People, Not Industry, Pushes Anti-Nazi Wa
SHUB, BORIS
People, Not Industry, Pushes Anti-Nazi War By BORIS SHUB rf a recent.issue of Sew Masses, British Communist R. Palme Dutt asks: "Will Britain's rulers capitulate?" The question is, of course,...
...History of Fascist Glamor Boy Reveals Early CP Sympathies By WALTER K. LEWIS and JEAN DAREN ¦"THIRTY-SIX years ago Joseph Ellesbury McWil* Hams was born on an Oklahoma Indian reservation, of Irish and Cherokee Indian stock...
...Very popular with the women, his pictures are sold at meetings, where they enjoy a good sale...
...Men like Morrison and Bevin do not expect to achieve a purely military victory over: Hitler...
...It explained (he conduct of men like Chamberlain, Bonnet and Thyssen...
...The Allies' wealth was what js^Sjampire economy"jneeded...
...This, of course, plays directly into Hitler's hands...
...McWilliams receives the " aid of the German-American Bund in Yorkville, pro-fascist groups throughout the city, and certain Catholic clergy...
...T ".Indeed, if the dest&iy of Germany had remained in the hands of "Ike German capitalist^ who financed Hitler to power, British planes flight not now be boiibing the industrial plants of the Ruhr...
...I am in perfect agreement with what they have to say, with the exception of their attacks on me...
...The proposition th|t this is a war between two sets of capitalist brigands, the outcomejof which does not concern humanity, is still plausible toNenough honest men to require some consideration...
...Joe himself'is not...
...Dutt speaks of the "fusion" of German and jfrench capitalism as a result of the defeat of France...
...gain further publicity, McWilliams' set himself up as an anti-Semitic candidate...
...They claim that they are against conscription, and that they will bring with them a workers' world, an America free of poverty and unemployment...
...XfHO are his backers...
...Of this "fusion" the Stalinists neither wfite nor speak, but its ultimate effect, in the Went of a German victory, would be to merge the Soviet and Nazi J?* capitalist monopolies, with control securely in the hands of SerKn...
...RflcWILLIAMS employs the same tactics which won Hitler many radical and labor-conscious converts...
...Henry George Curtis, real name Henry Gaede...
...Until World War II began, and especially during the Munich days,-it was argued with some force that big business in Great sAitani...
...He also was seen in the company of Fritz Kuhn, former head of the Bund, at countless meetings in New York, and at Camp Nordland, not many miles from the site of the disastrous Hercules Powder Company explosion...
...VTET, that is what it amounts to, * according to all the signs...
...S. Drive in South America By Bryce Oliver (W.E.V.D...
...and the Thorkelsons are doing their work on the national scene...
...He has said, "I am master of Yorkville...
...And rich, comfortable, appeasing LatinAmericans in influential places have long ago forgotten the spirit of Simon Bolivar and San Martin...
...This idea had element* of soundness as far as it went...
...He worked there until 1929...
...And although experts and specialists have learned the lesson that each advance of Hitler is the foundation for the next advance, it is difficult to picture the negotiations as a plan to secure a beach head on the Western Hemisphere...
...Sice August, *1939,TGerman engineers and technicians have been Wematically occupying Soviet factories...
...I'm not...
...Although the large majority of McWilliams' audienceis Catholic...
...James Stewart, a charter member of the Mobilizers...
...And the Falange Espagnoi, spreading rapidly through HispanicAmerica, including Cuba, is living and growing upon the idea of a great Spanish union...
...Only those within his immediate circle would know who McWilliams* backers are...
...RflcWILLIAMS is known to have attended Lovestonite meetings in 1932.'There is also a report around Yorkville that he was a member of the Communist Party at this time, and held a party card...
...Similar negotiations between Spanish envoys and an Austrian —Metterrrich—took place shortly after the defeat of Napoleon...
...Most of it is unanswerable in the sense that Dr...
...When New York City's streets became the meeca for pro-Hitler and pro-Coughlin meetings, Joe was right up in front as a speaker...
...Where It exists it is by suffei-ance only, and shorn political powe...
