The saying in this body is that the minority gets their say, and the majority gets their way. It was direct documentary evidence that the Senator had been colluding with a Nazi agent. President, Mr. He was kind of their top banana here. And that Viereck file that the Senator's wife was looking for and that she took away so soon after her husband died, that file contained more than a decade's-worth of correspondence between Lundeen and Viereck. If you were trying to reach Americans in their homes, if you were trying to influence Americans opinions and political leanings, and fundraise, and all the rest of it, you sent them mail. He served in the Minnesota House of Representatives 191114. Pitted against the popular Benson and ex-Farmer-Labor congressman Henry M. Arens, a 70-year-old former lieutenant governor with deep ties to the states farm cooperative movement, many observers believed that the Lundeen name still possessed some magic in Minnesota Farmer-Labor circles, especially among the states large German-American population. The bill embodied a far-reaching unemployment insurance and social insurance program formulated by the Communist Party in 1930 and openly and vigorously advocated by the party for the next several years. Germany's agents operating in the U.S. were tasked with finding those things and exploiting them here, in the interest of "national demoralization.. Addresses for each senator can be found on the senator's website or state's web page. America First Committee. Senate. He was trying to sow dissension among the American public about the war effort and about our own system of government, to spread misinformation that was favorable to Germany and disfavorable to us and our allies. Many of the issues fought over in this past election are not solved, they are still with us. Not so much when we talk common sense. Maddow: George Syvester Viereck, as a highly-paid, highly-ranked agent of Hitlers government, he had his marching orders. She complained to the radio stations who carried his reporting, trying to get him taken off the air; she threatened the sponsors who advertised on the broadcasts in which he appeared. Lundeen might be dead, but George Sylvester Viereck was still out there. All accusations of this nature are emphatically denied in the letters of the Attorney General Jackson and J. Edgar Hoover. Despite the loud protests of the senators widow, Norma Lundeen, on the radio her threats to sue reporters into submission, her attempts to gaslight the American people that her husband wasnt really standing in front of the swastika despite all of that, the details of her husbands relationship with this Nazi agent, those details began to get out. Norma Lundeen: Only a few days after the husband and father we loved had been laid away, this storm of malice broke. But what prosecutor William Power Maloney actually found during that raid, it set him back on his heels. Remember the thousands and thousands of Nazi propaganda books and leaflets and pamphlets that he disseminated all over Boston and the Northeast? President, Mr. He was. This promises to be good. But the woman behind the mic that day, she was someone who was in a unique and interesting situation. Senator Bob Rankin Announces his Resignation Dec 1, Inventory of Art in the Minnesota State Capitol March 2013, Politics Among Danish Americans in the Midwest, Ca. You will experience the difference in the way this body and the broader General Assembly takes on and talks about issues. Maddow: Once George Viereck was arrested, the members of Congress who had participated in this scheme, they knew that prosecutors were onto them. Senator Ernest Lundeen in a mysterious plane crash in 1940 left a series of questions that lead to revealing threats to American democracy. In late 1940 and early 1941, the Ernest Lundeen story it started off bad, it took a hard right turn, but then it just kept getting worse and worse all the time with each new revelation. And after about eight months of reading these reports about her deceased husband in the papers, hearing about them on the radio news, Norma Lundeen decided that shed had enough. And all of us face a future where energy is unreliable and unaffordable unless we wisely use the best carbon transition fuels we have and explore alternative energy options, like nuclear. The Colorado Senate is just three seats away from a conservative check on the out-of-control Democrat agenda. They represented a bunch of different states, up and down the political spectrum. In fact, to conclude that all the solutions lie in government action is false on its face and the highest order of misguided hubris. Viereck was not some kind of code word. Hart: We have a number of the biggest figures in American politics in this period, men who are truly household names, the biggest names really in Republican congressional politics, they all fall under the spell of this Nazi propaganda operation. Lundeens husband, who had been tragically killed in a plane crash near the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia two years earlier, was reportedly under investigation by the FBI at the time of his death. Hed never lost a case. Norma then proceeded to falsely testify that she indeed took the Viereck files, but the files are gone due to a burglary that has taken place at their residence. Klicken Sie auf Einstellungen verwalten um weitere Informationen zu erhalten und Ihre Einstellungen zu verwalten. Maddow: When Senator Ernest Lundeen died, there was a stack of smoking-gun evidence locked inside a filing cabinet in his Senate office in the U.S. Capitol. And yet we must not mislead ourselves into believing that the government can solve all problems. For the Colorado State Senate member, see, Districts 910 and statewide general ticket (obsolete), List of United States Congress members who died in office (190049), Ernest Lundeen, Minnesota Legislative Reference Library-Minnesota Legislators Past and Present, "Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra | an MSNBC original podcast", "Editorial: Minnesota's pro-Hitler senator", "Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra - Episode 4: A Bad Angle", "Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra - Episode 5: Shut It Down", Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, Third party officeholders in the United States, Notable third party performances in United States elections, Members of the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ernest_Lundeen&oldid=1134089249, American military personnel of the SpanishAmerican War, Republican Party members of the Minnesota House of Representatives, University of Minnesota Law School alumni, FarmerLabor Party United States senators, Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Minnesota, FarmerLabor Party members of the United States House of Representatives, Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 1940, Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in the United States, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Company B-12th Minnesota Volunteer Regiment, This page was last edited on 16 January 2023, at 23:45. Lundeen was carrying these pages when he died, and they were found near the scene of the plane crash. Senator. Young: Republicans are just feeling very defeated as if theres nothing that they can do to stop Roosevelt. With additional sound from CBS News. So at that point, they had two options: fess up, give up the game, cooperate with the investigation; or, try to burn the whole thing down. We wont be able to fix every problem this state faces during these next 119 days. Despite Norma's best efforts, the secret was getting out in the press and, soon, in court. In politics unexpected losses bless you with focused thoughts. The United States Senate is the upper chamber of the United States Congress, with the House of Representatives being the lower chamber. There was no Facebook, no Twitter, there was no news on TV. Yes! May 18, 1941, 11:30 to 11:45pm, the NBC Blue Network. The bill attracted support from liberals dissatisfied with the less generous and much less radical Wagner-Lewis bill (which became the Social Security Act). But thats not exactly what Norma wanted to talk about when she stepped behind the mic that day. A copy of the Congressional Record from 1940, containing Sen. Ernest Lundeen's last speech on the floor of the Senate. He was criminally charged for his role in the scheme that he ran through Congress, which was a shot across the bow to all the members of Congress who had helped Viereck carry out the scheme. Letter from Attorney General Robert H. Jackson addressed to Sen. Ernest Lundeen's widow, denying that there was ongoing investigation into Lundeen at the time of his death. box 4, folder 4-5. Norma Lundeen: The dead cannot be hurt by vilification. She said it was a big misunderstanding. Bill Information. What she was there to do really was, as she put it, something unprecedented in radio broadcasting. Among the crash victims were Nazi sympathizer Senator Ernest Lundeen (R-Minn; born August 4, 1878 Dakota Territory) and (reputedly) a couple of FBI agents, along with other passengers and crew members on the ill-fated flight that left that afternoon from Washington DC heading for Detroit. We care about the quality and flexibility of your childs education that is so important to their future success. They expected to find evidence of that scheme that they knew about: notes, documents, records of payments, other evidence linking this Nazi agent to Senator Lundeen. According to the secretary, Ive gone too far to turn back, was about all Lundeen said. Because not only did she know for a fact that that allegation was true, that in fact an agent from Hitler's government really had been writing speeches for her Senator husband, she knew that it was true. America First. That tight-little, patriotic-sounding populist slogan was both a don't-get-involved-in-the-war rallying cry, and a good, profile-boosting vehicle for members of congress who for whatever reason were opposed to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was just an electoral juggernaut at the time. His base of operations the center of American democracy itself the United States Congress. In part because everyone who choosesand most politicians chooseown a broadcast channel. But the other members of Congress, that band of America Firsters who were all in on it, too, they were still flying under the radar. Viereck's plan was working. DENVER Below is the transcript of Colorado Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeens (R-Monument) speech on the opening day of the First Regular Session of the 74th General Assembly. Sen. Ernest Lundeen sent these pamphlets to his constituents, and asked them to indicate whether or not they supported the United States declaring war on Germany. Maddow: Norma Lundeen made her case, defending her husband passionately and directly to the public. senator ( plural senators ) A member, normally elected, in the house or chamber of a legislature called a senate, as, for instance, the legislatures of the United States and Canada. The charming 46-year-old widow waged a relatively low-key campaign, quietly yet passionately defending her late husbands record and promising an all-out prosecution of the war, all the while presciently warning the voters of Minnesota that the internationalists including the Farmer-Labor Partys own Elmer Benson would keep American troops in Europe, Africa and Asia following the war, thereby making the United States the policemen of the world. By then, the Lundeen name had been too badlytarnished by revelations that her late husband had associated with some fairly seedy characters on the Far Right, the most damaging of which was his longtime association with George Sylvester Viereck, a controversial German-American poet and novelist who was then serving a two-to-six year prison sentence for having worked as a publicist and propagandist for the Nazis following Hitlers rise to power in Germany. This was in no way a secret and Lundeen must have known the man he was dealing with was at least pro-German, if not actively working on behalf of the German government. near Lovettsville, Virginia and all 25 