Under Cover: My Four Years in Nazi Underworld of America

Plot

"Under Cover" was a best seller in 1943, the story of how an Armenian-American magazine writer became "synthetic Italian" (the author's term) George Pagnanelli, publisher of a short-lived hate sheet and member or hanger-on of thirty fascist, Nazi, or nativist American groups in order to investigate the late 1930s-early 1940s far Right. What Carlson uncovered was pretty interesting; printing houses churning out translated German propaganda or American-made anti-Semitic tracts and books, secretive "gun clubs" full of fascists waiting for the order to begin "the revolution", isolationist pressure groups made up of old ladies who could cry on command while marching around Congress, pro-Japanese black fascists in Harlem hoping that Hitler would kill off the white man, retired US Army Generals attempting to lead or bankroll pro-Nazi "patriotic" groups. In short, a collection of cranks and loons, but ones that could influence American foreign policy, which was already isolationist. After Pearl Harbor, Carlson hoped that his "patriotic" friends would give up the nonsense, but no luck; the propaganda still kept coming while the more openly Nazi or Fascist groups (like the Nazi party clone German American Bund) went underground and members began to encourage draft avoidance while dodging the Army themselves. According to "Under Cover" it was not until 1942 that the F.B.I. began detaining the more famous "patriotic" propagandists like Laura Ingalls or Elizabeth Dilling for sedition.