Retired PR counselor Larry Roth has written The Nazi Account, a novel based on Carl Byoir & Associates’ work for the Hitler government in the 1930s. It led to the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

nazi accountIt tracks the exploits of A/E Logan Hunt who is given a folder with a swastika on its cover. In order to keep feeding his family, he must promote the Nazis.

At first, it doesn’t seem too bad since it’s 1933 and Hitler hasn’t completed his rise to power. Germany is still a democracy. But evidence of anti-Semitism is growing. Hunt is asked to mediate between the American Nazi Party and the Jewish population.

He wonders how long he can do this before moral scruples assert themselves.

Roth is University of S.C. J Grad

Roth earned a B.A. from the University of South Carolina, majoring in journalism. He wrote for various trade journals including Chemical Marketing Reporter, Chemical Business and Office World News. After marriage, he took a PR post that tripled his salary, later starting his own firm. He retired three years ago to follow his ambition of being a writer.

While The Nazi Account is fiction, it is based on facts that were determined in Congressional hearings and news accounts. Dr. Otto Klep, former German Consul General in New York City, paid $4,000 to CB&A obtain “publicity in this country” for the German government, according to the June 6, 1934 New York Times. The firm was the largest in the U.S. at the time.

According to a House Committee finding, gathering publicity meant publicizing anti-Semitic statements. In addition, pro-German pamphlets were purchased for $300. The German Ambassador, Dr. Hans Luther, was said to be the financial backer for this purchase. The brochures depicted notable places in Germany such as the Reich Chancellery. One piece described the German population’s love for Hitler.

Carl Dickey, CB&A partner, testified that he had a $6,000 monthly contract with the German Tourist Information Office.

Byoir Defended Work for Hitler

Carl Byoir, who noted his own Jewish background, said he had nothing “but the highest motives in working for German business interests.” His testimony was in an 18-page report to the Special House Committee on Nazi Propaganda in 1934. He advised against boycotting German products or banning travel to Germany. He said that he was “determined to make no profit at all” on the account (although a $1,000 a month profit was later reported).

“Gentlemen, I am not afraid of dictators,” Byoir testified. “Time deals with them—but a few years and one by one they disappear. They are but temporary and puny obstructions to the restless onward march of the rights of men. In Germany too, in a little while Hitler would have disappeared. What matter if it were a day or a year? The happy sanity of the German people would have reasserted itself and the great majority of them might have been quick to attempt to remedy the wrong done to the German Jew.”