the citizens of the United States provided material support to Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun with the hope that the Nazis overthrown the American government and establish production of nuclear weapons by a conveyor method. This scandal, programes in the 1950s, resurfaced in the media and led many to wonder: where did the supporters of Nazism in the postwar United States?
The story, which writes the American edition The Daily Beast, Russia will remind many about the Bender, which, however, did not choose their nominees for masks so terrible images.
In the late 1940s – early 1950s, hundreds of Americans began to mail letters signed “Adolf Hitler”, “Eva Braun”, “assistant to the A. Hitler background Boguslawski” or “Skinner number one”. They all contain request for financial assistance for the couple of Hitler, who had miraculously escaped from the führer bunker in may 1945 and now living in Kentucky.
The plans of the leader of the Nazis has not changed – world domination, to achieve which he planned to raise a rebellion in the United States. In fact, the organization of the rebellion and needed money because the project was costly: with underground tunnels to Washington, invisible space ships and factories for the production of nuclear bombs in Idaho.
Despite 36 thousand devotees “bayonets”, supposedly acquired by Hitler in America, sometimes the author is asked to send the Fuhrer clothes, including women’s.
Fugitive Nazi leader promised that the investment will pay off handsomely: luxury villas, generals ‘ epaulets, diplomatic posts and even the title of “number two Skinner” or “Skinner number three.” If it is read literally as “Hitler” used the English word furrier (i.e. Skinner) instead of the German fuhrer with the umlaut.
Letters from him were literally full of spelling errors, but the real Hitler would not have written such – foreign languages he was given.
The news of hiding in Kentucky, the Nazis pretty quickly got in the local media, but the big noise is not made while in conversation with the führer-furrier had not joined the police and are not lured fake Hitler from the shelter with the help of small amounts. “Fuhrer number one” was a 61-year-old Baptist preacher Henry Johnson. In addition, African-American.
At the trial he stated that he worked as a private investigator and exposed with the help of Nazi correspondence of the enemies of the state, by order of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. The court has not believed and has sentenced to three years in prison. The fraudster then disappeared – the archives have not kept the mention of it. May have died in prison, probably changed his name and collected the money under another fake now do not know.
But wondering why he even was able to collect on the idea of Nazi revenge in postwar America the equivalent of 150 thousand dollars? It is clear that in most cases “letter from Hitler” simply thrown away by the recipients, but missed, and those who sacrificed to Johnson for considerable by the standards of their income money. Are these people so stupid, worse, convinced the Nazis?
The correct answer is a little of everything.
In the second half of the nineteenth century, the United States is among the world leaders in the proportion literate in the population. However, a sharp increase in the quality of education (along with the equally impressive growth of the welfare of the nation) peaked in the 1950-ies, and the great depression, by contrast, was accompanied by the degradation of public schools and the boom of the yellow press, specializing in mysticism and conspiracy theories.
Fraud Johnson is painfully reminiscent of the famous “Nigerian letter”, which appeared in the 1980-ies. The authors, posing as high-ranking African officials, or even princes, asked on remittances with the purpose to return home, hire a lawyer, pay a bribe or unblock Bank account. In response to “the princes” promise diamonds in stone caves or share in the oil deal.
This type of fraud is considered to be one of the most common on the Internet and continues to collect the harvest from the narrow-minded and greedy. If so, there is nothing to marvel at in the Eisenhower administration and for such victims of Johnson, Mason Huber from Virginia or one Charlie brown, who were promised a harem with Aryan virgins (brown, incidentally, was also black, but regarded the assistance to Hitler as a profitable investment).
Moreover, the theory of successful escape Hitler’s “rat trail” somewhere in Argentina was very popular in postwar America and Europe. All the i dotted a few days later, after a series of examinations, which, however, some conspiracy theorists don’t trust still.
In 1947, according to The Daily Beast, citing a survey by the Gallup Institute, the salvation of Hitler was supported by 45% of Americans.
Not all of them were Nazis, but the Nazis among them were also.
Before the war, Hitler’s ideas in America in varying degrees, shared in even by such iconic figures as Walt Disney and Henry Ford (and Ford shared so that financed the Nazi party and received a personal praise from the Fuhrer). Events under the sign of the swastika was collected in the USA of the 1930s tens of thousands of people.
There are several reasons. First, is racism, which is self-explanatory. Secondly, anti-Semitism, also common in America in those years. Third, isolationism, that is the fundamental unwillingness of the elite and of society to participate in the Second world war. Fourth, the anti-communism. Sometimes all at once.
One of the commanders of the American army in Europe, General George Smith Patton was the one who was terrified by the German command. And at the same time those who do not considered people Jews nor Communists.
With the US entry into the war Pro-Nazi activities and movements were prohibited. After the victory, stigmatized and marginalized, their members are associated not only with extremists, but traitors. Yesterday sympathizers Hitler wanted this period of their lives was erased from history and public memory.
However, in 1959, George Rockwell founded future American Nazi party (ANP), as the leader called to send American Jews to the gas chambers as cryptocommunist. This despite the fact that Rockwell was a commander (Lieutenant Colonel) of the U.S. Navy and a veteran of the war serving in the Atlantic.
Organizations like ANP were many, some still exist: for example, the National socialist movement, famous for his part in the riots in Ohio in 2005. It is the largest neo-Nazi group in the United States.
But the really big and any influential fascist parties during the time Johnson was gone. The idea of “business” is, apparently, determined by the fact that he, being black, had exaggerated the number of white Nazis in the United States. Coupled with greedy fools, nevertheless, was enough to raise quite a large sum of money – and this is the case when the victim of fraud did not mind.
