BUND DRIVE FOR A NAZI UNITED STATES.

BUNDS OPEN DRIVE FOR A NAZI U.S.

Hitlerites Claim Fourth of U.S.

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EXPOSE REVEALS MOVE TO SET UP AMERICAN HITLER

Units Jump From 58 to 65 in Few Weeks Here in Membership Campaign, Belying Fuehrer’s ‘Order’ to Dissolve Organization, Eagle Probe Reveals–Plot Seen as Copying Austrian Coup.

Peril to Freedom

This is the first in series of articles to appear in The Eagle, daily and Sunday, comprising an expose of the extent and menace of un-American foreign and domestic propaganda and other subversive activities in the United States, aimed at American religious liberty and the American form of government.

The facts, as contained in this series, have been obtained by The Eagle’s own investigators from Government and other sources and are substantiated in many cases by photographs and documentary evidence.

By: John W. Smith

and

William Weer

While Hitler’s regiments were goose-stepping across the border into helpless Austria the German-American Bund launched a reinforced publicity and propaganda drive for membership in the United States.

The two events were not unrelated nor dissimilar.

Hitler swallowed Austria despite his promises to respect Austrian independence. The bund struck out for new members in a big way within a week after Fuehrer in Berlin, with a pretty fine gesture of good-neighborliness, had ordered bunds to dissolve.

And Austria fell on March 11, within striking a blow in self-defense, because it had already been softened up by years of Nazi propaganda, Nazi muddying of the waters of public opinion.

The German-American Bund drive in the East was started with a full page advertisement in the Deutscher Weckruf und Beobachter, New York, which poured the same kind of Nazi folderol over the American scene. It was an appeal in English to “German-Americans” to unite in the sort of Nazi split-off that had prepared Austria for the kill, that is readying Czechoslovakia as the next victim.

The Hitler order to Germans in the United States, to dissolve their bunds and not to re-form under any other name, was calculated to show that the Nazis do not interfere in the internal affairs of other nations, at least in the affairs of th U.S.A.

But there are 65 locals of the bund today, instead of 58 a few weeks ago, and the number is growing.

This is not the first time that Nazi organizations in the United States have been “dissolved” only to pop up again under a new name or with a new nominal leader. This time it is done with the gage that membership is limited to American citizens–and of course Hitler can have no control over them.

American Citizenship Not Required.

But the bund membership is blank, printed on March 10, asks for information as to an applicant’s marital status (single, married, widowed), nationally and even telephone number. It requires assurance that “I am of Aryan origin, free from Jewish or colored blood,” and a pledge to abide by the “leadership principle”–the principle of obeying the dictator.

But the subject of American citizenship is not mentioned.

In bold, black type, beside the drawing of the sort of extended swastika, the bund’s advertisement pleads;

You German-Americans who as Americans realize that it is your duty to help outlaw Jewish-International, Atheistic Communism in all its disguises and who as sons of Germans would defend your “old country” against malicious defamation, helping our U.S.A. to profit by Germany’s experiences,

JOIN THE GERMAN-AMERICAN BUND

AMERIKADEUTSCHER VOLKSBUND,

an essential part of the movement of the 1000,000,000 Aryan (white Gentile) Americans, fighting to reconstitute our country a free and sovereign, God-fearing, moral, social and national United States!

There is more, including addresses of local units of the bund, a membership application card and the patriotic slogan:

“For Constitution and Flag, for Practical Christianity, for True Social Justice and on AMERICAN Labor Front!”

Included you will find, in abbreviated form, most of the crackpot cries and the self-contradictions of Nazi propaganda now flooding the country, all aimed to set up an American Hitler.

You find here the patriotic American pose (but the patriotic Austrian Nazis have abolished Austria), the Aryan myth, the anti-Semitism, the anti-Communist dodge, the plea to “profit by Germany’s experiences” and if that isn’t clear, the proposal to “reconstitute our country, a...social and national United States—“ that is to say, a National-Socialist, or Nazi, United States.

Mentions Constitution and Christianity

There is talk of the Constitution beside the pledge by the “leadership principle”– the undemocratic and unconstitutional principle of follow the fuehrer, or dictator. There is talk of Christianity, though the dominant Nazis in Germany battle Christianity on all fronts.

Jews are damned as “international:, but the bund itself is German-American, or international.

These and other contradictions and puerilities do not disturb those who are working to spread them in the United States. Nazi dogma seemed just as pointless in its early stages in Germany, but it is riding high over there now!

It is riding for a fall here–or for another victory, impossible as it seems?

There is no doubt that foreign propaganda is pouring in from a hundred sources abroad, Nazi and Russian Communist. There are a hundred native centers where the imported poison is boiled over into an American likeness and scattered to the winds.

Much of it is secretly spread, much of it is disguised as to its true purpose.

The Weckruf und Beobachter, is a small weekly published in the heart of Yorkville (178 E. 85^th St.), part in German and part in English, and its circulation and direct influence are confined to a few thousand convinced pro-Nazis. Its propaganda is lumbering, unskillful. Its English sentences show their obvious and laborious translation from the German.

But it puts out editions in three other cities in the United States and its propaganda is typical of one large section of the flood to which Americans are being subjected, larger now than has been the case since the early years of World War.

And much more dangerous.

Differs From Wartime Propaganda

Wartime propaganda was intended to influence American public opinion in favor of one side or another in the war. The object was to float a foreign loan or to bring us into or keep us out of the war, on this side or the other.

Nothing as simple as that is the case today.

Propaganda today seeks not to change the public opinion of a nation on a specific issue, but to “reconstitute” the nation itself. As Austria was “reconstituted,” as Spain was in part.

Build up a sufficient body of Nazi opinion, organize a growing political party under the “leadership principle,” and presently you do not have to ask for loans or any other favors. The nation is yours–if you are Fuehrer Hitler.

Or, presumably–though here we have no such practical examples to go by as what happened to Austria and Danzig–convert a large enough section of the population to communism and the nation is Stalin’s.

The Nazi propaganda war now raging in the United States still is in the early stage. Dictatorship with all its ruthlessness may never come of it. But it is actually war, its object to conquer us by making us over into the likeness of Hitler’s Germany–or his Austria.

More adroit than the propaganda of the World War days, it hides or disguises its major aim.

Avoid Dictator Talk for Americans

Prospective members of the bund may be told of the “leadership principle.” Germans themselves, will presume Nazi sympathies, they can be trusted to take it in the right way. But for deluded Americans not so far advanced some coddling is necessary and the approach to them is by another route. The talk of dictatorship is avoided.

Instead the Nazi propagandists find a convenient entering wedge by playing their anti-Jewish tune.

There is also anti-Catholic and frankly anti-Christina propaganda. There is always the anti-communist shuddering.

But the greatest of these is the anti-Semitic. With the past few months Congressmen have been flooded with anti-Semitic leaflets, pamphlets, letters sent through the mail, many of them from the South and Middle West. More and more “secret” meetings are held, at which moronic listeners are pleasantly horrified by muddle-headed speeches in bad English, repeating ancient libels, frequently disproved of an international Jewish plot to conquer the world.

The history of the Ku Klux Klan shows there are millions in the United States who were impressed by such twaddle, though the white light of publicity reversed the impression.

What the Klan did for a while, and is still attempting to do, the new propagandist are out to establish for good.