Nazi activities in this country have been brought to a head by the first open attack on the Jews of America by the Friends of New Germany, Hitler organization in the United States, which has proclaimed a boycott on the Jews. The following is the twelfth of a series of articles detailing the rise and growth of the Nazi-inspired anti-Semitic movement in this country in all its ramifications. The articles are based on an exhaustive investigation of Nazi propaganda activities in this country and in Germany for a period of over a year.
Nazi Germany has launched its first great offensive against American Jewry. Flying the colors of the DAWA. (Deutsch-Amerikanischer Wirtschafts-Ausschuss; the German American Protective Alliance) Hitler’s former American Nazi Party has declared a boycott on American Jews.
Elsewhere is reproduced the cover of the Business Guide of the DAWA, which has recently come off the press and is being widely distributed to anti-Semites throughout New York. The booklet, the first of a series to follow, contains almost one thousand names of firms, each of which have paid $5 for the privilege of being listed among those which do not boycott German goods. It exhorts its subscribers, which according to this reporters, information, have risen during the few weeks of the organization’s existence, to over 15,000 in New York City and environs, to patronize DAWA stores and wear the DAWA button.
The DAWA, of a political, economic, and social nature, excluding and boycotting Jews, may be considered the nucleus of the new American Nazi Party based upon a program similar to that carried out by Hitler’s party in Germany.
Commencing today DAWA, expressly an organization for the boycott of American Jewry and their “ausgeschaltung” from so-called American economic and political life, will broadcast its theories over Station WINS. Their program will be held every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9:30 to 10 A. M.
GERMAN GROUPS SUPPORT DAWA
The DAWA is supported by the United German Societies and League of Friends of New Germany, two groups which are thoroughly Hitlerized and anti-Semitic. The first was “captured” by the Hitlerites shortly after the latter had dropped its title, “American Branch of the National Socialist Workers’ Party.” At present both masquerade as American groups, although the League is still under the unofficial but direct control of Fritz Gissibl and other German Nazi agents who continue to remain in this country.
The DAWA booklet is composed of fifty pages in both English and German. More than one hundred categories of service offered by the DAWA include everything from midwives and funeral parlors to attorneys. While for the most part these names are drawn from business houses located in the German Yorkville and Ridgewood sections of Manhattan and Brooklyn, a large number of concerns in all other boroughs and nearby New York and New Jersey cities are also listed. Much of the goods handled by the advertisers are exclusively of German manufacture. German business concerns are now displaying the DAWA emblem as prominently as that of the NRA.
Reflecting the rapid spread of the DAWA organization, the directory contains two postcards, both addressed to the United German Societies at 347 Madison Avenue, one of which is to be signed by business concerns wishing their names to appear in a new, enlarged edition of the trade guide and the other calling for the signatures of private subscribers who wish to receive the trade guide, which will be printed within the next few weeks. The slogan, printed on the cards, is “Unity is Strength.”
The purpose of the DAWA, as far as can be learned from those nearest the inner Nazi circle, is to co-ordinate all German business in this country with the policies of the Hitlerites and later to extend the scope of the association to American Aryans. Jews and Jewish concerns are definitely out of the organization, or at least such is the case as this is being written. German American wives have been warned by DAWA speakers to avoid buying from Jewish shops “if they had to go blocks out of their way to do it.”
STRONGEST WEAPON YET
The DAWA is by far the sturdiest weapon adopted by the Nazis thus far in their fight against American Jewry. It contains in it elements believed sufficient to unite German America against American Jewry. During succeeding articles I shall discuss at length the co-ordination of all classes of Germans with the DAWA movement-classes which could not be brought into a purely political anti-Semitic group like the Friends of New Germany. They are being forced into this apparently “defensive” organization by their Nazi masters who assure them that this is the one course leading to economic survival. Despite the assertions to the contrary, the anti-Nazi boycott can not imply the boycott of Germans or German Americans in this country unless they handle German manufactures. American Nazis have now appealed to their former countrymen with the declaration that the Jews intend boycotting them regardless of the wares they handle.
The United German Societies has publicly announced, with regard to the ultimate expansion of the DAWA, that “There is not a shadow of doubt that American citizens of German descent will receive an encouraging response from hosts of fair-dealing Americans who refuse to be associated with an undertaking (anti-Nazi boycott) so un-American, a propaganda so insidiously conceived in hatred and carried on to the grievous injury of a large element of loyal American citizens.”
