-Caveat Lector- <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/"> </A> -Cui Bono?- an excerpt from: Treason's Peace Howard Watson Armbruster©1947 A Crossroads Press Book Beechurst Press New York 438 pps. -- First/Only Edition -- Out-of Print --[15]-- CHAPTER XV Propaganda for Wall Street and Washington "EVERY AMERICAN businessman should endorse what James S. Kemper, President of the United States Chamber of Commerce said in a statement issued on May 18th: "The primary concern of American business today is that our country will not become involved in any foreign war. Business is not looking for the advantage of war profits and definitely is opposed to sending American boys and young men to fight on foreign soil!" The pacifist views of Mr. Kemper, who was elevated to preeminence among business men and politicians by his title as President of the U. S. Chamber of Commerce, were thus extolled in the Bulletin of the Board of Trade for German-American Commerce for June 1940, during that tragic period of the war when Germany's ultimate victory appeared inevitable-providing a craven America could be persuaded to keep out of it, disarmed spiritually and physically, and thus he destined to stand alone in a final hour of German triumph. After the death of Wendell Willkie, on October 8th, 1944, it was revealed that when the Republican National Committee was being reorganized, he aided in assembling data which was published regarding the isolationist record of James S. Kemper, who had been appointed financial chairman for the Dewey campaign. He was designated to handle the task of securing contributions from those business men and industrialists who believed that their best chance for a peace-time set-up satisfactory to their purposes would be by a Republican victory in that November election. It would appear that Mr. Willkie, in examining Mr. Kemper's record, did not grasp the full significance of the use which had been made of the Kemper doctrines by the organization which had so praised his appeal to American industrial leaders that America must keep out of the war. This organization was the supposedly respectable Board of Trade for German-American Commerce, the New York offices of which were finally raided and closed in December 1941, when the secretary and editor, Dr. Albert Degener, was interned and later shipped back to his native Germany. Mr. Kemper's full statement as it appeared in the June, 1940, Bulletin, followed the usual isolationist line but was slanted to the viewpoint of businessmen by enlarging on the inevitable increase in our national debt and heavy taxes should we become involved in the war. It demanded that "we must be realistic and not emotional" by refusing to fight Germany. Insofar as the European war was concerned, profits rather than patriotism appeared the important thing for businessmen to consider. That this kind of an appeal in the name of the United States chamber of Commerce should have appeared in such a publication, and at such a time, is ominous. Probably neither Mr. Kemper, nor many of the respectable American business companies which belonged to the Board of Trade ever took the trouble to find out that this organization was registered with the State Department as a representative of foreign principals, the names of which included German I.G. Farben and other German industrial and financial enterprises which were tied into that huge war machine. However, these gentlemen could have discovered that many of its American members were affiliates or subsidiaries of I.G. Farben, and that its executive officers were employees of, or dominated by, I.G. Farben. The German-American Board of Trade as a source of pro-Nazi propaganda was immune until after we entered the war because of the apparent respectability and high position of some of its members. A fact which escaped Mr. Willkie and those who dug into Mr. Kemper's record is that ample evidence was available that this allegedly legitimate organization of businessmen engaged in import and export with Germany appears in reality to have been just another one of the "Tarnung" or false fronts of German I.G. Farben, set up in this country by its predecessors of the Dye Cartel and directed by its employes under cover of the names of respectable American companies which either did not realize its real purpose or which, for benefits received, were willing to act as stooges for the mighty I.G. Cartel. Chief organizer of the German-American Board of Trade, in 1924, was the notorious Herman Metz, who has already been revealed as one of the most obnoxious American agents of the Dye Cartel for a quarter of a century, a professed Democrat who in 1919 switched his political and financial support to the Republican Ohio gang and its weakling, Warren Harding, for President. Metz, as its first president, announced that the purpose of the German-American Board of Trade was to find proper outlets for American products in. Germany and to divert German imports in this country to channels where