From The Guardian (London)
Wednesday April 4, 2007
Lawrence Dennis was a leading light in the American fascist movement of the 1930s. He was a fan of Hitler and a self-avowed anti-semite. Now a new book reveals that he was actually black - although even his wife didn't know. Gary Younge reports.
Lawrence Dennis was, arguably, the brains behind American fascism. He attended the Nuremberg rallies, had a personal audience with Mussolini, and met Nazi leaders; throughout the 1930s he provided the intellectual ballast for America's bourgeoning pro-fascist movement. But though his work was well known and well appreciated by the intelligentsia and political elites on both sides of the Atlantic, there was one crucial fact about him that has never emerged until now: he was black.
It turns out that the man Life magazine once described as "America's number one intellectual fascist" was, in fact, a light-skinned African American, born in the segregated South - although he "passed" for white among the greatest race hatemongers known to mankind.
In a new book, The Colour of Fascism, Gerald Horne reveals how Dennis managed to live a lie for his entire adult life. "It's not clear that his wife knew that he was black," says Horne, a history professor at the University of Houston. "He certainly never told his daughter. When she asked him, he would just smile enigmatically."
Dennis was born in Atlanta, Georgia in 1893 just as racial segregation had fully reasserted its authority on the South in the wake of the civil war. His mother was African American, as is clear from pictures; his father's race is not known. As a boy he was a famous child preacher, spreading the gospel first among black American congregations and then later abroad, even in Britain. But at some point in his adolescence, he did something quite dramatic: he cut all ties with his family so that he could attend the prestigious school of Exeter, and then Harvard, as a white man. After that he briefly pursued a career as a diplomat and broker, and then in the wake of the Wall Street Crash went on to become the public face of American fascism. None of these jobs would have been open to him had it been known he was black.
"Passing" was common in American society at the time. Despite laws against miscegenation, the pervasive practice of masters raping their slaves had produced a large number of light-skinned people. Under America's rigidly enforced codes of racial supremacy, any child of a mixed-race relationship was deemed "black", regardless of their complexion. They called it the one-drop rule: one drop of "black blood" made you black.
Given the manifest benefits of life on the other side of the colour line, black people who could pass as white often did, even though doing so meant cutting themselves off from their family and their past. Passing has provided the dramatic tension for many a novel, including Philip Roth's The Human Stain, Walter Moseley's Devil in a Blue Dress and, most pertinently, Nella Larsen's Passing. "Every year approximately 12,000 white-skinned Negroes disappear," Walter White, the former head of the civil rights organisation, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, claimed in the late 1940s. "People whose absence cannot be explained by death or emigration ... men and women who have decided that they will be happier and more successful if they flee from the proscription and humiliation which the American colour line imposes on them." White, who was light-skinned, used to pass himself as white at times when investigating lynch mobs in the South.
Interestingly, Dennis was dark enough to make most people look twice. The Nazi sympathiser and pilot Charles Lindbergh suspected that some of Dennis's "ancestors ... might have come from the near east". Lindbergh's wife Anne referred to Dennis's "bronzed" skin. A New York Times report in 1927 outlined Dennis's "close-cropped bristly hair and [skin] deeply bronzed by the tropical sun". A leftwing newspaper mentioned "the tall, swarthy prophet of 'intellectual fascism' ".
"Some suspected and others knew," says Horne. "But there was a don't-ask-don't-tell policy in place at the time for those on the borders of the colour line. One could perform whiteness to some degree, and that is precisely what Dennis did. His conservative politics also insulated him from a lot of further inquiry."
Years later, when he was forced to defend himself against charges of being a Nazi collaborator in a high-profile trial, one onlooker is recorded as saying that she was "puzzled and apprehensive over the fact that in nothing which I have read about Lawrence Dennis has mention been made that he is the son of a Negro mother. This fact was known to thousands, at least up to his 16th year when I knew him."
But while most people were, it seems, certain that he was no Wasp, no one seems to have had the audacity to suggest publicly that he was black either. And among the black community there was such a widespread awareness of passing that "outing" someone was considered a particularly vengeful act. "Black people then would have been very protective of his secret in a way I think they would not be now," says Horne. "He was like a slave who had escaped the plantation."
In any case, Dennis was not your run-of-the-mill fascist. He described fascism not so much as an ideology he favoured but simply as the inevitable consequence of America's political trajectory. "I took what was then considered a pro-facist view," Dennis explained in his later years. "I said that Hitler and Mussolini were rising to meet the economic crisis and that we would have to do much the same thing ... I defended them and tried to explain them; and that [brought] me under considerable criticism and attack as being a fascist ... I said the United States will have to go fascist in the same way that Germany and Italy have gone."
