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The Silver Legion of America, commonly known as the Silver Shirts, was an American fascist and pro-Nazi organization which was founded by William Dudley Pelley and headquartered in Asheville, North Carolina.<ref>"The Silver Shirts: Their History, Founder, and Activities" Template:Webarchive. August 24, 1933</ref>
HistoryEdit
Pelley was a former journalist, novelist and screenwriter turned spiritualist who began to promote antisemitic views by 1931, including the belief that Jews were possessed by demons.<ref name=atwood/> He formed the Silver Legion with the goal of bringing about a "spiritual and political renewal", inspired by the success of Adolf Hitler's Nazi movement in Germany.<ref name=atwood/>
A nationalist, fascist group,<ref name="americainwwii.com">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> the paramilitary Silver Legion wore a uniform modeled after the Nazis' brown shirts (SA),<ref name=atwood/> consisting of a silver shirt with a blue tie, along with a campaign hat and blue corduroy trousers with leggings. The uniform shirts bore a scarlet letter L over the heart, which according to Pelley was "standing for Love, Loyalty, and Liberation."<ref name=atwood/> The blocky slab serif L-emblem was in a typeface similar to the present-day Rockwell Extra Bold. The organizational flag was a plain silver field with a red L in the canton on the upper left hand corner. By 1934, the Legion claimed that it had 15,000 members.<ref name="Silver Shirts"/>
Legion leader Pelley called for the establishment of a "Christian Commonwealth" in America, a government that would combine the principles of fascism, theocracy, and socialism, along with the exclusion of Jews and non-whites.<ref name="Silver Shirts" /> He claimed he would save America from Jewish communists just as "Mussolini and his Black Shirts saved Italy and as Hitler and his Brown Shirts saved Germany." Pelley ran in the 1936 presidential election on a third-party ticket under the Christian Party banner. Pelley hoped to seize power in a "silver revolution" and set himself up as the dictator of the United States. He would be called "the Chief", a title which would be analogous to the titles used by other fascist leaders, such as "Der Führer" for Adolf Hitler and "Il Duce" for Benito Mussolini.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> However, the Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt was re-elected, and Pelley failed to appear in the top four. By around 1937, the Silver Legion's membership had declined to about 5,000.<ref name="Bernstein">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 1936, a small Silver Shirt office was established in downtown Spokane.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> About 200 members participated before the group's end.
When the Silver Shirts tried to hold a rally at the Elks Club in Minneapolis, the meeting was interrupted by senior local Jewish-American organized crime figure David Berman.<ref>Neil Karlen (2013), Augie's Secrets: The Minneapolis Mob and the King of the Hennepin Strip, Minnesota Historical Society Press, pp. 97–98.</ref>
Pelley disbanded the organization soon after the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.<ref name=atwood>Template:Cite journal</ref>
On January 20, 1942, Pelley was sentenced to serve two to three years in prison by Superior Court Judge F. Don Phillips, in Asheville, North Carolina, for violating terms of probation of a 1935 conviction for violating North Carolina security laws. The same sentence had been suspended pending good behavior, but the court found that during that period, Pelley had published false and libelous statements, published inaccurate reports and advertising, and supported a secret military organization.<ref>Associated Press, "Pelley of Silver Shirts Must Serve Prison Term," The San Bernardino Daily Sun, San Bernardino, California, Wednesday 21 January 1942, Volume 48, page 1.</ref> For claiming that the devastation of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor was worse than the government claimed, Pelley was arrested by federal authorities and sentenced to 15 years in prison for sedition and conspiracy to commit sedition, including for making seditious statements, obstructing military recruiting, and fomenting insurrection within the military.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
In popular cultureEdit
- Sinclair Lewis's novel It Can't Happen Here depicts a fascist takeover of the United States by an anti-Roosevelt demagogue who claims that he is inspired to do so by the Silver Legion of America.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
- In the Paradox Interactive video game Hearts of Iron IV, should the United States turn fascist, the Silver Legion of America will be depicted as the ruling party. Pelley can become president if certain conditions are met and the country will be renamed to the "Free American Empire".<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
See alsoEdit
- Authoritarianism
- Christian Party (United States, 1930s)
- German American Bund
- Political uniform
- Ulrich Fleischhauer
ReferencesEdit
Notes Template:Reflist
Further reading
- Allen, Joe "'It Can't Happen Here?': Confronting the Fascist Threat in the US in the Late 1930s," International Socialist Review, Part One: whole no. 85 (Sept.–Oct. 2012), pp. 26–35; Part Two: whole no. 87 (Jan.–Feb. 2013), pp. 19–28.
- Template:Cite journal
- Ribuffo, Leo Paul The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983.
- Spivak, John L. Secret Armies: The New Technique of Nazi Warfare. New York: Modern Age Books, 1939.
- Werly, John The Millenarian Right: William Dudley Pelley and the Silver Legion of America. PhD dissertation. Syracuse University, 1972.
- Yeadon, Glen. The Nazi Hydra in America. Joshua Tree, CA: Progressive Press, 2008.
