Acting Secretary of State Sumner Welles said at his press conference today that the State Department has under consideration the case of Dr. Friedrich Ried, German official removed from his post as consul at Porto Alegre, Brazil, when the Brazilian Government protested against his fifth column activities, and who is now attached to the German consulate in New York.
In response to a question, Welles declared that this was all he could say about the Ried case at the present time.
Ried’s removal from his post in the United States has been demanded by the New York Post and the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League on the ground that his activities menaced American democracy.
Dr. Ried, a veteran Nazi propagandist, quietly took over his New York post on July 9. During his six years in Brazil, he not only represented the legitimate interests of German nationals but also devoted great attention to Brazilian citizens of German birth and descent.
The incident which incurred the wrath of the Brazilian Government was his eagerness to enlarge the circulation of the Nazified Deutsche La Plata Zeitung, owned by Karl Gundlach, a naturalized Brazilian, who also publishes the newly-founded Neue Deutsche Zeitung of Porto Alegre.
Aware of the fact that, according to international interpretation, a consul merely is ” an official charged with the care of the commercial interests of citizens of the appointing government” and nothing more, the Brazilian Foreign Office insisted that Berlin recall the over-jealous Ried. The expulsion move was particularly important since the State of Rio Grande do Sul is the very center of Nazi control over the large German minorities in the southern Brazil and Porto Alegre is as noticeably German as New York’s Yorkville.
Ried also organized an exceptionally effective system of Nazi schools while in Brazil. In addition to keeping the schools running in spite of Brazilian opposition, Dr. Ried added new classses to the existing institutions.
He insisted that German be spoken at home as well as in the schools in order to spread the use of the language. Ried’s pedagogical achievements in Brazil have won repeated commendation from Berlin. On various occasions the League for Germans Abroad has reported his activities in great detail to serve as an inspiration for Nazi propaganda activities in foreign countries in general.
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