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Category: Martin Kerr

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Daybreak Publishing Martin Kerr Matt Koehl

Another book in PDF

In the featured post I said:

This is the migrant’s seventh and final step. He has finished crossing the river and is finally on dry land, albeit with his feet still wet in the damp, dark sand of the beach, even if he has a few more steps [emphasis added] to go before he touches dry, clear land.

Those steps, already on our side of the shore, are optional in that he who has crossed the Rubicon can continue to educate himself as he sees fit. Personally, it helped me to understand what has happened in North America, which is where I live (although south of the Rio Grande). That’s why I put together a new book which, for the moment, is only available as PDF: American Racialism from which I would like to quote the first pages:

 

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Editor’s Introduction

In his book Dominion, Tom Holland said that the most serious enemy of Christianity was National Socialism because no one—since Constantine—had challenged Christian morality as the Third Reich did. I agree with Holland and, accordingly, the first two pieces in this anthology touch the Christian Question.

The first is an abridged 2012 exchange between two Americans: Alex Linder and Brad Griffin, taken from Linder’s forum. In contemporary US racialism, Linder has been a fierce critic of Christianity. Griffin, on the other hand, is a Christian. Despite his anti-Christianity, Linder believes that the scale of values we inherited from Christianity is a secondary factor of white decline—I believe it is the primary factor—and blames Jewry as the primary aetiology. Using the alias Hunter Wallace, on his blogsite Occidental Dissent Griffin maintains that modernity is responsible for white decline and rejects the idea that egalitarian and universalist liberalism grew out of Christian morality, while Linder believes that liberalism is an offshoot of Christianity.

Regarding the second article of this anthology, fifteen years ago Griffin published a long list of American racial history on his website that is worth quoting, also in abbreviated form. Curiously, Griffin acknowledges, as does Tom Holland, that a form of Christian evangelism brought about the emancipation of blacks in both the UK and the US. But as a good Christian, unlike Holland Griffin is always careful to avoid the letter ‘C’ and blame Christianity plain and simply. Paradoxically, Griffin’s long list republished here corroborates Holland’s thesis in Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World. Although the racial instincts of the Anglo-Germans in America were healthy, compared to the Christian ethos with which the US was founded those instincts proved to be rather weak and, ultimately, the anti-racist forces overwhelmed racialism.

The following essay came not from the pen of an American, but from a New Zealander: Kerry Bolton, who has doctorates in theology. His academic style contrasts with the informal style of the bloggers in the previous texts. I include this third piece, ‘A contemporary assessment of Francis Parker Yockey’ because it seems clear to me that the American racial right has failed to realise that the project of nationhood represented by the US has been even more toxic for racial preservation than the communism of the former Soviet Union. Never mind that the American Yockey did not focus on the racial factor: what matters is if his critique of American culture is valid. Incidentally, Bolton said at the end of his essay that a Russia-China alliance would never happen, but recently it happened thanks to the Ukraine war. He failed to see that runaway egalitarianism metastasizes and ultimately leads to racial and political suicide.

Bolton’s essay is a splendid introduction to Yockey’s thought. In my journey of understanding the world, his article shed light on why it is currently impossible to preach our faith to the masses of white people: the System found a clever way to ‘control them through pleasure’. The passages Bolton wrote in which he refers to Aldous Huxley, in contrast to the failed Orwellian attempt of ‘control through pain’, should be read with care.

This said, I do not subscribe exactly to Yockey’s or Bolton’s worldview but to Savitri Devi’s post-1945 National Socialism, which is why the penultimate text in this book tells the story of NS in the US: ‘History of American National Socialism’ by Martin Kerr, the longest article in this anthology. This movement tried to mix the unmixable. For example, in the article we see images of an American flag next to a Nazi flag; and at a huge convention of American National Socialists we see a huge effigy of George Washington. But you cannot love two masters because you end up loving one and hating the other, which is exactly what has happened to the racialist movement. As we read in Kerr’s essay:

…the Bund adhered strictly to German National Socialism internally, but in terms of public outreach it advocated an ideology that was an awkward fusion of National Socialism and the Christian Nationalism of the times. ‘Christian Nationalism’ was roughly equivalent to modern White Nationalism. It was not a religious movement, per se; rather, by ‘Christian’ it was understood that Jews were excluded.

Inadvertently, this has been the scourge of American racialism. If Christian nationalism was more or less equivalent to contemporary white nationalism, both represent a clear regression compared to the Führer’s point of view.[1]

In Kerr’s article we will see that, unlike George Lincoln Rockwell (1918-1967) who tried to create an American-style National Socialism sympathetic not only to Christianity but to capitalism, his successor Matt Koehl (1935-2014), who was born the same year my mother was born, tried to stick more closely to Adolf Hitler’s original idea. One of the aims of this book is to honour Matt Koehl’s memory as the paradigm for anyone trying to emulate Uncle Adolf. If the organisation Koehl inherited from Rockwell was unsuccessful, that is because in the West’s darkest hour it was impossible to engender a true light of dawn. That light is only beginning to be glimpsed with deeper studies on the origins of Christianity, and how Christian morality permeates deeply into today’s secular world (see Neo-Christianity, listed on page 3).

Unlike the American National Socialists who now are virtually extinct, today’s white nationalists do not advocate National Socialism, not even in Christianised form. If we recall the parable alluded above and the impossibility of loving two masters, they have de facto chosen the effigy of Washington. But the final article in this book, a brief presentation on the books of my Daybreak Press, points to ideas that could potentially represent a breakthrough for the ideological impasse that has most racialists stuck in the middle of a psychological Rubicon.

César Tort
24 July 2023

[Read the book here]

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[1] After publishing this book as a PDF, I will put together a couple of shorter PDFs: one that collects some passages from Richard Weikart’s Hitler’s Religion, and a 2022 translation of the Introduction to the German edition of Hitler’s after-dinner talks. In those talks and Weikart’s book it is clear that the Führer’s view was anti-Christian: something he reserved for his inner circle of friends.

Categories
James Mason Martin Kerr Matt Koehl Racial right Real men Swastika William Pierce

History of American NS, 8

The National Alliance and smaller
organizations (1970-1985)

By any imaginable standards, the National Socialist White People’s Party was the predominant NS organization in the United States throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s. But it was not the only NS group. Except for the National Renaissance Party and NSDAP-AO, all of these other formations began as spin-offs or splinters of the NSWPP. For the most part, these other groups did not amount to much. Sometimes, the number of letters in their grandiose names exceeded the number of people they had on their mailing list. Nevertheless, they need to be included in any complete history of the NS movement in America – and three of these formations (the NA, the NSDAP-AO and the NSM) went on to play a significant role in the Movement after the end of the NSWPP.

In his 1968 essay, ‘Some Guidelines for the Development of the National Socialist Movement’ Matt Koehl noted: ‘Every dynamic force in history produces centrifugal tendencies. This has been true of the Christian church and the Marxist sects, as well as the National Socialist movement’. Professional Jewish ‘hate watcher’ Leonard Zeskind, comparing White Nationalism in America to an army, said that the movement consists solely of ‘generals and privates’ because as soon as a general promotes one of his privates to captain, the newly-minted captain declares himself to be a general and starts his army. There is certainly truth in the observations of both Koehl and Zeskind. Personality clashes differences, especially among the leaders, were the main reason that there were so many organizations all professing the same basic beliefs.

Here, listed alphabetically, is a roster of some of the NS-oriented formations active in the US during the 1970s.

  1. American Mobilizers (New York City)
  2. American Nazi Party (two different groups, one based in Hollywood, California, and the other in Phoenix, Arizona)
  3. American White Nationalist Party (Ohio)
  4. National Renaissance Party (greater NYC area)
  5. National Socialist League (San Francisco/Los Angeles)
  6. National Socialist Liberation Front (Los Angeles)
  7. National Socialist Movement (Ohio)
  8. National Socialist Party of America (Chicago)
  9. National Socialist Party of North Carolina
  10. National Socialist White Workers Party (San Francisco)
  11. National White People’s Party (North Carolina)
  12. National Youth Alliance (later the National Alliance)
  13. NSDAP-AO (Lincoln, Nebraska)
  14. United White Peoples Party (Cleveland)
  15. White Power Movement (West Virginia)
  16. White Youth Alliance (later the National Party, New Orleans)

This list is not inclusive, and other small groups came and went without leaving a mark on the political landscape.

These various organizations all shared a common ideology in a broad sense. Sometimes there were minor theoretical differences. The NWPP quibbled with the NSWPP over the inclusion of the word ‘socialist’; the NSL was a homosexual group, whereas all of the others were stridently anti-homosexual; the UWPP was openly Christian, while the NA and the NRP argued against Christianity.

But overall, all of the groups listed agreed on a certain body of core beliefs, namely:

  • that the White race was superior to all other races and needed to be defended
  • that the Jews were the enemy of all mankind and needed to be opposed
  • that race-mixing was wrong
  • that Blacks and other non-Whites (but especially Blacks) needed to be expelled from the US
  • that communism was a creation of the Jews and was evil, and
  • that the United States had fought on the wrong side during World War II, and it would have been better if Hitler had won the war.

It would be tedious and pointless to examine each of the organizations listed in detail, as most of them were insignificant, even by the modest standards of American National Socialism. But some among them do deserve discussion.

 
William Pierce and the National Youth Alliance

In 1968, Alabama Governor George Wallace mounted a presidential campaign as an independent candidate, opposing both the Republicans and the Democrats. Wallace presented himself as a disguised racialist, who would recapture the federal government from the traitors and ‘pointy-headed bureaucrats’ and reinstitute a White Constitutional republic.

It was all a lie: Wallace was just a two-bit political huckster bent on riding a massive wave of White discontent over the direction the country was heading. Nevertheless, his campaign released and focused on White resentment and anger as never before in the post-World War II era. In the November election, he won nearly 10 million popular votes and carried five southern states, totalling 46 electoral votes. Although Wallace himself was not a committed White racialist, probably 99 per cent of those who voted for him were Whites who had a positive sense of racial consciousness.

There were three different ways that American National Socialists reacted to the Wallace movement: Some, such as the NSWPP, denounced Wallace as the fraud that he was. Others ignored him as irrelevant to their efforts. But one man, at least, was shrewd enough to realize that the Wallace movement presented a unique opening for hardline racialists. That man was Willis Carto, whom we discussed in the sixth instalment of this series. Carto was a shrewd judge of human character, and he knew that Wallace was a false White Messiah. But he saw a wonderful opportunity to harness the tremendous racial energy that Wallace had unleashed.

Carto formed a student organization, ‘Youth for Wallace’ as an independent adjunct to the official Wallace movement. The goal was to amass a huge mailing list of young racially conscious White people who were attracted to the Wallace campaign and to use that mailing list for a post-electoral effort. And this he did.

Following the election, he transformed the YFW into a new organization, the National Youth Alliance. He recruited Dr Revilo Oliver to help him in the new enterprise. Carto had had a personal connection with the deceased neo-fascist ideologist Francis Parker Yockey and was the publisher of a popular edition of Yockey’s 1948 masterwork Imperium: The Philosophy of Politics and History. Because of this connection, Carto used Yockey’s thought as the ideological basis of the NYA. Yockey was not a racialist as we consider the term today: rather than racialism rooted in biological reality, he championed a wispy, insubstantial ‘spiritual’ racial ideology. Oliver was not especially enthusiastic about Yockeyism, but went along with it, later explaining that Yockey’s thought was ‘the best option open to us at the time’.

Carto’s NYA never went very far. He appointed Louis Byers as his frontman. Byers published one issue of a newspaper called Attack!, held a few meetings and distributed copies of Imperium. Within a year, the NYA was moribund.

As previously discussed, Dr William L. Pierce had split from the NSWPP in mid-1970, at the same time the nascent NYA was foundering. After the split, Pierce found himself at looses ends politically. He issued two multi-page public letters to the mailing list that he had accumulated. In the first letter, he gave his reasons for leaving the NSWPP. In the second, entitled Prospectus for a National Front he put forth his vision for a new American NS movement. He signed both letters ‘Heil Hitler!’ (see here).

In essence, what Pierce proposed was an organization that would retain basic National Socialist ideology but would be stripped of the external NS trappings that had characterized the movement since Rockwell formed the American Nazi Party in 1959: there would be no Swastikas, no uniforms, no glorification of Adolf Hitler and no fixation with National Socialist Germany. Serious political activism would replace the publicity stunts that Rockwell had used to propel himself into the headlines.
 

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Editor’s Note: See why a few days ago I wanted to read a history of American racialism? I was unaware of this precisely because I was reluctant to read the history of the Jew Leonard Zeskind, mentioned by Kerr above.

If I had known this little piece of info, I wouldn’t have romanticised Pierce as much as I did since 2010 until this year. It is clear that, on this point, Savitri Devi had a much deeper grasp than Pierce about how the collective unconscious works.

For example, keeping in mind what I said in my last post, had I known in my teens that there were two racist groups in the neighbouring country to the north, without any doubt I would have immediately chosen the one that was overtly NS: Matt Koehl’s (pic below)!

Now I see that it was Pierce who opened the first door to what since the mid-1990s John Gardner would start to call ‘white nationalism’: patriotard, tepid racialism that (unlike NS) is never going to amount to anything because it is incapable of, to use a Jungian term, making contact with the Self: the divine part at the core of the Aryan. This is so even taking into account that Pierce wasn’t lukewarm.

It doesn’t matter that Pierce tried to create a new religion (pace what Kerr says about ‘cosmotheism’ below). Without the central symbol of Hitler, deified as Savitri did it in her writings, it is impossible to replace the old religion (the Judeo-Christian poison) with the new one. It is impossible to transvalue values for the simple reason that what the Aryan needs are human models like Leonidas, Hermann and Hitler—instead of a mythical Jew from 1st century Palestine. A lot must be written about this in the future. For the moment, just remember Mauricio’s words quoted below the Roman sculpture, almost at the top of the sidebar. Kerr continues:
 

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Pierce’s letters met with a lukewarm response. Although people respected his intellect and his dedication, he had not yet proven himself as a leader. Few were ready to throw in with him in starting a new organization from scratch, especially since the NSWPP was flourishing.

At some point, Pierce sat down with the NYA’s Byers. He had given it his best shot, Byers said but had been unable to get the NYA off the ground, even after investing a substantial sum of Carto’s money and most of his savings into the venture. He offered the group to Pierce, if he wanted it, contingent on Carto’s approval. Pierce said that he was interested. Carto went along with the proposal, with the assumption that Pierce would just be another frontman as Byers had been, and that he, Carto, would call the shots from behind the scenes.

There was not a whole lot to turn over to Pierce. He received a mailing list of 15,000 names, most of which dated back to the Youth for Wallace group and were over two years old. But he also received Carto’s backing. Pierce produced the second issue of Attack! along the lines, he had discussed in his Prospectus. He jettisoned the Yockey angle and resurrected NYA as a group based on biological racialism. The tabloid was an immediate success. For a cost of $2,000, he received $6,000 back in the mail, and he could now separate the wheat from the chaff in the old NYA mailing list.

It was soon clear that Pierce had no intention of being a frontman for Carto. He was his own man and would run the NYA as he saw fit. Carto was outraged. There was a brief power struggle from which Pierce emerged victorious. By early 1971, Pierce had his group. Had he not taken over the NYA, Pierce would have doubtlessly gone on to form a new group of his own. However, with the resources of the NYA at his disposal, meagre though they may have been, he was able to move forward more rapidly than he would have otherwise.

The first NYA facility was in Washington DC, Georgetown neighbourhood. Today Georgetown is toney and upscale, but back in the early 1970s it was decidedly low-rent. A two-story brick building was provided to Pierce by Carto. On the ground floor was the Western Destiny Bookstore. The phrase Western Destiny was a nod to Yockey, whose acolytes called themselves ‘Destiny Thinkers’. Part of the stock came from the NSWPP’s George Lincoln Rockwell Bookstore, which had been run by Robert Lloyd. Lloyd had sided with Pierce in his split with Matt Koehl, and the contents of the bookstore came with him. The rest of the stock came from Carto’s own Noontide Press operation. Above the bookstore was Pierce’s office, where he produced Attack! and carried out routine administrative tasks for the Alliance. The bookstore was manned by Pierce’s first two followers, who had come over to him from the NSWPP.
 

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Editor’s note: So at least at the beginning, there had long been some founding stones for a future publishing house, which is what I was concerned about in my earlier comments on this series. Kerr continues:

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However, after he broke with Carto, Pierce lost use of the facility. He eventually relocated the NYA office to Crystal City, across the Potomac River in South Arlington. He would have different offices in Crystal City over the years, until he finally moved the operation (then greatly expanded) to Hillsboro, West Virginia, in August 1985.

The NYA presented itself to the public as an activist group, but the reality was that it had few activists. In the four years of its operations, two small, low-key picket-line demonstrations were its only organized public activities. In 1973, Pierce testified against Secretary of State nominee Henry Kissinger before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He stated that Kissinger, as a Jew would favour the interests of Israel over America. But for the most part, the NYA and Pierce kept a low profile.

Most of its energy and resources went into producing and distributing Attack! which quickly became a ‘must-read’ publication in pro-White circles. Although it had some agitational content, its strong point was thoughtful, in-depth essays by Pierce on a wide range of racial and societal topics. At first, Pierce had to write most of each issue himself. In time, however, he was able to attract other writers who were impressed with his intelligence, realism and seriousness. One of these young recruits was Mark Weber, who went on to become a leading revisionist historian and head of the Institute for Historical Review.

Another feature of Attack! was The Turner Diaries. This was a serialized novel, an episode of which appeared in each issue. Pierce used the format of an adventure story set shortly to present his ideas concerning race and revolution. In 1978, the episodes of this series were collected and published as a novel. The novel proved to be immensely popular and successful: hundreds of thousands of copies have been printed in several different editions, and for a while, it could even be found in mainstream bookstores across the US. This gave Pierce’s core message an audience far beyond the relatively small readership of Attack!

As the 1970s wore on, the premises on which the NYA were founded eroded. The upheaval and turmoil of the Vietnam War era subsided, and the dynamic radicalism of the 1960s gave way to a prosperous society based on conspicuous consumption. As noted, the NYA had been founded as a student organization with membership limited to those under 30 years of age. Pierce recognized that he needed to make some adjustments to fit the changing situation.

 
The National Alliance

In February 1974, the NYA was reorganized as the National Alliance. In May of that year, Pierce adopted the Life Rune as its symbol. In 1977, the Attack! newspaper was replaced by the National Vanguard tabloid. In May 1982, Pierce retired the tabloid format, which was designed for mass distribution, and relaunched National Vanguard as a magazine printed on glossy stock and aimed at a more select audience. With occasional interruptions, the print version of National Vanguard continued until 2009, at which time it was temporarily suspended. It exists today in an online format (here).

Although later it attracted enough followers to stage impressive public demonstrations, the NA, like the NYA before it, kept a low profile in its first years. In terms of recruitment, it focused on quality, rather than quantity. Unlike the NSWPP, which had a political focus, or the NSWPP’s successor organization, the New Order which defined itself in spiritual terms, the National Alliance was an educational organization. The content of National Vanguard reflected this. A sales division, National Vanguard Books was created; the NA’s extensive booklist was the envy of every pro-White group and even attracted attention from like-minded formations abroad. The simple list was replaced in 1984 by a magazine-format illustrated catalogue. In 1983, Pierce recruited Kevin Alfred Strom. Strom’s first major project was compiling and producing a huge, portfolio-sized volume called The Best of Attack and National Vanguard Tabloid.

Internally, Pierce continued to develop his movement’s ideology. In serialized fashion, like The Turner Diaries, he wrote a comprehensive history of the White race stretching from remote prehistory through the second half of the 20th century. It was called Who We Are.

