Swastikas and Silver Shirts: the Dawn of American Nazism

Home , American Nazi Party, Blue Shirts (Canada), Esoteric Nazism, Fascist paramilitary, Fascist Union of Youth, Friends of New Germany

ABSTRACT

SWASTIKAS AND SILVER SHIRTS: THE DAWN OF AMERICAN NAZISM

by Austin Carter Hall

From 1922-1936, there was a considerable effort by Americans, German-Americans, and Germans to spread Nazi ideology throughout the United States. Figures such as Henry Ford who owned the anti-Semitic newspaper the Dearborn Independent was one of the first people to exert a concerted, nation-wide effort to fund anti-Semitic literature aimed at the common folk of America. With the NSDAP forming in 1920, some Nazis looked to the United States as a place outside of Germany where Nazism could flourish. Numerous organizations emerged in an attempt to spread hateful ideological stances. Alongside the rise of the “Second Klan,” American Nazism began to rear its head culminating in 1933 with the formation of the two groups that are prevalent in this study: William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Shirt Legion of America and Heinz Spanknöbel’s Friends of New Germany. A failed Hitleresque Beer Hall Putsch attempt by the San Diego Silver Shirts, the smuggling in of Nazi propaganda by the Friends of New Germany, and the ensuing Congressional investigations into these two groups demonstrates the lengths that some organizations and their leaders went in order to provide anti-Semitic, anti-democratic, pro-Hitler, and pro-fascist literature, ideals, and ideas throughout the United States in the interwar era.

SWASTIKAS AND SILVER SHIRTS: THE DAWN OF AMERICAN NAZISM

Thesis

Submitted to the

Faculty of Miami University

in partial fulfillment of

the requirements for the degree of

Master of Arts

Austin Carter Hall

Miami University

Oxford, Ohio

2019

Advisor: Dr. Erik Jensen

Reader: Dr. Mila Ganeva

Reader: Dr. Steven Conn

This thesis titled

SWASTIKAS AND SILVER SHIRTS: THE DAWN OF AMERICAN NAZISM

Austin Carter Hall

has been approved for publication by

College of Arts and Sciences

and

Department of History

______Dr. Erik Jensen

______Dr. Mila Ganeva

______Dr. Steven Conn

Table of Contents

I. INTRODUCTION...... 1 II. DECADES OF HATRED: ANTI-SEMITIC CONNECTIONS OF GERMANY AND THE UNITED STATES...... 10 III. THE BEER HALL PUTSCH OF SAN DIEGO: THE SILVER SHIRTS STEP INTO THE NATIONAL SCENE...... 31 IV. “STARS AND STRIPES WITH SWASTIKAS:” THE FRIENDS OF NEW GERMANY AND THE SPREAD OF NATIONAL SOCIALISM AND ITS TENNETS...... 46 V. CONCLUSION...... 64 VI. APPENDICIES...... 67 VII. BIBLIOGRPHY...... 69

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Dedication

This project is dedicated to those who fought against Nazism from the beginning to bring the movement to its knees. Never forget.

Acknowledgments

There are many whom I must acknowledge and thank for their support throughout this process. Please bear with me.

Miami University

To my committee: Thank you for the endless amount of support from all you. I also must give a special thanks to Dr. Erik Jensen, for without your support and guidance, this project would not exist. I also wish to thank the all the members of the History Department for their tireless work in guiding the next generation through to a new and ever-changing world.

To the Miami University Librarians: From the beginning of our endeavor as a historian and many librarians, I have paved a difficult path. One full of grateful submissions of requests for all likes of material, of difficulties regarding the amount of materials requested, and of the difficulties processing the myriad requests that I so sought. I am forever in your debt. Your exceeding helpfulness, kindness, and tolerance in the face of my unholy amount of library requests and, eventual, acquisitions, was and is not forgotten nor repaid. Thank you, all of you, for everything that you did and continue to do for the students, like me, at Miami University.

Thiel College

To my advisers: Dr. Mary Theresa Hall, Dr. James Koshan, and Dr. Peter Rydberg, I would be remiss if I did not thank you all for your guidance throughout my undergraduate endeavors. You taught me to compose, research, and perform, all of which aided me greatly in the enterprise that is this project. You all believed in me from the beginning, shaped the way that I think, and helped me become an ardent researcher, historian, and scholar. I can never thank you enough for all that you have done for me and for your continued support throughout my academic career. I would also be remiss if I did not thank my English and history teachers—Dr. Jared Johnson, Dr. Christopher Moinet, Dr. Melissa Borgia-Askey, Brenda DelMaramo, Dr. David Buck, and Dr. Curt Thompson. You all helped to shape my education in a way that allowed me to venture on in my academic career.

To the Thiel College Librarians: Like the Miami University Librarians, you, Allan Morril and Tressa Snyder, know of the arduous requests that a researcher like I cause. From research papers to working with me to research materials for Berlin ist Gefallen to just talking and hearing me out about the trials and tribulations of the life of an undergrad, you both truly helped me to develop my skills at navigating a library, finding resources, and opening the door for me to the power of the library—the power to transmit knowledge to any individual.

Riverside Kindergarten, Elementary, Middle, and High School

Many writers, researchers, and scholars forget to include thanks to the humble beginnings in their education. Many forget to thank the teachers that shaped their formative years, guided their minds, and aided their efforts to become a professional. I have not reached the mountaintop yet, but I am on my way thanks to you. From my graduation party in the summer of 2013, I was told

something that I never fathomed—the early teachers get forgotten, and the high school teachers get forgotten within a year after high school ends. I have not forgotten anyone. Teachers, librarians, coaches, and administrators. You all shaped my life and led me to this point where I have the chance to complete a work of which I could only dream growing up. This may be long- winded, but it is completely worth it. I have not forgotten the influences, the aid, the guidance, or the faith that you so graciously gave me. They say that a soul never dies if it is placed in print. For the unwavering support you gave me, I am forever grateful, thankful, and humbled.

Mrs. Smail Mrs. Stagno Mr. Knabb Mrs. Salvetti Mr. Cavett Mr. Hand Mrs. Naar Mr. Agostinelli Mr. “G” Hall Mrs. Huth Coach Greg Williams Mrs. Smith Mrs. Best Coach Joseph Fisher Mrs. Milton Mrs. Meyers Mrs. Young Mr. Bonner Ms. Cochenour Mrs. Frank Mr. Saul Mr. Nocera Mrs. Pilarski Mr. Rosenberger Ms. Kazer Mrs. Boots Mrs. “Mom” Pinchott Mrs. Dietrich Mrs. Householder Mr. Felder Mrs. Richards Mrs. Hoyman

And the Teacher of My Lifetime – Mr. “J” Hall

Family and Friends

To my fiancée: I could never thank you enough for your support of my chosen career path. The life of an academic is not easy, but harder still is to be the supporter of a struggling academic. Therefore, I must extend my undying gratitude to my—now—fiancée Ashely Faith Mojica Torres for being the support structure throughout this process, the reminder that I could finish, at the least, a draft, and the one person who saw the struggles in the attempt to take on this project. I hope that you stick around for round three with my dissertation. Thank you for being the strong, intelligent woman I have come to know and love.

To my family: From birth, I have had the good fortune of coming from a loving family, a big family, a supportive family. To my parents—James and Lori Hall—education has always mattered to all of us. You pushed me to be the best I could possibly be at whatever I decided to do. Be it academics, sports, theater, or jobs, you were always there to support me, to mentor me, and to guide me. I love you both and could not have asked for better role-models for me. My sister, Ashley S. Hall pushed me in my childhood and adulthood to try to be a better, more understanding person, a person that I hope, one day, will be the fulfillment of that push. My grandparents—Wayne Larry Hall I, Anna Mae Hall, James Rosenmund Palmer, Sr., and Darlene Marion Palmer—provided more than can be said in words. Their kindness, toughness, and loving hearts I will forever treasure and from which I will forever learn.

Future Students, Scholars, and Academics

“You just gotta relax.”1 Albeit a vague, if not, seemingly hopeless tidbit of advice, it is the educator’s job to pass on knowledge to the next wave of scholars attempting to make their way in this confusing, rigorous, and somewhat cantankerous world. However, educators, from the teachers, mentors, and, now, close friends from whom I have had the pleasure to learn, to observe, and to question, work through those challenges, obstacles, and disheartening situations. Your primary mission, of which some seem to have lost sight, is to educate your students. But you must remember that education is not merely the classroom, tests, and research papers. It is to help every student—every student—to strengthen their resolve, focus on their skills, and send them out into the world with confidence, not in that they will get a job immediately (although that would certainly be cause for celebration and absolutely ideal), but confidence in themselves and their abilities. This may seem like an impossible task, but we signed up for the job. Fulfil it to the best of your ability, but you must always remember: You just gotta relax.

1 Wayne L. Hall, “You just gotta relax,” (USA: Every baseball game in which I was the pitcher, 2005-October 17, 2009). vii

Introduction

From August 11 through August 17, 2017, thousands of “alt-right” members gathered together for the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. White supremacists, neo-Nazis, and extreme nationalists gathered together on the University of Virginia campus as a counter- protest to a group peacefully organizing around a statue of Thomas Jefferson. Chants such as “Blood and Soil” and “You will not replace us” echoed across the campus as the tiki-torch wielding crowd marched toward the counter-protesters. The protest known as Unite the Right saw hundreds of Americans locked in step together throwing the “Hitler salute” in the air as they marched closer and closer to the counter protesters. When the so-called alt-right reached the counter-protesters, they attacked them with pepper spray, their tiki torches, and violent fists injuring a number of the counter-protesters. Mayhem, violence, and fear gripped the university campus, but it would not end there. The following day, thousands descended upon Charlottesville with a number of “alt- right” leaders to speak at the event condemning Jews, throwing support behind white supremacy, and stating their undying support for President Donald Trump. Many of the white supremacists donned the now famous red Trump hat, some carried Confederate flags, Nazi flags, and signs that had all kinds of racial slurs condemning any group that was not white. Like the previous night, violence ensued as protesters beat those protesting the rally with metal pipes, wooden stakes, and their own fists. At the rally, former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and former Louisiana senator stated, “We are determined to take our country back. We're going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump.”2 Chaos ensued with Virginia police doing little to stop the violence. One known white supremacist, whose name will not appear in this thesis, used his car to kill Heather Heyer, an advocate against violence and against the neofascist movement that took her life. Nineteen other people were seriously injured as the driver sped off. The rally descended into utter madness with those on both sides began to land blows with the alt-right members injuring many caught up in the counter protest.3

2 Zachary Cohen, “Trump's mixed messaging sparks concerns of 'emboldened' white supremacists,” CNNpolitics, August 19, 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/19/politics/trump-remarks-alt-right/index.html. 3 Richard Fausset and Alan Feuer, “Far-Right Groups Surge Into National View in Charlottesville,” New York Times, August 13, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/far-right-groups-blaze-into-national-view-in- charlottesville.html. 1

The aftermath of the Unite the Right rally proved that the neofascist, neo-Nazi, white supremacist movement was alive and well in the United States. Mixed responses spurred the movement as Trump did not condemn the rally. Instead, he called a press conference, and stated that “There were very fine people on both sides.”4 This response triggered former Imperial Wizard of the Duke to state, “Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa.”5 These responses showed the world that American Nazism was not dead, white supremacism, fascism, and anti- Semitic beliefs still infected the hearts of some Americans, and caused many in the public to wonder, just how did we get here? The construction of the American Nazi movement, organized anti-Semitic and pro-fascist ideological groups, and organized pro-Hitler believers can be traced to 1920s America with a rapid growth in the movement in the 1930s. Anti-Semitism, fascism, and Nazism are all “isms” that the public knows had flourished in 1930s Germany. They have heard of the Holocaust and Adolf Hitler. What many Americans may not realize, however, is that Nazis and Nazi sympathizers lived and operated throughout the United States at the exact same time. Certain domestic United States racist and authoritarian groups in the 1920s looked to the NSDAP (and later Nazi Germany) as a source of inspiration, expertise, logistical support, and financial assistance in the pursuit of goals that represented a specifically American variant of the fascism so prevalent in Europe. Global figures like Henry Ford along with Klan leaders, German-American anti-Semitic organizations, and home-grown fascist organizations are the remnants of the spread of American Nazism throughout the United States. Ford founded an anti-Semitic newspaper which ran articles based on the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a fake document detailing a Jewish plot to overthrow world governments. Leaders of the Klan, like Hiram Evans, spread anti-Semitism and anti-Catholicism throughout the United States through newspapers and rallies. However, it was groups of German-Americans along with one occultist, distinctly American organization that spread their anti-Semitic and pro-Hitler ideology the most. German Nazis who spent a great amount of time in the United States—Kurt Lüdecke, foremost among them—and German-Americans like Heinz Spanknöbel and Fritz Gissibl sought

4 Zachary Cohen, “Trump's mixed messaging sparks concerns of 'emboldened' white supremacists,” CNNpolitics, August 19, 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/19/politics/trump-remarks-alt-right/index.html. 5 Zachary Cohen, “Trump's mixed messaging sparks concerns of 'emboldened' white supremacists,” CNNpolitics, August 19, 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/19/politics/trump-remarks-alt-right/index.html. 2

to promote an American-style of fascism and Nazism. Organizations began to form through leadership of these men. The Swastika League, the American Nazi Party, the Steel Helmets, the Free Society of Teutonia, and others throughout the nation popped up throughout the 1920s with some support. By the 1930s, there was a concerted effort to consolidate all of these organizations into a single entity—the Friends of New Germany. Constituted less than six months after Hitler and the Nazis were elected into power in Germany, the Friends of New Germany sought to bring an American form of Nazism into being. Although the Friends of New Germany ultimately subsumed into the German-American Bund, the legacy of these organizations, these leaders, and their members showed that a consolidated American Nazi movement could be constituted in the United States. Working alongside the Friends of New Germany was an organization with an occultist leader hell-bent on bringing an American version of fascism and spreading anti-Semitism throughout America. William Dudley Pelley, leader of the Silver Legion or Silver Shirts, founded the organization the night that he discovered that Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power in Germany. Pelley was an ardent supporter of Hitler and formed his organization and platform in the same manner as the NSDAP. He had his members wear a certain uniform, pay dues, and believe in the same anti-Semitism infecting Americans and Germans. All communication and action had to go through him, the Chief. Like Hitler, Pelley ruled his organization as an authoritarian dictator. His organization spread from Asheville, North Carolina, to Washington, D.C., to Oklahoma, all the way to California. His plan for America? Deport all the Jews and have President Roosevelt resign. In the end, the San Diego Silver Shirts planned an armed insurrection, a putsch, on City Hall in order to overthrow the government and execute Pelley’s plan, albeit without his knowledge. Through the 1930s, the Silver Shirts distributed newspapers, Pelley wrote books, and sent pamphlets, letters, and other propaganda throughout the United States railing against the Jews and the government. The Silver Shirts, however, eventually took a backseat to the Christian Party, under whose banner Pelley later unsuccessfully ran for the president of the United States in 1936. The tale of the Silver Shirts, along with that of the Friends of New Germany and other organizations show the depth and expanse of American fascism, anti-Semitism, and Nazism that spread throughout the United States. Successful organized anti-Semitism that was American-born and expanded across the United States shows the influence of Nazism in the United States.

This is a study in the organized racism that pervaded the United States throughout the 1930s. Racism ran rampant with the construction of the Second Klan. They targeted anyone that was not a white, Anglo-Saxon protestant within the United States which meant they not only attacked black Americans, they also hated the Jews and Catholics connecting them to the same race hatred of the Nazis. This racism caused German-American fascists to ultimately seek out the Klan leaders in hope of forming an alliance while also recruiting like-minded WASPs (White Angle-Saxon Protestants) to their movement. It is also a study in German-American relations as Germans emigrating to America brought ideals with them that have been engrained in Europe for over a thousand years. Anti- Semitism has long been the scourge of Europe, and these sentiments followed some German- Americans who bought into the belief that Jews controlled the world and plotted against people in an organized shadow government. Anti-Semitism was also homegrown, and not just a phenomenon of German-Americans. However, the small number of members in these organizations also goes to show that most German-Americans left their anti-Semitic beliefs, if they ever even had them, in Europe for good. However, it does show that German-American relations were soiled by the few that organized anti-Semitic sentiment in the United States. Finally, this thesis is a study of those who would see the government of the United States forever changed into a fascist dictatorship. All of these organizations believed that fascism or national socialism needed to be supplanted within the United States. Thus, this is truly a study which shows the vast spread of the belief that democracy was no longer a viable form of government, that the United States’ democratic republic needed to fall. Spanknöbel and the German-American believers in the Hitler movement sought to bring fascism to the United States through the education of children in camps, the spread of fascist propaganda, and the recruitment of like-minded individuals. Pelley and the Silver Shirts believed that Pelley should supplant Roosevelt as leader of the nation and execute their plan to eliminate all Jews from the United States. Fascism, the ultimate critique of democracy, inflamed certain groups across the nation. The inspiration for this project came from reading James Whitman’s Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law. Published in 2018, Whitman’s study attempts to capture not only the development of the Nazis’ Nuremburg Laws, but to show that Nazi lawmakers used the miscegenation and segregation standards of the United States as a model for these infamous laws as well. Rather than claiming that the Nuremburg Laws exactly

copied the United States’ exclusionist policies, Whitman argues that the Nazis borrowed the ideas behind the laws in order to create a German version which would be accepted in the anti- Semitic atmosphere of the Fatherland. Whitman successfully offers insight into the way in which American race laws impacted and inspired the bigoted anti-Semitic laws of the Third Reich. Whitman’s monograph contradicts the traditional viewpoint that the creators of the Nuremberg Laws and the Nazi blood laws only viewed America as one of many countries with racist legislation, and that there was not direct connection to the United States. Whitman does not argue that the Nazis were attempting to recreate the American race laws in Germany; rather, they looked to the United States with unbridled admiration for the way in which the country was able to continually segregate and ‘keep bloodlines pure.’ He states, “The Nazis were never interested in simply replicating the United States in Central Europe. Nevertheless, Nazi lawyers regarded America, not without reason, as the innovative world leader in the creation of racist law.”6 This argument revolutionizes the discussion on comparative racism regarding the United States and the Third Reich. Whitman’s book links the histories of Nazi Germany and the United States. This connection caused an inquiry into American Nazism. Rather than looking to the Nazis in Germany, I wanted to examine the Nazi movement in the United States. Historians such as Sander Diamond, Arthur Smith, Jr., and Arnie Bernstein provide extensive overall histories of the Nazi movement in America.7 Their texts are invaluable resources to track the spread of Nazism; however, they do not do what this study purports to do. Their focus is primarily on the German-American Bund, Fritz Kuhn, or the Deutsches Ausland-Institut (DAI)—the German Foreign Institute. Many of the historians have examined the American Nazi movement from the German side of the equation. They also have not focused their efforts on the rise of the Friends of New Germany, relegating them to a footnote in the story of American Nazism. My project exhibits the American side of the story, initiated by Americans or by those who spent an