...On the continent of Europe private capitalism has largely been Widated...
...Froace and Germany would never •''allow'1 war to come...
...r\ECIDING to...
...These are the leaders McWilliams asks the people to accept, if he succeeds in his career as fascist glamour boy...
...Or John J. Olive, instructor of MeWirhams' youth followers in jiujitsu, boxing, wrestling, street fighting tactics, and rifle practice, who has a record in Children's Court for stealing an automobile in 1931, and who was sentenced in December of 1934 for attacking and raping a woman in Central Park—and then fleeing with her purse, is also a good example...
...I'm only interested in one person— Joe McWilliams...
...For his pains he was expelled from a school in Perryton, Texas Panhandle, in 1925...
...Some of these editorials have been reported in the press of Rio de Janeiro, Montevideo, Buenos Aires and other capitals, including the powerful Diario de la Marina of Habana, owned and edited by a family close to Caudille Franco...
...When the Trotskyites recently issued a leaflet attacking him, McWilliams held the leaflet up before the crowd and proclaimed, "They say I am a fascist...
...On the whole, his speeches are said to have been of a Communistic tinge...
...We are their local representatives...
...I * '- * O-* * TPtJEOPE was plunged into war by the decision of a revolutionary yj?fanatic to whom tie survival of old-fashioned capitalism means nothing...
...James Downey, convicted of inciting to riot, a naturalized citizen of only three months...
...Riots and disturbances of all kinds put the leaders in the limelight, and Joe basked in his new role...
...To gain adherents he speaks from a covered wagon on the streets of Yorkville, under the...
...It would...
...On the other hand.jthe argument runs, the "capitalist rulers" of Britain fear that a prolonged war is suicidal, and are anxious to come to terms with the "capitalist rulers" of Germany...
...They understand that the stubborndefense of crumbling institutions leads only to final defeat...
...The Hitler-Franco move, now taking shape, envisages no powerful British Empire—quite the opposite...
...PHE negotiations between Hitler and * Suner are, in a way, merely a repetition of history...
...On many an occasion he has said that "Every Irishman, every German, every Italian in Yorkville...
...Inasmuch as the membership of the ADP is made up of the poorest people in the Yorkville community, the mystery concerning McWilliams' funds is understandable...
...I am in agreement with these socialists...
...He championed the loyalists in Spain, and verbally annihilated all Nazis and Fascists in this phase of his development...
...He was arrested again in 1939 for making an inflammatory speech at a street meeting in the Bronx...
...Jfodern industrial society had- become too complex and too expensive to permit capitalists the luxury of large-scale destruction...
...They are exactly like some Daughters of the Revolution who Are now horrified by ideas which moved the revolutionists...
...Before the war McWilliams was a frequent visitor to the exclusive Union League Club...
...He tells them that the workers are, always have been, and always will be the majority, and that when the workers make their choice, only Christiana will be elected to public office...
...S * * * ""pHIS war is still injthe preliminary stage, but it has already gone • far beyond Worlof War I ,in its revolutionary consequences...
...The question is, of course, as loaded as ihe famous query, "When did you stop beating y°ur wife...
...Perhaps, if some of the inspired editorials in such influential newspapers as Arriba had been duly reported because they concern Americans, it would not now be so difficult for Americans to spot themselves as a place in the Spanish-Axis negotiations...
...An agreement with Spain for the restoration of a great world-wide Spanish sphere of influence would provide Nazidom with the opening for the much-desired beach head on the Western Hemisphere...
...and the press of the Latin-Americas, which is better informed on the subject than the United States press, has been, as a general rule, told to shy away from the implications of the conference at Berlin between Adolf Hitler and Ramon Serrano Suner, Spanish Minister of Government and brother-in-law of Caudillo Francisco Franco...
...What they lacked in clarity and coherence, they made up in drama...
...And it should also be recalled that at the time of the Congress of Vienna, the memory of the war of liberation (and all its bitterness and cruelty) was still fresh in the minds of the Latin-Americans, who were hostile to the Alliance and to Spain...
