Many of the nation’s leading anti-Semitic propagandists are included in the list made public today by Attorney General Francis Biddle of twenty-eight persons charged with conspiring to wreck the morale of the armed forces of the United States. Indictments against these twenty-eight were handed down Tuesday by a special Grand Jury in Federal District Court here.
Among those named were Court Asher, Mrs. Elizabeth Dilling, H. Victor Broenstrupp, C. Leon de Aryan, William Dudley Pelley, James B. True and Gerald B. Winrod.
Included in the evidence upon which the twenty-eight were indicted are numerous references to the alleged “Jewish character” of the war. The indictment charges that they tried to make the Army and Navy believe that “the war now raging in all parts of the world is a dishonest war waged at the expense and measured in blood and dollars of the people of the United States solely for the benefit of and to insure the continuance of world domination by “international Jewry-organized finance, Mongolian Jews, Communists and other persons and groups opposed to our republican form of government.”
Also that “the Axis powers are fighting to free the world from domination by Communism and international Jewry.” That “the public officials of the United States are planning to mingle the blood of Negroes, criminals and Jews with that of Christian-American soldiers and sailors.” That statements of American public officials that our best interest is served by aiding the United Nations are “false and designed to conceal from the people the true fact that such public officials are under the control and domination of British imperialists and international Jews.”
The indictment quotes 50 passages from articles and statements made and circulated by the defendants in support of these ideas. If they are convicted, they face maximum penalties of $20,000 fines and 30 years in jail. Listed in the indictment are 30 publications and 28 organizations, including the Silver Shirts, the Black Legion and the Ku Klux Klan, which the defendants “organized or caused to be organized, supported, used, controlled, or contributed financially to” in furtherance of the alleged conspiracy.
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.