Although he was a practical man, who kept his attention focused on the important tasks immediately before him in building the NA, he also had a reflective side to his personality. His reflections on Man and Race, and their place in the Universe (or Cosmos), resulted in Pierce founding Cosmotheism. This was the philosophical or spiritual dimension of the National Alliance worldview. Or perhaps it is better to say that it is Cosmotheism that is all-encompassing, and the NA is its political manifestation at this point in history. Although his focus on the NA and the challenges before it kept him from developing this new belief in-depth, he spent enough effort on it to author three short essays which serve as its basic texts: The Path (1977), On Living Things (1979) and On Society (1984).

As I have written before, if our Race survives the existential crises which now beset it, William Pierce will not be remembered by future generations as the author of The Turner Diaries, or even as the founder of the National Alliance, but rather as the man who first codified the Will of Nature as Cosmotheism.

In August 1985 – at roughly the same time that Matt Koehl moved the headquarters of the New Order to Milwaukee – Pierce relocated the national office of the NA to Hillsboro, West Virginia. Further discussion of the evolution of these two organizations in the late 1900s and early 2000s lies beyond the scope of this article.

 
National Socialist Party of America

Another split occurred in the NSWPP at roughly the same time that Pierce broke away. This led to the creation of the National Socialist Party of America, which lasted until 1980.

Frank Collin was the leader of the Chicago Unit of the NSWPP. He was half-Jewish: his father was Max Simon Collin (born Cohn), a German Jew who had been interned in the Dachau detention facility in the 1930s, before emigrating to the United States. Frank Collin’s mother was of Irish-Catholic descent. Collin concealed his Jewish heritage when he joined the NSWPP. In 1970, the NSWPP headquarters in Arlington received a tip concerning Collin’s father. National Organizer Robert Lloyd investigated the allegation by examining the pertinent immigration and birth records, which were available to the public. He determined that Collin was indeed half-Jewish.

Collin was asked by the NSWPP to step down as the Chicago leader, but he refused. This caused a split in the local group, with hardline party loyalists remaining with the NSWPP, and Collin and his followers breaking away to form the NSPA. Collin dishonestly told his members that he did not have any Jewish descent. Despite the hard evidence against him, his followers chose to believe him.

The NSPA was based in the Marquette Park neighbourhood on Chicago’s west side, where George Lincoln Rockwell had successfully organized White resistance to racial integration in 1966. The party headquarters was called Rockwell Hall, and the group enjoyed a high level of support among the area’s besieged White population. The NSPA occasionally ran candidates for public officer. In 1975, Collin standing for alderman received sixteen per cent of the vote. Although it was a tiny group with only a handful of members, it received massive nationwide publicity on two occasions.

The first of these was the ‘Skokie controversy’. The NSPA was told that it would be unable to use Marquette Park for its White Power rallies unless it posted a huge deposit with the city. The small group, with no base of financial support to speak of, was unable to raise the amount. Instead, it announced that it would march in Skokie, Illinois, a community with a large Jewish population, many of whom were reputed to be ‘Holocaust survivors’. When the city of Skokie prohibited the march, Collin took it to court for violating his First Amendment rights. The case wound through the court system, eventually finding its way to the Supreme Court. In the end, Collin was allowed to march in Skokie but declined to do so. The rally deposit for public parks required by Chicago was also struck down.

The NSPA also garnered major worldwide publicity for its participation in the Greensboro, North Carolina, shootout between Klansmen and National Socialists on one side, and members of a Marxist sect calling itself the Communist Workers Party on the other. The North Carolina chapter of the NSPA had originally been yet another NSWPP splinter group called the National Socialist Party of North Carolina. It was led by Harold Covington, a former NSWPP activist and staff member. In 1976 he merged his mini-party with the NSPA and was appointed ‘Deputy Party Leader’ by Collin.

The CWP had been agitating local Negroes against the Klan in the futile belief that this would make the Negroes support communism. A series of skirmishes between the Klan and their NSPA allies and the CWP culminated in a ‘Death to the Klan’ rally organized by the Reds in a Black neighbourhood of Greensboro. The CWP taunted the Klan, calling them cowards and it dared them to attend the rally to counter-protest.

The rally was held as scheduled on November 3, 1979. The Reds were startled when a caravan of cars containing twelve Klansmen and four NSPA members drove to the rally site. (Covington refused to go along, claiming that his life was ‘too important to risk’.) Recovering from their initial surprise, the Communists attacked the vehicles. The Klansmen and National Socialists left their cars and engaged in a brawl with the Marxists. At some point, the Reds pulled back and opened fire on the men from the convoy with handguns. One Klansman, Harold Flowers, was wounded by gunfire. The Klansmen and NS’ers then retrieved long guns from the trunks of their vehicles and returned fire, killing five of the Reds and wounding a dozen others.

Sixteen of the Klan/NS convoy were arrested for murder but were subsequently found not guilty. This was a good showing on the part of the NSPA, but it proved to be their last hurrah. In December 1979, Collin was expelled from his party after evidence was discovered by NSPA members proving that he was a paedophile who had molested young boys in the Rockwell Hall headquarters. This information was subsequently turned over to the police, who arrested Collin in January 1980. Upon conviction of the charges, he served three years in jail. He has since reinvented himself as ‘Francis Joseph’. a self-described neo-pagan and expert on Atlantis and similar subjects.

Covington briefly took over the NSPA. He ran what was left of the party from his Raleigh, North Carolina office rather than Rockwell Hall. Sometime in 1981 or 1982, he abandoned the party and moved to Ireland. Another NSPA officer, Michael Allen, took command before finally dissolving the group in the mid-1980s.

 
NSDAP/AO

The initials NSDAP/AO stand for Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei Aufbau- und Auslandsorganisation, which is German for National Socialist German Workers Party Development and Foreign Organization. Unlike the other groups listed here, the NSDAP/AO did not view the United States as its major field of operations; rather it was formed as a propaganda base for the German NS movement. Any open manifestation of National Socialism was strictly illegal in both West Germany and East Germany in the 1970s (as they remain so today in the reunited German state). The purpose of the NSDAP/AO was to produce hardline NS material in the US, which would then be smuggled into Germany.

The NSDAP/AO was formed in 1973 by Gerhard Lauck, an American of German descent. Lauck, who was only 19 years old at the time, was encouraged in his efforts by former members of the German-American Bund. In March of that year he published the first issue of NS Kampruf (‘NS Battle Cry’), a German-language National Socialist publication. The NSDAP/AO also published leaflets, stickers and posters. It began with modest press runs of a few thousand, but within two years it was printing hundreds of thousands of pieces of material at a time.

Sometimes this literature was mailed directly into Germany. However, because of interference by the German police, Lauck eventually developed a network that allowed him to send bulk shipments of material to countries bordering Germany where National Socialism was legal, such as Denmark. It was then smuggled across the border for distribution to underground NS cells.

In 1974, Lauck entered Germany for organizational purposes. He was ordered deported and eventually allowed himself to be arrested by the police.

Also in 1974, the NSDAP/AO began to involve itself in the American NS movement. Lauck initially tried to form a working relationship with Matt Koehl, who was the leader not only of the National Socialist White People’s Party but also of the World Union of National Socialists. WUNS had German and other European contacts. However, neither man fully trusted the other, and so Lauck cast about elsewhere for American allies. He eventually settled on an alliance with Frank Collin and his NSPA.

In April 1975, the NSDAP/AO issued its first English-language publication, the NS Report. Eventually, it was merged with Collin’s irregularly-published tabloid The New Order and adopted the other publication’s name. Lauck lent his political support to NSPA activities and attended some of them in person. In 1980, NSPA leader Collin was arrested for child molestation and was replaced by Harold Covington, who purchased the Rockwell Hall headquarter. Lauck soon broke with Covington and kept his distance from the American NS scene for the next two decades.

The NSDAP/AO continues its work to this day. In addition to English and German, it has expanded its operations to include material in over two-dozen languages. Its main website is: this.

 
National Socialist Movement and the National Socialist White Workers Party

The National Socialist Movement, which was alive and healthy in 2018, began in 1976 as a letterhead organization run by Robert Brannen and James Mason. The group conducted no activities, other than publishing a small photocopied newsletter. In April 1978, it merged with the National Socialist White Workers Party.

The NSWWP was an offshoot of the San Francisco Unit of the NSWPP. It was headed by Allen Vincent, an Old Fighter from the Rockwell years. The NSWPP in Northern California had been the subject of a documentary film that was nominated for an Academy Award in 1976, and which was later screened in Cannes. Vincent was the central figure in the film. After the film’s release, he broke with Matt Koehl and started his mini-party in the San Francisco bay area. It held occasional meetings and public activities and opened the Rudolf Hess Bookstore. The store was in a predominantly non-White area and was quickly stormed and destroyed by an angry mob. Vincent and his followers made a narrow escape out the back door.

At some point, both Brannen and Mason lost interest in the NSM/NSWWP. Brannen, the group’s chairman, turned it over to Clifford Herrington. Herrington had been in the NSWPP and a variety of splinter formations, and also ran his Satanic group called the ‘Joy of Satan’. In the 1990s, Herrington left the group and named Jeff Schoep as his successor. Surprisingly, Schoep proved an accomplished organizer and activist, and by 2000 he had made the NSM the largest and most-successful NS group in the US since the NSWPP was dissolved in 1983.

James Mason went on to form the Universal Order, another letterhead group, which combined traditional National Socialist doctrine with the teachings (such as they are) of the homicidal cult leader Charles Manson.

 
National Socialist Liberation Front

The NSLF was another NSWPP-breakaway, led by Joseph Tommasi. He had been the most impressive and successful of the NSWPP’s local leaders. He ran the Los Angeles Unit of the party out of a large Swastika-decorated farmhouse in the LA suburb of El Monte. Tommasi was a talented public speaker and organizer and had a charismatic personality. At a time when many NSWPP units struggled to raise a dozen men for local demonstrations, Tommasi could put 40 to 50 troopers in the street. By most political metrics, this is a pitifully small number, but by the low standards of post-War American National Socialism, it was noteworthy.

Unfortunately, Tommasi was impulsive, hot-headed and undisciplined. He viewed his NSWPP chapter as an independent NS franchise that he could run however he saw fit. Commander Matt Koehl, however, considered each local unit to be subordinate to the party’s national organization. Koehl repeatedly tried to bring Tommasi’s operation into line with the rest of the party, but the 22-year-old Tommasi was stubborn and refused to comply. In 1973, Koehl reluctantly removed Tommasi as the Los Angeles Unit leader. In March of 1974, Tommasi broke from the NSWPP to form the National Socialist Liberation Front.

The NSLF, supposedly, was committed to ‘building the National Socialist revolution through armed struggle’. Tommasi, however, was limited in how much-armed struggle he could undertake since the group was heavily infiltrated by the police from the moment of its inception. Instead, he allied with an anti-Castro Cuban group based in South El Monte. The Cubans would commit small acts of violence against local Marxist organizations, and by mutual arrangement the NSLF would publicly take the credit for them. Actual NSLF activities were largely limited to attacks on the NSWPP and its personnel, against which Tommasi continued to harbour a grudge.

On August 15, 1975, Tommasi was shot dead on the steps of his former NSWPP headquarters when a confrontation he initiated with two NSWPP security officers turned violent. One of the men later pled guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to six months in jail. Following Tommasi’s death, the NSLF was led by David Rust, but within a few years Rust found himself in prison on weapons charges. Periodic attempts were made to revive the group by James Mason, Karl Hand and others. None of these attempts was unsuccessful.

 
National Socialist League

The National Socialist League was an organization in Los Angeles and San Francisco for homosexuals. Homosexuals were not allowed in NS or related groups, which in fact, were vociferously anti-homosexual. Thus, the NSL was in a category of its own, seeking to combine National Socialism with ‘the struggle for sexual liberation’. The NSL was founded by Russell Raymond Veh, a former NSWPP activist who left the party after he belatedly discovered that it was hostile to his sexuality.

The NSL undertook no public activities. What its private activities were one can only imagine. It published a newsletter, initially called NS Kampfruf (no doubt plagiarized from Gerhard Lauck’s publication of the same name), but later changed to NS Mobilizer. The NSL lasted from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s.

We will not chronicle or document the other groups listed at the beginning of this article. With the notable exceptions of the NA, the NSDAP/AO and the NSM, these minor formations – some of them very minor indeed! – all tell the same story: A disgruntled NSWPP member declares himself to be the new Führer and proceeds to lead his corporal’s guard of followers into obscurity.

Taken together, these smaller groups cut a poor figure. Indeed, they hurt the overall prospects of American National Socialism by opening the movement up to ridicule, and by making it seem unappealing and unsavoury to disaffected Whites who might otherwise consider National Socialism in a positive light. Yet for good or for ill, they are part of the historical record.

Categories
Autobiography Child abuse Martin Kerr

My own stagnation in the pond

This paragraph from the previous post about the history of American National Socialism, written by Martin Kerr—:

Some NSWPP activities may seem startling by the standards of 2018. In 1976 and 1977, a contingent of uniformed Stormtroops, led by three drummers and a flag bearer, marched in the annual Arlington, Virginia, Fourth of July parade, along with the high school band, the VFW, the Rotary and other non-controversial participants. As I can personally attest, the National Socialists received both cheers and catcalls from onlookers along the parade route.

—slightly shocked me. Those years Kerr mentions, 1976 and 1977, were precisely the years when the soul-destroying assault of my parents (and a witch doctor they hired to break me) had reached its peak in my adolescence.

Had I known that such an organisation existed on the other side of the Rio Grande, I would have done my utmost to escape the hell at home and devote myself body and soul to the cause of National Socialism. As I wrote in mid-October on this site, a couple of years before the black hour of my life I had gone into a bookshop asking for ‘pro-Nazi books’. No one informed me that there was an organisation in the US that published the literature I was looking for.

I blame not only my family, the Spanish publishing houses, the school institution and the media that kept me in the dark in the darkest hour of my life (the internet didn’t exist). Had I known better, I would have remade my life instead of staying in a place where I would stagnate in a pond (to understand the metaphor of the Tarot card’s pond see this entry). After those pretty hellish years, in December 1978 I would enter a neo-Christian sect that would alienate me for decades, as I recount in the fifth and eleventh books of my autobiography.

Categories
George Lincoln Rockwell Martin Kerr Matt Koehl Real men

History of American NS, 7

The National Socialist White
People’s Party (1967-1982)

Second day of the sixth congress of the NSWPP and the
World Union of National Socialists, Milwaukee, 1975.

A telephone call came into the national headquarters of the National Socialist White People’s Party about half-past noon on August 25, 1967. National Secretary Matt Koehl took the call. It was a person claiming to be a reporter. He wanted the party’s comment on the assassination of NSWPP founder George Lincoln Rockwell. Koehl hung up without replying; he assumed it was one of the dozens of prank calls that the headquarters received each day. He knew that Rockwell was alive, as he had spoken to him in person some 40 minutes earlier; now he was impatiently waiting for the Commander’s return from the local laundromat so that he could use the vehicle that Rockwell had taken for a party activity.

Moments later the phone rang again, and once more it was someone else who said he was a reporter, asking for a comment on Rockwell’s death. Again Koehl hung up. Within seconds there was a third call – but this time, before Koehl could slam down the receiver, he heard the caller say the word ‘laundromat’.

‘It was as if an icy-cold hand gripped my hear’, he later said.

Koehl quickly dispatched a trooper on foot to run down to the laundromat, about a quarter-mile away, to see if Commander Rockwell was all right. Shortly afterwards, the trooper returned. He was out of breath and drenched in sweat from running in the 90-degree summer heat. Commander Rockwell had been shot, he reported. His body was laying on the parking lot pavement, surrounded by a crowd of curious onlookers who were being held back by the police.

‘I instantly knew two things’, Koehl later recalled. ‘First, that he had been killed to stop his life’s work, and second, that I would not let that happen’.

The era of George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party was over, and the era of Matt Koehl and the National Socialist White People’s Party had begun.

 
Transition and survival

Technically, the era of the American Nazi Party had ended some nine months earlier, when Rockwell had renamed the group as the NSWPP. The name change was only one component of a sweeping program he had announced to transform the noisy band of political dissidents he had gathered around himself into a serious political movement for angry American Whites. The transition of the party from a group specializing in street theatre to one engaging in legitimate grass-roots activism had only just begun when Rockwell was killed. It fell on Koehl and his co-workers to carry it out as best they could.

But Koehl had a more-pressing priority before him: the very survival of the party itself.

In the tumultuous days and weeks following the assassination, the party initially rallied behind Koehl as its new leader. At first, Koehl refused to assume the title of ‘commander’, although as Rockwell’s designated successor he was entitled to do so.

Instead, he called himself ‘National Leader’. He imposed a two-year probationary period on himself. At the end of that time, he said, he would consult the party’s membership, and if they were satisfied with the job he was doing, then he would continue as ‘commander’. Otherwise, he would step aside.

But the initial surge of party solidarity that followed Rockwell’s death soon evaporated, and fissures in its organizational structure emerged. Part of the problem was that Koehl, then 32 years old, had a very different personality from Rockwell, who was 49 at the time of his death. The 6’4’ Rockwell was gregarious and dramatic and dominated the gathering whenever he entered a room. All eyes were on him. The younger, smaller Koehl, on the other hand, was quiet and introverted. Some in the party mistook his low-key personality as a sign of weakness. They thought that it would be easy for them to control him. All bookishness aside, however, Koehl possessed an iron will and a clear vision of what needed to be done to build National Socialism in America. Soon, his critics were gone, either having been expelled for insubordination or having voluntarily resigned. Some of them convinced that they could do a better job than Koehl, set up their mini versions of the ‘American Nazi Party’. We will discuss some of these splinter groups in the next instalment of this series.

So, despite the unprecedented avalanche of free publicity that followed the assassination, the NSWPP soon found itself short of manpower and money. The party headquarters in Chicago and Los Angeles were shuttered, and key personnel were transferred to Arlington. The NSWPP’s printing plant in Spotsylvania, Virginia, was also closed, and the group lost its mail-order operation in Dallas, Texas. By the end of 1967, it had been evicted from its famous ‘Hatemonger Hill’ headquarters in Arlington. Enemies of the party gleefully predicted that its end was at hand. The New York Times published a lengthy obituary for the NSWPP, entitled ‘Rockwell’s Nazis Lost without Him’.

But Koehl refused to let the party die. By the middle of 1968, a small brick-and-stone building had been purchased to serve as the new headquarters. An impressive, hardcover edition of Rockwell’s posthumous book, White Power, was published. The new party tabloid newspaper, also called White Power, began to appear although on an irregular basis at first. Soon, the party opened a second facility in Arlington, the ‘George Lincoln Rockwell Bookstore’.

The new momentum was partly due to two officers whom Koehl had recruited: Dr William L. Pierce and Robert Lloyd. Pierce had been a behind-the-scenes consultant to Rockwell during the mid and late 1960s; now in the hour of need, he stepped forward to play a more prominent role. He became the party’s National Secretary and public outreach officer. Pierce brought a new level of professionalism and intelligence to the party’s publications. He also pioneered new outreach forms, such as the ‘White Power Message’. This was a three-minute telephone recording on various topical issues that was changed periodically. Thousands of listeners called the service weekly, including many who were otherwise unwilling to contact the party.

Lloyd had been a captain in Rockwell’s Stormtroops but had drifted away in the year before the assassination. Now, he returned as the group’s National Organizer, charged with recruitment, public activities and with forming new party units throughout the country.

On Labor Day weekend, 1969, some two years after Rockwell’s death, the party held its first-ever national congress, attended by over 120 delegates. The congress included a closed session for full members and officers only. At this time, Koehl’s leadership was unanimously reconfirmed, and he officially became the party ‘commander’.

