FBI Opposition to German and Japanese Nationalist Organizations in the United States (1941–1945)

Abstract

In modern research on the history of the United States in World War II, it is quite popular to study the opposition of the American special services and, in particular, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to various organizations of the German and Japanese diasporas in new historical conditions. The appeal to traditional methods of historical research, comparative studies and the principles of historicism will make it possible to more accurately trace the process of tightening the counterintelligence work of the Bureau and the close connection of concerns about the involvement of public organizations in the intelligence activities of the enemy. The broadcast of nationalist ideas by various communities of Germans and Japanese under the auspices of their governments quickly attracted the attention of the FBI, which is in the process of consolidating its powers as the main US counterintelligence service. At the same time, the investigations and trials conducted by the John Edgar Hoover department following these investigations often had an openly political color and increasingly consolidated the beginning of a political investigation in this service. This practice and its implementation ran into a tough contradiction between the legal norms of America, which proclaimed "democratic values," the right to freedom of speech and the needs to strengthen the internal security of the state and society in wartime. All these processes and the associated nuances and complexities are considered on specific examples of the work of federal agents against various pro-German and pro-Japanese organizations in the period 1941-45.