Episode 3: The Day

Rachel Maddow Presents: Ultra

NBC News

History, Congressman, Radicalism, Insurrection, Hitler, Senators, Right Wing, Constitution, Conspiracy, Radical, Political, Corruption, Violence, Archive, Senate, World War 2, Rachel Maddow Presents, Germany, Mystery, American, Politics, Fascism, Plot, Democracy, 1940s, Communists, Investigation, World War 1, News, Msnbc, Rachel Maddow, Overthrow, Dictatorship, Nbc News, Propaganda, Jews, Attack, Communism, Congress, Nbc, Anti-semitism, Government, Rachel Maddow Presents Ultra, Fascist, Ultra, Maddow, Nazis, Treachery, 1930s, Justice, Sedition, Extremism, Anti-semitic

4.8 • 31.5K Ratings

🗓️ 17 October 2022

⏱️ 39 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

A devastating explosion rips through a munitions plant in a small New Jersey town. And the American public is left with the chilling fact that the federal government had been warned about such an attack almost a year prior. The tip had come from a private spy ring operating in Los Angeles that was intent on doing what law enforcement had largely failed to do. Infiltrate far-right groups plotting violence across the country, and foil their plots before it was too late.

Transcript

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0:00.0	About an hour west of New York City is a town in New Jersey called Kenville.
0:10.0	Small town, small population, but in 1940, Kenville was home to one major employer,
0:16.1	one huge industrial plant.
0:18.1	It was cited on a parcel of land that was bigger than 900 football fields.
0:23.5	Given its huge size, that industrial plant had a fitting name, it was called Hercules.
0:29.5	The Hercules powder plant.
0:32.7	That plant started off making dynamite for the mining industry, but by 1940 it was making
0:38.2	gunpowder for the US Army.
0:40.7	Now, in 1940, the US of course had not yet joined World War II, the Pearl Harbor attack
0:46.8	that would bring us into the war that wouldn't happen until the end of the following year
0:50.8	in 1941.
0:52.6	But in the summer of 1940, the US was bracing and the government was preparing for what
0:58.4	might be coming.
1:00.0	By that summer in 1940, Germany was conquering all of Europe.
1:04.7	Just that summer France had fallen to Germany.
1:08.0	Britain was just then facing very long odds of survival as the German Air Force just pounded
1:13.0	them in the Battle of Britain.
1:15.4	The US government ordered American munitions factories into overdrive to start churning out
1:21.2	the kind of material the US would need if and when we joined the fight.
1:26.5	And that mobilization included the oldest continuously operating dynamite plant in the whole
1:32.0	country, that huge Hercules powder plant in Kenville, New Jersey.
1:37.5	Now repurposed to supply the US military and running full tilt to do it.
	...

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