Nazi Agents in American Universities

The universities are too important a training ground for Nazi agents to ignore. A few professors in some of our universities have joined the growing list of anti-democratic propagandists. Some of them are German subjects and do not disguise their pro-Nazi bias; others carry on their propaganda as a “scholarly analysis” of the Hitler regime with a fervor, however, that smacks of the paid propagandist.

German exchange students, too, studying at some of our universities, are active in various efforts to draw native Americans within the sphere of Nazi influence. Some of these students came here ostensibly to study for degrees, but devote most of their time to spreading Nazi ideology and meeting with secret Nazi agents and military spies. Such was Prince von Lippe of the University of Southern California.

Von Lippe is not an American citizen as so many of the agents are. With no visible means of support, he received expenses from a total stranger oddly enough, Count von Buelow whose home overlooked the naval base in San Diego and who was constantly in conferences with Nazi agents. It was to Count von Buelow, you recall, that Hermann Schwinn brought Schneeberger as soon as he arrived on his way to Japan, and von Buelow took him around while Schneeberger photographed areas in the military and naval zone. A number of very secret conferences were held while Schneeberger was on the West Coast, in the home of Dr. K. Burchardi, a Los Angeles physician who visits Nazi ships with Schwinn and von Buelow (on one occasion Schneeberger summoned Burchardi to come with him to a Nazi ship which had just docked in Los Angeles and the physician dropped his work and went).

German exchange students, when they enter this country, are under instructions to report to the German-American Bund. On July 4, 1936, three exchange students a young lady and two young men entered Los Angeles while on a motor tour of the country. They were students at Georgia Tech. In Los Angeles they went directly to the Deutsches Haus and presented a letter of introduction to Hermann Schwinn who assigned them quarters at the home of Max Edgan, one of Schwinn’s lieutenants. The students then made a detailed report to Schwinn on the political work they were carrying out at Georgia Tech.

But the professors are the chief hope of Nazi agents attempting to spread the idea of totalitarian government and a bit of race hatred as the bait to attract some elements in the population. Some of the professors and some of their activities follow briefly:

Professor Frederick E. Auhagen, formerly of the German Department, Seth Low Junior College, Columbia University.

Dr. Auhagen came to this country in 1923 and worked as a mining engineer in Pennsylvania. From 1925 to 1927 he was with the Foreign Department of the Equitable Trust Co.; then became connected with Columbia University in 1927. He is not an American citizen and constantly refers to Germany as “my native country.”

This professor is one of the leading academic apologists for Herr Hitler in the United States. Besides carrying on his pro-Nazi propaganda in the classroom, he does a great deal of lecturing, sometimes appearing before the Foreign Policy Association. On one occasion, in an address before the Men’s Club of the Baptist Church at Rockville, Long Island, he stated that Seth Low Junior College was opened “in order to keep Hebrew faces off the campus at Columbia University.”

Auhagen never tried to hide his sympathies with Nazism. Preceding a debate on February 1, 1936, before the City Club of Cleveland, he gave press interviews as a Nazi, and in the debate upheld Hitler as the savior of Germany and world civilization. With a fervor far removed from professorial calm, he explained that American newspaper dispatches about the treatment of Jews and Catholics in Germany were exaggerated.

“As to criticism of Germany’s treatment of Catholics,” he said again in Denver, Colorado on July 26, 1935, “that is not true!”

Professor Frederick K. Krueger, of Wittenberg college, with whom Auhagen is rather closely identified in arranging and giving talks about Nazis and totalitarian government, at every opportunity issues press interviews along the same line. In them he explains that the anti-Nazi sentiment in the United States press does not represent the editors, but is dictated by Jews who “control the press, the motion pictures and other organs of public opinion.”

Because of the high scientific standing of Professor Vladimir Karapetoff of the Cornell engineering faculty, he is listened to with more attention and respect than are the more blatant propagandists for the adoption of fascist tactics and principles. Shortly after Hitler took power, the Professor started to do his share on the campus. At first he did it subtly, but when this made little headway he began to talk of the “growing domination of Jews in American life, politically as well as economically” and emphasized that the large number of Jews in the Law School and on the campus generally was becoming a problem.

