The life of the anti-Hanfstaengl broadsides, however, was short. Shortly after their discovery an emergency call for men was put in by Major Charles R. Apted, superintendent of the Harvard Yard, and they were torn down, in the hope that “Hanfy” or “Putzy” as he is being greeted by the more intimate of his classmates, would not learn of them.
THREATEN HARVARD BOYCOTT
While these posters were giving sedate Cambridge something to think about, a slashing attack against the stranger within John Harvard’s gates came from another source. This took the form of a lengthy telegram to President James B. Conant and the Board of Overseers of Harvard, bitterly protesting the reception to Hanfstaengl and intimating that Harvard’s acceptance of “his blood-money” to establish a scholarship will place the university definitely on the blacklist of the international boycott movement and that it will cost her “innumerable incomes from trust funds, bequests from wills and future endowments.”
The telegram was sent from the New York office of Coudert Brothers, attorneys, and was signed by Major Frank Pease (U. S. A.) and his wife, the former Mabelle Foster Abbott, a 1909 graduate of Radcliffe. Mrs. Pease recently charged that Hanfstaengl, while listening to a recital of brutal indignities and injuries she received at the hands of Nazis in Germany, exhibited callous indifference and even gave vent to several guffaws.
“PUTZY” IN “BIG FIVE”
The message, which describes Hanfstaengl as “the Nazi cutthroat,” declares that the Hitler confidant “cannot be separated from the murderous Nazi party he has helped to create and of which he is now one of the Big Live.” “If you receive Hanfstaengl,” it continues, “you cannot accept what he represents. If you honor Hanfstaengl, you endorse what he officially personifies. If you take his thirty pieces, his blood-money for crucifixion of the humanities, you are betraying the freedom for which America and Harvard were established.”
ON PROPAGANDA MISSION
The message further charges that Hanfstaengl is in this country “to establish Nazi cells in American colleges and to give prestige to his murderous cult of Germanic tyrannies throughout America. He seeks Harvard’s {SPAN}endor##ment{/SPAN} as his first step.” It also charges the the Nazi propagandist is here “to convey Hitler’s orders to ‘The Friends of New Germany and Foes of Old America.'” He is here to convey personally secret commands to the Nazi party’s chief commissar in America, R. Kempe, in the New York City German Consulate.
“Once Hanfstaengl is received and honored by Harvard,” the telegram concludes, “America will know that Harvard the leader leads no longer.”
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
