Last week the U.S. learned the identity of the Nazi radio commentator who has been detailed to be its Lord Haw-Haw.
He was announced to go on April 18, on the 166th anniversary of U.S. history’s most famous ride. But it was not till the following week that piccolos squealed Yankee Doodle over the Berlin short-wave and a sound-effects man clopped coconut shells in simulation of furious galloping. Then, under the name of Paul Revere, “an unknown American of Pilgrim ancestry” took to the air and began in English to gabble for Goebbels.
Paul Revere adulated Adolf Hitler every night except Saturdays (DXP and DJB —11:30 E.D.S.T.), but so dully that a more fitting name for him might have been Lord Ho-Hum. Last week, celebrating his 52nd birthday (“the exact age of Hitler, the most successful man in the world”), he revealed himself as Chicago-born Douglas Chandler.*
Interviewed in Berlin by TIME’S Stephen Laird, who described him as “a tall, handsome, crisp-mannered, crisp-dressed person, with crisp iron-grey hair, gritted eyes and teeth,” the Goebbels galloper disclosed he had gone to private school in Baltimore, never to college, entered the advertising business at 18, got a commission in the Navy just before the close of World War I, ran a signed news-roundup column after the war in the Baltimore Sunday American called This and That.
In 1924 at swank Bar Harbor he married Laura Jay Wurts, daughter of Alexander Jay Wurts, Carnegie Tech professor and Westinghouse inventor, and great-great-great granddaughter of John Jay (1745-1829), the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Wiped out in the Bull Market Crash and “fed up to the chin with the Depression and the miasma that was enveloping Washington,” Galloper Chandler in 1931 took his wife and two small daughters and galloped off to Europe. A student of Naziism since 1927, he was received ten years later at Nuremberg by the most successful man in the world.
He contributed to the German press and wrote pieces on European geologic and ethnologic subjects for the National Geographic. When he removed his Paul Revere make-up last week Chandler declared that while he disapproved of certain Nazi principles, “I was overjoyed when the German Government accepted my offer to broadcast to America. America is my home. I love it. … I am in no way compelled by a need to earn money. . . .”
His Paul Reverings apparently recorded on wax (safest way for Nazis to know exactly what a commentator will say), Chandler has sneered at ”Wee Willie Willkie,” awarded to the British Empire the “Muddle Medal.” to F.D.R. the “Meddle Medal,” referred to the U.S. as “Uncle Sam’s flophouse for European down-and-outers.”
“Personally, I find many Jews most beguiling,” he conceded. “I have no grudge against any individual Jew, but collectively they are bringing ruin wherever they get a foothold. . . . Roosevelt is surrounded by Jews and is carrying out the Jewish plan enunciated by the Jews long ago for the world’s domination. … I would like to match my two children [at present 12 and 16] from the standpoint of character, now that they have studied seven years here, with any pair of youngsters their age produceable at home. If their views of life are to be credited to this system, this system must be good. I call this system Democracy. I don’t advocate National Socialism for America. These things can’t be imported. . . .”
Last Friday night the CBS listening station picked up a Paul Revere plug on the America Asks—Germany Answers broadcast, and a totally unsolicited testimonial went out on the ether. Axis-greased the announcer: “TIME and LIFE just rang me up a few seconds ago … to get the story of Paul and a personal description. So don’t fail to get the next issue of TIME and LIFE . . . The subscription rate is five dollars.”
* Two married sisters who live in Baltimore throughly disapprove of Brother Douglas’ goings-on and are ardent all-out-Aiders.
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