Insurgency Overview
The American Nazi Party (ANP) was a neo-Nazi organization founded in 1959 by George Lincoln Rockwell, a veteran Naval Pilot, whose paranoia and racism fueled his obsession with what he believed was a Jewish international conspiracy to destroy the white race. In 1950, anti-Semitic and far-right propaganda led Rockwell to read Hitler’s Mein Kampf and experience what he described as a “spiritual awakening.” For years, he tried to secretly promote his newfound Nazi beliefs in far-right organizations and right-wing propaganda, but in 1958 he was exposed after an explosion at a Jewish synagogue revealed his connections to neo-Nazi’s associated with the terrorist attack. In response, Rockwell hoisted a Swastika banner at his home for all to see and went public as a Nazi. He started the World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists (WUFENS) which transitioned to the American Nazi Party. In 1962, he co-founded an international organization of National Socialists named the World Union of National Socialist (WUNS).
As leader of the ANP, Rockwell and his Stormtroopers aimed at using provocation through street demonstrations and propaganda to garner mass publicity and support in hopes of becoming a large political movement. Rockwell sought to exploit fears of the white Christian majority by emphasizing social tensions surrounding race riots and economic instability and offering the solution of the ANP. ANP’s solution involved deporting black Americans to Africa and sending “Jewish-traitors and their collaborators” to the gas chambers. In the mid to late 60s, Rockwell began to tone down the Nazi imagery and shift strategy from the dogmatic German-Nordic Nazism of Hitler to a pan-white movement based on “white unity.” This caused a rift within the ANP that would eventually lead to its dissolution. In 1967, Rockwell decided the party should be rebranded as the National Socialist White Peoples Party (NSWPP). The same year a disaffected ANP officer, John Patler, assassinated Rockwell from the rooftop of a laundromat.
Following Rockwell’s death, Matt Koehl succeeded him as the party’s leader. He moved the NSWPP away from politics and reoriented it into a spiritual and insular movement based on “Aryan purity” and neo-paganism. This shift caused the party to split and fracture, forming new organizations such as William Pierce’s National Alliance. In 1982, Koehl moved the small, but loyal remaining party members to Wisconsin and rebranded as the New Order. Koehl died in 2014. Since then, the party has continued in isolation and obscurity, preferring to avoid communication with the media about its leadership and activities.
History & Foundations
George Lincoln Rockwell was born on March 9, 1918, in Bloomington, Illinois. His parents were famous vaudeville performers. His father, George Lovejoy “Doc” Rockwell, was a fun and charming man, but showed little affection to his children. His mother, Claire Shade Rockwell, was sweet but passive. Following their divorce, Rockwell would spend summers with his father in Boothbay Harbor, Maine and the rest of the year in Atlantic City, New Jersey with his mother and domineering aunt. (1)
As a teenager, Rockwell began to turn his frustrations with his aunt outward. For example, during his senior year he rebelled against a teacher he didn’t like by refusing to do any classwork. Later, at Hebron Academy, a college preparatory school, Rockwell organized a group of boys to terrorize a teacher until he quit his job. (1)
At Brown University, he developed an interest in advertising, illustration, and media. He revived the college campus humor magazine, Sir Brown! and honed his skills as an illustrator and cartoonist while working as arts editor for the school magazine. This was also the time during which he began developing a fascination with esoteric political tracts and conspiracy theories. By his second year at Brown, he began to complain the university was a haven for “intellectual dishonesty” and “infected” with communism. (1)
In 1941, Rockwell joined the Navy as a pilot, serving in both the Atlantic and Pacific theaters. He primarily flew on transport and reconnaissance missions. While in service he married his first wife, Judith Aultman. By 1945, he was promoted to Lieutenant Commander and received special decorations for his service. (1)
Following the war, Rockwell enrolled at Pratt University, a prestigious art college in New York City. While there, he won a prestigious illustration competition sponsored by New York Society of Illustrators and received a $1,000 cash prize and national notoriety. Despite the success, he dropped out and pursued advertising in Maine. His pursuits appeared promising, but his temper would consistently sabotage every opportunity for success. (1,2)
