Mr. Dies Delivers

Martin Dies of Orange, Tex. last week slapped down on the front pages of U. S. papers the result of a year's labor and $110,000 spent in 1940. According to legend, Mr. Dies was chosen for the job of Red hunting by a Texas senior who suggested that this might occupy his mind and thus give his colleagues a rest. True or not, neither the U. S., Congress, Communists, Nazis, Fascists, nor Mr. Dies has had much rest since.

Only six weeks away last week was a new Congress, and Martin Dies, never a piker, was ready to ask this time for a $1,000,000 appropriation. To earn his million, Dies produced a bigger show than ever. From Los Angeles to Chicago his agents brought Heinrich Peter Fassbender, alias Harry Smith, 23, a dark, smiling youth who claimed to have worked as a Gestapo agent for five years in Belgium, Spain and the U. S. Young Alien Fassbender, said Dies, was "sensational" in secret hearings.

Mr. Dies then raided German and Italian organizations in Chicago, seized files and records. Next day Mr. Dies charged that Chicago Nazis had sent Hitler $13,000. He hinted loudly: "We have found something that is completely incriminating." A "Mrs. Blank," he said, "a nationally prominent Chicago society woman," was to be questioned.

With the bugle sounded, and similar raids in eight other cities under way, Dies brought up his heavy artillery, released his 413-page, thickly documented "White Paper." It had passages as juicy as any E. Phillips Oppenheim tale. The tome traced in particular the correspondence of mustached Dr. Manfred Zapp, U. S. director of the German Transocean News Service, with German Embassy officials.

Dr. Zapp's trials in attempting to sell a somewhat flinty U. S. press on the merits of doctored, Nazified German news were bared in the lavish detail of Zapp's own correspondence, also urgent Berlin cables demanding information on Franklin Roosevelt's political chances.

Other sections revealed use of Transocean News in propaganda activities; attempts to indoctrinate Latin-American countries; use of friendly Americans as "fronts" for Nazi activities. Lauded in the German correspondence was Lawrence Dennis, approvingly noted as the author of The Coming Fascism in America and as "economic adviser of the gigantic firm of E. A. Pierce & Co., 40 Wall Street, which is probably the largest brokerage house in the U. S." Ralph B. Strassburger, of Gwynedd Valley, Pennsylvania was listed by Transocean as the only person taking two subscriptions. Mr. Strassburger, owner of the Norristown, Pa. Times Herald, later appeared in the report as distributor of the First German White Paper, intended to portray Ambassador William C. Bullitt as a warmonger. The Dies Committee told that Publisher Strassburger backed it and distributed 17,000 copies at a cost of $4,250, because of his "personal dislike" for Ambassador Bullitt.

The Dies report ended with a copy of an elaborate plan for the organization and control of German industry in the U. S. after the war's end: a fantastic setup of front organizations around a German bank to be established in the U. S.

After his enormous advance publicity, Martin Dies's revelations fell a little flat. His examples of inept Nazi propaganda and intrigue were not surprising. In Berlin, Nazi spokesmen gave "three short laughs," explained that in German military tradition when an officer cracks a joke without a point, an order is issued: "Three short laughs will be given."

Representative Dies, nothing daunted, announced that at least 6,000,000 persons in the U. S. were now members of or ganizations controlled by Germany, Italy or Russia ; said he would publish names of all workers with Communist, Nazi or Fascist affiliations. He also made the mistake of criticizing FBI.

"Entirely ineffective," said Dies of FBI. Into that opening Attorney General Robert Jackson drove an answer as powerful as a truck, declaiming that while Dies promised to investigate the Vultee strike soon, FBI had already thoroughly investigated the situation, had evidence the strike had been caused and prolonged by Communists. The "publicity activities" of the Dies Committee, as Mr. Jackson asserted, endangered "by premature exposure the work of the Justice Department."

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