The Waterbury Democrat., 1946-10-21
by Dre1e, Pearson

bassy was requested and did furnish, extensive re- ports with regard to Wkie. The report stated that Willkie would not be friendly to Germany but would not be energetically opposed and also that Wkie would not be capable of as sweeping political de- csions Roosevelt Ribbentrop stated, and believe that he was quoting Hitler that the United States would go to war it would be only with Roosevelt
 "Dckenhoff (ex-Ambassador to Washington had this comment: Ribbentrop always had the idea that the Foreign Office should try to influence the cleo tion against Roosevelt. He even had the same idea in 1924, which was more foolish than it was in 194O In the Foreign Office we did not particularly like Willkie either but we thought that anybody would be better than Roosevelt
 "In the 194O elections the Nazis had scheme to get John [. Lewis the labor leader, to come out against the reelection of President Roosevelt This scheme will be related in later section of this re- port.
 '@The Nazs had more regard for Dewey than for Willke. Accordingly, Ribbontrop's America Commit tee was again the job this time headed by Colin Ross
 "In the Roosevelt Dewey campaign, the Foreign Office had two pet schemes. One of these involved so-called folkdom propaganda aimed at various na- tionalites in the United States with view to get- ting these nationalities to vote against President Roosevelt The other scheme involved the planting, at what the NaZiS regarded as crucial time, on the of the election, of some alleged secret agree mentS between President Roosevelt and Stalin number of members of the former German Foreign Office gave us accounts of these schemes Schmidt told In 1914 the attitude prevailed that anybody would be better than Roosevelt and Dewey judged much more favorably than Willlie and the estimate went far to believe that negotiated peace der Dewey might be thnkable.
 CT recall very well conference in Ribbentrop's private quarters at WIhelmstrasse where the elec- tions and the possibility of influencing them was dis cussed. Present were Deckhoff, Gaus, Steengracht, all section chiefs, and several members of the Amer ica Committee
 "tAt that conference it was clearly stated that chances of directly influencing the press were hope less, but that press survey which had made my self clearly showed that the majority of newspapers were in favor of Dewey. had arranged service in Stockholm and Lisbon which had other flnc- tons than to advise about the elections The only way of influencing the elections in more or less radical manner was, in opinion to plant in the neutral press some sensational discriminatory to Roosevelt, and the best subject for this was to say that there a secret agreement between Staln and Roosevelt. An attempt made to place such story both in Sweden and Switzerland but without success. The story did appear in some small Swedish newspapers, but I recall this occurred a day or so after the election.
 "Ribbentrop himself stated: One of the ideas we had to try to prevent the reelection of Roosevelt in 1914 the folkdom idea. We wanted to address ourselves to the different nationality groups in America, such the Polish groups, the Irish, the CzechoSlovakians, the Hungarians the Greeks, the Italians and even the Germans We received reports about this propaganda. The reports came via South America. We received special reports from our men and then there two three radio uausrnitters remember, for instance, got reports about the results within the Polish minority. remember espe- cially report about the Polish group"
 NOTE-Another column on Hitler's efforts to sway the American people will follow shortly)