In 1950, the US Navy called him back up for service at the start of the Korean War. He relocated his family to San Diego, California to serve as a pilot instructor. By this time, his marriage was in shambles. He felt his wife was too “strong-willed.” He began to develop insomnia, staying up late and following far-right politics. He attended John Birch Society meetings and obsessed over Senator Joe McCarthy and the Red Scare. He started to develop a paranoia that communist were infiltrating every American institution. This paranoia led him down an anti-Semitic, anti-communist rabbit-hole directly to Hitler’s Mein Kampf and a “spiritual awakening.” In private, he started identifying as a Nazi (1)
In 1952, he was transferred to Keflavik Naval Air Station in Iceland and promoted to Commander. His first marriage ended in divorce. With nothing to do, he spent all his free time reading the anti-Semitic literature of Gerald L. K. Smith and Conde McGinley, Hitler’s Mein Kampf, and The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. He then met his second wife, Thora Hallgrimmson. They quickly married and spent their honeymoon in Berchtesgaden where they visited the site of Hitler’s Eagles Nest. (1)
In 1954, Rockwell returned to Maine with his new wife and child before relocating to Washington, D.C. to start a magazine designed for the wives of U.S. Servicemen called U.S. Lady. He believed his magazine could subliminally influence women into accepting traditional gender roles and avoid “race-mixing.” The magazine was relatively successful but due to arguments he was forced out. Following this failure, Rockwell began freelancing as an independent contractor for right-wing publications. During these years, he faced enormous financial and emotional pressure.
In 1958, he involved himself in John G. Crommelin’s campaign for governor of Alabama. Crommelin, a white supremacist and former Naval officer, shared Rockwell’s anti-Semitism. In fact, Rockwell borrowed a lot of Crommelin’s anti-Semitic theoretical framework. His campaign was a magnet for far-right extremists like Connie Lynch, Edward Fields, James K. Warner, Matt Koehl, Emory Burke, Gordon Winrod, Wallace Allen, and George Bright. With these men, Rockwell co-founded the National States’ Rights Party, a far-right, white supremacist organization based in Georgia. (1)
The same year, Rockwell was introduced to DeWest Hooker and Harrold Arrowsmith Jr. Hooker, a wealthy businessman, was being investigated by the FBI for his pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic beliefs, but more importantly for the recruitment of New York City youth into his National Youth League (NYL) to picket “Jewish-Communism.” Hooker convinced Rockwell that mainstream right-wing groups secretly shared sympathies with Nazism but were too afraid to be open about it. He persuaded Rockwell that if he went public as a full-blown Nazi, many would follow his lead. Arrowsmith, a retired millionaire and extreme anti-Semite, offered to be Rockwell’s financial backer to start the National Committee to Free America from Jewish Domination (NCFAJD). Arrowsmith put a down payment on a house in Arlington, VA and lent him a second-hand printing press for printing and distributing anti-Semitic propaganda. (1,2)
Rockwell’s first operation with NCFAJD was to picket the White House with anti-Semitic signs and hand out anti-Semitic literature with youth from Hooker’s NYL. The literature claimed that the United States government was secretly being forced by “the Jews” to send marines to protect Israel’s puppet regime in Lebanon. (1,2)
On October 12, 1958, fifty sticks of dynamite went off at the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation synagogue in Atlanta, Georgia. Wallace Allen, one of the founders of The Columbians, the first openly neo-Nazi organization in postwar America, was indicted in connection to the bombing. Rockwell had been using his printing press to supply the National States’ Rights Party (of which Allen was a member) with literature and propaganda. Police found a cache of letters from Rockwell to Allen with ambiguous but suggestive phrases. News reports identified Rockwell as a suspect and radical Nazi. Arrowsmith no longer wanted anything to do with him. His house began to be assaulted with bricks and cherry bombs and his wife and children left for Iceland. (1)
Rockwell hit rock bottom. His 2nd wife asked for a divorce. His reputation was destroyed. And he was unable to find work. He began to drink heavily and became suicidal. His father became ashamed of him. His brother reached out with an ultimatum that he either go to therapy or their relationship would be over. Rockwell made his choice and the only family member that didn’t ostracize him was his mother. Alone in a dilapidated house with no running water or electricity, he sank into complete despair. In that despair, he experienced another “spiritual awakening” that convinced him that he was the successor to Hitler’s Third Reich and called to start his own Nazi party to become America’s Führer. Thus, he created the World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists (WUFENS), which later rebranded as the American Nazi Party. He displayed a large, well-lit Nazi banner for all to see and began recruiting young, disaffected men into his ranks of Stormtroopers, including several from Hooker’s National Youth League.
