GERMANY: Holy War

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The Nazis, however, were out for blood. They seized on District Attorney Geoghan's charges of moral laxity in Brooklyn high schools (TIME, May 24) to prove that under "Jew LaGuardia there is wholesale bootlegging of contraceptives" and "unheard of things among Brooklyn high school students."

In Washington newly-appointed German Ambassador Dr. Hans H. Dieckhoff made a "vigorous and energetic" protest to the State Department, through Embassy Counselor Dr. Hans Thomsen. The protest however was "informal" because it was not specially sponsored from Berlin, but "followed automatically in the wake of the Ambassador's duties." Result: the State Department had no need to commit itself to a reply.

By week's end it looked as though Dictator Hitler was somewhat alarmed by the formidable Catholic batteries ranged against him. Rumors rustled through Berlin that he contemplated withdrawing the present German Ambassador to the Vatican (Dr. Diego von Bergen) and replacing him by the ablest diplomat in the Reich, Catholic Franz von Papen. It was von Papen who negotiated the Concordat with the Holy See in 1933 and the Austro-German pact (TIME, July 20).