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Heinz Spanknöbel

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Heinz Heinrich Spanknobel (or Spanknöbel), (27 November 1893 in Homberg (Efze), Germany – 10 March 1947 NKVD Special Camp No. 1 near Mühlberg, Brandenburg),[1] was a German immigrant to America who formed and for a short time led the pro-Nazi Friends of New Germany.

Spanknobel was the son of Konrad Spanknobel (1866-1969) and Christiane Becker (1869-1966). He had an older brother Karl Adolf (6 September 1892, Homberg, Germany-22 March 1983, Watsontown, Pennsylvania, USA) and younger brothers and sisters: Kathe (1897-1970), Anne (1898-1962), Wilhelm (1900-1980), August (1902-1969), Martha (1904-1966) and Freida (1907-?).

In 1918 he married Elsa Fourier (1892-1957) in Würzburg, Germany.

Initial support for American fascist organizations came from Germany. In May 1933, Nazi Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess gave German immigrant and German Nazi Party member Heinz Spanknobel authority to form an American Nazi organization.[2] Shortly thereafter, with help from the German consul in New York City, Spanknobel formed the Friends of New Germany[2] by merging two older organizations in the United States, Gau-USA and the Free Society of Teutonia, which were both small groups with only a few hundred members each. The Friends of New Germany was based in New York but had a strong presence in Chicago.[2]

The organization led by Spanknobel was openly pro-Nazi, and engaged in activities such as storming the German language New Yorker Staats-Zeitung with the demand that Nazi-sympathetic articles be published, and the infiltration of other non-political German-American organizations. One of the Friends early initiatives was to counter, with propaganda, a Jewish boycott of businesses in the heavily German neighborhood of Yorkville, Manhattan.

In an internal battle for control of the Friends, Spanknobel was ousted as leader and subsequently deported in October 1933 because he had failed to register as a foreigner agent.[2] At the same time, Congressman Samuel Dickstein's investigation concluded that the Friends represented a branch of German dictator Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party in America.[3]

He was arrested on 4 October 1945 in Dresden after the occupation through the Soviet military by secret service NKVD and died of starvation in Soviet captivity.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b Leonhardt, Heike; Steinhoff, Uwe (12 May 2013). "Heinz Spanknöbel" (PDF) (in German). Retrieved 11 Nov 2013.
  2. ^ a b c d American Bund: The Failure of American Nazism by Jim Bredemus
  3. ^ Shaffer, Ryan (Spring 2010). "Long Island Nazis: A Local Synthesis of Transnational Politics". Vol. 21, no. 2. Journal of Long Island History. Retrieved 2010-11-19.

Further reading

  • The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich by Max Wallace (New York City: St.Martin's Press, 2003) ISBN 0-312-29022-5.


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