In 1960, the Navy revoked his commission in the Naval Reserves. He had been charged with espousing race and religious hatred. He used the situation to publicize what he felt was persecution by “high-ranking Jews” in which he specifically named Anna M. Rosenburg, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Manpower. He became ineligible for his pension with only six months from military retirement. (1)
The ANP began holding demonstrations and handing out leaflets in Washington, D.C. Eventually, riots broke out between Stormtroopers and the enraged Jewish community, particularly members of the Jewish War Veterans. Rockwell and his Stormtroopers were arrested for disorderly conduct and received their first major publicity. Rockwell was ordered to be cross-examined in a psychiatric hospital for 30 days to see if he was mentally fit to stand trial. The Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith presented violent illustrations he had published in his college magazine, Sir Brown! as evidence of his insanity. He was released after 10 days and determined fit to stand trial. (1,2)
Rockwell sought more notoriety and publicity. He began planning a demonstration in New York City, home to the nation’s largest Jewish population (many survivors of the holocaust) and national news media. Rockwell saw New York City as the “pulsing heart of Marxism in the USA.” (2) Jewish community organizers fought to keep Rockwell from speaking, but the ACLU came to Rockwell’s defense on the grounds of free speech. In response, a riot of over 200 anti-Nazi protesters broke out in the rotunda of the supreme court building of NYC. While Rockwell won the right to speak, he no longer felt it was necessary since he had already got the publicity he needed. (1)
In 1961, Rockwell and a handful of Stormtroopers drove a Hate Bus to New Orleans to mock the Freedom Riders struggle to integrate public transportation in the South. He also held music fundraisers he called “Hate-o-nannies” and began indoctrinating recruits in chapters nationwide such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and Dallas. (1)
In 1962, the ANP toured America in hopes of increasing their publicity and gaining new supporters. It was largely a failure. Quarantine, the strategy of persuading local media and Jewish organizations to ignore Rockwell (what he termed the ‘paper curtain’) was relatively successful in keeping the ANP’s tour largely unnoticed. In fact, when Rockwell attempted to speak in NYC on Hitler’s Birthday, April 20th, which coincided with Good Friday and the second day of Passover, the Jewish War Veterans and other organizations finally agreed on the strategy and ignored Rockwell. (1,2)
Image of Rockwell holding a press conference
Source: Internet Archive, American Nazi Party
Rockwell began to look for new tactics to break through the Quarantine. When the Nation of Islam (NOI) held a National Convention at the Chicago Temple of Islam, Rockwell exploited Elijah Muhammad’s desire for racial segregation by delivering a speech on the “Lincoln Plan”, a plan where the US government would spend $50 billion dollars over the course of 10 years to establish a settlement for black Americans in Africa. When he described Muhammad as the “Adolf Hitler of the black man,” he made national headlines once again. (1,2)
Despite travel bans, Rockwell entered Gloucestershire, England for a meeting with National Socialists leaders from seven nations and laid out plans for a National Socialist world revolution in the Cotswold Agreement. This laid the foundations for the World Union of National Socialist (WUNS) of which Rockwell became the supreme commander. At this meeting he met for the first time with Savitri Devi, a Nazi mystic, Bruno Ludtke, an ex-SS officer, and Colin Jordan, leader of the British National Socialist Movement (NSM). All three would have a profound influence on Rockwell. (1)
By 1963, Rockwell would discover the lucrative college lecture circuit. It held no fertile ground for ANP recruitment but earned him a steady income for the first time in his life. He would continue to give lectures at universities until his death in 1967. He was able to sell out to crowds of 2-3 thousand students, but only as a spectacle with no actual political power. (1)
Rockwell hated Martin Luther King Jr. He believed King was a communist and part of the communist agenda. When stormtrooper, Roy James, punched King in the face in Birmingham, Alabama, Rockwell awarded him the “Order of Adolf Hitler Silver Medal.” In 1963, Dr. King was about to make his infamous “March on Washington.” Rockwell planned to hold a counterdemonstration, but only gathered around 90 men and women… “several of them undercover police, feds, and Jewish community organizers.” (1)
There is exactly one way for us to win…and that is to fight on racial grounds; to think, to act, above all, to vote as whites and nothing else.
