Although in New York and other cities American Nazi sympathizers have gained control of established German socicties, local Hitlerites after a year of activity still find themselves unable to make headway.
At the outset the Milwaukee Nazis, organized to form the Friends of the New Germany, succeeded in arranging meetings that attracted as many as 600 persons. At their most recent public rally slightly over 200 persons appeared. Average attendance at the “Friends” sessions in the past three months has fallen below 100.
NAZI SPEAKER HECKLED
At the last rally, much of the audience was comprised of radicals who hooted and hissed the speaker, Rev. John Schoenberger of Chicago, described as a former Russian Catholic priest. At one point they forced the speaker to halt his talk. Three of the radical ringleaders were thrust out by a dozen hefty Nazi ushers.
Schoenberger unleashed a vicious attack on the Jews and pictured Hitler in a “holy war,” fighting “not the Jews as a race but the Jewish materialistic spirit.” He asserted that Hitler “has at last brought unity to the German people,” and charged that “Stalin is a millionaire” and “most of the commissars who rule Russia are Jews.”
Disintegration of the Nazi organization here was explained by a local German writer as due partly to the character of the city’s Germans and partly to the type of leadership in the Friends of the New Germany.
MALCONTENTS LEADERS
One of the leaders was described as a “mad hatter” who was “eased out” of a half dozen established German societies as a trouble maker. Another was declared to be a transient, who was in the movement in Wilwaukee “for what he could get out of it.”
The membership of the Nazi group is still made up mainly of Germans who have come to this country within the past ten years. Old-time Germans remain aloof and bar Nazi propaganda from their gatherings. Most members of this group, although they retain their attachment to maennerchors, saengervereins and other German activities of this nature, confine their loyalty to political institutions of this country rather than those of a foreign land, the writer explained.
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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.
