CONGRESS: Hitler’s Shadow

If Adolf Hitler’s daily doings had not been so fully accounted for in the press last week, janitors and lollers might have looked twice at a sight in a hearing room in the House Office Building. Even so, those who did look blinked. Up to testify before the Dies Committee on UnAmerican Activities strode a militant-looking Hitler counterpart clad in a brownshirt uniform and Sam Browne belt, with a dab of mustache and a Führerish haircut. Cameras clicked and Chairman Dies, who had lately been short of headlines, beamed.

The witness was John C. Metcalfe, a newspaperman who joined Nazi Fritz Kuhn’s German-American Bund in order to spill its secrets in Chicago’s tabloid Times. Put on the Dies Committee payroll as an investigator, he testified before it two months ago that the Bund, on the surface a minuscule singing, beer-bibbing and marching society, was in reality a hateful Nazi network with some 500,000 U.S. sympathizers. Last week Chairman Dies made a timely move by recalling Witness Metcalfe to repeat and amplify his previous testimony, having him dress in his Bund uniform for photographers.

What Mr. Metcalfe had to say was almost as lurid as his appearance. The Bund, said he, was a fighting subversive force that had penetrated into U. S. navy yards and aircraft factories, was prepared to “muster a force” of 5,000 soldiers. Some of Witness Metcalfe’s quotations :

Bundsman Albert Zimmer of Cincinnati: “No one knows this, but we have a permanent list of silent contributors. Most of these persons are wealthy . . . so I keep a double set of books.” Declared Witness Metcalfe: “It is generally understood in Bund circles that some prominent American industrialists are helping to finance the movement.”

Bund Führer Kuhn: ” I have a special arrangement with Hitler and Germany that whenever any of our groups have trouble with the consuls in their districts they are to report it to me in full detail. I then take it up with the Ambassador.” According to Mr. Metcalfe, Ambassador Hans Dieckhoff replaced former Ambassador Hans Luther because Herr Luther did not step properly for the Bund.

This last was too much for chunky little Ambassador Dieckhoff, who trotted to the State Department to protest to Secretary Hull. He pointed out that Germany has done all it can do by forbidding its own nationals to join the Bund. “Un-officially,” Embassy Counselor Dr. Hans Thomsen called Witness Metcalfe untrustworthy. Counselor Thomsen asked why the Dies committee did not call Führer Kuhn to testify.

Chairman Dies retorted that he would call Fuhrer Kuhn on condition that he produce all Bund records. Then he added: ”We have almost conclusive evidence that Kuhn ordered all Bund posts throughout the U. S. to destroy their records. . . .”

A few days later, when Leader Kuhn turned up in uniform to address a Bund meeting at Union City, N.J., a crowd of 2,000 anti-Nazis interrupted his dinner at Bund headquarters with boos and brickbats, bum’s-rushed him fuming out of town.