6 James Whitman, Hitler’s American Model (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017) 5. 7 Sander A. Diamond, The Nazi Movement in the United States, 1924-1941 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974); Arthur L. Smith, Jr., The Deutshtum of Nazi Germany and the United States, International Scholars Forum, A Series of Books by American Scholars (The Hague: Martinus Nijoff, 1965); Arnie Bernstein, Swastika Nation: Fritz Kuhn and the Rise and Fall of the German-American Bund (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2013); and Christopher Vials, Haunted by Hitler: Liberals, the Left, and the Fight Against Fascism in the United States (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014).

inordinate amount of time in America away from Germany. The fascist, pro-Nazi movement in America was American-made and this project looks at the American side of the story. This project also focuses on the Friends of New Germany and the Silver Shirts together. Only one monographic history regarding the Silver Shirts has ever been published, but it is a biography of William Dudley Pelley himself rather than a history of the activities and actions of the group.8Furthermore, the putsch attempt in San Diego is relegated to but a few paragraphs in the monograph whereas in my history, the putsch attempt is an essential part of the story of the Silver Legion. It shows the localized race hatred pervasive in the United States along with a fascist uprising planned just like the one in Nazi Germany in 1923. My history also shows cooperation with the Friends of New Germany and statements made vehemently defending Nazism and showing it to be a goal of the Silver Shirts. Therefore, they are added to the history of American Nazism. This project is also of interest to those studying racism and interwar United States history. Studies on the Ku Klux Klan—such as Linda Gordon’s new monograph—highlight the activities of the so-called “Second Klan” which came to its largest influence in the 1920s. However, what studies of the KKK, including Gordon’s, miss is the cross-fertilization with domestic fascist groups such as the Friends of New Germany and the Silver Shirts. Missing from the histories of the Klan are the activities they undertook with like-minded organizations. Truer still is that although the Klan is depicted as virulently anti-Catholic, the anti-Semitic attitudes of Klan members and leaders is somewhat downplayed. This study shows that anti-Semitic organizations like the Friends of New Germany and the Silver Shirts attempted to, and in some cases, did work directly with the Klan of which the leaders of these organizations believed that they found an ally.9 Studies on racism throughout American history also seem to downplay the roles of these organizations, sometimes leaving them out entirely. John Higham’s Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 only include the nativism prevalent in the United States up to the mid-1920s when nativist fervor continued throughout the 1930s causing a HUAC committee to form. This study picks up where Higham’s leaves off and shows that American

8 Scott Beekman, William Dudley Pelley: A Life in Right-Wing Extremism and the Occult (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2005). 9 Linda Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition (New York: Liverlight, 2017). 6

nativism did not climax in 1925, but rather continued throughout the 1920s into the 1930s. Juan F. Perea selected a series of essays on American nativism in the 1990s. Although this study does well to call for the United States to pass less restrictive immigration laws, it leaves out the history of American nativist thinking. In order to paint a holistic picture of American nativism, this study fills the gap to show organized nativism, fascism, and anti-Semitism continued through the 1930s and continued to this present day.10 Finally, this study adds to the story of interwar America. Historians focus on the Jazz Age, the Great Depression, or the life of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Even those who focus on the disgruntled Americans like David J. Goldberg in Discontented America: The United States in the 1920s leave out the dawn of American Nazism. Focusing on the rise of the Klan, the larger movements like the Roaring Twenties, and American nativism regarding immigration before and after the 1930s, these foci lave out an important part of American history. This gap in the literature is where this study fits. It shows a sector of interwar America that saw the birth of American Nazism, organized anti-Semitic organizations, and attempts to sway American public opinion toward anti-democratic thought.11 The project required the use of a wide variety of sources. Key to telling this story, one of American-made fascism and anti-Semitism, required the digitized proceedings of the McCormack-Dickstein HUAC investigation. These proved to be an invaluable source of information detailing the activities of those who spread the Nazi ideology throughout the United States. Of equal importance, however, were documents discovered at the National Archives. These documents included titles of Nazi propaganda materials, private investigators and their reports to McCormack and Dickstein as to the everyday activities of those under surveillance, newspapers with articles detailing Nazi activities, and correspondence of and between these racist organizations. These documents provided the means to either corroborate testimony in the HUAC hearings or to disprove the statement(s) of those who testified. These documents were central in making this project complete. Finally, along with extensive secondary research, the project required primary source materials such as Pelley’s various publications, newspaper

10 John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988); Juan F. Perea, ed. Immigrants Out!: The New Nativism and the Anti-Immigrant Impulse in the United States (New York: New York University Press, 1997).

11 David J. Goldberg, Discontented America: The United States in the 1920s (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). 7

articles from the Friends of New Germany along with other propaganda material, and primary studies on American fascism, anti-Semitism, and Nazism. Without these sources, the completion of this project would not exist. Finally, the organization of the chapters is key to building the larger picture of the spread of American fascism and anti-Semitism. Chapter one focuses on the key elements and figures throughout the United States regarding this topic. An examination of Henry Ford and his newspaper operations along with a meeting with Kurt Lüdecke, a Nazi operating in America, opens the chapter in order to establish a connection between German-American fascism and anti- Semitism in the United States. It traces the elements of these ideologies throughout the United States from 1924-1933 concluding with an exposé on the formation of the Silver Shirts showing that a concerted anti-Semitic, pro-fascist organized movement came to America. Chapter two focuses on the Beer Hall Putsch of San Diego. Modeled after the Nazi Beer hall Putsch in 1923, Silver Shirt members in San Diego collected guns and ammunition in preparation for a putsch against San Diego City Hall. Although it never materialized, institutions as high up the proverbial food chain as the United States Marine Corps had a vested interest in the organization. Eventually, the HUAC committee convened to investigate Nazi propaganda revealed the insidious plot. Therefore, an examination of the Silver Shirt chapter in Southern California charts the evolution and eventual failure of the chapter to overthrow City Hall. This shows that there was a concerted effort to rally against the United States government and put a racist, fascist regime into existence similar to that of Nazi Germany. It demonstrates that the movement spread throughout the United States extending to both coasts. This chapter in American history shows the difficulty of controlling a vast fascist organization spanning from coast to coast along with the inability for fascism to triumph over democracy in the United States. Finally, chapter three examines plans for the eventual consolidation of the German- American Nazi groups into one organization under one leader. It details the great lengths that German-Americans who supported Nazism took to consolidating the movement into the Friends of New Germany. Before this effort, the American Nazi movement was splintered across the United States with various organizations vying for power and influence over the American people. It details that this organization was, in fact, American-made and its members lived strictly in America with support for the Nazi cause. The chapter concludes in 1935 as the HUAC

hearings crippled both the Silver Shirts and the Friends of New Germany while the leadership of the groups shifted their attention to other endeavors.

Chapter I

Decades of Hatred: Anti-Semitic Connections of Germany and the United States

“The German component of the American people will be the source of its political and mental resurrection.”12

Although the United States and Germany both have well-documented histories of anti- Semitic actions, beliefs, and policies, the two nations were not specifically interconnected in this arena. However, anti-Semitic thought reared its ugly head, yet again, as key players on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean spread this flawed ideology throughout the United States (after the conclusion of World War One (WWI). These players, such as the industrialist Henry Ford, the German-American Nazi agent Kurt Lüdecke, and anti-Semitic Ku Klux Klan leaders Hiram Evans and Milton Elrod published anti-Semitic literature, set up and colluded with pro-Nazi organizations in America, and even smuggled in literature and messages from the Nazis into America. The volume of anti-Semitic literature pouring into and out of the United States and Germany from 1918-1937 was as vast as it was virulent. Henry Ford helped spread anti-Semitism across the country. Ford’s Dearborn Independent caused millions of Americans to be exposed to anti-Semitic statements and literature throughout the 1920s. Kurt Lüdecke, Heinz Spanknöbel and Fritz Gissibl began to implant American Nazism with all its tenants throughout the United States by creating organizations such as the Free Society of Teutonia and the Swastika League. Although these groups were not coordinated, their messages of hate and statements against democracy were extensive and inflammatory. By 1932, the stage was set to consolidate these groups into one being. Alongside these groups, William Dudley Pelley, an occultist leader launched the anti- Semitic Silver Legion or Silver Shirts in Asheville North Carolina.13 This organization, along with the various German-American pro-Nazi groups began to disseminate a wide variety of fascist and anti-Semitic materials throughout the nation along with gaining members to their respective organizations. The stage was set for American Nazism.

12 Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf. 13 For the purposes of studying Pelley and other pro-Nazi leaders that bought into the idea that they could engage with the paranormal and the mystical. Pelley, along with the high leadership of the NSDAP, were among those who practiced occultist rituals. Pelley, himself, believed that he could connect and speak with anyone, anywhere, anytime, and anyone, anywhere, of anytime. 10

For years, Ford kept his anti-Semitism in check as only close family and colleagues knew of his beliefs.14 However, as WWI wrapped up, Ford blamed the Jews for what he considered a “wasteful war,”15 and he began to put together a campaign to spread his anti-Semitic beliefs. Operating out of Detroit, Ford purchased the publishing rights to a small paper known as the Dearborn Independent. Up to that point, this small newspaper company published local news stories. That would all change under Ford’s ownership. Ford immediately expanded his operations to spread anti-Semitic rhetoric across the United States and beyond. Ford’s business associate Ernest Liebold formed the vision of Ford’s anti-Semitic viewpoints. As Ford did not write any of the articles himself—preferring to spew his racist ideological assessments to his higher-ups as he paced back and forth throughout his office—he employed Liepold and others to form his hypotheses into article format. Perhaps the best summation of the Dearborn Independent’s operational structure is characterized by historian Victoria Saker Woeste. She states: In reconfiguring the Independent, Ford created a media voice that he alone controlled, one that…spoke in the vernacular of his limited ken.…The paper attacked the modernist impulses of its time, inveighing against new cultural trends that Ford personally abhorred: smoking; drinking; jazz; newfangled dancing styles; and what he believed was the disproportionate influence of Jews on politics, culture, entertainment, diplomacy, industrial capitalism, and the state.16 Essentially, through his publication, Ford opened the door for the right-wing Christian Nationalist movement to pick up steam in the 1920s. The ideology of Christian Nationalism essentially purports that to be American, one must be Christian, white, and never intermarry across the races. Christian Nationalism can be traced back all the way to the nativist movements of the 1840s and is persistent throughout American

14 Victoria Saker Woeste, Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 26-9. 15 “Henry Ford to Push World-Wide Campaign for Universal Peace,” Detroit Free Press (August 22, 1915). 16 Victoria Saker Woeste, Henry Ford’s War on Jews and the Legal Battle Against Hate Speech (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), 47. 11

history since then.17 Although the breadth of influence for nativism and Christian Nationalism wax and wane throughout the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, WWI allowed Americans like Ford to revisit these ideologies, especially with the importation of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. A virulently anti-Semitic work, The Protocols were originally published in Russia in 1903 as a way to spread anti-Semitic ideals throughout Tsarist Russia. The Protocols asserted that there is a Jewish or Zionist plot to overthrow the world and take over all governments. As it was translated swiftly into many languages, many US politicians and businessmen obtained a copy of the racist and fake work. This included Henry Ford. It was Ernest Liebold’s job to run the Dearborn Independent, and he was also charged with bringing like-minded people to Ford for discussions on the Jews. One such individual, Boris Brasol-Brazhkovsky, a former official in the Imperial Russian Government, became close with both Liebold and Ford, and by 1919 Liebold brought Brasol into the inner circle of the Dearborn Independent’s operations. This close connection to Ford and Liebold allowed Brasol the opportunity to provide Ford with a translated copy of The Protocols which furthered Ford’s beliefs that the Jews were the enemies of America and must be exposed and stopped. The way Ford sought to do this was by ramping up his publications’ influence throughout the United States. This plan of action became public with the first printing of the Ford-led Dearborn Independent in May, 22 1920. Years of planning culminated in articles propagating Ford’s racism. In fact, Ford titled the cover article of the very first issue “The International Jew: The World’s Problem.” Throughout the article, Ford’s ideas about the Jews are laid out in spectacularly racist terms. He asserts that the Jews are behind the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, control all of the world’s finances in order to eventually take over the world, and control much of the press throughout myriad of nations. On this last point, he even goes as far to say, “[The Jews] absolutely control the circulations of publications throughout the country [America]. Fewer than any race whose presence among us is noticeable, they receive daily an amount of favorable publicity which would be impossible did they not have the facilities for creating and distributing it themselves.”18 Essentially, Ford asserts that the Jews would not be given positive

17 John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925, 2nd ed. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1988), 3-8. 18 “The International Jew: The World’s Problem,” The Ford International Weekly 12

publicity if they themselves did not control the presses. Of course, there were Jewish newspapers and publications in the nation that presented pro-Jewish sentiment; however, this was certainly not the case that the Jews were in complete control of any industry. Ford’s accusation displays a level of anti-Semitic thought that would be spread across the nation for years to come through his publication. Ford’s newspaper allowed for anti-Semitism to spread across the nation. Going a step further, Ford reprinted the debunked Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion in 1921. Although the Protocols were proven to be false accusations against the Jewish community, many still viewed them as gospel truth. On February 17, 1921, a reporter from The New York World asked Ford for his opinion on The Protocols. He responded by saying, “The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on. They are sixteen years old, and they have fitted the world situation up to this time. THEY FIT NOW.”19 The impact of this statement, made by a business mogul that many Americans admired, was deeply influential in American society. The impact this statement and that of the Protocols being reprinted throughout the United States was large as Ford’s magazine reached over 700,000 readers in just the first year of printing, second only to the New York Daily Times during this period.20 With this level of exposure in merely a year, Ford opened the door for right-wing extremism to become much more public in everyday American newsprint. By 1921, Ford looked to expand his readership across the Atlantic Ocean. Ford expanded operations to Germany. Up to the 1922 publication of the four-volume set of anti-Semitic literature titled The International Jew, The World’s Foremost Problem which sold ten million copies within the United States, Ford did not have a huge presence in Germany.21 Choosing to name this set after the first anti-Semitic article published in the Dearborn Independent, Ford decided that readership in Germany would expand his global initiative of spreading his false narrative. By 1922, Ford sent millions of copies of The International Jew—translated into German—to Germany in hopes that his message would become internationally recognized.22

19 The New York World, February 17, 1921. 20 Harold Earl Quinley and Charles Young Glock, Anti-Semitism in America (New Brunswick: Transaction Books, 1983), 168. 21 Robert Michael, A Concise History of American Antisemitism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 139. 22 Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), 172-3. 13

And it worked as the Germany and America enjoyed a free exchange of ideas throughout the 1920s. After the travesty of WWI, a fractured Germany with a new, somewhat unwanted democratic government entered the 1920s. Many Germans looked for someone to blame for the devastation of their beloved nation and for Germany’s loss in the First World War. Many right- wing Germans believed that the Jews were to blame, and they let this sentiment be known to the world. Right-wing leaders and newspapers began to perpetrate the “Stab-in-the-Back” myth by which these players stated that the Jewish population schemed to bring Germany down from within. One such example of this sentiment was a November 11, 1919 article from the Deutsche Tageszeitung in which the author claims that “The German people are to blame for letting this disgrace be foisted upon them. They have in their hands [the means] by which they can free themselves if they want. At the moment they have black-red-gold ‘Jewish Flag’ blowing over them.”23 This sentiment was not a fringe idea for merely the right-wing extremists, but was a belief held by many Germans who saw nothing but destruction around them. Anti-Semitic ideology was not new to Germany, but it was about to be ramped up by leaders such as Ford and Hitler in the not-so-distant future. Hitler’s anti-Semitism and the breadth of his control within Germany throughout his life is well documented; however, historians of the twentieth century tended to shy away from connecting Hitler directly to the United States as Americans tried to distance themselves from Nazi Germany in the wake of the Holocaust. However, as early as 1922, Hitler gave orders to his fellow Nazi Kurt Lüdecke—who would become the most infamous German-American Nazi agent of the 1920s—to go to America in order to solicit funds for the fledging NSDAP. Lüdecke’s contributions to the Nazi Party were immense, especially with anything regarding the spread of anti-Semitism throughout American society. In a 1923 letter from Hitler, Lüdecke was ordered to solicit funds for the NSDAP in Germany and to see what interest the American people had in the Nazi movement. Hitler addresses Lüdecke: Much Esteemed Herr Lüdecke, First expressing my heartiest thanks for your representation of the movement in Italy, I ask you to solicit in the interests of the

23 November 11, 1919 article from the Deutsche Tageszeitung, p. 1 14

German Liberty movement in North America and especially to assemble financial means for it. I ask you to receive these means personally, and, if possible, to bring them over in person. Thanking you in advance for your efforts, I greet you most heartily. (Signed) Adolf Hitler24 Although this letter seems to indicate that Hitler’s desire for Lüdecke’s visit to the United States was to gain funds for the German Nazi movement, Lüdecke’s, and eventually others’, actions fully supported, operated, and fostered the dawn of the American Nazi movement. This letter is foundational for the expansion of Nazism across the Atlantic into the United States. Even though this is a Germany to America version of the story, it does not mean that the American version of Nazism to come did not necessarily have help from the Nazis in Germany. As stated previously, the American Nazi movement had players that reached out to the Nazis for financial support. However, in this case, the Nazis saw America as ripe ground for a Nazi movement to rise. It is necessary to note that Lüdecke believes that the reason that Hitler referred to the Nazi Party as the “Germany Liberty movement” rather than the National Socialists is due to the fact that Hitler hoped that using this rhetoric will allow more Americans to support Nazism and virulent anti- Semitism.25 Tasked with funding an American Nazi movement, Lüdecke turned to none other than his companion Henry Ford to begin to spread his message throughout American society. Lüdecke seeks out Siegfried and Winnifred Wagner in New York City hoping that they would help him gain an audience with Ford.26 In his memoir, Lüdecke notes that during an earlier and shorter visit to America, had several talks with W. J. Cameron, one of the chief editors of The Dearborn Independent. Lüdecke even states, “Naturally, I was pro-Ford, and I tried to reassure myself that his convictions would make him actively pro-Hitler. Although so far, he had advocated no corrective program, his attitude toward the Jewish question seemed enlightened enough to

