Rockwell, George Lincoln

Early years

Rockwell was born in Bloomington , Illinois , and was the eldest of three children in a family ^[3] .

His father, George Lovjoy (Doc) Rockwell, had English and Scottish roots, and his mother, Claire Chade, was German and French . They met in 1915. Both of his parents were actors playing comedies and vaudeville ^[4] . Among the friends of his father were such famous people as Fred Allen , Walter Winchell , Jack Benny, and Groucho Marx ^{[3] [5]} . Subsequently, Rockwell said that his ability to speak and respond to the crowd was learned by him in early childhood.

When Rockwell was 6 years old, his parents divorced. Because of this, his youth passed between two families - a mother in Atlantic City in New Jersey and a father in Boothbay Harbor in Maine ^[3] . He received his secondary education at Providence Central High School ^[1] .

Rockwell tried to enter Harvard University , but failed. He spent a year without doing anything, after which his father sent him to Hebron College in Lewiston , Maine . There he became interested in studying philosophy and other works on the development of society, which made him reconsider his religious views. Previously, he considered himself a “devout Protestant,” but then, after re-reading the Bible , he declared himself an atheist . Later, he again changed his attitude towards religion, considering it a necessary pillar of civilization. Later he considered the possibility of the existence of a higher mind in the universe and declared himself an agnostic . Despite this, in the 1960s he interacted with an organization dedicated to promoting the racist ideology of " Christian Identity " ^[6] .

In 1938, Rockwell entered Brown University in Rhode Island , where he studied philosophy ^[3] . On sociology courses at the university, he did not accept the point of view that a person is created by his environment, and that all people from birth have an equal potential. He argued with fellow students on topics such as social themes in popular novels.

Fleet Service

In the second year, Rockwell left the university and went to serve in the fleet ^[3] . In 1940, he was sent to pilot courses in Massachusetts and then to Florida , and became a naval aviation pilot.

During the war, blacks were separated from whites, and, according to colleagues, Rockwell was not hostile to them. Rockwell served in the South Atlantic on the ship Omaha, and his task was to detect enemy submarines ^[7] . He piloted the Curtis biplane, which was launched from a ship with the help of a catapult.

On April 24, 1943, Rockwell married Judy Altman, whom he met at Brown University. After his marriage, he studied at the aerial photography school in Florida, and then served in the Pacific .

After the war

After the war, Rockwell decided to engage in commercial photography, illustrations and graphic design. In the spring of 1946, he opened a photo studio and made sure that this activity can bring in money. In the same year he entered the Pratt Institute and moved with his wife to New York ^[3] .

In 1948, he won a $ 1,000 prize for advertising that he made for the American Cancer Society ^[3] .

Not having finished his last year at the Pratt Institute, Rockwell left him and opened his advertising agency in Maine, but it went bankrupt a few months later. In 1950, he was drafted into the army to participate in the Korean War . He and his wife and children moved to California , in San Diego , where, together with other pilots, he trained to participate in air support operations. In 1952, Rockwell was ordered to appear in Norfolk, Virginia, where he was notified of the transfer to Iceland ^[3] .

It was in San Diego that Rockwell became interested in politics. He met a married couple who actively supported Douglas MacArthur as a presidential candidate for the Republican party . From them he received several pamphlets with far-right and including anti-Semitic agitation. These ideas carried Rockwell ^[3] .

He read Hitler’s book My Struggle and accepted the Nazi point of view ^[3] . He wrote and published Orwell’s “ Animal Farm ” parody called “Fable of Chickens and Ducks” in which he tried to prove that America was ruled by Jews in the twentieth century.

Publishing Activity

When Rockwell returned to civilian life a second time, he decided to earn money by publishing a magazine for the wives of American servicemen. In September 1955, he began to publish the magazine “US Lady” ^[3] . According to Rockwell, this journal should also serve to promote his political views and support the opposition to racial integration and communism. Funding for this project Rockwell carried out mainly by trading in shares. However, the magazine sold poorly, and Rockwell’s financial problems forced him to sell his share in the magazine.

For a while, Rockwell worked for William Buckley Jr. and promoted his National Review magazine among conservative students.

Foundation of the American Nazi Party

Rockwell’s activism has become known among other right-wing extremists. Once he received a package in the mail from one of his supporters, in which was a Nazi flag with a swastika 8 feet long.

In the summer of 1958, he managed to raise a sufficient amount of money through postal donations and a group of 10 or 11 supporters to begin creating his own organization ^[3] . In March 1959, Rockwell founded the American Nazi Party ^[8] . The headquarters of the party was located in Arlington , Virginia .