“It’s the smooth-faced Jew whom we must fear,” he kept repeating, “and not the long-bearded Jewish rabbi.”

Not content with expressing personal opinions, he took to organizing groups, addressing them on the subject of the Jew; and on one occasion he called a special meeting of the Officer’s Club with the proviso that Jews be excluded.

Paul F. Douglas, teacher of German, Economics and Political Science at Green Mountain College, wrote a book, God Among the Germans, which purports to be an introduction to the mind and method of Nazism.

I have information coming from a reputable source that Dr. Douglas was paid by the Nazi Government to write the book. This source is unwilling to let his name be used, but is ready to testify and lay his information before any governmental body which will investigate the devious methods of Nazi agents in this country.

There are at various universities throughout the country other professors and instructors quite active in spreading pro-Hitler propaganda. Some of them meet with Nazi agents closely allied to the espionage machine. I offer only these few as illustrations of Nazi efforts to get footholds in the American universities.

Along with efforts to carry on their work in the universities, Nazi agents tried to get a foothold in the political life of the country by finding a few Republicans who were willing to use anti-democratic propaganda in their efforts to defeat Roosevelt during the Presidential campaign. At no time in American history did secret agents of a foreign power so brazenly attempt to interfere in the internal affairs of the American people. Nor at any time in American history did agents of a foreign government find such willing cooperation from unscrupulous American politicians.

Among those who worked with Hitler agents was Newton Jenkins, director of the Coughlin-Lemke Third Party. The Detroit Priest and the Congressman were fully aware, preceding and during the campaign, that Jenkins supported Hitler and was a Jew-baiter of the first order. They were aware of this while they were appealing for Jewish votes. The Radio Priest and the Congressman kept in constant touch with their campaign manager and knew what sort of government Jenkins wanted.

Jenkins’ association with Nazis dates to the days preceding the launching of the Presidential campaign. At that time he participated in a secret conference held in Chicago with the object of uniting the scattered fascist forces in the United States to form a powerful fascist united front. Among those who attended were Walter Kappe, Fritz Gissibl and Zahn three active Hitler agents assigned to the Mid-West area; William Dudley Pelley, leader of the Silver Shirts; Harry A. Jung, the ultra-"patriot”; George W. Christians of Chattanooga, Tenn., head of the American fascists; and several others. The conference ended with an agreement to support a Third-Party movement directed by Jenkins.

Throughout the campaign Jenkins stressed an exaggerated nationalism, advocated “party patrols” similar to Hitler’s storm troops and adopted the Nazi Jew-baiting tactics. His first public appearance with the Nazis was on October 30, 1935, at a meeting held in Lincoln Turner Hall, 1005 Diversey Building, Chicago. Uniformed storm troopers with the swastika on their arm bands patrolled the room. In the course of his talk he said:

The trouble with this country now is due to the money powers and Jewish politicians who control our Government. The Federal Treasury is being controlled by a Jew, Morgenthau, and a Jew, Eugene Meyer. The State, County and our own Municipal Government is being controlled by Jewish politicians. Our own Mayor signs what the Jews want him to sign. Nearly in every department of our country and local government you will find a Jew at the head of it. Not only under a Democratic administration but also under a Republican administration we will find the same conditions.... The American people must free itself from the money plunderers who have thrown this country into the World War and also a possibility of dragging them into the present war for private gain and shake off their shoulders the Jewish politicians. The Third Party promises to do both.

This is precisely the sort of stuff paid Nazi agents in the propaganda division are ordered to disseminate, and this is the man Father Coughlin and Congressman Lemke picked to direct their campaign.

It was a Nazi agent, Ernst Goerner of Milwaukee, who spread the story, aided by anti-Roosevelt forces, that Frances Perkins, Secretary of Labor, was a Jewess. The story received such wide publicity that she had to issue a public statement giving her birth and marriage records.

