ome of his letters will give an
indication of his activities. On February 21, 1936, he wrote to
William Stern, Fargo, N.D., a member of the Republican National
Committee. He said in part:

Information about the so-called fascist movement here in the
U.S.A. will be furnished by me if you so desire, together with
other data you might be interested in. An opportunity to discuss
our national problems and to lay before patriotic persons of
means and influence and before national organizations my plans
for a nationwide movement would be welcome....

This letter to a high Republican Party official was written after
Tietzow had outlined the contents to Toni Mueller, Nazi agent in
Chicago reporting directly to Fritz Kuhn.

Since most of the patrioteers were opposed to the New Deal and since
some of them were already working with Nazi agents in this country, it
was not long before they were going full blast in their "Save America"
racket. The people of the United States, though they don't talk much
about it, are thoroughly patriotic in the fullest sense of the word.
To accuse anyone of not being a patriot is almost worse than telling a
man that he is a son of not quite a lady. The racketeers in patriotism
long ago discovered that people would contribute to a "patriotic
cause" if only to escape the reputation of being unpatriotic; and the
racketeers have made a nice living out of it. For some of the
patrioteers it has become a thriving business, with everybody
involved--except the suckers--getting his cut. Some of the big
"patriotic" organizations are really influential, and the small ones
are hopefully struggling along in the expectation of bigger and better
and more patriotic days when the pickings will be more than
attractive.

[Illustration: Letter by Olov E. Tietzow, showing typical methods
of American fascists.]

Every time I start looking into organizations with high-sounding and
impressive names, I am profoundly impressed with the accuracy of
Barnum's noted observation. Raise the cry of "patriotism" and
perfectly good Americans forget to try to find out just what the
"patriotic" activities are, and shell out without a murmur.
Industrialists particularly like the "Americanism" of the patriotic
groups because almost all of them incorporate an anti-labor policy.
The propaganda, of course, is rarely conducted as an open fight
against labor, but is put across as a fight to save America from