Yet all was not well within the group. In June 1970, Pierce made a bid to oust Koehl as the party’s supreme leader. Instead, he demanded that the party be run by a committee chaired by himself. Under this scheme, Koehl would stay on as the Movement’s figurehead but would have no power.

Once again, Koehl’s opponents underestimated him. By August 1970, Pierce was gone, as was Robert Lloyd, who had supported Pierce’s power-play. Pierce later admitted that his effort to supplant Koehl had been an error. To use a contemporary term, both men were ‘alpha males’. Each had his vision on where to lead the Movement, and neither was inclined to take orders from the other. Pierce went on to form his group, the National Alliance, which will be discussed in the next instalment of this series.

Happily, despite the ill feelings that accompanied the split, by the end of the decade, Koehl and Pierce were again on speaking terms. As the saying goes, they ‘agreed to disagree’ on the best way forward for our Race. Still, Pierce’s departure was a major setback for the Rockwell movement.

But the ‘Pierce mutiny’ (as it was called within the NSWPP), was only the first in a decade-long series of similar episodes. Time and again, Koehl would build the NSWPP up to a certain level, only to have all of the progress undone by internal difficulties.

 
Koehl as a leader

Both inside and outside the party, people measured Koehl as a leader against their memories of Rockwell. And at first, Koehl made the same comparison himself. By such standards, he fell far short. For one thing, he lacked Rockwell’s charisma and exuberance. At the beginning of his tenure, Koehl’s speaking ability was poor. He did not have Rockwell’s ability to improvise before an audience. Instead, Koehl would read his speeches from a typewritten text, only rarely looking up. Over time, he developed into an impressive and dynamic speaker – but that is not how he started.

His effort to be an imitation of Lincoln Rockwell was a failure. He later told me that just as each of us has a unique personality, so each leader must find his unique style of leadership. It was a mistake, he said, for him to try and copy Rockwell’s style, as his personality and talents were far different. But in time he found his leadership style. It included careful forethought, methodical preparation and scrupulous attention to detail. He used the organizational sections of Mein Kampf as an inflexible guide to party-building and operations. But like Rockwell, he also led from the front. He was injured and arrested numerous times on party activities, although as commander he could have held himself aloof from danger. Above all, he never asked his men for something that he was not willing to do.

A famous example of this took place in Miami, Florida, on August 20, 1972, when Koehl spearheaded 23 Stormtroops in civilian clothes in a raid on a Marxist encampment in Flamingo Park. Koehl led the National Socialists in capturing the speakers’ platform, which the ST men then defended for two hours against repeated assaults by hundreds of communists before finally being overrun and forced from the park. The event, which took place near the site of the Republican presidential convention, garnered the NSWPP worldwide news coverage.

Gradually, a corps of Koehl loyalists emerged, both in Arlington and local units scattered across the country. These were men and women who understood and appreciated his disciplined leadership style in itself, as different as it was from Rockwell’s freewheeling, impromptu leadership of the previous decade.

Rockwell’s strategy had been based on what we may call ‘punctuated equilibrium’: long periods of stasis interspersed with dramatic breakthroughs. Koehl, on the other hand, worked on the theory of slow growth and consolidation:small, incremental gains that added up over a long period.

At first, Koehl, adhered to Rockwell’s Four-Phase program (discussed previously) as closely as he could. But over time, he began to diverge from it, only a little bit at first, and then more and more as time went on. Instead, he made practical progress in building the party whenever he could, with no real thought to a long-term NS ‘seizure of power’.

 
The NSWPP in the 1970s

Under Koehl’s leadership, the NSWPP grew into an impressive, nationwide organization with headquarters and bookstores in major US cities, such as Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles and elsewhere. For a while, it had a 15-minute program of news commentary on AM radio, entitled The Future Calls. The White Power newspaper was published monthly, and an internal newsletter, the NS Bulletin was issued twice a month. In addition, the party published a theoretical journal on behalf of the World Union of National Socialists. But it was not its publications for which the Party was best known, but rather for its relentless, high-energy, high-profile public activism.

Full membership in the party was restricted to those comrades who had proven their full commitment to the cause. Those who applied for membership were vetted. After a probationary period lasting from one to two years, they had to pass an interview before a panel of party officers. As a minimum, members were expected to tithe ten per cent of their net income to the party, to purchase and distribute fifty copies of White Power each month, and attend all private and public party activities in their area.

In addition to the party itself, there were three auxiliary formations. The best known was the paramilitary Stormtroops (ST). There was also a women’s auxiliary (the National Socialist Women’s Organization or NSWO) and a youth group (the National Socialist Youth Movement or NSYM). The NSW did not take part in public demonstrations but served behind the scenes in a support capacity. The NSYM provided National Socialist training for young men 14 through 17, who then normally went on to join the ST.

The party reached its numerical peak during the mid-1970s. At that point, it had approximately 600 Official Supporters and another hundred full and probationary members. The ST numbered approximately 200 men nationwide. The NSWPP routinely conducted uniform demonstrations with fifty to a hundred participants and on a few occasions, the number of troopers was over a hundred. In 1973, at the fifth NSWPP national congress in Cleveland, Koehl led 126 uniformed Stormtroops in a public march down Euclid Avenue. The police were present but kept their distance – as did a dispirited gaggle of ‘anti-Nazi’ protestors. In contrast, Rockwell had never been able to field more than two-dozen or so troopers on any single occasion.

(Commander Matt Koehl leading a march at the Fifth NSWPP Congress, September 1, 1973.) Some NSWPP activities may seem startling by the standards of 2018. In 1976 and 1977, a contingent of uniformed Stormtroops, led by three drummers and a flag bearer, marched in the annual Arlington, Virginia, Fourth of July parade, along with the high school band, the VFW, the Rotary and other non-controversial participants. As I can personally attest, the National Socialists received both cheers and catcalls from onlookers along the parade route.

Other activities were less peaceful and ended in violence when party personnel were attacked. One such dramatic episode took place in December 1977, when a half-dozen ST men repelled an attack on the Arlington headquarters by 40 communists armed with rocks and clubs. One ST man and four Reds were hospitalized from injuries they received in the brawl.

Beginning in 1975, the NSWPP began running candidates for local office as open National Socialists in areas where it had a strong organizational presence. Typically, the candidates would run for the school board or mayor. Party candidates never won less than 5.5 per cent of the vote, and on a few occasions they received nearly 20 per cent. In some instances, the percentage of the White vote was upwards of 30 per cent.

The strongest results for the party came in the February 1977 primary race for the Milwaukee school board. The NSWPP fielded two candidates, Sandra Osvatic and Sandra Enders. Both were members of the NSWO and had husbands in the ST. Both women received about twenty per cent of the vote cast; Comrade Enders, with 7,710 votes, came within 300 votes of winning her seat. In contrast, Lincoln Rockwell had garnered only 5,730 votes – barely one per cent – when he ran for governor of Virginia in 1965.

These election results amazed political observers. If a minimum of five per cent of the voters nationwide were prepared to vote for the NSWPP, this indicated that the party had a potential base of support in White America of 10 million people.

 
Theoretical development

Rockwell had deliberately kept the program and outreach of the party very simple. For him, just displaying the Swastika and images of Adolf Hitler was sufficient to establish the Movement as National Socialist. To the degree that there was an ideology, it was a mélange of basic NS racialism, common sense, and traditional American right-wing policies. Rockwell himself had a penetrating and profound understanding of Hitlerian National Socialism, but he thought that an appeal based solely on the ideas embodied in Mein Kampf and practised in the Third Reich would be impossible to sell to American Whites. Consequently, he put forth a simplified version of National Socialism that he hoped would resonate among his fellow countrymen.

(Matt Koehl in 1978.) Koehl’s outreach, on the other hand, hewed more strictly to the German model of National Socialism. Unlike Rockwell, Koehl did not have a personal background in the American right, and he had no sympathy for its fixations. He strongly supported the socialist elements in National Socialism. Unlike Rockwell, he did not champion ‘Western Christian civilization’. Rather, his spirituality had a more heathen cast to it. Above all, Koehl stressed the centrality of Adolf Hitler to the National Socialist cause.

In 1980, thirteen years after he had assumed command of the party, a new, formal NSWPP program was issued. It was written jointly by Koehl and his chief of staff, Martin Kerr.
 

______ 卐 ______

 
Editor’s note: I was unaware, until today, that Martin Kerr, the author of this series, held this position in the noblest association that has existed in the US since the American government annihilated the Bund!
 

______ 卐 ______

 
The new program was known as the ‘Twelve Points’. It presented a comprehensive outline for an American NS state. It included sections on the economy, education, agricultural policy, eugenics, culture, science, ecology and energy, as well as the expected call for racial unity and Aryan sovereignty.

A major theoretical development came in 1980, with the publication of Koehl’s groundbreaking essay, ‘The Revolutionary Nature of National Socialism’, Previously, the stated goal of National Socialism (going back to the era of NS Germany) was the defence of Western civilization. In this new work, however, Koehl declared that Western civilization had declined past the point of any rescue or recovery. Consequently, the proper goal of National Socialism was to prepare the way for a post-Western Aryan civilization. In retrospect, it can be seen that this essay was an ideological precursor to the 1983 transition from the NSWPP to the New Order, which will be discussed below.

 
The World Union of National Socialists

Koehl’s NSWPP continued participation in the World Union of National Socialists which Rockwell had helped to form a decade earlier.

In 1975, he made a successful organizational tour of Europe, where he contacted many Oldfighters of the NSDAP. Although some German National Socialists held the US movement in low regard, Koehl had built the NSWPP up to a point where they began to consider it in a more serious light.

Among those with whom he established connections were former Hitler Youth leader Arthur Axmann, Dr Hans Severus Ziegler, and Florentine Rost van Tonnigen (wife of the martyred Dutch NS leader). He also became friends with the NS pilots Hans Baur, Hans-Ulrich Rudel and Hanna Reitsch. Significantly, Koehl was the only American present at the funeral of the famous SS commander Otto Skorzeny.

Especially important, both to Koehl personally and the Movement, was the friendship that he established with Winifred Wagner, daughter-in-law of the renowned composer Richard Wagner and an early and continuing supporter of Adolf Hitler.

 
The decline of the NSWPP

In 1978, the party began another period of contraction. It was not that the party was doing anything differently, but rather that the mood of the country had changed. The social and political upheaval that had characterized the 1960s and early 1970s had faded away. That period had included such phenomena as Black rioting and ‘civil rights’ demonstrations; massive protests against the unpopular Vietnam War, the rise of the drug-oriented youth subculture and a general breakdown of traditional White society and values. This unrest and ferment alarmed many Whites and thus provided a fertile field for the growth of the NSWPP. But as the mood of the country shifted, the fortunes of the NS movement began to wane.

The election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 only intensified the deradicalization of White America. Many American Whites foolishly believed that Reagan would turn the clock back and reestablish White supremacy and traditional White values. Hence, some people who had previously supported the party now felt that the need for an extreme ‘Nazi’ alternative to the established order was unnecessary: they mistakenly believed that the System had fixed itself.
 

______ 卐 ______

 
Editor’s note: Exactly the same mistake that the more recent internet movements (‘race realism’, ‘white nationalism’, ‘alt-right’ or ‘alt-lite’, etc.) has been committing for decades!
 

______ 卐 ______

 
Party membership dropped off, donations declined, and it became harder to recruit qualified personnel for headquarters staff. Demonstrations became smaller and smaller, and it was more difficult to find candidates to stand for public office. Whether by coincidence or design, this period of party weakness also saw a rise in attacks on the Movement by the federal government. In particular, an effort was made by the Internal Revenue Service to bankrupt the NSWPP and seize its assets. Ultimately, Koehl was able to turn back these attacks, but only at an enormous cost that left the party drained of financial resources and energy.

 
Transition to the New Order

Koehl began to question whether the whole idea of gaining power under the banner of National Socialism was actually possible. It is true that he could build up the party – but only to a certain level. Rockwell’s original plan was for a sprint to power: he had hoped to become president by 1972. Now it was apparent that building an NS America was going to be more of a marathon race than a 50-yard dash. Consequently, a new approach was needed.

Matt Koehl was not just the leader of a movement on the fringes of polite society. He was also a thinker and theorist with a powerful intellect. Decades of reading and studying had convinced him that the problems facing the White nations of the world were deeper than even most National Socialists realized. It was not just a matter of the Jewish subversion of White society and the corrupt nature of the White elites. Rather, he felt, the very basis of Aryan society had been infected with alien spiritual values.

Consequently, efforts to gain political power by the Movement were ill-conceived. Even in the highly unlikely event that the party was able to outmanoeuvre and overpower its enemies, he reasoned, the diseased roots of White society would prevent the construction of a healthy NS state.

Western civilization was doomed, he believed, and there was no way that it could be rescued or saved. Rather, he felt, the proper focus for the National Socialist movement was to prepare the foundations for a post-Western Aryan civilization.

On January 1, 1983, Koehl dissolved the National Socialist White People’s Party and reorganized it as the New Order. While the NSWPP had been a political formation, the New Order was to have a spiritual or religious focus. In essence, Koehl was seeking to establish a whole new religion for Aryan humanity, which would provide a healthy basis upon which a future White civilization could be built.

______ 卐 ______

 
Editor’s note: During the West’s darkest hour this step was understandable. Perhaps what Koehl lacked was the new information about the true origins of Christianity, a true apocalypse for whites (see our masthead)?
 

______ 卐 ______

 
The transition to the New Order was highly unpopular with many NSWPP comrades, and it led to a mass exodus from the Movement. Nevertheless, Koehl was convinced of the correctness of his decision and did not back down from implementing it, regardless of its popularity (or lack thereof) among his base of support. He strongly believed that it was his sacred duty to lead the Movement in the direction that he thought best, even if some comrades did not fully agree or understand.

 
Summing up the NSWPP

Even more so than the German-American Bund of the 1930s, Koehl created an organization that was a miniature American version of the NSDAP. But, paradoxically, that was both its strength and its weakness. What drew its members to it was a love and appreciation for Hitler and Hitler’s Germany. But this same focus on the past kept it from appealing to a wider audience.

The NSWPP had a split personality: On one hand, it was a highly ideological vanguard organization that demanded the utmost commitment from its members; on the other hand, it spent an enormous proportion of its slim resources appealing to the ordinary American Whites, who had no interest in Hitler or NS Germany. This was a contradiction that Rockwell had been attempting to resolve at the time of his death, but he had made only a tentative beginning in fixing it.

An example of this paradox was the stormtrooper uniform and the accompanying stormtrooper demonstrations. Certainly, the uniform was a force multiplier (to use a military term): a handful of troopers in uniform attracted many times more attention than the same number in civilian clothes. The publicity that the party received allowed the NSWPP to project itself in the public eye far beyond what its numbers would have otherwise allowed. But at the same time, the uniform was a barrier in terms of recruitment, as most Whites who were sympathetic to the party’s core message were unwilling to take part in uniformed public activities. The same could be said for the party’s outreach overall: only a tiny fraction of those Whites who agreed with the party were willing to join or participate because of its ‘Nazi’ image. Thus, the NSWPP was never able to actualize its full potential as a mass organization.

At the same time, focusing its energies and resources on spreading its message to a mass audience prevented the party from maturing as an elite vanguard formation. For one thing, many of those who did join up had unsuccessful lives or marginal personalities – that is, people who had nothing to lose. Such types were the opposite of an elite. They were allowed in, however, because they were the ones who were willing to participate in unformed demonstrations.

In its final years, the party did put an end to uniformed demonstrations. But it struggled to find activities to replace what had been its propaganda mainstay for over twenty years.

In some respects, the 1970s NSWPP was the high point of post-World War II American National Socialism. Other organizations with a belief system sympathetic to National Socialism have been larger, such as the White Patriot Party in the 1980s or the National Alliance in the late 1990s and early 2000s. But in terms of being a complete, open NS movement, none have surpassed the NSWPP.

As mentioned above, there were other NS, pro-NS or semi-NS organizations active in the United States during the same period that the NSWPP existed. These other groups combined had perhaps ten per cent of the strength of the NSWPP in terms of manpower and financial resources. With one exception, these groups were formed as a breakaway splinter of the NSWPP. Nevertheless, no survey of American National Socialism would be complete without mentioning them. These splinter groups will be the subject of the next instalment in this series.

Categories
George Lincoln Rockwell Martin Kerr Racial right Real men William Pierce

History of American NS, 6

The Rockwell years (1959-1967)

When discussing Movement history, the period 1959-1967 is commonly referred to as ‘The Rockwell Years’, and rightly so. George Lincoln Rockwell first raised the Swastika banner in Arlington, Virginia, on March 8, 1959, and he was assassinated there on August 25, 1967. There were indeed other NS and pro-NS organizations on the scene during these years. Some of these were older than Rockwell’s party, such as the National States Rights Party and the National Renaissance Party, which we have previously discussed. Others arose as splinters or rivals of Rockwell’s movement, such as the White Party of America and the American National Party. For their part, the NSRP and the White Party were larger than Rockwell’s American Nazi Party.

But it is Rockwell who dominated the scene in every sense: he led the way in public awareness of the Movement, and forged a new path in the theoretical development of National Socialism. Abroad, he provided the initiative for the formation of the World Union of National Socialists and at home, he set a precedent for mass NS action with the Chicago White people’s rebellion of 1966. While his competitors in the pro-White movement laboured in obscurity, Rockwell was a household name. And everywhere his dynamic personality was felt: he was the standard against which other leaders and organizations were judged.

 
Getting started

In terms of resources and manpower, Rockwell started from zero; he was alone, without even the comfort of his wife and children. The lease would soon expire in the house in which he lived, and the small offset printing press in the basement would also be taken away from him at that time. The political contacts he had in the pro-White movement were scattered across the country, and for the most part, they were already committed to various mini-parties and were not looking for something new. Financially, he was broke. But what he lacked externally he more than made up for with his internal resources: in courage, intellect, imagination and drive.

He hung the huge Swastika banner on his living room wall. The house / headquarters was located on a busy street, and the flag was visible through a picture window to passing motorists and pedestrians. He opened his doors to the curious, and he spent every evening in discussion and debate with those who showed up. Word of the anti-Jewish naval commander with the Swastika flag on his wall spread quickly, and within a few weeks, Rockwell had his first followers. Newspaper publicity followed, and the Rockwell movement was born.

The name he chose for the new party was long and cumbersome. He called it, the ‘American Party of the World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists’. The ‘American Party’ was the name of a nativist political party of the 19th century, which espoused a sort of proto-racial nationalist ideology. The term ‘Free Enterprise’ was a reflection of Rockwell’s initial unease with the socialist component in National Socialism. Those whom he first recruited almost uniformly came from what the media called the ‘far-right’ in which ‘socialism’ is a dirty word. Rockwell designed a basic khaki uniform for his members, similar to the US class A naval uniform. A Swastika armband was worn on the left arm. A Rockwell innovation was to place a small blue circle in the centre of the Swastika. This symbolized the globe, and thereby the international character of Rockwell’s racialism. Almost immediately, the initial name of the party was shortened to simply the ‘American Nazi Party’. This is the designation by which it would be known throughout Rockwell’s lifetime, and by which American National Socialism is still known today in the popular mind.

 
Rockwell’s strategic plan

Rockwell had spent his entire adult life in the US navy. He had served in World War II and the Korean War. For a time, he was on the staff of the US Naval Mission to Brazil. Consequently, he knew something about military operations and strategic planning. Unlike many movement leaders, who charge off blindly into the political arena with little or no idea of what they are doing, Rockwell had a plan.