-George Lincoln Rockwell
In 1965, Rockwell ran for governor in Virginia. His campaign focused on anti-Segregation and toned down the Nazi imagery to be more palatable to a wider public. Stormtroopers became “campaign aides” and dropped the Nazi uniform for suits and ties. Race riots were erupting across American cities and Rockwell believed “white unity” should be the central motif of the movement. While 6,500 votes were inconsequential in the race for governor, Rockwell saw it as a win. (1)
Image of Rockwell during his Gubernatorial Campaign
Source: Internet Archive, American Nazi Party
With a budget of $1500, with a total press blackout, and with a ‘Kosher conservative’ [splitting the vote] …I got 7,000 people to vote for a Nazi.
-George Lincoln Rockwell
In 1966, Stokely Carmichael, leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, coined the term “Black Power” to describe a growing movement of militant black Americans. Rockwell decided to promote “White Power” as a counter-slogan for militant whites. By mid-summer, the slogan gained nationwide popularity amongst racists. Rockwell believed this new concept of “race unity” was “fundamental to success.” (1)
Rockwell’s “white unity” was based on pan-white inclusion, which stood in stark contrast to Hitler’s Aryanism, which was exclusively German-Nordic. He came to the belief that Hitler’s strategic mistake had been the exclusion of Slavs, Poles, Greeks, Turks, etc. Rockwell believed that “the dark peoples of the earth, led by the Jews” outnumbered “Whites” by “7:1.” He preached that the entire “white race” was in a fight for its survival. This shift in strategy caused a rift in the ANP between hard-core Nazis and those open to pan-white inclusion. The more dogmatic ‘Aryan Unity’ faction within ANP was led by Matt Koehl and included William Pierce, Frank Drager, and Alan Welch. Others, such as John Patler (formerly Patsalos), son of Greek immigrants, welcomed the change. (1,2)
In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. was preparing to march for open housing in Chicago, one of the largest and most segregated cities in America. Rockwell led a ‘White Power’ faction to counter King’s march with the white working class, mostly Polish and Italian Americans, that made up the area. He passed out “White Power” T-shirts and coalesced under a “White Power” banner. The crowd responded to King’s demonstration by throwing rocks and shouting racist vitriol. (1)
I’ve been in many demonstrations all across the South…[and] I have never seen—even in Mississippi and Alabama—mobs as hostile and hate-filled.
-Martin Luther King Jr.
After the demonstration, King said it was one of the most violent and hateful responses he’d ever experienced. Rockwell’s counterdemonstration in Chicago was captured on television and received tremendous publicity, but the victory was largely illusory. Many who participated in the demonstration admitted they were caught up in the heat of the moment and embarrassed by their behavior towards King’s march. Leaders of the community strongly rejected Rockwell’s message. (1)
On January 1st, 1967, Rockwell rebranded his party as the National Socialist White People’s Party (NSWPP). He was no longer concerned with Nazi dogmatism and felt confident in this shift in strategy. He also got rid of John Palter, an ANP officer and long-time loyalist to Rockwell and the party. Patler had become erratic and a source of tension. On August 25, 1967, the disaffected Patler shot Rockwell from the roof of a laundromat. Rockwell was pierced in the aorta while backing out of the parking lot and died at the scene. Patler was found guilty and sentenced to 20 years in prison. The ANP tried to give Rockwell a Nazi burial, but were consistently denied. There was a standoff at Culpepper National Cemetery and Matt Koehl, Rockwell’s successor, used the conflict to gain publicity. Koehl eventually had Rockwell cremated and thus George Lincoln Rockwell became the first martyr in the American neo-Nazi mythos. (1)
Under Koehl’s leadership, the NSWPP shifted away from Rockwell’s political doctrine. Koehl’s vision of National Socialism was less political and primarily spiritual. He was profoundly influenced by Savitri Devi’s “Esoteric Hitlerism”, which reveres Hitler as a messianic figure. He moved the party away from the political theatrics of Rockwell, preferring an insular organization centered around Aryan purity and neo-paganism. This shift in orientation led most party members to split from the group and join or found their own organizations such as the National Alliance, led by William Luther Pierce and the National Socialist Liberation Front led by Joseph Tomassi. Koehl was left with a small but loyal following and in 1982 moved the headquarters to Wisconsin to maintain a low profile. Following relocation, the party rebranded as the New Order. Koehl passed away in 2014. The party continues but remains obscure, avoiding media and information on its leadership or activities. (1)
Objectives & Ideology
I am, and must be…the Apostle of Adolf Hitler, who was the greatest world savior in two thousand years…like Saint Paul…I once misunderstood, hated and fought. I must, like the early Christians, drive out the ‘evil spirits’ of materialism, greed, selfishness, short-sightedness and cowardice, and stand defiant, even in the midst of the ‘lions of the Coliseum’, if that be my fate, to give the world once more that ‘Polar Star’ of direction, purpose, hope, loyalty, and love which can no longer be supplied by the infiltrated religions.
