Hollywood’s Spies

Finalist, Celebrate 350 Award in American Jewish StudiesTells the remarkable story of the Jewish moguls in Hollywood who established the first anti-Nazi Jewish resistance organization in the country in the 1930sIn April 1939, Warner Brothers studios released the first Hollywood film to confront the Nazi threat in the United States. Confessions of a Nazi Spy, starring Edward G. Robinson, told the story of German agents in New York City working to overthrow the U.S. government. The film alerted Americans to the dangers of Nazism at home and encouraged them to defend against it.Confessions of a Nazi Spy may have been the first cinematic shot fired by Hollywood against Nazis in America, but it by no means marked the political awakening of the film industry’s Jewish executives to the problem. Hollywood’s Spies tells the remarkable story of the Jewish moguls in Hollywood who paid private investigators to infiltrate Nazi groups operating in Los Angeles, establishing the first anti-Nazi Jewish resistance organization in the country—the Los Angeles Jewish Community Committee (LAJCC).Drawing on more than 15,000 pages of archival documents, Laura B. Rosenzweig offers a compelling narrative illuminating the role that Jewish Americans played in combating insurgent Nazism in the United States in the 1930s. Forced undercover by the anti-Semitic climate of the decade, the LAJCC partnered with organizations whose Americanism was unimpeachable, such as the American Legion, to channel information regarding seditious Nazi plots to Congress, the Justice Department, the FBI and the Los Angeles Police Department.Hollywood’s Spies corrects the decades-long belief that American Jews lacked the political organization and leadership to assert their political interests during this period in our history and reveals that the LAJCC was one of many covert "fact finding" operations funded by Jewish Americans designed to root out Nazism in the United States.

"Hollywoods Spiesis a very insightful book...[It]fills several holes in our knowledge of Nazi operations on the US soil and Hollywood.", "Hollywood's Spies has a good story to tell.", "Laura B. Rosenzweig provides a different perspective on a complex topic [namely, how Leon Lewis, a Los Angeles attorney who happened to be Jewish, organized the LAJCC...and filed meticulous reports on pro-Nazi activities.]", "A remarkable tale...Hollywood moguls did not speak out publicly against Nazi Germany, but Ms. Rosenzweig's book show[s] that they did take vigorous action against the Nazi threat.", "The product of over a decade of research, this book documents the work of the Los Angeles Jewish Community Committee in infiltrating and combating Nazi groups in Los Angeles between 1934 and 1941.The LAJCC findings quoted here will surprise readers in showing how extensive and active pro-Nazi groups were in Southern California.Rosenzweig has produced a fine, very-well-documented study."

Laura B. Rosenzweig, PhD is an independent scholar. She has taught U.S. History and American Jewish History at the University of California, Santa Cruz and at San Francisco State University. She is currently an instructional designer for the University of California, Office of the President.