He called it the ‘Four Phase Plan’, and it was designed to take Rockwell and the ANP from complete obscurity and impotence on the utmost fringes of the American political spectrum, to the White House. Here are the four phases:

PHASE ONE: Through agitation of all sorts, make the ANP a household name known to every White American. Rockwell was aware that racial nationalist formations were routinely ignored by the mass media. Consequently, they and their programs were completely unknown to the general population. But, he correctly surmised, by proclaiming himself to be an open ‘Nazi’ complete with Swastikas, praise for Adolf Hitler and a program that included gas chambers for ‘Jew traitors’, he could craft a public image so outrageous that the media could not ignore him. He would force the Jewish-controlled media to give him the publicity he desired, despite themselves. The downsides of this approach were two-fold: (1) The image that he projected to the public was not one of serious National Socialism, but rather an exaggerated caricature or cartoon version of the real thing; and (2) The publicity that the Party received was always hostile, to the point that it distorted Rockwell’s message even further.

PHASE TWO: Education. Once he had attracted the attention of the general public, he would correct the false image of National Socialism that had been projected to them and instead educate them as to the true nature and belief system of the NS worldview.

PHASE THREE: Organization. Once he had an educated cadre of trained party leaders and a base of support among the population, he would organize the White masses into what he termed a ‘powerful political machine’.

PHASE FOUR: The ultimate phase of Rockwell’s plan was to use the White, NS political machine that he had built to take national power.

He always spoke of taking power legally, through elections. However, as a political realist, he privately conceded that he would use whatever means necessary to secure the existence of the White race: no options were off the table.

Anyone wishing to examine Rockwell’s Four-Phase Plan in further detail should consult the last chapter of his political autobiography, This Time the World (1962), in which he explicates it in depth (pages 416-422 in the standard edition).

Rockwell discussed the plan frequently and publicly. This was a calculated risk on his part: normally, one does not divulge one’s plans to the enemy but instead keeps them secret. By making his plan public, he sought to reassure the authorities (especially the FBI) that he was not seeking to subvert and overthrow the government by force, which is illegal, but instead was seeking to make changes in a legal and peaceful manner. At the same time, he was trying to explain the disreputable and outrageous nature of his propaganda to serious-minded potential recruits who might otherwise be put off by the vulgar language, provocative street theatre and talk of gas chambers.

 
Phase One operations

In the last nine months of his life, Rockwell began to transition the party from Phase One to Phase Two. But for the preceding eight years he had been pushing Phase One as hard as he could, and so it is Phase One activities and propaganda for which he is best remembered.

This included street theatre, in which a handful of uniformed stormtroopers (usually between a half-dozen and a dozen) would march or picket. In addition to displaying the Swastika, they would carry deliberately provocative signs, such as ‘Who Needs Niggers?’, ‘Gas Jew-Communist Traitors’ and ‘Back to Africa’. The sole goal was to draw publicity to the party. Sometimes there would be a fight and arrests. So much the better, Rockwell reasoned, for that would guarantee the notoriety he sought. When he was allowed to present his ideas to a mass audience, as in his famous 1966 interview in Playboy magazine, he would consciously make himself out to be thuggish and buffoonish: he knew if he came across as too sharp and too persuasive, such interviews would never see the light of day.

ANP printed material was likewise designed to be outrageous. Towards the end of Phase One, he wrote: ‘When I began, I purposely made my propaganda as brutal and shockingly rough as I could, simply to force attention. And I have kept everlastingly at the business of building a simple and direct image of all-out hostility to “Jews and niggers” in the minds of millions of Americans, regardless of the costs in other respects’.

The important thing to remember about this approach is that it was a deliberate tactic, crafted to force a hostile news media to give him publicity–any publicity–which he described as ‘the lifeblood of any political movement’. He knew that what he was doing was not a reflection of serious National Socialism; it was a temporary expedient that he intended to abandon as soon as it had achieved its goal of making George Lincoln Rockwell and the ANP household names.

 
Proof of concept: the advent of William Pierce

Throughout his career, Rockwell spoke to many dozens of audiences at colleges and universities. This was an activity that fell into the Phase Two category–education–rather than Phase One. On these occasions, Rockwell could speak directly to the people he wanted to reach; he was not dependent on the media or any other third party. Consequently, he could explain National Socialism to his audience straightforwardly and seriously, without the outrageous slogans and provocative regalia that accompanied ANP street demonstrations. Another benefit of a speaking engagement is that the institution would pay Rockwell an honorarium of a few hundred dollars. The ANP operated on a month-to-month, shoe-string budget, with the staff at the Arlington headquarters were sometimes reduced to a near-starvation diet. The income from the colleges helped keep the party afloat financially.

One such speaking engagement took place at San Diego State College in California, on March 8, 1962. Rockwell, dressed in a suit and tie, spoke respectfully to an audience of some 3,000 students, explaining to them the ANP and its platform. Partway through his presentation, a Jewish student bolted from his seat and jumped up on the stage, attempting to wrest the microphone from Rockwell. Rockwell pushed him away, and as he squared off to fight with the attacker, the Jew punched him twice in the face, breaking his sunglasses. Before Rockwell could respond, two of his security men tackled the Jew from behind and threw him to the ground, pummeling him into submission. Other troublemakers in the audience then jumped up and began shouting, and the rest of Rockwell’s talk was cancelled.

On the surface, it appeared as though his enemies had won that round: they kept Rockwell from speaking. But the Jews had unwittingly played right into his hands. The fracas generated nationwide media coverage for Rockwell. One of those who saw the news reports was Dr William L. Pierce, a 29-year-old physics professor at Oregon State University. The report he saw on the evening news of the debacle in San Diego did not tell him much of what Rockwell had to say, but it gave him enough details that Pierce was intrigued. He dug out the ANP mailing address from a book at the school library and wrote Rockwell a letter.

The two men began corresponding, and in 1964 Pierce left his teaching position and moved across the country to help Rockwell out. This was proof of concept for at least part of Rockwell’s plan: the publicity that he received attracted the attention of a like-minded person of quality who recognized that Rockwell had a serious message to convey, even if his public image was disreputable and semi-comedic.

Pierce was a brilliant man with great moral courage, and in the years and decades to come, he would play a major role in the development of the Movement in the US. His service with Rockwell as a young man was a sort of basic training for him. Pierce never formally joined the ANP, although Rockwell asked him to sign up on several occasions and offered him an officer’s commission in the organization. One problem was that Rockwell insisted that if he were to join, that he would have to participate in at least one or two stormtrooper demonstrations each year. ‘Otherwise’, Rockwell explained, ‘the men will not respect you’. But demonstrations and the whole ‘Nazi’ image were not in keeping with Pierce’s outlook and personality, and so he declined to join. In the short term, this hobbled his Movement career. But the absence of news photographs showing Pierce parading in a ‘Nazi’ uniform meant that doors would be open to him in the years ahead that would not have been open had such photos existed.

Instead, he helped Rockwell in other ways, working on various low-key projects and advising him. In 1966, at his initiative and largely at his own expense, Pierce launched a theoretical journal for the ANP and its international affiliate, the World Union of National Socialists. It was entitled National Socialist World. The journal provided a platform for serious NS exposition on a high intellectual level. It gave a certain heft and gravitas to Rockwell’s movement that it had previously lacked. NS World included both translations of writings from the Third Reich era, and new, post-War material. Among the authors who wrote for it were, in addition to Rockwell himself, British NS leader Colin Jordan, Matt Koehl, Bruno Luedtke (a former Hitler Youth officer and NSDAP member) and Indo-European NS philosopher Savitri Devi. Pierce provided an editorial for each issue.
 

______ 卐 ______

 

Editor’s note: This was the right path to go but, alas, Pierce stopped publishing National Socialist World the next year after the assassination of Rockwell.

 

______ 卐 ______

 

Development of NS theory under Rockwell

In addition to being a man of action, Rockwell was a serious thinker. During his university days, he had majored in philosophy. Rockwell studied Mein Kampf and other original NS materials. He realized that Hitler’s teachings regarding, Nature, Race, Society, Marxism and the Jews were fundamentally correct. At the same time, however, he saw that Hitler’s defeat in 1945 had changed the world forever. The geo-political realities that were obtained before the War had been permanently altered. Before the War, the perception in NS and related circles was that each Aryan nation was menaced internally by Jewish Capitalism, and externally by Soviet-based Jewish-Bolshevism. Accordingly, it was up to each separate Aryan folk or nation to defend itself, or, as Hitler put it, to ‘devise its form of national resurrection’.

In the post-1945 dispensation, Rockwell realized, this had changed. It was not the individual Aryan countries that were threatened, but rather the Aryan race as a whole that was under attack – and in danger of complete extinction. It was only logical, he reasoned, that a race-wide threat required a race-wide response. So, for Rockwell, the political focus was on race, with national concerns being secondary, whereas, in Hitler’s conception, the good of the nation came first.

Rockwell’s almost-exclusive focus on Race as the primary issue had the side effect of marginalizing almost all other NS concerns, especially in the social and economic spheres. The party program made good faith nods at economic theory and social reform, but such issues were never fleshed out, nor were they the focus of party outreach. Exacerbating this neglect was the fact that the ANP was considered – and considered itself – as a far-right organization. Among the right, efforts at social reform and economic justice were considered the purview of the left. The people Rockwell targeted and whom he attracted had little or no concern with such issues.

Another problem was that the confrontational racial nature of ANP outreach made it impossible on a practical level to build bridges to Black nationalists and other non-Whites who shared the National Socialist position on racial separation. Much has been written on Rockwell’s effort to forge a link with the Nation of Islam and other Black separatists, but in fact, nothing concrete was ever achieved on this front, although theoretically trans-racial alliances between National Socialists and non-Whites are certainly possible.

 
World Union of National Socialists

A practical manifestation of Rockwell’s promotion of National Socialism as an international pan-Aryan movement was the World Union of National Socialists. As previously noted, the concept of a ‘World Union’ was already present in his thinking when he founded his party in 1959 under the name ‘World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists’. But for the first three years of the ANP such a formation was only an idea, not a political reality.

Rockwell’s ANP, however, inspired other National Socialists throughout the world to form similar parties. One of these was the National Socialist Movement, founded in Great Britain by Colin Jordan in April of 1962. In August of that year, Jordan and the NSM hosted a camp in the Cotswold region of England. It was attended by National Socialists from across the globe, including Rockwell.

Among those who participated, besides Rockwell and Jordan, were Bruno Luedtke from Germany, Savitri Devi, John Tyndall and Roland Kerr-Ritchie as well as delegates from Austria, Belgium and France. By the end of the gathering, the assembled comrades had agreed on a preliminary set of guidelines for the ‘World Union of National Socialists’ (Rockwell agreed to drop the term ‘Free Enterprise’ under pressure from the European comrades). The guidelines were known as the ‘Cotswold Agreements’. They named Colin Jordan as the International Leader, Rockwell as the Deputy International Leader, Karl Allen of the ANP as International Secretary, and John Tyndall of the NSM as Assistant International Secretary. The document stated that it was provisional, contingent on its ratification by a ‘World Nazi Congress’ scheduled for the next year.

The 1963 congress never took place. Jordan was imprisoned for political offences shortly after the gathering, and Rockwell became the International Leader. When Karl Allen left the ANP in 1964 after a failed mutiny, Matt Koehl become the International Secretary. The ‘provisional’ declaration, in effect, was made permanent.

The World Union provided for international strategic cooperation for its affiliated organizations (limited to one for each country), as well as participation by individual National Socialists in countries without a formal WUNS affiliate. Eventually, Jordan reorganized the NSM as the British Movement and withdrew from the World Union.

WUNS was never as effective in coordinating international NS operations as Rockwell had hoped. Eventually, after his death, it withered away until it was only a letterhead or symbolic organization. But it was important, nonetheless, for it established National Socialism in practice as a pan-Aryan internationalist movement, and not a movement embodying a racialist version of 19th-century petty nationalism.

 
The precedent of mass action in Chicago

Another precedent established by Rockwell was that of National Socialism as a mass movement for American Whites. In the summer of 1966, the west side of Chicago was rocked by a series of riots by working-class White ethnics who were opposed to the forced integration of their neighbourhoods. Spearheading the effort to break up all-White neighbourhoods was a young Jesse Jackson, who was soon joined by Martin Luther King.

The Whites felt abandoned by the politicians whom they had elected, and by the police, who were protecting Black ‘civil rights’ marchers invading their territory. The churches likewise sided with the Negroes. The media put out a steady stream of anti-White, pro-Black propaganda. Unsurprisingly, Chicago’s powerful Jewish community sided against the Whites. Special hatred was reserved by the White workers for the real estate agents – most of whom were Jews – who were trying through every means, openly and underhanded alike, to sell homes to Blacks in all-White neighbours. Everyone was against them. Who would stand up for the White Man?

The ANP maintained a small storefront office in the White neighbourhood of Gage Park, which had a large population of Italian origin. To the south of Gage Park was the neighbourhood of Marquette Park, which had a large population of Lithuanians and other Baltic peoples. Rockwell instructed his men to offer whatever aid they could to the embattled Whites. What began as noisy White counter-protests turned into violent White riots. A new Rockwell innovation, signs bearing the Swastika and the words ‘White Power’ were quickly adopted by the angry Whites as their emblem.

On August 21, Rockwell and his troopers (dressed in civilian clothes) held a mass rally in Marquette Park. Thousands of Whites cheered Rockwell’s call for White unity and White power under the Swastika. Upon the completion of his speech, Rockwell walked through the crowd, which hailed him as a conquering hero showered him with cash donations.

The enemies of the White workers – city hall, the police, the media, the clergy, the Black agitators, and above all the Jews – were shocked by the enthusiastic embrace of Rockwell by the angry Whites. Within days, King and his cohorts had wrapped up a hasty ‘desegregation’ agreement with the politicians and called off all further marches and other provocations. Indeed, King was so embarrassed that he left Chicago, never to return.

On September 10, Rockwell led a ‘White People’s March’ through White neighbourhoods and into the Black ghetto. Some 300 local citizens joined in. More would have participated but were turned back by police cordons. The authorities were once again flabbergasted by grassroots support for Rockwell and the ANP.

Within a year Rockwell was dead, and his vision of building a powerful base of support for the Movement in the areas in which he had had success was never fulfilled. But he had set the precedent for mass action. He had proved that ordinary American Whites will accept National Socialism and NS leadership when the conditions are right.

 
Rockwell’s final year and the transition to ‘Phase Two’

In the months immediately following the events in Chicago, Rockwell reviewed the state of his party and the progress that it had made. He concluded that it was time to begin to put aside the Phase One activities and concentrate on building a movement with a more serious image and focus. Effective January 1, 1967, he renamed the American Nazi Party as the National Socialist White People’s Party and began to institute other changes. The salutation ‘Sieg Heil!’ was replaced by ‘White Power!’, while ‘Heil Hitler!’ was to be used only within the party and never in public. New literature was written and designed, and older items that had been deliberately scandalous were phased out.

In June, a national leadership conference was held at the party’s national headquarters in Arlington, to brief local leaders from across the country on the movement’s new focus. A new monthly tabloid, entitled White Power: The Newspaper of White Revolution appeared in August, and Rockwell worked feverishly to complete a new book, also entitled White Power.

The specific goal of the new outreach was to recruit and build a base of support among the White middle class, as well as among White service personnel and police officers. Small businessmen were to be specially targeted.

It was at this point that Rockwell was assassinated. His deputy Matt Koehl took over leadership, and with the help of other party old fighters, he attempted to proceed with the changes Rockwell had outlined. How Koehl fared in this endeavour will be discussed in the next instalment of this series. But for now, let us note that in the minds of many people, Rockwell’s reputation, unfortunately, remains linked to the first phase of his program, and not to the next phase, which he was never able to fully implement.

 
Black Friday: August 25, 1967

On the afternoon of June 28, Rockwell and a supporter were returning to the headquarters, when they found the entranceway blocked by a pile of debris. As the makeshift barricade was being cleared, two shots rang out from the woods to Rockwell’s left. With characteristic courage, Rockwell, who was unarmed, charged his attackers. He gave chase for a quarter mile or so until the two men jumped in a vehicle and drove off. A report was filed with the Arlington County police. A few weeks later, Rockwell applied for a permit to carry a concealed weapon – and was turned down. He privately told his colleagues that from behind one of the men resembled John Patler, a former ANP officer whom he had recently expelled from the party for dereliction of duty and spreading dissension within the ranks.

Two months later, Rockwell was shot dead from an ambush at a local shopping centre. A suspect matching Patler’s description was seen running from the site of the crime, and indeed, Patler was subsequently arrested while waiting at a bus stop some distance away. In 1968, Patler was convicted of second-degree murder, and sentenced to twenty years in prison of which he served seven years. As of this writing, he is still alive and living in New York City.

It was a tragic but foreseeable end to Rockwell’s life. As early as 1962, he had predicted his assassination, writing, ‘I knew that I would not live to see the victory which I would make possible, but I would not die before I had made that victory certain’.

 
The Carto connection

So far, we have limited the discussion of American National Socialism in the 1960s to Rockwell and his party. As we previously explained, Rockwell’s presence during that period loomed so large that it overshadowed all other groups and efforts to spread the NS message. But no account of the Movement in the Sixties would be complete without mentioning Rockwell’s more mainstream counterpart: Willis Carto. While Rockwell was the face of the hardcore Hitlerian movement, Carto attempted to build support for it in a less-controversial manner.

Like Rockwell, Carto was a World War II veteran who was unhappy with the course that the country had taken in the postwar period. He felt that the government had been infiltrated with communists, and that, further, it was the Jews who were behind communism. Beginning in the mid-1950s, Carto launched a series of publications and business ventures designed to awaken American Whites to the danger that threatened the republic. But unlike Rockwell, Carto resolved to work within the system, and in particular, within the extreme right-wing of the Republican party.

Beginning in 1960, Carto and Rockwell would meet privately to coordinate their efforts. Carto began by publishing an article by Rockwell explaining the ANP and its approach in his publication Right! For this, he was roundly condemned by respectable conservatives who felt that support for Rockwell was beyond the pale of acceptance – whether Rockwell was right or not. Carto brushed off these criticisms by his more-timid colleagues.

Later Carto started a publishing company called Noontide Press (which still exists today). While not openly advocating National Socialism, Noontide produced books and other publications on race and revisionist history that espoused an essentially NS viewpoint. One of these books was a mass-market edition of Imperium: The Politics of Philosophy and History by Francis Parker Yockey. Yockey was a Fascist rather than a National Socialist, but he dedicated his tome to Adolf Hitler, whom he called ‘the Hero of the Second World War’. Carto also lobbied congress, and in other ways spread a message fundamentally the same as Rockwell’s to a mainstream audience.

 
Other groups

The National States Rights Party founded two years before the ANP was the largest pro-NS group in the country during the Sixties. Although based in the south, it had members and units throughout the US. In 1960, Rockwell was working as hard as he could to stay out of jail and bring in enough money to keep the lights turned on at his headquarters. That same year, the NSRP contested the presidential election, fielding former Arkansas Governor Orville Farbus for president and retired admiral John Crommelin for vice president. The NSRP ticket was on the ballot in five states and won a total of 300,000 votes.

At its height, the NSRP tabloid, The Thunderbolt: The Whiteman’s Viewpoint, had about 25,000 subscribers. Rockwell’s mailing list, in contrast, topped off at about 3,000. And yet, it was Rockwell who had the wider and more lasting impact for the decades.

The debate still rages today whether open advocacy of National Socialism or a slightly modified ‘Americanized’ approach is most effective. Certainly, in day-to-day operations, a concealed approach offers immediate advantages. But the evidence provided by Rockwell’s example suggests that over the long run, an honest, above-board strategy yields the greatest results.

James Madole’s National Renaissance Party was also active throughout the Sixties. However, it became, to a degree, a pale imitation of the ANP. Despite using the thunderbolt instead of the Swastika, and despite using a grey shirt instead of a brown shirt for its activist arm, it never had either the appeal or the success which Rockwell enjoyed.

