The opinion was enunciated that armed forces for the purpose of establishing a dictatorship by means of Fascism, or through the instrumentality of the proletariat or predicated in part on racial and religious hatreds have no place in the United States.
‘SHIRTS’ PATTERNED ON HITLER
William Dudley Pelley and his Silver Shirts were blasted. The Silver Shirts, Congress was told, were patterned after Adolf Hitler’s storm troops. The organization was called a breeding place of racial and religious intolerance and it was reported that its financial statement showed it to be a racket.
“For years Pelley, according to testimony, had been writing on metaphysical subjects, with nine out of ten of his followers being women, who gave him, and from whom he borrowed, varying sums of money, in one case receiving bonds valued at $14,000,” the account said.
“Early in 1933 he founded the Silver Shirts with headquarters at Asheville, N. C., a few days after Adolf Hitler became Chancellor of Germany. Pelley told people who testified that the idea was copied from Germany.
“Immediately his prolific writings changed from the sublime into violent, vitriolic and scurrilous attacks against certain religious groups.”
ATTACKS ON JEWS ALONE
These attacks, although the reports omitted the fact, were directed virtually exclusively against the Jews.
The whole story was then told, concluding with Pelley’s recent conviction in North Carolina of violating that state’s “blue sky” law, for which he is to be sentenced next week.
A compliment was paid to 20,000,000 Americans of German birth or descent who refused to have anything to do with Nazism in the United States.
“This committee has had evidence to show the strenuous efforts made to enlist these persons,” Congress was advised. “This committee has evidence to show the wiles and blandishments that were employed, and when these failed, the scurrilous attacks that were utilized, in an effort to bring them into the Nazi program.”
DRIVE IN TWO PARTS
The Nazi drive in the United States was divided into two sections—the first covering all the time previous to Hitler’s advent to power and the second concerning itself with the period from that event to the present—and described in some detail.
Significant excerpts from this portion of the report follow:
1.—”This committee found indisputable evidence to show that certain German consuls in this country, with all the appurtenances of diplomatic immunity, violated the pledge and proprieties of diplomatic status and engaged in vicious and un-American propaganda activities, paying for it in cash, in the hope that it could not be traced.”
2.—”One of the transactions in question … goes to the German embassy itself, and until recently no effort was made to stop such practices.”
3.—With the advent of Adolf Hitler as Chancellor efforts to obtain supporters for the Nazi movement were redoubled in the United States. Campaigns were conducted, gigantic mass meetings held, literature of the vilest kind was disseminated and the shortwave radio was added to the effort.
4.—”German steamship lines not only brought over propaganda, but transported back and forth certain American citizens without cost, for the purpose of having them write and speak favorably of the German nation.”
5.—”The Friends of New Germany was … fashioned entirely along the lines of the Nazi party in Germany.”
Dr. Otto H. F. Vollbehr, a German, who in recent years sold to the United States government rare books and other incunabula for which he was paid $1,500,000, was another who came in for strong denunciation.
He was described as the author and publisher of propaganda material which has been flooding the United States. This material, according to the committee’s report, was extensively devoted to defamatory statements, “the purpose of which was to create racial and religious intolerance.”
In spite of a pledge under oath that he would desist in his propaganda activities, his Los Angeles office was said to have issued “memoranda” only last month similar to those given out in the past. At that time Vollbehr was in Germany, but within recent weeks he has returned to the United States, the committee’s communication reported.
“He has been coming here for thirty-five years and, although for the past several years he has had an immigration visa, he has never seen fit to take out his first citizenship papers, and as a German citizen continues his propaganda efforts while in this country.”
SIX RECOMMENDATIONS
The committee offered six recommendations to make more difficult, if not impossible, the unrestricted promotion of Nazi and other un-American activities in the future.
These recommendations asked for the enactment by Congress of legislation authorizing the Department of Labor to terminate the stay in this country of visitors engaged in the dissemination of propaganda, requiring publicity agents for foreign governments, political parties or firms to register with the Department of State, making unlawful the counseling of members of the military and naval forces to disobedience, enabling United States attorneys to proceed against witnesses who decline to cooperate to the fullest extent with such a Congressional committee as the McCormack body, and making unlawful the advocacy of overthrow of the present form of government.
JUNG GROUP CITED
The American Vigilante Intelligence Federation, of which Harry A. Jung of Chicago is the founder, was another anti-Semitic organization mentioned in the report. Testimony of Jung’s secretary revealed that he and the federation had published and circulated masses of literature “tending to incite racial and religious intolerance.”
“Because this committee has seen the true purpose behind these various groups, it will lump them together and characterize them as un-American, as unworthy of support and created and operated for the financial welfare of those who guide them and who do not hesitate to stoop to racial and religious intolerance in order to achieve their selfish purposes,” the report stated.
“This activity your committee believes to be distinctly and dangerously un-American, and we denounce without qualification any attempt, from any source, to stir up hatreds and prejudices against any one or more groups of our people because of either race, color or creed.
The surest safeguard against Nazis and other fomentors of racial hatred, the committee pointed out, is “an aroused and intelligent public opinion.”
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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.