they would not conflict with American industries. To Metz it was to be a commercial "love thy neighbor" affair. (Love thy German neighbor—forget the war.) In 1934, when Metz passed to his reward, he was still president of the Board of Trade and by that time, according to evidence revealed before the Congressional Committee on un-American Activities, some of the board's officers and members were busily engaged in spreading the Nazi brand of sweetness and light (kill thy non-Ayran neighbor) in the United States. When legislation for return of enemy properties was pending in Congress in the 1920's, the German-American Board of Trade vehemently denounced all those who opposed this proposal with insistent demands that "American honor would be stained" unless all German properties we had seized were handed back. Again in the late 1930's it was the Farben Board of Trade that led the assaults on Washington, first in protest to the Treasury Department for imposing countervailing duties on German imports; and, after the war began, to the State Department for not breaking the British blockade. These Board of Trade gentry, from the time that it was organized, included a considerable number of those who during World War I had been engaged in similar subversive activities, in close cooperation with the American representatives of the German Dye Cartel of that earlier period. Herman Metz merely had the stage scenery repainted for the new false front-the actors and the action were frequently the same as before and during the first World War. When officers and directors of the German-American Board of Trade wrote to or appeared before Cabinet officials and Congressional Commijtees, they bad behind them a list of representative American corporations which appeared untainted by Nazi influence. They disguised and kept well in the background the I.G. Farben controlling influence. It was James S. Martin of the War Division of the justice Department, who later was to try to undue some of the post-war mess created by Farben's friends in Germany—who finally realized the true significance of the German-American Board of Trade as the headquarters where Metz and Ilgner had brought together the old crowd of Dye Trust pals of World War I with those newly added to Farben's Tarnung. And these important figures,' when associated with other influential personages who were untainted by Nazi ties, were then able to flaunt their high place in public banquets and thus launch materialistic propaganda aimed at the cream of America's social and political economy. In the fateful year of 1939 the Honorary President of the GermanAmerican Board of Trade was the late Julius P. Mayer, American-born top man of the Hamburg-American Steamship Lines in the United States for many years, the same Mr. Mayer who, during World War I, was closely associated with that notorious German spy, the American Bayer Company's Dr. Hugo Schweitzer; with the Kaiser's pay-off man, Dr. Heinrich Albert, and all the rest of the gang of German agents who made the Hamburg-American offices headquarters for propaganda, espionage, and sabotage during the war period until the United States Government finally raided it and sent some of its personnel to jail. Among Mr. Mayer's other World War I associates in the conduct of the earlier "Keep Us Out of the War" campaign, was none other than the still-celebrated Edward A. Rumely, who in April 19 was to win an acquittal after two trials on an indictment for refusal to show a Congressional Committee the names of contributors to his more recent activities. It was an executive secretary of the Committee for Constitutional Government, in which Mr. Frank Gannett was a prominent participant, that Mr. Rumely crossed swords with Congressional Committees in 1938 and 1944 for refusing to reveal the identity of those who put up the funds used by his new organization; much of which, before the war began, was violently isolationist and for anti-war. Mr. Rumely, being held in contempt by Congress his refusal to tell all, finally went free by grace of a second trial" jury, despite his earlier record as an ex-convict. It will be recalled that during the earlier war Rumely conspired with Bayer’s Schweitzer to purchase the New York Evening ail with secret German funds, and after the war served a jail term for these subversive activities. As was elsewhere shown he also came within the Sterling-Farben orbit in 1929. Mr. Mayer's training during the first war, which qualified him to become the honorary head of the Board of Trade in preparation for the next war, included membership in the fake German University League, a propaganda agency financed largely by the, American Bayer Company through H. C. Seebobm, Bayer’s secretary; with Dr. Schweitzer as a trustee, and all of the other important Bayer officers (including those who were indicted and interned) among its members. It was the president of this German University League, Dr. Edmund von Mach, who in February 1917, bombarded members of Congress with impudently worded pamphlets and letters attacking President Wilson's request for a declaration of war on Germany. President of the German-American Board of Trade in 1939 until he died on February 20th of that year, was Herbert A. Johnson whose ostensible business was that of handling publicity for the Leipzig Trade Fair (of Germany) in the United States. Mr. Johnson’s death occasioned a noteworthy tribute in the next issue of the Bulletin, which featured cables and letters of condolence received from Dr. Max Ilgner of Berlin (Head of Farben's Secret intelligence Bureau); attendance at the funeral of representatives of Farben's Chemnyco, Inc., and beautiful flower arrangements bearing the card of I.G. Farbenindustrie a.