Rockwell’s wife and children left for Iceland and they later divorced. Meanwhile, Rockwell’s relations with his own family also deteriorated. His brother and sister refused to even talk to him, and his father also did not forgive him that he had dishonored his name.

In order to attract the attention of the press, Rockwell held a congress of his party in the Washington National Park on April 3, 1960 . After that, he was going to arrange the next congress in New York , at Union Square . Reporters who asked him questions, he said that 80% of the US Jewish population sympathize with the Communists and therefore should be destroyed in the gas chambers as traitors.

The third congress Rockwell planned on July 3, 1960 . But when Rockwell and his supporters arrived there, they were met by a crowd of his opponents, clashes occurred. Rockwell and another 8 members of his party were arrested. Rockwell demanded a trial, but together he was sent to a mental hospital for 30 days for examination. Less than two weeks later, he was released and found to be sane.

Rockwell was a Holocaust denier ^[3] . In early 1966, Rockwell was interviewed by Alex Haley , which was published in the April issue of Playboy . According to him, he agreed to this interview because the magazine is aimed at white men. For many, this was the first publication in which Rockwell’s ideas were presented without censorship:

I will not for a moment believe that some 6,000,000 Jews were exterminated by Hitler. This was not ^[3] .

Original Text (Eng.)

I wasn’t the Jews who were exterminated by Hitler. It never happened

In the summer of 1966, Rockwell was one of the leaders of a demonstration organized in opposition to the demonstration of Martin Luther King , which was intended to put an end to actual segregation in one of the white suburbs of Chicago . In his opinion, Martin Luther King was a tool of Jewish communists who wanted to integrate America on the basis of their communist ideas of equality ^[3] .

Rockwell and his party also helped the Ku Klux Klan and close to him groups - for example, interfering with the famous march to Washington . However, soon Rockwell began to believe that the Ku Klux Klan was frozen in the past and was unable to effectively fight in modern conditions ^[3] .

The size of the party has always remained statistically insignificant, and it never became a serious political force ^[9] .

"National Socialist Party of White People"

On January 1, 1967, Rockwell announced the next stage of party development. She officially changed her name to the National Socialist White People’s Party ^[10] . The new slogan of the party was “White Power”, replacing the provocative “Sieg Heil”.

Hatenanny Records and Hate Bus

In the 1960s, Rockwell tried to draw attention to his work by creating a small record label called Hatenanny Records (the name was based on the word hootenanny , a term given to performances of folk music). The label released several 45 RPM singles, including recordings by bands such as Odis Cochran and Three Bigots , sold mostly via postal order. Cropped version of one of the groups of records, «Ship Those Niggers Back», appears in the documentary " California Reich ." When the Freedom Riders conducted their campaign to desegregate bus stations in the Deep South, Rockwell decorated the Volkswagen van with swastikas and white supremacy slogans and called it “ Hate Bus ” and the driving force for speeches and party meetings ^{[5] [11] [12]} . According to the FBI report on the American Nazi Party, the van was selected after non-repayment of loans ^[13] .

On August 25, 1967, Rockwell was shot dead on exit from a car wash at the Dominion Hills shopping center in Arlington ( Virginia ) ^[2] . Two bullets from the Mauser K96 passed through the windshield of his Chevrolet and the car slowly rolled back until it stopped ^[14] . Rockwell, staggering, walked out of the passenger’s front door, pointed to the roof of the shopping center, and then collapsed face down on the pavement.

The offender ran on the roof of the shopping center and jumped to the ground from the opposite side of the crime scene. The store owner and customer were chasing him for some time, but they could not clearly see the person who was running away. Other customers called the Arlington County police and checked Rockwell's pulse. There was no pulse; the only bullet that hit it broke several major arteries just above the heart. The internal bleeding was so severe that Rockwell died within two minutes ^[15] .

Half an hour later, a former member of the Rockwell party was detained at a bus stop about half a mile (800 m) from what happened ^{[16] by a} patrol policeman familiar with the Nazis of Arlington. On the same day, after the news of the death of his son, Rockwell’s 78-year-old father was brief:

I'm not surprised at all. I have been expecting this for quite a long time.

Original Text (Eng.)

I am not surprised at all. I've expected it for quite some time.

Matt Coel , man number two in the NSWPP, received the legal right to dispose of Rockwell’s body and all of the party’s assets. At the time of his death, the NSWPP had about 300 active members across the country and possibly 3,000 people who supported the party with money. Although Rockwell's parents wanted to hold an unofficial funeral in Maine , they did not fight the Nazis for burial rights. On August 27, a spokesman reported that federal officials gave verbal confirmation of Rockwell’s planned funeral with military honors at Culpeper National Cemetery as an officer in the US military in honorary retirement ^[17] .

