Historical evidence points to Trump's father being a Nazi sympathizer; possible wartime agent
By The Wayne Madsen ReportAn historian, who specializes on Nazi influence in America during the 1920s, 30s, and early 40s, has contacted WMR with supporting evidence that Fred Trump, Donald Trump's father and New York real estate baron, was not only a Nazi sympathizer during the 1920s and 30s, during the time of Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany, but may have also acted as an intelligence agent for Nazi Germany in wartime America.
Heretofore, the evidence that Fred Trump was a Nazi sympathizer rested on a June 1, 1927 article in The New York Times. The article, "Warren Criticizes 'Class' Parades," reported that "1,000 Klansmen and 100 policemen staged a free-for-all battle in Jamaica." Jamaica is a
neighborhood
in Queens where Fred Trump resided at the time. Donald Trump has
consistently sought to obfuscate the fact of his father's arrest,
claiming in media interviews that it never happened and that his father
never lived at 175-24 Devonshire Road in Jamaica, as claimed in The New York Times story from 1927. Fred Trump, according to the Times
story, was released by Magistrate Thomas F. Doyle. It is noteworthy
that Fred Trump and the six other defendants arrested with him at the
Klan march were represented by ex-Judge Edgar F. Hazleton, described in
the article as a "prominent member of the Knights of Columbus," the Roman Catholic fraternal society. Fred Trump and his fellow Klansmen were actually protesting against the "Roman Catholic" New York Police Department when the melee 
broke out with the hundred New York cops.However, an announcement of the marriage of Fred Trump to Mary A. MacLeod, Donald Trump's mother, that ran in the
January 22, 1936 edition of the Long Island Daily Press clearly states that Fred Trump of "175-24 Devonshire road, Jamaica." Donald Trump has a habit of calling any news unfavorable to him 
and his family "fake news" from the "lying media." In fact, "lying press" (Lügenpresse) was a pejorative used by the Nazis in Germany to describe "Jewish,
Communist, and foreign-owned" media. During the 2016 presidential
campaign, the term "lying press" was resurrected by Trump supporters,
including members of alt-right neo-Nazi groups.The fact that a prominent member of the Knights of Columbus would represent Fred Trump and the other Klansmen is interesting because the 1920s -- which saw a KKK heavily steeped in anti-Catholic and anti-papacy beliefs -- would quickly subside in the 1930s and give way to the German-American Bund as the leading far-right political grouping in the United States. The Bund supported Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. Because Hitler was a Roman Catholic, the American far-right toned down anti-Catholic fervor and concentrated their venom on Jews and blacks.
Fred Trump's parents hailed from Bavaria and, although they were ostensibly Lutheran, their home village in predominantly Lutheran Kallstadt was surrounded by heavily Catholic parishes. On the eve of the outbreak of World War II, Fred Trump, already a successful real estate mogul in Queens and Brooklyn, claimed that he and his parents were Swedish.
Claiming false Swedish lineage was no guarantee of avoiding accusations of pro-Nazi sympathies. During the 1930s, one of the biggest apologists for Nazi Germany was Swedish-American, Charles Lindbergh. "Lucky Lindy" was even awarded the Service Cross of the German Eagle by Nazi Air Minister Hermann Goering in Berlin in 1938. Lindbergh was a prominent member of the America First Committee, which urged the United States to avoid
a war with Germany and which had much in common with the pro-Nazi German-American Bund. Donald Trump has resurrected "America First" in his political rhetoric.Trump apologists claim that Fred Trump was probably arrested not as a marching Klansman, but as an innocent bystander attending what was billed as a Memorial Day parade honoring military war dead. This contention is without merit as seen in the June 2, 1927 edition of the Long Island Daily Press. [Pictured, right] The article on the KKK march clearly states that "when the police attempted to break up the formation of klansmen and resulted in the arrests of seven of the berobed marchers." Not only was Fred Trump part of the Klan march, but he was wearing the signature white robe and regalia of the Ku Klux Klan when he was arrested.
