George Lincoln Rockwell was a United States Navy commander, leader of the American Nazi party born in Illinois, United States
Background
George Lincoln Rockwell was born in Bloomington, Illinois, United States, the son of George ("Doc") Rockwell and Claire Schade, vaudeville comedians. Rockwell spent much of his early life on tour with his parents until their divorce in 1924.
Education
He attended Atlantic City (New Jersey) High School for nearly four years, complaining in his autobiography that the students in the school were primarily Jewish and black. Because he refused to complete certain required assignments, he was not able to graduate from that school, but he did graduate from Central High School in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1937. From 1938 to 1940, Rockwell attended Brown University, boasting the lowest grades of anyone ever admitted to that school. He studied philosophy and did artwork for the college humor magazine, Sir Brown, imitating, so he claimed, the style of the cartoonist Charles Addams. Some psychiatrists later said that his drawings reflected preoccupations with death, cannibalism, blood, and bombing. In his autobiography he again complained that left-wing Jews and blacks seemed to be in control and in favor everywhere in the administration and among the students. Rockwell left Brown to become a pilot in the navy. After World War II he attended Pratt Institute in New York City on the GI bill. He left without graduating, although in 1948 he won $1, 000 in a contest sponsored by the National Society of Illustrators. He again commented disparagingly on the predominance of Jews, blacks, and Communists on campus, referring to them as the dregs of society.
Career
Rockwell founded and managed, with a modicum of success, a small advertising agency in Portland, Maine. During the Korean War he was called back to service in the navy, in which he attained the rank of commander. While stationed in San Diego he was introduced to the works of anti-Semite Gerald L. K. Smith. Thereafter he became an avid reader of racist and, in particular, anti-Jewish literature. Following his study of Mein Kampf, which by his reckoning he read a dozen times, he declared himself a disciple of Adolf Hitler. In November 1958, while still in the navy, he founded in Arlington, Virginia, a fascist group known as the American Nazi party. While stationed in Iceland during the Korean War, Rockwell was a white supremacist who advocated the sterilization or extermination of all Jews. It was they, he insisted, who were responsible for the worldwide Communist movement. He professed to like certain individual Jews, saying on one occasion, "I like Jews. I'll be very sorry when we've killed the last of them. " He also called for the deportation of all blacks to Africa and for the hanging of all "traitors, " including former presidents Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower and Chief Justice Earl Warren. Rockwell's followers, whom he himself once described as criminals, psychotics, and social misfits, probably never numbered more than 100, but the American Nazi party under his direction staged numerous provocative demonstrations. His "storm troopers" were provided with Nazi SA uniforms and swastika armbands, as well as gorilla suits and pro-civil rights placards, the last two as taunts to blacks (whom they envisioned as gorillas) and to civil rights advocates. In May 1960, New York City parks commissioner Newbold Morris denied Rockwell a speaking permit on the grounds that his preaching might incite crowds to riot, but in February 1961 the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court affirmed Rockwell's right to speak in public, regardless of his message and its possible results. In November of the same year the Supreme Court of the United States upheld this decision. Despite his legal right to proclaim his racist doctrines, Rockwell's attempts to hold public crusades were generally unsuccessful, and his public demonstrations often generated hostility even from other right-wing political groups. In February 1960 the navy discharged Rockwell because of his repeated attempts to propagate his racist doctrines. His explanation for his unceremonious, albeit honorable, discharge was that he was caught in a general cutback program and that his former wife Judith had complained about him to his commanding officer. In January 1961, Rockwell was stoned while trying to picket the pro-Zionist film Exodus, and later that year he was arrested in New Orleans for disorderly conduct while picketing the same movie. In 1962 the state of Virginia, in which the American Nazi party had established its headquarters, revoked the party's charter, but in August 1963, Rockwell and a small band of followers were permitted to hold a counterdemonstration during a civil rights march on the nation's capitol. Rockwell's presence at rallies often led to violence and arrests. In January 1965 he was arrested in Selma, Ala. , for disturbing the peace outside a church in which a civil rights meeting was being held. Late in 1965, Rockwell entered the Virginia gubernatorial race, polling 5, 730 votes out of 562, 789 cast, and he announced that he would run for the presidency. In November he and some of his followers had a run-in with people carrying a National Liberation Front flag at an anti-Vietnam War demonstration in Washington, D. C. Rockwell's greatest success came in the summer of 1966 during open-housing demonstrations in Chicago, when a number of protesting whites carried swastikas that he had distributed. Rockwell announced in December that he was changing the name of the American Nazi party to the National Socialist White People's party and that he was going to replace its slogan of "Sieg heil" with "White power. " Despite this, his Nazis were singularly unsuccessful in identifying themselves with the white backlash against the civil rights movement. In October 1966 the student union at Brown University, at the request of the university president, withdrew an invitation to Rockwell to speak, and in March 1967 the Idaho Board of Education vetoed an invitation from students at the University of Idaho. Rockwell was shot to death in Arlington, Virginia, by John Patler, a dark-skinned former member of the American Nazi party who had been expelled a few months earlier for allegedly denouncing his more Nordic-looking colleagues as "blue-eyed devils. " Rockwell was succeeded by Matt Koehl as leader of the party.
Politics
While stationed in San Diego he was introduced to the works of anti-Semite Gerald L. K. Smith. Thereafter he became an avid reader of racist and, in particular, anti-Jewish literature. he declared himself a disciple of Adolf Hitler.
Personality
He severely criticized many things, was an uncompromising and hypocritical person
Connections
On April 24, 1943, Rockwell married Judith Aultman; they had three children. Rockwell later complained that his wife's extreme commitment to feminism prevented her from being a true woman. His writings are full of personal criticisms of her.
Rockwell fell in love with Thora Hallgrimsson, a divorce with one child. Rockwell quickly divorced his wife, and he and Hallgrimsson were married on October 3, 1953. Fittingly, they spent their honeymoon in Berchtesgaden, the German town in which Hitler and other Nazi leaders once lived. They had four children. In 1958, Thora's parents called her home to Iceland; after a year there, she divorced Rockwell.
Rockwell was shot to death in Arlington, Virginia, by John Patler, a dark-skinned former member of the American Nazi party who had been expelled a few months earlier for allegedly denouncing his more Nordic-looking colleagues as "blue-eyed devils. "
World War II Victory Medal
Naval Reserve Medal
American Defense Service Medal
American Campaign Medal
Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal
European-African Middle Eastern Campaign Medal
National Defense Service Medal