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State Department Issues “white Book” on Nazi Racialism and Fifth-column Activities

January 31, 1943
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A 500-page “White-Book” on Nazi racial and other theories and on Nazi plans to foment unrest in foreign countries through the use of German minorities for fifth column activities, under the concept that blood ties are stronger than allegiance to a State, was issued today by the State Department.

The study, prepared by a special unit of the Division on European Affairs, establishes that the racial theory was first advocated in Germany by the composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883) who made it a basis for his anti-Semitism. “For Wagner,” the State Department’s document says, “racial purity was the touchstone for the value of a people, and he attributed the decay of the Germans, i.e. their falling away from the tradition of the romantic hero, to Jewish penetration.”

The document, entitled “National Socialism,” then goes on to analyze the ideas of “racial supremacy” developed by Alfred Rosenberg, the high priest of Hitler’s racial theory. “Rosenberg acclaims the new faith of the blood which is to replace the non-German religion of Christianity,” the study by the State Department points out quoting Rosenberg’s writings in which “the Jewish enemy race” is constantly assailed.

HITLER CLOAKS NAZI AIMS BY ASCRIBING THEM TO JEWS, DOCUMENT SHOWS

Portraying the attempts of the Nazis to organize and direct Germans or persons of German blood abroad for the furtherance of Nazi aims, the “White Book” declares that Hitler, “with his usual perfidity ascribed to the Jews

Disclosing how the Nazis have sought to impose obligations to Germany on persons of German descent whose ancestors left Germany generations ago to seek freedom and economic opportunity in other lands, the “White Book” reproduces a number of Nazi secret orders to Germans abroad on how to conduct subversive activities. It reveals that in 1938 the Nazis, for the first time, determined “to get rid of the Jews wherever possible outside Germany” and that they were supported by their military intelligence bureau. “After the Jews same other undesirables, from the Nazi point of view,” the document states.

TECHNIQUE OF NAZI FIFTH-COLUMN DESCRIBED; “STUERMER” CITED

“Nazi fifth columnism,” the document continues, “is a three-ring circus, built one ring inside the next. The innermost ring is represented by the normal espionage and intelligence service of the military establishment common to all governments. The middle ring is the Nazi Party organization. with its affiliated agencies operating on foreign soil. And the outermost ring is the socioeconomic situation of the workers and businessmen in the non-German country where the Nazi spies and fifth columnists are at work.”

The volume issued by the State Department reproduces a photostat from the notorious anti-Semitic paper “Der Steurmer” reporting the news that Marlene Dietrich, famous film star, had become an American citizen. Publishing a photograph of the scene in the federal court when the actress took her oath of allegiance, the Stuermer wrote: “The film actress Marlene Dietrich, who hails from Germany, has spent so many years with the movie-Jews of Hollywood that she has now become an American citizen, Much association with Jews has made her entire nature un-German.”

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