Goerner is one of the important Nazi agents in the Mid-West. He’s a bit eccentric and the Nazis sometimes have difficulty keeping him in line, but when Schwinn made a trip East shortly before the election campaign, he stopped off specially to see Goerner who thereupon sent a flood of propaganda throughout the country about Secretary Perkins’ ancestry as well as charges that Roosevelt and almost all Government officials were Jews.

It was after Schwinn’s trip to the East that other disseminators of anti-democratic propaganda, like Robert Edward Edmondson and James True, came to life in a big way. One of the penniless men who suddenly blossomed into the money after Schwinn’s trip East was Olov E. Tietzow, who used Post Office Box N in Chicago lest the fact that he lived at 715 Aldine Ave. be discovered.

Up until a few months before the campaign Tietzow was an unemployed electrical engineer who had difficulty paying the three-dollar weekly rent for his hall bed-room at the Aldine Ave. address. After Schwinn’s visit and meeting with him, Tietzow began to commute by air between Chicago and Buffalo where he opened a branch office.

Tietzow was tested out a little at first. He was put to work in the offices of the Friends of the New Germany on Western Ave. and Roscoe St., Chicago. In his spare time he worked out of 1454 Foster Ave., Chicago. A quotation or two from some of his letters will give an indication of his activities. On February 21, 1936, he wrote to William Stern, Fargo, N.D., a member of the Republican National Committee. He said in part:

Information about the so-called fascist movement here in the U.S.A. will be furnished by me if you so desire, together with other data you might be interested in. An opportunity to discuss our national problems and to lay before patriotic persons of means and influence and before national organizations my plans for a nationwide movement would be welcome....

This letter to a high Republican Party official was written after Tietzow had outlined the contents to Toni Mueller, Nazi agent in Chicago reporting directly to Fritz Kuhn.

Since most of the patrioteers were opposed to the New Deal and since some of them were already working with Nazi agents in this country, it was not long before they were going full blast in their “Save America” racket. The people of the United States, though they don’t talk much about it, are thoroughly patriotic in the fullest sense of the word. To accuse anyone of not being a patriot is almost worse than telling a man that he is a son of not quite a lady. The racketeers in patriotism long ago discovered that people would contribute to a “patriotic cause” if only to escape the reputation of being unpatriotic; and the racketeers have made a nice living out of it. For some of the patrioteers it has become a thriving business, with everybody involved except the suckers getting his cut. Some of the big “patriotic” organizations are really influential, and the small ones are hopefully struggling along in the expectation of bigger and better and more patriotic days when the pickings will be more than attractive.

Every time I start looking into organizations with high-sounding and impressive names, I am profoundly impressed with the accuracy of Barnum’s noted observation. Raise the cry of “patriotism” and perfectly good Americans forget to try to find out just what the “patriotic” activities are, and shell out without a murmur. Industrialists particularly like the “Americanism” of the patriotic groups because almost all of them incorporate an anti-labor policy. The propaganda, of course, is rarely conducted as an open fight against labor, but is put across as a fight to save America from the Communists.

Some of the racketeering patriotic organizations with a more or less devout following include the National Republican Publishing Company, Washington, D.C., the American Vigilant Intelligence Federation, Chicago, Ill., the Paul Reveres, Chicago, Ill., the Industrial Defense Association, Boston, Mass., the American Nationalists, Inc., New York, N.Y. and the American Nationalist Party, Los Angeles, Calif. There are a number of others, but these are some of the most blatant.

The National Republican Company, 511 11th Street, N.W., Washington, D.C., is one of the most influential. It publishes the National Republic, a journal accepted by men high in public office and by leading industrialists as earnestly trying to inculcate “Americanism” into Americans.

