[Jewish Central Information Office]

The Auslandsorganisation der NSDAP (AO) was an umbrella organisation of Nazi party groups abroad, founded in 1930 on the initiative of Bruno Fricke, from Paraguay, and Gregor Strasser, who at the time was in charge of the Nazi Party organisation in Germany. In May 1933 Ernst Wilhelm Bohle became its director. The organisation provided Nazi Party members abroad with political and ideological instructional propaganda material; it also organised travel in the Reich and set up sister-city arrangements. Although the AO proclaimed its strict non-intervention in the affairs of host countries, it used its connections for espionage and political pressure.