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Steven J. Ross

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Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America Hardcover – October 24, 2017

by Steven J. Ross (Author)

4.5 314 ratings

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A 2018 FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE

The chilling, little-known story of the rise of Nazism in Los Angeles, and the Jewish leaders and spies they recruited who stopped it.

No American city was more important to the Nazis than Los Angeles, home to Hollywood, the greatest propaganda machine in the world. The Nazis plotted to kill the city’s Jews and to sabotage the nation’s military installations: plans existed for hanging twenty prominent Hollywood figures such as Al Jolson, Charlie Chaplin, and Samuel Goldwyn; for driving through Boyle Heights and machine-gunning as many Jews as possible; and for blowing up defense installations and seizing munitions from National Guard armories along the Pacific Coast.

U.S. law enforcement agencies were not paying close attention--preferring to monitor Reds rather than Nazis--and only Leon Lewis and his daring ring of spies stood in the way. From 1933 until the end of World War II, attorney Leon Lewis, the man Nazis would come to call "the most dangerous Jew in Los Angeles," ran a spy operation comprised of military veterans and their wives who infiltrated every Nazi and fascist group in Los Angeles. Often rising to leadership positions, this daring ring of spies uncovered and foiled the Nazi’s disturbing plans for death and destruction.

Featuring a large cast of Nazis, undercover agents, and colorful supporting players, Hitler in Los Angeles, by acclaimed historian Steven J. Ross, tells the story of Lewis’s daring spy network in a time when hate groups had moved from the margins to the mainstream.

Print length

432 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Bloomsbury USA
Publication date

October 24, 2017
Dimensions

6.44 x 1.55 x 9.59 inches
ISBN-10

9781620405628
ISBN-13

978-1620405628
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"A terrifying, revelatory and inspiring masterpiece that probes the flourishing fascism of 1930s America, and the power of popular resistance to combat an alliance of Nazism, the Ku Klux Klan and other homegrown paramilitary groups." - Jury for Pulitzer Prize in History

"A remarkable tale, one that pits a secretive, chess-playing Jewish spymaster--attorney Leon Lewis--and a group of courageous German-American war veterans that he recruited as his spies against a cast of villains straight out of a classic Warner Bros. film . . . Mr. Ross has a novelist's eye for characters and detail." - Wall Street Journal

"Hitler in Los Angeles . . . is part thriller and all chiller, about how close the California Reich came to succeeding." - Los Angeles Times

"Fascinating." - Smithsonian Magazine

"A history book that doubles as espionage thriller with a cast of characters that includes movie stars, studio moguls, entertainment lawyers, diplomats and pols, all of them quite real . . . Remarkable . . . Now that anti-Semitic chants recently have been heard in the streets of Charlottesville, Va., Hitler in Los Angeles must be seen as much more than an accomplished work of historical scholarship." - Jewish Journal

"The director of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life and an award-winning film historian, Ross tells a shocking story of Nazi efforts to infiltrate America . . . Ross puts his experience in film history to good use, and he creates lively portraits of the men and women whom Lewis recruited as spies and who succeeded in putting some dangerous Nazis behind bars. A vivid history of homegrown resistance." - Kirkus Reviews

"Readers interested in a detailed look at this spy operation can have confidence in this well-sourced account." - Library Journal

"Thrilling . . . dramatic." - The Daily Express

"A chilling, captivating story of espionage and resistance . . . Author Steven J. Ross employs impeccable research and a driving no-holds-barred writing style . . . [This] nonfiction revelation . . . reads like an exciting spy novel. Ross reveals this true story of resistance by American Jews and Gentiles with an exciting, evocative writing style." - The New York Journal of Books

"Remarkable and meticulously researched." - Times Higher Education

"Reveal[s] the hitherto untold story of Jewish resistance to Nazi infiltration, not in Berlin or Warsaw but in Los Angeles during the 1930s, a time when Nazism, a distant rumble on the horizon for most Americans, was for tens of thousands of others a siren call to action . . . Ross has a blockbuster revelation." - The Chronicle of Higher Education

"A riveting and terrifying chapter of Nazi American history... Ross has a flair for thriller-writing and this history is a captivating read.. Enthralling... Important and compelling... Hitler in Los Angeles is crammed with twists and turns involving double-agents, movie stars, and big-time studio moguls. Netflix needs to turn Hitler in Los Angeles into a television series." - PopMatters

"Outstanding and compelling... parts of Hitler in Los Angeles read almost like a spy novel, except that these events really-- and frighteningly-- happened." - TruthDig

"Nazis, spies, assassination plots, a planned putsch to topple Franklin Roosevelt--these are the ingredients for a World War II movie. But in Steve Ross's compelling history, they make for a true-life thriller about an episode that has been almost completely ignored: the attempt by the Nazis to take over America." - Neal Gabler, author of WALT DISNEY

"Steven J. Ross has the verve of a spellbinding novelist and the skill of a master historian. This story has every bit the drama of Roth's The Plot against America or Dick's The Man in the High Castle, except it actually happened! The all-important take-away of Hitler in Los Angeles? Good people can and must prevail against bad." - David N. Myers, President/CEO, The Center for Jewish History

