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A nazi catholic priest who was wildly popular with millions of

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Americans well, trust the great depression to always have something ever more

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insane up it's sleeves the guy we're talking about was father Charles E [Charles E Coughlin standing for a photograph]

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Coughlin and yea though he may sound like a villain from an edgy graphic

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novel he was a grade A historical figure well maybe grade F

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Coughlin started out at the humble shrine of the little flower church in [Image of the little flower church]

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suburban Detroit and somehow became one of America's best-known political [Coughlin photographed in Time magazine]

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figures. How? by harnessing the new technology of radio well Coughlin's

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resonant voice an impassioned populist message through millions of listeners [Coughlin speaking into a microphone for the radio]

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this guy was like Taylor Beyonce and Bieber combined at one time according to

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the US Post Office Coughlin received more mail than anyone else in America [Statistics of letters received by Coughlin]

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including the President to which FDR presumably said whatever mail is stupid

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anyway well Coughlin actually began as a supporter of Franklin Delano Roosevelt [Coughlin holding a I love FDR sign]

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famously declaring that the New Deal was in fact Christ's deal, however like Huey

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Long and Upton Sinclair, Coughlin soon became frustrated with the new deals

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perceived lack of success and broke with FDR well unlike long and Sinclair [Coughlin stood under a right wing sign and Huey Long and Upton Sinclair under a left wing sign]

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however Coughlin moved not further to the left but to the right like way to

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the right Coughlin increasingly preached bigoted sermons of anti-semitic [Coughlin preaching to the country through a radio microphone]

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class resentment his fun new hobby became blaming the depression on evil

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conspiracies of Jewish communists and Jewish bankers. Wait a sec,that sounds [Hitler stood outside a large building]

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an awful lot like a certain German dictator with a funny moustache, what

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do you think? while Coughlin actually began to express sympathy for the policies of

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Hitler even going so far as to plagiarize sections of sermons from

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speeches composed by Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels a father

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Coughlin we have figured if he was going to steal hate speech he might as well [Joseph Goebbels sat beside a radio]

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steal from the best despite the whole kind of being a Nazi thing a public

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opinion poll found that one in for Americans supported all or most of [Person asking 4 American's who supports Coughlin]

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Coughlin's ideas all the way up until 1938 Coughlin didn't

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fall fully from grapes until after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor well [Japanese attacking Pearl Harbor]

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even after the attack Coughlin was still preaching support for America's new

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fascist enemies at that point Americans were like oh way fascism kind of stink

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and so do you and they turned off their radio or a maybe they just turned them to [American stood beside an exploding radio]

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a different station or something alright well knowing what we know now about the

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evils of fascism and Nazism it's hard to imagine that many Americans ever thought [American man looking at a chalkboard displaying Fascism and Nazism = Bad]

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these ideas were actually cool but in the 1930s we hadn't yet gone to war with

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Hitler and the monstrous evils of the Holocaust hadn't yet been committed

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Americans were more likely to fear communism than fascism and Hitler and

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Mussolini had done a bang-up job of kicking communists out of their country [Hitler and Mussolini stood in a field]

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well some Americans admired the fascist self-proclaimed defense of traditional

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culture and Christian morality most importantly fascism seem to be working

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as an economic model at a time when the American economy was a total wreck so [

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yeah father Coughlin wasn't alone in admiring the Fuehrer's accomplishment [Coughlin's voice admiring Hitler on a radio]

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okay there Father C, we now understand your beliefs within a complex historical

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context but sorry you still get an F [Teacher giving Coughlin a grade F on a piece of paper]

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