American PR Professionals Helped Sell the Nazi Regime to the United States

Rome was n’t progress in a day . And the Nazis did n’t exterminate 10 million people overnight . When we look for historical parallels to the current rise of fascism around the world , it ’s important to remember how things became anneal in the yesteryear . And an old book about propaganda is a helpful putz in understanding how the evils of the past came to be .

The 1934 bookMobilizing for Chaosby O.W. Riegel is a fascinating artifact of the Nazi geological era . There are so many anecdotes and observations that resonate today , but one department of the script is particularly shivery . rally for Chaos names a fistful of people and PR companies that were intimately involved in pushing Nazi propaganda in the United States . And it ’s foreign to imagine yourself in that catamenia of chronicle , when Americans were overt to the melodic theme of Nazi Germany being just another perfectly acceptable governing .

The authoritative matter to retrieve , ( and what make it so terrifying ) , is that the U.S. was still seven years from getting involved in World War II at this item . The Nazis open up the first denseness campin 1933 , but in 1934 there was n’t anything close to far-flung cognition of just how vicious the Nazis were out of doors of Germany . Even as later as 1939 , too many Americans did n’t see the threat that Nazism posed , as tens of thousands gather at Madison Square Garden to celebratethe Nazi regime .

Argentina’s President Javier Milei (left) and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., holding a chainsaw in a photo posted to Kennedy’s X account on May 27. 2025.

A brusk passage from the 1934 book Mobilizing for Chaos by O.W. Riegel :

The field of home propaganda has attracted professional American promotion adult male . Edward L. Bernays looked after the public relations of Latvia , and Herbert St. Houston has recently herald himself as a Counsel on International Relations , with a Fifth Avenue address . A Congressional committee investigating Nazi propaganda in the United States in July , 1934 , bring out that Ivy Lee , public dealings counsel for the Rockefellers and the Pennsylvania Railroad , is being pay $ 25,000 a yr by German sake to “ apprize ” on German - American relations , which his son , James Wideman Lee II , is being paid $ 33,000 a year to care the Berlin end of the stage business .

Adjusted for inflation , that $ 25,000 salary was roughly $ 469,300 in 2018 money . And $ 33,000 in 1934 was about $ 619,500 . They were being well paid , to say the least .

William Duplessie

When this passage in Mobilizing for Chaos was release in 1934 , it was when many Americans were still amenable to the mind that fascist Nazis may not be a trouble for the rest of the world . But some Americans appear at the medium landscape and were startle to take notes on who was helping the Nazis spread their message in the U.S.

It ’s a scary reminder that the media plays an important function in normalizing objectively evil actions through goodish offices on Fifth Avenue .

The book continued :

Starship Test 9

Carl Byoir , New York promotional material man who handle Cuban publicity for Machado and more lately was paid a turgid nub of money for handling national socialist propaganda in the United States , is also a reserve officer in the army intelligence army corps and will , in the event of war , handle with equal facility propaganda for the United States .

When we look back at history , it can be difficult to revalue just how slow momentous change occurs , for better and for regretful . Citizens become acclimated to the evil of any afford society as norms are reshaped piece by piece .

In the thirties , Americans had to fight the tide of fascism that was aided and abetted by their own citizens in public telling and media . Here in 2018 , things are n’t so unlike when it comes to the way that well - paid the great unwashed insist that the white Christian legal age arethe literal dupe .

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