Introduction

The Minutemen and the Newark division of the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League (NSANL), combined to attack two domestic Nazi organizations, first the Friends of the New Germany and later its successor the German-American Bund. The Minutemen was a group of prizefighters and gangsters who fought against domestic Nazis and their sympathizers with physical confrontation and intimidation. The NSANL used protests and a boycott against German goods as its weapons of choice. Close coordination between Nat Arno and S. William Kalb made it possible for the Minutemen and the anti-Nazi boycott activists to consistently aid each other and to create an anti-Nazi force in Newark that held at bay German-American Nazis and other anti-Semitic groups while at the same time giving a sense of purpose to those Newark Jews who wanted to inflict damage on Germany. By early 1934, Kalb had formed a personal and organizational alliance with Arno. Arno and Kalb's organizations proceeded to battle Nazism in Newark until 1941.