“Red Fascists”: anti-Nazi Germans under suspicion of the FBI “Red Fascists”: alemães antinazistas sob a suspeição do FBI “Red Fascists”: alemanes antinazis bajo sospecha del FBI

Since the rise of Adolf Hitler in Germany in 1933, German opponents of Nazism had look for exile on the American continent, forming complex political movements across the American continent. The presence of the Free German Movement and the Council for the Democratic German in Los Angeles has alerted the US authorities, especially because of evidence of their links with communism and their relations with political movements in Latin America. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in investigating German anti-Nazi exile groups in California and south of the United States border in the context of World War II.


Introduction
The advancement of persecution of the anti-Nazi Germans triggered a strong wave of exile to the Americas, leading to major changes in political and social structures, particularly in the border regions between the United States and Mexico. A large police apparatus organized to investigate the actions of German and Austrian exiles on US territory. Between the 1930s and 1940s there was a significant increase in agents at the FBI, which now numbered more than 7,000 agents, representing an increase in spending from $ 6 million annually in 1941 to $ 30 million in 1943. The methods of FBI Director-General John Edgar Hoover were considered excessive by the public in the United States, earning him the nickname "J. Edgar Himmler", receiving harsh criticism from even the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, when she stated that there were many similarities between the Hoover methods and the Gestapo (USC Special Collections, Noah Isenberg. BOX # 1).
The Hitler-Stalin pact made in 1939 received with great surprise by the US authorities.
Therefore, in many documents produced by FBI researchers, the term used to mention Germanspeaking exiles in the United States was "Communazis" and "Red Fascists." Thus, behind the apparent sense of freedom that foreigners enjoyed in America, the US police and intelligence agencies produced more than twenty dossiers, containing about fourteen thousand pages, with investigations into the activities of these writers during the period that they were in the United States. Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, Lion Feuchwanger and Heinrich Mann were some of the main targets of these investigations, and they were great references for anti-Nazi Germanspeaking groups in South America. Thus, in many cases the investigation went beyond the borders of the United States targeting the possible relationships they had with groups in the same condition in Latin American countries. Spying on US government agencies focused on three main "scenarios": Los Angeles, New York, and Mexico. Initiatives were centered on the FBI, but other agencies such as the Office of Strategic Service (OSS), and the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the methods used were telephone interceptions, correspondence violations, wiretapping, and even checking the rubbish of houses and places frequented by German-speaking exiles (STEPHAN, 2000).
The purpose of this paper is to analyze the existence of the German-speaking anti-Nazi political movements and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) actions in the investigations of these groups in California and south of the United States border in the context of World War II. In addition to bibliographic references, documentary sources from the Exiled German Speaking Archieves, available at the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, used to produce this article.
In recent decades the work of historians Ehrhard Bahr and Alexander Stephan has expanded the scope for research into the political performance of anti-Nazi German-speaking exiles in the United States and Mexico. Bahr elaborated a large study on the exile of German writers in Los Angeles and the political debates between them in the context of the growing Hollywood film industry. The work reconstructs the daily life of recurring discussions between writers in exile, revealing the diversity of ideological affiliations that made up the anti-Nazi movements.
The term "Weimar in the Pacific", which gave its name to his work, explains the author's general approach by bringing to light the problem of lack of unity between them, reflecting the political context of the Weimar Republic period, exemplified by the discussions between Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht on the position that groups in exile should take in relation to events in Germany.
The author also stressed the influence that the cultural and political universe of Los Angeles had on German-speaking exiles, showing that much of the his positions taken in the fight against Nazism were in defense of the "liberal values" experienced in the US In a recent publication, "Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and This literature demonstrates the multiple possibilities of study in relation to anti-Nazi exile on the American continent. As this is a border region, we chose to use the methodological perspective of Transnational History, represented here by Micol Seigel and Barbara Weinstern, The idea is not to change from the cultural sphere to the political sphere; on the contrary, the argument is the impossibility of understanding political developments without a more careful consideration of cultural exchanges, and the role of culture in inter-American projects (whether promoted by Americans, Latin Americans or those without a point of origin). that we can clearly identify) (WEINSTEIN, 2013, p. 17).
This proposal aims to demonstrate the interaction between political analysis and cultural relations established between exiles in different countries with different political structures (SEIGEL, 2005). By highlighting the "communist inclinations" of refugees, the Free German Movement's intentions to ally with Moscow and using the expression "underworld" when referring to the French resistance, the FBI seemed to misunderstand the fight against Nazism and the inter-state alliance. States and Soviet Union that was inserted in this context. The FBI censors' concern with Nazi spies seemed to be less compared to the "Red Threat" present in exile groups.