A splinter of the ANP, called the White Party of America popped up in the middle of the decade. It was led by Karl Allen, former deputy commander of the ANP. The White Party, as it was commonly known, attempted to ape Rockwell’s policies and tactics, but without using the Swastika or referencing Adolf Hitler or National Socialism. It attracted activist types who were put off by Rockwell’s ‘Nazi’ image. In terms of membership, it quickly overtook the ANP. But like the NRP, it never had the impact or influence that Rockwell had.

Rockwell invited Allen and the White Party leadership to the June NSWPP conference mentioned previously. He hoped to merge the two groups or at least ally with them. However, as the conference began, Allen picked a quarrel with Rockwell, and the White Party delegation stormed out. Later, after it was revealed that Allen’s employer was an official of a Jewish dirty-tricks outfit, the White Party disbanded. Some suspect that it was a false flag operation all along, designed to draw manpower and economic support from people who would have otherwise supported Rockwell.

 
Summing up the Sixties

For American National Socialism, the 1960s was a time for both renewal and experimentation. When the Second World War ended in 1945, it was widely assumed that National Socialism was dead and gone forever, especially in the US, where it had never been that strong, to begin with. But through the courage, genius and Herculean effort of one man, National Socialism was reborn. Although the Rockwell movement did not amount to much in terms of numbers during his lifetime, Rockwell laid the groundwork for the continued existence and growth of his Cause into the future. It was then up to those who took up the mantle of his leadership to determine whether the potential that Rockwell had uncovered would be realized or not.

Categories
George Lincoln Rockwell Martin Kerr Racial right

History of American NS, 5

The pre-Rockwell years (1946-1958)

For good or for ill, the German American Bund was the primary exponent of open National Socialism in the US before America entered the War. After the voluntary dissolution of the Bund on December 8, 1941, there was no open advocacy of the National Socialist worldview in the US until George Lincoln Rockwell raised the Swastika banner in Arlington, Virginia, on March 8, 1959. The option to re-found the Movement was theoretically available as soon as the War had ended in 1945. However, the immediate post-War political and social climate was so hostile to National Socialism that even the most stalwart American National Socialists were unwilling to take that path forward.

But still, the struggle went on, albeit in the political shadows, rather than in the light of day. Various pro-NS or neo-NS activist groups arose during the pre-Rockwell period that attempted to advance the Cause without openly declaring themselves to be National Socialist.

There is a great divide – really, a chasm – that divides the pre-War Movement from the post-War Movement. To a degree this separation is one of ideology: the world was a much different place in the 1950s than it was in the 1930s, and it was a natural and organic development that the Movement’s policies evolved to fit the new dispensation.

But the real differences are those of quantity and quality. If pre-War American National Socialism was, at best, a minor movement on the American political scene, it became microscopic in its numbers in the post-War period. The Bund had 25,000 members at its height, of whom 3,000 were uninformed activists. In contrast, the National Socialist White People’s Party at its strongest in the early 1970s never had more than 800 supporters and 200 Stormtroopers. Adjusted for population growth, this meant that the NSWPP had about two per cent of the Bund’s numerical strength relative to the total US population, and perhaps three per cent of its activists.

It can be said that both the pre-War and post-War movements were led by men who were fanatically committed to the Cause, who were intelligent, and who and possessed stable personalities. But the pre-War Movement’s rank-and-file members were also of similar quality: men with careers, families, marriages, community standing and the like. In contrast, the fringe nature of the post-War Movement often meant that its rank-and-file adherents had eccentric personalities, and frequently lived on the edges of American society. This is especially true of the Movement’s activist contingent. There were, of course, a percentage of rank-and-file supporters who had successful lives in society’s mainstream. But normally these comrades kept a low profile and played a passive role rather than an active one.

 
The Columbians

On August 18, 1946, Emory Burke, along with Henry Loomis and John Zimmerlee, incorporated the ‘Columbians Workers Movement of America’ in Georgia. It was commonly referred to simply as ‘the Columbians’. Although short-lived, the Columbians was the first attempt to rebuild the Movement after the catastrophe of 1945.

Burke was a National Socialist at heart, but he realized that with the War barely a year over, open advocacy of the Hitlerian worldview was a non-starter. Rather, something in line with American traditions and values would have a greater chance of success.

______ 卐 ______

 
Editor’s note: This was a gigantic mistake by the American racialists, and it persists to this day.

The correct way would have been, as I have said, to found a publishing house for books like Hellstorm: The Death of Nazi Germany, 1944-1947, which decades later Tom Goodrich would write. All the information was already there, in the 1940s (Goodrich’s sources!). The sources only had to be cited in emotive books like Goodrich’s to show that the Allied narrative about the war was a hoax.

But they didn’t. Today’s westerners still ignore that the Allies committed a real Holocaust of Germans after 1945. The blame lies entirely with these Americans who didn’t want to do astute metapolitics (Goodrich-like books) but activism—a fool’s errand because of the media brainwash of the masses.
 

______ 卐 ______

 
What he had in mind was a dynamic racial movement, something more political than the Ku Klux Klan and more racially focused than Christian Nationalism. Burke was a veteran of numerous pre-War organizations, and he was still in contact with leaders of the old movement who still had some fight left in them, such as George Deatherage, Gerald L.K. Smith, and Gen. George Van Horn Moseley. However, he also attracted recruits who had only come of age since the War. One of these was a young attorney from Chattanooga named J.B. Stoner; another was high school student Edward Reed Fields, transplanted to Atlanta from Chicago. Although neither of these two young men would play a significant role in the Columbians, the racialist movement would hear more from them in the years to come.

Burke and his comrades spent several months in preparation before publicly launching their new enterprise. In June 1947, they were ready. A headquarters had been secured in Atlanta, and the first issue of a newsletter, The Thunderbolt, had been issued, along with a program. Following in the steps of the pre-War movement, the Columbians had a uniform: khaki, with a red thunderbolt insignia on the left arm. The thunderbolt was also featured on their banner, which was patterned after the Confederate battle flag.

The Columbians held meetings and made a concerted effort to attract White workers and recently demobilized soldiers. In July, they began night-time patrols of White working-class neighbourhoods that were bordered by Negro areas: Blacks criminals, who had historically preyed on other Negroes, had begun to drift into White neighbourhoods after the sun went down.

The rise of the Columbians disturbed the political establishment of Atlanta, and it scared the city’s large and powerful Jewish community. After an incident in which a Columbian patrol injured a Black man found wandering at night through a White neighbourhood, the authorities cracked down on the group. Its leaders, including Burke, were arrested on charges of ‘usurping police powers’ – that is, conducting a citizens’ patrol to do a job that the police were failing to do. Burke was sentenced to prison, and the charter of the Columbians was revoked.

The Columbians were in operation only a scant two months. Their total membership numbered less than 200, of whom only a couple dozen were actively involved. Yet their example inspired racial nationalists elsewhere. Slowly, the Movement was beginning to reawaken.

 
National Renaissance Party

Before describing the National Renaissance Party, a cautionary note is necessary: Almost without exception, everything that may be found online or in printed books concerning the NRP and its leader, James H. Madole, is flat-out wrong. Wikipedia has collected the most egregious falsehoods about the NRP and exaggerated them further, and then published them as the truth. Virtually nothing that you may have heard about the NRP from such sources is correct.

The National Renaissance Party was officially founded on January 1, 1949, following several months of negotiations among various minor leaders of the pre-War movement who decided to combine their meagre memberships and resources into a single new group. The main groups involved were Kurt Mertig’s Citizens Protective League, the German-American Republican League (also led by Mertig) and William Henry MacFarland’s Nationalist Action League. Mertig was named as the chairman of the group, but it was under the operational control of 22-year-old James Harting Madole, a new post-War recruit.

Madole was brilliant, energetic, fearless and an effective public speaker. One of his contacts was Charles B. Hudson, who had been a defendant in the 1944 Sedition Trial described previously. Hudson shared Madoles’s interests in racial nationalist politics, space travel, science fiction and the occult. And here we come to one of Madole’s shortcomings: his trouble in separating his enthusiasms from his political career. However, this problem only manifested itself later, in the 1970s, and was not a handicap during the NRP’s early years.

Madole’s title was National Director, and he held the real power within the small party. A nine-point program was drafted, stationery was printed up, and the first issue of the party’s publication, the National Renaissance Bulletin was issued. The lead article of the inaugural issue ‘Americans, Awake’, was authored by Madole. He continued to issue the newsletter without interruption until death in 1979.

(James Madole, left.) From the very beginning, the NRP showed itself to be different from many of the pre-War NS and Christian Nationalist groups, in that it took a serious interest in ideas and ideologies. Madole’s goal was to build a new Aryan super-civilisation in North America, not just to save the Constitution from the Jews. He was anti-rightwing, anti-capitalist and anti-Christian, all of which earned him the hostility of the Christian Nationalists and their allies, such as the Ku Klux Klan.

An early NRP associate was Francis Parker Yockey, who attended NRP meetings and activities, although he never officially became a member. Madole shared Yockey’s assessment that Stalin had broken the power of the Jewish-Bolsheviks in the USSR, and was steering the Soviet Union ever-closer to the traditional Russia of the czars. Whereas the mainstream view of the Soviets in the West during the Cold War was that they were ideologically monolithic, Madole perceived that there was a behind-the-scenes struggle taking place between the remaining Jewish Marxists on one hand, and Russian nationalists on the other. The smart thing, Madole felt, was to encourage the nationalists within the Soviet regime, and forge an alliance with them, which he tried to do. This nuanced appraisal of the USSR was lost on the American Right of the 1950s, who decided that Madole was just a racist, anti-Semitic communist.

______ 卐 ______

 
Editor’s note: This flaw would also appear among some white nationalists of the next century with their mad infatuation with Putin’s Russia.

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The NRP never defined itself as National Socialist, although it praised Adolf Hitler and NS Germany. In the early years, the NRP used both Swastikas and thunderbolts on its printed material. Initially, the NRP did not have a uniformed, paramilitary section. However, repeated efforts by its opponents to disrupt NRP public activities convinced Madole that such a formation was needed, and in 1953 he formed the ‘Elite Guard’, who wore black uniforms with thunderbolt armbands. The EG was under the joint command of Hans Schmidt and an 18-year-old Matt Koehl, who was just beginning his apprenticeship in NS politics.

From the very beginning, the NRP had an aggressive program of public activities. Typically, Madole and his followers would commandeer a busy sidewalk corner in a White neighbourhood of New York City, gather a crowd, and begin speaking. Some twenty-two rallies of this sort were held in 1953, for example. Madole pulled no punches in his speeches. A report to the FBI from this period from an informant describes him as ‘a vicious son-of-a-bitch’. New York’s huge Jewish community, as well as the FBI, became aware of and alarmed by, the NRP activities. Hostile and mocking publicity ensued, such as a major article in the New York Post, ‘The Man Who Wants to Be Fuehrer’.

Demands were soon made that the authorities ‘do something’ about Madole. The problem was that Madole, like the earlier German-American Bund, conducted his activities strictly within the letter of the law. One thing that the Federal government could do, however, was to ‘investigate’ the NRP. In 1954, the House Unamerican Activities Committee, under the leadership of Harold H. Velde (R-Illinois) launched an investigation of the NRP and other ‘hate groups’. Party members were interrogated and spied on. The Movement feared that the government was going to crack down on the NRP in a heavy-handed manner as it did a decade earlier with the Bund when dozens of Bund members were sent to prison. Many members dropped out of the NRP and others scattered to the four winds, some running as far as Mexico.

The government’s findings were released on December 17, 1954, in a grandiosely entitled Preliminary Report on Neo-Fascist and Hate Groups, often referred to as The Velde Report for short. It was a scant 32-pages in length, half of which were devoted to the NRP. HUAC concluded that while the NRP was ‘Unamerican’ it did not pose an immediate threat to the American republic.

The Feds estimated that there were 200 NRP members. After the release of the report, there were far fewer. Only a tiny handful of activists remained. But Madole soldiered on. On one occasion, two or three party members climbed to the roof of a Manhattan skyscraper and showered thousands of leaflets onto the sidewalk below during a busy rush hour. But although Madole continued the party until his death, the effectiveness of the NRP as a vehicle for promoting National Socialism, or ‘Racial Nationalism’ as Madole preferred to call it, was over.

New York City was the centre of American National Socialism and Christian Nationalism before the Second World War. Consequently, it made some sense to try to exploit whatever residual support remained there in the late 1940s. But a decade later, New York was enemy territory. An insane Jew took Madole hostage in February 1958, with the intent of killing him, but Madole escaped unharmed. His remaining followers told him that he needed to relocate both the party and himself to a Whiter area, but Madole stubbornly remained in New York until the end.

 
United White Party / National States Rights Party

Mention was made earlier of Edward Fields, a high school student affiliated with the short-lived Columbians. After the demise of the Columbians, Fields continued his participation in the shadowy world of the post-War movement. In the early 1950s he journeyed to New York City, to check out the NRP. He was impressed by Madole’s intellect and dedication but put off by Madole’s ideological radicalism. He did not like Madole’s embrace of (non-Marxist) socialism, nor did he accept The New Yorker’s analysis that the USSR was no longer under strict Jewish control. Field’s also had a poor impression of many of the NRP’s activists, some of whom had marginal personalities and lifestyles.

Fields was not a National Socialist, but his belief system ran parallel to it, especially on racial issues. His goal was to create a racial movement that combined the ideology of the Columbians with a base of mass support among racially conscious Whites, who at that time were the majority of the White population.

In 1957, Fields was instrumental in convening a gathering of White racialists in Knoxville, Tennessee, to unite various small groups together into a single large party. Among those attending the gathering were Emory Burke, J.B. Stoner, Wallace Allen and John Kasper. Also present was 22-year-old Matt Koehl, who attended as a protégé of the controversial movement personality DeWest Hooker, who was unable to attend.

The immediate outcome of the convention was the formation of the United White Party, which was reorganized the following year as the National States Rights Party. It would remain the largest White racialist formation in the US for the next two decades.

Anti-Jewish attorney J.B. Stoner was the public face of the party, while Fields ran its day-to-day operations, and edited its monthly tabloid newspaper, The Thunderbolt. The publication took its name from that of the newsletter put out by the Columbians in 1946. The NSRP also adopted the flag and the thunderbolt insignia of the Columbians. Indeed, it can be said that the party was an extension or version of the earlier group. There were close ties between the NSRP and the Klan movement, although the NSRP pursued a strictly political agenda and the Klan operated in other arenas. The membership of the party and the KKK overlapped, and, with some accuracy, the NSRP was often referred to as the political wing of the Klan movement.

Although it was not a NS formation, the party had many National Socialists among its ranks. To keep these members from drifting away, Fields would confide to them that the NSRP’s initials secretly stood for ‘National Socialist Revolutionary Party’. This, and similar practices, later got Fields condemned as a ‘sneaky Nazi’. But Fields had good reason to be concerned about losing his NS members because an open, forthright National Socialist leader was only months away from raising the Swastika banner for the first time since 1945.

 
The advent of George Lincoln Rockwell

One participant in the Knoxville conclave who did not go on to join the UWP was a 39-year-old naval commander, who introduced himself to the gathering as ‘George Lincoln’. He gave a presentation to the convention outlining a plan to relocate the Black population of the US to Africa. He called it the ‘Lincoln Plan’.

George Lincoln Rockwell had abandoned his philosophy major at Brown University in 1941 because he, like many other Americans, could sense that war was on the horizon. As a patriotic American, he felt that it was his duty to defend his country in times of war. Beyond that, he believed that he had a moral obligation to help ‘stop Hitler’ from ‘conquering the world’. He joined the navy as an ordinary seaman; by the end of the conflict, he had risen to the rank of lieutenant commander. After the War, he became a member of the Naval Reserve. Rockwell was called back to active duty during the Korean War. He was eventually promoted to full commander.

Lincoln Rockwell was one of any number of former servicemen who came home to an America they did not recognize. Softness in the face of Communist aggression abroad, cultural Marxism at home, feminism, and what was euphemistically termed ‘civil rights’ were features of post-War America. But most of these men merely grumbled and got on with their lives. Rockwell, being more sensitive and reflective than his compatriots, began to investigate what had gone wrong. This was not the America that Rockwell and the others had fought for – and for which 500,000 Americans had died.

While stationed in San Diego during the Korean War, he became involved in the movement to draft Gen. Douglas MacArthur as the 1952 Republican presidential candidate. Through his contacts in the conservative wing of the Republican party, he was exposed to his first anti-Semitic literature. He did not take it seriously. But over time, he noticed that the charges made in anti-Jewish publications were, by and large, factually correct. Specifically, he was horrified to learn that the Jews were behind the communist movement both, at home and abroad.

In his political autobiography, This Time the World (1962), he wrote of this time:

I wondered about Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. I had learned that he was right about the Jews. It might be worth reading his book to see if he had anything else right, too.

I hunted around the San Diego bookshops and finally found a copy of Mein Kampf hidden away in the rear. I bought it, took it home, and sat down to read.

And that was the end of Lincoln Rockwell, the ‘nice guy’ – the ‘dumb goy’ – and the beginning of an entirely different person.

That was probably sometime in 1952. Rockwell was instantly converted to National Socialism. He spent the next seven years trying to find a workable strategy to promote National Socialism in a quiet, low-key way through the extreme right-wing of the Republican party. All of these efforts came to nought. Although there was plenty of awareness of the Jewish Question and racial issues in right-wing circles, there was no will or courage to tackle these problems effectively.

Rockwell realized that the Republicans were not the solution to the problems to which he had been awakened. But he was also unimpressed with the little NS or racialist groups that he investigated. It gradually dawned on him that if he could not work through any of the existing formations, he would have to start one himself.

By 1958 he had made the acquaintance of Harold Arrowsmith, an eccentric, anti-Jewish multi-millionaire (a billionaire in today’s terms). After some negotiation, they agreed: Arrowsmith would finance the new movement, and Rockwell would run its operations. Rockwell had his idea for a name for the group, but Arrowsmith insisted on the ‘National Committee to Free America from Jewish Domination’. A house in Arlington, Virginia, was rented for use as a headquarters, and a printing press was installed in its basement.

One of Rockwell’s strengths was that he thought in grand terms: thinking big is the key to big results. As the inaugural manifestation of the Committee, Rockwell planned for several nationwide anti-Jewish demonstrations to take place simultaneously. Rockwell himself would lead a picket of the White House, while Fields would hold demonstrations at the same moment in Knoxville and Atlanta. Rockwell hoped that James Madole would come aboard in New York City, while DeWest Hooker would lead an activity in Boston. Rockwell further wanted other demonstrations in Chicago, San Diego and elsewhere.

In the event, Rockwell went ahead in Washington and Fields in Knoxville and Atlanta, but the others fell through.

Still, it was an auspicious beginning – but soon everything collapsed. A suspicious bombing of a synagogue in Atlanta that was undergoing renovation led to the arrest of the Atlanta demonstrators. Arrowsmith was picked up by the FBI and interrogated for hours as though he were a common thief, all his wealth notwithstanding. The Arlington headquarters, which was also the home of Rockwell and his family, came under repeated attack and he sent his wife and children to safety in Iceland.

Finally, Arrowsmith withdrew his support and ordered Rockwell to vacate the house and return the printing press. Rockwell fought back and won a delay: at the beginning, he had insisted that Arrowsmith sign a contract, and it held up in court. But the victory was only temporary. The year 1958 came to a bleak end for Rockwell: he had put himself in a position where he could not turn back, and he could not see a way forward.

On March 8, 1959, Rockwell received a package sent to him by James K. Warner, a young admirer. In it was a large, Third Reich-era Swastika banner. A tingling ran up Rockwell’s spine: He suddenly saw the way forward.