24 Adolf Hitler to Kurt Lüdecke, 24 January 1923, in Kurt G. W. Lüdecke’s I Knew Hitler: The story of a Nazi Who Escaped the Blood Purge (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1937), 191. The original German reads: INSERT GERMAN HERE 25 Kurt G. W. Lüdecke, I Knew Hitler: The Story of a Nazi Who Escaped the Blood Purge (New York: Scribners’s Sons, 1937), 190. 26 Neil Baldwin, Henry Ford and the Jews: The Mass Production of Hate (New York: Public Affairs, 2001), 186-7. 15

promise co-operation.”27 This attitude and receptiveness of those in Ford’s organization made Lüdecke believe that he had a natural ally in Henry Ford. On January 31, 1924 the Wagners and Lüdecke were able to successfully gain an audience with Henry Ford to discuss Hitler, anti-Semitism, and Nazism in America. Lüdecke discussed the aims of the Nazis highlighting their anti-Semitic stance. Lüdecke states that Ford listened intently and agreed with the Nazis and Hitler’s anti-Semitism. Lüdecke states, “Ford listened keenly. He was hearing for the first time things which he could not learn from American newspapers, which, the Dearborn Independent alleged, were controlled by Jews….Occasionally, he nodded; once in a while he interjected a curt remark: ‘I know…yes, the Jews, these cunning Jews.’”28 Lüdecke asserts that although Ford was extremely keen on what Lüdecke had to say, but was not particularly interested in what Lüdecke was asking. Lüdecke, not discouraged by Ford’s seeming lack of interest in funding, presses on. He ramps up his admiration of Ford’s anti-Semitism in an attempt to secure some funding. He refers again to his meetings with Cameron and quotes from the Dearborn Independent. He argues that Ford was correct in stating “the Jewish question will be solved, and its solution will begin in the United States.”29 Lüdecke fervently believed that the German Nazis needed Ford’s help in order to continue to spread their message across the world. Although he was directed to secure funds, Lüdecke indicates that his actions in the following months and years helped to build the foundation of the American Nazi movement. This is precisely why Lüdecke kept pushing the issue towards funding. He continues to quote from the Dearborn Independent and even attempts to steer the conversation towards the Jewish conspiracy of international banking, a prominent topic in Ford’s newspaper. However, funding was not provided by Ford. Lüdecke eventually refers to Ford as a strict businessman and not necessarily a man of action. This could potentially be due to lingering anti- German sentiment following WWI but is more likely that due to the financial crisis in Germany, Ford was wary to tie up money in a German cause. Lüdecke stated that the more extensive

27 Kurt G. W. Lüdecke, I Knew Hitler: The Story of a Nazi Who Escaped the Blood Purge (New York: Scribners’s Sons, 1937), 193. 28 Kurt G. W. Lüdecke, I Knew Hitler: The Story of a Nazi Who Escaped the Blood Purge (New York: Scribners’s Sons, 1937), 196-7. 29 “The Jewish Question—Fact or Fancy” in The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem, Vol. 1 (1920), 46, qtd. in Kurt G. W. Lüdecke, I Knew Hitler: The Story of a Nazi Who Escaped the Blood Purge (New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1937), 198. 16

discussion of anti-Semitism intrigued Ford. However, this anti-Semitic like-minded viewpoint did not help Lüdecke to gain funds for the NSDAP. Ford did not lose sight of the potential business fallout from funding any part of the NSDAP.30 It would be a catastrophic business move to openly fund German Nazi agents in America as there would boycotts of his goods and the corporation could potentially be brought to its knees. Eventually, Ford uses Cameron as a mouthpiece and outwardly refuses to fund the Nazis in America. A telegram sent to Lüdecke simply states, “The proposal will probably not be entertained—Cameron,”31 causing Lüdecke to try a different atmosphere for funding. Although Lüdecke does not secure funding from Ford for the Nazi Party at this point, the meeting nevertheless points to the existence of an active transatlantic exchange of anti-Semitic thought. As Lüdecke and Ford split ways, choosing to spread their anti-Semitic thoughts by other means, Lüdecke chose to change tactics and focus his efforts in a new area. Rather than seeking out like-minded businessmen, Lüdecke chose to focus on German-Americans. From original immigration to the United States in the latter half of the eighteenth century, the number of Germans in America is vast. Census data published in 1927 displays that the number of German- Americans from a variety of nations if roughly eight million, seven hundred thousand.32 This means that Lüdecke had more than enough opportunity to find German-Americans who shared his anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi viewpoints. Lüdecke’s efforts to gain funds for the NSDAP were futile in the beginning as many people that he reached out to were not Nazi sympathizers. In fact, at this time, most German- Americans were somewhere on the political center or left when it came to loyalties back in the Fatherland. In fact, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) won 100 out of the 472 seats in the Reichstag33 that year with the Nazis not even holding a single seat.34 Convincing other German- Americans to support the Nazi Party, especially with their belief in anti-Semitism, was not an easy task. Many Germans did not even entertain Lüdecke’s rhetoric, and those who did refused

30 This seems to be an odd claim. As previously discussed, Ford funded The Dearborn Independent which was virulently anti-Semitic. In this sense, Ford is openly supporting anti-Semitism throughout America so the claim that Lüdecke makes might be misguided. 31 Kurt G. W. Lüdecke, I Knew Hitler: The Story of a Nazi Who Escaped the Blood Purge (New York: Scribners’s Sons, 1937), 204 32 Albert Bernhardt Faust, The German Element in the United States: With Special Reference to its Political, Moral, Social, and Educational Influence, Vol. 2 (New York: The Steuben Society of America, 1927), 12. 33 The Reichstag is the German parliament in the Weimar Republic. 34 Dieter Nohlen and Philip Stöver, Elections in Europe: A Data Handbook (2010), 769. 17

funding. Lüdecke notes that the closest he got to funds was when he met with an organization known as the Barbarossa-Bund. This organization eventually dissolved, subsumed under the umbrella of the Deutscher Orden der Schwarzen Ritter.35 Lüdecke asserts that he failed to gain any funding in the United States.36 This leads Lüdecke to shift tactics once again, this time turning to solidify advantageous relationships with like-minded people and organizations already established in the United States. This marks an interesting development as Lüdecke ends up meeting with leaders in the Ku Klux Klan. Effectively defunct by the end of the nineteenth century, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) reemerged on the American scene in the early 1920s as violent, virulent, and villainous as ever. The KKK emerged as the leading organization of hate in the United States. Boasting over five million Knights by the mid-twenties, the Klan was certainly powerful and flooded with money.37 As they were also vehemently anti-Semitic, Lüdecke thought that he would be able to make friends with some of the more powerful people in the organization to further Nazism in America. Lüdecke, like anyone living in America, knew of the power of the KKK in the mid- twenties. Their organizational structure, their beliefs, and the vastness of their organization intrigued Lüdecke. He reached out to the Klan and set up a meeting with Hiram Evans, the Imperial Wizard of the Invisible Empire, and Milton Elrod, the publicity person within the KKK. As Lüdecke states, “The KKK was an interesting study. I did not need much political knowledge to know that it would come to nothing in spite of its appeal to the anti-negro, anti-Jewish, and anti-Catholic sentiment by which many Americans, particularly in the Southern states, could be pricked into action.”38 Although he believed that the structure of the KKK would eventually fail, Lüdecke sought to elicit their help. However, Lüdecke did not get the help he thought he so easily would obtain. The second iteration of the KKK was strongest throughout the 1920s. Re-established by William Joseph Simmons in 1915, the Klan slowly grew in numbers. Unlike the previous KKK of the post-Civil War era which only targeted black Americans, Simmons’ version reflected a

35 Cris Whetton, Hitler’s Fortune (South Yorkshire: Pen and Sword Military, 2004), 129. 36 Kurt G. W. Lüdecke, I Knew Hitler: The Story of a Nazi Who Escaped the Blood Purge (New York: Scribners’s Sons, 1937), 205. 37 Linda Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition (New York: Liverlight, 2017), 3. 38 Kurt G. W. Lüdecke, I Knew Hitler: The Story of a Nazi Who Escaped the Blood Purge (New York: Scribners’s Sons, 1937), 205. 18

much wider range of hatred. The Klan of the twenties hated all who were not white Anglo-Saxon Protestants.39 Simmons’ Klan believed that “The Anglo-Saxon is the typeman of history. To him must yield the self-centered Hebrew, the cultured Greek, the virile Roman, the mystic Oriental.”40 This helped the Klan to grow exponentially in the following years. By 1921, Simmons claimed that the Klan had over 850,000 new members all with the same ideology: America must be for those who were “100% American.”41 This was not an uncommon viewpoint of many Americans during this time, making the Klan a potential ally to the Nazis within the United States. By 1922, Evans and Elrod organized a coup against Simmons ousting him from power. In seeing power, Elrod and Evans became the Imperial Wizards and continued to grow the Klan through political as well as propagandistic measures. The two Klan leaders expanded the operations of the Klan by moving their headquarters to Washington, D.C. In doing so, they promoted “pure Americanism,” hailed the well-known ex-president Woodrow Wilson as their national hero, and adopted a “Nordic” platform with the help of famed eugenicist Madison Grant. In his infamous The Passing of the Great Race, Grant asserted that the United States had a pure Nordic history that must be preserved. Grant stated: We Americans must realize that the altruistic ideals which have controlled our social development during the past century and the maudlin sentimentalism that has made America “an asylum for the oppressed,” are sweeping the nation toward a racial abyss. If the Melting Pot is allowed to boil without control and we continue to follow our national motto and deliberately blind ourselves to all “distinctions of race, creed or color,” the type of native American of colonial descent will become as extinct as the Athenian of the age of Pericles, and the Viking of the days of Rollo.42 Members of the Klan held this viewpoint in high regard. They even used the term “Nordic” to separate who they believed to be true Americans from those who did not fit into their identity.

39 Linda Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition (New York: Liverlight, 2017), 15. 40 Qtd. in Randel, The Ku Klux Klan, 187. 41 Henry P. Fry, The Modern Ku Klux Klan (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1922), 37-51. 42 Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, or The Racial Basis of European History, 4th rev. ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1924), 263. 19

This racist and anti-Semitic sentiment was not rare in the early 1920s. As H. L. Mencken, writer for the Chicago Klan’s newspaper Dawn, wrote, “Not a single solitary sound reason has yet been advanced for putting the Ku Klux Klan out of business. If the Klan is against the Jews, so are half of the good hotels of the Republic and three quarters of the good clubs.”43 The anti- Semitism prevalent throughout the Klan reflected the larger American sentiment towards the Jews. It is no wonder, then, that Nazi agents such as Lüdecke sought out the Klan for help. Many Germans living in America shared the ideas of the Klan and the belief in the Nordic race being superior to the Jews. In his memoir, Lüdecke notes the kinship between the Klan and the Nazis. He states, “The contact which I established with the white-robed KKK never had any practical results [in obtaining funds] …If Evans could not contribute to the Nazis, I decided, then perhaps the Nazis could contribute to him. It would be something to have five million men organized in America for a purpose parallel to our own.”44 In meeting with the Klan, Lüdecke was able to forge an alliance as the aims and views of the Klan matched that of the Nazis and Lüdecke himself. The alliance would help the American Nazi movement as well as secure funds for the fletching NSDAP back in Germany. As the Klan topped over 5 million people by 1924, this was the year of the height of their influence and power. Within a decade the Klan grew from an organization with a few hundred people to a powerhouse that boasted membership of many congressmen, senators, and judges..45 That kind of influence was attractive to several leaders within the Nazi regime who saw the opportunity for growth within the United States. Just as the Nazis sought to rid their nation of so-called “undesirables,” so, too, did the Klan. This is evidenced through the literature of both organizations at this time. 1924 was a critical year for both the Nazi Party agents in America and the KKK. Virulent anti-Semitism filled the newspapers run by the Klan and the Nazi agents. One blatant example of Klan anti- Semitism within the newspapers happened just as Congress discussed immigration laws for the coming year. On November 17, 1923, the Dawn, the Chicago-based Klan’s organ, ran a virulently anti-Semitic piece. In it, the author called out the Chicago Tribune for not exposing

43 H. L. Mencken, in Dawn, 17 March 1923. 44 Kurt G. W. Lüdecke, I Knew Hitler: The Story of a Nazi Who Escaped the Blood Purge (New York: Scribners’s Sons, 1937), 207. 45 Linda Gordon, The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition (New York: Liverlight, 2017), 213-6; and Robert Michael, A Concise History of American Antisemitism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2005), 138. 20

Jewish plots within the government. The author stated, “These [voting] figures prove two things—that the Tribune is careful not to comment on (1) the Jews, while attacking the right of the Americans to unite themselves on racial lines in politics, themselves unite solidly behind Jewish candidates. (2) In their urge for victory, the Jews resort to wholesale fraud, corruption, and double-crossing.”46 The idea that Jews were running and corrupting many nations was not an uncommon sentiment throughout the world. This sentiment is echoed by the Nazi Party leaders pro-Hitlerites throughout the United States Many argued that the Jews infected both the German and American governments. By the end of 1924, Lüdecke went to Chicago to help spread the pro-Nazi newspapers, Der Stürmer and Völkischer Beobachter, throughout the United States.47 Although it did not gain a lot of readership immediately, its message paralleled that of the Klan’s numerous papers. Often running racist caricatures of Jews along with its anti-Semitic articles, Der Stürmer reached the United States through Lüdecke and spread throughout the United States. Its publisher in Germany, Julius Streicher, sought to expand operations to the United States where there was already a large community of anti-Semites. Every printing to reach America through Germany ran with a tagline “"Die Juden sind unser Unglück!” or “The Jews are our misfortune!”48 Anti- Semitism began to inflame certain Americans sympathetic to the ideals of Nazism. While in Lüdecke was in Chicago, two brothers organized the beginnings of what would become the German-American Bund. Fritz Gissibl and his brother, August, both German immigrants to the United States, started the Free Teutonia Society or the National Socialist League of Teutonia on October 12, 1924.49 Founded on the same principles as the Ku Klux Klan, the new organization promoted anti-Semitism as a, if not the, core belief of its members. The name was derived directly from the eugenic ideology of the 1920s. The Teutons, according to Madison Grant, are the pure Nordic Aryans who settled in Germany after 1800 B.C.50 According

46 “Eller’s Jewish Vote Shows Discrepancies,” Dawn (Chicago, IL), Saturday, November 17, 1923, 7. 47 Kurt G. W. Lüdecke, I Knew Hitler: The Story of a Nazi Who Escaped the Blood Purge (New York: Scribners’s Sons, 1937), 309-10; and Carl A. Sokoll, “The German-American Bund as a Model for American Fascism: 1924- 1946” (Ed.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 1974), 25-26. 48 Carl-Eric Linsler, Stürmer-Karikaturen, in Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Judenfeindschaft in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Berlin: München Saur, 2015), 477. 49 Testimony of Peter Gissibl, United States v. McWilliams, et al, United States District Court, Washington #73806 (United States v. Winrod included), 1944, 2318. 50 Madison Grant, “Classification of the Races of Europe: Their Characters and Distribution,” inset The Passing of the Great Race, or The Racial Basis of European History, 4th rev. ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1924); Madison Grant, “Present Distribution of European Races (generalized scheme),” inset The Passing of the Great 21

to testimony of Peter Gissibl, the third brother in the organization, the brothers organized the Teutonic League “to speak to young German immigrants, to get them into our society; immigrants who belonged to the German nationalist group in Germany before they came to the United Stater and after the organization changed its name. We demanded from our members the National Socialist way of life.”51 This sentiment shows a connection between Nazi sympathizers in the United States and the Nazi Party in Germany. Within this organization, Fritz Gissibl became the first American Bundesführer. However, there is another viewpoint as to how the German-American organization came to be. As reported by the journalist Samuel McCoy, American Nazi agents, such as Kurt Lüdecke, were sent directly by the Nazis to be the party’s eyes and ears in the United States. Throughout the series of articles in 1934 editions of Today: A Personal Journal of Public Affairs, McCoy detailed the breadth of influence of the Nazis in the 1920s. McCoy stated that the men “visited the east, the central west, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Idaho and Oregon; they traversed Texas and the southwest. From every state they sent back reports on men and the conditions they saw them.”52 This vast network of Nazis secretly roaming America seeking places where the movement could grow aided the expansion of the Teutonic League. Some of these spies sent by the Nazi Party originally were not outed as members of the Nazi Party. However, by 1934, McCoy was able to tie numerous German immigrants to the Nazi Party. Well-known Nazi conspirators included Paul Themlitz, Hermann Schwinn, Karl Sprecht, and worst of all Heinz Spanknöbel who was to become the head of the German-American Friends of New Germany, a later iteration of the Teutonic League.53 These men became the leading figures of the German-American National Socialist movement which spread anti-Semitic literature throughout the United States.