Dennis had in fact gone further, while still hiding behind the smokescreen of objectivity. "When analysed simply on the basis of historical fact, [Hitler] is not only the greatest political genius since Napoleon but also the most rational," he once said.
Dennis's views gained particular currency in the late 1930s as a significant portion of the US rallied against America joining the war and he launched into his most prominent period as a forthright isolationist.
Horne describes Dennis's position as both cynical and logical. "Well, you could see why he would think it was inevitable," he says. "Fascism was a far greater threat to the US than communism ever was. Dennis had no faith in the white working class. So if you believe it's going to happen you have one of two choices. You can fight against it or you can ride the wave. He decided to ride the wave and that was hard-boiled cynicism and coldly calculating."
Dennis was a prickly, arrogant character who never seemed to be happier than when he was slating the intellects of others and making references to his own superiority. In an interview with the author John Roy Carlson, he was asked about a series of congressmen with whom he was acquainted. For each one he would just say: "Dumb. No brains." The influential publisher of the Chicago Tribune company? "Dumb. No brains." On a trip to Germany he met Rudolph Hess, whom he regarded as "more of an intellectual than the others", meaning Hermann Goering and Joseph Goebbels.
Dennis was undoubtedly antisemitic - "I am no friend of the Jews," he once wrote - but his antisemitism was no more pronounced than that of most Wasps in the US at the time and less severe than that of the Nazis. "Hitler says the Jew cannot be a citizen of Germany. I consider that position to be unsound nationalism," he said. "As for any persecution or organized violence against Jews in this country, I consider it unthinkable."
Not surprisingly, perhaps, his racial politics were the most peculiar. He kept company with some of the most extreme white supremacists of his day, but despite the views of most of his friends and backers, Dennis managed both to champion fascism and subtly to maintain a distance from racist polemic.
While in Berlin, he asked Karl Boemer of Hitler's Propaganda Ministry: "Why don't you treat the Jews more or less as we treat the Negroes in America? You can practice discrimination and all that, but be a little hypocritical and moderate and do not get in conflict with American opinion." As the years went on he opposed segregation, branding the "the case against integration in the schools" as one "based on odious comparisons".
In retrospect, given his status as a black man in white drag writing for the hard right, his constant references to race in America seem reckless. "He was like an arsonist who simply could not resist returning to the scene of a crime," says Horne. But in the end it was the law rather than his race that would come into conflict with his rightwing views. For, as the war was winding down, Dennis found himself on trial for sedition; he was one of 29 defendants charged with undermining the morale of the armed forces. They were accused of being part of some kind of worldwide Nazi conspiracy. (Horne describes the trial as a farcical attempt to "frame a guilty man".)
The case collapsed after the judge had a fatal heart attack. But Dennis's world was also collapsing. Friends and financial supporters distanced themselves from him. His wife, Eleanor, who had worked as both housekeeper and secretary to his one-man intellectual operation, filed for divorce in 1956. Dennis's arrogance, it seems, had been as prominent in his personal life as in his professional life. "It is just hard to believe Eleanor can be so mad," he wrote to a friend. "What jolts me is that over 62 years in which I had lots of affairs and nearly a dozen women one time or another who seriously wanted to marry ... I never had a single one turn on me. I could meet and exchange fond memories with every one of them. This is the first time a woman ever turned on me."
Their two daughters, Emily and Laura, studied at top colleges before graduating into good marriages even as their father's fortunes declined. After his divorce, with no extended family - he had had to bid farewell to them years ago in order to pass as white - he was on his own. With subscriptions to his newsletter drying up and the cold-war era dismissive of his politics, he struggled to pay his way with bits of writing and the occasional lecture. He did marry again, though, and after his second wife died he moved in with daughter Laura.
In what may have been his most audacious act of defiance, or evidence that he had finally given up the pretence, he eventually let his hair grow out. When he died, in obscurity, in 1977, he did so with an afro.
Gary Younge displays more racism than Lawrence Dennis ever did ("The Fascist Who 'Passed' for White," 4 April 2007) when he condemns an obvious Caucasian as "black" simply because his ancestry isn't "pure."
