Step Back History did a video once about the relationship between the KKK and Neo-Nazis that claimed up until the end of the Vietnam Era they were always two separate strains of White Supremacy that were if anything hostile to each. And he even says that is partly because many Klansman were WW2 Veterans and WW2 Vets didn't like Nazis for "obvious reasons".
Sure would be embarrassing for him if any research at all would have shown that the founder of post-War American Self-identifying Nazism was a WW2 Veteran named George Lincoln Rockwell, and the first American Holocaust Denier was a WW2 Veteran named Eustace Mullins (see also Revilo P. Oliver and Willis Carlo). You see a lot of the kinds of people who become Soldiers have a mindset that actually makes them inclined to respect and even admire the enemies they fought against, it's more the people back home cheering on the war effort from the sidelines who buy into propaganda that completely dehumanizes the enemy. And in general the Warrior mentality inherently feeds into Nazism and Fascism. So no fighting on the Allied side in WW2 didn't inoculate anyone agaisnt Nazism or Fascism.
But even leaving that point aside, the tendency towards partnership between the Klan and the Nazis goes back to way before WW2 and thus certainly before Vietnam.
In some of my recent posts I've gotten into the sticky question of how to define Nazism and Fascism, but for this post I shall use the strictest definition for what makes a Nazi, before and during the War it refers to documented confirmed members of the NSDAP or derived organizations like the SA (Stormtroopers/Brown Shirts), SD and SS, and groups in other countries openly operating as extensions of that Party like the German American Bund. I have another definition of Nazi that essentially includes groups like the Klan, and well this post is part of arguing for that really, and even that is more narrow then how I use Fascist.
The main philosophical difference that does exist is the Klan favors Anglo-Israelism to reconcile their Racial Antisemitism and White Supremacy with believing in a Bible entirely about Semites being God's Chosen people. While Nazis, if they are actively Christian at all, favor Marcionism.
And it's important to remember that the Second Klan's main focus was never on Anti-Black Racism (The Segregationists had already won in The South, when they Lynched Black People they did it openly no Hoods necessary.) It was opposition to Immigrants, Catholics and Jews, the same things that animate Nazism.
Lothrop Stoddard was a known member of the Second Klan, he'd been exposed as one as early as 1923 and his books were required reading for Klan members. His books about White Supremacist Social Darwinism alongside Madisen Grant's work were an important influence on Alfred Rosenberg's Myth of The Twentieth Century. In 1939 and 1940 he was a in Nazi Germany as a journalist and received preferential treatment.
In the mid 1920s there was a Klan offshoot operating in northern Germany founded by American Immigrants to Germany called The Knights of The Fiery Cross. Information about it online is mainly through old Newspaper Articles, there really should be more research into it. But it seems there is known to have been members of this Klan who were also SA (the SA was temporarily officially banned for a time in the 20s). However the main German Political Party it was tied to was the Germany Social Party founded and lead by Richard Kunze, but that party's platform was essentially the same thing as the Nazis and by the end of the 20s they like a lot of other rival Volk Nationalist Parties had been absorbed into the NSDAP including Kunze himself who joined in 1930.
The Detroit chapter of the Klan was founded in 1921, the year after The International Jew was serialized, which I don't think is a coincidence. A key player in the origins of those articles was Boris Brasol a Russian Emigre who was a member of the Reconstruction Organization along with several other key early Nazis like Alfred Rosenberg. Another key player was Ernest G. Liebold who form a family of German Immigrants whose Antismeitism was derivative of the Volkish Proto-Nazism already forming in 19th Century Germany. William J Cameron meanwhile went on to become a proponent of Anglo-Israelism which was also very popular in the K.K.K. The articles were also translated into Germany where they where promoted by the Nazis resulting in Hitler praising Henry Ford in Mein Kampf.
I also don't think it's coincidence that Gerald Burotn Winrod founded his "Defenders of The Christian Faith" organization Kansas in 1925 the same year Kansas banned the KKK. Winrod went on to word with the Nazis via Ulrich Fleischhauer's Welt-Dienst/World-Service/Service Mondial. 1925 is also the year the Black Legion was formed in Detroit.
In the 1930s Britain had a Klan imitation group called the White Knights of Britain that operated out of the same building as the Nordic League. The Nordic League was founded by agents of Alfred Rosenberg's Nordische Gesellschaft and Archibald Ramsay for the purpose of networking between different Nazi Sympathizing groups and politicians in Britain. Oswald Mosley wasn't a member because he intended to model his Fascism more after Mussolini, but he did allow other BUF members to participate. It had stronger ties to Arnold Leese's Imperial Fascist League which despite it's name actually hated Mussolini style Fascism and got into Street Fights with Mosley's Black Shirts. The Nordic League was mainly lead by Archibald Maule Ramsay but the President of it's Liberty Restoration league front group was Lord Arthur Wellesley the 5th Duke of Wellington.
La Cagoule were a Klan style Right Wing terrorist group formed in France in the 1930s many of whom became collaborators during occupation.
George W. Christians is another link between the Second Klan and actual Nazi Spies, by working with Klansman C. A. Hester and Nazi Spy Oscar C. Pfaus.
In 1938 The KKK sent a letter to the House Unamerican Activities Committee informing them of how it had their full support. This form of the Committee was already primarily doing what we would later call McCarthyism, what nominal effort it did put into investigating Nazi sympathizers was half hearted and came to naught. Instead it's fixation on Communists resulted in it going after the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, they considered being Anti-Nazi the same as being Communist.
Theodore G. Bilbo was an admitted KKK member and he also openly praised Nazi Race Laws. (He was also closely associated with Earnest Sevier Cox co-founder of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America and future ally of Post-War SS survivors like Leers and even sent a letter of support to George Lincoln Rockwell.)
Eugene Talmadge was a Klan linked Governor of Georgia who bragged about reading Mein Kampf seven times.
But don't forget the Second Klan had Republicans too, like Oregon Senator Rufus C. Holman who expressed admiration for Hitler.
If you go to the Wikipedia Page for the man who was Grand Wizard of the KKK during WW2 James A. Colescott, it will talk about how the Kan had fought alongside Nazi Sympathizers in Race Riots like the one in Detroit in 1943. The National Workers League was the key front group for their collaboration.
Tyler Kent the American Ambassador to Britain who committed Treason helping Archibald Ramsay spy for the Nazis, went on to work for a KKK linked Newspaper in Florida.
In Chile in 1964 Franz Pfeiffer's Nazi party also founded a Chilean branch of the KKK.
Wesley A. Swift was a KKK recruiter who died in 1970m his associates included Neo-Nazi Oren Petito, Silver Shirts like Gerald L.K. Swift and Richard Girnt Butler who founded the Aryan Nations. He also claimed to have gotten his Anglo-Israelist ideas from Gerald Burton Winrod the "Jayhawk Nazi".
Looking into the National States Rights Party will bring up even more connections between Neo-Nazis and Klansmen all through the 50s and 60s. After all they are a group founded in 1958 whose flag is a fusion of Confederate and Nazi imagery. Likewise with the Christian Defense League.
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