-g- of Frankfurt, Germany. (A long distance to say it with flowers.) However the actual director of the Board of Trade after Herman Metz died appears to have been the chairman of its executive committee, Rudolph Ilgner, brother of Max and head of Chemnyco, whose job there was described in the last chapter and discussed elsewhere. Rudolph Ilgner was indicted on the day Germany invaded Poland, for destroying evidence in the files of Chernnyco which a federal grand jury had demanded. This indictment was kept a secret from the public for a long time after it was handed down, but Mr. Ilgner and Farben knew about it, and in November 1939 the Board of Trade, with expressions of deep regret and praises for his invaluable services, accepted Mr. Ilgner's resignation as chairman of its executive committee. Perhaps the vote of thanks had special reference to Mr. Ilgner's criminal destruction of records which would have exposed some of the treasonable activities which were being conducted through the offices of Chemnyco and other Farben affiliates in the United States; or perhaps the Board's directors merely wished to pay tribute to their chairman for having arranged an elaborate reception and dinner at the Deutsche Verein in New York City in honor of Captain Fritz Weidemann who had just arrived in this country to become Consul General for Nazi Germany by order of Adolph Hitler, and who had acted, a few months before, as the official escort of former President Herbert Hoover during the latter's grand inspection tour of Nazi Germany in 1938 (of which more later). This Ilgner-Weidemann dinner took place some months before Captain Weidemann was exposed as Pacific Coast head of Nazi espionage and was ordered to get out—and stay out—of the United States. The Farben-Ilgner executive body of the German-American Board of Trade included Ernst Schmitz, director of the German Railroad Information Service; J. Schroeder and. C. J. Berk of the Nazi combined Hamburg-American and North German Lloyd Steamship Company and other notables. Mr. Schmitz's Information Services, financed by the Nazi government, had included engaging the public relations firm of Carl Byoir and Associates for $6,000 per month, presumably to give council to Americans how to become German tourists. The ubiquitous George Sylvester Viereck, editor of the German Library of Information "Facts on Review" was also on the Byoir payroll at $1,750 per month, plus many more thousands from other sources, helping to edit a propaganda sheet called the Ge rman-American Bulletin—for the guidance of the prospective tourists. Mr. Schmitz also tied in with the notorious Manfred Zapp, the Casanova head of the Nazi handout agency Transocean News Service, until the latter was interned and indicted in 1941; Transocean, according to information found in Zapp's files, was owned among others by I.G. Farben's Robert Bosch, and the Hamburg-American Lines. On November 30, 1939, according to a letter written by Mr. Schmitz, that member of the Board of Trade's directorate wrote inviting Zapp to attend a meeting at the Schmitz apartment in New York of a "number of people of the Intelligence Service of the Rome-Berlin Axis." This invitation gives some 'indication of the kind of people included in the management of the MetzIlgner-Farben Board of Trade. Mr. Schmitz, like Mr. Mayer, had World War I training in pro-German, anti-war activities; he was then an editor of the Ridder family's Staatz-Zeitung, which attained notoriety during the first war and, while preparations for the next war were under way, heaped editorial ridicule on the heads of those who saw the slightest impropriety in I.G. Farben's penetration into American munition industries. Mr. Schroeder, who had been with Hamburg-American for thirty years, was vice-president of the Board of Trade in 1939 as well as director and member of its executive committee; Schroeder, along with his North German Lloyd colleague, C. J. Berk, also aided in Vierecles editorial labors. Among the Hamburg-American propaganda activities during the second world war, as during the first one, was the transportation to this country of tons and tons of printed matter of the most vicious character such as Ivy Lee, Farben's American hired press agent, once described as "books and