...The coarsely cynical assertions that through "annexation" the Soviet Union has preserved the independence of the Baltic Republics, and the statements that Great Britain is profiting from the destruction of Norway, Denmark, Belgium, Holland and France, show to what extent -the comrades are indebted to the first principle of Mein Kampf— the bigger the lie the better the chance that it will be believed...
...It is nevertheless a mystery how McWilliams' attorney, Frank Walsh, is paid...
...British labor knoiivs that the support which must come from behind the German lines to make victory possible cannot become a reality until the promise of a new Europe is real...
...An attack on Gibraltar would still be a story of Gibraltar and the life or death of Britain...
...In tljiis instance the catch is in the meaning of the word "rulers...
...But it should also be recalled that Metternich and Spain were also confronted by a powerful British Empire, openly determined to uphold Washington's stand...
...While Britain fights, and while labor •^tinnes at the helfa, there remains the hope that this generation |P have freedom a^d a better economic order...
...The solution, Dutt concludes, is for |he people of Britain to turn the imperialist war into a civil war and clasp the hand of Stalin...
...Therefore, if Hitler is only doing something that was done before, he is heading for too much trouble...
...It was Halpern's clothes that McWilliams wore when he went with another Jewish friend, Charlie Pritzker, advertising manager of the Gillette Razor Company, to, the executive offices of that concern to sell his patent...
...He is a good example of the type of supporters McWilliams has...
...what about Morgan?'' McWilliams shouted right back, "He's with us...
...is a damn sight better than any Jew that ever lived...
...It's the old story, maintains Dutt, an imperialist struggle for the redivision of the worlds...
...Only where the Soviet Uniop has intervened to pi-event partition, "have their independence andlnational freedom been maintained...
...If at-Munich, Chamberlkin could have dealt with Thyssen, instead of Hitler, an Anglo-German economic and political arrangement might have been reacjsid...
...SUCH is the burden,|of a four-page argument, with appropriate . citations from Lenin's Imperialism...
...Britain alone starts in the way of the emergence of the greatslave economy irfihistorv...
...Whatever the economic factors of the road to World War II, *nd they are far moi;e complex than the Leninist concept of "imperialism" defines, the war is becoming a struggle to determine the type of international order that is to replace traditional capifahsm...
...i«?Bitler triumphs over Britain, the war will continue in new and on other Continents, but the decision will be postponed *** many years to cjme...
...Joe admits he has held conferences with General George Van Horn Moseley, Lawrence Dennis, James True, William Kunze, Fritz Kuhn, Silver Shirt Pelley, and ranking officials of the army...
...There have been references to the "hopeless" attempt of the United States to preserve democracy by taking over British naval bases...
...more correct to sty that the totalitarian German state has con"*«ted a major part of French industry...
...For the people of [Britain, continues this tortuous logic, it is equally disastrous to flight Hitler or to appease him...
...As a result of his success, the Smith and Hemingway Red Devil Tool Company hired him as idea man and salesman: The Crescent Tool Company took over the Red Devil, and McWilliams with it...
...For a person without a job, he dresses well, looks well-fed, and has the general appearance of a man of leisure...
...But that is only *art of the work of the Nazi economic machine...
...As his first speaking assignment, McWilliams spoke before the Jewish Community Center of Jamaica, making an aggressively anti-British talk, because of what he considered to be Britain's unfair policy toward Palestine...
...The following quotation is attributed to him after Wendell Willkie repudiated his support: "I don't care what Mr...
...In his varied life he has been a truck driver, farm hand, and inventor...
...Or now McWilliams can afford to maintain two apartments, one at the Pickwick Arms Hotel, and the other on East 89th treet...
...There has been no lack of warning, such as that contained in Hermann Rauschning's report ("The Voice of Destruction") on Hitler's Western Hemisphere scheme, and President Roosevelt has definitely indicated — although guardedly — that government information reveals that intimate familiarity with the war pattern may be coming to the Americas...
...John Zitter, a Christian Mobilizer, was arrested November third, 1934 for burglary...
...His lieutenants are Louis Helmorrd, a printer, and chairman of the American Destiny Party...