Race, or The Racial Basis of European History, 4th rev. ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1924). See appendix I & II. 51 Testimony of Peter Gissibl, United States v. McWilliams, et al, United States District Court, Washington #73806 (United States v. Winrod included), 1944, 2323. 52 Samuel Duff McCoy, “Hitlerism Invades America,” Today: A Personal Journal of Public Affairs, I, 23:5, March 31, 1934. McCoy’s work is cited in numerous secondary sources and has been vetted as an apt and accurate report on the growing nature of American Nazism throughout the 1920s and 1930s. McCoy gained his information through the propaganda published by those in the American Nazi movement, more mainstream newspapers like the New York Times, and through interviews with a number of different sources including Fritz Gissibl. 53 Samuel Duff McCoy, “Hitlerism Invades America,” Today: A Personal Journal of Public Affairs, I, 23:6, March 31, 1934. 22

Regardless of its origins, the Teutonic League grew slowly. However, there were over four hundred people that joined the League by 1927. This growth allowed the organization, albeit small, to hold a convention in Chicago in the same year. Although the organization boasted that it had membership in five major cities—Chicago, Detroit, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and Los Angeles—only fifteen people attended the first convention in 1927.54 This would change in the coming years as German-American Nazi groups would consolidate into a large organization that boasted hundreds of thousands of members known as the German-American Bund. . By 1928, the Teutonic League enlisted the help of none other than Kurt Lüdecke. As has been established, Lüdecke, a well-known Hitler conspirator, was also operating out of Chicago during this time. It was at this point that Lüdecke helped the Teutonic League establish a newspaper of its own. Der Vorposten55 became the official organ of the Teutonic League and spread virulently anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi viewpoints throughout America. Lüdecke also helped the Teutonic League establish a connection to Germany by corresponding with editors of the Völkischer Beobachter, the well-established Nazi official newspaper.56 A transatlantic partnership between American Nazis and German Nazis was well-established by the end of 1929. It must be noted that the Teutonic League went through several name changes between 1926-1929. By 1926, some within the League began to refer to the organization as the National Socialist Society.57 This aligned the League even closer with other Nazi organizations in America. With help from Lüdecke, the League was able to initiate a correspondence with a New York City group sympathetic to the Nazi cause and advocated for National Socialism to expand to the North American continent. As it was extremely secretive, the Ortsgruppe or the American “local branch” of the Nazi Party, not much is known about the group. It is known, however, that the Teutonic League or the National Socialist Society had a large correspondence with the

54 Testimony of Peter Gissibl, United States v. McWilliams, et al, United States District Court, Washington #73806 (United States v. Winrod included), 1944, 3466. 55 Known throughout the United States as The Outpost. 56 Testimony of Peter Gissibl, United States v. McWilliams, et al, United States District Court, Washington #73806 (United States v. Winrod included), 1944, 2322. 57 Testimony of Peter Gissibl, United States v. McWilliams, et al, United States District Court, Washington #73806 (United States v. Winrod included), 1944, 2321. 23

Ortsgruppe leadership due to their shared beliefs that the Jews were mobilizing to destroy America and Germany through the government.58 The Teutonic League also corresponded with a Detroit anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi club led by Heinz Spanknöbel. A recent immigrant from Germany, Spanknöbel organized the Detroit group in the late 1920s just as the Teutonic League was gaining momentum. Gissibl along with leaders Ulrich Staack and Arthur Doering went to Detroit to discuss a merger with Spanknöbel’s group. At a Deutsches-Haus in central Detroit, Gissibl along with Spanknöbel iterated their plans to merge the two organizations. However, as Samuel McCoy points out in his work, a large amount of heckling ensued causing Spanknöbel to send in a crew of his supporters to quell the disturbances.59 The heckling suggests skepticism on the part of many German-Americans to the anti-Semitic agenda. However, this instance of a strong, authoritative leader would help Spanknöbel come to prominence within the new organization in the years to come. With the merger, the Teutonic League gained not only new members throughout the United States, they gained notoriety and showed that they had staying power as a pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic organization within the United States. By 1929, the League officially changed its name to the Friends of the Hitler movement and began to expand once again. Throughout the early 1930s, Americans truly began to take notice of the Nazi agents present in the United States due to the influence and gains of the Nazi Party in Germany. This led Lüdecke to go to Boston to expand operations there. In testimony given before the House of Representatives in 1934, Lüdecke admitted to entering the nation under false pretenses. The committee reports: The first real representative of the National Socialist German Labor Party of which this committee has definite knowledge, was one Kurt Georg Wilhelm Lüdecke, who admitted under oath before this committee that he utilized his position of traveling representative for a German commercial house, as a smoke-screen behind which to disseminate his propaganda in the United States,

58 Testimony of Fritz Gissibl, United States Congress, House Special Committee on Un-American Activities, Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities; “The McCormack-Dickstein Hearings” (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1934), Hearings #96, New York, October 16-17, 1034, 112-115. 59 Samuel Duff McCoy, “Hitlerism Invades America,” Today: A Personal Journal of Public Affairs, I, 23:27, March 31, 1934. 24

in an effort to gain adherents and financial support for the Nazi movement. Lüdecke, on his own admission, stated that while he was here acting as a propagandist for a minor political party in Germany, he gained access not only to the press galleries of Congress, but also to press gatherings in the White House.60 As the committee describes, Lüdecke’s time in Boston allowed the Nazis to expand the League’s operations. While in Boston, Lüdecke established the Swastika Press—a large publisher that printed numerous anti-Semitic propagandistic works—in order to spread the Nazi ideology throughout the larger United States. The Press’ job was to help recruit a large number of Germans loyal to the Nazi Party to join the Friends of the Hitler movement. Lüdecke even writes in one issue of one of the newspapers owned by the Swastika Press, “We repudiate the doctrine of popular sovereignty. Believing in the authority of leadership, in the value of personality, we advocate a state of truly sovereign authority, which dominates all the forces of the Nation, coordinating them, solidifying them, and directing them towards the higher ends of a national life.”61 By 1931, the Swastika Press established outposts in New York, Boston, Chicago Detroit, Oklahoma City, Los Angeles, and San Diego, pushing their National Socialist racist agenda for the Nazi Party in Germany. The goal of this Swastika Press is outlined in Lüdecke’s memoir. Part of the German- American Nazi cause was to cultivate an American leadership within these organizations so that the Americans would follow the Nazi ideology. A portion of the Press published a virulently anti-Semitic newspaper known as the American Guard. Lüdecke stated, “the announced purpose of my American Guard was ‘to maintain, defend, and advance American ideals, Aryan concepts and culture; to further the cause of national unity and social justice.’”62 The American Guard,

60 House Committee on Un-American Activities Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, H.R. Rep. No. 153, February 15, 1935, pp. 3-4, in RG 233 Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, HR73A—F30.1, Special Committee on Un-American Activities on Nazi Propaganda, Entry 1—Administrative Records, Box 358. 61 House Committee on Un-American Activities Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, H.R. Rep. No. 153, February 15, 1935, p. 4, in RG 233 Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, HR73A—F30.1, Special Committee on Un-American Activities on Nazi Propaganda, Entry 1—Administrative Records, Box 358. 62 Kurt G. W. Lüdecke, I Knew Hitler: The Story of a Nazi Who Escaped the Blood Purge (New York: Scribners’s Sons, 1937), 331. It is interesting to note that Lüdecke uses the term “social justice” as this phrase would become the calling card of anti-Semitic leaders such as William Dudley Pelley, Father Coughlin, Gerald L. K. Smith, and Huey Long. Father Coughlin’s anti-Semitic journal was even titled Social Justice and was the organ of the Coughlin-led National Union for Social Justice. For more on this turn to Alan Brinkely, Voices of Protest: Huey Long, Father 25

according to Lüdecke, would serve American interests to promote the Nazi ideology in the United States. And that it did. Other literature began to circulate throughout New York City from the Swastika Press. By 1932, Lüdecke used the name of his anti-Semitic newspaper to set up a splinter organization known as the American Guard. This organization, related to the Friends of the Hitler Movement, was located in Boston. By mid-1932, Lüdecke applied for a charter for his organization; however, he was denied this charter by the Massachusetts Secretary of State who viewed the organization as against Massachusetts state code.63 This did not stop the publications of the Swastika Press, however, as Aryan book stores began to open throughout Boston.64 Titles such as Handbuch der Judenfrage, Das Programme der N.S.D.A.P., Mein Kampf, and Reich un Kirche made their way into the homes of many Americans throughout the United States.65 All of these publications contain virulent descriptions of the Jews in America and in Germany. Of particular interest is that The Swastika Press obtained many of these works which spread throughout Boston and New York through German Nazi sailors smuggling Nazi literature through the North-German Lloyd-Hamburg American Steamship Company.66 In this way, anti- Semitic works could be distributed and reproduced in the United States for pro-Nazi sympathizers to obtain and read.

Coughlin, and the Great Depression (New York: Alred A. Knopf, 1982); Glen Jeansonne, Gerald L. K. Smith: Minister of Hate (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); and Donald Warren, Radio Priest: Charles Coughlin, the Father of Hate Radio (New York: The Free Press, 1996). 63 Testimony of Kurt Lüdecke, United States Congress, House Special Committee on Un-American Activities, Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities; “The McCormack-Dickstein Hearings” (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1934), Hearings #96, New York, October 16-17, 128. 64 Although the sources from the National Archives do not give an exact number, the documents collected show at least four different bookstores were under surveillance by the United States government in 1933. House Committee on Un-American Activities Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, “List of Aryan Bookstore Books from late 1932 into 1933,” in RG 233 Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, HR73A—F30.1, Special Committee on Un-American Activities on Nazi Propaganda, Entry 1—Administrative Records, Box 365. 65 House Committee on Un-American Activities Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, “List of Aryan Bookstore Books from late 1932 into 1933,” in RG 233 Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, HR73A—F30.1, Special Committee on Un-American Activities on Nazi Propaganda, Entry 1—Administrative Records, Box 365. Their translated titles are Handbook of the Jewish Question, The Program of the N.S.D.A.P., My Struggle, and Reich and Church. 66 Testimony of Fritz Gissibl, United States Congress, House Special Committee on Un-American Activities, Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities; “The McCormack-Dickstein Hearings” (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1934), Washington, June 5-7, 1934, 71-2. 26

By 1932, there was support by some German-Americans who adopted the Nazi ideology. This was in part due to Heinz Spanknöbel’s leadership within the “Friends of the Hitler Movement.”67 Spanknöbel’s strong-willed leadership style helped the already flourishing organization to expand operations throughout large urban areas throughout the United States such as Chicago, New York, and, of course, his home city in Detroit all of which gained chapters of the organization by 1932.68 Expansion to these cities was key as pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic sentiment spread throughout the American populace. As events in Germany moved Hitler and the Nazi party closer and closer to power, the stage was set for an American Nazi movement made in admiration of the (now-successful) German Nazi movement. From Henry Ford’s anti-Semitic Dearborn Independent and meeting with the Nazi Kurt Lüdecke to the Klan’s involvement in spreading virulent anti-Semitism across the nation, America was ripe for the Nazi influence within its borders. The growth and organization of groups such as the Teutonic League, The Friends of Hitler, and eventually, the American Guard, connected German and American anti-Semitic ideology. By the end of 1932, American and German anti-Semitic connections were well-established. However, there was another organization, by another anti-democratic, anti-Semitic, and pro-Fascist leader in the mix. Alongside the German-American groups set to launch an even greater group in 1933, the Silver Shirts led by William Dudley Pelley launched the day that Hitler received power in Germany. Born on March 12, 1890 to a New England family in Lynn, Massachusetts, Pelley grew up in a religious household, but not a radical one. His father, a Methodist minister, preached compassion and acceptance to his flock.69 After entering adulthood, Pelley time and again failed to operate businesses ranging from his time in Hollywood to operating various presses in hopes of starting a successful journalistic career. As his businesses failed over and over, he began to look for reasons that excluded him from blame. After a psychic event which occurred in 1928, Pelley stated that he gained “hyper-dimensional

67 Samuel Duff McCoy, “Hitlerism Invades America,” Today: A Personal Journal of Public Affairs, I, 23:7, March 31, 1934. After the merger in the late 1920s, the Teutonic League changed its name officially to the “Friends of the Hitler Movement.” 68 Testimony of Fritz Gissibl, United States Congress, House Special Committee on Un-American Activities, Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities; “The McCormack-Dickstein Hearings” (Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1934), Washington, June 5-7, 1934, 74. 69 William Dudley Pelley, The Door to Revelation: An Intimate Biography (Asheville, NC: The Foundation Fellowship, 1936), 7. This is corroborated by historian Scott Beekman in his biography of Pelley: William Dudley Pelley: 27

instruction” which allowed him to visit people and places from different times and confer with these people about the past and present.70 It was this occultist line of thinking that caused Pelley to begin to blame the Jews for the misfortune of society. Delving deeper into his occultist and spiritualist beliefs, Pelley founded the Galahad Press in 1930 which produced The New Liberator, Pelley’s personal newspaper. The New Liberator provided Pelley with the resources to begin publishing anti-Semitic articles with what he believed was proof of an international conspiracy for the Jews to overthrow the government and American society. These beliefs and actions mirror that of Henry Ford and the Dearborn Independent. Like Ford, Pelley set up a newspaper that printed anti-Semitic literature and marketed it to like-minded believers around the nation. After rallying supporters across the nation, Pelley formed his first organization, the League of Liberation in 1931 and incorporated the Foundation for Christian Economics in 1932. Pelley set the stage for a larger, more expansive organization to form in the coming year. With the groundwork completed, Pelley and his followers waited for the right moment to form that larger organization. The moment presented itself as Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party gained control of the government. Pelley, a supporter of Hitler and the Nazis, stated that he used his hyper- dimensional powers to receive a revelation about forming the Silver Shirts. In the February 18, 1933 edition of Liberation, Pelley stated that the message he received was “When a house painter takes over the German people, that will be his sign for bringing the work of the Christian Militia into the open.”7172 This account is further proved in John Roy Carlson’s detailed exposé on the underworld of Nazis within the United States. He states, “This publication [Liberation] appeared on the 18th of the ensuing February openly and unashamedly endorsing Hitler and his program against the Jews.”73 This, again, directly links the United States and German anti- Semitism in the interwar era. Based on this Pelley followed Hitler’s lead and formed the militant Silver Shirts.

70 William Dudley Pelley, Seven Minutes in Eternity With the Aftermath (New York: Colliers, 1933), 20. 71 Samuel McCoy, “Hitlerism Invades America, Part II,” Today, no. 1, vol. 23, (April 7, 1934): 31. This study focused on the level of exposure the Nazis and supporters of the Nazi movement had in America. McCoy reprinted 72 Pelley changed the name of The New Liberator to Liberation. 73 John Roy Carlson, Under Cover: My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld—The Amazing Revelation of How Axis Agents and Our Enemies Within Are Now Plotting to Destroy the United States (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1943), 400. 28

Like many religious zealots before him, Pelley followed this up with a call to arms. In every edition of Liberation and other Silver Shirt organs such as the Silver Ranger, Pelley placed the following advertisement: If you are 18 years of age, of reasonably good health, and not afraid to risk your life and limb for your country, you are asked to take the Oath of Consecration upon you and step out as a TRUE CHRISTIAN SOLDIER garbed in a shirt of silver with the great scarlet “L” emblazoned on your banner and over your heart, standing for Love, Loyalty, and Liberation.74 In order to join the Silver Shirts or the Silver Legion of America, all one had to do was fill out an application and send in ten dollars for a uniform. The application asked for various personal information such as banking information, race, and real estate holdings. The uniform, modeled after the militaristic uniform of the Brown Shirts in Nazi Germany, consisted of blue trousers, white leggings, a trooper hat, and a token silver shirt with a scarlet “L” above the left breast pocket.75 The Silver Shirts then expanded across the nation. Pelley located his headquarters and presses in Asheville, North Carolina where the Galahad Press, Pelley Publishers, Liberation, and many other papers and publications housed operations. Like Hitler’s Brown Shirts, Pelley organized the Silver Shirts as a paramilitary group. He divided the organization into 9 zones. Each zone would have its own regional commander that would then dish out orders to local chapter leaders; however, all activity had to be approved by Pelley himself.76 Understanding the structure of the organization is essential towards understanding what caused the government to look at the Silver Shirts and add them to the list of fascist organizations that would be investigated by the McCormack-Dickstein Committee that investigated the threat of Nazi agents or Nazi influences and beliefs being spread throughout the United States. Pelley attempted to ensure that all communications and decision-making be done by him just as all decision-making of the Nazi Party went through Hitler.

74 Samuel McCoy, “Hitlerism Invades America, Part II,” Today, no. 1, vol. 23, (April 7, 1934): 5; also evidenced by copies of the Solver Ranger in Silver Ranger no. 10, vol. 1, (January 31, 1934); Special Committee on Un-American activities on Nazi Background Publications (Serial No. HR73A-F30.1); 73rd Congress; Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, Record Group 233, Box 385; National Archives Building, Washington, DC. 75 Samuel McCoy, “Hitlerism Invades America, Part II,” Today, no. 1, vol. 23, (April 7, 1934): 5. 76 Samuel McCoy, “Hitlerism Invades America, Part II,” Today, no. 1, vol. 23, (April 7, 1934): 5. 29

With the formation of this new organization, it was clear that a pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic entity could come together within the boundaries of the United States. The launch of the Silver Shirts and the swiftness of their organizational efforts proved to America and the German- American groups that it was entirely possible to form such and organization. With the formation of the Silver Shirts, the German-American groups, bent on spreading Nazi ideology throughout the United States, took notice and a concerted effort to organize into a singular organization was on the horizon.

