Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America

by Steven J. Ross

Overview

A 2018 FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE

“[Hitler in Los Angeles] is part thriller and all chiller, about how close the California Reich came to succeeding” (Los Angeles Times).

No American city was more important to the Nazis than Los Angeles, home to Hollywood, the greatest propaganda machine in the world. The Nazis plotted to kill the city's Jews and to sabotage the nation's military installations: Plans existed for murdering twenty-four prominent Hollywood figures, such as Al Jolson, Charlie Chaplin, and Louis B. Mayer; for driving through Boyle Heights and machine-gunning as many Jews as possible; and for blowing up defense installations and seizing munitions from National Guard armories along the Pacific Coast.

U.S. law enforcement agencies were not paying close attention--preferring to monitor Reds rather than Nazis--and only attorney Leon Lewis and his daring ring of spies stood in the way. From 1933 until the end of World War II, Lewis, the man Nazis would come to call “the most dangerous Jew in Los Angeles,” ran a spy operation comprised of military veterans and their wives who infiltrated every Nazi and fascist group in Los Angeles. Often rising to leadership positions, they uncovered and foiled the Nazi's disturbing plans for death and destruction.

Featuring a large cast of Nazis, undercover agents, and colorful supporting players, the Los Angeles Times­ bestselling Hitler in Los Angeles, by acclaimed historian Steven J. Ross, tells the story of Lewis's daring spy network in a time when hate groups had moved from the margins to the mainstream.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620405642
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	10/24/2017
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	176,468
File size:	36 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Steven J. Ross is professor of history at the University of Southern California and director of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life. He is the author of Hollywood Left and Right, recipient of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Film Scholars Award and nominated for a Pulitzer; Working-Class Hollywood, nominated for a Pulitzer and the National Book Award; Movies and American Society; and Workers on the Edge. He lives in Southern California.

Table of Contents

Map of Nazi and Fascist Los Angeles x

Prologue 1

I Creating a Spy Network, 1933-1934

1 "The Most Dangerous Jew in Los Angeles" 7

2 The Spying Begins 21

3 Plots Revealed, Spies Uncovered 35

4 Going for Help 44

5 A Bitter Lesson: The German-American Alliance Trial 53

II The Nazi and Fascist Attack on Hollywood, 1933-1935

6 The Moguls and the Nazis 67

7 Inside the Fascist Front 79

8 HUAC Comes to Town 94

9 The Most Charming Nazi in Los Angeles 108

III New Threats, New Spies, 1935-1939

10 Spy and Divide 133

11 The Plots to Kill the Jews 152

12 Nazi versus Nazi 166

13 Silver Shirts, Nazis, and Movie Stars 186

14 Slaughter the Hollywood Jews 198

15 The Most Hated Nazi in Hollywood 214

16 The Three Most Dangerous Enemies List 228

17 The Race Is On 247

IV Espionage, Sabotage, and the Coming of War, 1938-1941

18 Closing In 263

19 Sabotage, Secret Agents, and Fifth Columnists 279

20 Darkening Skies, New Dangers 298

21 Pearl Harbor Roundup 316

Epilogue: Vigilant till War's End and Beyond 331

Guide to Spies, Nazis, and Fascists 341

Acknowledgments 345

Notes 347

Index 399

Editorial Reviews

A terrifying, revelatory and inspiring masterpiece that probes the flourishing fascism of 1930s America, and the power of popular resistance to combat an alliance of Nazism, the Ku Klux Klan and other homegrown paramilitary groups.” —Jury for Pulitzer Prize in History

“A remarkable tale, one that pits a secretive, chess-playing Jewish spymaster—attorney Leon Lewis—and a group of courageous German-American war veterans that he recruited as his spies against a cast of villains straight out of a classic Warner Bros. film . . . Mr. Ross has a novelist's eye for characters and detail.” —Wall Street Journal

“Hitler in Los Angeles . . . is part thriller and all chiller, about how close the California Reich came to succeeding.” —Los Angeles Times

“Fascinating.” —Smithsonian Magazine

“A history book that doubles as espionage thriller with a cast of characters that includes movie stars, studio moguls, entertainment lawyers, diplomats and pols, all of them quite real . . . Remarkable . . . Now that anti-Semitic chants recently have been heard in the streets of Charlottesville, Va., Hitler in Los Angeles must be seen as much more than an accomplished work of historical scholarship.” —Jewish Journal

“The director of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life and an award-winning film historian, Ross tells a shocking story of Nazi efforts to infiltrate America . . . Ross puts his experience in film history to good use, and he creates lively portraits of the men and women whom Lewis recruited as spies and who succeeded in putting some dangerous Nazis behind bars. A vivid history of homegrown resistance.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Readers interested in a detailed look at this spy operation can have confidence in this well-sourced account.” —Library Journal

“Thrilling . . . dramatic.” —The Daily Express

“A chilling, captivating story of espionage and resistance . . . Author Steven J. Ross employs impeccable research and a driving no-holds-barred writing style . . . [This] nonfiction revelation . . . reads like an exciting spy novel. Ross reveals this true story of resistance by American Jews and Gentiles with an exciting, evocative writing style.” —The New York Journal of Books

“Remarkable and meticulously researched.” —Times Higher Education

“Reveal[s] the hitherto untold story of Jewish resistance to Nazi infiltration, not in Berlin or Warsaw but in Los Angeles during the 1930s, a time when Nazism, a distant rumble on the horizon for most Americans, was for tens of thousands of others a siren call to action . . . Ross has a blockbuster revelation.” —The Chronicle of Higher Education

