The Agitator: William Bailey and the First American Uprising Against Nazism is Peter Duffy’s account of the 1935 action led by the young Merchant Marine Seaman Bill Bailey when the SS Bremen, the flagship of Hitler’s commercial fleet, arrived in New York Harbor flying the Nazi flag, just days after violent anti-Semitic riots rocked Berlin.

Bailey and a few compatriots snuck onto the ship while a lavish party was in full swing, climbed its flagpole and tore down the Nazi flag. A brawl ensued, Bailey and his gang were arrested and acquitted in a trial that transfixed the nation and shed light on the swift and brutal rise of fascist Germany.

A few years later, Bailey later fought against fascism in Spain with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, and during & after World War II he was a business agent for the Marine Firemen’s Union, until he was expelled from the union during the McCarthy era. He then worked as a longshoreman, and was a well-known figure in San Francisco labor and activist circles for decades leading up to his death in 1995 at the age of 84.

Author Peter Duffy is a New York-based journalist whose three previous books have looked at historical moments including American espionage in Germany during the run up to World War II, resistance in Germany during the war, and the Irish potato famine.