Plans for a new Nazi propaganda drive in this country, directly tied in with the Presidential elections this fall, have been formulated and partially set in action by the Nazi Propaganda Ministry, it was reliably learned today.
The campaign will be openly manifested by the publication of a newspaper or magazine modeled on Der Stuermer, German Jew-baiting weekly. Staffed entirely by German writters and artists personally selected by Julius Streicher, the publication will take an active part in the pre-election campaigning, with special emphasis being placed on a violently anti-Semitic editorial policy directed at President Roosevelt and the New Deal.
Heading the staff, which is expected to arrive in the United States, either by Clipper or by way of South America, in the near future, is a cartoonist named Fipps, reputed to be the top-ranking political pen artist of the Hitler regime. Fipps is coming to this country on a diplomatic visa.
The magazine or newspaper will be geared to an already started pro-Willkie campaign which has been in evidence for several weeks in the evidence for several weeks in the Nazi and home-grown Fascist press circulated in New York City, particularly Yorkville.
Willkie’s German-American ancestry is the basis for this drive. A whispering campaign has been started in Yorkville declaring that the Republican candidate will, because of his German background, be more sympathetic toward Germany and will be “easier to handle.”
This line of reasoning has cropped out in the Nazi press in the Nazi press in New York. The Free American and Weckruf und Beobachter, organ of the German-American Bund, has been outspokenly pro-Willkie, and published an article in German three weeks ago praising Willkie’s German ancestry and predicting that he would be favorably inclined toward the German Government. During the past few weeks, an increasing number of Willkie buttons have appeared in the German areas of Yorkville and at the street meetings of pro-Hitler Joseph E. McWilliams, self-styled “anti-Jewish candidate for congress.”
Another point of the Nazi propaganda in the presidential campaigns will be a concerted drive on President Roosevelt, blaming him for the prolongation of the war.
Concurrent with this campaign, propaganda designed to drum up sympathy for the Nazi Government, particularly in occupied countries, will be launched through “national groups” supposedly representing several of these countries. Present plans call for the establishment of Dutch, Norwegian, Danish, French and Polish groups to spread a picture of progress and contentment in Nazi-occupied lands–to paint these centers of oppression and ruin as lands of milk and honey.
It is expected that the personnel of these groups will also be sent over from Germany, or from the different occupied countries.
Although the top people in both campaigns will be imported from Hitler’s trusted following, many of its supporters and workers will probably be drawn from the ranks of the German-Americans in this country.
In 1938 the Gestapo drew up a list of American relatives of German subjects. This list comprised more than 18,000,000 persons. These people will be one of the focal points of the Nazi propaganda drive, many of them cooperating willingly, others because of threats of harm to their relatives or other pressure devices.
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