New Jersey Minutemen

The New Jersey Minutemen were a militant anti-fascist group that operated in Newark, New Jersey from 1933 to 1941. They were antagonists of the pro-Nazi German-American Bund and the Christian Front group inspired by Charles Coughlin's Social Justice doctrines. The commander of the Minutemen was a former featherweight[1] and lightweight[2] class boxer of Jewish ancestry, Nat Arno (April 1, 1910 – August 8, 1973).[3][4] The group was organized at the behest of local criminal leader Abner Zwillman.[3] The membership consisted of "tough guys...recruited from Zwillman's Third Ward gang."[3] According to one historian, "The mob hastened the Bund's demise by introducing mortal risks to its leadership."[5]

Nat Arno (The Bayonne Times, 1931)

The Minutemen initially attacked a meeting of Friends of New Germany with pipes wrapped in cloth or rubber; three Friends of New Germany were injured.[3] This was followed shortly thereafter by a massive street fight outside the Schwabenhalle in Irvington,[6] a brawl that encompassed nearly 2,000 people over 12 city blocks, 20 injuries with three hospitalizations, and seven arrests.[3][7] Two men in a black sedan shot at Nat Arno and another Anti-Nazi Minutemen leader Max Feilshus on Fourth of July 1934; Feilshus was hit in both legs.[8]

The "hoodlums" of the Minutemen coordinated with Dr. S. William Kalb of the respectable Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League. They had different approaches to the shared goal of disarming antisemitism and Nazism in New Jersey before World War II.[9]

A similar program dedicated to punching Nazis was organized by Meyer Lansky in New York. Lansky's efforts—which included 1938's so-called Battle of Yorkville Casino, in which 60 Jewish-American World War I vets fought the 1,000-strong German-American Bund at a birthday party for Hitler[10]—were partly at the behest of former U.S. Congressman Nathan Perlman and Rabbi Stephen S. Wise.[11] Lansky put together a team for this work that included the likes of Bugsy Siegel, Lepke Buchalter, Gurrah Shapiro, Tick Tock Tannenbaum, and Blue Jaw Magoon.[5] Lansky and Siegel declined an offer of payment for these services, considering it, rather, a duty and an honor.[12][13] Lansky, who referred to the Bundists as brownshirts, later said "The main point was to teach them that Jews couldn't be kicked around."[11]

In both states, respectable leadership involved with the campaign specified "no killing please" even though the lower-level muscle were willing to provide additional violence.[9][14] Meanwhile, opposing the rise of American fascism was sound policy for criminal underground leaders whose business prospects would likely be compromised by the rise of an authoritarian regime; Mussolini, for his part, had not been a particular ally of the Sicilian Mafia.[11][5]

The New Jersey Minutemen took their name from the Continental Minutemen rapid-reaction militia of the American Revolutionary War. The slogan of the New Jersey Minutemen was "No Ism But American-Ism."[3]

Nat Arno enlisted on January 1, 1941[15] and served as a sergeant in the infantry of the U.S. Army during World War II.[16][17] He later moved to California, started a family there and died in 1973.[15]