Younge delights in displaying contempt for a man he considers inferior and who dared to claim an ancestry of which he was supposedly unworthy. Why was Dennis inferior? Younge tells us that a small amount of "black" ancestry makes a white person "black." How can that be unless the black race is indeed biologically inferior? If blacks are not inferior, then Dennis was white. I doubt Younge would dare to condemn a Jew for "passing for Aryan" or failing to claim a "non-Aryan" identity.
Younge does not condemn the daughters or descendants of Lawrence Dennis as "black." Where, in his racial "wisdom," is the dividing line between a true "white" and a mere "light-skinned black" (an odious oxymoron that should be banned from polite society). Nearly all of Latin America, North Africa and the Middle East are "tainted" with this magical blood of the black race in whose equality Younge claims to believe. Are they all "blacks" or inferiors "passing" as something superior? Is the "white race" too good to absorb "black" genes?
I suggest that Younge read my book on multiracial whiteness, Passing For Who You Really Are. It can be found on Amazon.co.uk.
The turning point of Dennis' life came when he served in Nicaragua. He resigned from the foreign service in disgust at the US intervention there against the Sandino rebellion. He then became an adviser to the Latin American fund of the Seligman banking trust, but again made enemies when he wrote a series of exposes of their foreign bond enterprises in The New Republic in 1930. These exposes propelled Dennis into a national public intellectual career, publishing his first book at the height of the depression in 1932, Is Capitalism Doomed?. The book submitted that capitalism was, and by all right should be, on its death knell, but warned of the grave dangers of a world devoid of its positive legacy. Dennis' two later books detailed his sense of the system that was emerging to replace it, which he believed to be fascism. The Coming American Fascism in 1936, detailing the system's substructure, and The Dynamics Of War And Revolution in 1940, on the superstructure.
These works remain controversial today, especially within the old right. Thomas DiLorenzo has maintained that Dennis was in fact the "leading intellectual fascist" he was smeared as by the partisans of the New Deal, while Justin Raimondo has argued that Dennis was a disinterested student of phenomena to which he was opposed, anticipating with far superior execution the later work of such authors as James Burnham. Others, including Raimondo, have suggested that Dennis' writings are far closer to the ideas professed by the modern anti-globalist left than are those of the New Left.[citation needed]
Dennis, along with Charles Beard, led the progressive opposition to the New Deal. In 1944 he was indicted, in a group which ranged from genuine progressives to pro-Nazi agitators, in a sedition prosecution under the Smith Act which ended in a mistrial because the judge died of a heart attack.[2]. Dennis co-authored with Maximillian St. George an account of the trial, A Trial On Trial, in 1946.
In his later years Dennis continued to propagate his views through a modest newsletter, The Appeal To Reason, which maintained a prominent circle of readers , including Herbert Hoover, Joseph P. Kennedy, William Appleman Williams, Harry Elmer Barnes, and James J. Martin. Dennis' last book, Operational Thinking For Survival, was published in 1967
Posted: Thu 05 Apr 2007 15:42 Post subject: Re: British support of the ODR?
Powell wrote:
Gary Younge displays more racism than Lawrence Dennis ever did ("The Fascist Who 'Passed' for White," 4 April 2007) when he condemns an obvious Caucasian as "black" simply because his ancestry isn't "pure."
I may be wrong, but I got the impression that Younge (a Brit journalist) was simply trying to convey the feel of the book that he was reviewing, The Colour of Fascism by Gerald Horne, a professor of African-American studies at the University of Houston, Texas. I would have aimed my wrath at the USAmerican academic book author, not at the Brit journalist book reviewer.
Last edited by fwsweet on Thu 05 Apr 2007 15:47; edited 1 time in total
Lawrence Dennis, Racial Passing, and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States
Gerald Horne
ISBN 0814736866
256 pages, 4
Cloth
"With his characteristic verve, Professor Gerald Horne has written an excellent book about the fascinating and mysterious Lawrence Dennis. This pairing of the leftist black intellectual Horne and the racially-closeted fascist Dennis makes for an exciting exploration of obscure terrain that warrants more notice. Professor Horne has performed an important service by revealing so vividly Dennis's strange but instructive career."
—Randall Kennedy, Harvard Law School
"I am almost certainly not alone in expressing surprise that Lawrence Dennis, the principal American intellectual fascist, was an African American who 'passed' for white. In the process of explaining Dennis's rise and how his secret minority status shaped his political extremism, Gerald Horne has researched and written a compelling and significant history of American fascism."
