The German-American Bund was the most consequential pro-Nazi political movement to emerge in the prewar United States. Under the leadership of its "Führer," a notorious antisemite named Fritz Kuhn, the Bund at its height claimed about 15,000 members in addition to 8000 Storm Troopers.

A 1939 rally in New York City's Madison Square Garden attracted an audience of 20,000. In spite of efforts to portray themselves as patriotic Americans, even going so far as to combine images of George Washington and the swastika in their propaganda, Bundists were overwhelmingly German immigrants whose thoughts were with Nazi Germany. Membership was concentrated in large cities, and the party never had much grass-roots support. Never a serious threat to the American government, the Bund's fortunes experienced a downturn in 1939, when Kuhn was sent to prison for embezzling funds.

Another avowedly antisemitic political movement to emerge between the wars was William Dudley Pelley's Silver Shirts. Pelley claimed that a "near-death experience" influenced his spiritualist antisemitism. Like the Bund, the Silver Shirts could never claim an extensive membership; they had only about 15,000 members, mostly middle-class, by 1934. The movement's strength dwindled to only 5000 four years later.
Photo: Library of Congress/United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Photo Archive