pamphlets, and newspaper clippings and documents, world without end." Incidentally it was the Hamburg-American-North German Lloyd, and the German Railroad Information Office which relayed from the Hitler government the funds through which Heinz Spanknoebel (until he was indicted and skipped) had financed the original gutter publication of the Nazis in this country Das Neues Deutschland (The New Germany). The Board of Trade's Mr. Schroeder saw to it that this alleged newspaper he was helping to finance had plenty of readers-in 1932 he sent a letter to each Hamburg-American employe instructing them to join the Friends of New Germany. The ships of these German lines, including the Bremen and Europa, when docked in. New York between trips, were thrown open to the Bund and other Nazi groups, for meetings and banquets in full uniform. The Hamburg-American did yeoman service in the inside job of softening up America for World War II—just as it did for World War I. Officers of the Board of Trade who were not members of the select Ilgner committee included Dr. Degener, already mentioned, and Heinrich Freytag its Treasurer, who was also an employee of the German Embassy at Washington. Dr. Degener, according to evidence said to have been seized and suppressed by the McCormack Committee in 1934, contributed large sums to Nazi organizations in America. Degener started a red hot campaign against the anti-Nazi boycotts when they began in 1933; he threatened publicly that the boycott would cost this country's businessmen their most profitable customers in Germany, and the interest on over two billion dollars of American investments in the Fatherland. Degener was particularly bitter at New York City's LaGuardia for a dvocating the boycott; he denounced the -pugnacious Little Flower for endangering what he termed the "Peaceful relations" between the United States and Germany. One of the directors of the Board of Trade in 1939 when the war began was our old friend Dr. Eugene R. Pickrell. This ubiquitous gentleman, still on Farben's payroll as revealed in the preceding chapter, was now listed as a customs attorney, his office was across the hall from the Trade Board at 10 East 40th Street, New York City; and he made another trip to Washington on December 1, 1939 with Dr. Robert Reiner then president of the Trade Board, to protest bitterly to Secretary Hull against the British embargo on exports from Germany. These Farben Board of Trade protests in 1939, after Germany bad gone to war, at 'interference with the rights of American citizens to engage in trade with Germany, were framed in almost the same words as those made by the Dye Cartel's Herman Metz to Secretary Bryan, and to President Wilson himself in 1915 about the British blockade in Germany's first world war. History repeats. Carl Schreiner, of the Pilot Insurance Company of New York, was also a director of the German-American Board of Trade in 1939. Back in World War I days Schreiner had achieved notoriety through mention as an alien enemy in a justice Department report on what was called the German Insurance Pools conspiracy, the purpose of the pool being to fight the British boycott and blacklist by the creation of dummy insurance companies. The justice report indicated that the German Dye Trust's American Bayer and Cassella outfits were involved in this insurance monkey business. Another 1939 director of the Farben Trade Board whose name recalls World War I was George W. Simon, listed as vice-president of the Heyden Chemical Company. Back in 1915, Mr. Simon was chief chemist for the Heyden concern when Dr. Hugo Schweitzer put over his phenol deal on Tom Edison with the assistance of Simon's father-in-law, Richard Kny. It was Heyden, it may. be recalled, who purchased the surplus Edison phenol and used it in making drugs in order to prevent its conversion into munitions for use against Germany. Active in the behind-the-scenes affairs of the German-American Board of Trade until the end was Dr. Kertess, whose jail term and espionage escapades appear in the previous chapter. To be always available, Dr. Kertess moved his offices to the same building as those of the Trade Board and his colleague, Dr. Pickrell, and as a supporter of Nazi propaganda, in 1939, helped to found the notorious American Fellowship Forum, whose "Today's Challenge" was edited by George Sylvester Viereck (before he was jailed), and whose National Director was Dr. Friedrich Ernst Auhagen, former instructor at Columbia University, who was also jailed for failure to register as a German agent, and, when he got out, was promptly interned as an enemy alien, and his citizenship revoked. Dr. Kertess protested to the Dies Committee in 1941 that he took no active part in organizing the Forum, but it developed that he paid the rent for its offices on West Forty-Second Street, New York, out of his personal funds. The vice-president of his Chemical Marketing Company, Richard Koch, was one of its founders, and when Dr. Auhagen retired as Director, Dr. Kertess