American Nazi Party

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American Nazi Party
AbbreviationANP (1959–1967)
NSWPP (1967–1983)
Leader Martin Kerr
Founder George Lincoln Rockwell
FoundedOctober 1959
Headquarters(Rockwell's headquarters)
928 North Randolph Street,
Arlington, Virginia, U.S.
Newspaper The Stormtrooper
Youth wing NSLF (1969–1974)
Membership500 (c. 1967)
Ideology Neo-Nazism
Political position Far-right
International affiliation World Union of National Socialists
Party flag
American Nazi Party flag (Blank Globe).jpg

The American Nazi Party (ANP) is an American neo-Nazi political party founded by George Lincoln Rockwell in 1959. In Rockwell's time, it was headquartered in Arlington, Virginia. It was renamed the National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP) in 1967. Rockwell was murdered by former ANP member John Patler later that year. Following Rockwell's murder, the organization appointed Rockwell's second in command, Deputy Commander Matt Koehl as the new leader.

Contents

The NSWPP, now under Koehl's command, was subject to ideological disagreements between members in the 1970s and 1980s, leading to several members being kicked out and forming their own groups. Koehl renamed the NSWPP the New Order in 1983, which came with a shift in the organization towards esoteric neo-Nazism. After Koehl's death in 2014, a long-time member and officer of the New Order, Martin Kerr, assumed leadership.

History

Background and founding

The American Nazi Party was founded in October 1959 by George Lincoln Rockwell, a commercial artist, publisher, and commander in the United States Navy. Rockwell had became radicalized into National Socialism after an initial contact with antisemitic anti-communist figures, and then after reading Adolf Hitler's autobiography Mein Kampf in 1950, from then on becoming a neo-Nazi. [1] [2]

After this experience, Rockwell spent several years organizing extreme right-wing political groups; he initially tried to do this in a socially acceptable fashion, but came to see this as a failure as it did not attract an extreme enough audience. He eventually decided to go public with his antisemitism, and made more extreme and explicit political efforts. [3] When Rockwell's supporters were implicated in the Hebrew Benevolent Congregation Temple bombing, it caused a backlash against him, and Rockwell's wife and family cut ties with him. [3] Now miserable, Rockwell had a Nazi "religious experience" of and committed to overt, explicit advocacy of Nazism. [4] In October 1959, Rockwell founded the American Nazi Party. [2]

Activities

Martin Luther King Jr. (left) gesturing at Roy James (right) after James punched him in the face; in the center, breaking them up, is Ralph Abernathy Martin Luther King Jr after he was punched by neo-Nazi Roy James.png
Martin Luther King Jr. (left) gesturing at Roy James (right) after James punched him in the face; in the center, breaking them up, is Ralph Abernathy

Its headquarters were established at 928 North Randolph Street in Arlington, which also became Rockwell's home, and a nearby farmhouse served as a barracks for its members. [4] [5] Under Rockwell, the party explicitly embraced Nazi uniforms and iconography, and embarked on high profile media stunts designed to gain the maximum amount of press coverage. [6] [7] The group itself was quite fringe and had few members in comparison with the very large amount of publicity it garnered. [7] Members regularly protested and caused disruptions. [8]

The Virginia House of Delegates revoked the ANP's corporation charter in June 1962 and banned the use of the name "Nazi" or "National Socialist" in charter names. A new charter was submitted under the name of ANP, Inc., which was rejected on a technicality. It was recreated under the name the George Lincoln Rockwell Party with only a single change on the board of directors. [9]

In September 1962, ANP member Roy James punched Martin Luther King Jr. twice while King was speaking at a convention. King did not defend himself and instead spoke to him. [10] [8] [11] James expressed regret and apologized shortly after the attack, but later went back on it. [10] [12] James was sentenced to 30 days in jail and fined $25 (equal to $259.87 today) after pleading guilty to charge of assault and battery and disorderly conduct. King had not wanted to press charges, but Birmingham Judge Charles H. Brown insisted on trying James, calling the incident an "uncalled for, unprovoked assault." [13] In September 1962, Rockwell awarded James a medal for the deed. [8]

In November 1963, when King was set to speak in Danville, Virginia, to set up a dialogue with whites, Rockwell sent ANP member Karl Allen and another member to instigate against him. [14] [15] He initially planned to have Allen stay there for some time to harass King, but this plan was derailed by the Kennedy assassination. [16]

