more sinister than he would have them appear is the accusation contained in a statement issued yesterday by the National Committee to Aid Victims of German Fascism.
“Hanfstaengl’s ‘last-minute’ decision to attend the reunion of his class at Harvard University is nothing but a sham,” the statement declares.
“Hanfstaengl’s flying visit to America has nothing to do with the Harvard reunion,” the document continues. “He aims to be … helpful to the Nazi regime. He will seek to block the widespread boycott of German goods, to further activities of Nazi units, strengthen their links with the agencies of government and finally to raise funds for the Hitler regime which is in a desperate state of bankruptcy.”
In pursuance of the committee’s attack of the Nazi’s visit, Alfred Wagenknecht, its executive secretary, sent the following telegram to Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins:
“Demand you refuse admittance Ernst Hanfstaengl press representative bloody Hitler regime. His trip here is calculated to extend activities Nazi agents among National Guard and American Fascist groups as exposed in the Congressional Investigation Committee hearings. Past record linking Hanfstaengl to acts of terrorism and espionage culminating in Black Tom dynamiting and others makes his exclusion imperative.”
The committee’s statement gives a thumb-nail sketch of its estimate of Hanfstaengl, the “man,” as follows:
“Under his pose of urbanity and cosmopolitan culture he is one of the most coldly calculating and vicious of the Nazis. He is known and despised by the foreign press representatives in Berlin as one who climbed on the Nazi band wagon for the graft he could get out of it, as reported in a recent anti-Fascist newspaper.
“As Hitler’s confidential adviser in relations with the foreign press, Hanfstaengl is to be held responsible for the censorship, threats and intimidation which have been used to persuade or force reporters to tell stories favorable to the discredited hunger dictatorship of the German Fascists.”
CHARGED WITH SABOTAGE
But while this organization and other associations and individuals were joining in the outcry against Hanfstaengl’s admission to this country, by far the most important indictment against Hitler’s gentleman nurse was contained in the State Department affidavit signed by James Larkin, deported Irish radical.
In this document, according to the World-Telegram, Larkin swears Hanfstaengl was the master mind during the war who outwitted the British and French secret service agents by destroying $1,000,000 worth of ammunition when the Allies most needed it.
Larkin, deported from this country in 1923, was induced to talk last December by Casimir P. Palmer, former Scotland Yard detective, now a New York City resident.
The Irish radical declared the explosives used to dynamite Black Tom had been distributed by Hanfstaengl in his art studio on East Fifty-seventh street.
TO SUPPORT GERMAN CASE
The Larkin affidavit is among a mass of evidence which the United States has submitted to the Mixed Claims Commission. Evidence of both nations will be presented to Justice Owen J. Roberts of the United States Supreme Court, who will sit as a referee in September.
Hanfstaengl is expected to answer through the Mixed Claims Commission in support of Germany’s case.
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.
