Strategy of Nazi Plot is Revealed

THROUGHOUT the entire country the influence of the anti Democratic movement of the Nazis and their American conspirators is being felt. The ridicule with which the Fascist movement sponsored by the League of Friends of New Germany and the Silven Shirts, was greeted on its inception has not died down. Editors and those who stand well beyond the sidelines of the Fascist ball grounds continue to regard with tongue in check the march toward the Fascist goal. But those who are intimately concerned with the Fascist movement review the kaleidoscopic developments with rising apprehension.

Jews in New York, particularly those who belong or have belonged to German-American societies, are among those hardest hit by developments thus far. They are already ausgeschaltet from German society.

PLAN COUP D’ETAT

Yesterday I gave the content of a document which came to my hands in which orders were given for the negotiation of German arms shipments for the Silver Shirt movement in the United States. Other evidence is at hand to indicate that the League of Friends of New Germany, or at least a unit of it, has acted upon plans for the violent overthrow of the Democratic Government of the United States. I shall give this evidence promptly. In later articles, however, I shall discuss a far more portentous growth, the marshalling of the entire German American population into a political, economic, and social bloc within the United States which has as its ultimate objective the “Aryanizing” and Hitlerizing of the United States.

During the last two weeks in January a civil suit in Los Angeles Superior Court brought forth amazing revelations in the sworn testimony of a number of persons connected with the League of Friends of New Germany. The suit, brought by members of the German-American Alliance, who charged that their organization had been illegally unsurped by the Nazis, was thrown out of court by Judge Guy Bush, when it was held that the complainants, members of incorporated bodies, had no &grounds for action. The testimony rendered during the two weeks, however, remains a moral indictment of the Nazis as revolutionary conspirators against the government, seducers of our military defense forces, and corrupters of the American citizenship of naturalized German-Americans. It showed further the unwholesome and cunning strategy of aliens in their efforts to bring under the dictation of the Hitler Government German-Americans and German-American organizations. This latter practice of the Nazis is universal throughout the country. The gleichschaltung of New York’s German element presents even a more remarkable story.

Co-defendants in the case were the Ladies Auxiliary of the Friends of New Germany, and the Storm Troops of the Friends of New Germany.

Witnesses for the complainant included Carl J. Sunderland, forty-nine, of Los Angeles. He is a former captain of the United States Army and a past commander of the Los Angeles chapter of the Disabled War Veterans. Sunderland related his meeting with officers of the Friends of New Germany who were then defendants in the action: Hans Winterhalder, Paul Themlitz, Hermann Schwinn, and Carl Specht, who were described in the bill as being paid agents of Hitler. He said that he was asked to use his influence to delay the deportation of Robert Pape, who later admitted having made no move toward becoming an American citizen. Pape also said that he was a member of the National Socialist Party of Germany, that he is still loyal to Germany, and that he was appointed to the leadership of the Western Division of the Friends of New Germany by Heinz Spanknoebel, who, until his flight from American justice, was the leader of the National Socialist Party in the United States, which later became the League of Friends of New Germany.

CASH ASSETS $30,000

Sunderland said that Pape had requested his aid in delaying deportation so that the Friends of New Germany might gain control of the German Alliance, an organization with assets of between $25,000 and $30,000 in cash and about 40,000 members which he wished to bring into the Nazi organization. At the same time Pape requested Sunderland to help him recover a Friends of New Germany membership list which had fallen into the hands of the Los Angeles Police Department, according to the witness’s testimony.

Sunderland at the same time told of the connection between Max Socha, a prominent leader of German society in Los Angeles and a member of the German Alliance, and Pape. He said that Socha was the Nazi’s key man in the German Alliance through whom it was expected absorption of the latter group would be brought about. The witness described Nazi threats to have fifty storm troopers from the North German Lloyd steamer, Schwaben, protect the Los Angeles German Day parade from possible popular anti-Hitler reaction.

According to the testimony of Sunderland and others who supported his sworn statements, Dietrich Gefkin, a member of the Los Angeles storm troops for which the League of Friends of New Germany was a “ocvering organization,” had set forth as the purpose of the Friends of New Germany the combining of Nazis and American veterans to revolt against the “raw deal” given the latter by the present administration. Gefkin was quoted as saying that it was his life duty to carry on in America the Nazi campaign against Jews and Catholics. Gefkin, who could not be brought to the trial, is a member of the Nazi Party in Germany despite the fact that he is a veteran of the United States Army and a member of the San Francisco unit of the National Guard, which he someday “hoped to convert into an arsenal for revolutionists.” According to Sunderland, the expressed objective of Gefkin, Pape, and their henchmen was “to foment uprising to the end that veterans would step in and take over control of the government.”

