George Lincoln Rockwell
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George Lincoln Rockwell (March 9, 1918 - August 25, 1967) was the founder and Commander of the American Nazi Party and perhaps the most prominent American neo-Nazi leader.
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Biography
Early life
Born in Bloomington, Illinois of English-Scottish father (George Lovejoy Rockwell) and a German-French descended mother (Claire Schade Rockwell). Rockwell grew up with divorced parents, both of whom were famous vaudeville comedians and actors, where he learned his skills for speaking to and working with crowds. He studied at Hebron Academy in Lewison, Maine. After quitting Brown University following his sophomore year, he joined the U.S. Navy where he served throughout the Second World War.
Politics
Rockwell heard radio broadcasts by Joseph McCarthy and supported Douglas MacArthur's nomination for Republican candidate for President of the United States. He attended a Gerald L.K. Smith rally and read Common Sense newspaper becoming introduced to the Jewish Question. He read Mein Kampf and was instantly converted to National Socialist belief. In 1952 he was posted to the US Naval Air Base in Keflavik, Iceland, where he met and married his second wife (Thora Hallgrimson), and honeymooned in Berchtesgaden. On March 8, 1959, he founded the American Nazi Party, under whose banner he ran for governor of Virginia in 1965.
Assassination
On the early afternoon of August 25, 1967 as Rockwell was pulling his blue and white Chevrolet out of his parking space in the lot of a small three-story office building at 6045 Wilson Boulevard in Arlington, Virginia where the American Nazi Party had its office, two shots were fired by a sniper on the roof of a beauty salon across N. Livingston Street in the Dominion Hills Shopping Centre. Rockwell attempted to avoid the shots by jumping into the passenger seat of the vehicle when the bullets hit his car, but both shots went through the windshield hitting him in the head and chest, killing him instantly. His car then crashed into another vehicle on the scene.
Shortly after the shooting twenty-nine year old John Patler was arrested and charged with Rockwell's murder. His rifle was found abandoned in a vacant lot several blocks away. Patler had been a captain in the American Nazi Party and was Rockwell's editor for the newsletter of the party, "The Stormtrooper". He wrote most of the newsletter himself. Some considered Patler to be co-founder of the organization along with Rockwell. In the first print edition of Rockwell's autobiography This Time the World. Patler was featured in a photograph in the opening pages carrying the party flag; which was edited out in subsequent editions.
After the murder Matt Koehl informed reporters that Patler had been expelled from the group in April of that year due to his "Bolshevik leanings". The primary accusation being that he was inserting Marxist propaganda into the newsletter of the party, The Stormtrooper.
Many former lieutenants of Rockwell, who had broken away from Rockwell's group to form "The White Party" only months before his assassination, stood up in a campaign that maintained Patler's innocence. John Patler was sentenced to 20 years imprisonment for the murder of George Lincoln Rockwell in December 1967.
Rockwell's funeral was held on August 30, 1967 but the Pentagon denied his burial at Culpepper National Cemetery because his followers refused to remove their swastika emblazoned armbands before entering the cemetery grounds. His remains were returned to the headquarters of the American Nazi Party in Arlington where he was cremated during a secret Nazi funeral on August 31, 1967.
Trivia - The American Nazi Party moved out of the Wilson Boulevard office from the predominately residential Dominion Hills neighborhood to a more urban location in lower Arlington, Virginia for several years but eventually abandoned the Northern Virginia area for other climes as they realized that the urban Washington area was not sympathetic to their recruiting.
The office building where Rockwell was slain is now known as the Dominion Hills Professional Center. The strip mall across the street where the sniper fired from spells it "centre."
Today
Many of Rockwell's writings are available through the Internet today.
Portrayals
Rockwell was portrayed by Marlon Brando in the miniseries Roots: The Next Generation.
Works
- In Hoc Signo Vinces, a political manifesto (World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists, 1960)
- How to get out or stay out of the insane asylum, recounts his experience of being sentenced to thirty days oberservation [1] (http://www.geocities.com/mensenrassen/rockwell.htm) (American Nazi Party, 1960)
- This Time The World, his autobiography (written 1960; White Power Publications, 1979; Liberty Bell Publications, 2004, ISBN 1593640145).
- White Power (written 1967; John McLaughlin, 1996, ISBN 0965649288)
References
- Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party by William H. Schmaltz (Brasseys, Inc., 2001, ISBN 1574882627).
- American Fuehrer: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party by Frederick James Simonelli (University of Illinois Press, 1999, ISBN 0252022858).
- Siege: The Collected Writings of James Mason by James Mason (Appendix III contains Mason's "George Lincoln Rockwell: A Sketch of His Life and Career"; introduced by Ryan Schuster, Black Sun Publications, ISBN 0972440801)
External links
- "Who was George Lincoln Rockwell?" (http://www.americannaziparty.com/rockwell/index.shtml) by A.V. Schaerffenberg at the American Nazi Party website.
- "Lincoln Rockwell: A National Socialist Life" (http://www.aryanunity.com/glrlife.html) by Dr. William Pierce
- "Why Kennedy Was Killed" (http://www.geocities.com/orderuniversal/kennedy.htm) by Robert Burns aka James Mason
- Transcript of interview with Rockwell (http://www.rebrebel.com/artists/rockwellplayboyinterview.html) in Playboy Magazine conducted by Alex Haley, introduced thusly (http://www.rebrebel.com/artists/rockwellbio.html).
- "George Lincoln Rockwell and the Church of Racism" (http://www.falange.us/rockwell.htm) Myles B. Kantor interview with Frederick J. Simonelli (Jan. 24, 2003)
- This Time The World (http://www.skrewdriver.org.uk/tttwcont.html), by Lincoln Rockwell.
- Excerpts from This Time The World (http://www.heretical.com/miscella/glrttww.html), including photos.
- Full text of White Power (http://reactor-core.org/white-power.html), Rockwell's final book where he explained what he was about.
- American Fuehrer: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party review (http://www.salon.com/books/review/1999/07/19/simonelli/print.html) by Katharine Whittemore at salon.com.
- "Nazi's In America" (http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/nazis_in_america.htm), a commentary and review of Hate by Myrna Estep, ph.D.
- "Capitalist Conflicts and the Nation of Islam" (http://www.plp.org/TheCommunist1/noi.html) from the Progressive Labor Party recounts Rockwell's involvement.
- A telegram to Rockwell (http://www.malcolm-x.org/docs/tel_rock.htm) from Malcolm X, 1965
- "When Hate Came to Town: New Orleans' Jews and George Lincoln Rockwell" (http://www.holocaustsurvivors.org/cgi-bin/data.show.pl?di=record&da=texts&ke=3) by Lawrence N. Powell in American Jewish History (85.4, 1997, pp. 393-419)
- "Blast from the Past: George Lincoln Rockwell" (http://www.loper.org/~george/trends/2003/Aug/958.html) by David Maurer in Daily Progress, August 24, 2003)