By james art 
“United Front Against Fascism” – The mass anti-fascist rally at Madison Square Garden in New York organized by the Communist Party USA on April 5, 1933, just weeks after Hitler came to power in Germany. | People’s World Archive
This article is part of People’s World 100th Anniversary Series.
With Donald Trump’s hate-filled rally at Madison Square Garden drawing comparisons to a Nazi rally held at the same venue in 1939, People’s World dug through our archives and found this story about a very different kind of political event held at the Garden this year. period.
On April 6, 1933—just weeks after Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party took power in Germany—the Communist Party USA organized a mass anti-fascist demonstration in New York to show solidarity with the beleaguered Jews and workers of Germany and also to spread the word an urgent call for the formation of a “United Front Against Fascism” in the United States
The CPUSA regularly filled Madison Square Garden from the 1920s through the early 1950s with all manner of meetings and demonstrations—Lenin Memorials, election rallies, national conventions, antiwar and McCarthyism protests, International Women’s Day celebrations, and a long list of other causes. However, the April 1933 meeting stands out as signaling the beginning of a national campaign to build a broad anti-fascist alliance of labor and democratic forces.
Accepting the invitation, a number of unions, Jewish groups, progressive political organizations, representatives of several influential publications, and spokespeople for resistance groups in Nazi Germany attended the CPUSA’s MSG rally: the Coastal Workers Union, the International Needle Trade Union, the Progressive Labor Conference Action, Trade Union Unity League, International Labor Defense, ACLU, The Freiheit, The New Republic, The Amsterdam News, etc.
In the two excerpted articles below, Daily Worker reporter Robert Hamilton reports directly from Madison Square Garden on the formation of the united front against fascism.
A selection of two articles published in Daily worker on April 6 and 7, 1933:
– “22,000 workers at Madison Square Garden forge a united front against fascism”
– “German workers fight for their lives against terror; American workers build a united front against the Nazis”
By Robert Hamilton
NEW YORK—Madison Square Garden, with a capacity of 22,000, was jammed last night with New York workers who flocked from all parts of the city to join the mass protest against German fascism. At 6:30 p.m., a four-deep line extended from the 49th Street entrance to Eight Ave.
Delegations from labor organizations marched in rows into the hall, shouting “Down with Hitler!” Three hundred seamen from the waterfront were greeted with thunderous applause as they streamed in. Two hundred Italian workers marched out singing “The Internationale,” and the whole crowd joined in the chorus.
The organizations then arrived thick and fast. Fifty mounted police sat on their horses near the entrance and sulked, and another 200 police were around the arena.
Many of the workers were mobilized by a huge open-mouthed Hitler head being carried through the working-class parts of the city. On top of the truck was a Negro and a white worker who were shouting alternately “Down with Hitler!”
Inside the hall was a sea of colour, with union flags flying and posters denouncing the atrocities of fascism. Banners hung from the balconies and crowded the stage. 
The Relief Workers International Brass Band played revolutionary songs and the whole audience joined in the singing…
[The opening statement from the New York District of the CP] declared: “This is not a meeting to end the struggle against German fascism, but to continue it until Hitler and the fascist government are overthrown and the working class comes to power.”
It was then announced that the Progressive Labor Action Conference had accepted the Communist Party’s call for joint action against fascism.
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The meeting was an expression of the growing will to unite the entire working class on the platform of unyielding struggle against fascism wherever it rears its head, both in America and in Germany.
Communists and socialists, workers and intellectuals, blacks and whites joined to proclaim their firm determination to create a powerful united front in the unrelenting struggle against fascism.
…
[The opening speech] outlined the willingness of the Communist Party to cooperate with all labor organizations, of every shade of opinion, in building a united front to fight fascism in the United States.
…
Erna Stams, chairman of the German Action Committee against Fascism and leader of the Ruhr workers in Germany, spoke in German on behalf of the revolutionary German proletariat. She pointed out that although workers’ blood had stained the streets of German cities, the illegal apparatus of the Communist Party was already functioning effectively, reaching every factory, distributing the illegal party press throughout the nation. Stams called on the workers of America to redouble their protest actions in international solidarity, stressing that the workers of Germany would respond with tenfold activity, emboldened by the help of the American working class.
Robert Minor, speaking on behalf of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, urged the workers who are members of any organization which calls itself a working-class group to see to it that their leaders do not avoid or reject the Communist Party’s proposal for a broad united front , based on the determined will to fight against the capitalist dictatorship in America, against anti-Semitism and anti-Negro terror, against the reduction of wages and for the 17,000,000 unemployed in America.
…
Roy Hudson, speaking for the International Maritime Workers Union, pointed out that: “Fascism means war – war against the workers, war between the imperialist powers, war against the Soviet Union. And in these war plans, the bosses need sailors and boatmen to load and transport the war materials and ammunition needed to wage war…
J. B. Mathews, a socialist and secretary of the Brotherhood for Reconciliation, made a fierce attack on the illusions of bourgeois democracy prevalent among the intelligentsia. “Fascism is not a rejuvenated nationalism rising from the ashes of military defeat. In essence, fascism is capitalism turned nudist. Bourgeois democracy is a fig leaf to hide the bare realities of the capitalist system. But as soon as revolutionary action is threatened by the working class, the fig leaf is thrown aside…
Joseph Freeman, editor of New massesand Malcolm Cowley of the editorial board of The New Republicdescribes the fascist attack on culture in Germany, the persecution and arrest of Germany’s greatest writers, artists and scientists for their radical views. Freeman brought news of the increasingly heroic and successful struggle of the Communist Party of Germany against Nazi terror…
Peretz Heishbein, a famous Jewish playwright, speaking in Yiddish in a voice charged with restrained emotion, imagines the iron boot trampling the best of German culture, the best blood of the German working class…
Richard B. Moore, speaking on behalf of the Negro Division of the International Labor Defense, pointed out that the struggle against fascism must necessarily include the relentless struggle to free the Scottsboro Nine, that fascism is like the oppression of the Negro in the South under the Ku Klux Klanism….
Other speakers included Roger Baldwin of the American Civil Liberties Union; MJ Olgin, editor of Freiheit; and Edward Dahlberg, an American writer recently attacked and beaten by Nazi thugs on the streets of Berlin.
The mass meeting passed a resolution pledging to remain united in the struggle to support the heroic German people against the bloody fascist dictatorship… The motion called on all workers… to join the united front of the struggle against fascism.
Another resolution moved by Alfred Wagenknecht of the Workers’ International Aid supported calls for the organization of joint relief committees to assist the victims of German fascist terror. The public contributed an impressive $1,304.21 in response to the stirring appeal.
