New York Life v01n01, June 1933 / Meeting Hitler in the Streets

Here's a remarkable and very scarce publication I visited in university collection recently that I'm thrilled to be able to share:

Cover as well as the other 7 pages are up at Flickr, a very easy way to read this oversized tabloid.

Full scan available for download here, also readable online and available in other formats at the Internet Archive here.

Part of Joey Burten's mid 30s comeback, this publication is far different than I'd imagined what I'd find. Burten is listed as publisher, but New York Life was distributed by Independent News (Harry Donenfeld, Jack Liebowitz, and Paul Sampliner) who I assume were the money men and de facto actual publishers (and there were men behind these men as well).  Donenfeld had made his initial mark in the girlie pulps but when Eastern Distributing was forced into bankruptcy in 1932, Independent rose from the ashes.  Soon Spicy Detective would be a hit, and, in 1938, the real goldmine, man in tights, Superman, would come along and DC comics would ride strongly into the media conglomeration future to where it remains today -

But here we are in 1933, and Germany is *rapidly* transforming under Hitler, and who is ringing the alarm bell in the states?  This cadre of rapscallions. This first issue is a full newspaper-sized 8 page tabloid chronicling the incredibly fast shift of Germany to Nazi state and disappearance of and barbarity towards the Jews.  Nationalism, racism, and playing to the grievances of "the injured and insulted masses" is playing into a totalitarian's hands.  Pulp and comic publishers are recognized for pubs like Daredevil Battles Hitler or Captain America smacking Der Fuhrer the on cover of the first issue, but here they are 8 full years earlier directly calling for a boycott of German goods.  Is there some sensationalistic tabloid angle at play? Sure, but this is muckraking activism attempting to make America aware of what is happening to the Jews in Germany and advocating for a boycott of German goods as the shit is hitting the fan.

 

The issue begins - Hitler's promise - a revival of German values and the liquidation of 'Marxist' enemies:

Despite having long been residents of Germany and active in civil, commercial, and community life, Jews are no longer welcome under the new regime.

But Burten not only presages the coming Holocaust, he also sees the coming war and Hitler's first move will be.  Militarism, nationalism, and a blind fervor is leading to the inevitable here in 1933.  Germany's coming for Austria and the rest of Europe, and we already know it:

 

The construction of new camps is underway.  Dachau -

Officers in churches, desecration of holy sanctuary

 

Tony Sarr cartoon (Burten himself?  A strong possibility)

No shoppers allowed during the Nazi boycott of Woolworth's.  These gentlemen are singing songs while they discourage any would-be shoppers.

There's all sorts of other details in here.  Bits on Einstein's daughters left behind.  Erich Maria Remarque as an enemy of the state for his realistic writings on the horrors of war in All Quiet on the Western  Front.  A knowing indifference to the plight of the Jews from business competitors happy to gobble their share of the market.  Officers expelling Jews to the ghetto mainly out of interest for stealing their worldly possessions. The argument by Germany that American cries of racism be rejected out of hnad as hypocrisy over Jim Crow and the Asian Exclusion Act.

The issue ends with a bold proclamation of action, no doubt over-estimating the awareness or will to act in the American public:

 

What America knew and when we knew it is troubling to the national conscience.  

The standard historical take (and no doubt true in some cases) is that Americans only knew when concentration camps were discovered towards the end of the war.  But in my years of digging in pulp and newsstand publications, you find many American publishers were exposing atrocities and American conspirators with the Nazis long before we joined the battle.  Ken Burns three part documentary on the subject, The U.S. and the Holocaust, is a very informative look at the subject.  

And, lest I be too indirect, could it happen here?  De-humanization of our fellow man?  America Uber Alles? The American Continent as Manifest Destiny? A demolishing of Democracy's guardrails? Fuck, I hope not.  History can turn on a dime, but good people have often let evil flourish under the guise of something else.