Axis Europe and European Americans at the 1939 New York World’s Fair

When the New York Times reported in December 1937 that both Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany had accepted invitations to build exhibits at the upcoming world’s fair, the backlash was immediate. Within days, local Sons of Italy chapters publicly reaffirmed their loyalty to the Roosevelt administration, the American Jewish Congress organized a general boycott, and celebrities took to hosting fundraisers to aid the construction of a so-called ‘freedom house’ that would counter the proposed German pavilion on the fairgrounds. Yet this negative response to Axis involvement was not universal. This paper offers an assessment of the ways local populations throughout New York responded to the involvement of the two most notorious European regimes at the 1939 World’s Fair. It will revisit several flash points in the run-up to the fair and explore the tension between anti-fascist groups and ethnically motivated fascist sympathizers. The protests and violence that broke out over the German-American Bund rally at Madison Square Garden will be explored, as will the several block parties held across the city in commemoration of Mussolini’s colonial conquest of Ethiopia. While episodes of social unrest throughout interwar America have been well-documented, this study is unique in offering an assessment of specific ways the fascist regimes at Berlin and Rome used the 1939 New York World’s Fair to win the affinities of ethnic Germans and Italians living in and around greater New York City. Through examination of various popular press publications, local social clubs, and labor organizations, we are afforded a glimpse of the ways the regimes broadcast messages of ethnic kinship throughout the five boroughs on the eve of World War II. Necessarily, this paper also considers the US State Department’s resistance to such outreach efforts and concludes by weighing the consequences of this overlooked episode of cultural diplomacy and conflict.