American History

Nazis in Arlington: George Rockwell and the ANP

1/2/2013 in Virginia by Mark Jones


Now a coffee shop, this brick duplex near the Arlington
County courthouse was the headquarters of the American
Nazi Party for almost 20 years. (Photo source: Mark Jones)

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As it turned out, the crippling blow to the organization would come from within. On August 25, 1967, Rockwell was assassinated by one of his former deputies in the parking lot of the Dominion Hills strip mall on Wilson Blvd. John Patler – who had left the group a few months earlier after a dispute – took a rifle up to the shopping center roof and shot Rockwell through the front windshield of his car, which was parked outside the Econowash laundromat.

Close-Up of an American Nazi
November 28, 2010 by The Editorial Desk

Newly unearthed photos from the 1960s document hatred and banality on display in Northern Virginia.

By Charles S. Clark / Photos by Jack Hiller

In the spring of 1960, a mere 15 years after the defeat of Nazi Germany, an American version of the Nazi Party was operating openly in middle-class suburban Arlington. ... The Nazis’ hypnotic commander, etched into public consciousness by his full name of George Lincoln Rockwell, set up headquarters in a ramshackle home at 928 N. Randolph St. (today the site of the Richmond Square high-rise apartments in Ballston). The façade of the wood-frame house bore a large sign reading: “White Man … Fight! Smash the Black Revolution Now.”

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Why Arlington?
Rockwell, born in Bloomington, Ill., in 1918, grew up with performing skills as the son of vaudeville comedians. His upper-crust status would afford him prep school in Maine and philosophy studies at Brown University in Rhode Island. Later he attended the Pratt Institute of Art in Brooklyn, where he developed the drawing talents he would use in the advertising field and later to create Nazi fliers. He served as a Navy pilot during World War II.

When the Korean War broke out, Rockwell left his first wife and three children and was assigned to a U.S. naval air facility in Iceland. There he read Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” and became obsessed with Aryanism. He married an Icelandic woman and honeymooned in Germany (in Hitler’s retreat town of Berchtesgaden.)

In the mid-1950s, in a move that would estrange him from his wives and family, Rockwell returned to the United States and conceived the American Nazi Party. In 1958, he moved to the suburbs of the nation’s capital, where it would be easier to win publicity and funding in a primarily white jurisdiction.

Death of an Arlington Nazi
December 30, 2010 by The Editorial Desk

George Lincoln Rockwell was an internationally famous hate-monger when he was gunned down in Arlington in August 1967.

By Charles S. Clark / Photos by Jack hiller

The political ringleader who had achieved international notoriety was seen doing his own wash at a coin-operated laundromat on Wilson Boulevard in Arlington. Just before noon on Friday, Aug. 25, 1967, George Lincoln Rockwell, the founder of the American Nazi Party whose presence for nearly a decade had been an embarrassment to many locals, told the proprietor at the Econowash in Dominion Hills Shopping Center that he had to return home to fetch some bleach.

As the 49-year-old Rockwell slid into the seat of his fading blue-and-white 1958 Chevrolet, gunshots rang out from the roof of the shopping center. Two bullets burst through the windshield, knocking his car into another vehicle as Rockwell fell and landed face-up in the parking lot, splayed beside his box of Ivory Snow and a copy of the New York Daily News. Bystanders called police, but in minutes, the flamboyant—and ordinarily well-guarded—leader of the modestly sized American Nazi movement had died of a shot through the heart.

An important witness to the killing was the owner of nearby Tom’s Barber Shop, Tom Blakeney, now 80 and retired in Fredericksburg. Blakeney knew Rockwell as a customer of his shop. He recalls, Rockwell behaved “as a gentleman, and had been a lieutenant commander, so if you didn’t know his politics, you’d never guess.” Blakeney also cut the hair of some Nazi troopers; he remembers them cursing at images of black Americans on the barber-shop television.

American Nazi Party’s George Rockwell Assassinated 50 Years Ago Today in Arlington

by Chris Teale August 25, 2017 at 1:45 pm

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However, today there was a reminder that Rockwell’s Nazi beliefs did not die with him. A group of at least five men and one woman arrived in the parking lot, set up a small swastika-adorned wreath and a Nazi flag, and gave the “Heil Hitler” salute in memory of Rockwell, according to a photo tweeted by NBC 4’s Mark Segraves.

Link to tweet

‘Shocking’: Neo-Nazis fly swastika, salute at Virginia shopping center where leader was killed

By Michael E. Miller August 26 at 8:50 AM

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Michael E. Miller is a reporter on the local enterprise team.
Follow @MikeMillerDC