The
American Nazi Party (ANP) was founded by
George Lincoln RockwellGeorge Lincoln Rockwell was a Navy Reserve Commander and founder of the American Nazi Party...
with the goal of reviving
NazismNazism, known officially in German as National Socialism , is the totalitarian ideology and practices of the Nazi Party or National Socialist German Workers’ Party under Adolf Hitler, and the policies adopted by the dictatorial government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.Nazism is often considered...
in the United States of America and was headquartered in Arlington,
VirginiaThe Commonwealth of Virginia is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" because it is the birthplace of eight U.S. presidents. The geography and climate of the state are shaped by the Blue...
. Initially called the World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists (WUFENS), Rockwell reorganized and renamed it the American Nazi Party in 1960 to attract maximum media attention. The party was based largely upon the ideals and policies of
Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , popularly known as the Nazi Party...
's NSDAP in
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
during the Third Reich but maintained allegiance to the Constitutional principles of the U.S.'s Founding Fathers.
The
American Nazi Party (ANP) was founded by
George Lincoln RockwellGeorge Lincoln Rockwell was a Navy Reserve Commander and founder of the American Nazi Party...
with the goal of reviving
NazismNazism, known officially in German as National Socialism , is the totalitarian ideology and practices of the Nazi Party or National Socialist German Workers’ Party under Adolf Hitler, and the policies adopted by the dictatorial government of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945.Nazism is often considered...
in the United States of America and was headquartered in Arlington,
VirginiaThe Commonwealth of Virginia is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" because it is the birthplace of eight U.S. presidents. The geography and climate of the state are shaped by the Blue...
. Initially called the World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists (WUFENS), Rockwell reorganized and renamed it the American Nazi Party in 1960 to attract maximum media attention. The party was based largely upon the ideals and policies of
Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , popularly known as the Nazi Party...
's NSDAP in
GermanyGermany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium,...
during the Third Reich but maintained allegiance to the Constitutional principles of the U.S.'s Founding Fathers. It also added a platform of
Holocaust denialHolocaust denial is the claim that the genocide of Jews during World War II—usually referred to as the Holocaust—did not occur at all, or that it did not happen in the manner or to the extent historically recognized....
.
Headquarters
The WUFENS headquarters was first located in a residence on Williamsburg Road in Arlington, but was later relocated as the ANP headquarters to a house at 928 North Randolph Street (now a hotel and office building site). Rockwell and some party members also established a "Stormtrooper Barracks" in a farmhouse in the Dominion Hills section of Arlington at what is now the Upton Hill Regional Park, the tallest hill in the county. After Rockwell's death, the headquarters was relocated again to one side of a duplex brick and concrete storefront at 2507 North Franklin Road which featured a swastika prominently mounted above the front door. This site was visible from busy Wilson Boulevard this site is often misidentified as Rockwell's headquarters when in fact it was the successor organization's last physical address in Arlington (now a
coffeehouse) .
Assassination of George Lincoln Rockwell
On August 25, 1967, Rockwell was killed by
John PatlerJohn Patler was an American neo-Nazi who assassinated American Nazi Party leader George Lincoln Rockwell on August 25, 1967....
, a former party member whom Rockwell had ejected from the party for allegedly trying to introduce
MarxistMarxism is the political philosophy and economic worldview based upon a materialist interpretation of history, a Marxist analysis of capitalism, a theory of social change, and an atheist view of human liberation derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; three primary aspects of...
doctrine into the party's platforms. While leaving the Econowash laundromat at the Dominion Hills Shopping Center in Arlington, Virginia, two bullets entered his car through his windshield, striking Rockwell in the head and chest. His car slowly rolled backwards to a stop and Rockwell staggered out of the front passenger side door of the car, and then collapsed face up on the pavement.
A previous assassination attempt was made on Rockwell on June 28, 1967. Returning from shopping, he drove into the party headquarters driveway on Wilson Boulevard and found it blocked by a felled tree and brush. Rockwell assumed that it was another prank by local teens. As a young boy cleared the obstruction, two shots were fired at Rockwell from behind one of the swastika-embossed brick driveway pillars. One of the shots ricocheted off the car, right next to his head. Leaping from the car, Rockwell pursued the would-be assassin. On June 30, Rockwell petitioned the Arlington County Circuit Court for a gun permit; no action was ever taken on his request.