became one of the holders of the registered title of the Forum. Until he got into difficulties with the law, Dr. Kertess devoted much time and talent to arranging a grandiose plan for what he called the "Organization of German Industry in America after the War." This peace-time absorption of American industry was to be managed by none other than the Board of Trade for German-American Commerce—with Dr. Kertess and other representatives of I.G. Farben as Directors. A 1939 director of the German-American Board of Trade who had an exemplary record as an American-born citizen and who engaged in pronounced isolationist propaganda, was James D. Mooney, World War I veteran, Lieutenant-Commander, U. S. N. R., and vice-president of General Motors Corporation. One of Mr. Mooney's anti-war contributions was an appeal on the subject which was introduced into the Congressional Record by Democratic Senator E. C. Johnson of Colorado, reprinted and distributed as a pamphlet and then published in amplified form in the Saturday Evening Post, August 3, 1940, under the title 'War or Peace in America." In that article Mr. Mooney described the horrors of war and Germany"s defense of her own position. He criticized our attempt to aid England as futile, and insisted that the influence of the United States should be directed toward saving England a further beating by using our strength in the situation to compel a peace with Germany. As a native-born American, Mr. Mooney was in strange company among some of the German nationals of the Board of Trade. According to Who's Who of 1940-41 Mr. Mooney was awarded the "Order of Merit of the German Eagle." Apparently some one in the Fatherland Eked his brand of Americanism. In the Bulletin of the Board of Trade for October, 1940, General Motors' Mr. Mooney was quoted as saying, with reference to our possible entrance into the war: " On the day was is declared, we can kiss democracy good-bye." When Mr. Ilgner threw a banquet it was a sumptuous affair, with big names on the seating list overshadowing the identity and purposes of those in the background. For a grand luncheon which he gave in the name of the German-American Board of Trade on May 27,1937, to honor His Excellency Dr. Hans Heinrich Dieckhoff, the German Ambassador, parts of the seating list read like a directory of representatives of Farben hideouts and affiliates in this country. One table seated I.G. Farben's distinguished Director Dr. Wilhelm Ferdinand Kalle, along with Sterling's president, A. H. Diebold; General Dyestuffs E. K. Halbach; Synthetic NitTogen's A. L. Mullaly; W. P. Pickhardt of the old Badische agency; and Dr. E. R. Pickrell, the Metz handyman. With these close pals of Farben sat E. H. Meiji, vice-president of the J. Henry Schroder Banking Corporation, of New York and London, lending a high note of Anglo-American financial approval to that group, and Ferdinand Andreas, Prince of Liechtenstein, added a touch of royalty. Another table was graced by Rudolph Ilgner himself; Dr. K. Hochswender, of Magnesium Development and Chemnyco and D. A. Schmitz, of General Aniline. Among other Farben affiliates American Bemberg Company was represented by director H. W. Springorum; Fezandie & Sperrle by Oscar E. Sperrle." Scattered through the seating arrangements were George Sylvester Viereck and Fritz Kuhn (this was some time before these two were convicted and locked up), also another celebrated pair, Dr. F. E. Auhagen and Dr. A. Degener (this was also before that couple were picked up by the F.B.I.). Two other notables who graced this gathering were Dr. Herbert Gross who hired an American spy for Dr. Kertess, as revealed in the previous chapter; and Col. Ed. Emerson, notorious as a German agent during both world wars. Theodore Dinkelacker and Willy Luedtke, national leaders of the Bund, were also present. It was what might be called a "mixed" gathering. On the dais with the guest of honor and Board of Trade officers sat James D. Mooney of General Motors; Editor Victor F. Ridder; F. W. La Frentz, president of the American Surety Corp.; Col. Sosthenes Behn, of the International Telephone & Telegraph, and other notables. It surely appeared to be a representative peacetime gathering of influential American citizenship. When its connections are noted it may be more readily understood that this Farben organized and directed Trade Board was so respectable or so powerful, even after its offices had been raided and closed in December 1941, that its name was conspicuously missing from the long list of propaganda agencies, espionage hideouts and subversive organizations which was published as defendants or participants in four blanket indictments handed down in the District of Columbia in 1941-'42 and '43, out of which George Sylvester Viereck drew one conviction in 1942, which was reversed by the Supreme Court, and one in 1943, which put him back in jail. The Trade Board's subversive activities were largely ignored by the Dies Committee when the latter partially