Categories
James Mason Martin Kerr Quotable quotes Racial right

History of American NS, 4

1942-1945 (The War Years)

The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The next day the German-American Bund burnt its membership lists and other sensitive documents and dissolved itself. Three days later, Hitler declared war on the United States.

With very few exceptions, which will be discussed below, the other American NS and pro-NS groups followed the Bund’s lead. But the Bund’s 25,000 members did not simply evaporate, nor did they cease believing in National Socialism. The America First Committee, associated with Charles Lindbergh, had 800,000 members. Most of these people, if not all, were broadly sympathetic to Hitler’s Germany. They, too, did not simply cease to exist when their movement formally shut down its operations on December 10.

The first reaction of the rank-and-file adherents and sympathizers of National Socialism was to go to the ground. They hoped that the crackdown they expected would pass them over if they kept a low profile, remained out of the public eye and did not cause trouble.

The leadership was a little bit warier: they knew that in the eyes of the government they were enemy agents operating in the American homeland in a time of war and that they would not simply be ignored. They knew that they were in for a rough ride.

 
The persecution of the Bund

Some Bund chapters did not accept the shutdown ordered by the national headquarters in New York to be absolute and binding, and continued operations for a while on a reduced basis. But in short order, they, too, closed down. Then it was quiet for a while.

The last national leader of the Bund was George Froebose. He had been the Midwest district leader for the group when Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze, Fritz Kuhn’s successor, mysteriously disappeared in the autumn of 1941. As the most senior-ranking Bund officer, he formally took over in Kunze’s place. But Froboese was in poor health and allowed August Klapprott and others to run the Bund on a day-to-day basis. In the middle of June 1942, he was served with a subpoena and ordered to report to New York to answer questions about the Bund’s operations. He never made it. The official story was that he lay down on a railroad track in Waterloo, Indiana, and allowed a train to decapitate him. But although his death was ruled a suicide, Klapprott and others who knew him suspected foul play.

On July 7, 1942, the former leaders of the now-defunct Bund were arrested in coordinated nationwide raids by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. Frederick Schraeder, the editor of the Free American, died of a heart attack during the raid when armed FBI agents broke into his house in the dead of night to arrest him. He was 83.

Since the Bund had conducted its operations with scrupulous legality, the government had to fabricate spurious charges to arrest its leaders. The Bundsmen were accused of ‘conspiring to undermine the morale of the armed forces of the United States’ by encouraging men of military age to avoid wartime service. (In point of fact, the Bund had issued a directive encouraging its members to comply with the draft.) The initial wave of arrests targeted the leadership, but other arrests followed in the succeeding months. Eventually, even individual members of the Bund’s youth organizations were tracked down. In some cases, they were pulled from their classrooms in front of other students, handcuffed, and marched away.

In October 1942, the Bund leaders were found guilty of ‘sedition’ and sentenced to five years in prison. The majority were sent to a forced labour camp in Sandstone, Minnesota. The conditions there were rough. Some of the men died and others had their health shattered. Gustav Elmer, former Bund Organizational Secretary, suffered a mental breakdown and was transferred to an insane asylum. Malnourishment cost August Klapprott all of his teeth and put him in a wheelchair. Once, before being sent to Sandstone, he had been brutally beaten by prison guards.

Although they were interned without trial, rank-and-file Bund members and their families who were rounded up fared better. Most of these were sent to a detention camp in Crystal City, Texas. There, the government built a complex of internment facilities, including those for Japanese and Italian Americans, as well as those of German descent. In all, some 7,000 Germans and German-Americans were imprisoned for the duration of the War.

In May 1943, former Bundesleiter Fritz Kuhn was paroled from New York’s Sing Sing prison, where he had been serving a sentence for allegedly embezzling Bund funds. He was then sent to Crystal City, where he enjoyed celebrity status among his fellow National Socialists.

Although not luxurious by any means, the conditions in the Crystal City camps were livable. Families were kept together, and private cottages were provided for the bigger families. The inmates largely governed themselves, and the Bund members organized their camp into a functioning National Socialist community. NS holidays were celebrated (such as Hitler’s birthday on April 20) and NS flags were proudly displayed. There was a camp newspaper published in German. Two schools were provided for youngsters: an ‘American’ school run by the government, in which instruction was in English, and a ‘German’ school run by the inmates, with German-language instruction. Most parents opted to send their children to German school.

Following the War, the federal government slowly released the detainees. About 1,000 were repatriated to Germany. One of those sent back was Fritz Kuhn. He settled in Munich, where died in poverty in December 1951, an unrepentant National Socialist to the end. The rest were allowed to stay. The last camp was closed in 1948 – three years after the end of the War.

‘Adolf Hitler Strasse’, a street running through Camp Siegfried

 
Operations ‘Pastorius’ and ‘Elster’

The government’s true rationale for the persecution of the Bund was not, as it falsely claimed, that the Bund was subverting the US military. Rather, it was the fear that if the Germans invaded the North American mainland the Bund would constitute a ‘fifth column’ to assist the Wehrmacht. War propaganda had reached a fever pitch, to the point that most Americans believed that such an invasion was a real possibility.

But the Germans only landed men on US soil twice during the War, and in both cases, the efforts proved so weak and poorly organized that they collapsed immediately, and never posed any threat to the US.

The first of these missions was Operation Pastorius (named after an early German-American settler in the New World). In June 1942, German submarines landed two four-man teams on the East Coast, one on Long Island, and one in Florida. The men were agents of the Abwehr (German military intelligence) and they had been tasked with sabotaging the US war effort. Two were American citizens and the other German nationals who had lived in the US.

The effort disintegrated almost instantaneously when two of the would-be saboteurs turned themselves into the FBI and betrayed their comrades. The two traitors were sentenced to prison and the other six men were executed on August 8, after being convicted of espionage by a secret military tribunal.

Hitler was angry with Abwehr chief Admiral Wilhelm Canaris over the botched operation, and no further sabotage missions were launched against the United States.

In November 1944, two German agents were landed by submarine in Maine. Their assignment was to report on the production of war materials. The mission, called Operation Elster, also ended in disaster when the two agents were captured soon after landing. They were sentenced to prison.

The threat of a mass invasion of the US by Germany had been a phantom all along, and the Bund had played no role in assisting the minuscule efforts that did take place.

 
The Great Sedition Trial of 1944

President Franklin Roosevelt, who had been a frequent target of the German-American Bund and its Christian Nationalist allies, was not satisfied with the destruction of the Bund. He wanted every vestige of pro-Axis sentiment obliterated. Early in 1942, Roosevelt ordered Attorney General Francis Biddle to organize a comprehensive prosecution of NS and Fascist sympathizers and anti-Semites. The legal justification for this was to be the Smith Act, which made it illegal to call for the overthrow of the Federal government.

The government’s case was problematic from the beginning. The initial theory of the case was that those indicted were sympathetic to Hitler’s Germany and that had conspired together to help Hitler take over the United States. The first assumption was correct, that all of those under indictment to some degree or another had a favourable impression of National Socialist Germany. But, as a group, they were not united in either thought or action and did not collectively ‘conspire’ to do anything. And, certainly, there was no thought of aiding a German conquest of the US.

Nonetheless, the prosecution went ahead, indicting an ever-changing roster of defendants three different times before settling on a final list. Here are the 30 defendants (28 men and two women) listed in the final indictment. It constitutes an honour roll of National Socialists and Christian Nationalists from the 1930s and early 1940s. Many of those indicted were associated with more than one organization, but accompanying each name is the group with which each defendant was most prominently affiliated.

  1. Garland L. Alderman – National Workers’ League
  2. David Baxter – Social Republic Society
  3. Howard Victor Broenstrupp – Silver Shirt Legion
  4. Frank W. Clark – National Liberty Party
  5. George E. Deatherage – National Workers’ League
  6. Prescott Freese Dennett – Citizens Committee to Keep America Out of the War
  7. Lawrence Dennis – Author of The Coming American Fascism, The Dynamics of War and Revolution and other books
  8. Elizabeth Dilling – Patriotic Research Bureau
  9. Hans Diebel – German-American Bund
  10. Robert Edward Edmonston – Editor of the American Vigilante Bulletin
  11. Ernst Friedrich Elmhurst – Pan-Aryan League
  12. Franz K. Ferenz – German-American Bund
  13. Elmer J. Garner – Editor of Publicity newsletter
  14. Charles B. Hudson – Publicist
  15. Ellis O. Jones – National Copperheads
  16. August Klapprott – German-American Bund
  17. Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze – German-American Bund
  18. Lois de Lafayette Washburn – National Gentile League
  19. William Robert Lyman, Jr. – National Workers’ League
  20. Joseph E. McWilliams – Leader of the Christian Mobilizers, later renamed the American Destiny Party
  21. Robert Noble – Friends of Progress
  22. William Dudley Pelley – Leader of the Silver Shirt Legion
  23. E.J. Parker Sage – National Workers’ League, Black Legion
  24. Eugene Nelson Sanctuary – American Christian Defenders
  25. Herman Max Schwinn – German-American Bund
  26. Edward James Smythe – Protestant War Veterans of America
  27. James True – Editor of Nation and Race magazine
  28. Peter Stahrenberg – Leader of the American National-Socialist Party
  29. George Sylvester Viereck – German American Fellowship Forum
  30. Gerald. P. Winrod – Defenders of the Christian Faith

Notably missing from the list are Charles Lindbergh, Father Charles Coughlin and Fritz Kuhn. Lindbergh was hugely popular with the American public, who considered him to be a hero. Including him in the indictment would have made the prosecution’s case less believable and less sympathetic. Father Coughlin, known as the ‘radio priest’ for his broadcast sermons, was indeed openly anti-Jewish – but he had an enormous following, and, to an extent, he enjoyed the backing of the Roman Catholic Church. So, he, too, was not charged. Fritz Kuhn was already in prison on separate charges and had not been active politically in the run-up to the War.

The government’s original theory of the case, that the defendants comprised a conspiracy to aid Hitler in his conquest of the US, was ridiculous and was discarded before the proceedings began. In its place, the prosecution substituted the ploy that had worked for them in the case against the Bund: that the defendants conspired to undermine the US military. Specifically, they were charged with subverting the military by criticizing its commander-in-chief, President Franklin Roosevelt.

This, too, was a ludicrous theory: criticizing a sitting president has never been considered treason. But ‘undermining the military’ had worked against the Bund, and the government hoped it would work this time too. O. John Rogge was the lead prosecution attorney; Edward C. Eicher was the judge. An indictment was handed down on January 3, 1944, and the trial began on April 17. The government’s case ran into problems immediately. The Bundsmen had been unpopular defendants, with a lazy and timid lawyer. This time, each of the 30 defendants had their attorney, some of whom were experienced and aggressive. They challenged Rogge’s case at every turn. Some of the accused, such as Elizabeth Dilling, had powerful friends and connections. As the trial progressed, the media began to mock the prosecution for its ineptness.

On November 29, Judge Eicher died suddenly of a heart attack. A new judge was appointed. After reviewing the evidence that the prosecution had provided, he declared a mistrial and dismissed the indictments. Although Rogge was still enthusiastic about going forward with new charges, the Department of Justice had no stomach for renewing the case and did not back him. The only allies he could find were the American Jewish Committee and the Communist Party, USA. In 1947, a Washington, DC, court of appeals upheld the dismissal.

But although the government failed to obtain the verdict it wanted, it achieved its primary objective: the trial crushed the Christian Nationalist movement. It rendered the most prominent and effective CN leaders politically impotent, destroyed their organizations and publications, and it intimidated their rank-and-file followers into silence. Whatever base of support that National Socialists and Christian Nationalists had enjoyed previously was now gone: they and their cause were now anathemas among ordinary Americans.

 
The National Worker’s League

Despite the brutal persecution of the Bund, a few small pro-NS groups continued to solider on even after the war began. The most notable of these was the National Workers’ League, based in the Detroit area. The NWL was formed in 1938. Ostensibly, it was led by Sage Parker, Garland Alderman and William Lyman, but another man, Russell Roberts, made the most important policy decisions behind the scenes. Their publication was the typewritten Nationalist Newsletter.

The NWL concentrated its efforts on organizing White workers in Michigan and elsewhere in the Upper Midwest. It also was outspoken in its opposition to the War. In 1942, when racial fighting broke out between Whites and Blacks in Detroit, the NWL was at the forefront of organizing the White resistance.

The federal government decided that the League, which was building strength in the armaments industries, posed a potential threat to the War effort. In 1943, its newsletter was banned from the US mail, effectively terminating it, and subsequently, the NWL ceased operations. In 1944, Parker, Alderman and Lyman were indicted in the ‘sedition’ trial discussed earlier. Roberts, however, escaped prosecution. A successor group, the United Sons of America, took the place of the NWL, but it was only a pale reflection of the original group.

 
The Citizens Protective League

Although he is little-known today, Kurt Mertig was an influential National Socialist activist and organizer during the 1930s and 1940s. He was born in Germany and became a naturalized US citizen. In addition to being affiliated with the Bund and other groups, he also ran an organization of his own, the Citizens Protective League. The innocuously-named CPL pursued a hardline NS agenda while maintaining a low profile. In some respects, it resembled the National Alliance of Dr William L. Pierce two generations later. Mertig and his associates rejected the uniformed marches of the Bund and the rabble-rousing speech-making of ‘Nazi Joe’ McWilliams and instead appealed to a sober, serious middle-class audience.

Before the War, the CPL held meetings every Monday evening in a hall in Yorkville, a German-American neighbourhood of Manhattan. While the Bund and other groups disbanded after Pearl Harbor, Mertig continued his low-profile meetings without missing a beat. When, eventually, the CPL lost the use of the Yorkville meeting hall, Mertig shifted the location of his gatherings to the private homes of some of his more-affluent members. This was done on a rotating basis so that the CPL never met in the same place twice in a row.

Mertig escaped the sedition indictment, perhaps because the feds thought he was a small fish not worth their efforts. Nonetheless, in 1943 he was ordered to relocate inland, out of the three-hundred-mile ‘exclusion zone’ that the military declared for the East and West coasts. Presumably, this was to prevent him from aiding the feared German invasion.

Mertig kept his small group together throughout the conflict, and in 1949 he used it as a membership base when he formed the National Renaissance Party, which will be discussed in subsequent instalments of this series.

 
Other movements

Although the purpose of this series is to specifically chronicle and analyze American National Socialism, there are a few other wartime developments of movements allied to National Socialism that should be mentioned.

In 1942, Rev. Gerald L. K. Smith, a former associate of Louisiana governor Huey Long and a champion of Christian Nationalism, founded The Cross and the Flag magazine, which was to be the banner publication of the CN movement into the 1970s.

In the summer of 1944, the Internal Revenue Service, on orders from the Roosevelt regime, placed a lien on all assets of the Ku Klux Klan, effectively (but only temporarily) putting an end to it.

In November 1944, Smith contested the presidential election as the candidate of the America First Party. He was on the ballot in only two states and received a paltry 1,781 votes (1,531 in Michigan and 250 in Texas). This was the low point of American racialism in the 20th century.

We should also mention the ‘Mothers Movement’, founded in 1939 after the outbreak of the war in Europe. It is sometimes known by its campaign name of ‘We, the Mothers’. Its initial goal was to prevent US entry into the War. After Pearl Harbor, it urged an end to the War through a negotiated peace. Before the Normandy D-Day, it vociferously opposed the ‘second front’ invasion of Europe.

All of the groups that continued to fight on after the US entry into the war were weak and ineffective in the face of their main adversary, which was the Federal government. It is a testament to the strength of their beliefs and their courage that they refused to bend the knee or give up the fight, despite the insurmountable odds that they faced.

The War in Europe came to an end on May 8, 1945. The Japanese formally surrendered on September 2. All charges were finally dismissed against the sedition trial defendants on May 18, 1946.

On August 16, 1946, Emory Burke founded the Columbian Workers Movement of America (or simply ‘the Columbians’), and the work of rebuilding National Socialism in America commenced.
 

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Editor’s note: Let’s cite a quotable quote by James Mason: ‘In Germany they wanted to be given the Truth, and Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP provided it. Here, they don’t want the Truth and will try to kill you if you offer it’.

Categories
Martin Kerr Mein Kampf (book)

History of American NS, 3

Critical assessment of the pre-war movement

The first period of development of American National Socialism came to an end with the entry of the United States into the Second World War. Although some tiny remnants of the pre-War movement continued through the War years and into the post-War period, for all practical purposes, the attack on Pearl Harbor by Germany’s Japanese ally put an end to the American movement as a force on the political scene. A great divide separates pre-War National Socialism from its post-War counterpart. Therefore, before resuming a chronological account of NS development, it is appropriate to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the pre-War movement, its successes and failures.

 
Strategic overview

With the benefit of eighty years of historical perspective, we can say that there were two optimal strategies that the Movement could have pursued in the pre-War period.

1. American National Socialists could have dedicated themselves to supporting National Socialist Germany by adopting a low profile, and working to weaken the economic boycott against the Reich, and fostering German-American friendship. Those who wanted to play a more active role in building National Socialism could have relocated to Germany. This strategic role for the Movement is the one favoured by Adolf Hitler.

2. Alternately, American comrades could have focused their resources and energy on building an authentic American NS movement, rooted in the broad masses of White America, that would have been separate from, but allied to, the Hitler movement in Germany. This is the course favoured by Peter Stahrenberg of the American National Socialist Party, and a small segment of the American movement.

But neither of these two strategies were pursued in a focused manner. Instead, American National Socialists, who were overwhelmingly German in ethnic or national origin, chose to support the German-American Bund. The Bund’s strategy (to the degree that it had any grand strategy) was to serve as a home for Germans in exile from their fatherland. It imitated the NSDAP in every way it could, and conducted no outreach to non-German-American Whites. It dressed its members in stormtrooper uniforms and attempted to reenact the German NS kampfzeit on American soil. Its public activities included marches and meetings, which often ended in brawls with Jewish and Marxist opponents. Such battles were then reported in newspapers, magazines and newsreels.

Although the coverage was always negative, the media gave an exaggerated portrayal of the Bund’s strength, implying that it posed a real threat to American democracy. Perhaps this publicity was in some way psychologically and emotionally fulfilling to ordinary Bund members. But if it pleased the Bund it was a black eye to Hitler, who was trying to convince America and Western Europe that the New Germany was not the menace its enemies claimed it was.

Other Bund activities were low key and internal, such as those that strengthened the folk identity of German-Americans through an emphasis on German language and custom. But in the long run, these activities did not contribute to establishing National Socialism as a native movement on the shores of the New World.

From hindsight we can judge that the pre-war movement was a strategic failure in every sense. It failed to provide substantial aid to National Socialist Germany, and it undercut Hitler’s efforts to have normal diplomatic and economic relations with the US. Rather than building support for National Socialism among White Americans, it played into the Jews’ false narrative: Hitler was a dangerous, evil mastermind, and the ‘Bundists’ were his willing goons and thugs. The Bund’s image convinced ordinary citizens that Hitler harboured sinister and aggressive designs on the US, and that the Bund itself constituted a ‘fifth column’ that would aid the German military in the conquest of America in the event of an invasion. No concerted effort was made to explain National Socialism – either as a worldview or a political-economic system – to the American public.

In consequence, ordinary White Americans believed the lie that Hitler posed a threat to their lives and liberties. Little wonder that George Lincoln Rockwell dropped out of college in the months before Pearl Harbor, so that he could join the US Navy and help ‘stop Hitler’ from conquering America!
 

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Editor’s note: The racialists who believe in ‘optics’ seem to be saying: Jews control the media and have created a false view of reality. We must behave under that vision, so as not to appear as Hollywood Nazis before the brainwashed public.