-George Lincoln Rockwell
George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party’s heritage can be traced back to the 1930s, when pro-fascist, pro-German groups like the German-American Bund, Silver Shirt League, and the Christian Front were preaching anti-Semitic and ultranationalist ideas in the pre-war era. During this time, anti-Semitism had made its way into the cultural mainstream via popular anti-Semitic publications, such as The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem by Ford Motor Company founder Henry Ford. Ford’s book and newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, spread anti-Semitic propaganda and promoted the fabricated Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which claimed there was a Jewish conspiracy for world domination. While serving in the Korean War, Rockwell was heavily influenced by anti-communists like Senator Joe McCarthy and anti-Semitic propagandists like Gerald L. K. Smith and Conde McGinley which led him down a far-right political rabbit hole until he reached Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Rockwell’s political theories attempted to stitch together the fears brought by the Red Scare of the 50s and the racial tensions of the 60s with his anti-Semitic and racist beliefs. Rockwell’s National Socialist convictions were not just political but spiritual. He claimed to have reoccurring dreams of meeting Hitler’s ghost and was further encouraged by Savitri Devi and Bruno Ludtke that his spiritual destiny was to bring National Socialism to the world and save the Aryan race. (1)
In his book, “White Power,” Rockwell describes ANP’s thesis:
1. Western Society is sick.
2. The youth are spiritually empty.
3. This is not natural, but an effort conspired by “liberals” and “Chart-Foragers” aka Jews.
4. Those leading the nation are purposefully causing its collapse.
5. Those leading the nation are Jews.
6. There is an international Jewish conspiracy to smash Western Civilization because Jewish people are inherently paranoid and thrive in degeneracy and chaos.
7. There are two segments using the “divide and conquer” strategy in order to conquer the world. The first segment, “Friends of the Captain”, promote conspiracy by “gathering up gold by fake speculation and unfair merchandising” …then buying media outlets and using them to brainwash people and promote a class war.
8. The other segment, “friends of the crew” promote violent class war from below. (3)
Rockwell goes on to describe the “ideal” society his party intended to create:
1. White America
2. White World Solidarity
3. A new social order based on racial values.
4. An “honest economy” that ends both economic freeloading (welfare) and economic exploitation.
5. White self-defense where all white citizens are allowed to keep and bear arms and “maintain vigilance against enemies internal and external.”
6. A government led by the strongest, smartest, and wisest men.
7. Spiritual rebirth centered around racial idealism.
8. Promotion of Aryan culture.
9. A healthy, clean, wholesome environment where pollution is eliminated, and resources conserved.
10. A better race where the best qualities are emphasized, and weaknesses and flaws eliminated (eugenics). (3)
The American Nazi Party had a five-phase plan. Fortunately, they never succeeded beyond phase one.
Phase 1: Use provocative and shocking tactics to garner media attention and maximize publicity to raise awareness of the party.
Phase 2: Gain political legitimacy by running for office and presenting the party’s ideas to the mainstream.
Phase 3: Build a mass movement amongst disaffected white working-class and middle-class Americans. Rockwell believed race-wars and economic collapse were imminent and hoped to exploit these chaotic conditions to “use political power to fight and win back American heritage and enforce the Constitution for the benefit of the White Christian people.”
We will build our trained, hardcore Nazis into nationwide mass organizations…inflamed with a holy zeal as fired the American Revolutionist.
-George Lincoln Rockwell (1)
Phase 4. Achieve political power. Rockwell believed he would gain millions of ANP supporters that would elect him as President of the United States in 1972 along with stacking the Senate and House of Representatives with people from his party.