uncovered many of the less important pro-Nazi propaganda agencies in the United States, and by the Truman and Bone Senate Committees when they partially lifted the lid on other Farben-American hideouts. It remained for hard-hitting James S. Martin, Chief of the justice Department Economic Warfare squad to bring out some of the background facts and pre-war activities of the Board of Trade in testifying before Senator Kilgores Sub-Committee on War Mobilization in September 1944. Ample evidence has been revealed in Chapter II and elsewhere in this story that the German I.G. through Bayer and other American fronts engaged in propaganda, espionage and sabotage prior to and during World War I. The Ivy Lee advisory service engaged by Farben as discussed in Chapter X revealed how that agency of the dye trust continued its propaganda activities in anticipation of World War II. In considering much of the evidence relating to appeals for pacificism, isolation and disarmament, it is frequently difficult to distinguish criminal propaganda from the protest which arises in the idealism of thousands of patriotic citizens whose normal, sincere hatred of war formed the nucleus of much of the pre-war sentiment which has divided public opinion in the United States on, our mythical isolation. To step away from the domestic scene for the moment, we might consider the "Union of Democratic Control" of London which, in 1932, published an expose of what its authors described as the secret "Bloody International" or munitions combination, which included I.G. Farben and was accused of continually conspiring to cause wars in order to reap profits from the resulting demand for battleships, guns and munitions. This pamphlet advocated abolition of private manufacture of arms and munitions to insure world peace by disarmament. This was the same, thesis which allegedly motivated the United States Senate Munitions Committee in 1934 when it uncovered the hold that Farben had already secured on our national defense industries—and then did nothing about it except to aid in weakening our own security. Evidently the idealistic English group was not directly inspired by Farben; actually that doctrine of disarmament thus preached was an integral part of the pattern of propaganda of the German dye trust in the period before we entered World War I, and again in the period before we entered World War II. When we examine the activities of many of the peace groups in the United States during the last pre-war period, it must be admitted that thousands of those men and women were sincerely patriotic citizens who would be quick to rebuke the suggestion that their detestation of war was induced even indirectly by foreign propaganda. One such group was World Peaceways Inc., of New York City,, the letterhead of which carried the names of many distinguished citizens. This organization advertised its demands for peace by picturing the fact that women and children would be killed in the next war. On June 26, 1941, it issued an appeal for funds, copy of which was handed to me, with a message entitled "A Referendum on War." Accompanying that World Peaceways circular letter was a single page entitled "Sorry to Bother You," on which a wistful-looking youth asked you to talk over his plea to: Be a little careful, willya, about whether you send me to war or not. I mean, I'd hate to have you send me over to fight and maybe die . . . . and then find out you'd made a mistake again, etc. Underneath was the demand: Keep America from making mistakes with her boys' lives. Write to the President today. Issued by World Peaceways, Inc. 103 Park Ave., New York. This appeal was sent out a few short weeks before the near tragedy in the Congress of the United States, on August 12, 1941, when the addition of just one more negative vote would have destroyed the training of our new Army. The vast majority of members of World Peaceways, and of its contributors, who would bitterly resent an intimation that I.G. Farben or any of its friends had anything to do with this organization, may be equally indignant to have it appear that an elaborate radio program which was staged in the name of World Peaceways some years previously was paid for by a pharmaceutical house which enjoyed close relations with Farben affiliates in the United States, and the head of which was reported to have approached Farben officials at Berlin with the intention of offering the latter a participation in the business of this company in the United States. After Pearl Harbor, contributions were again solicited World Peaceways in letters stating that funds were needed to enable it to resume advertising-to educate leadership for the next peace. Other expressions of this same type of idealism were found in numerous articles and books published in America during that critical period when it seemed at times that the people of the United States, and its government, would never start to arm, or take a stand until too late to do so—except alone. One such book was 