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Disbanding of Hitler ‘cells’ in U.S. Proven Merely a Gesture

May 21, 1933
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Police and observant news chronicles throughout the United States are aware of the existence of occasional meetings of recently established German organizations, which invite all Germans and sympathizers of the Hitler administration to attend. The meetings are open to the public, although they are not widely advertised. Police and, occasionally, reporters are in attendance. The Society is known as “Friends of New Germany”, “Sympathizers of Hitler”, and many other appelations that express a loose connection or no connection at all with Nazi-ism.

This, however, is not the true Nazi unit in the United States. Behind this outward show of frankness, a nuclear organization exists, and neither the press nor police are aware of their operations or details of their existence.

By formal, publicized order from Germany, the Nazi Party has been ostensibly broken up in all foreign countries. At the departure of Heinz Spanknoebel, national chief of the brownshirt organization, for Germany six weeks ago, it was announced that all Nazi cells in the United States had been dissolved, because “with the ascendancy of Hitler to power in Germany, their services are no longer required.” A week later Nazi Headquarters in New York, located at 309 East 92nd Street, took Swastika emblems from their walls, moved their paraphernalia from the building, pulled down the shades, and locked the door behind them.

Other cells in America did likewise.

ONLY A GESTURE, AFTER ALL

But, it is learned from the best authority (members of the Nazi group), this gesture of dissolution was merely a part of the process of moving into new quarters, where the machine could carry on its work secretly without suffering the former ineffectiveness imposed upon its operation by press and police knowledge of their evacuated offices.

Somewhere in New York, Detroit, Chicago, Philadelphia, New Orleans, Washington, Salt Lake City, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, St. Paul, and more than a score of other important American cities, Nazi cells continue to function secretly. Propaganda is received in huge lots and distributed from these offices in places where it will do the most good. Other Nazi propaganda is written by agents in these headquarters and sent to sister units. And from each of these headquarters and sent to gated to address nearby German gatherings in an effort to sway sentiment to the current German administration.

Through the efforts of the inner clique, influences of all German societies are being “coordinated” toward the consummation of Hitler policies. By virtue of their strenuous efforts to “cover” all German societies, a comparatively small number of Nazi mercenaries are rapidly aligning the sentiment of large groups of Germans toward a single objective—Nazi support. Current periodicals, organs of the Nazi party abroad, with the Deutsche Post in New York as the most widely distributed, have also proven effective in inculcating National Socialist policies in German organizations of this country.

NEUTRALS COME OVER

Heretofore neutral or assertedly anti-Nazi German newspapers in the United States have also felt the ef-

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