NAZIS IN U.S.A.

Waikato Times, Volume 125, Issue 20907, 12 September 1939, Page 8

NAZIS IN U.S.A.

COMMITTEE AT WORK ORGANISATION OF BUND NATIONAL HEAD EXAMINED The committee which is to investigate "un-American” activities, with Mr Martin Dies, a member of the House of Representatives from Texas, as its chairman, opened its public hearings today, reported a Washington message to the Times on August 16. Armed with a fund of 100,000 dollars from Congress, its agents have been at work since February, and, according to Mr Dies, have a mass of material large enough to keep the inquiry going until Chris Unas. The possibility that the labours of this committee, with their inevitable accompaniment of sensationalism, may embarrass the more orderly and discreet 'working of the Executive bureaux, operating in the same "unAmerican” field, is a source of some uneasiness to the Government. The first witness called this morning was Mr Fritz Kuhn, the national head of the German-American Bund, who left Germany in 1923, before the Munich beer cellar Putsch, and who told the committee that he had been a member of the German Reserve Officers’ Association and of the Stahlhelrn, but not of the Nazi Party. He is a naturalised American. Organisation of the Bund It was upon the organisation of the Bund, the character of its membership, and its income that questions turned during the morning session. Mr Kuhn was vague as to the number of members of the Bund. Membership lists had been destroyed upon his order about a year ago, when, as he said, there were newspaper rumours of an "investigation.” He set the entire strength at 20,000, a more modest figure than he had given earlier to the committee's chief investigator, and one which does not include “sympathisers,” who outnumber the members by three, four, or five to one. Membership is, though has not always been, strictly of American citizens, and a “cleansing” took place about the time that the order forbidding Germans to join such organisations was issued in Germany. There was no relation of cause and effect, Mr Kuhn insisted—the Bund had acted earlier —but he admitted having gone to the German Consulate for the checking of the Bund's lists. “What is wrong with that?” he asked. There are movements auxiliary to the Bund in which Mr Kuhn plays a directing part. He is the president of the German - American Business League, whose purpose is to support “Chris tian s torekeepers.” A payment of three dollars secures the listing of the store in a published hook, and members of the league, as an inducement to join, are given stamps which are used to validate a 3 per cent reduction on their purchases from “Christian” storekeepers.

WAR ITEMS The French newspaper, Le Matin, states that 0000 Slovaks have deserted and escaped to Hungary. A message from Copenhagen states that Germany is establishing a concentration camp to accommodate 1000 Poles. • • • • Jonkheer Michaels Van Yerduynen has been appointed Minister to Britain, says a message from The Hague. There is very little business at Bradford in tops because the topmakers are dissatisfied witli the. maximum llxed prices. A Ministry of Information communique states that British Honduras and Northern Rhodesia have joined the long list of dependencies and colonies offering assistance to the British cause.