The secret war waged by ordinary Americans against hate

The end of World War II is often remembered as the beginning of a more peaceful and tolerant era in the United States. But Steve Ross, a historian at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, documents a darker reality: Antisemitism and racism increased after the war, and the number of organized hate groups more than doubled between 1940 and 1946.

In his latest book, The Secret War Against Hate: American Resistance to Antisemitism and White Supremacy, Ross tells the story of the ordinary Americans who decided to fight back. Working through clandestine networks, these civilian operatives infiltrated Nazi and white supremacist organizations, gathered intelligence and helped thwart plots to bomb churches and synagogues.

Among them was Emmanuel Trujillo, who rose to become a leading figure in the postwar American Nazi movement while secretly communicating with antifascist organizations and tracking extremist leaders in the U.S. and abroad.

Ross, Distinguished Professor and Dean’s Professor of History and Myron and Marian Casden Director of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life at USC Dornsife, was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for his previous book, Hitler in Los Angeles: How Jews Foiled Nazi Plots Against Hollywood and America. Researching his latest book, he says, gave him the opportunity to write his own spy story — “only unlike the fiction I read, this stuff is true.”

In this video interview with USC Dornsife News, Ross discusses the operatives who put themselves in danger, the attacks they prevented and what their courage can teach us today about resisting hate and defending democracy.