The purpose of the DAWA as set forth in pamphlets put out by the United German Societies follows: In securing the collapse of the anti-Nazi boycott-
1. To combine all German Americans in the city of New York in one defensive front;
2. To organize a community of interests of all those, be they importers of merchants, artists or artisans, who are the victims of the boycott;
3. To influence and induce all American citizens of German origin and millions of other right-thinking Americans to patronize only such firms which are known to reject the boycott and which have joined the organization mentioned in two.
Lecturers are being sent to all German American societies in the metropolitan district in the crusade to convert the entire German-American population to DAWA principles. Thus far few if any organizations outside those controlled by the Nazified United German American Societies have subscribed to the plan, but observers report that large blocs from the major societies have expressed their willingness to join.
A ‘GERMAN’ STORE
We have in the above plan the scheme for the creation of a German-American commercial empire. The plan provides for its expansion to become an American “Aryan” business association. The DAWA has announced that it will shortly bring into existence its first venture, a German store selling German goods. It is hoped by its sponsors that the success of this concern will warrant the establishment of other stores selling German goods almost exclusively.
The DAWA was brought before the public on the evening of April 8, when approximately 12,000 persons sought entrance to the Ridgewood Grove Arena in Brooklyn. Two hundred uniformed stormtroopers stood guard. The crowd booed at the mention of Jews, Jewish leaders, and public officials who had protested against the terrorism of the Hitler Government. When the name of Mayor LaGuardia, “the half-Jew,” as the Nazi organ later called him, was mentioned, catcalls came from all parts of the auditorium. Bundmeister Louis Zane said, “LaGuardia was elected the mayor of all New York, not only of Jewish New York. And the ballot is the ammunition of Germans against this mayor, who has publicly declared himself on the side of the (anti-Nazi) boycotters. We will make a memorandum of that for the next election.” He then proclaimed the anti-Nazi boycott a double-edged weapon which in the end would be turned from the Germans to the ruin of the Jews.
Joseph Schuster, leader of the Brooklyn Nazi cell then told the audience that they had not the rights of the Jews in this country, and he ordered them to fight for these rights. He charged the women with the duty of spending their husbands’ money in German stores for the purchase of German goods. The meeting ended with the frenzied audience rendering three cheers jointly for (first) Chancellor Hitler and (second mentioned) President Roosevelt.
THEY GIVE YOU A PIN
According to an announcement in the Deutsche Zeitung, Nazi organ in New York, the DAWA pinis to grace the lapel of every German American in German American society; German America is to work in cooperation with Germans in the fatherland for the DAWA idea’s realization; and that all societies, regardless of their nature, whether they be for sport, singing, benefit, or political, will be induced to join the DAWA.
The leaders of the DAWA come from the highly Hitlerized United German Societies. Those in charge are Willy Warnecke and H. Froelich.
The League of Friends of New Germany, it must be kept in mind, was first the American Branch of the German National Socialist Workers’ Party, composed exclusively of Germans who could vote in the German elections. Its membership is now exclusively of American citizens with the German Nazi leaders still guiding its policies and activities unofficially.
The sphere of influence of the League of Friends of New Germany has been extended in ever-widening concentric circles. It has placed strategically its members in groups free from Nazi influence, and by various forms of pressure and coercion has succeeded in winning these organizations to its policies.
SOME STATISTICS
While the Friends of New Germany have only about 12,300 members in Greater New York and about 25,000 throughout the country, it maintains dictatorial powers over German American societies which embrace what some authorities reckon to be 500,000 members. The cooperation of the League of Friends of New Germany with such groups as the Silver Shirts (estimated at from 36,000 to 143,000 in manpower), the Crusader White Shirts, and others makes it an alliance whose membership would be an asset to any political party.
In the DAWA we have the seed of a political party, which may easily be extended to embrace more than one hundred small Fascist groups in the United States. The DAWA in the form of a united German America will appeal to the public for support in its second and greatest bid for influence on the evening of May 17, when DAWA sympathizers will be herded into Madison Square Garden under the slogan
“Down With the Jewish Boycotters;
“Down With the Infamous German Haters.”(To be continued tomorrow)
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.
