WAR & PEACE: Dr. Ried’s Occupation

WAR & PEACE

Nazi propaganda overseas is organized with characteristic German precision. In the chosen spot, first a paper or magazine is printed in German to pump local Germans full of Nazi propaganda. Next, schools are started where small tots ab sorb a Nazified version of the three Rs. It is a systematic penetration of the Hitler ideology, generaled from Berlin, executed by experts.

One such expert is affable Dr. Friedrich Ried, whose six fruitful years in Brazil were a joy and comfort to his Nazi bosses at home. During those six years Dr. Ried busily administered the second phase of Nazi penetration by setting up some 1,000 Nazi schools in the province of Rio Grande do Sul, coaxing 58,000 German and Brazilian small fry into the classes. But Brazilian patience finally cracked, and by this summer Dr. Ried received his walking papers.

To the Rio Grande do Sul went Richard Paulig, an assistant in the German Consulate in Manhattan, and Dr. Ried went north to fill Paulig’s shoes. Day after he had settled himself at work, the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League rushed a note to the State Department reviewing the Ried record. Three days later a “thank you” letter came back explaining that no information had yet been received as to Ried’s U. S. duties. There the matter lay until last week when the Ried cries grew louder as the New York Post’s Daniel Lang tracked him down, wrote an interview in which talkative Dr. Ried gladly discussed his South American success. As other papers picked up the story the nervous Anti-Nazi League, remembering that a pro-Nazi magazine (Die Neue Woche, edited by Propagandist Dr. Manfred Zapp, in format somewhat resembling TIME) was already running full force, again warned the State Department: “If he does not take over certain of the activities of Dr. Friedhelm Drager [German vice consul in Manhattan] … he will probably occupy the position of confidential fifth-column adviser to Consul General Borchers.” Last week Acting Secretary of State Sumner Welles told his press conference that the case of Friedrich Ried was “under consideration.”