—Kenneth Janken, author of White: The Biography of Walter White, Mr. NAACP
What does it mean that Lawrence Dennis—arguably the "brains" behind U.S. fascism—was born black but spent his entire adult life passing for white? Born in Atlanta in 1893, Dennis began life as a highly touted African American child preacher, touring nationally and arousing audiences with his dark-skinned mother as his escort. However, at some point between leaving prep school and entering Harvard University, he chose to abandon his family and his former life as an African American in order to pass for white. Dennis went on to work for the State Department and on Wall Street, and ultimately became the public face of U.S. fascism, meeting with Mussolini and other fascist leaders in Europe. He underwent trial for sedition during World War II, almost landing in prison, and ultimately became a Cold War critic before dying in obscurity in 1977.
Based on extensive archival research, The Color of Fascism blends biography, social history, and critical race theory to illuminate the fascinating life of this complex and enigmatic man. Gerald Horne links passing and fascism, the two main poles of Dennis's life, suggesting that Dennis's anger with the U.S. as a result of his upbringing in Jim Crow Georgia led him to alliances with the antagonists of the U.S. and that his personal isolation which resulted in his decision to pass dovetailed with his ultimate isolationism.
Dennis's life is a lasting testament to the resilience of right-wing thought in the U.S. The first full-scale biographical portrait of this intriguing figure, The Color of Fascism also links the strange career of a prominent American who chose to pass.
Gerald Horne is Moores Professor of History and African-American Studies at the University of Houston. His books include Race Woman: The Lives of Shirley Graham Du Bois and Race War!: White Supremacy and the Japanese Attack on the British Empire (both available from NYU Press).
The preface to the book can be read here (in PDF format). Be warned though, it's full of critical race theory code speak.
Lawrence Dennis, Racial Passing, and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism in the United States
It's interesting that the British paper's review omits the above subtitle. One is sorely tempted to speculate that Gerald Horne is attempting to propose some linkage between the "passing" phenomenon and right-wing extremism. The traditional civil rights organizations similarly posited a relationship between the multiracial census initiative and supposed right-wing efforts to roll back civil rights advances.
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Fri 06 Apr 2007 20:51 Post subject: Re: The fascist who 'passed' for white
chasbyrd wrote:
... Now a new book reveals that he was actually black - although even his wife didn't know. Gary Younge reports.
...
Yes, there have been many Nazis and also Ku Klux Klaners (I believe) who were admixed individuals with Jew, Native, Black, Slav, Gypsy, Arab or any of those so called by them "inferior" races. That's nothing new. Some even suspect that Hitler himself was 1/4 Jew, for example.
However, the paragraph above is simply IDIOTIC.
How come someone is Black and do not notice it? That's the most ridiculous and absurd statement I have read in a long time.
Racism is the rejection of people because of looks. In several spheres of life people IS what LOOKS, not what the family tree or the genetical markers show. If a person was white racist is because he look like a white and hated people that don't look like white. That's all.
Posted: Fri 06 Apr 2007 21:22 Post subject: Re: The fascist who 'passed' for white
oevega wrote:
That's the most ridiculous and absurd statement I have read in a long time. Racism is the rejection of people because of looks.
Not according to this site's standards.
1. Discrimination and prejudice based upon the victim's appearance exists over much of the world.
2. Discrimination and prejudice based upon the victim's ancestry, regardless of his/her appearance also exists, mainly in the U.S. and in the Hindu caste system.
To reduce verbiage, paragraphs B.4.e and B.4.f of The Rules recommend using "colorism" for (1) and "racism" for (2). There is nothing magical about the terms. They are meant simply to enable site members of different cultures to understand each other.
If you have a problem with this usage, then feel free to call (1), "appearance-based discrimination." And feel free to call (2), "ancestry-based discrimination."
Joined: 04 May 2005 {Posts: 2021 } Location: santiago, chile
Posted: Sat 07 Apr 2007 01:00 Post subject: Re: The fascist who 'passed' for white
fwsweet wrote:
oevega wrote:
That's the most ridiculous and absurd statement I have read in a long time. Racism is the rejection of people because of looks.
Not according to this site's standards.
1. Discrimination and prejudice based upon the victim's appearance exists over much of the world.
2. Discrimination and prejudice based upon the victim's ancestry, regardless of his/her appearance also exists, mainly in the U.S. and in the Hindu caste system.
To reduce verbiage, paragraphs B.4.e and B.4.f of The Rules recommend using "colorism" for (1) and "racism" for (2). There is nothing magical about the terms. They are meant simply to enable site members of different cultures to understand each other.
