It’s not just springtime for Hitler in America. It’s winter, summer and fall too. There is what the historian of American neo-Nazism, Steven J. Ross, defines as the “too many Führers Problem.” This, he says, is the central weakness of American neo-Nazism over eight decades. Every far-right leader from the 1940s onward demanded a united fascist movement — and every one of them insisted on being the Führer in charge of it. The result was the permanent fracture of the American far right. That is, until the latest wannabe Führer, Donald Trump, came along.

Last week, the Justice Department sided with the Ku Klux Klan. The Southern Poverty Law Center — the country’s main watchdog against antisemitism, racism, and far-right violence — was accused of running agents within radical right-wing organisations and using charitable funds for improper purposes. In his new book, The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy, Ross says that this has all happened before.

The Secret War Against Hate tells the story of three undercover spy operations — run by the American Jewish Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League — that infiltrated every fascist, Nazi, and racist group in America from the 1940s through the 1970s. When government fails to protect its citizens, Ross suggests, it falls to citizens to protect themselves. J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI was obsessed with communists and mostly indifferent to antisemitism and racism. Rather than the solution, the G-Men were one more problem.

In May 1945, a few days before VE Day, the three spy chiefs — working in offices a few blocks apart in Midtown Manhattan — wrote the identical memo on the same day. If right-wing groups, fractured by the “too many Führers problem,” ever found a way to communicate instantaneously with one another, and if one of them ever peeled off into a mainstream political party, they warned, American democracy would be in big trouble. That was their “Too Many Führers Problem.” Springtime for an American Hitler. Today this problem is no longer a joke.
Five Takeaways

• The Justice Department Sides with the KKK. The SPLC accused of running agents within right-wing groups and misusing charitable funds. The same accusations were made against the ADL, AJC, and Anti-Nazi League from the 1940s onward. Those operations foiled plot after plot. The FBI informants doing the same thing were never prosecuted. The pattern is not new.

• J. Edgar Hoover: The Enemy Within. Hoover cared almost exclusively about communists. His correspondence referred to the ADL as the “Anti-Deformation League.” No burning gun — but the correspondence smells like antisemitism and racism. In 1940, LA’s open ports were a free corridor for Nazi spies and propaganda. Leon Lewis’s spy network foiled every Nazi plot in Southern California.

• Three Memos, One Day, Three Authors Who Didn’t Know Each Other. May 1945, days before VE Day. Three spy chiefs in offices a few blocks apart in Midtown Manhattan, working independently, wrote the same memo on the same day. Two fears: right-wing groups communicating instantaneously. One of them peeling off into a mainstream party. Both predictions have now come true.

• The Too Many Führers Problem. Every right-wing leader called for a united fascist front. Every one wanted to be the Führer in charge. Permanent fracture. What changed with Trump: here was a Führer. He articulated what they said. After Charlottesville, the deal was sealed. The internet gave them instantaneous communication. Trump gave them the figurehead.

• Jefferson’s Long-Term Solution. In his Notes on the State of Virginia, Jefferson warned that political hucksters would come and go, but a collectively educated citizenry would always come out on the side of democracy. He called for a constitutional amendment mandating universal education in perpetuity. Ross’s verdict: look at the voting patterns. Look at what is happening to the Department of Education. An uneducated public is the most vulnerable public.

About the Guest

Steven J. Ross is a Distinguished Professor of History at USC and the author of The Secret War Against Hate (Simon & Schuster, April 2026) and Hitler in Los Angeles (Pulitzer Prize finalist).

References

The Secret War Against Hate by Steven J. Ross (Simon & Schuster, April 2026)
Hitler in Los Angeles by Steven J. Ross

Chapters:

00:00:30 The Justice Department sides with the KKK
00:01:25 The Southern Poverty Law Center as inheritor of the spy tradition
00:04:27 J. Edgar Hoover: the enemy within
00:06:36 Hitler in Los Angeles: the prequel
00:07:58 The threat of neo-Nazism in the 1930s
00:14:00 The three spy agencies
00:17:00 The 1945 memos: three leaders, one day, one fear
00:20:00 The too many Führers problem
00:40:08 The internet and the instantaneous communication fear
00:43:21 What should we do?
00:44:08 Jefferson and universal education
00:47:56 A less secret war against ignorance