Friends of Democracy

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Friends of Democracy, Inc. (FOD) was organized in Kansas City, Missouri in 1937 by Unitarian minister Leon M. Birkhead. The group described itself as "a non-partisan, non-sectarian, non-profit, anti-totalitarian propaganda agency." In 1939 their offices were moved to New York City, an early branch of the group. In 1942 propagandist Rex Stout later became chairman of Friends of Democracy.[1] John Dewey, Thomas Mann, Van Wyck Brooks, and Will Durant were also prominent members.[2]

By 1939 the Friends of Democracy had files on over 800 pro-NS Germany organizations in America.[3] The group issued a journal called The Propaganda Battlefront.[4] and Democracy’s Battle.

Author James P. Duffy in his book Lindbergh vs. Roosevelt: The Rivalry That Divided America claims that Friends of Democracy was a front group for British intelligence. He also makes the point that Birkhead became chairman of another front group controlled by the British called the Nonpartisan Committee to defeat Hamilton Fish.[5] An interesting point which supports this claim is that FOD was strongly interventionist during time of the Hitler-Stalin pact.[6]

The group was the forerunner of today’s "watchdog" organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center that track so-called "hate groups".

Pamphlets

  • The program of Friends of Democracy Incorporated 3 pages
  • The America First Committee, the Nazi Transmission Belt
  • A confidential statement concerning pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic organizations 12 pages
  • The master race mentality 24 pages
  • What’s Wrong With Winrod
  • The bulwark of democracy (1938) 4 pages
  • Land of the free (1938) 4 pages
  • "Let's look at the record." (1938) 4 pages
  • Pulling together (1938) 4 pages
  • Hitler or Christ? (1938) 4 pages
  • Smoke-screen (1938) 4 pages
  • Watch out! (1938) 4 pages
  • The Catholic church, Nazi scapegoat number two (1939) 7 pages
  • The case against Joseph E. McWilliams (1940) 12 pages
  • Father Coughlin self-condemned (1940) 26 pages
  • Is Lindbergh a Nazi? (1941) 26 pages
  • The Gestapo: Hitler's secret police--the Nazi scourge in Germany, the conquered countries [and] the United States (1941) 32 pages
  • Henry Ford must choose (1941) 32 pages
  • Hitler's "Typhoid Marys." (1942) 4 pages
  • Joe Kamp: Peddler of Propaganda and Hero of the Pro-Fascists (ca. 1944) 21 pages
  • Pattern for revolution (1944)
  • The Case of McCormick-Patterson Press (1945)

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ AMERICA FIRST: The Battle Against Intervention 1940-1941, by Wayne S. Cole, page 108
  2. ↑ William Dudley Pelley: a life in right-wing extremism and the occult, By Scott Beekman, page 124
  3. ↑ Not without honor: the history of American anticommunism, By Richard Gid Powers, page 167
  4. ↑ The nervous liberals: propaganda anxieties from World War I to the Cold War, By Brett Gary, Page 79
  5. ↑ Lindbergh vs. Roosevelt: The Rivalry That Divided America By James P. Duffy, page 154
  6. ↑ The Plotters, by John Roy Carlson, page 362
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