Phase 5: “The Final Settlement”
(1,2,3,4)
The Final Settlement:
Rockwell’s ultimate goal was to purge all Jews, leftist, queers, and non-whites from American society.
I’m going to completely separate the black and white races and preserve the white Christian domination in this country, and I’m going to have the Jew Communists and any other traitors gassed for treason.
-George Lincoln Rockwell (4)
Rockwell believed Elijah Muhammed’s Nation of Islam would help organize and direct the ‘Lincoln Plan’ to send black Americans to a settlement in Africa. The plan would utilize $50 billion dollars supplied by the US government and payed out over the course of ten years to settle and colonize part of Africa. Those who refused to “voluntarily” leave for Africa would be stripped of citizenship, placed in concentration camps, and become wards of the state. (4)
I’d also purge the queers. I despise them worst of all…They’re the ultimate symbol of a decaying civilization.
-George Lincoln Rockwell (4)
Military & Political Abilities
Rockwell enlisted a small “revolutionary cadre of fighters” or “Stormtroopers” to implement ANP’s plans. While membership figures were never released, it is evident he never received the financial or numerical support to carry through with his objectives. Rockwell only gave the illusion that ANP was a large and growing movement.
Stormtroopers, Party Members, and Supporters
No reliable sources place membership above 200 active members and a few thousand supporters. (1) However, Rockwell would claim in Playboy Magazine to have 500 stormtroopers, 1,500 party members, and 15,000 correspondents (including thousands more abroad in the WUNS movement). (4)
Weapons
Rockwell claimed he and the stormtroopers only carried rifles and handguns for self-defense purposes. He claimed the party didn’t participate in terrorism not for moral reasons but because it didn’t serve the interest of the party.
“I feel that terrorism is a valid weapon in guerilla warfare…if it would work. A hundred years ago, I’d have been a Klansmen with a rope and gun and the whole business…but today, it plays directly into the hands of Martin Luther [King]…it manufactures martyrs…” (4)
Funding:
Tony Ulasewicz, New York City Police Department monitored Rockwell from 58’ to 67’.
He once visited Rockwell at his home and reported: [Rockwell’s] glowing, published accounts of his party’s progress had been nothing more than a pack of lies…I noticed that bullet holes punctured the walls of his house…I also saw a stack of unpaid bills high on the table. Rockwell’s electricity had been turned off, and he used kerosene lamps to light the place…whatever Hitler’s ghost had promised Rockwell, it hadn’t yet arrived.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, ANP’s annual income was no more than 20k. In fact, Stormtroopers had to find jobs and turn over their paychecks to the party. They were constantly on the verge of bankruptcy. Rockwell was selling his own valuables at local pawnshops to pay court-mandated child support payments. He lost a battle with the IRS and had ANP’s headquarters on Randolph Street in Arlington confiscated along with its belongings.
The ANP’s most notable contributors were the following:
Harrold Arrowsmith Jr., a retired millionaire, provided him with $20k of support by putting a down payment on a house in Arlington, Virginia, providing a secondhand printing press, and $2500 in cash. The relationship ended abruptly following the Atlanta synagogue bombing. (1)
Mr. and Mrs. Floyd Fleming of Arlington, VA bought ANP a new house on North Randolph Street (which got confiscated by the IRS). They spent about $30-$50k on the party despite earning a modest income as sign painters. (1)
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Surrey of Dallas, TX “used…money for bails and fines for Stormtroopers…[and] raised better than $20k in a three-year period for the party.” Rockwell cryptically mentioned ANP’s “backers in Dallas” in public statements. He probably meant to give the allusion that oil money from right wing reactionaries such as the multi-millionaire oil baron and reactionary H. L. Hunt were donating to the party. To the contrary, the Surrey’s were middle-class. (1)
Ray York of California, introduced to Rockwell by the Surreys, contributed around $25k in cash, services, and rent-free use of his property. (1)
Other income came from ANP’s newsletter, Nazi and White Power merchandise (literature, stickers, shirts, etc.), initiation fees, small donations, and fundraising events like the racist music jamborees they called “Hate-o’-nannies.”.(4)
From 1963 to 1967, Rockwell began to earn a steady income on the college lecture circuit reportedly earning around $350 a lecture by the time of his death. (1)
