Fomenter Ousted

"There is no authorized representative of myself or the German National Socialist Party active in America. ... I have given strictest orders that not even lectures or speeches on National Socialism are to be given in America by members of my party.

"What good would it do me to waste money on propaganda in America? . . . No doubt Jews are at the bottom of such reports."

Thus spoke Adolf Hitler after a U. S. Federal warrant had been issued last week for the arrest of Heinz Spanknoebel, zealous fomenter of Nazi activities in the U. S., under a Wartime act which provides five years in jail or a $5,000 fine, or both, for "acting as a foreign governmental agent without notice to the Secretary of State." Heinz Spanknoebel promptly disappeared. Ships were searched at sea, detectives ferreted. Best opinion seemed to be that Nazi Spanknoebel was hiding somewhere among the beer kegs and singing waiters of Manhattan's Yorkville.

Heinz Spanknoebel, a pert young man with a shock of hair, came to live in the U. S. three years ago. A Seventh Day Adventist minister, he left his wife and children in Wurzburg, set up in Detroit as a photograph finisher. He made no attempt to become naturalized, and has always boasted of himself as "one of the original Nazis." With the accession of Chancellor Hitler, Heinz Spanknoebel was appointed head of the U. S. Nazis by Dr. Ley of the Nazi Foreign Propaganda Bureau in Hamburg. Mounting foreign protests, and the dismal failure of Nazi propaganda in foreign countries caused the Propaganda Bureau's official dissolution last July. Heinz Spanknoebel became leader of a milder organization of U. S. Teutons known as the "Friends of New Germany."

At a Manhattan meeting of leaders of the United German Societies early last week, the Ridder Brothers, proprietors of the New York Staats-Zeitung and the New Yorker Herold, influential U. S. German-language dailies, rose to charge Nazi Spanknoebel with attempting to dictate to their papers, charged that German Day was about to become a Hitler Day celebration. The audience jeered. A Dr. Griebl attempted to hit Bernard Ridder. Somebody twice pulled the chair out from under the Jewish treasurer, and a delegation of the United Societies Party wound up in City Hall to hear a riot act read to them by prognathous Mayor John Patrick O'Brien, who had forbidden the German Day celebration.

Freed for once from the embarrassments of his own campaign (see p. 21) the Mayor was superb. He stuck out his great jaw and roared questions at Herr Spanknoebel till the latter cringed in embarrassment. In random efforts to pronounce his name he called him "Spanknoobel," "Spanknoodle" and once "Stoopnagel."

Two days later the entire matter was threshed out in City Hall again, but by this time Heinz Spanknoebel had disappeared. The Federal Government started a search for him. The Ridder Brothers and other witnesses testified that he and other "Storm Troopers" had terrorized German-American societies, forced out their Jewish members.

"The matter then," said Mayor O'Brien who declined to rescind his ban on German Day. "has a broader aspect, and more serious, since there seems to be a secret invasion of the country!"

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.