REGARDING CIVIL RIGHTS

Gefkin was quoted by Sunderland as saying that “it’s all right for German immigrants to take out citizenship papers, because German citizenship would be restored on their return to the Fatherland regardless of the oath of allegiance to America.” The witness related statements attributed to both Gefkin and Pape indicating that orders to the Western Division of the Friends of New Germany were relayed from Germany through the New York office, over which Spanknoebel was the head at that time. He said that he had met German Consul General Gyssling at a meeting of The Friends of New Germany and quoted the official as having said that he had heard good reports of Sunderland, who at that time had assumed the appearance of being sympathetic toward the Nazi cause.

Sunderland and other witnesses described the eagerness with which Gefkin and other Nazis sought acquaintance with members of veteran and national guard organizations in Los Angeles, San Diego, and other Southern California cities. Gefkin was quoted by the witness as saying that he wished to get the plans of the armories so that with the outbreak of revolutionary hostilities, the armament could be used for the Nazi cause. Sunderland said that in preparation for this event Nazi storm troop members of the Friends of New Germany drilled at regular intervals in an annex to the Aryan Book Store, a building at 1004 Washington Boulevard used for propaganda and meeting purposes.

The testimony of Sunderland and other witnesses against the League of Friends of New Germany included references to Nazi methods of intimidation–bending to their will persons who have relatives in Germany. This practice of hostage-holding, revived by the present form of Government in Germany, maintains in a state of terrorized subjection many German-Americans who would like to cry out against Nazi outrages in this country, as this reporter has learned in a number of interviews, which unfortunately must be kept confidential. The custom will be discussed at greater length, however, in succeeding articles.

ONE JOHN SCHMIDT

The rest of the testimony against the Nazis pointed to other highly un-American motives behind the organization. The testimony of Captain John Schmidt, who resigned as warrant officer from the German Army in 1890, was naturalized in 1900, entered the United States Army in 1908, served throughout the World War with American defense forces as a lieutenant and captain, and had been for months a member of the Friends of New Germany, included the following assertions:

That Pape told him that Spanknoebel had been appointed head of the Friends of New Germany by Reichspropaganda Minister Goebbels, and that Spanknoebel in turn had appointed him (Pape) head of the Western Division;

That on August 30, 1933, aboard the German steamer Estes (which was later found carrying a huge cargo of Nazi propaganda to be smuggled into New York) ship officers passed a package to the local bund treasurer Schwinn, which he believed might have contained money:

That the storm troopers (which the Nazis later claimed were Sport Abteilung) drilled every Wednesday night at nine o’clock in the Aryan Book Store, and that a few members came in the uniform of the SS, or higher grade storm troopers of the Reich;

That the Friends of New Germany controlled the election of officers of the German American Alliance, so that they could incorporate the organization with their own;

That members of the Friends of New Germany considered American citizenship merely as a protective device;

That the Aryan Book Store had been supplied with Nazi propaganda from German ships;

That members of the Friends of New Germany wanted introductions to war veterans so that they might be influenced toward an uprising;

That even Pape had been “too easy” and too inactive and hence was replaced by Schwinn as leader of the Western Division of the Friends of New Germany which included almost all Western States and part of the province of British Columbia in Canada;

That Gefkin and another member of the Friends of New Germany named Geistbeck asked his aid in gaining membership to the National Guard preferably in machine gun companies and in making the acquaintance of officers of the United States Military Association.

That another member, Zimmerman, was accepted into the National Guard, but that Gefkin was turned down because of bad teeth.

Another witness for the complainants, Major C. B. Allen, a distinguished war hero and an adjutant of the Disabled American Veterans, described the Friends of New Germany as a sort of covering organization for storm troopers who drilled regularly, and he quoted Gefkin as saying that “there are plenty of arms available to overthrow the government.”

The defendants brought before the court denied that their motives had been to foment revolution. Likewise, they denied that storm troopers, whom they called Sport Abteilung, drilled with rifies They denied that the drills were of a military nature, although testimony was introduced to show that the commands were those of the Germany army.

Karl Specht, one of the defendants and leader of the Sport Abteilung (or storm troops), admitted that he had brought into the country books containing Nazi drill regulations. He said that he was the head of the Nazi Party in Los Angeles, which disbanded in April, 1933, and further stated that a new group was formed, the Deutscher Volksbund, which late in July became a unit of the League of Friends of New Germany. Specht said he was preparing to save the United States from Communism.

“An the news concerning Jews” is faithfully and promptly reported in the Jewish Daily Bulletin–the only Jewish daily newspaper printed in English.