Initially, his Communist sympathies remained strong: in 1936, then Senator-elect Lundeen addressed a meeting of the "Friends of the Soviet Union" at Madison Square Garden as Tovarishchi ("Comrades"). [2] Owing to the vote, he would lose renomination for the Republican primary in 1918 to the eventual winner, Walter Newton. He was fully capable of writing his own, and he wrote his own. Addresses for each senator can be found on the senator's website or state's web page. Paul Lundeen is the Republican Colorado Senator for District 9. Republican. Filter members by last name, committee, district number, or party (type (D) (R) for party): Home Page. But Senator Lundeen was also someone who always had money on the mind. American tax payers were paying for Nazi propaganda with American tax dollars. But he remained isolationist and was later denounced by the party as a reactionary. It went on for years, right up until the day Lundeen died with one of Vierecks speeches in his pocket. [4], His isolationist views led him to be sympathetic to Nazi Germany. At the time of his death, the FBI was investigating Lundeen's ties to George Sylvester Viereck, a top Nazi spy working in the US to spread pro-Hitler and anti-Semitic propaganda. We can ratchet up the noise of politics or we can elevate the level of debate. Like the charter airplane accident that killed DFL Sen. Wellstone, his wife and daughter and four others near Eveleth, Minn., Oct. 25, 2002, the accident that took the life of the 62-year-old Lundeen changed the course of Minnesota and perhaps even American political history. The Latin word senator was adopted into English with no change in spelling. Here are historians Nancy Beck Young and Bradley Hart. Two years after failing to win her late husbands seat in the U.S. Senate, Lundeen remarried, tying the knot with U.S. Sen. Rufus C. Holman of Oregon in a simple ceremony in Minneapolis during the summer of 1944. When this war is over, she asserted on the campaign trail, we must insist that our sons be returned to America. If the internationalists prevailed, she cautioned repeatedly, the United States would soon find itself entangled in continuous intrigue around the globe, one in which the American people would eventually lose control of their own country and find their own children pushed out of their cradle of liberty.. Testifying as a witness for the defense in Vierecks trial, Norma Lundeen said that she had never heard Viereck utter a single un-American remark. She had essentially just been handed the airwaves at NBC, at the National Broadcasting Company, set loose to say whatever she wanted. Join our email list to receive press releases and other important news about legislation delivered straight to your inbox. She later made a dramatic plea for justice for her late husbands memory, but was denied an opportunity to speak directly to the jury. Viereck wrote Lundeen's speeches. Maddow: Do you remember Francis Moran, the leader of the Christian Front in Boston? Space for freedom and opportunity, creativity and ingenuity, and access to support and connection to help when a season of life is so heavy as to overwhelm a fellow Coloradan. Hed never lost a case. That evidence would not stay hidden forever. He not only votes the right way but he fights for other pro-gun leaders to be elected to defend the Second Amendment. The plane crashed near Lovettsville, Virginia, and all 25 persons on board were killed. In late 1940 and early 1941, the Ernest Lundeen story it started off bad, it took a hard right turn, but then it just kept getting worse and worse all the time with each new revelation. What was Hitler trying to do? To the People of Colorado: We care about your familys ability to get aheadnot just survive. One of those photographs was taken at such an angle as to convey the impression that my husband was standing beneath the swastika. These coming years will likely be tough on the people of Colorado, and only through bipartisan cooperation, and reasoned application of the best and most inherently sustainable ideas, will we be able to overcome the challenges all of us face. This list includes all current senators serving in the 118th United States Congress . The full episode transcript for Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra | Episode 4: A Bad Angle. What we can do is give space in every Coloradans life. Speech before Congress by US Senator Ernest Lundeen, (Farmer-Labor, Minnesota) Senator Lundeen gave this speech detailing the history of the Minnesota Farmer Labor Party on Senator Ernest Lundeen: I have never heard a German, or a German born American, with the gall to ask that we help Germany, but red, yellow, brown, black and white Majority Leader, colleagues, families, guests here in the Capitol, and to the People of Colorado : Welcome. So with the current anti-democracy campaign intended to NazifyAmerica (and you know which orange figureheadand faithless political party thisinvolves, as with RepublicanSenator Lundeen in 1940), Rachel Maddow's new podcast Ultra(which premiered today!) Hart: This is a moment of great political danger, I think for these men. But the other members of Congress, that band of America Firsters who were all in on it, too, they were still flying under the radar. Hed spent years at the U.S. Attorneys office in the Southern District of New York handling high-profile federal cases of fraud and corruption. And that Viereck file that the Senator's wife was looking for and that she took away so soon after her husband died, that file contained more than a decade's-worth of correspondence between