Activities
The American Nazi Party published racist cartoon books portraying white men fighting and defending white school children allegedly oppressed by Blacks (who were being ignorant and violent). "Send Them Back to Africa" was a common theme. ANP members stood in the parking lots of local Junior High & High School parking lots handing out these cartoons to young students, Thomas Jefferson Junior High School (now Thomas Jefferson Middle School) in particular.
Factions
In 1970, NSWPP member
Frank CollinFrancis Joseph Collin formerly served as the leader of the National Socialist Party of America, whose plan to march in the predominantly Jewish suburb of Skokie, Illinois was the centerpiece of a major First Amendment decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, National Socialist Party of America v....
, broke away from the group and founded the
National Socialist Party of AmericaThe National Socialist Party of America was an extremist Chicago-based organization founded in 1970 by Frank Collin shortly after he left the National Socialist White People's Party. The NSWPP had been the American Nazi Party until shortly after the assassination of leader George Lincoln Rockwell...
, which became famous due to an attempt to march through
Skokie, IllinoisSkokie is a village in Cook County, Illinois, United States. It is a Chicago suburb, on the northwest border of the city, that, per the 2000 census, had a population of 63,348.-Geography:...
, a community with a large Jewish population that included numerous survivors of the Holocaust. The event was dramatized in the television film
SkokieSkokie is 1981 television movie directed by Herbert Wise, based on the real life NSPA Controversy of Skokie, Illinois, which involved the National Socialist Party of America.The film premiered in the U.S. on November 17, 1981...
and is mocked in the film
The Blues BrothersThe Blues Brothers is a 1980 musical comedy directed by John Landis and starring John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd as "Joliet" Jake and Elwood Blues, characters developed from a musical sketch on the NBC variety series Saturday Night Live. It features musical numbers by R&B and soul singers James Brown,...
. Collin's aim was to lead demonstrations in Chicago's Marquette Park area, and he targeted Skokie in an attempt to gain access to Marquette Park without posting a large insurance bond. In 1979, Collin was convicted and sent to prison on charges of child molestation .
Greensboro Massacre
On November 3, 1979, in what became known as the
Greensboro massacreThe Greensboro massacre took place on November 3, 1979 in Greensboro, North Carolina, United States. Five marchers were shot and killed by members of the Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party while in a protest...
, five protestors at an anti-Klan march in
Greensboro, North CarolinaGreensboro is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina. It is the third-largest city, by population, in North Carolina and the largest city in Guilford County and the surrounding Piedmont Triad metropolitan region. As of the 2000 census, Greensboro was home to 223,891 residents...
, were shot and killed by members of the
Ku Klux KlanKu Klux Klan , informally known as The Klan, is the name of several past and present hate group organizations in the United States whose avowed purpose was to protect the rights of and further the interests of white Americans by violence and intimidation. The first such organizations originated in...
and the American Nazi Party. The victims were members of the Communist Workers Party, which had been seeking to organize mainly black industrial workers in the area and confronting local white supremacists. At the time of the shooting the
ATFThe Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives is a specialized federal law enforcement agency and regulatory organization within the United States Department of Justice...
had an undercover agent within the Party, and one of the Klansmen present at the shooting was a police informant. None of the killers were ever convicted. In a 1985 civil lawsuit the survivors won a $350,000 judgement against the city, the
Ku Klux KlanKu Klux Klan , informally known as The Klan, is the name of several past and present hate group organizations in the United States whose avowed purpose was to protect the rights of and further the interests of white Americans by violence and intimidation. The first such organizations originated in...
and the Nazi Party for violating the civil rights of the demonstrators.
External links
See also
- Neo-Nazism
The term neo-Nazism refers to any post-World War II social or political movement seeking to revive Nazism, or some variant that echoes core aspects of Nazism.The term can also refer to the ideology of those movements....
- Neo-Nazi groups of the United States
- German American Bund
- Neo-völkisch movements
Neo-völkisch movements, as defined by the historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, cover a wide variety of mutually influencing groups of a radically ethnocentric character which have emerged, especially in the English-speaking world, since World War II...