Based on collected intelligence by Leon L. Lewis, U.S. Navy agents arrested two Marines who were selling rifles and 12,000 rounds of ammunition to local Nazis.
[10] The Friends of New Germany was led by Spanknöbel and was openly pro-Hitler, and engaged in activities such as storming the German language newspaper New Yorker Staats-Zeitung with the demand that Nazi-sympathetic articles be published, the infiltration of other German-American organizations, and the use of propaganda to counter the boycott of businesses in the heavily German neighborhood of Yorkville, Manhattan.
In an internal battle for control of the Friends, Spanknöbel was soon ousted as leader, and in October 1933 he was deported because he had failed to register as a foreign agent.
In December 1933, Spanknöbel's bodyguard, Walter Kauf, was sentenced to six months in jail in New Jersey on charges of carrying a concealed weapon.
[2][12] The same month, the Friends's treasurer, Engelberg Roell, was jailed for one day for contempt of court after refusing to hand over the organization's membership to a federal grand jury investigating Nazi activities in the United States.
[14] Dickstein's investigation concluded that the Friends represented a branch of German dictator Adolf Hitler's NSDAP in America.