UNDERGROUND ARMIES
IN
AMERICA
event a war finds the United States on the
131
enemy
side or,
if
neutral, supplying arms and materials to the enemy.
The first step to prevent such a development is to build
an
enormous propaganda machine and to draw into it as many
native Americans as possible. Because of the future potentiali
ties of natives as spies and saboteurs, the Nazi leaders take ex
traordinary precautions to safeguard their identities. Should the
United States become involved in a war with fascist powers,
especially Germany, the German members of the Bund can be
watched and, if necessary, interned; but native Americans not
known as Bund members can move about freely, hence the
care to prevent their identities from becoming known. Schwinn,
for instance, keeps a regular list of the German-American Bund
members at the Deutsches Haus in Los Angeles. The native
American members, however, are not listed. The names are kept
in code and only Schwinn knows the code numbers.
Military considerations thus lead the Nazi General Staff to
this propaganda in the United States, despite the
maintain
knowledge Nazi leaders in Germany have that its activities and
distasteful propaganda here are seriously hampering GermanAmerican commercial relations.
The propaganda machine is already functioning as the Ger
man-American Volksbund. The second step, as was demonstrated
in France with the Cagoulards and in Spain with Franco s Fifth
Column, is to organize secret armies capable of starting sporadic
outbreaks tantamount to civil wara procedure which would
naturally deflect the country s energies in war time.
This second step was taken after careful study, and Henry D.
Allen was chosen as the liaison man between those maneuvering
the plot.
The
private letters exchanged between Allen and his fellow
are now in my possession. Some of the letter*
were signed with the writers real names and some
exchanged
conspirators
with code names. Allen
s
code name, for instance,
is "RosenthaL"