booklife.com
Verga (author of The Ferguson Brothers Lynchings on Long Island) delivers an eye-opening account of treason, sedition, and a surprisingly robust “breeding ground for an American Reich” in Long Island and neighboring New York City in the days leading up to and during World War II. Much more than an agricultural backwater or Manhattan bedroom community, Long Island was a prime target for Nazi espionage—home to defense plants engaged in various aspects of the aviation industry, railroads, small ports, and, on its western tip, the Brooklyn Naval Yard. The island also was home to German American Bund camps like Camp Siegfried in Yaphank, which offered a beer hall, outdoor fun, youth indoctrination, and full-fledged Nazi rallies—all “just ten miles from the region’s most extensive military base.”