Rockwell's money habits and usage of the ANP's funding resulted in regular problems for the party and rough conditions for its members. [17] Many became dissatisfied with his leadership. [18] The second highest ranking member, Karl Allen, left the ANP in December, claiming it was for personal reasons. [19] This surprised Rockwell, and he was disturbed to lose the best educated member of the group and second in command. Many party members left and followed Allen, and drew up a list of grievances against Rockwell and his leadership tactics, particularly an inability to "refrain from inserting his personality and judgment into every minute part of the Party's operation". They enumerated a list of grievances to be addressed and changes in the party's operations if they were to rejoin. [18] Rockwell refused to address the demands. He was most worried about a demand that he would no longer have sole discretion over the board of directors, which he worried would be used to take control of the party. From then on declared them to be "the mutiny" and kept them out of the ANP. [20]

After several years of living in impoverished conditions, Rockwell began to experience some financial success with paid speaking engagements at universities where he was invited to express his controversial views as exercises in free speech. This prompted him to end the rancorous "Phase One" party tactics and begin "Phase Two", a plan to recast the group as a legitimate political party by toning down the verbal and written attacks against non-whites, replacing the party rallying cry of "Sieg Heil!" with "White Power!", limiting public display of the swastika, and entering candidates in local elections. [6] [21] [22]

The years 1965 and 1967 were possibly the height of Rockwell's profile. [21] He was interviewed by Playboy magazine, an event that stirred controversy within the ranks. [21] At the time Rockwell had about 500 followers. [6]

Name change and assassination of Rockwell

On January 1, 1967, the group underwent several changes. Rockwell changed the name of the American Nazi Party to the National Socialist White People's Party (NSWPP), changed the logo to a stylized eagle, and replaced their slogan of Sieg Heil with White Power, all in an effort to Americanize the organization and increase its appeal. [23] This alienated some hard-line members. The new name was a "conscious imitation" of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Rockwell wanted a more "ecumenical" approach and felt that the swastika banner was impeding organizational growth. Rockwell was killed on August 25, 1967, before he could implement party reforms. [6]

On August 25, 1967, as Rockwell left a laundromat, a former follower named John Patler shot Rockwell from the roof of the building. One missed, the other hit his chest and ruptured his heart. He was pronounced dead at the scene. [24] [25]

Koehl's succession and ideological divisions

Rockwell's second in command, Deputy Commander Matt Koehl, a staunch Hitlerist, assumed the leadership role after a council agreed that he should retain command. In 1968, Koehl moved the party to a new headquarters on 2507 North Franklin Road, clearly visible from Arlington's main thoroughfare, Wilson Boulevard. [26] In 1969, NSWPP William Luther Pierce and Joseph Tommasi founded the National Socialist Liberation Front (NSLF) as a youth wing of the American Nazi Party, aiming for it to appeal to White college students. [27] In 1970, David Duke joined the NSLF youth wing (through mail order). [28]

Koehl's leadership style resulted in many members leaving the group or being kicked out. [29] The party began to experience ideological divisions among its followers as it entered the 1970s. [30] Thereafter, the members engaged in internecine disputes, and they were either expelled by Koehl or they resigned. After the murder of Rockwell, the party dissipated and ad hoc organizations usurped the American Nazi Party logo. Those included James Burford in Chicago and John Bishop in Iowa. [21] Some members of the NSWPP chose to support William Luther Pierce, who was kicked out by Koehl, [31] and formed the National Alliance in 1974. [30] Others went with Joseph Tommasi, who was abruptly kicked out of the group for unclear reasons by Koehl in 1973. [32] [33] Tommasi founded the National Socialist Liberation Front in 1974, using the same name as the NSWPP's youth wing, but in effect an entirely new group. [29] [34] The new NSLF was a highly militant splinter of the NSWPP that attracted its most radical members; members were linked to several violent attacks. [35]

In 1975, members of the California NSWPP were the subject of the academy award nominee documentary film The California Reich . [36]

In 1982 the Internal Revenue Service took action to foreclose on the group's headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. [37] The site of the party headquarters, 928 North Randolph Street in Ballston, Virginia, is now a hotel and office building. After Rockwell's death, his successor Matt Koehl relocated the headquarters to 2507 North Franklin Road in Clarendon, Arlington, Virginia. [38] The small building, often misidentified today as Rockwell's former headquarters became The Java Shack. [39] [40]