Chapter II

The Beer Hall Putsch of San Diego: The Silver Shirts Step into the National Scene

May, 1934: The San Diego chapter of the Silver Shirts prepare to march on City Hall in an attempt to overthrow city government, continue the march to Sacramento, and demand that President Roosevelt deport all the Jews living in the United States and resign as president so that their leader, William Dudley Pelley, could assume the office. After obtaining guns and munitions, the Silver Shirt chapter, headed by Willard Kemp and Donald Niswender, chose to march on May Day due to a misguided belief that the Communists in San Diego planned to march on City Hall themselves on the same day. Akin to Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch and Mussolini’s March on Rome of the previous decade, the Silver Shirts attempted to organize their own march. However, the Silver Shirts in San Diego never got the chance to march as the Communists never marched on City Hall giving the Silver Shirts no cause to march themselves. Although the putsch attempt never materialized, examination of the San Diego chapter revealed connections and parallels to the Nazi movement in Germany at the exact same time. The San Diego Silver Shirts’ actions rocketed the whole organization into the national spotlight through testimony provided during the HUAC hearings in August 1934. Thus, the failed Beer Hall Putsch of San Diego caused many issues for the bigoted national organization and its leader Pelley, showed that fascism and organized anti-Semitism stepped onto the national stage, and that some Americans ultimately wished to see over 150 years of American democracy replaced by an authoritarian governmental structure. Kemp and Niswender, at the behest of Pelley, began an attempt to purchase weapons and ammunition in order to lead an armed insurrection during the May Day celebrations of 1934. They believed, as did many of the Silver Shirts, that the Communists and Jews planned their own armed insurrection to overthrow the United States government and install a Communist dictatorship. The Silver Shirts sought to preempt this purported plot by installing their own Christian-based government, which they foresaw as tightly constraining the expression of religion and essentially revoking the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. Reporting shortly after this Silver Shirts plot had failed, an article in the Santa Cruz Evening News noted, “At an annual rate of $10 per member, William Dudley Pelley imparts mystic messages from eternity to his Protestant Christian Militia of America—the Silver Shirts, on how

a Christ state was to be established in America.”77 This ardent belief that the United States needed to become a Christian-only nation meant that the Silver Shirts sought to eradicate any other religion in the United States. These unwarranted beliefs that Jews and Communists were plotting against the United States caused Kemp and Niswender to believe that they needed to fight both groups in armed insurrection, secure City Hall, and demand the deportation of all Jews and Communists. Their plan was to seize City Hall—killing or wounding Communists and Jews along their march, much the same way that Hitler and the Nazis planned their putsch—and use that as a base of operations to mobilize their forces to overthrow the state government in Sacramento. Due to San Diego’s proximity to a naval base, there was no shortage of military personnel to which the Silver Shirts turned to attempt to gain access to weapons and training. The plot to attempt a May Day march against the Communists who the Silver Shirts also thought were going to march, meant that weapons, training, and planning needed to occur as soon as possible. The Silver Shirts, particularly Kemp and Niswender, reached out to a number of Marines and former Marines to attempt to gain all necessary equipment for their plan. According to testimonies given during the first of the HUAC Committees’ inquiries into the Silver Shirts, different Marines revealed the plot. According to later testimony, Earl T. Gray, a marine who trained the Silver Shirts with military-grade weapons testified that the May Day celebrations were to be the day of the march. He stated, “The 6th of May was attempted to be the day for their actions and activity.”78 Their plan was to take advantage of the turmoil that they believed the Communists would cause, and during that turmoil, take City Hall and overthrow the government after which they would institute their own. He even asserted that the Silver Shirts had the police commissioner on their side and that somewhere between 75-100 Silver Shirt members were prepared to participate in the march.79 However, Gray was not the only marine that the Silver Shirts sought aid from. Perhaps the most damning evidence of the strange plot to overthrow City Hall came from former marine Virgil Hays, a member of the Silver Shirts. Kemp and Niswender approached Hays to teach the

77 “Silver Shirts in U.S. Planned Move For Christ State,” Santa Cruz Evening News 54, no. 77 (July 31, 1934): 4. 78 Testimony of Earl T. Gray in Public Hearings before the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, Confidential Committee Print, Hearings No. 73—DC—1, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1934 (August 7, 1934): 15. 79 Ibid, 16. 32

Silver Shirt members how to street fight in hand to hand combat. Niswender told Hays that the chapter had military grade weapons—Springfield rifles—and when they returned to the headquarters together, he saw around 2,000 rounds of ammunition. However, Niswender claimed that the chapter had over 12,000 rounds at various locations for the march on City Hall. However, a connection with Germany is evidenced by a secret, violent, and armed organization within the Silver Shirts that the public knew nothing about. Niswender told Hays that they, at Pelley’s behest, set up a secret paramilitary faction within the chapter to be known as the Storm Troops.80 The fact that the Silver Shirts, already connected with the Nazis through their failed putsch attempt that emulated Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch, they also set up a paramilitary group within the organization with the same name as Hitler’s Sturmabteilung or S.A. The Silver Shirts directly emulated the Nazis as their Storm Troops, like the S.A., personally protected different leaders throughout the Silver Shirts organization and was set up with ranks, positions, and leadership akin to that of a modern military unit. Although the public around San Diego may well have known about the connections to the Nazi party, the San Diego chapter certainly attempted to keep this part quiet. Hence, many within the public did not see the breadth of influence that the Nazi organization had on the Silver Shirts. In a sense, the Silver Shirts saw themselves as an American version of the Nazis. Kemp and Niswender solicited Hays to join the Silver Shirts in mid-April of 1934 meaning that Hays had intimate knowledge about the leadup of the never-attempted putsch. Kemp promised to give Hays “$10 for every rifle we81 could steal and $50 for each machine gun and $20 a case for any ammunition I could steal.”82 Immediately after this encounter with Kemp, Hays reported the conversation to his commander who instructed him to infiltrate the organization and begin collecting intel on any terrorist activities.83 The Silver Shirts, unaware that they had an undercover spy from the United States’ military, continued to involve Hays in all of their plans which Hays relayed to his commander. By ordering the infiltration of the

80 Testimony of Earl T. Gray in Public Hearings before the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, Confidential Committee Print, Hearings No. 73—DC—1, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1934 (August 7, 1934): 2-4. 81 The “we” in his testimony refers to anyone in the organization that could steal and then produce the military weaponry that Kemp and Niswender desired. 82 Ibid, 6. 83 Ibid, 6. 33

organization, it shows that the United States Navy and marine Corps certainly viewed the Silver Shirts as a serious threat to national security. The damning testimony of these two marines, along with the fact that they were under orders to infiltrate the organization speaks to the level of concern on the part of the United States Marine Corps and their concerted attempt to foil the plan. It also explains exactly why the United States HUAC Committee continued to investigate the Silver Shirts. However, the San Diego Silver Shirts would not go away quietly. A guard had to be placed over the HUAC hearings as, once again, the Silver Shirts engaged in threatening and intimidating activities. Members of the San Diego Silver Shirts publicly threatened Hays after he provided the evidence against the organization. The San Bernardino Sun reported, “[Congressman Charles] Kramer said Hayes gave valuable information about drilling activity and accumulation of firearms by an organization known as the Silver Shirts. Kramer said the threats were directed principally against members of the secret service division of the United States marine corps, which has been conducting an investigation of subversive interests in San Diego County.”84 Although nothing came from these threats, they demonstrate that the Silver Shirts would not go away quietly. This, and particularly the plot of armed insurrection against the United States, caused the HUAC Committee to continue to investigate the Silver Shirts for years to come. Although the Friends of New Germany and their leadership organized mainly in the east, other fascist movements began to move westward as far as California. Many were skeptical that a fascist and racist organization could ever form and expand operations to California. However, one religious leader saw what mostly everyone else missed. Reverend George Steed of the small Moorpark Community Church in Southern California told a tale of a fascist group in California known as the Silver Shirts, a radical, protestant, anti-Semitic organization. On November 16, 1933, only eleven months after Hitler and the Nazis came to power in Germany, the Piru News reported on the dire warnings that Rev. Steed had issued about the Silver Shirts’ presence in California and their dangerously antisemitic and anti-Catholic creed. Rev. Steed stated that the organization claimed membership in forty-six states with over 5,000 members in those respective states. According to Steed, the articled stated, all members should direct their hatred toward five targets:

84 “Guard Placed Over Silver Shirt Hearing,” San Bernardino Sun 40 (August 7, 1934): 1. 34

1st–Hatred of Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States, Acquiescent to German Jewish money kings. 2nd–Hate Alfred Schmidt, popularly known as Alfred E. Smith. 3rd–Hate the NRA designed to enslave the nation. 4th–hatred of the Jewish race and the Roman Catholic Church, its members and organization. 5th–hate the present form of Government in the United States of America.85 Rev. Steed continued his oration by detailing the racism present within the organization and defended the Catholic Church as being an open and free organization that seeks inclusiveness, the opposite of the Silver Shirts. Continuing his speech, Rev. Steed was quoted as stating, “The Silver Shirt, like the K.K.K. fails to realize that our government has been established by free American people who will handle it without interference by, or dictation from, church or any organization like the Silver Shirts.”86 He concluded this rousing oration with a call for peace and harmony, denounced racial hatred, and asserted that the Silver Shirts represented the beliefs of Adolf Hitler and that they intended to spread his anti-Semitic doctrine throughout the United States. Steed continued his talks throughout Southern California communities throughout the next year in an attempt to warn others against the fascist Silver Shirts.87 Up to this point, only one other person assailed the Silver Shirts, exposing them to Californians. One week before Rev. Steed denounced the Silver Shirts at a public meeting, Chester Rowell, a columnist for the Oakland Tribune, tried to get the word out through his weekly column. In his column he stated that the Silver Shirts originated in Georgia, disseminated anti-Semitic pamphlets to Californians, and, like Rev. Steed connected the group directly to the Nazis. 88 He stated, “That organization has since spread, with centers now even as far as California. It is less grotesque, less easy to laugh away than was the Klan, but therefore even more insidious. Its purpose is to stir up German anti-Semitism in America.”89 He finished his column with a rousing call to action for American citizens. He stated, “Let there be no hospitality

85 “Rev. Steed Scores the Silver Shirts: Rousing Address before Community Church in Piru Recounts the Silver Shirt Origin,” Piru News 7, no. 11 (November 16, 1933): 1. 86 Ibid, 1. 87 “County C of C met at Fillmore,” Piru News 7, no. 29 (March 22, 1934): 1. 88 This is factually untrue as the Silver Shirts formed in Asheville, North Carolina. 89 Chester Rowell, “Chester Rowell’s Comment,” Oakland Tribune 119, no. 125 (November 2, 1933): 25. 35

to the effort to add one more. If the other countries must go crazy, with this or other manias, let America at least keep sane”90 Rather than falling into the trap of misinformed, bigoted, hate speech that was the modus operandi of the Silver Shirts, Rowell challenged American citizens not be sucked into the mania that surrounded organizations emulating Nazi rule. Organized anti- Semitism, previously seen only through the horrific ideals and activities of the KKK, spread rapidly throughout the United States, California included. However, the San Diego chapter of the Silver Shirts spelled doom for the national organization due to the failed putsch attempt that brought the Silver Shirts into the national spotlight. While Reverend Steed and Chester Rowell saw the early signs of fascism and anti-Semitism spread throughout California and tried to warn Californians, the San Diego Silver Shirts had much more insidious plans than to only spread their ideals throughout communities. Throughout the early 1930s, organized bigotry ran rampant throughout the United States. Although the Silver Shirts are the emphasis and, perhaps, the most insidious of these “shirt” movements that took their cue from the Nazi Brown Shirts of the SA, they were not the only bigoted organization to don colored shirts as they organized different chapters of their organizations throughout the nation. This led Rowell to proclaim: “Perhaps historians will refer to this age as the ‘Government of the Shirts.’ There will be the Blue Shirts, the Khaki Shirts, Black Shirts, White Shirts and Silver Shirts to refer to. And all of these ‘shirts’ are directed against the theory of democracy.”91 That sentiment crossed the minds of many Americans in the 1930s. After all, “shirt movements” cropped up all across the United States. The Black Legion out of Detroit, the Crusader White Shirts of Tennessee and Alabama, The Gray Shirts of New York, the Khaki Shirts of Pennsylvania, and now the Silver Shirts of Asheville, North Carolina. All of these shirt organizations took their lead from the Nazis in Germany, thought that the United States government needed reorganized, and all exhibited racist beliefs such as anti- Semitism. The Silver Shirt Legion of America highlights another transatlantic comparison between the German Nazis and the American group the Friends of New Germany. As previously stated in chapter one, the Friends of New Germany promoted anti-Semitic and bigoted ideals and statements in the same manner as the Silver Shirts. Highlighting the efforts of the San Diego chapter and setting them in context of the overall organization shows

90 Chester Rowell, “Chester Rowell’s Comment,” Oakland Tribune 119, no. 125 (November 2, 1933): 25. 91 Brent, “Inside and Outside,” Santa Cruz Evening News 53, no. 92 (February 19, 1934): 1. 36

that the San Diego chapter caused the national government to become acutely aware of the dangers of the Silver Shirts, the extent of their organization and influence, and caused the McCormack-Dickstein HUAC committee to further investigate the group after learning of a potential putsch attempt by the San Diego chapter. This chapter will show that the Silver Shirts, like the Friends of New Germany and the German Nazis, engaged in destructive, anti-Semitic, occultist activities and spread hatred throughout the American continent. The Silver Shirts, founded on January 30, 1933 and headed by William Dudley Pelley out of Asheville, N.C., attempted to recruit people across the United States.92 At the time of Rev. Steed’s speech, organized chapters of the Silver Shirts did not exist in Southern California. However, members that subscribed to and sent in yearly dues began to wreak havoc by planning the putsch attempt after terrorizing citizens through letter campaigns, intimidating different witnesses to crimes, and spreading their bigoted beliefs to American citizens. One such case— pre-organized chapters—occurred less than three months after Reverend Steed’s oration. The Silver Shirts disrupted a public court case brought before the Los Angeles superior court involving famed evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. The estate of deceased film actor and director J. Roy Stewart sued McPherson for $240,000 due to an alleged breach of contract. San Diego Silver Shirts viewed this as another Jewish assault on evangelical protestants and decided to intimidate the presiding officials. They sent Judge Leon Yankwich, a Romanian-American Jew, and others involved with the case a series of threatening letters. On the third day of the trial, Yankwich received the first letter to which the Silver Shirts attached some of their anti-Semitic literature. The letter stated, “Don’t try to get in the good graces of Aimee’s followers. Remember Richfield. And don’t run for reelection. You know why.”93 This threat caused the District Attorney, Buron Fitts, to order a massive inquiry into the blatantly anti-Semitic organization. This activity seems to have borrowed directly from the tactics used by the German Nazi Party, which similarly engaged in disruptive actions, such as the releasing of smoke bombs and white mice at the 1930 premiere of the pacifist film All Quiet on the Western Front in Berlin, for instance.

92 Roy Tozier, American’s Little Hitlers: Who’s Who and What’s Up in U.S. Fascism, ed. Emanuel Haldeman-Julius Little Blue Book no. 1761 (Girard, KS: Haldeman-Julius Publications, 1940), 8. 93 “Fitts Orders Aimee Judge Threat Probe: Intimidation Attempt Is Attributed to ‘Silver Shirt’ Group,” Santa Cruz Evening News 53, no. 77 (February 1, 1934): 5; corroborated by “Judge Gets Threat In Aimee Suit: Letter from ‘Silver Shirts’ Warns Jurist Not to Run For Superior Bench Again,” Oakland Tribune 120, no. 32 (February 1, 1934): 2. 37

In another instance, the Silver Shirt members engaged in direct witness intimidation by telephoning Dave Hutton, ex-husband to McPherson, late at night regarding his testimony that was to follow the next day. According to the San Bernardino Sun, the intimidation attempts by the Silver Shirt members continued. The February 3rd article stated, “Dave received a late-night telephone message warning him not to testify “in the Aimee case if you know what’s good for you.”94 The Silver Shirt members, in a crude, unsolicited, and backwards attempt to show their support for an evangelical Christian committed crimes such as witness tampering, obstruction, and others. This was just the beginning of the illegal activates of the Silver Shirts in San Diego. The more outlandish and dastardly crimes would be committed in the coming months as the Silver Shirts started to organize chapters throughout Southern California. In January 1934, the San Diego Sun, a now-defunct newspaper, published several articles detailing the activities of Silver Shirts in San Diego. Throughout these articles, the newspaper revealed that the Silver Shirts disseminated not only their own anti-Semitic literature, but also distributed and profited from the sale of Nazi literature from Germany itself.95 This was seemingly not enough for the San Diego Silver Shirts, however, as the members also displayed the Nazi swastika flag at this headquarters which the paper revealed was located 4224 University Avenue, the site of a former pool hall. Later HUAC testimony also provided the names of the two leaders of the movement: Willard W. Kemp, and Donald J. Niswender. At this point, the Silver Shirts started to gain national attention due to Pelley’s expansion into the western states and due to the San Bernardino Sun’s articles detailing an admiration, if not affiliation with the Nazi Party.96 Although the Sun was a regional newspaper, its coverage of the Silver Shirts’ rise in San Diego was only the beginning as national news coverage ramped up due to the growing infamy around the organization. The San Diego branch of the Silver Shirts was renegade even by Silver Shirt standards and had moved in much bolder and more radical directions than its founder, Pelley, wanted, and then simply note the causes of friction. The San Diego chapter of the Silver Shirts began to make their presence known to a much greater extent. After the formation of the chapter in April of

94 “Hutton Again Given Threat,” San Bernardino Sun 40 (February 3, 1934): 1. 95 See for instance, I have the articles, I just need to find them. 96 Testimony of Mr. F. J. Prince in Executive Hearings before the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, Confidential Committee Print, Hearings No. 73—DC—1, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1934 (April 26, 1934): 12. 38

1934, the heads of the Sand Diego Silver Shirts—Willard Kemp and Donald Niswender—began to recruit like-minded members. Like the Nazis who slowly and steadily formed a network or like-minded racists throughout Germany, Kemp and Niswender began their journey to grow their chapter through travelling throughout Southern California and asking fellow racists for donations. However, this was not the end of the issues for Kemp and Niswender. As Pelley was indicted on fraud charges and had no money to aid in operations, the San Diego leaders had to find creative ways to fundraise. The subsequent criminal case against the two following the testimonies in August opened the door for prosecutors to investigate further. Kemp and Niswender were so devoted to the Silver Shirt cause that they spent money to travel all around San Diego, even going as far as Escondido which was, at that time, over an hour away. One particular event that gained regional attention due to the massive amount of anti-Semitic literature that the San Diego chapter, in particular, disseminated throughout the area occurred on May 10, 1934 at the Women’s Club of Escondido. The front-page story in the Escondido Times Advocate stated: The principal speaker was Dr. L. E. Berger, an evangelist, whose subject was “Christian Democracy.” In his talk, Dr. Berger pointed to what he considers the dangers of Communism, saying that it was not the “long whiskered” radical that is so dangerous to this country, but expressing the opinion that scholars who are taking up Communism are placing this country in a perilous condition. The speaker also denounced the Jews, saying that the capitalistic Jew is the cause of much of today’s depression.97 Kemp and Niswender both attempted to provide speakers at different events to spread their fascist and anti-Semitic rhetoric to other like-minded individuals. But they had to obtain the funds from somewhere, and this caused them issues in the months after the HUAC testimonies came to light. John Beatty, a middle-aged ranch owner from San Diego, joined the Silver Shirts in February 1934 when Niswender and Kemp were fundraising for the chapter. At this meeting, Beatty gave Niswender $300. Months later, Beatty gave Niswender more money, but asserted

97 “‘Silver Shirts’ Draw Out Crowd,” Escondido Times Advocate (May 11, 1934): 1. 39

that Niswender said to him that “because of impending changes in the monetary system it would be advisable to exchange all gold coin for silver.”98 Niswender, along with many of the Silver Shirts, subscribed to Pelley’s notion that President Roosevelt was in the pocket of the “money plot” supposedly orchestrated by Jews around the world and was to take the US off the gold standard. Following this advice, Beatty subsequently gave Niswender $1700 in gold to be exchanged for silver. When Niswender only provided him with $800 in repayment, Beatty decided to go to the courts for repayment. Beatty filed a criminal complaint against both Kemp and Niswender on October 11, 1934 asserting that they owed him $900. After a preliminary hearing found that there was reasonable cause to indict Niswender, but not Kemp, Niswender was arraigned on October 30, 1934, pled not guilty to one count of felony grand theft, and the judge set his court date for January 4, 1935.99 However, after several continuances, Niswender’s trial finally commenced on February 18, 1935.100 Criminal proceedings against a Silver Shirt leader began. After jury selection finished, People vs. Donald J. Niswender commenced. At 11:05 a.m., the court clerk read the charge against Niswender to the jury members. The charge was: Donald J. Niswender is accused by the District Attorney of the County of San Diego, State of California, by this information of the crime of grand theft committed as follows: The said Donald J. Niswender on or about the 25th day of March A.D., nineteen hundred and thirty four at the County of San Diego, State of California, and before the filing of this information did then and there willfully, unlawfully, and feloniously take the property of one John M. Beatty, consisting of $900.00 lawful money of the United States.101 Throughout the prosecution’s side of the case, the Deputy District Attorney E. Victor Winneck questioned a number of witnesses including Kemp who testified that the Silver Shirts used the money provided by Beatty to further fund their paramilitary group in preparation for the inevitable fight against the Communists. Oher witnesses included former Silver Shirt Henry