'War, Peace & Change" by John Foster Dulles, published in 1939, a very studious pre-war volume which indicated the author's conclusion that quarantine, non-recognition and sanctions were not solutions for problems of aggression by "dynamic" nations such as Germany, Italy and Japan. Mr. Dulles appeared to praise the peoples of these countries and to believe that they should not be confused with adventurers, soldiers of fortune or criminals, who might be "safely" repressed. The arguments and the peaceful desires of Mr. Dulles as thus expressed were no doubt welcome to the peace-at-any-price idealists of this country during that tragic period. It may also appear that they were equally welcome to those who in Germany were guiding the behind-the-scenes preparations for war. Thus the great value for Farben of the propaganda agencies controlled or guided from within the membership of the German American Board of Trade was the fact that among its members were honorable American companies and individuals whose commercial relations with Germany were legitimate and of long standing. For this reason the Trade Board for a long time was looked upon as above suspicion and as it spoke for business-big business at that-it was not subjected to that kind of public suspicion and distrust which was attached to groups like the Bund in the minds of many citizens during the decade before the entry of the United States into World War II. When on June 16, 1941 the United States Government struck its first real blow at Nazi propaganda and subversive activities in this country, the three organizations which were ordered to close up with the twenty-four German consulates for "Activities of improper and unwarranted character" were the German Railroad Information Office; German Library of Information, and Transocean News Service—as three of the principal Nazi propaganda agencies in this country. All of these were tied in with the I.G. Farben—directed German-American Board of Trade as a clearing house for information, and a safe refuge until then for their personnel. But the Board stayed open until after Pearl Harbor. When President Harry S Truman, in December 1945, stated that the American people were responsible for what happened at Pearl Harbor as much as were our military forces, it might appear that our Chief Executive overlooked several highly important factors which are brought to light in this book, and especially in this chapter. Granted that the spiritual disarmament of the American people was due in part to the genuine idealism and pacificism of many honorable citizens, the fact remains that much of that idealism had a materialistic background, and much of this was induced, directly or indirectly, by the top level propaganda created and broadcast among our most influential circles to which I. G. Farben was able to appeal through the highly respectable Board of Trade for German-American Commerce. The President, in that blanket indictment of American public opinion, overlooked what is perhaps the more important aspects of Farben's secret weapon-of influence at the top levels of industry, finance, and politics—which made it impossible for those who not only saw what was coming, but wanted something done about it, to be heard. Regardless of how the President's remarks may be taken, the excuse may be offered that when the Bulletin of the subversive agency parading as a Board of Trade publicized the isolationist views of Republican Finance Chairman James S. Kemper it meant no more than when the opinions of other prominent American citizens were likewise broadcast in this or any other publication. It is thus interesting to examine the contents of an issue of the German-American Commerce Bulletin which appeared in March 1941, somewhat later than that containing Mr. Kemper's appeal. Many of the articles and editorials in this issue were emphatic pro-Nazi, anti-war propaganda appealing to the "business as usual" and appeasement sentiments of its readers. Various Farben officials and Farben's war-time accomplishments, making Germany now invulnerable, received mention in sketches and news articles. Included were pleas for appeasement of Germany and isolation for this country by pacificist advocates like General Robert E. Wood, National Chairman of the America First Committee, and Dr. Edward Lodge Curran, who stated that current "war mongering propaganda" ignored the fact that we had fought two wars with Great Britain in our history. A New York Daily News artic le, also bitterly anti-British, was reprinted, and the leading article, entitled "German-Americans in the World War," by Frederick Franklin Schrader, compared the hostility to German nationals in the United States during World War I, to current harrowing reports of racial persecutions by the Nazis in Germany. A description of Mr. Schrader as a well known author of historical works failed to mention other activities, such as associate editorship of the Fatherland propaganda journal published during World War I, by our old