Michael Benson’s Hollywood vs. Nazis takes an important historical moment — when anti-Nazi organizers were infiltrating West Coast Nazi cells in the years before Pearl Harbor — and gives it the Hollywood blockbuster treatment.
Benson begins his story in the years after World War I. In Germany, fascism was gaining traction. In Depression-era Hollywood, studios were cranking out feel-good reels to boost morale. Enter Leon Lewis, a middle-aged Jewish lawyer who, in 1933, had started hearing hate speech in downtown LA. and decided to do something about it. Tabling his day job, Lewis started an anti-Nazi action network, assembling a mostly German-American staff to infiltrate pro-Hitler organizations in the LA area. He didn’t have any background in counter-intelligence work, but he was a quick learner. He sent his agents undercover into Alt Heidelberg, Friends of New Germany, the Silver Shirts, and other pro-Hitler organizations, where they went to meetings and rallies and made themselves into trusted insiders, often fomenting discord among rival factions. His female agents got themselves hired as secretaries, giving them access to minutes of meetings and incoming information. Lewis compiled all their information, sharing it carefully with government agencies, so his agents weren’t unmasked but sabotage was averted.
In time, Lewis reached out to the (Jewish) studio heads who formed more public-facing anti-fascist organizations. Unfortunately, Lewis’s attempts to recruit government officials into his efforts were less successful, since the FBI was obsessed with communists, and those Jewish-run Hollywood studios were all full of communists — at least as far as the Dies Committee and the FBI were concerned.
Lewis’s infiltration and sabotage of fascist plots continued successfully. Still, the American public was reluctant to accept the reality of the German threat. It wasn’t until April 1939 that Hollywood’s first explicitly anti-Nazi film premiered: Confessions of a Nazi Spy. Still, this milestone didn’t mean Lewis’s work was over, as many pro-Hitler groups joined the America First movement, aimed at isolating America from entering the war.
Benson wraps his story of Lewis’s undercover project when America officially enters the war, after Pearl Harbor. He notes that antisemitism in America actually increased at this point, as people blamed the Jews for dragging America into the world war. But at least Benson’s mission has been accomplished: the history of a rarely-discussed but heroic anti-fascist movement is finally available.
Readers should be advised that Benson’s writing style might not appeal to everyone. There are no endnotes and very little documentation of sources. His stories are peppered with odd idioms (“his Johnny pump of a wife”), neologisms (“Hitler crapola”), clichés (“playing ball,” “getting out of Dodge”), and yiddishisms (“shiksa,” “shlepped”). He seems to have concocted the real-time dialogue, albeit with the ease of a Hollywood scriptwriter. It’s a style that may work for some and not others. Regardless, the story is important and deserves to be told.
Bettina Berch, author of the recent biography, From Hester Street to Hollywood: The Life and Work of Anzia Yezierska, teaches part-time at the Borough of Manhattan Community College.