Lundeen and Viereck. She was looking for something very specific. Maddow: The widow of Senator Ernest Lundeen. They knew that William Power Maloney was very likely hot on their trail. How many members of Congress were in on this thing? IE 11 is not supported. All eyes were briefly on Lundeen. In fact, to conclude that all the solutions lie in government action is false on its face and the highest order of misguided hubris. The biggest names really in Republican congressional politics, they all fall under the spell of this sort of Nazi propaganda operation. Note that he may make real-time changes to some of the exact language. ", On the afternoon of August 31, 1940, Lundeen was a passenger on Flight 19 of Pennsylvania Central Airlines, flying from Washington, D.C. to Detroit. She had a taste for flamboyant hats. Norma Lundeen: A number of photographs of my husband were taken while he was speaking. [1] He then served as a Republican from Minnesota in the United States House of Representatives, from March 4, 1917, to March 3, 1919, in the 65th congress. Dies geschieht in Ihren Datenschutzeinstellungen. It immediately led them to start wondering: Were they next? Just a misunderstanding. His work ethic, persistence, and principled defense of gun-rights makes this endorsement simple. DENVER Below is the transcript of Colorado Senate Minority Leader Paul Lundeens (R-Monument) speech on the opening day of the First Regular Session of the 74th General Assembly. Paul is a conservative fighter focused on protecting school choice, the 2nd amendment, and making Colorado more affordable. All these sitting members of Congress. It was all the correspondence between him and a man named George Sylvester Viereck. He starts asking for huge numbers of these speeches to be printed which are printed at government expense, of course then he actually adds to this and begins asking staffers to provide him with franked envelopes, which can be mailed through the U.S. postal service for free. In that demand for the papers, there is what could be read as an acknowledgement of guilt. Radio Announcer: Youre about to hear an address delivered before a meeting of the America First Committee. Lundeen was carrying these pages when he died, and they were found near the scene of the plane crash. Young: Viereck would stand in Lundeen's office and use Lundeen's Senate phone to make phone calls to conduct their Nazi business in the United States, disseminating Nazi propaganda to unsuspecting Americans and it's not costing us, German Nazis, a single reichsmark. Other countries have senators as well, either elected or appointed. 1890-1914, Guide to a Microfilm Edition of the Alexander Ramsey Papers and Records, 2021 Directory of Licensed and Certified Health Care Facilities (PDF), CHAIRMEN of SENATE STANDING COMMITTEES [Table 5-3] 1789Present, Minnesota's Scandinavian Political Legacy, Knute Nelson and the Immigration Question, History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier.Pdf, CAPITOL AREA ARCHITECTURAL and PLANNING BOARD (CAAPB) and the MINNESOTA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Federal Government President of the United States, Farmer-Labor, Minnesota) Senator Lundeen Gave This Speech Detailing the History of the Minnesota Farmer Labor Party on August 15, 1940, Norse Centennial in America from Bemidji MNS Newspaper, The Pioneer Sunday, August 1 2004 Page B5, The Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota Politics: 1918-1948, CONGRESSIONAL RECORD-SENATE. House and Senate Rules; Email addresses for the Colorado legislature have changed from the @state.co.us domain to the @coleg.gov domain on December 1, 2022. ICPSR #5839 And then in the run-up to World War II, he was basically the poster child in the Senate for leaving Germany alone to just do its thing. senator. All of them, Maloney now realized, apparent participants in this operation funded and run by the Hitler government to disseminate Nazi propaganda to the American people. Business card from Ernest Lundeen's campaign for Congress. Pitted against the popular Benson and ex-Farmer-Labor congressman Henry M. Arens, a 70-year-old former lieutenant governor with deep ties to the states farm cooperative movement, many observers believed that the Lundeen name still possessed some magic in Minnesota Farmer-Labor circles, especially among the states large German-American population. Jared Poliss office. He was something close to famous for his opposition to World War I. The plane crashed. Laws & Agency Rules. Lundeen was carrying these pages when he died, and they were found near the scene of the plane crash. His real talent was recruiting sympathetic Americans to do the work for him; recruiting Americans sometimes with cash, but sometimes just with his charm, with his powers of persuasion. Have you visited? An IPR Political Analysis: The Seventh Realignment, Breaking News: Connor Nepomuceno Resigns from LNC. So at that point, they had two options: fess up, give up the game, cooperate with the investigation; or, try to burn the whole thing down. They ultimately chose option two. Maddow: Norma contacted the news networks directly, demanding that they put a gag on any journalist who wanted to talk about her late husband. He basically operated in plain sight in the United States for years. Again, this was less than 48 hours after the crash that killed her husband. But it's almost something from a James Bond film. Lundeen might have added a comma, or changed the spelling of a word, but Lundeen did not do any significant, or even mild editing to the prose provided to him by