persons on board were killed, including Senator Lundeen. Darcy could be President if he listens to me. Nancy Beck Young: This group of people, if they were anything first, it was their own political success and careers first. Postal Service at essentially their own cost. And she knew that she herself had just hidden away the evidence that would prove it. In 1940, FDR was running for an unprecedented third term as US president. But Senator Lundeen was also someone who always had money on the mind. It was all the correspondence between him and a man named George Sylvester Viereck. All these sitting members of Congress. He was very good at it. These coming years will likely be tough on the people of Colorado, and only through bipartisan cooperation, and reasoned application of the best and most inherently sustainable ideas, will we be able to overcome the challenges all of us face. Young: The relationship that the two of them come up with is that Viereck will function as speech writer for Lundeen. Hart: What we know is true is that Viereck is receiving much of the material for these speeches from the German embassy itself. But besides their connection to this German foreign agent, they did all have one other thing in common. (CROWD CHEERING AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN). Hart: It's really a scheme of, of genius in some ways. Senators died in relative obscurity in 1983 at the age of 87. So now we launch into 120 days of policy and politics. All of those members of Congress tied up in Vierecks scheme, all of them were associated with something called the America First movement. Senator Patricia Billie Miller Senator Miller represents Darien and Stamford. Viereck, who had actively supported Robert M. La Follettes insurgent candidacy for the presidency in 1924, had cultivated friendships with several leading isolationist lawmakers, including New Yorks Hamilton Fish, Jr., but Senator Lundeen was arguably his closest ally in Congress. Fax: (202) 228-2190. Viereck would arrange for speeches that he wrote for Lundeen to be printed in major American magazines and newspapers. Hart: We believe it's millions of Americans. Republican State Senator Paul Lundeen could be the next President of the State Senate if Republicans take the majority. This is the man, who after the grave had closed on him, and he could no longer defend his good name, has been ruthlessly slandered by repeatedly suggesting that Senator Lundeen was not a loyal American. As far as prosecutors could tell, this D.C. publicist, and Senator Ernest Lundeen, and Viereck the Nazi agent, theyd all been involved together in a scheme to secretly disseminate pro-Nazi disinformation and propaganda. But we are intent to do more than just talk. Viereck wrote Lundeen's speeches. She threatened to sue one radio journalist who had reported a story about her late husband. Armed with that information, William Maloney took action. I think we would say evil genius. Jared Poliss office. But no. I warn the American people that we cannot defend America by defending old, decadent, and dying empires. And some Americans didnt need much persuading. He served from January 3, 1937, in the 75th and 76th Congresses until his death. She wasnt a reporter, or a paid commentator, or a politician, or even a well-known public figure. WITNESS SAYS HILL USED LUNDEEN FRANK; Mrs. Spielman Testifies Viereck Wrote Speeches for Senator. He served as a Minnesota Farmer-Labor Party member in the House from March 4, 1933, to January3, 1937, in the 73rd and 74th Congresses. All of us face something completely unexpected in Coloradoempty store shelvesand runaway UNaffordability when we do find the products and services we seek. When this war is over, she asserted on the campaign trail, we must insist that our sons be returned to America. If the internationalists prevailed, she cautioned repeatedly, the United States would soon find itself entangled in continuous intrigue around the globe, one in which the American people would eventually lose control of their own country and find their own children pushed out of their cradle of liberty.. And less than 48-hours after her husband had died, she in one of her memorable hats marched into his Senate office in the U.S. Capitol. Hart: He realizes very quickly that one Senator isn't enough here. senador. The Republican caucus in this chamber can, and I believe will, make a fundamental difference. Maddow: This was the early 1940s. Hart: This is a moment of great political danger, I think for these men. Options for Contacting Senators. "[5], On June 14, 1939, Lundeen joined a civilian and press delegation aboard USS Hammann for its sea trials off Fire Island. One of those photographs was taken at such an angle as to convey the impression that my husband was standing beneath the swastika. It tends to be our nature as politicians to launch into any debate at full throttle to tell everything we know about a matter. But historians who've studied this have made the very obvious point, how could she have not known his connection to Viereck and the Nazis? A - Agriculture. Photo of Minnesota Sen. Ernest Lundeen, April 1940. The letter reads: "May I be a senator after Wash [ington] and Failure to address these issues risks leaving our grandchildren to face a parched, unlivable, ignorant existence. To Senators Pelton (Byron and Rod), [] The book on your desk has the subtitle of talking politics without the noise. It offers each side of the aisle the ability, at least in some small way, to seek first to understand before seeking to be understood. This is on par with the median of 17.7% among the lifetime records of senators serving Hart: His initial idea is that he's going to have a U.S. In fact, politics has become extremely noisy. He didn't just churn out propaganda and disinformation himself, although he did do plenty of that. Viereck would supply this material, supply these speeches to Lundeen, Lundeen would take them and read them verbatim on the floor of the Senate. He was something close to famous for his opposition to World War I. 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