Donald Trump may try to convince his followers that The New York Times is "fake news" -- a ridiculous charge considering the Times article is from 1927, long before Trump's "fake news" meme gained any currency -- but he cannot explain why the same report on his father's arrest appeared in three others newspapers: The Daily Star of Brooklyn of June 1, 1927; The Queens County Evening News of June 2, 1927;
and The Richmond Hill Record of June 3, 1927. [Pictured right from top to bottom]All three papers, along with The New York Times and The Long Island Daily Press, the Daily Press providing details about Fred Trump's KKK march participation and Klan robes, are certainly not "fake news," but legitimate references that would be relied upon by any historian or biographer. Four of the papers include Fred Trump's address as 175-24 Devonshire, which Donald Trump claimed was never his father's address.
The Richmond Hill Record provides interesting details about
Fred
Trump's fellow "Jamaica Seven" Klansmen. They hailed from around the
New York area: John Kipp of Peekskill, New York; John Marcy of Yonkers,
New York; Fred Lyons of New Hyde Park, Long Island; Thomas Carroll of
Jamaica; and
Harry J. Free of Carl Place, Long Island; as well as Thomas Erwin of
West Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The KKK march in Queens was no local
affair and drew participants from beyond New York City. In the 1930s, Nazi meetings in New York,
including the February 20, 1939, 20,000-strong "Americanization" rally
at Madison Square Garden, drew participants from around the country, but especially from Long Island, upstate New York, New Jersey, and the Philadelphia area.There is also the interesting fact that members of the
Knight of Columbus defended the ostensibly anti-Catholic Klan, with John P. Conlon, the marshal for five years of the Jamaica
Division of the parade, being quoted as saying, "Police action was
atrocious and entirely unwarranted. Police performed atrocities which
were unpardonable. Without their interference the parade would have been
perfect. I am a Knights of Columbus man and I do not agree with the
principles of the Klan, but I do believe they should have been granted
permission to participate in any parade to honor dead war veterans."
The Klan marchers in Queens [pictured, left] believed that the NYPD was a "Roman Catholic" police force, so it would appear unusual for a leading Catholic organization like the Knights of Columbus to defend the KKK. However, given the situation in Europe with the steady rise of Nazism in Germany and fascism in Italy, the right-wing Catholic rapprochement with the KKK is perfectly logical as both groups decided to make common cause against Communism, "Jewish Bolshevism," and socialism. The year 1929 saw the enactment of the Lateran Treaty between the Vatican and Benito Mussolini's fascist government, while the Concordat (Reichskonkordat) between the Vatican and Nazi Germany was signed in 1933 between Vatican Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII (the so-called "Nazi Pope') and Nazi Vice Chancellor Franz Von Papen. These two agreements resulted in Nazi and fascist groups around the world, including the KKK, making common cause with far-right groups, regardless of their Catholic ties.
Perhaps no one was more instrumental in uniting the pro-Nazi sympathizers within the United States than Roman Catholic priest, Father Charles Coughlin. The expert on American Nazism and fascism in the interwar years, a renowned expert on Coughlin, believes that Fred Trump was a follower of not only Coughlin, but of Hitler. The expert's research indicates that Coughlin, much of whose material came from early and rather obscure Hitler speeches, influenced not only Fred Trump but also his son Donald. Research into Hitler's speeches and those of Coughlin and Donald Trump show definite similarities in rhetoric and policies. For example, Donald Trump has called the press the "enemy of the American people." Hitler stated, "A press which is in principle anti-national cannot be tolerated in Germany." The Coughlin expert told WMR that Hitler and Donald Trump have one definite thing in common: "Hitler took advantage of those who thought they were taking advantage of him," adding that Trump does the very same.
Coughlin, whose weekly radio broadcasts from Michigan reached up to 30 million listeners in the United States, were laced with rhetoric in support of Hitler, Mussolini, and Japanese Emperor Hirohito. In 1938, Coughlin voiced support for the Nazi Kristallnacht in Germany, which saw attacks on Jews, synagogues, and Jewish-owned businesses throughout the country. Coughlin also received financial support from Nazi Germany and, along with Lindbergh, was a leading figure in the America First movement.
