Hitlerism Spreads to Baltics: Christian Social Democratic Labour Party Organised in Latvia to Figpt

A Hitlerist Party calling itself the Christian Social Democratic Labour Party has been founded here, the programme being mainly concerned with the fight against the Jews. The principal demands of the new Party are that all Jews who entered the country after 1917 should be expelled, that all houses, businesses and factories belonging to Jews should be confiscated, and that no State loans should be given to Jews. The first duty of the authorities, the programme says, is to provide work or assistance to Letts, and if the Jews cannot make a living they should be expelled from the country.

The Hitlerist movement originally claimed to be modelled on Italian Fascism. At one time the German Hitlerist Press published a report claiming that Mussolini had invited Hitler to come to Rome and no gotiate for the establishment of an International Fascist Federation. This report was brought to Mussolini’s notice by the Chief Rabbi of Rome, Dr. Sacerdoti, to whom Mussolini thereupon declared that the Fascist movement had never contemplated any antisemitic activity, and that he regretted greatly that foreign antisemites were exploiting the influence of the Italian Fascists for their own ends.

Thrown back on itself, the Hitlerist movement has been making efforts recently to extend its activities outside Germany and Austria. Last month, the German Hitlerist Press reported the formation of a Hitlerist organisation in the Scandinavian countries, with a central organ in Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, called the “Hajekorset” (Swastika), and the slogan “For the liberation of the Nordic races and against International Judaism”. Hitler himself, and Deputy Goebbels, the leader of the Hitlerists in Berlin, were announced as speakers at Hitlerist meetings in Copenhagen and Stockholm, but they were refused admission by the Scandinavian authorities.

About the same time it was reported that Hitler’s brother-in-law, Ernst Goelnike, had arrived in Roumania in order to negotiate with Professor Cuza and his friends for the formation of a Hitlerist Party in Roumania.

Last November, the German general Press expressed some anxiety over reports which had been received about anti-Jewish out-breaks by people calling themselves Hitlerists in places which no longer form part of Germany, like Danzig, which is under the administration of the League of Nations, and Memel, which belongs to Lithuania, and also in Latvia, where the new Hitlerist movement is now reported to have been formed, which before the war belonged to Russia, but has a very important German minority. The J.T.A. in New York revealed about the same time the existence of Hitlerist cells among the Germans living in the United States. The German newspapers condemned this extension of Hitlerism among the Germans living in other countries, suggesting that it would do a great deal of harm to these German minorities.