...DUT because of the rather shocking ^ ignorance of the public—north and south—concerning the relationship of the Western Hemisphere to the broad pattern of Nazi world revolution, the Americans have been quite unable to appreciate as yet their own involvement in the plans...
...I don't care what Mr...
...Residents of Yorkville claim to remember McWil-* Hams speaking for "Red Causes" on soap boxes in the East Eighties, ranting against Hitler and Mussolini, imperialism, business monopoly, the evils of capitalism, and promising the free flow of fascist blood in the gutters...
...Roosevelt thinks of me...
...Why then doe$ Britain fightj Because the decision to fight or make peace is not in the hands' of "millionaires," enlightened or otherwise...
...He had just invented a rubber keycase, and again a few of his Jewish friends were aiding in its manufacture...
...Although the foreign offices of the Americas, including the United States, have been agitated and concerned over the Spanish-Axis rapprochement, publicly they have been extremely reticent...
...The appeasement spirit is apt to recall that the promulgation of the MonroeDoctrine, that is, the firm atand taken by the United States, effectively broke up the Austrian's plot...
...uehin was quite right when he wrote that "the enlightened millionaires wish to hasten peace because they are afraid of revolution...
...Coming to New York McWilliams and several Jewish friends, Ray Halpert, Jerome Shapiro, Wilbur Shapiro, shared rooms over Gellis' delicatessen store from February, 1930, to April, 1931...
...Go'ebbels is unanswerable...
...interested in them...
...If Britain emerge* victorious, in the end, it will be because of tte promise it holds ifor all the oppressed peoples...
...He then continued, probably recalling his speeches at WPA school, "I believe that the workers have the power to rule, and Joe McWilliams will lead them...
...publisher of the pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic sheet, the "American Bulletin...
...He received f.20,000, got married, and was broke six months later...
...Like the good actor that he is, he carries his own spotlight...
...He spoke for the Christian Front in the Bronx, until the order came for the Front to calm down...
...Britain and Germany have already divided Best of the small couriu-ies of Europe among themselves...
...it would be difficult, as the guns roared, to picture the attack as the first skirmish for a beach l..-ad on the bulge of Brazil...
...We are now in the plot, whether the people of the Americas recognize it or not...
...At last he had found a cause which recognized his executive and oratorical abilities...
...Joe's friends aided him financially with many of his inventions and patents, for scores of models had to be built before a patent could even be applied for, and this required funds...
...His headouarters are over a beer saloon, the Franziskaner Grill, on Second Avenue near 81st Street...
...One leader of an anti-McWilliams organization in Yorkville told us he had seen the card himself...
...It must be remembered that observers place the entire membership of the American Destiny Party at a figure never exceeding five or six hundred at one time...
...When McWilliams comes out to be greeted by his followers, and the larger crowd of curiosity seekers, he does so with a lantern in his hand...
...The conferences in Berlin mean business for the United States...
...As J*t proceeds and inteipsifies, the decisive issue becomes more apparel whether the direction taken by the Bolsheviks in 1917, as •dopted and streamlined by the Nazis, must condemn mankind to ti*e "socialism" of slaves for decades to come, or whether a rational political and social democracy shall emerge as the basis for *sting peace and freedom...
...McWilliams' appeal comes from his handsome, finecut appearance and wavy black hair, streaked with gray...
...There is no secret whatsoever about the plain indication that the Franco Government^ has been called upon to pay off its indebtedness to the Axis, and that this development threatens Great Britain at the vital nerve center of Gibraltar...
...party's auspices...
...Soon we will all be together...
...A study of the Spanish national press leaves no doubt...
...But the implications go far beyond that and extend to the Western Hemisphere...
...Or another fairly typical case is Edwin Westphal, member of the Advisory Board of the Christian Mobilizers, and the Bund, who, since 1929, has maintained a cumulative police record, beginning with conviction as a wayward minor, and continuing with convictions for burglary, violation of the copyright law, disorderly conduct and other offenses...
...I mean naming names, not just making implications...
...Dutt finds that the chances lor putting across a deal are excellent...
...Never much of a success in .the first two, he has had no little success .with his inventions...
...He's so good looking," one female admirer said, "that he should win on looks alone...
