The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 1938. GERMAN SPIES IN AMERICA.

Evening Star, Issue 22990, 22 June 1938, Page 8

The Evening Star WEDNESDAY, JUNE 22, 1938. GERMAN SPIES IN AMERICA.

Mr Edgar J. Hoover, chief of America’s “ G ” men, may have been justified, at least prospectively, when ho announced dramatically towards the end of February that “ a European spy corps that bored from within the United States Army in an attempt to carry out a far-flung espionage programme ” had been shattered by the good wortk of his department. The arrests that were made then, of two soldiers and a German woman, threatened a mare’s nest in the first developments. The conspirators appeared as such childish bunglers that no one could be alarmed at their activities. Guenther Rumrich had in his possession plans of tanks and guns so badly drawn as to be useless, and apparently his employers thought him sufficiently paid at the rate of fifty dollars a month. All the information in the airman Erich Glaser’s possession was accessible to the public through army and navy publications and records of inquiries. Johanna Hofmann, a hairdresser on the liner Europa, had concocted a fantastic plot for the obtaining of plans which was never put into execution. It was intimated, however, that other arrests would be made, and the apprehension of Otto Voss, employed at the Seversky aeroplane factory, had the possibilities of being more important, since the Seversky plant turns out pursuit aeroplanes said to be the fastest and best in the world. The public was most convinced, however, that the “ G ” men might be right in the importance they attached to their discoveries when Dr Griebl, who was to have been one of the chief witnesses for the Government in the espionage trials, preferred to scape to Germany rather than give evidence. It was suggested that he had been summoned there by Nazi superiors in the homeland. There have been more arrests since then, and the spy hunt has now taken the most sensational turn that anyone would have expected. The Federal grand jury has named eighteen individuals, the majority of whom are said to be highly placed German officials, charging them with the wholesale theft of military, aviation, and industrial secrets. Disdaining the official reticence that is usual where names of other Powers are concerned, the Federal Prosecutor declared that “ the directing heads of the ring reside in Germany, and are connected with the Government of Germany. They operated through agents residing in the United States and Germany. The directing heads paid these agents, all of whom are of German extraction, for furnishing information regarding American national defence.”

Only four of those indicted are under arrest in America. Thirteen are resident in Germany, and are not able to be extradited. It is a far-reaching spy campaign, controlled by high officials in the Fatherland, which is alleged in the ‘ New York Times’s ’ elaboration of the charges. The information obtained, it is said, went first to Tokio, which might have more direct interests in it than ■ Berlin—an example of friendly services (performed by one member of the anti-Comintern Pact for another. It is denied that any vital'secrets have been discovered, and the Germans, alike in the operations of their spies in England at the outset of the war, and later, during its continuance, in America, proved themselves the clumsiest plotters. But the faith in plotting and in subversive activities held by some Nazi fanatics seems incurable. The revelations of what has been happening in the United States recall the exploits of the Amerika-Deutsche Volksbund, which was formed there in 1933 under the leadership of Herr Heinz Spanknobel, a member of the Nazi Party. Herr Spanknobel, after a brief but lively record, fled to Germany to escape prosecution on a charge of failing to register as the agent of a foreign State. Dr Griebl was his successor, but in 1934 he resigned when a committee of Congress condemned the Bund as “ for all practical purposes the American branch of the Nazi Party.” Not long afterwards Herr Hitler proscribed the Bund, and he did so again in Februai'y of this year, when it was laid down that the Nazi Party neither had, nor desired to have, any connection with or authority over, any organisation of Germans who were naturalised American subjects. The value of those denials is now being put to the test, and it will not be forgotten how, after troubles experienced by the Pretoria Government with its South-west African German subjects, complaint has been made only this month of undesirable activities in Canada. The Secretary of State announced there that the Government was investigating the naturalisation status of Dr Egerhard, of Montreal, as the culmination of Mr R. B. Bennett’s charges that Herr Hitler’s agents are not idle in Canada. “Dr Egerhai-d was described as the ‘ Canadian Fuhrer.’ Under the guise of social clubs, Nazis in various centres are alleged to be organising by direct orders from Berlin, supplying the names of Canadian Germans refusing to join.”