Viereck. in Episode one, features Senator Lundeen, the plane crash, and more. Photo of Minnesota Sen. Ernest Lundeen, April 1940. The Senate Republican caucus eagerly awaits the opportunity to help achieve solutions that will benefit all Coloradans. As representative, he was one of 50 Congressman to vote, against the declaration of war against Germany on April 6, 1917.v He served as a Party member in, the House from March 4, 1933 to January 3, 1937 in the 73rd and 74th congresses. Nancy Beck Young: This group of people, if they were anything first, it was their own political success and careers first. [11] It was later discovered that the files were actually stored in the Lundeen family archives. Our Senior Executive Producers are Cory Gnazzo and Laura Conaway. He was. Young: Republicans are just feeling very defeated as if theres nothing that they can do to stop Roosevelt. There was no Facebook, no Twitter, there was no news on TV. The cause of the mysterious crash was never The charming 46-year-old widow waged a relatively low-key campaign, quietly yet passionately defending her late husbands record and promising an all-out prosecution of the war, all the while presciently warning the voters of Minnesota that the internationalists including the Farmer-Labor Partys own Elmer Benson would keep American troops in Europe, Africa and Asia following the war, thereby making the United States the policemen of the world. Long forgotten, Norman Lundeen Holman the wife of two U.S. [8], In 2022 Rachel Maddow released a podcast series titled Ultra, which explored Lundeen's complicity in Nazi Germany's intelligence and propaganda operations in the U.S. during the 12 to 18 months immediately preceding America's entry into World War II. Maddow: In the wake of the plane crash that killed Minnesota U.S. Coloradans remain optimistic. The history books remember the senators widow as a tall, confident, well-spoken woman. He operated all over the country in the lead-up to America entering World War II. All accusations of this nature are emphatically denied in the letters of the Attorney General Jackson and J. Edgar Hoover. Private activist groups operating outside law enforcement were tracing stolen U.S. military weapons and complex, violent plots involving homegrown violent fascists with help and financing from Berlin. We hope that the majority will listen to our ideas and incorporate the best of them in what we ultimately together offer the people of Colorado. It should literally be free to send their constituents mail about any government business. That was all she asked for. Now, that was unusual because she did not work for NBC. Post something that gets attention and likes and shares and viral explosion, or post something that informs, even if it informs people of something theyd prefer not to hear. Senators The Constitution prescribes that the Senate be composed of two senators from each State (therefore, the Senate currently has 100 Members) and that a senator must be at least thirty years of age, have been a citizen of the United States for nine years, and, when elected, be a resident of the State from which he or she is chosen. He served as, a Republican from Minnesota in the United States House of Representatives, from March 4, 1917, to March 3, 1919 in the 65th congress. With the help of his pal, Senator Ernest Lundeen, George Sylvester Viereck had roped in dozens of sitting members of Congress to help him launder and disseminate Nazi propaganda using the resourcces of the United States congress. Together we face some persistent problems and it is likely that new challenges will arise. In 1940, FDR was running for an unprecedented third term as US president. Lundeen was adamantly opposed to the United States involvement in World War I and campaigned on that stance. Maddow: The deal that Viereck was offering to Senator Lundeen, it was a lucrative one. And while he was doing that, he was also wheedling his way into the heart of American power. For the Colorado State Senate member, see, Districts 910 and statewide general ticket (obsolete), List of United States Congress members who died in office (190049), Ernest Lundeen, Minnesota Legislative Reference Library-Minnesota Legislators Past and Present, "Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra | an MSNBC original podcast", "Editorial: Minnesota's pro-Hitler senator", "Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra - Episode 4: A Bad Angle", "Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra - Episode 5: Shut It Down", Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, Third party officeholders in the United States, Notable third party performances in United States elections, Members of the U.S. House of Representatives from Minnesota, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ernest_Lundeen&oldid=1134089249, American military personnel of the SpanishAmerican War, Republican Party members of the Minnesota House of Representatives, University of Minnesota Law School alumni, FarmerLabor Party United States senators, Republican Party members of the United States House of Representatives from Minnesota, FarmerLabor Party members of the United States House of Representatives, Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in 1940, Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in the United States, Short description is different from Wikidata, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, Company B-12th Minnesota Volunteer Regiment, This page was last edited on 16 January 2023, at 23:45. 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