Review

General Books

American Fuehrer thoughtfully examines George Lincoln Rockwell, founder of the American Nazi Party who remained a spiritual mentor to rabid rightists following his assassination in 1967. Despite confronting ridicule, quarantine, familial estrangement, and economic deprivation along the way, Rockwell remained a true believer, enamored of the man who sought to carry out a Final Solution that would result in the extermination of supposed "undesirables." Like his spiritual soul-mate Adolph Hitler, the American would-be fuehrer was both a virulent anti-Semite and a racist; thus, Rockwell called for the eradication of Jews and foresaw race war and a day when, as he put it, "We're going to have nice peaceful niggers like we used to..." (p. 97). However, in a bid to reach out to working-class white ethnics, Rockwell discarded the German Nazi Party's denigration of Slavic peoples. That enabled him to become an exemplar for other American rightists such as David Duke, who underscored "whiteness" in an effort to broaden their own base of support. Consequently, author Frederick J. Simonelli contends, Rockwell helped recast the ideological spectrum, purportedly enabling right-wingers like Robert Welch of the John Birch Society and H. L. Hunt to appear "tame by comparison" (p. 143). At the same time, Rockwell, through his revisionist denial that the Holocaust had occurred, helped to spur the rebirth of far-right organizations in Europe that defiantly identified with the Nazi terror; he acquired even greater prominence on the European continent than at home. Ultimately, Rockwell helped to spawn a "legacy of hate" (p. 141), and became "the bridge over which so many...have crossed" (p. 142).	1
American Fuehrer could readily be employed as a teaching vehicle in a vast panoply of classes. This book demonstrates all too starkly how persistent is the lure of the kind of anti-Semitic, racist pandering that Rockwell, Gerald L. K. Smith, and a series of other American far rightists have employed. Although he struggled to make his neophyte political organization viable, Rockwell ultimately acquired considerable success in garnering adherents, financial backing, and, most important, Cold War America, the 1960s, and race and prejudice, as among those for which Simonelli's book could be useful. With crisp prose underscored by sharp analyses and a psycho-historical approach, the book provides a case study of the mind and operations of a leading American political sociopath which can help the student and scholar alike to understand the inexplicable: how so shortly following the unveiling of the barbarity that swept over Europe, figures like George Lincoln Rockwell could glibly spout similar phrases while urging a replication of the Nazi-spawned horrors. The price of the First Amendment, it should be pointed out in American classrooms, includes the right of demagogic figures like Rockwell, Charles Coughlin, and others, to cloud public discourse with the dissemination of hate-filled literature and preachments. At the same time, the failure of such individuals and their movements to amass greater support serves as a testament to the enduring strength of the American system of governance and constitutional law.	2
The only caveat regarding the employment of this book in classrooms involves the troublesome subject matter and the age appropriateness of discussing it. American Fuehrer succeeds as both a teaching vehicle and as a work of scholarship. To his credit, Simonelli draws on a series of personal collections, interviews conducted with Rockwell family members and compatriots, university archives, the papers of such groups as the American Jewish Committee and B'nai B'rith's Anti-Defamation League, and the FBI's file on his subject. Government documents and records proved fruitful, too, along with video and audiotapes. Simonelli's study might have been strengthened had he explored more fully the links--which, admittedly, he touched on--between Rockwell and both earlier and later right wing groups. Curiously absent was much discussion of contemporary militia groups, who frequently espouse much of the same anti-Semitic, racist rhetoric that Rockwell so readily spouted. Nevertheless, this is a fine, albeit concise, biography of an important, but deeply troubled individual who sadly left his mark on his times and that which followed.	3
California State University, Chico   Robert C. Cottrell

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