Hate: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party

George Lincoln Rockwell flew U.S. Navy fighters against the Germans and Japanese during World War II. After the war, he raised a family with his college sweetheart, worked as a commercial artist – and founded the American Nazi Party. By the mid-Sixties, he was a charismatic national political figure. On August 25, 1967, he lay murdered in a laundromat’s parking lot. This is the first time the details of Rockwell’s bizarre, hate-filled life have been told. Operating from Nazi Party headquarters in suburban Washington, D.C., Rockwell directed malicious campaigns against civil rights activists, Jews, communists, and homosexuals, attempting to capitalize on the violence and chaos of a tumultuous time. A main goal was to instill fear among whites that the civil rights movement was led by Jewish communists who wanted to plunge the nation into socioeconomic ruin. His ultimate goal was to gain power by electoral means ina manner similar to the rise in Germany of his hero, Adolf Hitler. Today, more that thirty years after his assassination, Rockwell’s poisonous legacy continues to spread among right-wing fringe groups such as the white separatist militias, the skinheads, and the Ku Klux Klan. His dark relevance to world history is perhaps most apparent in the current Holocaust denial movement. To probe for the first time the sinister inner workings of the American Nazi Party, author William H. Schmaltz pored through recently declassified FBI documents and interviewed Rockwell associated and foes. He brings us in on Nazi planning and strategy sessions and the dangerous personnel conflicts among the stormtroopers. We learn of the strange relationship between Rockwell’s Nazis and the Black Muslims of Elijah Muhammed and Malcolm X, and the rationale behind Rockwell’s repeated attacks on Martin Luther King , Jr. The cloak-and-dagger details of Rockwell’s secret journey to England to form the World Union of National Socialists are finally revealed. Dozens of never-before-seen photographs document this incredible true story.