That’s a rather twisted way of seeing things. In my opinion, the public relations (PR) problem of the Bund members was the same problem of the Germans on the other side of the Atlantic: Christianity!

Mein Kampf wasn’t remotely as comprehensive a text as, say, the collection of articles by several authors in The Fair Race’s Darkest Hour (I merely added a preface). As John Gardner said in my recent post ‘Yggdrasil’:

Surprisingly, I was unable to find any coherent and helpful works in English translation from the Third Reich explaining how National Socialism might save us. Most of the major works of that period, including Rosenberg’s Myth of the Twentieth Century and Hitler’s Mein Kampf are dreadful tomes, which fail to recognize our basic predicament.

In German National Socialism there wasn’t an equivalent, under the pen of its Führer, of Marx’s The Communist Manifesto. The closest thing to it is an unsigned SS pamphlet which we reproduced in The Fair Race: a pamphlet that mentions the churches as the enemy together with liberals, commies and Jews.

Keep in mind how Savitri had been quoting Hitler’s intimate talks in our series. Hitler couldn’t say openly what he said privately because the majority of Germans were Christians. The Führer bloated his PR text, Mein Kampf, with many unreadable pages not written by him, so much so that David Irving didn’t read it so as not to distort his view of the historical Adolf!

Hitler did that because the people weren’t ready for the pure and naked truth that could be expressed in a brief manifesto (remember that in his intimate table talks there are more passages critical of Christianity than of Judaism). The net result is that the American Nazis of yore lacked a comprehensive manifesto, and the same could be said of Rockwell.

Paraphrasing Mark’s gospel, publicly Hitler didn’t speak to the masses without a parable; but he explained everything in plain language to his apostles. Under this dynamic, the only correct practice for German Americans was to do what some did: return to Germany and submit to the orders of the state. Personally, if I had been one of them and had to stay in this continent, I’d have formed a publishing house to explain NS in the plainest way we could imagine; say, by translating into English those pamphlets I have been quoting. That would have been much better than what they did!

But in this, failure to found a publishing house, everyone erred including William Pierce as we shall see in future instalments of this series. Kerr continues:

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Following the war, the tattered and beleaguered remnants of the pre-war movement tentatively came together to resume the struggle. But there were no Bund members among them. Of the 25,000 or so members that the Bund had at its height, none chose to actively resume the fight when the war was done. In the 1960s, Lincoln Rockwell waited in vain for a mass influx of former Bund members, whom he hoped would provide an initial membership base for his nascent NS party. I, personally, knew a half-dozen or so members of the original German Hitler Youth who joined the National Socialist White People’s Party and took part in its demonstrations in the 1970s, but I never met a single former member of the Bund’s Order Division or its youth organization who did so. August Klapprott, his family, and a handful of his comrades provided behind-the-scenes advice and moral support to the NSWPP. I am told that former Bund members also provided the initial impetus to the formation of Gerhard Lauck’s NSDAP-AO. But beyond that, the Bund failed to provide leadership, direction or even a meagre physical presence to the post-war movement.

Tragically, this failure was not foreordained, but largely was the result of the moral shortcomings of two key Movement leaders, Heinz Spanknoebel and Fritz Kuhn

 
The moral failings of Spanknoebel and Kuhn

The three leading figures in pre-War American National Socialism were Fritz Gissibl, Heinz Spanknoebel and Fritz Kuhn. Spanknoebel and Kuhn were cut from the same cloth: both men were energetic and intelligent, with strong personalities and a flair for the dramatic. The two were sincerely dedicated to building National Socialism in the US, but only on the condition that National Socialism itself was subordinate to their agendas. While they demanded obedience from their followers in the name of Adolf Hitler, they were not loyal to Hitler in an absolute sense.

Both Spanknoebel (as the leader of Gau-USA) and Kuhn (as Bundesleiter) falsely told their followers that they had a mandate from Hitler to lead the American movement. While they were misrepresenting themselves to their followers as being the executors of the Fuehrer’s instructions, they were charting a course for the Movement that they knew contravened Hitler’s express wishes. Simply put, they thought that they knew better than the Führer, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. Their ultimate loyalty was not to Hitler, but their egos.

In the end, Spanknoebel came to heel and voluntarily subordinated himself to the will of the Führer. His wartime service in the SS and eventual death in a Soviet gulag largely expiates his earlier hubris. But even so, the damage that he did to American National Socialism proved irreversible.

Kuhn, for his part, picked up where Spanknoebel left off, charting a course for the Bund that negated its domestic potential and made it a parody of the NSDAP. As with Spanknoebel, even in the face of direct criticism from the German movement, Kuhn wilfully pursued a course of development that he found personally gratifying, but which was a dead-end for National Socialism in the New World.

Kuhn’s decision to cheat on his wife with a mistress, whom he then supported with Movement funds, further underscores his fundamental flaw: when a conflict arose between what was best for the Bund, and what Kuhn believed to be in his interests, he followed the dictates of his ego.

In contrast to Spanknoebel and Kuhn is Fritz Gissibl, founder of Teutonia and briefly leader of the Friends of the New Germany. Gissibl was quiet and unassuming compared to the other two men. But though he lacked their flair, he was a hundred per cent loyal to Hitler, not just in word, but indeed as well. He carried out the directives that he received from the NSDAP in leading the American movement as well as he could.

In 1936 he returned to Germany, where he worked with Deutsches Auslands Institut in encouraging other expatriate Germans to return to the Fatherland. When the war came, he joined the SS, rising to the rank of Obersturmbannfuehrer. His ultimate fate is uncertain, some sources saying that he perished on the Eastern Front in 1944, while other people claim that he survived the war and was imprisoned for 18 months in a Soviet ‘denazification’ concentration camp. Either way, the Bund would have pursued a different course of development if he had been the Bundesleiter, a course that would be in keeping with Hitler’s will.

 
A chink in our armor

The failings of Spanknoebel and Kuhn point out a weakness in National Socialist doctrine that needs to be addressed. Under the leadership principle, a person in a position of authority has both absolute authority and the concomitant absolute responsibility in carrying out the job assigned to him. Someone who fails in successfully executing his mission is subject to removal from office. But what happens when that person is the supreme leader? Who removes him then? In the case of the pre-war American movement, there was no mechanism in place to remove a national leader who placed his subjective desires above the objective good of the cause. Indeed, in the absence of any oversight, it is not clear whether the senior leadership of the FND or the Bund were even aware that Spanknoebel and Kuhn were disobeying the instructions given to them by the NSDAP.

 
Tactical successes

Although the pre-war movement was a strategic failure in building National Socialism in America, it enjoyed success on a tactical or operational level on several fronts.

We have previously noted that the Bund established a nationwide organizational structure that included 163 local chapters in 47 of the 48 states. It had 18 summer youth camps and facilities that provided for Bund members to live in a National Socialist community year-round if they desired. There was a weekly bilingual newspaper and other publications. In the 1930s, America had a population of roughly 100 million – less than a third of what it has today. Thus, the Bund membership of 25,000 would be 75,000 in today’s terms. The 3,000 men of its Order Division would be 9,000 strong. Especially impressive was the Bund’s success in organizing its local chapters as folk communities, which included cultural, social and youth activities. There was a place in the Bund for women, children, veterans and the elderly – not just for military-age males.

 
August Klapprott’s critique

In the 1970s, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity on two occasions to speak privately at length with August Klapprott concerning the Bund. Klappott’s credentials were impressive: leader of the Bund in the eastern third of the US; editor of the Free American; proprietor of the largest Bund camp – Nordland – in New Jersey; and head of security at the mammoth Madison Square Garden rally. In the final months before the entry of the US into World War II, Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze, who had succeeded Fritz Kuhn as leader of the group, quietly drifted away, allowing his erstwhile comrades to fend for themselves. It was August Klapprott who stepped in and helped to lead the Bund during its final days.

I asked him what he thought were the greatest successes and failures of his movement. It is interesting to note that he refused to criticize Kuhn by name, even 30 years later: such was his sense of personal loyalty to his former leader. But although he did not criticize Kuhn by name, he was not slow in criticizing his policies.

Klapprott said that, in retrospect, the uniformed marches and street battles with communists were counterproductive. At the time they took place, however, he said, this was not so clear. The Bund had the legal right to conduct its public activities and to defend itself when physically attacked. The bad reputation that this brought to the Bund was unavoidable, he said, as the Jews controlled the media and would have painted the Bund in a bad light, no matter what its activities were.

He told me that, realistically speaking, the Bund did the best that it could under difficult circumstances. Even if it had forgone activities that brought it negative publicity, and concentrated on low-profile support of Hitler’s Germany, the outcome would have been the same: the Japanese would still have attacked Pearl Harbor, and four days later Hitler would still have declared war on the US.

I found another critique by Klapprott especially surprising. Although he had organized Camp Nordland, the most successful of the Bund’s facilities, he said that the underlying premise of the Bund’s camps was flawed. The Bund sank every available dollar into purchasing the land for the camps. Consequently, the Bund was always strapped for cash. When the time came for it to defend itself from legal attacks by the government, sufficient funds were not at hand for a full-scale legal defence. And in the end, the government just seized the Bund’s properties anyway, so that that the financial investment that the camps represented was lost without benefiting the Movement.

The Bund maintained four camps in the state of Michigan alone, for example. It would have been better, he said, for the Bund to have had fewer but larger camps, and to have rented the land. That way, money could have been set aside to fend off federal attacks.

I asked him for his opinion of non-Bund NS groups, such as Peter Stahrenberg’s American National-Socialist Party, that sought to build an authentically American NS movement. Klapprott was scornful of such efforts, saying that they drained manpower and resources from the Bund, and in the end, amounted to nothing. On this point, I must disagree with comrade Klapprott, for if this course of action had been followed from the beginning, the movement could have survived the war intact in some form.

 
Summing up

Regardless of the personal failings of its leaders, and despite the strategic blunders that rendered it ineffective in building National Socialism in America in the long run, there is something positive to learn from the Bund’s history. The lesson of the Bund is this: It is possible to build a functioning National Socialist movement in the United States [bold by Martin Kerr], even in the face of aggressive semi-legal persecution by the federal government and the open hostility of the media, the Jews and other committed anti-NS forces.

The America of 2017 is not the America of 1937, and today’s NS movement would have to adapt itself accordingly. But it could be done.

Categories
Franklin D. Roosevelt Mainstream media Martin Kerr Real men Rudolf Hess Third Reich

History of American NS, 2

German-American Bund camp

1936-1941

German-American Bund

At its height, the Friends of the New Germany had approximately 10,000 members. This is ten times the number of members that Gau-USA had, and twenty times the number of its predecessor, Teutonia. However, sixty percent of FDND members were German citizens, not eligible for membership in the newly reorganized Bund. In a sense, Kuhn had to rebuild the Bund from the ground up.

Fritz Julius Kuhn was born in Munich in 1896. He served as an infantry lieutenant during the First World War, and had earned the Iron Cross Second Class. Kuhn and his wife Elsa emigrated to Mexico in 1923. They moved to the US in 1927, and Kuhn became a naturalized citizen in 1933. He settled in Detroit and was employed as a chemist by the Ford Motor Corporation. He took an active interest in ethnic politics, and became the leader of the Detroit chapter of the FDND.

A minor point, but one that is worth addressing: Kuhn’s title was Bundesleiter. Historians and biographers, however, in error frequently refer to him as BundesFüher. But Kuhn himself was quick to point out that there was only one Füher, and that was Adolf Hitler.

Under his determined and energetic leadership, the Bund grew steadily. By the time it ceased operations in December 1941, the Bund had an organized presence in 47 of the 48 states (the exception being Louisiana), with a combined 163 local chapters. A fully accredited chapter was known as a ‘unit’. As a minimum requirement, each unit had a unit leader, a treasurer, a public relations officer and a nine-man OD squad. Many units had a membership of over a hundred. Chapters that could not meet the minimum requirements were known as ‘branches’, and were attached to the nearest unit.

The Bund was divided into three departments – Eastern, Midwestern and Western – which in turn were divided into regions. The regions were subdivided into state organizations, which were further organized by city, neighbourhood, and even block-by-block where the membership warranted it. Total membership is unknown, but probably exceeded 25,000. The uniformed Order Division had an estimated 3,000 members nationwide.

The Bund published a weekly newspaper, with both German-language and English content. It was initially called the Deutscher Weckruf und Beobachter (‘German Wake-Up Call and Observer’). By 1937, it had a total circulation of 20,000. Three regional editions were published that carried local news and advertisements. In 1939, as part of an ongoing effort to Americanize the Bund, its full name was lengthened to Deutscher Weckruf und Beobachter and Free American. From that point on, for convenience’s sake, it was normally referred to simply as the Free American. Building on its success, the Bund published several other publications, including a youth magazine.

A notable Bund feature were its summer camps, which were located on Bund-owned property. There were 18 of these camps in all. Some were modest in size, but others, like Camp Nordland in New Jersey, Camp Siegfried on New York’s Long Island and Camp Hindenburg in Wisconsin, were large and elaborate, with facilities for year-round living. Camp activities included hiking, camping, swimming and other athletics. There were also communal cultural activities. Special programs were developed for young people, designed to build comradeship and to strengthen bodies, minds and character.
 

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Editor’s note: Could one imagine this in today’s US? They wouldn’t even let them protest against a historic statue that the government removed in Charlottesville! One of the biggest lies of the American system is that it claims to allow freedom of speech and association. As we will see in the subsequent history of the Bund, it allows neither. The American system has ways of destroying dissidents through legal and paralegal system of penalties, as we shall see not only in the destruction of the Bund but of the pro-Aryan groups that followed it.
 

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The Bund was not a political organization in the normal sense of the word, and did not run candidates for office. It did, however, hold public meetings and parades, and these gatherings became a target for protests by Communists and Jews. Sometimes the protestors would physically attack the Bund members, resulting in bloody brawls. Clashes between uniformed National Socialists and their enemies received generous publicity in the mainstream media, which was eager to portray the ‘Bundists’ (as they termed the Bund members) as violent troublemakers. Back in Germany, the NSDAP viewed such publicity as detrimental to the foreign policy interests of the Reich. The same concerns that Hitler and Hess had over Gau-USA and the Friends of the New Germany had not gone away: instead, they were taking place on a larger scale and with increased media scrutiny.
 

The Bund’s 1936 trip to Germany

Nearly all Bund activity took place on a local level, but on at least two occasions, the Bund pooled its resources for a major national event. The first of these was an excursion to Hitler’s Germany in the summer of 1936. The second was a mass rally in New York City’s Madison Square Garden in February 1939.

The year 1936 was a watershed for Hitler’s Germany. When the National Socialists assumed power in early 1933, the country was in a dreadful condition as a result of the lost world war and fifteen years of democratic incompetence and corruption. It had been ravaged by the Great Depression and the depredations of the Treaty of Versailles. The economy was a wreck, unemployment was at a record high; many thousands of the most energetic and skilful Germans emigrated each year to seek a better life elsewhere. The media was in the hands of the Jews, as were other important segments of society. But after only three years of National Socialism, the Reich had been reborn: hunger had been banished, the economy was booming and the armed forces had been reorganized and strengthened. A new sense of optimism and national pride filled the population.

The 1936 Summer Olympics, held in Berlin, brought countless guests and tourists to the new Germany. Among those visitors were Fritz Kuhn and some 50 members of the newly-formed Bund. The American National Socialists toured the country, and were widely feted as heroes. Uniformed members of the OD were accorded the same privilege as the German SA and allowed to ride public transportation for free. In Munich, uniformed Bund members marched with the SA, the SS and the Hitler Youth in a parade.

Shortly before the beginning of the second parade in Berlin, Bundesleiter Kuhn and his officers were granted a short, formal audience with Hitler. This meeting is what today might be termed a ‘photo-op’ – the Füher shook hands with them and chatted amiably for a few minutes. One photograph from the occasion shows Hitler and Kuhn talking together. As the brief audience wrapped up, Hitler told Kuhn, ‘Go back and continue the struggle over there’. Nothing deep or significant was meant by these words: they were just a courtesy by the Füher to his American followers.

Upon his return to the United States, Kuhn lost no time in misrepresenting his brief photo-op with Hitler. Kuhn told reporters, ‘I have a special arrangement with the Füher’ to build the NS movement in America. Rumours spread that there had been a second, private meeting between Chancellor Hitler and the Bundesleiter, during which Hitler had given Kuhn detailed instructions on strengthening Germany’s position in the New World. Kuhn did nothing to stop the spread of such tall tales, and instead maintained that he had received a direct mandate from Hitler to lead the American movement.

Kuhn’s dishonesty and false claims undoubtedly strengthened his position as the undisputed leader of the Bund. They came at a steep cost, however, because now they lent credibility to the charges made by the Jews and other anti-German forces that Hitler harboured aggressive aims towards America. The foreign-born Kuhn, with his thick German accent and mannerisms that some felt were off-putting, became the public face of domestic National Socialism to ordinary citizens. It was a face that many found hostile and threatening. Instead of building support and sympathy for the New Germany, Kuhn had alienated a huge swath of the American population.
 

What Hitler and the NSDAP wanted from German-Americans

Hitler had low respect for groups or parties in other countries that wanted to imitate the NSDAP. He realized that such copycat groups were inorganic and essentially foreign to their folk. This included not just the Bund, but also NS parties such as those in Denmark and Sweden. He commented that if Sir Oswald Mosley were really a great man as he presented himself he would have come up with an original movement of his own, instead of merely aping the NSDAP and Mussolini’s Fascists.

But this does not mean that he felt that there was no way for Germans outside the Reich in foreign countries to help build National Socialism. Regarding the US, the Füher felt that there were two primary ways that indigenous American National Socialists could help the New Germany:

1. Those German-Americans and expatriate German nationals residing in the US could most effectively help out by relocating to Germany. There they could help build National Socialism first-hand in the Fatherland.

And, in fact, many did exactly this. An agency was set up to encourage and assist with their relocation, the Deutsches Auslands Institut (German Foreign Institute). It was headed by Fritz Gissibl, former leader of Teutonia and the FDND, provided financial assistance to Germans who wanted to return to their Fatherland, and it helped them reintegrate into German society. In this connection, an association was formed for German-Americans who had returned, called Kameradschaft-USA.

2. For those German-Americans unable or unwilling to relocate to Germany, there was still an important task that they could perform. Since the earliest days of the Hitler government, Germany had been faced with an international economic boycott of German goods by the Jews and their many allies. This hampered the economic recovery and financial growth of the Reich. By working to weaken the boycott and promote German imports, pro-NS Americans could render immediate and tangible aid to the Movement.

Fritz Kuhn formed a corporation to organize an NS fightback against the boycott, first called the Deutsch-Amerikaner Wirstschafts Anschluss (German-American Protective Alliance), and later renamed theDeutscher Konsum Verband (German Business League). The DKV urged American merchants to ignore the Jewish boycott and to buy German goods for resale. It also encouraged American consumers to buy goods made in Germany. The DKV held a highly publicized ‘Christmas Fair’ highlighting German-made products and promoting their sale.

The DAI and the DAWA/DKV had the full and enthusiastic support of Hitler and the NSDAP. Uniformed marches, provocative speeches and confrontational meetings, however, were the mainstays of public Bund activity and did not meet with the approval of Reich authorities, who did whatever they could to discourage such activities and to distance themselves from them – to no avail.
 

The Madison Square Garden rally

On February 20, 1939, the Bund held a mammoth rally in New York’s Madison Square Garden. The event was billed as a ‘Mass Demonstration for True Americanism’. It took place in proximity to George Washington’s birthday, and indeed, a gigantic image of the first president formed a backdrop for the speaker’s platform. Over 22,000 Bund members and allies gathered for the occasion, easily making it the largest National Socialist meeting ever held in North America, before or since. Some 1,200 OD men under the command of August Klapprott provided security. Outside the Garden, 80,000 unruly anti-Bund protestors scuffled with the police in an unsuccessful effort to disrupt the meeting.
 

