WASHINGTON, (JTA)—American Nazi, Fascist and anti-Semitic organizations are engaged in a form of racketeering as well as in subversive activities, the Dies Committee found in a preliminary report of its investigations. The primary aims of the Nazi-Fascist organizations, the committee said, are: (1) a radical change in the American form of Government, and (2) collection of dues from such misguided citizens as will support them.
Warning “all our citizens against aping the methods of foreign dictators,” the committee said: “In these times when democracy is harrassed from many sides, peewee Hitlers have arisen in our midst urging our people, through an unprecedented volume of propagandistic literature, to resort to force and violence against large sections of our population.” The Nazi leaders were characterized as “aspiring Fuehrers” and “would-be Caesars.”
“The voluminous correspondence in this committee’s possession’” the report said, “shows that time and time again these American Fuehrers have proposed to each other the necessity and justification of military action. Some of the groups which our committee has been investigating use the Swastika as their official emblem and almost without exception all of them profess admiration for Hitler and his regime.”
The first part of this report dealing with the inroads of Nazism on the United States was released after the committee finished hearing the weird career of William Dudley Pelley, whose presses spew tons of anti-Semitic literature, described by investigators. Two more sections of the report will be released this week. Tuesday of next week the committee will shift its investigation to Communism, when Earl Browder, secretary of the Communist Party, will be called.
The Southern Jewish Weekly, Jacksonville, FL, September 8, 1939