicly, the organization adopted an “America first” front while privately advancing Nazi doctrine.
He also highlighted the scale of Nazi propaganda spending. Citing research attributed to William Donovan, later head of the Office of Strategic Services which became the CIA, Verga said the Nazi government spent an estimated $200 million in 1930s currency on propaganda abroad, including support for American-based groups and sympathetic writers.
Of that money, roughly $3 million was spent on Long Island, equivalent to nearly $70 million adjusted to inflation.
Local resistance was equally part of the story. Anti-fascist organized boycotts and protests. Disabled American veterans sent undercover investigators into camps. Brookhaven Town Council member Gustav Neuss attempted to use zoning laws to restrict activities at Camp Siegfried.
In 1938, six camp managers were convicted in Suffolk County for violating New York’s civil rights law by requiring loyalty oaths without proper filings. Verga recounted a chilling exchange from the trial: when asked in court to demonstrate the camp salute, a witness performed the Nazi salute. The district attorney then asked whether it was an American salute. The witness replied, “No, but it will be soon.”
The Bund’s most infamous public display came on Feb. 20, 1939, when it held a rally at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan.
An estimated 20,000 supporters gathered inside for what was billed as a “true Americanism” rally. According to Verga, Bund leader Fritz Kuhn spoke for about 30 minutes and attempted to align Nazi ideology with American revolutionary imagery, including invoking George Washington.
Outside, thousands of protesters clashed with police. A Jewish plumber named Isadore Greenbaum rushed the stage in protest and would likely have been killed had he not been removed by police officers.
“Thank God for New York City Police Department,” Verga said, “because they saved him that night.”
Those same officers chipped in to pay Greenbaum’s bail after he was held for disturbing the peace.
Beyond rallies, Verga emphasized that Bund activity extended into espionage. He detailed Operation Pastorius, a 1942 sabotage plot in which German agents landed on Long Island and in Florida with plans to attack American infrastructure. One of the saboteurs, George Dasch, turned himself in to the FBI, leading to the arrest of others. Most were executed.
Verga also described intelligence gathering related to shipping timetables and aviation manufacturing on Long Island, including facilities in Garden City and at Republic Aviation in Farmingdale.
“This is espionage. This is sedition,” he said. “It’s not just a crazy bunch of people in the woods.”
The museum will host an upcoming exhibit on Black and Women’s history months titled No Longer Hidden debuting on Saturday. For more information on the museum’s offerings and upcoming events, visit NorthShoreHistoricalMuseum.org.