Charges that Nazis in this country aim to create a vast spy net and a powerful sabotage machine in the event of war were made before the Congressional committee investigating un-American activities at its first public session today. They were voiced by John C. Metcalfe, first witness called to testify on Nazi activities, who spent six months investigating the Nazi movement for the Chicago Daily Times.
Metcalfe, now on the committee’s staff, asserted that the German-American Bund, nucleus of the Nazi movement here, has 25,000 active members, that 75,000 others attend meetings and 400,000 are sympathizers. At one time, he disclosed, an entire company of the National Guard in Illinois were Bund members.
Committee members revealed before the session opened that attempts had been made to sabotage the probe by planting agents among the investigators.
Discussing aims of the movement in the United States, Metcalfe, who joined the Bund to obtain first-hand information for his expose, declared:
“Germany had practically no espionage organization or sabotage machine in this country before the war. It is to avoid a duplication of this mistake, that the bund has become active without even letting its own membership know the real purposes behind the movement so that they may be prepared for any eventuality that may arise, such as a state of war with America or an effort to prevent the United States from delivering arms or supplies to a Nazi enemy.”
Metcalfe testified that Fritz Kuhn, fuehrer of the Bund, was “top man” of the Nazis in the United States. He said Kuhn had told him he was responsible for removal of Dr. Hans Luther as Ambassador. Kuhn also told him, Metcalfe asserted, that he had a secret relationship with the Nazi Government in Germany to further the interests of the Bund. The reporter declared the Auslands Bureau in Stuttgart was the principal means of fostering Nazi aims in this country.
The Bund’s youth movement, Metcalfe declared, was modeled on the Hitler Youth Movement. He also said that 10,000 persons in this country possessed Fascist Black Shirt uniforms and that 5,000 more uniforms were available, having been sent here from Rome to further the fascist movement.
Metcalfe charged William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Shirts had a very definite connection with the bund.
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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.