In the years between Fred Trump's arrest as a robed Klansmen in Queens and his surfacing as a U.S. government contractor, little is known. Trump was busy building barracks and other buildings for the U.S. Navy troop embarkation ports in Chester, Pennsylvania and Norfolk and Newport News, Virginia. As WMR stated in our August 16, 2017 report: "Around 1937, Fred Trump's pals in the Klan joined with the Bund and the Nazi Silver Shirts and Black Legion to form the Storm Troops. This early "United the Right" movement received heavy corporate funding. By 1937, Fred Trump was making handsome profits as a notorious Queens slum lord. Did any of those profits end up in the coffers of either the Bund or Storm Troops?" In addition, we reported that a Bund member, German immigrant Waldemar Othmer, infiltrated the U.S. military as a civilian employee and dutifully sent via microfilm information to his Abwehr handlers in Berlin on the movements of British and American military vessels, convoys, and merchant ships out of Brooklyn and Norfolk. Sinking American ships was a high priority for German naval commander Admiral Karl Donitz, who dubbed the program Operation Paukenschlag or Drumbeat."
Considering Fred Trump's Klan background and the "unite the right" agreement between the Klan and the Bund-affiliated groups in the United States, did the father of the current president have loyalties to another master, perhaps Herr Hitler? As we previously reported, 'there is every indication that Fred Trump held his far-right views during the war. He adamantly refused to rent to African Americans, even though many of them worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and other nearby military bases and were in need of housing. When the draft was imposed in 1940, Fred Trump, who was 35, was subject to conscription but was never drafted. In 1942, Trump's age and dependent children would have put him in a lower priority category for the draft. Yet, Fred Trump did not serve in any draft-exempt occupational areas such as war production or public health and safety."
FBI files on Fred Trump, while containing information on his violation of the Fair Housing Act in the 1960s in refusing to sell or rent to blacks and his ties to organized crime, are void of any mention of his activities in the 1930s and 40s. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover is known to have downplayed the collection of intelligence on America Firsters and Nazis until the December 7, 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Defenders of Fred Trump point to his friendship in the 1980s with then-Israeli ambassador to the United Nations Benjamin Netanyahu and Fred Trump's donations to Jewish causes. However, Netanyahu, whose Likud Party has joined political forces with far-right and neo-Nazi groups in Europe and tolerated similar groups in the West Bank and Israel proper, is hardly an exemplar for establishing one's anti-Nazi bona fides. Donald Trump's embrace of pro-Israel Stephen Miller as his adviser and major speechwriter is no different than his father's embrace of Netanyahu. Miller serves as a conduit for President Trump to the alt-right neo-Nazis led by Miller's friend and Duke University classmate, Richard Spencer.
As president, Donald Trump has shown loyalty to foreign autocrats but little to the U.S. Constitution. Donald Trump has called neo-Nazi marchers in Charlottesville, Virginia "fine people" and he has extolled the "virtues" of Confederate generals, placing himself in the mold of his Klan father. Rather than call for a military march in Washington, DC, Mr. Trump might want to fess up about his father's time as a Klansman and as a possible Nazi sympathizer and war-time agent. In the case of the President of the United States, it is not the sins of the father that are as important as the political indoctrination passed down from father to son.
February 28, 2016, Trump tweeted a quote made notorious by Italian fascist leader Benito Mussolini, "It is better to live one day as a lion than a 100 years as a sheep." In defending the tweet after criticism, Trump said, "Mussolini was Mussolini . . . It's a very good quote. It's a very interesting quote." The electoral gains of Italy's former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, an open admirer of Mussolini and his Italian fascist movement, will undoubtedly encourage Trump's promotion of fascism and dictators.
Adolf Hitler's book Mein Kampf on a book cabinet by his bed. She said Trump would read the book "from time-to-time." Asked by Vanity Fair writer Marie Brenner about the book, Trump replied, "Who told you that? . . . I don't remember . . . Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he's a Jew."