98 “Niswender,” San Diego Union (October 12, 1934), 2. 99 Record of Action, People vs. Donald J. Niswender, San Diego Superior Court Case No. 79309, hereafter referred to as “Superior Court Case.” 100 “People vs. Donald J. Niswender,” San Diego Superior Court Minutes and Orders, vol. 146, p. 61. 101 Ibid, 61. 40

Leon Misamore who testified that he saw Niswender “with a bag of gold as big as a sack of popcorn” shortly after Niswender met with Beatty.102 The following day, the defense began to argue its case. After quickly examining a few witnesses, Niswender’s attorney, Clifford Fitzgerald, called Niswender to the stand to aid in his own defense. As he did in the preliminary hearing, Niswender asserted that the gold he procured from Beatty was a donation to the Silver Shirts to fund their organizational efforts to fight the communists.103 Niswender’s testimony and assertion that the money was strictly used for the Silver Shirts corroborated Kemp’s testimony from the day before. It also confirmed and corroborated Hays and Grey’s testimony from the HUAC congressional hearings months prior, that the Silver Shirts were a racist, fascist, paramilitary organization hell-bent on attacking Communists and Jews alike. After the defense and People rested, the jury deliberated well into the night. At 9:00 p/m/, the jury returned to deliver their verdict.104 Jury foreman F. H. Nigh rose, and delivered the not guilty verdict. As the jury left the courtroom, Beatty became overcome with rage and threatened to kill Tony Gearhart, the court guard at the jury room door. Yelling loud enough for court reporters to hear him, Beatty yelled, “It’s His fault. He was acquitted and I’ll kill that guy. He tampered with the jury.”105 Obviously enraged at the jury’s verdict, Beatty had to be secured by other court guards while other guards took Gearhart to another room until securing the area. By having to secure Beatty’s outburst shows the unstable nature and the culture of violence that the Silver Shirts organization perpetuated.106 As previously stated, Pelley set up the organization so that the “Chief” made all of the calls, much in the same way that Hitler required all actions to be approved by him during his tenure as chancellor and then Fuhrer. The fact that Pelley set up the organization to have everything go through him caused problems for the organization as it had chapters throughout all four times zones in the United States. Being able to control an organization as a dictator in a country of this size is impossible. As Silver Shirt chapters sprung up in New York, Oklahoma, and California, the organization spread too far for Pelley to control. The San Diego chapter

102 Ibid, 62. 103 Ibid, 63. 104 Ibid, 63. 105 “Niswender Trial,” San Diego Sun (February 19, 1935): 1. 106 “People vs. Donald J. Niswender,” San Diego Superior Court Minutes and Orders, vol. 146, p. 63. 41

would cause Pelley the most problems in the coming year and bring the Silver Shirts into the national spotlight. Pelley looked to expand his operations throughout the nation, and the Midwest and the West, particularly California, proved to be the most successful areas of the nation for the spread of their ideology. Since Pelley named himself Chief of the Silver Shirts, all other members had to agree with his ideology of hate. Under the guise of saving America from the Communists, who Pelley asserted were all Jews, the Silver Shirts began to gain membership across the nation. The San Diego Silver Shirts formed and expanded their membership. The members subscribed to Pelley’s beliefs. One particular view came from an article in Liberation. In it, Pelley explained that “Jews should be removed from public office,” and “there was lots of proof the Jew was the epitomization of materialism, is the pollution of the bloodstream of civilization, and that any attack that does not center on the Jew is simply scratching the scabs instead of treating the cause.”107 Some members in the San Diego community wholesale bought into this part of the ideology, and they thoroughly believed that the Jews were the bane of society and must be eliminated. In order to set up the San Diego chapter, Pelley met with a number of California sympathizers. Pelley held a meeting in Los Angeles on April 12, 1934 wherein he, untruthfully, told the crowd that he has a vast knowledge and military experience. According to W. Clairville, a member of the Silver Shirts, “We tried to find out from Mr. Pelley what his affiliations were, whether lie was at military man or not but he told us lie had served in some sort of intelligence in Siberia, military intelligence.”108 By attempting to pass himself off as a great military leader and strategist, Pelley’s goal was to gain the sympathies of the military men with whom he believed would lead his revolution in the months to come. But in order to set up operations in this part of the country, Pelley would need help. Frederick Beutel, a long-time attorney and new member of the Silver Shirts, operated the financial sector of this district. In his testimony, he states that he attempted to institute Pelley’s Western operations as a militaristic and financial sector in order to complete Pelley’s vision for

107 “Jews Should be Removed from Public Office,” Liberation 6, no. 4 (March 17, 1934), 11-13. 108 Testimony of W. Clairville, Investigator for Un-Americanism, for Disabled Veterans, McCormack-Dickstein Hearings, Los Angeles, August 7, 1934, p. 22. Pelley vastly overstated his military experience in order to make himself seem like a hardened veteran capable of leading other war veterans. 42

the region. His vision, with a direct connection to his admiration of Hitler and the Brown Shirts, follows in Clairville’s testimony. Clairville stated: He was to have charge of all finances. on the west, coast, and in his new set-up he was to have a committee which he called, or who were to be the Storm Troopers, and he talked about Mr. Hitler's set-up, that in some places where the leader had as low as 35 men under him, but that they could not do that in this country, said “I want 100 men and women under a ranger; women never can be rangers, but they must be taken as members.”109 Further on in the testimony, Clairville discussed Pelley’s absolute infatuation with Hitler and the Brown Shirts and insinuated that what Hitler did in Germany needed to be replicated here. This evidence, and the fact that Beutel and Pelley organized the Ninth District in a radicalized manner from the beginning, leads the San Diego chapter to become the most troublesome for Pelley and the Silver Shirts in the months following the April 12 meeting. Though Pelley and Beutel set up the chapters in this manner, chapters were still supposed to act only with express instruction from Chief Pelley. However, the San Diego chapter did not want to wait and began plans for the radical Beer Hall Putsch of San Diego. Unlike the chapter at Asheville which housed the publication and national organizational documents, the Pelley and Beutel constructed the Ninth District as a business operational center. In Beutel’s testimony, he stated: Well, you see, this district was to be set up as the ninth division of the national organization. Question. Yes. Answer. And was to operate its a district or a department. Now, Mr. Pelley was going to issue certain orders He was going to give us a contract that we were to do certain definite things relating to the setting up of this thing in a certain business way. In other worlds, we were to set this up as a business department.110

109 Testimony of W. Clairville, Investigator for Un-Americanism, for Disabled Veterans, McCormack-Dickstein Hearings, Los Angeles, August 7, 1934, p. 22. 110 Testimony of Frank Beutel in executive session, McCormack-Dickstein Hearings, Los Angeles, August 2, 1934, p. 557. 43

This testimony shows the direct admiration that Pelley had for Hitler and the way that Hitler built the Nazi Party. Beutel also testified that the members of the California chapters were to pay 25% of the membership fees to the national organization head in Washington, D.C., much the same way that the Nazis bankrolled themselves in their earlier years.111 Pelley and the Silver Shirts constituted chapters in San Francisco, San Diego, and Los Angeles. Of them, the San Diego chapter caused Pelley and the organization the most problems throughout the organizations first year and a half of existence. By the end of April, 1934, Pelley and the Silver Shirts constructed chapters in these three cities; however, the chapters needed trusted leadership to guide Pelley’s vision. According to testimony from Beutel, Pelley chose a former army Captain—Walton R. Bethel—as District Nine Commander.112 According to the testimony of Virgil Hays, Pelley split the district into five zones with regional leaders that would mobilize the Silver Shirts for a potential coup against state governments and then the federal government. The leadership choices the Pelley made ultimately proved problematic for the ninth district as Kemp and Niswender refused to cooperate with Bethel or anyone from the Los Angeles chapter. Thus, the stage was set for the San Diego Silver Shirts to radicalize, mobilize, disobey orders, plan a march, purchase weapons, and solicit military help. This caused a HUAC Committee to convene in San Diego in August 1934.113 Many Americans continued to perceive the San Diego chapter as a threat to national security and were appalled by the testimony regarding the failed putsch attempt. Newspaper accounts of the first day of testimony about the putsch attempt. The headline the following day— August 8, 1934—from the Oakland Tribune read “SILVER SHIRT PLOT TO NAB CITY TOLD: ‘Putsch’ Hatched to Seize San Diego on Red May Day Fete, Congressmen Told.”114 Nearly every headline of every newspaper that day in Southern California consisted of the story of the putsch attempt. Americans, particularly those in Southern California and those Congressmen conducting the interviews were horrified at the actions of their fellow citizens.

111 Ibid, 557; Pelley moved the headquarters, but not the printing presses, to Washington, D.C. in order to gain notoriety for and to legitimize the Silver Shirts. 112 Ibid, 558. 113 Historians note that Congress did not constitute the Hous Un-American Activities Committee until the Dies Committee in 1938. It was only at this time that HUAC became a permanent body in Congress while prior to 1938, HUAC investigations were short-lived and only served specific purposes such as investigating the spread of Nazi and other propaganda throughout the United States. 114 “SILVER SHIRT PLOT TO NAB CITY TOLD: ‘Putsch’ Hatched to Seize San Diego on Red May Day Fete, Congressmen Told,” Oakland Tribune 121, no. 39 (August 8, 1934), 1. 44

Coverage of the hearings continued throughout the next few weeks and the outrage and disdain for the anti-Semitism and blatant lack of respect for democracy disgusted many Americans causing the HUAC committee to continue serious inquiry into the Silver Shirts for the nearly the next decade. Most scholars who look at the San Diego chapter of the Silver Shirts merely stop at the HUAC committee documents and do not include the trial of Donald Niswender; however, this omission does not allow for the explanation behind the continuance of the HUAC hearings. Criminal wrongdoing such as Pelley’s indictment on fraud and Niswender’s indictment on grand theft points to the criminality of the organization itself. HUAC committee members, especially after the August 7, 1934 testimony, dug deeper into the Silver Shirt organization to investigate ties to Germany and the Nazis as well as domestic fascist and anti-Semitic organizations, movements, and businesses. Understanding the movement in San Diego, the May Day Plot, the Niswender grand theft case, and the organizational structure and inspiration for the Silver Shirts details the reasoning that the HUAC committee continued to heavily investigate the Silver Shirts in the coming years. The time had come for a full onslaught of a HUAC investigation that sought to prove connections between Germany and the United States regarding fascism, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy to spread Nazi ideology throughout the United States.

Chapter III

“Stars and Stripes with Swastikas:”115 The Friends of New Germany and the Spread of National Socialism and its Tenants

American anti-Semitism, fascism, Nazism, and the Hitler Movement—all these virulent actions were alive and well in 1930s America. The Friends of New Germany. along with other groups such as the Silver Shirts, riled up hate, bigotry, and anger in the hearts of some of the American people, spreading their own ideology and whipping up the bigotry that had long existed in the U.S. The story of these organizations shows that America—and some Americans—bought into the hate-mongering and racism that gripped the United States in the 1930s. And it was an American movement. During the 1920s through the end of World War II, the United States government convened the House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC)—or variants thereof—to investigate individuals and organizations deemed a threat to the United States. Following the formation of numerous proto-fascist and anti-Semitic groups spreading Nazi propaganda throughout the United States, the House formed the “Special Committee on Un-American Activities: Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities.” Headed by John William McCormack and Samuel Dickstein, the committee would come to be referred to as the McCormack-Dickstein Committee. The Committee’s main purpose was to investigate the spread of Nazi propaganda and Nazi ideology throughout the United States as groups like the Silver Shirts and the Friends of New Germany had, by 1934, gained national attention due to the conduct of their members, their organization’s racial beliefs, and the spread of their ideological beliefs and was forced to dissolve, later morphing into the powerful German-American Bund. However, this committee was not the first look into the spread of Nazism throughout America. As early as November 8, 1933, the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization began to investigate Nazi activities throughout the United States. The first instance of the United States government investigating the influence and spread of Nazism throughout the States included a complete historical sketch of those activities, lists of affiliated organizations, and names of top leaders throughout the Friends of New Germany. This sketch,

115 William Groedel, “Stars and Stripes with Swastikas,” The New York Times 83, no. 27873 (April 12, 1934): 22. 46

including names such as Kurt Lüdecke, Heinz Spanknöbel, Fritz Gissibl, and Ku Klux Klan Grand Dragon Harry W. Garring, provided the federal government with numerous targets as to whom they would interrogate during the HUAC Committee investigation to come the following year.116 The sketch went into detail about the activities of the Friends of New Germany, their connection to Berlin and the NSDAP in Germany, the methodology employed by propaganda agents prompted by the government of the Third Reich, and their connection to other hate organizations such as the KKK. Given that the Teutonic League had splintered into different factions, such as the Swastika League, the Steel Helmets, and the Friends of the Hitler Movement, the Nazis ordered these organizations in 1933 to unify into the Friends of the New Germany. Spanknöbel, now the leader of the movement to unite these organizations, came to then-Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess to suggest that Spanknöbel lead a new group, an American group, that would spread the tenants of Nazism throughout the United States. Through testimony gained later by Captain Frederick Mensing, Spanknöbel claimed “that he had discussed it amongst other persons, with, I think, Mr. Hess, and also, when I asked him if he had any credentials, he showed me some kind of a letter by a man who signed himself Schmeer.”117 This shows yet another direct connection between fascism and anti-Semitism in the United States and Nazi Germany as a top-ranking Nazi officer gave the okay to a German, pro-Hitler agent to consolidate the Hitler movement in the United States into an organization named the “Friends of New Germany.”118 Correspondence shows just how quickly and eager Spanknöbel was to get to work consolidating the American Hitler movement into one succinct organization. The week that Spanknöbel met with Hess, he sent word to a trusted friend in New York City from Nuremberg

116 Historical Sketch on Origin and Extent of Nazi Activities in the United States, House of Representatives, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Confidential Committee Print, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1934 (November 8, 1933): 1, 5-6. 117 Testimony of Frederick C. Mensing in Public Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Special Committee on Un- American Activities, House of Representatives, Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, Confidential Committee Print, Hearings No. 73—NY—7, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1934 (July 11, 1934): 237. Rudolf Schmeer was a politician for the NSDAP who sat in the legislative body of Nazi Germany. He would later become a deputy for the German Labor Front and had the authority to authorize Spanknöbel’s vision for American Nazism. 118 The “Friends of New Germany” used the German language for their meetings and actual title. The German and true title of the organization is Freunde des neuen Deutschlands. From here on out, I will refer to this group as the Friends of New Germany. 47

of his plans. He states that Kurt Lüdecke was, in fact, finished with the American Nazi movement and that Spanknöbel was now fully in charge of consolidating the movement and spreading it further throughout the United States. Originally, Spanknöbel thought to name his organization the Association of the Friends of the Hitler Movement; however, Spanknöbel soon realized that this would draw the attention of the United States government, so he changed it to the Friends of New Germany. He also stated that he was having membership cards printed, organizational structure enacted, and money raised for the new group that was to unite all pro- Nazis in the United States. He also asked Strauss to inform Fritz Gissibl, former leader of the Free Society of Teutonia, “that in any event that 3 party members will be able to work permanently as paid officials (officially for the League).”119 Spanknöbel went back to the United States with a plan for a new, strong pro-Hitler organization. The decision to put Spanknöbel in charge and create the Friends of New Germany came straight from the Nazis. The explanation was attached to the correspondence between Spanknöbel and Strauss. It stated: The proposed re-organization of the National Socialists and their friends in the U.S. has been regulated as follows by the decree of May 28, 1933: The chief of staff of the Supreme Party Office of the National Socialist German Workers Party has authorized the former Leader of the National Group U.S.A. of the National Socialist German Workers Party, Heinz Spanknöbel, Detroit to organize [sic] and direct the Friends of New Germany on the basis of certain defined rules. It is officially laid down that this organization is the only organization in the U.S.A. which is recognized by the National Socialist German Workers Party.120

119 “Letter from Heinz Spanknöbel to Hans Strauss with a Transcription of a Decree from the NSDAP,” Letter, McCormack-Dickstein Committee Miscellaneous Material, House Committee on Un-American Activities Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, in RG 233 Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, HR73A—F30.1, Special Committee on Un-American Activities on Nazi Propaganda, Entry 9—Administrative Records, Box 378. 120 “Letter from Heinz Spanknöbel to Hans Strauss with a Transcription of a Decree from the NSDAP,” Letter, McCormack-Dickstein Committee Miscellaneous Material, House Committee on Un-American Activities Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, in RG 233 Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, HR73A—F30.1, Special Committee on Un-American Activities on Nazi Propaganda, Entry 9—Administrative Records, Box 378. 48

The decree also contained information as to how Spanknöbel was to set up the organization. It instructed Spanknöbel to detail the information of this new organization to fellow party members to dissolve their organizations and pledge their allegiance to the Friends of New Germany, Spanknöbel, and Hitler himself. It ordered the dissolution of the Steel Helmets, the Friends of the Hitler Movement, and the NSDAP-affiliated organizations and urges all member of these organizations to immediately change their loyalty to the new organization. It also stated that the dues remain the same but were to stay with the Friends of New Germany to fund the pro-Nazi propaganda push throughout the United States. It also definitively stated that the Nazi Party in Germany would subsidize the Friends through the Ministry of Propaganda.121 With Spanknöbel receiving support from Germany, he was to create a completely American version of Nazism and spread the Nazi ideology throughout America. Spanknöbel, eager to create a new German-American organization that followed Hitler’s decrees, demands, and ideals, hurried back to the United States. Spanknöbel decided that he would set up the organization as a strictly American organization whose members that agreed holistically with Hitler’s doctrine. Propaganda distributed throughout the United States by the Friends of New Germany stated that it was the express purpose of the organization to spread national socialism throughout the United States. Further propaganda stated, “To be in politics means to join the fighting troops of the Friends of New Germany and cooperation in forming a bulwark of a united German America.”122 Spanknöbel began by appointing his subordinates to serve the organization throughout the nation who would disseminate the beliefs of the Friends of New Germany along with their propaganda throughout the United States. He started by aligning several Hitler supporters like Fritz Gissibl and Walter Kappe—future editor of the Friends of New Germany newspaper Das Neue Deutschland. The stage was set to launch the Friends of New Germany and Spanknöbel was ready to launch the organization. To set up the Friends of New Germany and ensure that the members were like-minded individuals and of the type of ancestry that Spanknöbel and the Nazis preferred, he and his