Anti-Nazi groups and the FBI
The idea of the "Red Threat" often appears in the FBI's documentation of the Free German Movement in Southern California, stating that this was a new attempt to create a government in exile, as it had with the "Thomas Mann Committee". "But now under the leadership of a communist leader, Heinrich Mann. In describing its intentions and activities in the United States, the FBI stated that The Free German Movement aims to establish a post-war German government in favor of the Soviet Union. The findings of this office state that some of those involved in this movement intend to move their activities to Europe as soon as possible." (USC Libraries, Box L11, folder 38).
When a group of exiles called by the FBI the "German-Russian Committee" met at the Brazil, and Uruguay. Unlike agricultural and industrial workers, intellectuals found it more difficult to perform the activities they were used to in Europe. In many countries, lack of resources and tight surveillance of immigration services made it difficult for foreigners to engage in political activities, with significant differences from country to country.
One of the main functions of the anti-Nazi organizations was to assist refugees, so cooperation agreements were maintained for those who needed visas and ship tickets to the countries. Everyone seemed to agree that despite the Allied countries' military victories against the Axis powers. It was necessary to discuss the postwar changes that should take place in the countries that were dominated by the Nazi regime, and that to do so would not only have to eliminate Hitler, but change the whole German government by "introducing order and reestablishing democratic rights". "At the same time, we express faith in the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and throughout Latin America." (USC Special Collections, Box L11, folder 38, p. 03).
The group maintained a financial cooperation network to help exiles in need of support.
Among the organizations sending funds to the Latin American Free German Committee were the League of American Writers, an association of writers, journalists, playwrights and literary critics, founded in 1935 in New York City and closed in 1943. The objectives of the group were changing according to the world context. First it was an anti-fascist group, with many of its members linked to the United States Communist Party (CPUSA), which organized congresses across the country and supported the German exiles persecuted by the Nazis. During the Spanish Civil War the group helped many writers to enter the United States, and after the start of World War II began to partner with the movements of anti-Nazi Germans in the United States and Latin America. Despite attempts by the FBI to summarize the association as a "group of communist subversives," the League of American Writers had members who were unrelated to communism, such as Thomas Mann, one of the League's most active writers (FOLSOM, 1994).
The rapprochement with the Mexican government's official press agencies has resulted in some attendance at the National Civil Defense Department's radio programs. By correspondence, Heinrich Mann was informed in Los Angeles that he would be able to give speeches on broadcasts that would reach Mexico and Southern California, as did Enrique Guttman, a member of the American Free German Committee, using the space provided by the The magazine was widely spread on the American continent. The precarious conditions that were printed and distributed made it difficult for difficulties to arise, but despite all these problems were published until 1946, without any interruption, 55 numbers in total. The different sections of the magazine form a material distribution scheme that reflects the balance reached by the free Germans between their historicalpolitical writings and their artistic and cultural production (OCHOA, 1995).
With the United States entering the war, the editors added "V" -as a "sign of victory" for the Allies -on the cover of the magazine. Allied countries represented hope for the anti-Nazi groups of exiles, hence unconditional support for the country. The highlight of the publication was always for culture, always working with the concepts of democracy, freedom and progress. From the analysis of the magazine Freies Deutschland that circulated among the Germans, we can understand what were the exchanges of information, ideas and political plans that were shared among the movements of anti-Nazi Germans around the world. These were writers, intellectuals, businessmen, among others who sought to demonstrate that there was indeed a German thought opposed to Nazism.
The magazine was not only important for exiles, it was news sources from many to many Freies Deutschland remained active throughout the war, serving as a source of analysis for the conflicts taking place in Europe, not only in the field of war, but especially as regards political affairs. The latest publications in 1945 and 1946 served to discuss the directions of Germany following the defeat for the Allies. Disagreements about the ideologies that should be adopted to reorganize the German state followed. In this same context, the materials released by the exiles were increasingly scarce, as for the US authorities, as soon as the war with the Germans and the Japanese was over their full attention was drawn exclusively to the enemy they represented. the greatest danger: communism, which led them to an extensive ideological war against the USSR, the Cold War.

Conclusion
The 1930's and 1940's were a crucial decades that defined the FBI way of acting, influenced directly by the geopolitical context, when US government was alert about Nazism and soviet communism, all of it aggravated during World War II.The FBI's investigative actions crossed the United States and Mexico borders, extending to wherever organized Germanspeaking anti-Nazi movements acted. Political activity in exile has always occurred transnationally, that is, overflowing across the borders of various countries of the American continent.
The broad network of investigations organized by the police systems in America has been severely influenced by the mode of operations undertaken by the United States around the FBI. Thus, it is possible to see that the strong anti-communist discursive apparatus determined actions across the continent. This means that at various times the Nazi threat became less relevant than the willingness to pursue anything that might pose a communist threat, so the use of the terms "Communazis" and "Red Fascists" to refer to German exiles and the various German-speaking anti-Nazi movements that acted throughout America.