Rockwell’s mom also sent money when asked. (1)
Approach to Resistance
Rockwell’s strategy was to exploit the chaos of what he believed was a coming ‘race war’ and ‘economic collapse’ to implement ANP’s platform. He thought he could win a mass following by provoking his enemies by antagonizing them in street demonstrations and passing out hate literature. Once he gained people’s attention, he planned to run for political office and use that platform to legitimize his party’s ideas. Rockwell believed with enough publicity, ANP would gain mass public support, attract financing from wealthy right-wing reactionaries, and establish political power for his party. He was wrong. His party’s publicity peaked in the early 60s and never gained legitimacy or a mass following. He never gained any significant political power and spent his entire career on the fringe of the far-right. (1)
Rockwell struggled to break through what he termed the “paper curtain” which he believed was a conspiracy by Jewish controlled institutions in media, banking, government, and commerce to silence him. In reality, Jewish organizations were organizing around the “Quarantine Strategy” developed by Dr. Solomon Anthill Fineberg of the American Jewish Committee (AJC). The strategy had been used years before to deal with anti-Semites like Gerald L. K. Smith. The strategy consisted of two components:
1. Coordination amongst major American Jewish community organizations to minimize public confrontation between the anti-Semite and their opponents to deny them a dramatic event and invite publicity.
2. The dissemination of back-ground information and tactics on the anti-Semite to media outlets to convince them the rabble-rouser had nothing newsworthy to say. (1)
Rockwell needed the publicity to get his contributions in…just the threat of him coming was good for a couple grand.
Tony Ulasewicz, NYPD
The quarantine strategy worked. The ANP were literally starving for attention.
[stormtroopers] ARE EATING STALE BREAD AND 10-CENT-A-POUND MEAT INTENDED FOR DOGS!…they can’t fight because they are hungry and COLD…we have no money for the heat bill.
-George Lincoln Rockwell
White Power Strategy
In 1965, Rockwell toned down the Nazi symbolism for a “cleaner” image focused on “white unity” as the central motif. The strategic focus on white unity was meant to exploit racial tensions around desegregation. Rockwell’s emphasis on “white unity” broke with the dogmatic teachings fundamental to Nazi belief of German-Nordic racial superiority. It also differed from the Ku Klux Klan whose members were anti-Catholic Protestants and Nativists. While this strategy had profound influence on the future of neo-Nazism and racists groups in the United States and elsewhere, it ultimately led to a rift in the party which contributed to its dissolution following Rockwell’s death. The American public remained uninterested. They decided that Martin Luther King’s dream was more noble than Rockwell’s white nationalist movement. (1,3)
Holocaust Denial
“I don’t believe for one minute that any 6,000,000 Jews were exterminated by Hitler. It never happened. The photographs you’ve seen passed off as pictures of dead Jews are frauds, pure and simple.”
George Lincoln Rockwell (4)
Rockwell introduced Holocaust Denial into the American anti-Semitic Zeitgeist. He believed that pre-war, pro-fascist organizations like Christian Front, the German-American Bund, and Silver Shirt Legion, which had hundreds of thousands of followers, were evidence of his party’s potential. He believed the memory of the Holocaust was holding his movement back. His solution was to attempt to distort historic memory and remove the stigma from Nazism by sharing what today some might call “alternative facts”. Many of these “facts” and “arguments” were introduced to Rockwell by his mentor, the ex-SS officer Bruno Ludtke. Ludtke sent Rockwell writings from Harry Barnes, Charles Tansill, Fred Utley, David Hoggan’s The Myth of the Six Million and an article published anonymously in a German-language Argentinian magazine, Der Web. These writings came to mark Holocaust denial of the 20th century. They included conspiracy theories of “supposed Zionist control of Allied interrogation of German war prisoners, inflation of mortality data for purpose of increasing reparations, fabrication of confessions, eliciting confessions by torture, and manipulating prewar census data to create the illusion of genocide.” (1)
Rockwell promoted these ideas in an interview with Alex Haley in Playboy Magazine. In the interview, he bragged about having published an article for Sir!, a popular men’s magazine, titled “When Nazis Tried Human Vivisection” (1958) under the name Lewcor (Rockwel backwards). He admitted everything in the article was completely made up. For Rockwell, this was proof the media were out to discredit the Nazis. He is considered the father of American Holocaust denial. (4)
