Abstract
This is a study of the relationship between a nation and a small portion of its people and their descendants who choose to emigrate to the United States, but did not want to yield their national and racial identity. It is the story of the attempts of a German institute — the “Deutsches Ausland-Institut” — to further the aims of National Socialism among these people.
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References
Joseph B. Schechtman, European Population Transfers, 1939–1945 ( New York: Oxford University Press, 1946 ), p. 35.
German Records Microfilmed at Alexandria, Va., Series 3, Reel 141, frame 0178903. Hereinafter cited as German Records. The words Series, Reel, and frame will henceforth be omitted and citations will be noted simply as follows: 3/141/ 0178903. In America and Total War (New York: Smith and Durrell, Inc., 1941), Fletcher Pratt pointed out that in the decade before World War II, there were not as many newly arrived German immigrants whose loyalty might be suspect since most of the 90,000 who came to the United States were Jewish refugees. This element was not present with the 243,000 German arrivals in the decade before World War I. PP. 54–55.
John A. Hawgood, The Tragedy of German-America: The Germans in the United States o America During the Nineteenth Century and After ( New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1940 ), p. 302.
The crossing of lines in making German foreign policy was not unusual in Hitler’s Germany: “Hitler ruled like a Byzantine emperor, having a court but neither parliament nor co-ordinating cabinet. In the general scramble of the rival palace cliques no office of state could get its own way except by fighting other offices.” Gerald Reitlinger, The SS: Alibi of a Nation, 1922–1945 ( London: William Heinemann Ltd., 1956 ), p. 96.
Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal (Nuremberg, Germany: The United States Government, 1948), Vol. X, p. 49. Hereinafter cited as MT.
Ralph F. Bischoff, Nazi Conquest through German Culture ( Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1942 ), p. 107.
General Records of the United States Department of State. Record Group 59. Reports on Interrogations of German Prisoners-of-War, made by Members of the Department of State Special Interrogation Mission (Sept. 1945-Sept. 1946), headed by DeWitt C. Poole. Washington, National Archives and Records Service, 1953. 1 Microreel. Stroelin interrogation, p. 13. Hereinafter cited as State Dept. Special Interrogation Mission, Stroel in interrogation.
German Records, 21/419/5165466. Of course, the files of the Institute provided valuable information of another sort at times: “The order was given (in 1941) to examine the indexes of the Amerikadeutschen at the Deutsches Ausland-Institut in Stuttgart as well as the maps and photographs of American factories, railways, canals and harbors filed there; moreover, agents had to be found.” Louis De Jong, The German Fifth Column in the Second World War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1956), p. 216. This resulted in the spectacular attempt at sabotage in the United States by eight former German-American Bund members in 1942.
Stroelin was named to his honorary position by three prominent experts on Deutschtum abroad, including, at that time, the Reichsleiter of the Volksbund für Deutschtum im Ausland, a Dr. Hans Steinacher. Stroelin’s position was perhaps one of exaggerated importance in the eyes of Americans since he had been invited to the United States by German American Bund leader Fritz Kuhn to be guest speaker at German Day celebrations in 1936.
National Socialism (Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1943 ), p. 127.
German Records, 2,/502/5265243. The document is of especial interest since it is dated July, 1940, although the leadership of the VDA, which had been under Dr. Hans Steinacher, and for a short time under Dr. Karl Haushofer, was placed under SS Obergruppenführer Werner Lorenz in 1936. The significance of this was that Lorenz headed the Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle as well which meant, in effect, that VoMi absorbed VDA.
which had long served as co-ordinative centers and home bases for the defensive struggle of these `outposts’ had already been infiltrated by National Socialists before 1933.“ Robert L. Koehl, RKFVD: German Resettlement and Population policy: 1939–1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1957), p. 37.
Ibid., Bohle interrogation, p. 14. Apparently, however, the ill-feeling between Bohle and Steinacher had a longer history, for Bohle didn’t fail to note that Steinacher had attempted to gain control of the Reichsdeutschen abroad for VDA in 1933. Ibid.
Verpflichtendes Erbe (Kiel: Ferdinand Hirt, 1954), p. 4.
Technically the VDA was subject to the jurisdiction of Section II, Propaganda Section, Propaganda Ministry. Bohle stated that even after 1938, the VDA continued to have a sizeable membership inside Germany - something like a million and a halt people. These were people interested in the problems of ethnic Germans in one way or another. Bohle interrogation, State Dept. Special Interrogation Mission, p. 14.
Germany Speaks (London: Thornton Butterworth Ltd., 1938), p. 328.
Maurice Baumont, et al., The Third Reich ( New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1955 ), p. 880.
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© 1965 Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands
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Smith, A.L. (1965). The Deutsches Ausland-Institut and the Third Reich. In: The Deutschtum of Nazi Germany and the United States. International Scholars Forum, vol 15. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-0931-2_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-0931-2_1
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