friend George Sylvester Viereck; and during the present war again assisting the Viereck literary efforts as editor of Facts in Review, for the German Library of Information. According to Congressional records, Schrader was also for a time editor of Deutscher Weckruf und Beobachter, official organ of the German-American Bund, which, it need not be said, circulated, among citizens of much lower levels of society than those of the highly refined industrialist readers of the Board of Trade Bulletin. In such select company there was also published in this same' issue of the Bul letin an urgent appeal to its readers to read a book entitled "Shall We Send Our Youth to War," which was described as a "a plea . . . that the United States should stay out of the war." This book, which appears to have escaped the notice of the literary reviewers of this country, recited from the personal experiences of its author the "unparallelled famine and pestilence" which resulted from World War I. A few of the sig-nificant passages in the book may be quoted here: Amid the afterglow of glory and legend we forget the filth, the stench, the death of the trenches. We forget the dumb grief of mothers, wives and children. We forget the unending blight cast upon the world by the sacrifice of the flower of every race. We may need to go to war again. But that war should be on this hemisphere alone and in defense of our firesides or our honor. We should hold. that the basis' of international relations should not be force, but should be law and free agreement. The first thing required is vigorous, definite statement from all who have responsibility, both publicly and privately, that we are not going to war with anybody in Europe unless they attack the Western Hemisphere. The second thing is not to sit in this game of power politics. These are the American policies that will make sure that we do not send our youth to Europe to War. The author of this book also stated that prior to World War I he had lived with the "invisible forces which moved its causes,. that he knew Europe intimately, "not as tourist but as a part of my workaday life," and that in 1938 he had spent 'some months in Europe with unique opportunity to discuss its problems with the leaders of fourteen nations." On the cover of this book is a picture of a soldiers' cemetery, row after row of little white crosses; with quotations from the book and a blunt request: If you want the United States to keep out of war, here is a book to send to your friends, to your Representatives, to all people who have power, directly or indirectly, to sway public and legislative opinion. Neither The New York Times nor the Herald Tribune book review sections ever mentioned this book, and according to the Book Review Digest, no other literary publication gave it any notice. That honor was reserved for the Bulle tin of the German American Board of Trade, which urged its purchase and also announced its author to have been Herbert Hoover, former President of the United States and Elder Statesman of the Republican party who strangely enough was to be elevated an expert emeritus on post-war problems of world famine by President Truman. In reply to my inquiry, Mr. Thomas R. -Coward, of Coward, McCann, Inc., advised that the book was contracted for with the personal representative of Mr. Hoover, and that insofar as he knew, no one connected with the German-American Commerce Bulletin had anything to do with it. This statement may be accepted as entirely sincere as would be the protestations from thousands of Mr. Hoover's followers that his sentiments did credit to him and were shared by many others. The fact remains that the German-American Commerce Bulletin appears to have been the only publication in which mention of this book appeared. And that Bul letin was the official organ of the Board of Trade for German-American Commerce, Inc., the organization started by Herman Metz, in 1924; registered with the State Department as the agent of a foreign principal; and directed, in 1939, by Rudolph Ilgner, head of Chemnyco, the patent-holding and espionage outfit maintained by Farben in the United States. And Mr. Hoover's guide in Europe in 1938 during his 'unique opportunity to discuss its problem? was Captain Fritz Weidemann. The position occupied in the public mind by our only living ex-President, a highly educated man of long experience in international affairs, gave dignity and impressiveness to his demands that we keep our sons out of the war—unless—and until-the invasion of the American continents should begin. (This, could only have occurred after Hitler had conquered Europe.' and had landed in the Argentine, or Panama, or Long Island.) So Mr. Kemper, again the National Committee Treasurer, was still in good Republican company. 286-304 ----- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, All My Relations. Omnia Bona Bonis, Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soap-boxing! 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