New Order

Koehl's NSWPP changed its name to New Order on January 1, 1983, on the grounds that the people in the area "are not people looking to join revolutionary organizations", saying that it was moving to an area in the Midwest which it would not reveal for security reasons. [41] This was announced by Martin Kerr, the leader at the Franklin Road headquarters. [42] Due to recruitment issues along with financial and legal trouble, Koehl was forced to relocate the group's headquarters from the DC area, eventually finding his way to scattered locations in Wisconsin and Michigan. [43] The name change reflected the group's neo-Nazi mysticism and it was still known by that name in 2010. [42]

The organization briefly attracted the media's attention in October 1983, when it held a private meeting at Yorktown High School in Arlington, Virginia. [44] New Order's Chief of Staff, Martin Kerr, claims that the group is no longer a white supremacist group and focuses on advocating "in favor of [white] people, not against other races or ethnicities...we consider the white people of the world to be a gigantic family of racial brothers and sisters, united by ties of common ancestry and common heritage. Being for our own family does not mean that we hate other families." The SPLC still classifies them as neo-Nazis and as a "hate group." [45] [46] [47] After Koehl's death in 2014, Kerr assumed leadership and maintains the New Order website and organization. [43]

Organization

The American Nazi Party's flag was a standard Nazi flag with a small blue dot in the center, [48] [49] supposed to represent a globe, which it was in some iterations. [50] An ANP storm trooper meeting with journalist George Thayer explained that this blue dot was supposed to be representative of the United Nations being consumed by Nazism. [48] In a 1967 issue of the ANP's The Stormtrooper Magazine , the party stated the blue dot was added to symbolize internationalism and non-German white races, in which they differed from the original Nazis, to "represent the world and all the White People who live in the world". [50] After Rockwell was assassinated, the blue dot was removed from the party's flag and they began using a standard Nazi flag; an internal memo reproduced by James K. Warner in his 1968 "open letter" declared that the "pure Aryan Swastika of our ancestors is to be used unblemished." [49]

The ANP published several periodicals, run on a subscription, which it used to connect with the party's various sympathizers. The sympathizers sometimes became members or followers of the group. [51] Its first periodical, the National Socialist Bulletin, was founded in May 1960; it was a small periodical, 15 pages long for each issue. It published eight issues, before it was succeeded by The Stormtrooper Magazine . [51] They also ran The Rockwell Report, starting in 1961; the Report, unlike the Bulletin, was a full-size magazine. [52]

Rockwell and some party members established a "Stormtrooper Barracks" in an old mansion owned by the widow of Willis Kern [24] in the Dominion Hills section of Arlington at what is now the Upton Hill Regional Park. After Rockwell's murder, the headquarters was moved 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. Today, the Franklin Road address is often misidentified as Rockwell's headquarters when in fact it was the successor organization's last physical address in Arlington (now a coffeehouse). [53] [54] [55]

Namesake organizations

Since the late 1960s, there have been a number of small unrelated groups that have used the name "American Nazi Party."

