This is the fourth despatch of the Fifth Column series released by the U.S. Secretary of Navy, Colonel Frank Knox.
By Col. William J. Donovan and Edgar Vowrer, INCE we must ascribe a huge share in Adolf Hitler's incomparable military successes to his use of Germans and "Fifth Columnists" in victim countries, ihe question arises: How was such a success possible? How are Germans abroad brought to such self-sacrificing enthusiasm for the Nazi regime?
How above all can foreigners living under relatively mild and civilized governments be induced voluntarily to betray their own countries for Hitler's Germany? It seems mysterious.
The answer is U.S.$200,000,000 spent annually on organization and propaganda abroad. The immensity of this sum is the secret. Nazi Germany is not a government—not even a "folk dom" of the sort Nazi orators talk about. Nazi Germany is a conspiracy. Its scope is universal and its aim world dominion. Its primary agents are as many of the millions of Germans in Germany, and abroad, as can be induced or compelled to serve the German Fatherland.
Its activities begin with attempted proselyting of Germans abroad, go on to the murder and kidnapping of real or fancied enemies, and end in armed insurrection against the foreign. country Hitler wishes to conquer or absorb.
Such insurrections of Germans actually occurred in Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Holland. But for the firm attitude of the United States such an insurrection would, many students believe, have occurred in Brazil.
"Double Nationality"
That the Germans abroad are usually "naturalized" into something else is no hindrance. Rre-war Imperial Germany sanctioned the "Double Nationality Status"—Germans could, that is, become French or American or Portuguese without losing their German nationality. The Weimar Republic did not alter this strange conception and Nazi Germany has made it the centre of its "Trojan Horse" tactics of placing Germans within the enemy walls It is safe to say that a fair proportion of the non-refugee Germans who have become American since Hitler came to power did so with the secret intention of turning free and democratic America into "their"—that Is, Hitler's—America.
Children of Germans naturalized half a century ago are still counted German by Berlin, and every effort is made to convince them of the fact. Naturally, the Nazis accept traitors as allies wherever they can find them, and welcome the assistance of non-End oer Nordics.
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Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.