121 “Letter from Heinz Spanknöbel to Hans Strauss with a Transcription of a Decree from the NSDAP,” Letter, McCormack-Dickstein Committee Miscellaneous Material, House Committee on Un-American Activities Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, in RG 233 Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, HR73A—F30.1, Special Committee on Un-American Activities on Nazi Propaganda, Entry 9—Administrative Records, Box 378. 122 Historical Sketch on Origin and Extent of Nazi Activities in the United States, House of Representatives, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Confidential Committee Print, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1934 (November 8, 1933): 5. 49

followers began to distribute membership applications to those who wished to be members. The application reveals the type of person that Spanknöbel and the other members wanted to join the organization. The application asks some relatively normal application questions such as name and age, single or married, occupation and residence; however, it is other criteria that truly reveal the nature of the group. The application asks potential members if their wife is “of the Nordic race,” if they had “Service in the S.A. or S.S. in Germany,” and for their eye and hair color. It went further to ask for an unconditional pledge to the leaders of the Friends of New Germany and to the organization as a whole. It stated: I hereby declare that of my free will and without being forced I put myself at the disposal of the “Friends of New Germany” for the protection of its members, friends, and guests, as well as of its property, using all my strength and ability and obligate myself to preserve fullest military discipline and to follow the orders of the leader at any time. The costs of the uniform (which are all alike) which is to some degree adapted to the German “S.S.” uniform will be met at once from my own funds as far as I am able to meet such costs.123 Many parts of this pledge are as disturbing as they are real. The members of the Friends of New Germany had to swear their allegiance, not to the United States of America, but to the organization that aimed to cause absolute chaos throughout America. Even the uniform—just like that of the Silver Shirts—was modelled after the Brownshirts of the Hitler movement in Nazi Germany. Once again, the Friends of New Germany showed that they specifically wished to spread hate and terror throughout the United States. After Spanknöbel returned to the United States, he along with his followers began a concerted effort to consolidate all of the organizations from the Teutonic League to the Chicago Nazi Party along with Germanscher Bund and the Stahlhelm into the Friends of New

123 “Declaration of Application for member of Protective Squad,” Application to join the Friends of New Germany in Chicago, Illinois. McCormack-Dickstein Committee Miscellaneous Material, House Committee on Un-American Activities Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, in RG 233 Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, HR73A—F30.1, Special Committee on Un- American Activities on Nazi Propaganda, Entry 9—Administrative Records, Box 365. 50

Germany.124 At a meeting in Chicago during mid-July, 1933, Spanknöbel announced the launch of the Friends of New Germany and appointed himself as the American Bundsleiter rather than the American Fuhrer to pledge his allegiance to Adolf Hitler who, Spanknöbel believed, was the only person worthy of the title of Fuhrer. This declaration made Spanknöbel the unquestioned leader of the organization.125 To call himself the American Bundsleiter suggests that this group was entirely American-born and American-made meaning that it was, in fact, Americans attempting to spread fascism and anti-Semitism throughout the nation just as the Nazis had in Germany. The consolidation of German-American support for the Nazi movement did not only extend to the unification of the organizations, but it also happened through the press. After Lüdecke and Spanknöbel consolidated many of the German and German-American newspapers and presses in New York City, it became easier to then consolidate newspapers that claimed to be the organization’s or region’s voice of the pro-Hitler movement. The exposé on Nazi activities up to November 1933 revealed the consolidation of newspapers claiming to be the organ of the American Nazi movement. It stated that as the Friends of New Germany consolidated all Nazi affiliated papers into their paper, Amerika’s Deutsche Post, that was published up until August 1933. They decided to change the paper into a biweekly German- language newspaper titled Das Neue Deutschland which first appeared on September 1, 1933.126 The letterhead listed Spanknöbel as the official publisher of the paper after Spanknöbel relieved Friedrich Hess of his position at the newspaper. Thus, the newspaper began publishing scathing, racist articles about the Jews, ran columns dedicated to and fawning over Hitler’s policies, and, as their moniker states, proved that they supported the Nazi Party wholeheartedly. This disinformation propaganda campaign spread to other cities including Chicago, Los Angeles, and Detroit. While the New York branch of the Friends of New Germany converted Amerika’s Deutsche Post in New York City to Das Neue Deutschland, the Chicago chapter of

124 The names of these organizations was provided by Historical Sketch on Origin and Extent of Nazi Activities in the United States, House of Representatives, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Confidential Committee Print, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1934 (November 8, 1933): 7. 125 Joachim Remak, “‘Friends of New Germany’: The Bund and German-American Relations,” Journal of Modern History 29, no. 1 (1957), 38; Arthur L. Smith, Jr., The Deutshtum of Nazi Germany and the United States, International Scholars Forum, A Series of Books by American Scholars (The Hague: Martinus Nijoff, 1965): 70. 126 Historical Sketch on Origin and Extent of Nazi Activities in the United States, House of Representatives, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Confidential Committee Print, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1934 (November 8, 1933): 1. 51

the Friends of New Germany published their own newspaper titled the Chicagoer Weckruf which, translated, means Chicago’s Wake-up Call which was a common statement of the Friends of New Germany and other German-Americans who sought to establish an extension of the Third Reich in the United States.127 This implied that the Germans and German-Americans living throughout the United States needed their own wake-up call to change their allegiances from peacefully existing within the United States to promotion of hateful and disruptive Nazi ideology throughout the United States. The motto that appears on most of the Friends of New Germany newspapers and other important documents is further proof that the organization attempted to promote their racist ideological beliefs throughout United States. It states, “Fuer ein einiges Deutschtum in Amerika und der Heimat” which translates to “For a United Germandum in America and the Homeland.”128 The fact that this title appears on much of the propaganda published directly by the Friends of New Germany is further proof that German-Americans throughout the United States that believed in Hitler’s vision. These German-Americans thoroughly believed that they could and were convincing hundreds of thousands of other German-Americans that they were championing American values through the beliefs of Hitler. The paper and the symbols of the Friends of New Germany also connect Nazi ideology to the United States and show how some Germans living in Germany and America believed both countries to be linked through their hatred of Jewish individuals. The sketch stated: In the banner of Das Neue Deutschland [sic] appears an emblem showing an American eagle the stars and stripes, and in a circle located in the middle of the emblem "Friends of the New Germany", in the German language. It is interesting to note at this point that the silver emblem worn by the members of the Friends of the New Germany is in all respects identical with the emblem

127 Chicagoer Weckruf 1, no. 16 (July 15, 1934), Newspaper Clipping, McCormack-Dickstein Committee Miscellaneous Material, House Committee on Un-American Activities Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, in RG 233 Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, HR73A—F30.1, Special Committee on Un-American Activities on Nazi Propaganda, Entry 9— Administrative Records, Box 384. 128 “Fuer ein einiges Deutschtum in Amerika und der Heimat,” Das Neue Deutschland 1, no. 2, September 16, 1933, Newspaper Clipping, McCormack-Dickstein Committee Miscellaneous Material, House Committee on Un- American Activities Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, in RG 233 Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, HR73A—F30.1, Special Committee on Un-American Activities on Nazi Propaganda, Entry 9—Administrative Records, Box 384. 52

appearing at the top of this paper with one exception-the circle in the emblem worn by these members does not contain any lettering but the swastika sign, showing that the local Nazis have combined the American flag with the swastika sign.129 The combination of symbology from the Third Reich and the United States such as the American Bald Eagle with the Swastika, the American Flag next to the Swastika of the Third Reich. Even the application to join the Friends of New Germany was emblazoned with the Nazi Party Emblem with the eagle and swastika encircled with the phrase “Freunde des neuen Deutschlands,” which was in turn emblazoned over the American flag shield which violated United States federal law.130 This overt symbology further displays that the Germans living in America sympathetic to the Nazi movement thought they found kinship in the racial ideologies that pervaded American society in the 1930s. Further, the sketch outlined the connections between the Nazi Press and Germans living in the United States through a smuggling operation previously mentioned in chapter one. By the time that 1933 rolled around, the smuggling of Nazi literature and the sale of it was fully underway and pervaded American society. As previously mentioned, up to 1932, Nazi agents and pro-Nazi sympathizers in America secretly smuggled in pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic literature to be disseminated throughout the United States through the North-German Lloyd-Hamburg American Steamship Company headed by Captain Mensing. The merger itself should have alarmed the United States government as it was conducted by Nazi sympathizers; however, until 1933, the federal government was seemingly unaware of the amount of literature pouring into the United States by the Nazis in Berlin. However, this would change as private investigators,131

129 Historical Sketch on Origin and Extent of Nazi Activities in the United States, House of Representatives, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Confidential Committee Print, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1934 (November 8, 1933): 2. 130 “Reproduction of the Membership Card of the ‘Friends of New Germany,” Newspaper Clipping, McCormack- Dickstein Committee Miscellaneous Material, House Committee on Un-American Activities Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, in RG 233 Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, HR73A—F30.1, Special Committee on Un-American Activities on Nazi Propaganda, Entry 9—Administrative Records, Box 370. 131 The agents tasked with infiltrating the groups, conducting surveillance, and reporting the activities of the Silver Shirts, Friends of New Germany, and other groups were William F. Lucitt, R. R. Carroll, and Mrs. F. Shreve. Copies of their official cad IDs is in Appendix C. Identification Cards of William F. Lucitt, R.R. Carroll, and Mrs. F. Shreve, Identification Card, McCormack-Dickstein Committee Miscellaneous Material, House Committee on Un- American Activities Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, in RG 233 Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, HR73A—F30.1, Committee Papers, Special Committee on Un-American Activities on Nazi Propaganda, Box 359. 53

employed by the government, began to survey the so-called Aryan Bookstores along with several groups including the Silver Shirts and the Friends of New Germany throughout the United States. In tracking the sales receipts of these bookstores, the private investigators came across lists of the titles being sold at these businesses. Some of the titles of the literature smuggled into the United States include copies in both the German and English versions of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf—which seems to be the most popularly sold item from shops in New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles—Kampf um Deutschland, Dr. Goebbels, Das Programme der N.S.D.A.P., Das Neue Deutschland, and Handbuch der Judenfrage.132 Similarly, Pelley’s Silver Legion began to distribute an equal, if not, greater amount of anti-Semitic literature through these Aryan bookstores throughout the nation. Pelley’s vast array of anti-Semitic literature included weekly magazine publications known as Pelley’s, The Silvershirt Weekly and Liberation. An Aryan Bookstore owned and operated by Friends of New Germany member Paul Thomlitz out of Los Angeles sold Hitler’s Mein Kampf alongside other titles such as Roderich Stoltheim’s The Riddle of the Jews Success, Andrea B. Nordskog’s Spiking the Gold, and both of Pelley’s weekly magazine and his book No More Hunger which outlined his eventual plan for a Christian Democracy.133 Some of the Aryan bookstores were successful as shown by the bookstore run by Rev. Francis Gross out of Perth Amboy, New Jersey. The financial statements from August 29, 1933 through December 6, 1933 show that the bookstore purchased “5,000 Letters to Priests, 5,000 6x9 Books “Justice to Germany,” and 2,000 4-Page Appeals,” and other materials for $802.50 and sold nearly half of their materials in the first three months.134 The success of these stores selling the aforementioned titles full of anti-

132 “Transcripts of the Titles and Number of Copies Sold at Aryan Bookstores throughout the United States,” Transcripts dating from October, 1933 through December 20, 1933,” McCormack-Dickstein Committee Miscellaneous Material, House Committee on Un-American Activities Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, in RG 233 Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, HR73A—F30.1, Committee Papers, Special Committee on Un-American Activities on Nazi Propaganda, Box 378. 133 Themlitz’s Aryan Book Shop was located at 1004 W. Washington Blvd. “Advertisement for Paul Themlitz’s Aryan Book Shop with a List of Titles Sold.” McCormack-Dickstein Committee Miscellaneous Material, House Committee on Un-American Activities Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, in RG 233 Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, HR73A— F30.1, Committee Papers, Special Committee on Un-American Activities on Nazi Propaganda, Box 380. 134 “Terminal Printing and Publishing Company Records for Rev. Francis Gross’s Book Store,” McCormack- Dickstein Committee Miscellaneous Material, House Committee on Un-American Activities Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, in RG 233 Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, HR73A—F30.1, Committee Papers, Special Committee on Un-American Activities on Nazi Propaganda, Box 380. 54

Semitic and pro-fascist rhetoric shows the early successes of both the Friends of New Germany and Pelley’s Silver Shirt Legion in the early parts of the concerted effort to spread their hateful message throughout the United States. While these Hitlerites set up bookstores and distributed vile anti-Semitic literature throughout the United States, Spanknöbel successfully launched the Friends of New Germany and consolidated power throughout the United States. However, he was in desperate need to solidify support from other organizations with like-minded beliefs. A natural ally who also set up and distributed similarly virulent publications alongside those of Spanknöbel’s organization. Spanknöbel turned to and had a trusted member correspond with William Dudley Pelley himself to gain his attention and support from the Silver Shirt leader. This correspondence, particularly one letter from the Silver Shirt leader himself, connects the two organizations through their beliefs. Through the correspondence, Pelley showed that he and Spanknöbel were of similar thinking. Pelley’s letter definitively showed him to be a fan of the Hitler movement. In the letter dated June 22, 1933 Pelley stated: I am very happy you have written me, for I have a specific message for the German-Americans of integrity in this nation. Knowing from true German sources most of what Hitler is about in the Fatherland, and recognizing that the influences he is combatting there are the same which we have to combat in the United States, I have been one of Herr Hitler’s defenders among my own people from the first….I say from no ulterior sources that I have had a strong sympathy for the pure-blooded Germans, both in America and abroad.135 Pelley’s correspondence revealed his unwavering support for the German dictator and for groups such as the Friends of New Germany. He continued in this letter to slander the Jews referring to Jewish communism and the faked Protocols of the Elders of Zion as well as the supposed

135 “Letter from William Dudley Pelley to Henry C. Spier,” pg. 1, McCormack-Dickstein Committee Miscellaneous Material, House Committee on Un-American Activities Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, in RG 233 Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, HR73A—F30.1, Committee Papers, Special Committee on Un-American Activities on Nazi Propaganda, Box 380. 55

international Jewish plot to seize world governments and their economies. He also stated that he believed that the German people were “‘taken for a ride by those Jewish potentates who were of undue influence in the pre-war monarchal government of the Fatherland.”136 This meant that Pelley, just like many on the far-right, believed in the false narrative of the stab-in-the-back myth circulated by bitter soldiers, politicians, and civilians who believed that Jews caused Germany’s downfall in the First World War. Along with these false beliefs, Pelley also asserted that he, like those who followed Hitler, believed that the Versailles Treaty was a completely unfair and unjust treaty caused by Jewish interference in the peace dealings. All of these beliefs aligned Pelley with the Hitler movement in the United States. The correspondence continued and provided interesting information regarding the formation and promotion of both the Silver Shirts and the Friends of New Germany. Pelley asserted that any organization in America that fought against the Jewish plot to bring down American business and world government must be formed by Americans and for Americans. He stated: The most likely strategy which they [Americans] could adopt in their fight for justice and equity is not to try to make an out-and- out Hitler organization in this country, for as time goes on our common adversary will see that it is misinterpreted before our citizens to mean an attempt to bring the United States under a foreign chancellorship….The adroit thing to do is to let a spontaneous American movement be born here, that has exactly similar principles and precepts to Hitler’s, that shall work shoulder to shoulder with German aims and purposes and probity. Let the German-Americans in America throw their massed support behind such an American organization, and then let the latter treat frankly and understandingly with the German people and the popular German party, in mutual trust and wholesome candor.137 This assertion that the American people would not accept anything but a spontaneous pro-Nazi movement falls in line with his thinking about the Silver Shirts and now the Friends of New

136 Ibid, 1. 137 Ibid, 2. 56

Germany. Throwing support and advice behind the Friends, Pelley showed himself not only to be pro-Hitler, pro-fascism, and anti-Semitic, he showed himself and his supporters to be allies to an uprising movement spurring those ideals throughout America. To what end Pelley’s alliance with the Friends of New Germany was for the Silver Shirts, we may never know; however it is definitive that an American-born, American-made anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi movement was spreading throughout the United States and they were beginning to mobilize for their cause. Spanknöbel continued to make public statements condemning the Jews, held rallies, and made powerful allies in the private and public sector. Spanknöbel sought to shore up his own production of anti-Semitic literature as well as meet with more influential businessmen and disgruntled German-Americans sympathetic to his cause in order to boost membership throughout the United States. After the launch of the Friends on new Germany, Spanknöbel needed domestic financial support to add to the money pledged to him by Rudolf Hess. This caused Spanknöbel to reach out to another organization: The Steel Helmets or the Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldated in New York City.138 The Steel Helmets of the New York branch was directly affiliated with the Nazi Party even though Hitler himself gave the order for NSDAP- affiliated organizations disbanded and only affiliated themselves with Americans of German descent. However, the Steel Helmets in New York were directly affiliated with the German NSDAP through an association with Dr. Franz Seldte, a member of the German Nazi cabinet. An appeal from the Bund der Auslandsdeutschen (Association of Germans in Foreign Countries) stated: The competent department in the foreign office has promised to support the efforts of our association…. The National Socialists’ work in foreign countries is the unification of all Germans whether they belong to the party or not. There is only one condition and that is that every German is willing to cooperate according to the tendency and the ideas of the National Socialist Government. It is therefore necessary to strain all efforts toward the formation of State organizations and other directing organizations. This has to be done in closest cooperation with the National Socialist groups in