Alliances & Relationships
Christian Identity
Rockwell saw Christianity as weak, feminine, and Jewish, but long entertained the idea of a Christian front with a pseudo-Christian exterior and National Socialism at its core. In 1964, Rockwell met with Wesley Swift to discuss merging elements of National Socialism with Christian Identity. (1)
Christian Identity is the 20th century American variation of 19th century British Israelism. British Israelism is the belief that “the British are lineal descendants of the ‘ten lost tribes of Israel” which dates as far back as the 17th century. John Wilson, a 19th century millenialist, turned it into a religious movement and Joseph Wild, a Congregationalist minister in Brookyln made it popular in the United States by the last quarter of the 19th century. It experienced a resurgence in the 20s amongst white supremacist and anti-Semites because it saw white, Anglo-Americans as “true Israelites” and “God’s Chosen People.” (1)
During the 1930s, Gerald Winrod and Wesley Swift shaped the first churches recognized as Christian Identity around a doctrine of racial purity which became successful in parts of California and the southeastern US. Richard Butler, a former Lockheed aerospace engineer and member of the fascist Silver Shirt Legion saw Nazi politics and Christian Identity as inseparable. Christian Identity holds that Jews are not the Biblical Israelites, but the “literal spawn of Satan”. It pitted Aryans as the true Israelites engaged in an apocalyptic struggle with Satanic Jews. (1)
Rockwell sent one of his trusted ANP officers, Ralph Perry Forbes, to join CI as a minister in California. Forbes built a large congregation and enshrined Rockwell into CI as “God’s latter-day apostle to America and all the lost sheep of the nations of true Israel.” Thus, CI became a haven for American Nazis and their ideological descendants. (1)
World Union of National Socialist (WUNS)
WUNS was an international network of Nazi organizations whose members included:
United States: GLR’s American Nazi Party
United Kingdom: Colin Jordan’s British National Socialist Movement
West Germany: Bruno Ludtke’s underground movements
Canada: The Canadian Nazi Party
France: Yves Jeanne’s French National Socialist Movement
Argentina: Horst Eichmann’s (Adolf Eichmann’s son) Argentine National Socialist Party
Japan: The Greater Japan Patriotic Society
Chile: Former SS colonel Franz Heinz Pfeiffer’s Chilean National Socialist Party
South Africa: Ray K. Rudman’s South African Anglo-Norman Union
Including chapters in Belgium, Denmark, Austria, Sweden, Rhodesia, Iceland, Spain, Hungary, Italy, Switzerland, Uruguay, and Puerto Rico
(1)
The WUNS movement was stifled by legal and logistical challenges due to strict laws surrounding Nazi activities post-World War 2, but it planted seeds and influenced neo-Nazi and far-right extremist groups around the world. (1)
Schisms
ANP/NSWPP split off into several factions. Matt Koehl, Rockwell’s chief lieutenant and formal successor, retained the party name and headquarters, but later moved to the mid-west and changed the party to the New Order, embracing Esoteric Hitlerism as a religion and losing interest in the political movement. Other schisms of ANP include the National Socialist Front, National Socialist Party of America, National Alliance, Northwest Front, Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and the Christian Defense League. (1)
Former Members of ANP
David Duke-Founder of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan organization.
Frank Collin-founder of National Socialist Party of America
Harold Covington-founder of Northwest Front
James Mason-former convict, author of Siege, promoter of Fascist Terrorism, and former associate of cult leader Charles Manson
Kurt Saxon-author of The Poor Man’s James Bond
Joseph Tommasi-founder of the National Socialist Liberation Front
William Pierce-author of the Turner Diaries
Arthur Jones-Republican candidate for Illinois’s 3rd congressional district in the November 2018 midterm elections
Tom Metzger (ANP affiliate)-founder of the White Aryan Resistance (WAR)
(1)
Works Cited
1. Simonelli, Frederick J. The American Fuehrer: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party. Chicago, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1999.
2. This Time the World (pink)
Rockwell, George L. This Time the World. Arlington, Virginia: Stormtrooper Publications, 1961.
3. Rockwell, George L. White Power. Arlington, Virginia: The National Socialists White People’s Party, 1967.
4. Haley, Alex. “Interview: George Lincoln Rockwell.” Playboy, April 1966.
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