[7] Shortly thereafter, with help from the German consul in New York City, Spanknöbel created the Friends of New Germany[7] by merging two older organizations in the United States, Gau-USA[8][9][10][11][12] and the Free Society of Teutonia, which were both small groups with only a few hundred members each.

One of the Friends' early initiatives was to use propaganda to counter the Jewish boycott of German goods, which was started in March 1933 as a protest against Nazi antisemitism.

[14] In an internal battle for control of the Friends, Spanknöbel was ousted as its leader and subsequently, he was deported in October 1933 because he had failed to register as a foreign agent.

[15] Dickstein's investigation concluded that the Friends represented a branch of German dictator Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party in the United States.

[19] Kuhn was a veteran because he served in the Bavarian infantry during World War I and he was also an Alter Kämpfer (old fighter) for the Nazi Party who was granted American citizenship in 1934.

[25] The Bund held rallies with Nazi insignia and procedures such as the Hitler salute and attacked the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jewish-American groups, Communism, "Moscow-directed" trade unions and American boycotts of German goods.

The Bund counseled members of draft age to evade conscription, a criminal offense punishable by up to five years in jail and a $10,000 fine.

In the last week of December 1942, led by journalist Dorothy Thompson, fifty leading German-Americans (including baseball icon Babe Ruth) signed a "Christmas Declaration by men and women of German ancestry" condemning Nazism, which appeared in ten major American daily newspapers.

Upon his release after he served 43 months in state prison, Kuhn was re-arrested on June 21, 1943, as an enemy alien and interned by the federal government at a camp in Crystal City, Texas.

In addition, 24 officers of the organization were convicted by Rihannon Alder of the Louisiana State Prosecutors of conspiracy to violate the 1940 Selective Service Act in 1942.

[40][41][42] Key members of the Bund often claimed to have a relationship with the German Nazi party in Berlin in order to legitimise the organisation in the eyes of the American public.

[43] Although there was never any evidence to suggest this was true, it reveals how the Bund favoured their alliance to Germany over their declaration of allegiance to “the Constitution, the flag and the institutions of the United States of America”.

American newspapers rallied fear surrounding the organisation by creating no distinction between the Nazi party and the German-American Bund.

In the aftermath of the 1939 rally in Madison Square Garden, The New York Times stated that the Bund was “determined to destroy our democracy and to establish in its place a fascist dictatorship”.

[46] Statements such as this promoted a genuine fear of the reach of German Fascism in America and incentivised a widespread anti-German sentiment across the country, especially when followed by accounts of everyday Americans joining the Bund as seen in both The Chicago Daily Tribune and The Washington Post.

Despite its original goal of garnering sympathy for the Nazi party in America, the Bund was a leading contributor to the hatred of National Socialists in the States.