See also

References

  1. ↑ Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 9.
  2. 1 2 Schmaltz 2000, p. 58.
  3. 1 2 Goodrick-Clarke 2002, pp. 10–11.
  4. 1 2 Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 11.
  5. ↑ Simonelli 1999, p. 40.
  6. 1 2 3 4 Green & Stabler 2015, p. 390.
  7. 1 2 Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 12.
  8. 1 2 3 Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 13.
  9. ↑ Schmaltz 2000, p. 145.
  10. 1 2 "When a Nazi punched Dr. King: A story about radicalism, violence and helping unify America". New York Daily News. January 18, 2021. Retrieved September 2, 2025.
  11. ↑ Engler, Mark; Engler, Paul (January 20, 2014). "When Martin Luther King gave up his guns". The Guardian. ISSN   0261-3077 . Retrieved September 2, 2025.
  12. ↑ "The power – and relevance – of Martin Luther King's revolutionary love". Christian Science Monitor. ISSN   0882-7729 . Retrieved September 2, 2025.
  13. ↑ "Rockwellite Sentenced to Jail for Assaulting Negro Clergyman". Jewish Telegraphic Agency . March 20, 2015. Retrieved October 29, 2023.
  14. ↑ Schmaltz 2000, p. 193.
  15. ↑ Simonelli 1999, p. 76.
  16. ↑ Schmaltz 2000, pp. 193–194.
  17. ↑ Schmaltz 2000, pp. 177–178.
  18. 1 2 Schmaltz 2000, pp. 195–196.
  19. ↑ Schmaltz 2000, p. 195.
  20. ↑ Schmaltz 2000, p. 196.
  21. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Kaplan 2000, pp. 1–3.
  22. ↑ Goodrick-Clarke 2002, p. 14.
  23. ↑ Schmaltz 2000, p. 304.
  24. 1 2 Schmaltz 2013.
  25. ↑ E. Miller, Michael (August 21, 2017). "The Shadow of an Assassinated American Nazi Commander Hangs Over Charlottesville". The Washington Post . Archived from the original on August 21, 2017. Retrieved August 10, 2019.(subscription required)
  26. ↑ Schmaltz 2013, p. 344.
  27. ↑ Kaplan 2000, pp. 98, 221, 302.
  28. ↑ Kaplan 2000, p. 98.
  29. 1 2 Kaplan 2000, p. 155.
  30. 1 2 Schmaltz 2013, p. 346.
  31. ↑ Sunshine 2024, p. 35.
  32. ↑ Kaplan 2000, pp. 174, 247, 302.
  33. ↑ Sunshine 2024, pp. 26, 36.
  34. ↑ Sunshine 2024, p. 37.
  35. ↑ Kaplan 2000, p. 222.
  36. ↑ Tuchman, Mitch (July 1, 1977). "Review: California Reich". Film Quarterly . 30 (4): 37–37. doi:10.2307/1211583. ISSN   0015-1386.
  37. ↑ Kaplan 2000, p. 156.
  38. ↑ Barrett, H. Michael. "Pierce, Koehl and the National Socialist White People's Party Internal Split of 1970". The Heretical Press.
  39. ↑ Weingarten, Gene (February 10, 2008). "It's Just Nazi Same Place". The Washington Post . ISSN   0190-8286.
  40. ↑ Jones, Mark (February 2, 2013). "Nazis in Arlington: George Rockwell and the ANP". WETA . Arlington.
  41. ↑ "Nazi Party to Relocate". The New York Times. December 27, 1982. Retrieved July 26, 2022.
  42. 1 2 "Death of an Arlington Nazi". www.northernvirginiamag.com. December 30, 2010. Retrieved March 26, 2018.
  43. 1 2 "Longtime Neo-Nazi Matthias "Matt" Koehl Dies". Southern Poverty Law Center . Retrieved April 24, 2022.
  44. ↑ "Swastikas on Wilson". Arlington Magazine. August 12, 2013. Retrieved March 27, 2018.
  45. ↑ "A look at Wisconsin's 'hate' groups". www.WisconsinWatch.org. November 12, 2017. Retrieved April 28, 2018.
  46. ↑ "Across Wisconsin, recent rises in hate, bias incidents spark concern" . Retrieved April 28, 2018.
  47. ↑ "Neo-Nazi". Southern Poverty Law Center. Retrieved July 28, 2022.
  48. 1 2 Thayer 1968, p. 21.
  49. 1 2 Kaplan 2000, p. 562.
  50. 1 2 "Questions & Answers". The Stormtrooper Magazine . Vol. 6, no. 1. Arlington. 1967. p. 33.
  51. 1 2 Schmaltz 2000, p. 73.
  52. ↑ Schmaltz 2000, p. 128.
  53. ↑ Fenston, Jacob (September 6, 2013). "Arlington's Uneasy Relationship With Nazi Party Founder". WAMU . Retrieved May 13, 2016.
  54. ↑ Weingarten, Gene. "It's Just Nazi Same Place" The Washington Post (February 10, 2008)
  55. ↑ Cooper, Rebecca A. "Java Shack glimpses its past as Nazi headquarters" Archived August 16, 2011, at the Wayback Machine TDB.com (March 8, 2011)
  56. ↑ Kaplan 2000, pp. 1–3, 558–562.
  57. ↑ Kaplan 2000, pp. 3, 33.
  58. ↑ Anti-Defamation League. Danger: Extremism, New York; Anti-Defamation League, 1996, p. 177
  59. ↑ "Special Collections Manuscript Collections | Bishop (John Robert) papers, 1951–1977 and undated". augustana.libraryhost.com. Retrieved March 26, 2018.
  60. ↑ "Special Collections Manuscript Collections | Bishop (John Robert) papers, 1951–1977 and undated". augustana.libraryhost.com. Retrieved March 26, 2018.
  61. ↑ Marks 1996, p. 58.
  62. ↑ "A Guide to the American Nazi Party Recruiting Materials, c. 1966 American Nazi Party Recruiting Materials Ms2015-060". August 12, 2016. Archived from the original on August 12, 2016. Retrieved March 26, 2018.
  63. ↑ Kaplan 2000, p. 228.

Works cited

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