When NYC Mayor LaGuardia insulted Hitler - and the State Department apologized

In March 1937, New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia spoke at a women's meeting of the American Jewish Congress Women's Division:

Michael Williams, editor of Commonweal, Catholic weekly, warned against the spread of Nazism and anti-Semitism in the United States. He suggested that the 1939 New York World’s Fair establish a building devoted to “human and divine liberty.”

Mayor LaGuardia, seconding the suggestion, said: “I will add an annex to Dr. Williams’ suggestion. I would have a chamber of horrors added to this temple. In it I would place that brown-shirt fanatic. I’d give them an example they could look at and learn.”

The Third Reich responded furiously, calling LaGuardia the most vile epithet in their vocabulary: a "dirty Talmud Jew." (Sound familiar?)

Because Germany formally demanded an apology, the spineless State Department gave them one:

LaGuardia doubled down:

Time magazine reported on the story, and suggested that LaGuardia was pandering to Jewish votes, by saying - no joke - that "In New York City, as any political nose-counter knows, the hooked far outnumber the Aryan noses. " (Time, Mar. 15, 1937)

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