Zapp Trapped

He lived in Manhattan's swank Waldorf-Astoria. A small, dark, dapper man, with horn-rimmed glasses and big beak nose anchored by a full mustache, he might have passed as a Hollywood executive, a clothing manufacturer or a prosperous refugee. Few would have spotted him for what he really was.

Last week a special Federal grand jury identified him in no uncertain terms. He was Dr. Manfred Zapp, 38, alias Hermann Nille, alias Otto W. Hermann, son of a Ruhr steel tycoon, head of the German Transocean News Service, and No. 1 Nazi propagandist for the U. S. and Latin America. After a five-month study of his activities by FBI, a Federal grand jury in Washington, D. C. indicted him and his chief aide, Guenther Tonn. (The Dies Committee picked up his trail seven months ago.)

The charges: that Zapp 1) registered as a foreign agent three months late; 2) then failed to admit his true connection with "officers and agents of the German Government" in spreading Nazi propaganda; 3) concealed his underground role in publishing the German White Paper, the documents allegedly seized in Poland which implicated Ambassador to France William C. Bullitt as promising that the U. S. would go to war for Poland. Trans-ocean and Guenther Tonn were indicted for complete failure to register.

Most sinister revelation concerned the Nazi news-dealings of Transocean News Service, an affiliate of D.N.B., an out-&-out propaganda mill. It receives most of its Nazi-needled news by short-wave radio. Some is relayed to the German-language press in the U. S. Bulk of Transocean news is consumed by Latin America, where many a small paper depends on it almost entirely for its foreign news (Mexico's foreign news is 25% to 30% Transocean). Reason: Transocean "news service" goes on just as regularly when papers do not pay for it as when they do. Transocean output is 5,000-10,000 words a day.

Zapp--Transocean veteran of South America and Africa--became Transocean head in 1938. Three months later he registered in the U. S. as a foreign agent--with significant omissions. One omission especially interested the grand jury--how Zapp contrived to distribute 60,000 copies of the First German White Paper, and where he got the copies.

The devious trail led to the Manhattan publishing house of Howell, Soskin & Co., whom Zapp "procured" to publish the German White Paper under its imprint. Thence, the charges continued, the trail led to Ralph Beaver Strassburger, rich, 58-year-old publisher of the prosperous Norristown (Pa.) Times Herald, who last summer fought hard to get the Republican nomination for Ham Fish. According to the Federal indictment, Zapp "procured" Strassburger to finance and distribute free more than 60,000 copies of the White Paper, while concealing the fact that he had anything to do with the deal.

Strassburger was not indicted. Excuse for his part in the deal was that he wished to expose Ambassador to France William C. Bullitt, who was accused in the White Paper of warmongering. Publisher William Soskin's secret testimony before the grand jury was not divulged.

Meanwhile, with Zapp and his chief assistant out on $10,000 bail, Transocean was doing business last week as usual. But if Zapp is convicted, Transocean's palmy propagandist days are very likely to be numbered.

Four days later in Berlin the Gestapo arrested Manhattan-born United Press Correspondent Richard C. Hottelet, charged him with spying for an "enemy power," refused to let either the U. S. Embassy or United Press communicate with him. Nazi officials, who said that any further information would come out in the trial, made a special point of denying that Hottelet's arrest was a reprisal for the indictment of Dr. Zapp. Washington thought differently. President Roosevelt promptly instructed the U. S. Embassy in Berlin to investigate to the hilt.

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