“It used to be called Dondero.” “Yeah, I went to Dondero.” “Hey, remember Dondero?” Dondero. Dondero. Dondero. When I worked and shopped in Royal Oak, I heard that name a lot, without assigning it any significance. In fact, I thought people were saying a full name: Don Darrow. It wasn’t until I saw the name in Sheldon Marcus’s book Charles Coughlin: The Tumultuous Life of the Priest of the Little Flower that I realized people were talking about former Royal Oak mayor and longtime member of Congress, George Anthony Dondero. Before 2006, the building that now houses Royal Oak Middle School was named George A. Dondero High School, and the middle school currently has an auditorium named after him.
Plaque for auditorium named after Dontero in Royle Oak Middle School.
Dondero was known as a history buff. He regularly gave talks on Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War. He had in his possession the letter Grace Bedell wrote as an 11 year old, encouraging Abraham Lincoln to grow his soon-to-be famous beard. The Representative was also a stickler for House protocol. He chastised his fellow Congressmen in 1943 for walking around while the Speaker of the House was talking and for putting their feet up on tables. For years, Dondero pushed for the construction of a seaway that would connect the Great Lakes to the Atlantic Ocean. He chaired the House Committee on Public Works and saw his dream realized in 1954 when he sponsored the bill authorizing construction of the St. Lawrence Seaway. If that were the extent of his notability, that would be fine, but his other activities were much more unsavory.
Dondero was a good friend of notorious Michigander Father Charles Coughlin, who broadcast his radio program and published his newspaper, Social Justice, in Royal Oak. The “Radio Priest” was an open anti-Semite and fascist sympathizer who justified Nazi policies against the Jews. Dondero was not only lauded in the pages of Social Justice, he inserted pieces from the publication into the Congressional Record. Such was the friendship between the two men that the Detroit Free Press reported on September 15, 1940, that Coughlin officiated Dondero’s son’s wedding, even though Dondero was a Methodist. In Dondero’s papers found in the Detroit Public Library’s Burton Historical Collection, there is a 1966 letter to Coughlin from Dondero on the occasion of Coughlin’s retirement. Dondero lauds Coughlin, saying, “Your ministry here in Royal Oak has been a very distinguished one…You have been very kind to me while I was in public life, and particularly while I was a Member of Congress.” Dondero was Coughlin’s congressman, both literally and ideologically.
In the lead up to World War II, Dondero served as an apologist for fascist aggression. He claimed that pre-Pearl Harbor acts of “unneutrality” on part of the United States would warrant Germany or Italy to declare war against us. In a speech that was reprinted in the Oxford Leader, Dondero claimed labor unions were a “fifth column” working to overthrow the United States. “If the American Nation desires to know how to build up its national defense,” he said in that same speech, “it might be well for us to inquire as a people how Hitler in the short space of 7 years built up one of the greatest war machines the world has ever seen.” This was an invitation for the U.S. to adopt Nazi methods. Two months before Pearl Harbor, Dondero said in Congress, “The greatest danger menacing the United States today is not invasion or attack by the Axis Powers but the trend of socialism and communism.”
Dondero was not alone among Michigan’s Congressional delegation in voicing these sentiments. Congressman Roy O. Woodruff inserted a letter into the Congressional Record that included the startling phrase: “We do not need to fear Hitler.” Another Congressman, Clare E. Hoffman, saw a beneficial side to the dictator. The U.S. “might now profit…” he advised, “from what Hitler has done by adopting at least some of his decent methods of production…” Hoffman’s speech was given as France was falling to the Nazis. In last year’s Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism, Rachel Maddow reported that Hoffman allowed his Congressional frank to be used to mail out propaganda pieces on behalf of a German agent.
You might think that American entry into World War II would have led Dondero to change his view of fascists and fascism. This would be incorrect. Before World War II, General Motors’ head of overseas operations, Graeme E. Howard was a vocal advocate of trading with Nazi Germany. Economist James Stewart Martin remarked that Howard’s book America and a New World Order, “might just as well have been titled You Can Do Business with Hitler.” Howard’s sympathies were so well known that he was removed from a post in the Army investigating ties between German industrialists and Nazi war criminals. Howard’s post-war hiring as general manager of Ford’s international division was criticized by Michigan Congressman George Sadowski. Nevertheless, Howard was praised by Dondero on the House Floor as “one of America’s foremost industrialists, a man of proven patriotism.”
But defending a businessman who saw benefits to trade with fascists paled before what Dondero did next: Defending Nazi German war criminals. During the trials of executives of chemical conglomerate IG Farben, the company that manufactured Zyklon-B gas for the Nazi death camps, Dondero assailed the Allied prosecutors “who are trying to blacken the name of IG Farben.” Dondero further claimed that prosecutor Josiah E. Dubois (Who wrote the definitive account of the trial, the Devil’s Chemists) was “a close student of the Communist Party line.” Dubois challenged Dondero to repeat that claim on the House floor, so Dubois could sue him for libel. Wisely, Dondero ducked the challenge. It is perhaps no coincidence that Dondero’s district also contained Dow Chemical, and there were and continue to be rumors that Dow had a close business relationship with IG Farben. Dondero argued that the famous Nuremburg Trials of high ranking Nazis would encourage “mass disobedience to superior officers within our armed forces.”
If Dondero is remembered at all today, it is for his vituperative anti-Communism that turned him into something of an art critic. During the Red Scare, Dondero was a near duplicate of Joe McCarthy, seeing Communist conspiracy everywhere. He saw this conspiracy particularly in the field of modern art. Dondero argued, “The art of the isms, the weapon of the Russian Revolution, is the art which has been transplanted to America, and today, having infiltrated and saturated many of our art centers, threatens to overawe, override, and overpower the fine art of our tradition and inheritance.” This speech was appropriately quoted from in celebrated historian Richard Hofstader’s Anti-Intellectualism and American Life.
In an interview with Emily Genauer of the New York World Telegram, Dondero continued his argument. “Art which does not glorify our beautiful country in plain, simple terms that everyone can understand breeds dissatisfaction,” he said. “It is therefore opposed to our government, and those who promote it are our enemies.” When Genauer pointed out that this was functionally identical to what the Stalinists in the Soviet Union were saying about art, Dondero worked to have her fired.
Left-wingers lobbed numerous barbs at Dondero in his heyday. He was included in the book The Illustrious Dunderheads compiled by Rex Stout. The socialist Labor Action identified him as the “notoriously ignorant reactionary Republican from Michigan.” The progressive National Guardian accused him of working “tirelessly to revive [fascism] abroad and introduce it at home.” There is hyperbole in these attacks, but also a degree of truth.
The notables of Royal Oak, of course, didn’t see it that way, hence why a school was named after him and why an auditorium is still named for him. In the present, Dondero instead serves as a warning. His legacy is one of bigotry, ignorance, and, yes, sympathy for fascism. Michiganders should carefully consider whether he is a figure worthy of honor.