The National Republic has an amazing list of endorsers governors, mayors, senators, congressmen and nationally-known industrialists. The magazine is virtually the entire organization and is dedicated “to defending American ideals and institutions.” It is headed by Walter S. Steele, who was tied up with Harry A. Jung of the American Vigilant Intelligence Federation before he went into business for himself. While Steele was working with the ace of racketeers in patriotism, the president-editor of the National Republic also eked out a few pennies by distributing the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion.” Today, however, he confines himself chiefly to fighting Communism, spreading race hatred only when it is paid for in advertisements. Books distributed by Nazi propagandists in furthering their anti-democratic campaign such books as T.N.T. by Colonel Edwin Hadley and The Conflict of the Ages find space in the National Republic’s pages. Colonel Hadley headed the Paul Reveres which tried to organize fascist groups on American university campuses, and The Conflict of the Ages devotes a full chapter to the Nazi “proofs” of the authenticity of the “Protocols.”

I mention these to show the type of stuff Steele is willing to disseminate if he is paid for it. And by permitting the use of their names, the sponsors, consciously or unconsciously, aid him in his anti-American activities.

The detailed aims of the National Republic are to provide a “weekly service to twenty-three hundred editors, to defend American institutions against subversive radicalism; a national information service on subversive organizations and activities; an Americanization bureau serving schools, colleges and patriotic groups; conducted for the public good from Washington, D.C., by nationally known leaders.”

The procedure of conducting the organization “for the public good” includes high-pressuring the shekels from the suckers. Steele, a former newspaperman, learned from his association with that other arch-patriot, Jung. So when Steele established his own racket, he found one of his early aids in former Senator Robinson of Indiana. Robinson was closely tied up with the Ku Klux Klan. Through Robinson and through other politicians reached with the cry “Save America,” he got a long list of prominent sponsors and gradually increased it until now it reads like a Who’s Who of reactionary industrialists and innocent politicians. With letters of introduction from Senator Robinson, Steele’s high pressure gang set out to collect in the name of patriotism.

The procedure was simple. Salesmen presented their letters of introduction to the mayor of a city. The mayor was impressed with the high “patriotic” motives and especially with the imposing list of names sponsoring the efforts. The mayor introduced the high-pressure fellows to other people and the milking began.

Let me illustrate a little more specifically:

On March 4, 1936, Steele sent two of his ablest dollar-pullers, Messrs. Fahr and Hamilton, into the Oklahoma oil fields where the industrialists would like to see a minimum of 200 per cent Americanism instilled in the public mind. Messrs. Fahr and Hamilton had letters of introduction to Mayor T.A. Penny of Tulsa, Okla. When the salesmen approached the Mayor, they had not only the long and imposing list of names on the letterhead but additional letters of introduction from ex-Governor Curley of Mass., ex-Senator Robinson of Indiana and Congressman Martin Dies of Texas. The drummers wanted the Mayor to introduce them to the Chairman of the Tulsa Board of Education who could help them get funds in Tulsa and elsewhere. The funds were to be used to place the “patriotic” magazine in the public school system in order “to preserve this country against subversive activities, particularly Communism.”

It was a neat circulation-getting stunt, performed without Fahr and Hamilton telling what percentage of the take they got.

The Mayor gave the letters of introduction. With these letters and the excellent contacts thus established, they started down the sucker list from W.G. Skelly, head of the Skelly Oil Co., Tulsa to Waite Phillips of the Phillips Petroleum Co.

Like his former colleague Harry A. Jung, Steele works on the big industrialists by whispering confidentially that he has sources of information about which he can’t talk much but which make it possible for him to keep the industrialists informed about “subversive radicals.” For a reasonable price and perhaps a contribution to a worthy cause, Steele would supply the industrialist with “confidential information for members only” which would keep him up to date about the radicals threatening America. The “confidential information” must not be shown to anybody else. Extreme caution is necessary lest the radicals find out about the “information service.” With all this hocum, secrecy and whispering, the industrialist becomes a member at so much per not realizing that the information thus peddled can be got for three cents a day five cents on Sundays by buying the Daily Worker. It’s just one of the little patriotic rackets the boys have cooked up.

Working closely with Steele is James A. True of the James True Associates, another precious racketeer who stepped from patrioteering into efforts to organize in conjunction with Nazi agents a secret armed force in the United States. With True in this effort to establish a Cagoulard organization in this country, were some of the most active Nazi agents and patrioteers.