Bund Banned

If a nationwide vote were taken to discover the most despised politico-social organization currently extant, the Amerikadeutscher Volksbund would stand at least a fair chance of winning. A group of some 125,000 U. S. citizens of German blood and clubby tendencies, it is hated in the U. S. as an offspring of Naziism. In Germany it is apparently equally scorned by the Hitler Government: 1) as a feeble, provincial imitation, and 2) as a source of damaging publicity.

Several months ago U. S. disapproval of the German-American Bund twice got the organization into the headlines characteristically. First, the peaceful village of Southbury, Conn. refused to permit establishment of a Bund camp on village property. Then a midwestern Bund convention was postponed twice because of difficulty in finding a St. Louis hall in which to hold it. Last week the Bund encountered trouble again, this time from another source. In Washington German Ambassador Dr. Hans Heinrich Dieckhoff called on Secretary Hull to announce that the German Government had again warned its 350,000 nationals residing in the U. S. that they "must not belong to" the Bund or any "possible substitute organizations of that kind." In New York Bund leaders promptly announced that since their membership for two years past has been restricted to U. S. citizens, the requests of the German Government did not affect them at all. Nonetheless, Ambassador Dieckhoff's statement, for which he got the State Department's hearty thanks, aroused again the familiar question of what the Bund is, what it wants and whether it can get it.

Origin of the Nazi movement in the U. S. antedates the Hitler regime by ten years. In 1923 the Teutonia Society, patterned vaguely on Klan principles, was the biggest of a dozen or so similar groups whose members gave aid to the National Socialist Party in Germany throughout the late 20's. In 1933 these groups were merged as "Friends of New Germany," run by Heinz Spanknobel, a Nazi party member. Herr Spanknobel, indicted by a New York Federal Grand Jury for failing to register as the agent of a foreign nation, speedily fled to Nazi Germany. In 1934 a Congressional Committee investigated the Friends of New Germany, found it "for ail practical purposes the American section of the Nazi party." The Friends changed this name to Amerikadeutscher Volksbund in 1936, resumed functioning under the leadership of a sleek, pompous, garrulous ex-chemist named Fritz Kuhn whose offices in Manhattan are decorated by portraits of Franklin Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler.

Germans are by nature joiners. How much the Bund is actually an undercover wing of Naziism and how much the innocent modern equivalent of an old-fashioned Turnverein is highly debatable, even among Bund members. Major operations of the Bund are week-end outings, where members in grey uniforms with Swastika brassards are drilled in German military tactics, sing German songs, listen to speeches in favor of Adolf Hitler. Dues of $9 a year partly go to buy camping sites, of which the Bund has 27 in as many cities. They also pay the salaries of Fuehrer Kuhn and the district leaders whom he appoints. Major Bund centres are New York, Milwaukee and Los Angeles. Separate editions of the Deutscher Weckruf are printed in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Los Angeles. Unfortunately for its reputation as a legitimate wing of Naziism, the Bund did not suffer in the least when the Hitler Government disavowed all interest in it for the first time, two years ago. Instead, its membership steadily rose.

Major stated aims of the Bund are: 1) to fight the Jewish boycott on German goods, and 2) to stand as the nucleus of a U. S. army to defend the country against Communism. To achieve the first, Bund members are urged to patronize only stores run by Aryans who give members stamps entitling them to a discount relative to the amount they purchase. To achieve the second, Bundsmen have thus far done no more than make impassioned homesick speeches, parade with wooden guns. Sleek Mr. Kuhn, who looks and talks like an embryo Goering, last week failed to lead his organization through its latest crisis. He was in Brussels for an "antiCommunist" meeting with two other equally unsuccessful but considerably more authentic advocates of totalitarian government--Belgium's Leon Degrelle, France's Franc,ois Casimir de La Rocque.

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