...The rantings of a Hitler, the stage effects, all these were part of his oratory...
...News Commentator) A T a conference in Berlin this week the Nazi pattern of world revolution was expanded definitely to include the Western Hemisphere...
...For Thyssen, no less than Chamberlain, jjMti ukiod that a seoprfd world war was a catastrophe for private capitalism—and both Reared the result...
...The bloodless social revolution that has already taken place in Great Britain since Chamberlain passed into oblivion and France colUpsed, indicates thai there is an alternative to totalitarian despotism without clinging to the past...
...The Dirty Kikes...
...Whatever the -reasons, tlie trip never came off as scheduled, and upon his return from the South, McWilliams had changed completely...
...The Bund has been extremely helpful to McWilliams in his congressional campaign in Yorkville's 18th congressional district, where he ran in the Republican primaries, and as an Independent on his own American Destiny Party ticket...
...On one side, it rests with a totalitarian regime determined to establish a new world order of state capitalism feeding on slave labor...
...In beginning the war he received assurances of economic support and security from eastern attack from Stalin, the disciple of and successor to Lenin...
...On the other pside, the determination to fight finds leadership in the British Lfbor Party, which believes that social revolution is possible without dooming nations and men to oppression and permanent policePterror...
...Early in August of this year he announced from a public platform that "The Fords, and the Lindberghs, and the Coughlins...
...For weeks, before Suner went^to Berlin, Arriba and other Spanish newspapers have been agitating for the restoration of a Spanish Empire and naming the Western Hemisphere...
...I don't care what anyone else thinks of me...
...The Americas are threatened...
...Similarly, negotiations be', een Hitler and Franco appear clearly as negotiations for an attack on Gibraltar...
...They say that I am a Nazi...
...Or how he is able to pay for an entire floor above the saloon on 2nd Ave...
...Assurances have been given that with the eventual help of Mother Spain, the nations of Hispanic America would throwoff the yoke of "Yankee Imperialism...
...Suner-Axis Talk Aims at Spanish Anti-U...
...He also follows closely the platform of his idol, Huey Long, in appealing to the masses on the ground that they are being exploited by the "Internationalists...
...IN January, 1939, he went to Sarasota, Florida, for his health...
...McWilliams' character can be summed up in his own words...
...He then split with the Front, and formed the Christian Mobilizers, which now became a sort of left wing of the Front...
...Some of McWilliams' staunchest supporters and lieutenants have been convicts, former "confidence men," rapists, thieves, etc...
...One night someone in the crowd called out, "Hey Joe...
...He received a suspended sentence in General Sessions, and was placed on probation for a period of two years...
...He had planned to sell his invention down South that February, thinking that he could also tour the South as a speaker for the League for Peace and Democracy...
...Willkie thinks of me...
...McWilliam's career as a tub-thumper began with an attack on Woodrow Wilson and the injustices contained in the Treaty of Versailles...
...McWilliams calls the Jews "Eskimos," and the crowd goes wild and joins in with...
...Perhaps one of the reasons why Americans cannot .yet appreciate the full significance of the Spanish-Axis flirtation is the failure of the press to perform the difficult task (under the impact of explosive spot news) of painting in the American home background of an elusive picture of far-away death...
...This is the direction of the war...
...Soon after this episode he sold his first invention, the 444 <Jiant Grip- Plier, which is now well-known to pipefitters...
...One of the most important of these signs, which has been completely overlooked by the press because of the difficulties alluded to, has been the inspired statements in the controlled press of Spain...
...Not long after, he studied speech and public speaking at the WPA Center Street School...
...Huey Long is dead, but his spirit is within Joe McWilliams...
...He gave up his Jewish friends, forgot about his personal life and by April, 1939, he made his debut as speaker for the American Nationalist Party...
...Chamberlain failed in his efforts because he discovered too late jipt in National Socialist Germany the language of a Birmingham business man was not understood...
...It was the plot of the Holy Alliance to regain control of Hispanic-America (through Spain's desire to recover lost colonies), and it was this that caused the United States to counter with the Monroe Doctrine...
Vol. 23 • September 1940 • No. 38
