Video: 'A Night at The Garden - Field of Vision'

(Monday, February 20, 1939, 8:55-11:00 p.m. EST) — 22,000 members of the German American Bund, a pro-Nazi group, packed Madison Square Garden tonight in New York City to hear Bund leader Fritz Kuhn, known as the “American Hitler,” criticize U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt by repeatedly referring to him as “Frank D. Rosenfeld,” calling his New Deal the “Jew Deal” and denouncing what he believed to be Bolshevik-Jewish American leadership.

At one point, Jewish American Isadore Greenbaum charged the stage to attack Kuhn. As he crawled over the speakers to tackle Kuhn, the Bund’s OD officers and police ran and grabbed the man, punching and kicking him, to the delight of the Nazi American youth group watching onstage.

After his pants were nearly torn off his body and his clothes were ripped, Greenbaum was held overhead by a group of policemen who carried him out of the Garden and charged him with disorderly conduct.

As the Bund color guard took the stage inside the arena, more than 100,000 New Yorkers gathered outside the Garden. Fights broke out between demonstrators, Bund members and police on the ground who were brandishing billy clubs.

13 protesters were arrested for disorderly conduct, including Greenbaum, who was charged a $25 fine.