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Editor’s note: Eighty thousand? The anti-NS sentiment in America isn’t just a thing of our times! Incidentally, red emphasis below, of Kerr’s text, is mine. I just want to show that since the beginning of the American racialist movements, they never stopped worshiping the Jewish god:
 

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Among the speakers were National Secretary James Wheeler Hill, National Public Relations Director Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze and Bundesleiter Kuhn. As Kuhn began his address, a Jew named Isadore Greenbaum pushed his way past the police, slipped between two OD guards, and rushed the stage. He was armed with a knife. The would-be assassin was quickly tackled by the OD and beaten into submission. Klapprott pulled his men off the Jew before he was badly hurt, and he was turned over to the police for arrest. Kuhn continued speaking without interruption. Later, some members and followers leaving the meeting were assaulted by the mob outside.

The Bund portrayed the event as a huge victory. And indeed, it was an impressive tactical and logistical triumph. The Bund had shown that it could organize a successful mass meeting in the face of massive opposition.

But the reaction in Berlin was not so favourable. From the standpoint of the German government, this was exactly the type of publicity that they did not want.
 

Bund ideology and outreach

The Bund formally adhered to the National Socialist worldview as expressed in NS Germany. But there was a problem: the US was not Germany, and the social, economic, political and racial situation in America did not correspond to that of Germany. The program and exact policies of the NSDAP did not fit the American scene. Kuhn’s solution to the quandary was two-fold: the Bund adhered strictly to German National Socialism internally, but in terms of public outreach it advocated an ideology that was an awkward fusion of National Socialism and the Christian Nationalism of the times. ‘Christian Nationalism’ was roughly equivalent to modern White Nationalism. It was not a religious movement, per se; rather, by ‘Christian’ it was understood that Jews were excluded. An example of this was a statement by Kuhn quoted in the New York Times:’ I am a White Man and I give the White Man’s salute: Heil Hitler!’

Publicly, the Bund claimed to be for ‘100 percent Americanism’ and opposed to ‘Jewish communism’. It never attempted to forge a specific American National Socialism, unique to the experiences and situation of the Aryan race in North America.

When it felt the need to give some intellectual heft to its outreach, the Bund would refer to the writings of Lawrence Dennis, who was the foremost American Fascist intellectual of the period, or to other non-Bund, non-NS theoreticians and commentators.

The German National Socialist Colin Ross attempted to provide some intellectual ballast for the Movement in America with his 1937 book, Unser Amerika (Our America). He gave lectures throughout the US which were supported and attended by Bund members. But in the end, he was an outsider, and it is unclear to what extent his work had any effect on the Movement in the US.
 

Decline and end of the Bund

The Madison Square Garden rally aggravated the increasing dissatisfaction of the German government with the Bund. The German ambassador, Hans Diekhoff, had a contentious relationship with the group. Public opinion, largely manufactured and manipulated by the Jews, was already strongly tilted against the Reich. The media wanted to portray the Bund as a violent, un-American subversive organization directly under Hitler’s command; every headline that played into that false image made Diekhoff’s already-challenging job that much more difficult. He sent repeated dispatches to Berlin urging the German government to sever all ties with the Bund and publicly disown it. But the truth was that there was little or nothing Berlin could do: Contrary to popular belief, the Bund was not under the command of Hitler, the German government, or the NSDAP. It was an independent organization that could conduct its operations in any way that it wished.

The average American had a negative appreciation of the Bund. It was widely assumed that the Bund was a ‘fifth column’, designed to aid the ‘Nazis’ if the Germans invaded the United States – which the media assured the public was Hitler’s ultimate aim.

Consequently, there was a widespread feeling that the government should ‘do something’ about the Bund. The Roosevelt regime was more than willing to comply, but there was a hitch: the Bund operated strictly within the limits of US law.

Eventually, the authorities found a solution: In May, 1939, Kuhn was charged with the embezzlement of approximately $14,000 of Bund funds. Kuhn had foolishly taken as a mistress Virginia Cogswell, a former beauty queen. He had purportedly used Bunds funds to pay for her medical bills and to ship some used furniture to her from California. The Bund hierarchy responded to the charges that Kuhn, as leader of the Bund, was free to use the money in question in any manner that he wanted to. But the government was out for blood, and in November Kuhn was convicted of misusing Bund funds. Eventually he was sent to New York’s Sing Sing prison.

The scandal, rocked the Bund, and resulted in many resignations. However, a new leader, Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze, stepped forward to lead the group until Kuhn was free again.

Bund operations continued until December 8, 1941 – the day after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and three days before Hitler’s declaration of war against the United States. On that day the Bund national council voted to dissolve the organization, and it burnt sensitive documents before they could be seized by the FBI.

 
Other National Socialist and pro-NS groups

Although we have concentrated our attention on the German-American Bund, the Bund was not the only NS formation in the US during the pre-War period. We have previously mentioned the short-lived American National-Socialist Party of Anton Haegele (1935). In 1939, the Brooklyn chapter of the Bund – which was the largest in the nation – broke away and reformed the ANSP, under the leadership of Peter Stahrenberg. But, despite the excellence of its newspaper, the National American, the party was small and never amounted to anything.

Of the hundreds of other small groups that flourished during this period, the following are also worth mentioning:

• The Christian Mobilizers, a New York group led by Joseph ‘Nazi Joe’ McWilliams. Its uniformed branch was called the Christian Guard. Later, the group was renamed the American Destiny Party.

• The National Workers League, led by Russel Roberts, later a supporter and advisor of George Lincoln Rockwell. Based in Detroit.

• The Citizens Protective League, led by Kurt Mertig, later mentor to James Madole of the National Renaissance Party.

• American Nationalist Party (founded as the American Progressive Workers Party). Emory Burke, who would go on to be the founder of the post-War movement, was a member of this group.

Americans who were National Socialist or pro-NS also supported organizations such as Charles Lindbergh’s America First Committee, William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Shirt Legion, Father Charles Coughlin’s National Union for Social Justice, and the Christian Front.

To broaden its appeal, the Bund also held a unity rally with the Ku Klux Klan at August Klapprott’s Camp Nordland in 1940.

Categories
Martin Kerr Real men

History of American NS, 1

by Martin Kerr


 

1924-1936

Introduction

In order to chart a course for American National Socialism into the future, we must know where we stand today. And to have an accurate understanding of our present position we need to know where we came from.

It is the goal of this series of articles to provide an outline of the history of the Movement in the United States. But we are not interested here in a simple timeline recitation of names and dates. Rather, we wish to provide a framework for a critical analysis of NS development. A hagiographical account, in which every event and decision is presented as being necessary and perfect, will not accomplish our purpose. Instead, we must be willing to ruthlessly examine the mistakes that were made as well as congratulating ourselves on the modest successes of our struggle. For only in recognizing where things have gone wrong can we hope to correct any missteps we have made.

Although any telling of our story will inevitably highlight the Movement’s leaders, we need to also keep in mind the countless thousands of rank-and-file members and supporters: the nameless street activists who time and again risked life and limb for the cause; the women comrades who laboured behind the scenes in an often thankless support capacity; the financial benefactors who provided the economic wherewithal that financed our efforts; and the silent aid rendered to us by sympathizers whose employment situation or family obligations prevented them from openly proclaiming their National Socialist faith. If the well-known names of our leaders have provided the head of the Movement, these unknown and unheralded comrades have provided its body.
 

The movement’s beginnings: Teutonia

The earliest manifestation of organized National Socialism in the US dates back to the early 1920s. Various private associations – clubs, really – sprang up in cities with a high concentration of German nationals, many whom were newly arrived since the end of the First World War. Following the unsuccessful National Socialist revolt in Munich in November of 1923, a number of members of the Hitler movement emigrated from Germany to the US. Little clusters of like-minded men gradually found each other in the tightly knit German communities of cities such as Chicago, Cincinnati, Milwaukee and New York. These little groups were formed mainly for social reasons, and none of them amounted to much – and, indeed, expansion and recruitment were not really on their agenda.

One of these little groups was known as the American National-Socialist League, but like the others, it faded away almost as soon as it had arisen, and vanished without a trace. The first serious attempt at building National Socialism on these shores was the ‘Free Association of Teutonia’. It was founded in October of 1924 in Chicago by 21-year-old Fritz Gissibl and his brothers Peter and Andrew. Joining with them in the enterprise was 19-year-old Walter Kappe, who edited Teutonia’s small German-language newspaper Vorposten (‘Picket’). That the group even had a publication, as modest as it was, placed it head-and-shoulders above earlier NS efforts. Teutonia quickly obtained a headquarters for itself by leasing a room in Chicago’s Reichshalle.

An early recruit to the group was Joseph ‘Sepp’ Schuster. He had been a member of the Sturmabteilung in Munich, and had participated in the fateful march that had ended so tragically. Schuster organized Teutonia’s equivalent of the SA. It was named the Ordnungsdienst, or ‘Order Service’ in English. Eventually, the OD wore uniforms patterned on those of the SA, with similar insignia. No doubt at the time forming a uniformed paramilitary formation that copied the German model seemed normal and organic. But in hindsight it proved to be an unfortunate development, from which the Movement still has not recovered today, for it set a precedent that every subsequent NS group has followed – often to the Movement’s detriment, as we will discuss later.

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Editor’s note: Here Kerr and I disagree completely. If we recall the intense discussion about ‘optics’ that raged in white nationalist circles after Charlottesville, and then compare it to how the media and even various government and corporate bodies condoned the violent BLM riots, we will understand that ‘optics’ is a Byzantine discussion. The elites and woke folk care nothing about BLM optics even when some people actually were killed by blacks! What the establishment traitors after WW2 want is the destruction of the white race, and the ‘optics’ of seeing chimp outs under the cameras burning cars and vandalising shops doesn’t matter a damn to them.

What it is all about is to impede Aryans to fight for their interests under any circumstances, but to give them bread and circuses in the darkest hour of the West until their extinction. Kerr continues:
 

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Although it forthrightly supported the NSDAP in Germany – which was a political party – Teutonia itself was not political or outward-looking in any way. Rather, it limited itself to quietly building support for National Socialism among the sizeable German-American community. Semi-public meetings were held every two weeks, and the proceeds from the meetings were used to fund German cultural activities. On one occasion, at least, Teutonia used an airplane to drop leaflets. But its newspaper and other printed material were in German, and there was no thought of recruiting non-Germans, nor of expanding the group in a political sense beyond the German community.

In all, Teutonia only had 400 or 500 members. Most were in the Chicago area, but there were small local chapters in other cities throughout the Upper Midwest.
 

Heinz Spanknoebel and Gau-USA

Another key figure in the establishment of American National Socialism was Heinz Spanknoebel. Although virtually unknown today, he played a pivotal role in the first decade of the Movement. Spanknoebel was a man of strong personality. Like all of us, he had human weaknesses and shortcomings. But these were more than offset by his strengths. One of these strengths was his insight into the true nature of National Socialism.

In the late 1920s, the NSDAP was a struggling fringe movement in German politics, and although it had small chapters throughout the Reich, in practical terms it was largely limited to Bavaria. Hitler himself was considered a Bavarian firebrand, and not a national political leader. But already at this time, Spanknoebel recognized the fundamental, world-changing character of the NS worldview, and he recognized Hitler not just as the leader of a small extremist party, but rather as world-historical figure of the first order. He envisioned a future in which National Socialism controlled the entire Earth, with a National Socialist Germany dominating the eastern hemisphere and a National Socialist America dominating the western hemisphere. In his vision, Hitler would rule one half of the world, and he, Spanknoebel, would rule the other half.

And here we encounter Spanknoebel’s first shortcoming: he had a greatly exaggerated sense of his own importance and capabilities. But although we may today smile at his presumption to be Hitler’s equal, that should not detract from his realization that National Socialism was far more than just a vehicle to rectify the injustices of the Treaty of Versailles.

Like Gissibl and Schuster, Spanknoebel was a German National Socialist who had taken up residence in the US. He investigated Teutonia and decided that although it was well-intentioned, something on a grander scale was needed to create the NS America he envisioned.

Through the end of the 1920s, the NSDAP was a tiny party on the margins of the German political scene. In the 1928 national elections, the party won a scant 2.6 percent of the vote. It struggled just to survive in Germany, and had no resources for and no desire in establishing a functioning bridgehead in the US. It was distantly aware of the efforts of Gissibl and Teutonia on its behalf, as they occasionally sent modest contributions to the party’s Munich headquarters, but there was no official recognition of Teutonia as an NSDAP affiliate.

However, the 1930 election changed the party’s status. It went from being a fringe movement to the second-largest party in the Reichstag overnight. Spanknoebel decided that was time for him to act. He journeyed to Munich, and sought out an audience with the NSDAP. He asked for permission to form an official branch of the NSDAP in the US. The details of the meeting have been lost to history. Did he explain his plan to divide the world between Hitler and himself? Who knows? But the result was that the party denied his request: there was to be no NSDAP chapter in America.

Undeterred, Spanknoebel returned to the US and dishonestly announced that he had, in fact, been given authorization to form an American unit of the Hitler movement. In April of 1931 he formed his group, which he called Gau-USA. Its headquarters was in New York City, which had a huge population of both German immigrants and multigenerational German-Americans.

Gau-USA and Teutonia existed as competing NS organizations until sometime in 1932. Gissibl, under the impression that Spanknoebel had official recognition from the NSDAP, voluntarily dissolved Teutonia and merged it with Gau-USA. Teutonia’s local chapters became chapters of Gau-USA, and its Order Division was absorbed intact into Spanknoebel’s group, with Sepp Schuster still at its head.

Gau-USA had a higher public profile than Teutonia, with a greater media presence. At the same time, more attention was being paid in the press to the Hitler movement in Germany, which had become a force to be reckoned with.

Following the party’s ascension to power in January 1933, a letter was sent by Rudolf Hess to Spanknoebel, asking him to stop falsely representing himself as the US leader of the NSDAP. It further requested that he cease operations and disband his group. In April 1933, after Spanknoebel ignored the letter, a second, more forcefully-worded letter was sent. This time Spanknoebel acquiesced, and disbanded Gau-USA.

Unfazed, Spanknoebel made a second pilgrimage to Munich, and again sought audience with Rudolf Hess. He convinced Hess that there was huge potential support for National Socialist Germany in the US among both German immigrants and among native-born Americans of German descent. He again asked for permission to organize this support on behalf of the NSDAP. This time Hess relented. Spanknoebel returned with a letter of authorization from Hess. With this letter as his foundational document, he reorganized the Movement in America as the League of the Friends of the New Germany, generally known by its German initials FND. It officially came to life at a convention in Chicago in July 1933. Like Gau-USA before it, FND was based in New York City.
 

Friends of The New Germany

But rather than quietly organizing German-American support for Hitler’s Germany – which is what Hess undoubtedly had in mind – Spanknoebel proceeded to build an open, confrontational NS movement that mirrored the early history of the NSDAP. The Friends held uniformed marches and rallies that sometimes ended in bloody brawls with Jews and communists. When there was an outbreak of vandalism directed against synagogues, Jewish merchants and Jewish cemeteries, the FND was blamed. Much of the FND’s operations were conducted in the German language, which left many Americans thinking that the group was foreign, un-American and somewhat sinister. The publicity generated by the FND was unrelentingly negative. Rather than building sympathy for the New Germany, the overall impression it gave was that it was a subversive group that owed its allegiance to a foreign government.

Spanknoebel further made things worse by enraging established German-American organizations and publications by insisting that they subordinate themselves to him as Hitler’s American representative.

The members of the Friends, however, had faith that they were on the right path – a path that they believed had been specifically charted by Hitler himself. They threw themselves into the struggle with great enthusiasm and self-sacrifice, unaware that Spanknoebel had misrepresented the nature of his mandate from Munich.

German diplomats in the US followed the disastrous progress of the FND, and dutifully reported it to Berlin, where the bad news was brought to the attention of Hitler and Hess. Eventually, Spanknoebel was ordered by Munich to cease operations until further notice, as his efforts were doing more harm than good to the cause of National Socialism.

Spanknoebel finally got the message. He resigned as leader of the FND and returned to Germany, where he enlisted in the SS. He survived the War and settled in the shattered ruins of Dresden. There he was betrayed to the Soviet secret police by a German traitor. He was arrested and died of starvation in a Soviet concentration camp in 1947.

In early 1934, Fritz Gissibl took the reins of the FND. Some ten years after first forming Teutonia, he was again the leader of American National Socialism. Under his renewed tenure, the FND made some tentative steps to Americanize its image. German citizens and members the NSDAP were first discouraged from being members of the FND, and later were formally prohibited from joining. Gissibl himself began proceedings to obtain American citizenship. Printed materials from the time show that English was used as well as the German language in Friends literature.

Gissibl also began to steer the FND away from the confrontational activities favoured by Spanknoebel and to focus more resources and energy on building an NS community. In 1934, a women’s auxiliary, the Frauenschaft, was formed, as well as youth organizations for male and female youngsters, the Jugendschaft and Maedschenscaft, respectively.

Not all members were happy with Gissibl’s leadership, and in 1935 Anton Haegele and a small band of followers broke away to form the American National Labor Party, which was later renamed the American National-Socialist Party. Their newspaper was the National American, and it set a high standard of quality for Movement publications that was to last the rest of the decade. The ANLP/ANSP was short-lived, but it was important in that it was the first attempt to create an American National Socialism that was not simply an extension of the German movement and that was open to all Aryan Americans, not just Germans.

The FND membership threw itself behind Gissibl’s new initiatives, and the organization began to grow. This growth spurt did not go unnoticed by the Movement’s numerous and powerful enemies, who did everything they could to hamper and thwart its efforts. A congressional investigation designed to undermine and cripple American National Socialism was begun in 1934 at the behest of Congressman Samuel Dickstein of New York. Dickstein’s stated goal was to eradicate all traces of National Socialism in America. He was a Jew, and most observers felt that his zeal in persecuting the Friends was simply a manifestation of the racial animosity that all Jews felt towards the Hitler movement. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s, documents came to light in Moscow that revealed that Dickstein was a paid agent of the NKVD, the Soviet secret police. It seems likely that this employment contributed to his enthusiasm in trying to strangle American National Socialism in its infancy.

Dickstein convened hearings of the House Un-American Activities Committee in Washington. Gissibl and other prominent members of the Friends were ordered to appear for public interrogation in full light of the news media. There they were insulted and berated. Although the committee was unable to find any evidence that the FND was engaged in illegal activities, they published a report in February of 1935 that described the group ‘Un-American’ in its orientation.

The blatant persecution of the Movement by HUAC split the German-American community. Many remembered the dark days of World War I, when all German-Americans had been suspected of being spies and traitors, and were treated accordingly. Consequently, some German-Americans put as much distance between themselves and the Friends as possible. However, others rallied behind the FND, as it defended itself in the face of the government and media onslaught against it.

In Berlin, the NSDAP reacted adversely to the overwhelmingly negative publicity. In the eyes of Hitler, Hess and other party leaders, the FND was doing more to hurt the cause then to help it. Accordingly, in October 1935, an edict was issued severing all ties between the Friends on one hand and the German government and NSDAP on the other. Gissibl resigned as the League’s leader, and made a trip to Germany in a futile attempt plead his case. (Like Spanknoebel before him, Gissibl eventually settled in Germany, and likewise joined the SS.)

German-American Bund rally at Madison
Square Garden (NY), 20 February 1939.

In December, Fritz Julius Kuhn became the new Bundesleiter (League Leader). In March 1936, the Friends held a national convention, where it was dissolved. A new organization was formed in its place, the Amerikadeutscher Volksbund (German-American Folks League) which was to be popularly known as the German-American Bund.