The American Nazi Party is an American political party founded by George
Lincoln Rockwell. Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, Rockwell initially
called it the World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists, but
later 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
Hitler's NSDAP in Germany during the Nazi era. It also espoused Holocaust
denial. Headquarters
The WUFENS headquarters was first located in a residence on Williamsburg
Boulevard in Arlington, but was later moved as the ANP headquarters to a house
at 928 North Randolph Street. Rockwell and some party members also established
a "Stormtrooper Barracks" in an old mansion owned by the widow of Willis
Kern 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 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. Name change and party reform
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 inspired 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. On January 1, 1967 Rockwell renamed the ANP to the National
Socialist White People's Party, a move that alienated some hard-line members.
Before he could fully implement party reforms, Rockwell was assassinated on
August 25, 1967 by a disgruntled follower, John Patler.
Assassination of George Lincoln Rockwell An assassination attempt was made on
Rockwell on June 28, 1967. As Rockwell returned from shopping, he drove into
the long driveway of the "Stormtrooper barracks" located in Arlington's
Dominion Hills subdivision and found it blocked by a felled tree and brush.
Rockwell assumed that it was another prank by local teens. As a party member
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.
On August 25, 1967, while leaving the Econowash laundromat at the Dominion
Hills Shopping Center, an assassin, hiding on the roof of the building,
fired two bullets into Rockwell's car through the windshield. One missed, the
other hit his chest and ruptured his heart. His car slowly rolled backwards
to a stop and Rockwell staggered out of the front passenger side door of the
car, stood briefly while pointing upward at the strip mall's rooftop where the
shots had come from, and then collapsed on the pavement. He was pronounced dead
at the scene. Rockwell's assailant was John Patler, a former ANP/NSWPP member
whom Rockwell had ejected from the party for allegedly trying to introduce
Marxist doctrine into the party's platforms.
Koehl succession and ideological divisions
Rockwell's deputy commander, Matt Koehl, a staunch Hitlerist, assumed the
leadership role after a party council agreed that he should retain command.
Koehl continued some of Rockwell’s reforms such as emphasizing the prospect
of a future all-white society, and toning down public denigration of
non-whites. Koehl retained the swastika-festooned party literature and
pseudo-Nazi uniforms of the party's "Storm Troopers" who had been modeled on
the NSDAP's Sturmabteilung. In 1968 Koehl moved the party to a new
headquarters at 2507 North Franklin Road, clearly visible from Arlington's
main thoroughfare, Wilson Boulevard. He also established a printing press, a
"George Lincoln Rockwell Memorial Book Store", and member living quarters on
property nearby. The party began to experience
ideological division among its followers as it entered the 1970s. In 1970, member
Frank Collin, who was himself secretly the son of a Jewish father, broke away
from the group and founded the National Socialist Party of America in Chicago,
which became famous due to an attempt to march through Skokie, Illinois, home to
many Holocaust survivors. This led to the United States Supreme Court Case.
Other dissatisfied members of the NSWPP chose to support William Luther Pierce,
eventually forming the National Alliance in 1974.
Further membership erosion occurred as Koehl, drawing heavily upon the
teachings of Hitlerian mystic Savitri Devi, began to suggest that National
Socialism was more akin to a religious movement than a political one. He
espoused the belief that Hitler was the gift of an inscrutable divine providence
sent to rescue the white race from decadence and gradual extinction caused
by a declining birth rate and miscegenation. Hitler's death in 1945
was viewed as a type of martyrdom; a voluntary, Christ-like self-sacrifice,
that looked forward to a spiritual resurrection of National Socialism at a
later date when the Aryan race would need it the most. These esoteric beliefs
led to disputes with the World Union of National Socialists, which Rockwell had
founded and whose leader, Danish neo-Nazi Povl Riis-Knudsen, had been
appointed by Koehl. Undaunted, Koehl continued to recast the party as a new
religion in formation. Public rallies were gradually phased out in favor of
low-key gatherings in private venues. On Labor Day 1979, in a highly unpopular
move for some members, Koehl disbanded the party's paramilitary "Storm
Troopers". The Koehl organization is now known as the New Order and operates so
far from the public spotlight that few of today's neo-Nazis are aware of its
existence or know that it is the linear descendant of Rockwell's original ANP.
On November 3, 1979, some members of the NSWPP and a Ku Klux Klan group attacked
a Communist Workers' Party protest march in Greensboro, North Carolina. The
alliance of neo-Nazis and Klansmen shot and killed five marchers. Forty Klansmen
and neo-Nazis were involved in the shootings with sixteen Klansmen and
neo-Nazis being arrested. The six strongest cases were brought to trial
first, but the two criminal trials resulted in the acquittal of the
defendants by all-white juries. However, in a 1985 civil lawsuit the survivors
won a $350,000 judgment against the city, the Klansmen and the neo-Nazis for
violating the civil rights of the demonstrators. The shootings became
known as the "Greensboro Massacre". Namesake organizations
Since the late 1960s there have been a number of small groups that have used
the name "American Nazi Party". Perhaps the first was led by James Warner and
Allen Vincent and consisted of members of the California branch of the NSWPP.
This group announced its existence on January 1, 1968. In 1982 James Burford
formed another "American Nazi Party" from dissafected branches of the
National Socialist Party of America. This Chicago-based group remained in
existence until at least 1994. There was also a small American Nazi Party that
operated out of Davenport, Iowa led by a John Robert Bishop.
The name "American Nazi Party" has also been adopted by a group run by Rocky J.
Suhayda, a former member of Rockwell's original ANP in 1967. Although Suhayda's
ANP states that Rockwell was their founder, there is no direct legal or
financial link between it and Rockwell's legacy organization, now a low-key
Hitlerian religious group called New Order. Headquartered in Westland,
Michigan, Suhayda's ANP website sells nostalgic reprints of Rockwell's
1960s-era magazine The Stormtrooper. The group boasts 2008's National Socialist
presidential candidate John Taylor Bowles as a member. Holding semi-private
yearly meetings at his home, and at the national convention in California,
Suhayda's followers do not wear uniforms, except for the SA, or Security
Arm and eschew public demonstrations, frequently criticizing rival
organization the National Socialist Movement for "outing" its members with
excessive media exposure. Notable former members
Frank Collin, founder of the National Socialist Party of America
William Luther Pierce Kurt Saxon
See also German American Bund
Neo-Nazism Neo-Nazi groups of the United States
Neo-völkisch movements References
Notes Bibliography
Kaplan, Jeffrey Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical
Racist Right Walnut Creek, California: AltaMira Press, 2000
External links Official website of the revived ANP
Federal Bureau of Investigation - American Nazi Party monograph, June 1965
- Detailed report on George Lincoln Rockwell and the original American Nazi
Party