"This is a truly brilliant history by a superbly talented historian. More importantly, it's a damn fine read, a true life thriller that's a powerful reminder of how hate, if left to fester, can destroy us all." - Alex Kershaw, author of AVENUE OF SPIES

"Steven J. Ross, one of our foremost authorities on the entwined histories of American Jewry, domestic politics and Hollywood, presents a chilling tale of the Nazi plot to destroy America; the small spy network who helped defeat it; and the official indifference to the threat posed by German agents and home-grown extremists bent on sabotage and political murder." - Glenn Frankel, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of HIGH NOON

"This little-known chapter of 1930s history--captured by Steven J. Ross with impeccable research and an intriguing narrative--needs to be told; it will challenge assumptions about the power of citizens to shape world events from their own backyard." - Ted Johnson, senior editor, VARIETY

About the Author

Steven J. Ross is professor of history at the University of Southern California and director of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life. He is the author of Hollywood Left and Right, recipient of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ Film Scholars Award and nominated for a Pulitzer; Working-Class Hollywood, nominated for a Pulitzer and the National Book Award; Movies and American Society; and Workers on the Edge. He lives in Southern California. http://scalar.usc.edu/works/hitler-in-los-angeles/index

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ 1620405628
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloomsbury USA; First Edition (October 24, 2017)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 432 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9781620405628
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1620405628
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.66 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.44 x 1.55 x 9.59 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #945,831 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,743 in Jewish Holocaust History
- #8,235 in World War II History (Books)
- #15,824 in U.S. State & Local History

Customer Reviews:
4.5 314 ratings

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Steven J. Ross

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STEVEN J. ROSS is Distinguished Professor of History at the University of Southern California and Director of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life. He is the author of "Hollywood Left and Right: How Movie Stars Shaped American Politics" (2011) which won an Academy of Motion Pictures Film Scholars Award and was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize; it was also listed by the New York Times Book Review as one of their recommended Summer Readings. His book, "Working-Class Hollywood: Silent Film and the Shaping of Class in America" (1998), received the prestigious Theater Library Association Book Award for 1999 and was named by the Los Angeles Times as one of the "Best Books of 1998." His other works include Movies and American Society (2002) and Workers On the Edge: Work, Leisure, and Politics in Industrializing Cincinnati, 1788-1890 (1985). His Op-Ed pieces have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, International Herald-Tribune, HuffingtonPost, Hollywood Reporter, and Politico.

His latest book, "Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America," was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in History for 2018; it has been on the Los Angeles Times Bestseller list for 23 weeks. It tells the true story of a spy ring run by Los Angeles Jews from August 1933 until the end of WWII. Ross is currently working on a follow up to Hitler in Los Angeles called "The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to White Supremacy After 1945" (Bloomsbury).

For HITLER IN LOS ANGELES Website:

http://scalar.usc.edu/works/hitler-in-los-angeles/index

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4.5 out of 5

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Susan Pecaut Stark

Scary n history of LA

Reviewed in the United States on January 16, 2024

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Amazing history of dangerous Nazis in CA during WWII. Incredible spying nu two men saved the West Coast before and during WWII. Mind blowing risks taken to protect California's Jewish population

Reviewed in the United States on December 28, 2023

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I was unfamiliar with this history. The brave patriotic people described in this book deserve to be identified. They risked their lives when no government was compelling their actions. As we are now facing a resurgence of fascist sympathizers, it gives me hope that new heroes will emerge.

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Nazi Hunters

Reviewed in the United States on April 3, 2019

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USC history professor Steven Ross has written a way too detailed account of how a small group of Jews set up a spying operation on Nazi activity in Los Angeles. The protagonist of his story is Leon Lewis who was a WWI vet, a founder of the Anti-Defamation League and a Chicago lawyer who moved to Los Angeles. He is assisted by Joseph Roos and Joseph Klein. Through Lewis’ involvement with veterans’ organization he was able to recruit non-Jewish German Americans to infiltrate and sew divisions within the Nazi oriented organizations operating in Los Angeles. In this activity he was extraordinarily successful. His work led to the rounding up of Nazi operatives along the west coast when the U.S. entered WW II. He was light years ahead of the F.B.I.

Los Angeles was a focus of Nazi activity in the United States because of the importance Joseph Goebbels viewed the propaganda potential of the motion picture industry. Although Hollywood was loaded with Jewish senior executives they did little or nothing to warn the American public of the atrocities committed by the Nazis against the Jews in Germany and Germany’s growing geopolitical threat. Simply put the executives feared the loss of the German market.

Enforcing Hitler’s de facto censorship of Hollywood was the German Consul Georg Gyssling. Gyssling was prominent in Los Angeles social circles in the 1930s and was very effective in promoting the “New Germany.” However his real role was to prevent a negative view of Germany in Hollywood’s films. In that task he was extraordinarily successful and as a result there were no anti-Nazi films made until 1939.

