 Deatherage was an important player in domestic and international anti-Jewish circles in the 1930s and 1940s, including collaboration with the "Welt-Dienst/World-Service" propaganda agency headed by German Ulrich Fleischhauer.Both were also defendants in the Great Sedition Trial of 1944.In 1942, the United States Navy declared Deatheredge to be a person “undesirable to have access to the work of the Navy Department” and directed his discharge from employment as chief engineer for private contractors on a $30,000,000 expansion project at the Norfolk Naval Base.