138 The Stahlhelm, Bund der Frontsoldated will simply be referred to the Steel Helmets as this was the name that most Americans used. 57

all places concerned. The Steel Helmets already have put themselves under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, which in itself means a cooperation in foreign countries also. All State and local groups of the Nazi Party in foreign countries receive at the same time parallel instructions by the foreign department of the Nazi Party in Hamburg. The Steel Helmets will give identical orders in due time.139 This assertion that the Steel Helmets organized in America for the furtherment of Nazi ideology with Nazi support obviously intrigued Spanknöbel causing him to reach out and discuss his plans for the Friends of New Germany with the Steel Helmet leadership. On September 18, 1933, Spanknöbel met with the United German Societies. Before this meeting, Spanknöbel forged an alliance between the Steel Helmets of New York and the Friends of New Germany in order to spread more German propaganda throughout the United States. The Steel Helmets elected Spanknöbel their president meaning that the Bundsleiter the head of two pro-Hitler anti-Semitic organizations. Through this merger of the two organizations and the fact that the Steel Helmets already belonged to the powerful United German Societies, Spanknöbel effectively infiltrated and gained influence over the United German Societies. Further proof of this influence comes from that September 18th meeting where the Steel Helmets expanded from over 500 percent increasing their delegation from four seats to twenty-five seats.140 This increase along with the merger provided Spanknöbel to expand the Friends of New Germany branches across the nation. This move and consolidation of pro-Hitler organizations provided Spanknöbel with the resources to continue both the Friends of New Germany and the Steel Helmets operations. However, Spanknöbel’s downfall was imminent. Actions taken throughout the summer and fall of 1933 caused the Friends of New Germany would cause his departure from America to Germany and overhaul the leadership of the organization. After Spanknöbel amassed a number of people in his organization, Spanknöbel went out to begin disrupting the United States and its

139 Historical Sketch on Origin and Extent of Nazi Activities in the United States, House of Representatives, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Confidential Committee Print, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1934 (November 8, 1933): 4. 140 Historical Sketch on Origin and Extent of Nazi Activities in the United States, House of Representatives, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, Confidential Committee Print, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1934 (November 8, 1933): 3. 58

citizens. Spanknöbel, in his attempt to unify all German-Americans into his group, stormed the office of Victor Ridder, the editor of the New York Staats-Zeitung which was and is one of the oldest German-language newspapers in America. Spanknöbel demanded that operational control be given to the Friends of New Germany and that all the members of the paper were to join the cause. Ridder responded, “Spanknöbel, our family has been running this paper 50 years, more or less, and we have so gotten in the habit of running it that I do not think we are going to permit anybody else to break up that habit. What you are trying to do here to us even the Congress of the United States would not attempt, and if you take our advice, do not try it either here or anywhere else.”141 Spanknöbel did not appreciate Ridder’s refusal and stormed out of the office. This was a blow to his credibility and a revelation that Spanknöbel’s intent to cause trouble in and throughout the United States would soon lead to trouble. Spanknöbel and some of the members of the Friends of New Germany then attempted to disrupt the planning for the German Day celebrations in New York City. Spanknöbel envisioned that the Nazi banner was going to march in step with the American flag throughout these celebrations. After the meeting of September 18, 1933 of the United German Societies, Spanknöbel took the next week to raise what he called the “flag issue,” and he stated that he wished to see the Nazi flag raised over the Manhattan armory, a United States military installation. Many groups pulled out and eventually the decision was Spanknöbel’s alone to make. The flag was to be raised over the government building.142 This was an act of treason, an outspoken rebellion against the United States to have a foreign flag flown over a government building. This made Spanknöbel a target. Public outcry began as Spanknöbel’s actions became known across the country. Among others, Samuel Dickstein, one of the co-chairs of the HUAC hearings publicly denounced Spanknöbel’s actions, and the race was on to try to arrest Spanknöbel. He went into hiding as an arrest warrant was issued for him and seeking to escape persecution made plans to flee the country and return to Germany. The arrest warrant issued for him attested that he was, in fact, a German agent spreading German propaganda throughout the nation. On October 29, 1933,

141 Testimony of Victor Ridder in Public Hearings before the Special Committee on Un-American Activities, House of Representatives, Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, Confidential Committee Print, Hearings No. 73—DC—1, Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, 1934 (June 9, 1934): 2-4. 142 New York Evening Journal, Nov. 3, 1933. 59

Spanknöbel fled the country via the Deutschland of the Hamburg-American Line, effectively ending his leadership of the Friends of New Germany.143 As the Nazis in Germany thoroughly believed that the Friends of New Germany needed to be a wholly American organization in order for it to work, leadership eventually fell to Fritz Gissibl who had been commanding the Chicago chapter of the Friends of New Germany. Gissibl, a founding member of the Teutonia Society in 1924 had spent much of his life in America; however, Gissibl was not an American citizen. In order to the Friends of New Germany to work, the leader had to be an American citizen so that the Friends of New Germany would make more headway convincing the American people that the Jews plotted against them and that National Socialism was the only true combatant. Gissibl decided to step down and have Reinhold Walter, an American citizen who Gissibl could manipulate and control, take the reins. Although Walter was the stated leader of the movement, Gissibl truly controlled the narrative and held the operational power. Under Walter’s and Gissibl’s leadership, the Friends of New Germany began to expand operations throughout the United States in order to spread its message to the American people. At Gissibl’s behest, negotiations between the DZ Publishing Corporation and the Friends of New Germany. Gissibl sought to spread the propaganda of the Friends of New Germany to the American people even farther than through the Aryan bookstores and their newspapers. Rather than self-publish their materials, the American Nazis decided that they needed a respected American-based corporation to spread their message throughout the States. They contacted Carl Voelcker, an ally to the Friends of New Germany. Voelcker drafted an agreement that his publishing company would now handle all of the publications of the Friends of New Germany and even set up another German-American newspaper Deutsch Zeitung.144 The organization was strictly and American corporation that spread the Friends of New Germany’s propaganda against

143 “Arrest is ordered of Spanknöbel as German Agent: Federal Warrant Charges He Broke 1917 Law by Failing to Register in Washington. Medalie is the Accuser, Acts on Ridder Brother’s Testimony – Nazi Leader is Reporter on Ship at Sea,” The New York Times 83, no. 27,671 (Saturday, October 28, 1933): 1-2, and O. John Rogge, The Official German Report: Nazi Penetration 1924-1942, pan-Arabism 1939-Today (New York: Thomas Yoseloff, 1961), 21. 144 “Agreement Between the Friends of New Germany and DZ Publishing Corporation,” January 17, 1934, McCormack-Dickstein Committee Miscellaneous Material, House Committee on Un-American Activities Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, in RG 233 Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, HR73A—F30.1, Committee Papers, Special Committee on Un-American Activities on Nazi Propaganda, Box 380. 60

the Jews and for Hitler throughout the United States furthering the cause that the Friends spread American Nazism. Throughout the next months, a concerted effort to continue their propaganda activities and membership gains ensued. Although actual membership remained low, support for the organization was not necessarily low. The Friends of New Germany held rallies, spread propaganda through the press and their publisher, and even created youth camps. One such rally held on May 17, 1934 details the depth of the Friends of New Germany. Newspaper reports stated that the Friends of New Germany, organizing against a United States boycott of German goods, hosted a rally of over 20,000 people in Madison Square Garden. According to the article, “With Nazi swastikas dominating the scene and 750 policemen on hand to prevent disorders or interference, more than 20,000 persons heard speakers denounce ‘the Jewish boycott’ of Germany and defend Hitler policies last night.”145 Speakers included such pro-Hitler leaders George Sylvester Vierick, Reinhold Walter, Louis Zhane, Henry Spier, Walter Kappe, W. L. McLaughlin (secretary of the Deutsche Zeitung), and many others. Draping the American flag alongside the Nazi swastika, they railed against the “Jewish Boycott,” spoke highly of Hitler and National Socialism, and Vierick even claimed that he was speaking for every American and that every American should embrace National Socialism. This was a blatant American display of support for Nazism and its racist policies. However, this was no small display by a few misguided Americans, this was a massive, organized show of force by Americans. This truly was a display of the stars and stripes with swastikas. This and other shows of force proved too much for the United States government as Samuel Dickstein and John McCormack convened the HUAC Hearings in May, 1934 to investigate the depth of influence that the Friends of New Germany and organizations like it had in the United States. This added pressure to the organization as one by one the members, influential or otherwise, were dragged before Congress and compelled to testify as to the nature of their group and the actions thereof. The HUAC hearings exposed the organization and its leaders of their plots to spread National Socialism and anti-Semitism throughout the nation.

145 "20,000 NAZI FRIENDS AT A RALLY HERE DENOUNCE BOYCOTT: THRONG IN MADISON SQ. GARDEN APPEALS TO ROOSEVELT TO STOP 'ILLEGAL' MOVEMENT. UNTERMYER'S NAME BOOED 750 POLICE HOLD OFF 1,000 RED MARCHERS -- 'STORM TROOPS' IN UNIFORM CLEAR LOBBIES. THE "FRIENDS OF NEW GERMANY" AT THEIR RALLY IN THE GARDEN. 20,000 NAZI ALLIES DENOUNCE BOYCOTT." New York Times (1923-Current File), May 18, 1934. http://proxy.lib.miamioh.edu/login?url=https://search.proquest.com/docview/101122888?accountid=12434. 61

However, the beginnings of a HUAC Committee did not stop the activities of the Friends of New Germany. The Friends of New Germany’s Steel Helmet branch continued to conduct military drills throughout the United States in preparations for fights with the Communists and Jews throughout the country. Branches of the Steel Helmets numbered “250 in Chicago— Gissibl’s home city—100 in Detroit, 60 in Philadelphia, 60 in Rochester, 50 in Newark, and organizations in Los Angeles and Houston.”146 The actions of these groups and their continued recruitment of new members for the militant branch of the Friends of New Germany shows that some Americans still embraced the Friends of New Germany and their beliefs. The Friends of New Germany also opened summer camps throughout the nation for boys and ran them similar to that of the Hitler Youth camps in Germany. The state with seemingly the most Friends of New Germany youth camps fell to New Jersey. The Friends of New Germany erected camps in Griggstown and Newark with children being transported from Brooklyn, Buffalo and Philadelphia.147 These camps reportedly flew the Nazi flag in conjunction with the American flag; however, the camps taught the children Nazi principles, spoke only in German and saluted the Nazi flag in the morning.148 The boys were dressed in the same manner as the Hitler Youth although the leader, Hugo Haas, stated that the “brown shirt uniform had no connection with the Brown Shirts of Germany. He also stated that a misconception prevailed in regard to the purpose of the Friends of New Germany. ‘We are not Nazis in the accepted sense of the word, although the general public has that idea.”149 This assertion that the Friends of New Germany were not Nazis in the accepted sense of the word shows that they were an American

146 Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES. "SAYS NAZIS HERE DRILL IN UNIFORM: WITNESS AT HOUSE INQUIRY TESTIFIES MEN USE BOTH GERMAN AND GUARD RIFLES. SHIP LINES ARE ACCUSED LETTER FROM 71ST REGIMENT SERGEANT URGING STEEL HELMET MEMBERS TO ENLIST IS READ. SAYS NAZIS HERE DRILL IN UNIFORM." New York Times (1923-Current File), Jun 08, 1934. http://proxy.lib.miamioh.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest- com.proxy.lib.miamioh.edu/docview/100935570?accountid=12434. 147 Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES. "NAZIS OPEN CAMP IN JERSEY FOR BOYS: SWASTIKA AND AMERICAN FLAGS SIDE BY SIDE ON TENTS AT SITE NEAR PRINCETON." New York Times (1923-Current File), Aug 09, 1934. http://proxy.lib.miamioh.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest- com.proxy.lib.miamioh.edu/docview/100942284?accountid=12434. 148 “Investigation of Nazi and Other Propaganda,” McCormack-Dickstein Committee Miscellaneous Material, House Committee on Un-American Activities Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities, in RG 233 Records of the U.S. House of Representatives, 73rd Congress, HR73A—F30.1, Committee Papers, Special Committee on Un-American Activities on Nazi Propaganda, Box 363. 149 Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES. "NAZIS OPEN CAMP IN JERSEY FOR BOYS: SWASTIKA AND AMERICAN FLAGS SIDE BY SIDE ON TENTS AT SITE NEAR PRINCETON." New York Times (1923-Current File), Aug 09, 1934. http://proxy.lib.miamioh.edu/login?url=https://search-proquest- com.proxy.lib.miamioh.edu/docview/100942284?accountid=12434. 62

version of Nazism, loyal to the teachings of Adolf Hitler. The erection of these camps throughout the summer of 1934 suggests that the Friends of New Germany and their members were doing well. However, the HUAC hearings began to cripple the organization and by 1935, the Friends of New Germany began to consider other options for its continuation as an organization. The Friends of New Germany struggled to stay afloat as an organization and ultimately folded into the much more powerful and influential German-American Bund. However, their legacy shows that an American Nazi movement, and American anti-Semitic movement, and American pro- Hitler movement could survive in the United States of America.

Conclusion

American-style Nazism was crippled as the HUAC hearings reigned in leaders, members, and other parties to testify before the members of Congress. Even though the German-American Bund formed afterward and grew larger and more powerful than any of these organizations, the Friends of New Germany and its influence was effectively finished. As the HUAC hearings continued through 1937, the Friends of New Germany and the Silver Shirts began to dwindle in strength. The Friends of New Germany continued to disseminate anti-Semitic literature throughout the United States alongside the Silver Shirts; however, their influence and power began to shrink. The exposure of these organizations and their ties to American-style Nazism caused public outrage. Protests against the organizations commenced, public outcry, and Congressional committee hearings forced the organization into the backburner of the American mind. Pelley and the Silver Shirts, under attack by Congress and without a sustainable business model, began to fade in influence. However, Pelley switched tactics and decided to form the Christian Party and change the aim of the organization. The aim switched from disseminating anti-Semitic propaganda to the American people to disseminating anti-Semitic propaganda through a presidential campaign with Pelley as the main candidate. The movement was alive and well albeit changed in focus. Pelley would run for president in 1936, and ultimately lose to President Roosevelt in gaining very little votes.150 However, this would not mean the end of the sentiments of both organizations died with the organizations influences dwindling. In fact, a bigger role, particularly for the Friends of new Germany came in 1936 with the formation of the much larger and more powerful German- American Bund under the leadership of Fritz Kuhn. The German-American Bund would go on to overtake the Friends of New Germany and continue the American Nazi movement, spreading their racist ideologies throughout the United States. For the purposes of this study, the project ends with the formation of the German-American Bund as the Bund took on a bigger role and was much more connected with Nazi Germany than were the Friends of New Germany.151

150 Scott Beekman, “Pelley, William Dudley (1890-1965),” American National Biography, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) 30 June 2019. https://www.anb.org/view/10.1093/anb/9780198606697.001.0001/anb- 9780198606697-e-1501310?rskey=WrfHP3&result=1. 151 Sander A. Diamond, The Nazi Movement in the United States, 1924-1941 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1974), 207. 64

The German-American Bund would be more successful than the Silver Shirts and the Friends of New Germany due to several different factors. The Bund succeeded the Friends of New Germany and its leader, Fritz Kuhn, was an imposing leader who formed the Bund in the same model as the NSDAP in Germany. He was to be the American Führer with subordinates reporting directly to him. Another reason that it was more successful is that nearly all its members, including Kuhn, were naturalized citizens meaning that they could not be deported from the United States simply for un-American activities. Finally, the Bund’s structure in promoting a strictly American Nazi movement with no direct ties to the NSDAP allowed the Bund to exist due to the First Amendment of the United States Constitution which protects free speech and assembly. Kuhn shored up the organization that traces its origin back to the Teutonia Society, Swastika League, and all the other American Nazi organizations. The American Nazi movement showed itself to be American-made. From Henry Ford’s assailment of the Jewish community in the United States through the formation of German- American Nazi organizations popping up in major cities throughout the country, the American Nazi movement was prime and prepped for organized anti-Semitism, organized fascism, organized Nazism. The formation of the Silver Shirts, their activities throughout the United States, and the attempted putsch in Southern California displayed a truly American attempt at spreading these ideologies. Spanknöbel’s consolidation of the Friends of New Germany confirms that American-style Nazism organized itself within the walls of the American empire. With the reorganization of the Friends of New Germany to employ an American citizen as the head of the organization, the Friends of New Germany showed themselves to be American Nazis. The Nazi movement in America continued through the 1930s albeit somewhat differently, but it showed organized itself as an American movement. The legacy of these organizations implanted Nazism in the United States. Followers such as George Lincoln Rockwell, who founded the American Nazi party in 1959, is alive and well today known as the New Order. Former head of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, formed numerous white nationalist, neo-Nazi organizations such as the White Youth Alliance, the Nationalist Party, and the National Association for the Advancement of White People (NAAWP). George Wallace, a virulent pro-segregationist, received support from the White Citizens Council and the pro-Nazi, anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby, a group that even distributed pro-

Wallace pamphlet throughout the United States.152 Skinheads, Aryan Nation, Tom Metzger’s White Aryan Alliance and Aryan Youth movement, United White People’s Party, and, now, the alt-right were all groups with ties to the Nazi movement in the United States promoting white power, anti-Semitism, and fascism. All of these ideological groups and people show that the American-made Nazism, anti-Semitism, and fascism trace back their beliefs, their literature, and their rallies to organizations like the Friends of New Germany and the Silver Shirts. Fascism and anti-Semitism continue to spread throughout the United States, however their legacy traces back to the 1920s and 1930s America.

152 Dan T. Carter, The Politics of Rage: George Wallace, the Origins of the New Conservatism, and the Transformation of American Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 296-297. 66

Appendix I

Appendix II

Bibliography

Archived Materials

McCormack-Dickstein Committee Miscellaneous Materials. House Committee on Un-American Activities Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities. In RG 233 Records of the U.S. House of Representatives. 73rd Congress. HR73A—F30.1. Committee Papers. Special Committee on Un-American Activities on Nazi Propaganda. Boxes 358-384.

Congressional Materials

Testimony Provided by Individuals in Public Hearings before the Special Committee on Un- American Activities. House of Representatives. Investigation of Nazi Propaganda Activities and Investigation of Certain Other Propaganda Activities. Hearings in Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, New York City: United States Government Printing Office: April 1934 – May 1937.

Newspapers

American Bulletin: White Man’s Viewpoint Los Angeles Times (NYC) New York Staats-Zeitung American Guard (Brookline, MA) New York Times Amerika’s Deutsche Post (NYC) Oakland Tribune Chicagoer Weckruf Pelley’s Weekly (Asheville, NC) Das Neue Deutschland (NYC) San Bernardino Sun Dawn (Chicago KKK Newspaper) San Diego Sun Dearborn Independent (Dearborn, MI) San Diego Tribune Der Stürmer (Germany) Silver Ranger (Oklahoma City, OK) Deutsche Tageszeitung (Germany) Swastika Press (NYC) Deutsche Zeitung (NYC) The Broom (San Diego, CA) Deutscher Weckruf und Beobachter (NYC) The Searchlight (Atlanta, GA) Fiery Cross (Indianapolis) Today (NYC) Liberation (Asheville, NC) Völkischer Beobachter (Germany)

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