Hollywood Anti-Nazi League Organized
Anti-Nazi figures in the movie industry on this day organized the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League (HANL) to protest both the policies of the Nazi regime and the pressures by Germany on the film industry.
With the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany in January 1930, the American film industry came under pressure to remove Jewish employees in their German offices and to not produce films with Jewish themes, directors, screenwriters, or actors. Because Germany was an extremely lucrative market for American films, however, most of the major Hollywood film companies attempted to maintain some kind of commercial relations despite the pressures.
Warner Brothers stood out as the most uncompromising anti-Nazi Hollywood studio and refused to compromise.
The Hollywood Anti-Nazi League was soon targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The chair of HUAC charged that HANL was “under the control of the communists.” After the infamous Nazi-Soviet pact in 1939, HANL merged with several other groups and essentially went out of business.
Learn more: Thomas Doherty, Hollywood and Hitler, 1933–1939 (2013)
See the membership list of the HANL: http://www.nndb.com/org/977/000353915/