German Tempter

Ever since last April, a new and special type of German Ambassador has been making calls in the U. S. His name: Gerhardt Alois Westrick. His title: Commercial Counselor to the German Embassy. His job: Hitler's ambassador-off-the-record to U. S. businessmen.

Dr. (for lawyer) Westrick arrived in the U. S. through the back door from Japan. He brought with him his dark, beautiful wife, and his two boys, Klaus, 9, and Peter, 6. They put up at Manhattan's swank Plaza Hotel. For several weeks, short, stocky, snow-haired, direct-speaking, wound-limping Dr. Westrick did his business from there.

As an ambassador, Dr. Westrick had one strike on him before he arrived. His former law partner in Berlin was none other than famed Dr. Heinrich Albert, who served here during World War I as sidekick of Provocateur Franz von Papen until his brief case, loaded with incriminating evidence, was stolen from him by another spy on New York's Sixth Avenue Elevated, and turned over to Government and press. After the war. Dr. Albert returned to Berlin, was briefly in the Reich Chancellery (1920) and later Minister of the Treasury, lived down his memorable Merkle. He built up a good law practice with Partner Westrick, representing foreign corporations in the Reich. Among their clients: Ford, General Electric Co. (of Germany), I. T. & T., Harris Forbes, and the semiofficial Hamburg-American Line. Most of the New York banking houses, which floated German bonds during the '205, used Albert and Westrick.

To service this clientele, Dr. Albert and Junior Partner Westrick used to commute between Berlin and New York. But by the time Hitler took over. Dr. Westrick had not been important enough in the Weimar regime to be objectionable to the new. He got by. Early this year, when Hitler began thinking of his post-war relations with the U. S., he logically dug Lawyer Westrick out of the pigeonhole marked: "familiar with the inside of a U. S. businessman's lunch club, controllable." No beer-hall Nazi is Dr. Westrick, but simply a scout and atmosphere-conjurer, sent over to feel out Big Business sentiment and plant some seeds.

By last week Planter Westrick had become something of a public issue. After the management of the Plaza decided that his further residence there might involve it in the preliminaries of World War III, New York's untiring anti-Nazi Columnist Walter Winchell uncovered him at the Carlyle Hotel (Madison & 76th St.) under the name of Dr. Webster.

Various newspaper pieces "exposed" his mission, warned against U. S. acquiescence to any pending German offer of the olive branch in return for U. S. appeasement of Hitler. But Dr. Westrick went on seeing U. S. businessmen, converting some, alienating others. Last week he was in Philadelphia browsing around the Convention.

The Westrick proposals, plausible and businesslike, appeal to the U. S. economy in its most vulnerable spot. Their net: a post-war era of harmony between Europe (i.e., Germany) and the U. S. would mean a boom for the U. S., especially U. S. farmers, and would relieve the U. S. Government of two of its thorniest problems: 1) its $19,000,000,000 pile of idle gold, and 2) Latin America.

Underlying the Westrick olive branch are several assumptions. Hitler is assumed to be supreme in Europe, which will now become one continental economy, like the U. S. Living and consumption standards throughout Europe will therefore boom, afford an unprecedented market for North and South American goods which Europe sorely needs. (Did not Hitler's recent statement, "At no time has Germany had any territorial or political interest in the American continent' promise that Germany wants nothing else here?) Europe's demand for crops, says Westrick, will suffice to bail out U. S., Canadian and Latin-American surpluses, too.

As for how Germany is to pay for all these imports, the Westrick proposal is equally simple: the U. S. will give her the money--by continuing to pay $35 an ounce for Gold. Germany now claims to have something like $2,000,000,000 in gold. If she shipped that here, she would add to our surplus, embarrass us. Instead, she will help us put gold back into circulation by putting her $2,000,000,000 fund into a new European-American ("Schachtian") Bank of Intercontinental Settlements. Protected by this margin, the U. S. can then lend Germany, says Westrick, about $5,000,000,000 in gold. This would come back in payment for German purchases throughout the Hemisphere.

There is also offered a supplementary means of payment. Its ideological basis: Germany's belief in the Hull idea of freer trade. To implement it, the U. S. has only to reduce her prohibitive tariffs, let German manufacturers in as payment for the many U. S. crops and products Germany wants to buy.

All this talk carries one rider: all bets are off if the U. S. remains politically unfriendly toward Germany, tries an arms race with her. Such a race would, of course, divert the resources of both continents from the job of bringing prosperity to Hitler's brave new world.

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