“A riveting and terrifying chapter of Nazi American history... Ross has a flair for thriller-writing and this history is a captivating read.. Enthralling... Important and compelling... Hitler in Los Angeles is crammed with twists and turns involving double-agents, movie stars, and big-time studio moguls. Netflix needs to turn Hitler in Los Angeles into a television series.” —PopMatters

“Outstanding and compelling... parts of Hitler in Los Angeles read almost like a spy novel, except that these events really— and frighteningly— happened.” —TruthDig

“Nazis, spies, assassination plots, a planned putsch to topple Franklin Roosevelt—these are the ingredients for a World War II movie. But in Steve Ross's compelling history, they make for a true-life thriller about an episode that has been almost completely ignored: the attempt by the Nazis to take over America.” —Neal Gabler, author of WALT DISNEY

“Steven J. Ross has the verve of a spellbinding novelist and the skill of a master historian. This story has every bit the drama of Roth's The Plot against America or Dick's The Man in the High Castle, except it actually happened! The all-important take-away of Hitler in Los Angeles? Good people can and must prevail against bad.” —David N. Myers, President/CEO, The Center for Jewish History

“This is a truly brilliant history by a superbly talented historian. More importantly, it's a damn fine read, a true life thriller that's a powerful reminder of how hate, if left to fester, can destroy us all.” —Alex Kershaw, author of AVENUE OF SPIES

“Steven J. Ross, one of our foremost authorities on the entwined histories of American Jewry, domestic politics and Hollywood, presents a chilling tale of the Nazi plot to destroy America; the small spy network who helped defeat it; and the official indifference to the threat posed by German agents and home-grown extremists bent on sabotage and political murder.” —Glenn Frankel, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of HIGH NOON

“This little-known chapter of 1930s history—captured by Steven J. Ross with impeccable research and an intriguing narrative—needs to be told; it will challenge assumptions about the power of citizens to shape world events from their own backyard.” —Ted Johnson, senior editor, VARIETY

From the Publisher

09/15/2017
Winston Churchill said of World War II that, "This is a war of the unknown warriors." Nowhere was this truer than in the little-known story of attorney Leon Lewis and others who thwarted internal and external threats to the security of America during this era. Ross (history, Univ. of Southern California; Working Class Hollywood) brings his knowledge of both history and Hollywood to weave information from the considerable archives of the Jewish Federation Council of Greater Los Angeles. From 1933 until the end of the war in 1945, Lewis and his fellow agents risked their lives to counter Nazi and homegrown nationalist forces plotting sabotage and mass murder. Little has been written about Lewis and his network, despite that they helped the FBI capture and contain these forces. Because state and federal law enforcement were more focused on anti-Communist efforts, several plots came quite close to fruition. VERDICT This rich, academic tome lends an important aspect to the typical look at Hollywood studio acquiescence to Germany, such as Thomas Doherty's Hollywood and Hitler, and provides a counterpoint to Ben Urwand's The Collaboration. Readers interested in a detailed look at this spy operation can have confidence in this well-sourced account.—Maria Bagshaw, Elgin Community Coll. Lib., IL

Library Journal

Just when you thought every story of the Nazi resistance had been written, this audiobook confirms that there are more. And this book is among the best of the genre. Narrated with intensity by Peter Berkrot, historian Steven Ross’s book highlights the efforts of Hollywood attorney Leon Lewis, who organized rings of spies to infiltrate Nazi and fascist groups in Los Angeles. Lewis’s cohorts thwarted Nazi plans to kill prominent Jewish actors and Hollywood moguls, preventing them from using California as the epicenter of their plot to take over America. Berkrot’s performance is excellent; he reads with the staccato of a newsreel narrator, while adeptly mixing in moments of awe at how Lewis and his allies outsmarted the Nazis at virtually every turn. D.J.S. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine

MARCH 2018 - AudioFile

2017-07-03
During World War II, American Nazis planned to overthrow the U.S. government and eradicate Jews.The director of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life and an award-winning film historian, Ross (History/Univ. of Southern California; Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics, 2011, etc.) tells a shocking story of Nazi efforts to infiltrate America. He focuses on Leon L. Lewis, a Los Angeles attorney who created a spy ring to infiltrate and undermine Nazi groups and faced widespread anti-Semitism throughout the country and in government. Nazis set their sights on the film industry, which they saw as dominated by Jews. Their plans included killing prominent entertainers, including Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Charlie Chaplin, and movie heads Louis B. Mayer and Jack Warner. They proposed public executions of Jews and a plan to drop cyanide into an acid solution that would be blown into Jewish homes and synagogues to exterminate Jews—"like rats, that is the way to get rid of them," announced a Nazi leader. When Lewis solicited government support and funding for his operation, he was met with a mixed response: anti-Semites abounded there, too, and the FBI and newly created House Un-American Activities Committee were concerned more with routing out communists than in dealing with the Nazi threat. Movie executives contributed to Lewis' efforts but at the same time wanted to ensure that Germany would remain a strong outlet for their films. "However much they may have hated the German consul and the Hitler regime," Ross writes, "the movie moguls had to cooperate with both if they wished to remain in the German market." To halt production of one movie he deemed "detrimental to German prestige," the consul summoned German actors and threatened them with harm to family members living in Germany if they appeared in it. Ross puts his experience in film history to good use, and he creates lively portraits of the men and women whom Lewis recruited as spies and who succeeded in putting some dangerous Nazis behind bars. A vivid history of homegrown resistance.

Kirkus Reviews