Biography
Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze was a German American Bund official who succeeded Fritz Kuhn as the organization’s national leader. He had earlier served as its public-relations director. He was arrested in Mexico in 1942 and received a fifteen-year sentence in a separate espionage-conspiracy case. That conviction was distinct from the Washington Smith Act proceedings. He was named in the January 3, 1944 Washington indictment alleging conspiracy to undermine military loyalty under the Smith Act. The mass trial ended in a mistrial on December 7, 1944. The indictment was dismissed in December 1946; no conviction resulted in this case.
Photo: Wilhelm Kunze speaking at a German American Bund rally, January 5, 1938. Still from March of Time outtakes, courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration via the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.
