“That’s a big mistake,” muttered Russ. “That’s the marching song of the storm troopers.”

The first speaker, Carl Brauner, talked about the great unfairness being done to German Americans, how the president clearly was an Anglophile and viewed German people on both sides of the Atlantic with disfavor.

A unique aural phenomenon began to take place. As the speakers on the rostrum stated their case in ever more specific and poisonous terms, a portion of the crowd fell gradually more silent while the remainder became increasingly enthused. Thus the volume of the crowd remained level, even as its depth and character changed.

The next fellow said he was from New York, where a year earlier they’d been able to fill Madison Square Garden with over twenty thousand Nazi supporters. “I will tell you a little something about New York City, my friends: they have an Easter parade there, where the people walk by Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in fancy clothes and Easter bonnets. And who wrote the song ‘Easter Parade’? Of course. A Jew named Irving Balin,” he said, “who changed his name to—all together now—”

“Berlin!” chimed some of the crowd lustily.

“But he will never get to be a part of our—”

“Berlin!”

“And someday the name of New York will be New—”

“Berlin!” yelled a considerably smaller group.

Russ turned to me. “It’s not like I believe for one second there could ever be a German occupation of the United States. But I’ll tell you what isn’t so far-fetched. Say Hitler takes out England, as I’m afraid looks likely. Meanwhile, completely separate from this, Japan wins out over China, then the Philippines and Guam, and they shut down our trade with Asia. Now we can’t import or export, and that breaks our economy. The people blame Roosevelt, you get a new Congress elected that thinks a new order in Europe and across Asia doesn’t have to be bad news for this country. One day you look up and you’re living in a different America.”

“I know that boy over there,” Gail said, pointing to a fellow with curly brown hair. “Nathan Federman. And he’s with Mort Kaplan. They’re president and vice president of the student ACLU. And see over there, by the beer barrels? The Wald brothers, they’re from Berkeley as well. That’s odd. Why would they be here?”

The picnic sponsors next scummed up the fellow in the Bund uniform, whose name was Gunther Günstling and who, I later learned from the Oakland Tribune, had been charged with helping four Nazi saboteurs enter the United States via a German U-boat that surfaced off the coast of Long Island.