However, a conflict occurred on the day of the funeral, because the procession participants refused to remove the bandages with the swastika. The Pentagon banned funerals at the Kulpeper National Cemetery. Rockwell's body was returned to the party headquarters and cremated the next day ^[18] .

John Patler , expelled from the American Nazi Party six months before the murder, was sentenced last year to 20 years in prison ^[19] , but was released in 1975 after 8 years in prison ^[20] .

Rockwell was a source of inspiration for the politician David Duke , who adhered to the ideas of white nationalism . As a high school student, Duke, upon learning of the Rockwell murder, declared: "The greatest American was shot" ^[21] . In the mid-1960s, Rockwell had a plan for the development of Nazi political philosophy within the religious movement of Christian identity. Prior to this, Christian identity included anti-Semitism and racism , but without an orientation to the Third Reich . A full-scale study of the ideology of Rockwell and his party presents difficulties, since a significant part of the documents is in private hands ^[9] .

A few years after Rockwell’s death, a split occurred in the party. Two like-minded people, Matt Coel and William Luther Pierce, formed their own organizations. Coel, who was Rockwell's successor, renamed NSWPP New Order in 1983 and moved it to Wisconsin shortly thereafter. Pierce founded the National Alliance ^[22] .

Rockwell had a successful naval career, both on active duty and in reserve. As a veteran of World War II , he was a naval aviator and later participated in the Korean War . He moved to the reserve after 19 years of service, rose to the rank of commander, and served for several more years. In 1960, as a result of political and racist activities, a year before he retired, he was fired from the US Navy as "unfit for service" because of his views ^[23] .

George Rockwell appears in season 3 of the television series The Man in High Castle , an adaptation of the novel of the same name . According to the plot after the victory of the Nazis in World War II, the surrender of the United States and the occupation of most of the country by the Third Reich, he is the Reichsmarschall of North America, directly subordinate to the Fuhrer of the Third Reich (first Adolf Hitler , then Heinrich Himmler ). The role is played by American actor David Furr.

• George L. Rockwell. White Power. - John McLaughlin, 1967. - 482 p. - ISBN 0965649288 .
• George Lincoln Rockwell. This Time the World. - Liberty Bell Publications, 2004. - 444 p. - ISBN 1593640145 .
• George Lincoln Rockwell. The dramatic saga of intrigue, propaganda and subversion. - Media Concept, 1996. - 21 p. - ISBN 1898419159 .
• George Lincoln Rockwell. How to get out or stay out of the insane asylum. - American Nazi Party, 1960. - 12 p.
• George Lincoln Rockwell. In hoc signo vinces. - World Union of National Socialists, 1971. - 25 p. ^[24]

• Goodrick-Clarke N. Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity . - NYU Press , 2003. - 371 p.
• Hamilton NA American Social Leaders and Activists . - Infobase Publishing, 2002. - p. 324-325. - (American Biographies). - ISBN 9781438108087 .
• Krassner P. . Paul Krassner's Impolite Interviews . - Seven Stories Press, 1999. - 340 p.
• George Lincoln Rockwell (Eng.) // American Jewish History . - 1997. - Vol. 85, no. 4 P. 393-419. Archived June 4, 2012.
• Scee TI Rogues, Rascals, and Other Villainous Mainers . - Down East Books, 2014. - 224 p.
• Simonelli FJ American Fuehrer: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party . - University of Illinois Press , 1999. - 206 p. - ISBN 9780252022852 .
• Simonelli FJ The American Nazi Party, 1958-1967 // The Historian . - 1995. - Vol. 57, No. 3 . - ISSN 0018-2370 .
• Schmaltz WH Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party. - Brassey's, 1999. - 388 p. - ISBN 9781574881714 .
• Schmaltz WH For Race and Nation: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party. - River's Bend Press, 2013.

• AV Schaerffenberg. Who was George Lincoln Rockwell? (eng.) American Nazi Party . The appeal date is June 1, 2015.
• American Nazi Party Part 1 of 2 (eng.) . FBI (1965). The appeal date is June 1, 2015.
• The American Nazi Party, 1958-1967 (English)
• Excerpts from This Time The World (eng.)
• American Fuehrer: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party (Eng.)
• Nazi's In America: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party (Eng.)
• Rockwell, George Lincoln (Eng.) On the Internet Movie Database