The New Statesman and National, liberal weekly, declared today that a secret Nazi “fifth column” in the United States was intensifying its activities with the objects of strengthening isolationist sentiment and spreading anti-Semitism.
An article captioned “Hitler Over U.S.A.” with the signature “American Correspondent” said “there is every indication that this pro-Nazi propaganda campaign, cleverly planned and disguised under various labels breathing the true spirit of ‘100 per cent Americanism’ and firmly hitched to the isolationist bandwagon, is to be pressed with every weapon in the local Nazi armory during the coming months.”
“The Nazi chorus in the United States,” the article said, “pursues two main objectives–to strengthen isolationist sentiment and thus keep the country out of the war and to direct the spread of anti-Semitism as the first step toward imposing on the United States those racial theories for which Adolf Hitler has become infamous and by which it is hoped that democracy can be disintegrated on this side of the Atlantic.”
The correspondent said the Nazis in America used three weapons in their campaign:
(1) Ample funds, to influence the press to publish the German viewpoint.
(2) Mobilizations of German-Americans. “It is reliably reported that at least a half million German-Americans are fully regimented and working for the downfall of the British Empire. France, the Jews, the New York Times (‘the best British newspaper published in the United States,’ sneer the Germans) and democratic institutions, while another million are probably sympathetic to the German cause.”
(3) Use of pro-Nazi Catholics, Irish, industrialists, some members of the American Legion, “even a handful of suspicious liberals who declare Tory England is pro-Fascist at heart.”
The article declares that “anti-Semitism, undoubtedly stimulated to the point at which many Jews are taking alarm,” and rapidly increasing Jew-baiting are perhaps Germany’s greatest single achievement and one which is causing headaches in Washington.
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.