Although the Hollywood studios kowtowed to Gyssling, behind the scenes they funded Lewis’ spying operation. The key figure here was entertainment lawyer Mendel Silberberg who founded the still very successful law firm of Mitchell, Silberberg and Knupp.

Along the way we learn about the “Silver Shirts,” the U.S. equivalent of the brown shirts and we learn about the pro-Nazi sympathies in the Los Angeles Police Department which made cooperation between Lewis and the police difficult.

What is new here is that we learned that Gyssling actually had back channel conversations with Morton Klein. Further after returning to Germany Gyssling remained a diplomat and at war’s end he worked with Allen Dulles to arrange the German surrender. Simply put Gyssling was more a patriotic German than a Nazi.

What troubled me about the book is that Nazi’s knew about Lewis and viewed him as there most prominent enemy in the Jewish community. Why wasn’t he assassinated? In a footnote Ross believes they feared severe reprisals. To me that does not wash. Perhaps both Lewis and the Nazis overestimated the strength of the Nazis in Los Angeles.

Nevertheless Ross presents an interesting history of how and why all too many Americans got sucked into the racist ideology of Nazism. A scary reminder for today.

28 people found this helpful

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Rhonda Kitchens

BRAND NEW BOOK IN PLASTIC COVERING - WHAT'S NOT TO LOVE

Reviewed in the United States on December 12, 2023

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This is a beautiful copy of a book i have been trying to get for a long time. While the description said NEW and the price was higher than on previous orders, that had been cancelled, I took a chance and ordered it. this is above and beyond NEW. Beautiful book WITH A PLASTIC COVER, WHICH I LOVE. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR CARE AND THE PRISTINE COPY OF THIS BOOK.

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Mark D. Burgh

Surprising and Frightening

Reviewed in the United States on December 18, 2023

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This book shows the way the Nazi's tried to start a movent in America in the 1930's. It also describes how Jews banded together to stop this insurrection.

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Joseph Christopher Teichman

Not bad

Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2017

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Sometimes too boring with facts and descriptions of possible events difficult to sustain interest very good job of describing the people involved.

2 people found this helpful

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Son of Flintstone Munchausen

Munich on the West Coast, 1933-1941

Reviewed in the United States on February 17, 2021

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HITLER IN LOS ANGELES, by Steven J. Ross.

Wow. An attempted infiltration of the U.S. West Coast beginning about May, 1933, and the efforts of amateur spy masters to trip it up, with little help from domestic law enforcement and the business press.

U.S. domestic Nazis plotted to load up on arms and ammunition (12,000 rounds of rifle ammunition and firearms supplied from a San Francisco armory by two Marine Corps. corporals!), extensive plotting to overthrow the U.S. government, and lots and lots of behind the scenes amateur Jewish-American spies. The book suggests that the American domestic Nazi true believers who acted on their plans were relatively few in number, and the actions of the Jewish spy ring kept knocking the domestic terrorist cells back off their organizing heels through most of the Depression years. The book also makes plain that California local law enforcement and the FBI ignored or downplayed the danger, to the point of sympathizing with the American Nazis' aims to overthrow the Roosevelt New Deal by infiltrating Los Angeles city/county governments and law enforcement, notably by the Silver Shirts in the police department and gangster units, preferring to view local communists as the primary target for surveillance. The Daws Committee generally flipped from attempted American pro-Nazi military sabotage of arms manufacturing and the CA airplane industry to a focus on American Communist (pro-union) organizing (subversive) activities in 1938.

German ships with Gestapo agents, crateloads of propaganda, and millions of dollars to pump through the American economy passed through West Coast ports during those years. The German government's primary direct purpose was having Georg Gyssling monitor and massage the CA movie industry's productions away from unfavorable portrayals of the Nazi Regime, which lasted until early 1939, when CONFESSIONS OF A NAZI SPY broke the ban.

The book strongly suggests that the effectiveness of the Los Angeles amateur Jewish informers' infiltration of American Nazi terrorist cells circumstantially explains the HUAC hearings coming out of California in the 1948-55 period focused on harassing Hollywood movie studios, popular entertainers, minorities and civil rights advocates as payback for winning the war with Nazi Germany. ...Which resulted in so many earnestly stilted Technicolor Spectaculars and such AWFUL white ASCAP pop music during the 1950s?

14 people found this helpful

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Joseph Myren

AWESOME

Reviewed in Canada on December 9, 2022

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AWESOME

Wayne Murray

A must buy

Reviewed in Australia on October 12, 2019

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Great read for research

bigkissfan

Very interesting book

Reviewed in Canada on June 14, 2019

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A bit "dry" to read, but the details are interesting and is well worth the money

One person found this helpful

Josh Goldschmidt

A great book

Reviewed in Canada on December 6, 2019

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I bought it and read it, then my father read it.

Despite our different tastes, we both heavily enjoyed it.

The author can write history with the thrill of a spy novel and the humour of a funny spy novel.

I highly recommend it for people who have an interest in Jewish history

One person found this helpful

Kyle

Loved it

Reviewed in Canada on October 20, 2020

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Great

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Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America Hardcover – October 24, 2017

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