If you have a problem with this usage, then feel free to call (1), "appearance-based discrimination." And feel free to call (2), "ancestry-based discrimination."
OK. You are right. I have no problem with the usage in this site. So, we are taking of "Colorism" then. So "Racism" as defined in this site, and in practical terms, does not exist in my culture.
Joined: 05 Apr 2006 {Posts: 300 } Location: Chatsworth, CA
Posted: Sat 07 Apr 2007 13:52 Post subject:
Very interesting book. I'll have to check it out when it comes to area libraries.
It's clear that Lawrence Dennis was part of the black American cultural community, the black American ethnic group. His mother, his sole parent, was a black American. No one disputes that.
Dennis himself was a child prodigy as a preacher in a black American church. The black church is and was one of the central institutions for black Americans in terms of religion, culture, and politics. No one disputes this.
What's also clear is that by the standards of the time, a person with a black American mother was also black. This was a matter of both law and custom. The law and the custom were expressions of the values of white American society. Black Americans in this era had little political or economic power, especially in the Jim Crow South. White Americans, then, decided who was white, and defined the standards of whiteness.
So Dennis was black. To claim otherwise would involve imposing alien cultural and legal values on white Americans of that era. I wouldn't go so far as to call it "ethnic rape," but forcing a community to accept people it would otherwise not accept is invasion at the very least. In order to gain acceptance into white society, Dennis had to deceive everyone about his parentage. He had the right, as anyone should, to turn his back on his family, but this is hardly admirable, and it is deception.
I can only conclude that the writer and the reviewer were correct in their characterization of Dennis as a black man. Just because we disagree with the prevailing values and laws of America in that time doesn't mean we can deny their existence. To do so would represent a triumph of ideology over facts.
add.
oevega was on to something when he commented on the way that Fascists often have mixed or ambiguous backgrounds. I suspect that the rigidity and (supposed) certainty of Fascist ideologies makes them appealing to people who are confused and/or insecure about where they fit in.
The leading Fascist movement in the postwar US has been the Nation of Islam. The NOI ideology is fiercely anti white and prescribes the behavior and beliefs of its members in minute detail. Not surprisingly, the leading members of the movement are usually black identified multiracials with considerable Euro ancestry.
Farrakhan, the half white appearing, partly Jewish in ancestry, Fascist, denounces whites and Jews one more time. Theater of the absurd.
Posted: Sun 08 Apr 2007 04:07 Post subject: Dennis not "black"
Odocoileus said:
Quote:
It's clear that Lawrence Dennis was part of the black American cultural community, the black American ethnic group. His mother, his sole parent, was a black American. No one disputes that.
Nobody? Clearly, you haven't read "Interracial Voice." Let's replace the adjective "black" with "white" and replace "Lawrence Dennis" with "Barack Obama" or "Halle Berry." If a dark mulatto kid is raised in the "white community" by a white single parent, would you say that the kid had no right to call himself a member of the "black" ethnic/racial group?
Posted: Sun 08 Apr 2007 04:22 Post subject: Reviewer's intent
Frank said:
Quote:
I may be wrong, but I got the impression that Younge (a Brit journalist) was simply trying to convey the feel of the book that he was reviewing, The Colour of Fascism by Gerald Horne, a professor of African-American studies at the University of Houston, Texas. I would have aimed my wrath at the USAmerican academic book author, not at the Brit journalist book reviewer.
If Horne had written a book denying the Holocaust, do you think the reviewer would simply cite his views without distancing himself from them? Would he not take pains to point out to his readers that the evidence in support of the Holocaust's reality is overwhelming and undeniable to any reasonable person? Younge is effectively endorsing Horne's view that rejecting forced hypodescent and a "black" identity in a person who does not look "black" is immoral. Younge send a message to people of good will that "invisible race" (if it's "black") is a valid concept and it's acceptable for a person who considers himself "anti-racist" to think this way.
oevega was on to something when he commented on the way that Fascists often have mixed or ambiguous backgrounds. I suspect that the rigidity and (supposed) certainty of Fascist ideologies makes them appealing to people who are confused and/or insecure about where they fit in.
.
But was Dennis truly a Fascist? There is some dispute on this issue and the primary basis for the charge that he was appears to be his membership in the America First Committee.
There are also examples of Jewish/of Jewish ancestry fascists in Germany.
Interesting side note: My mother befriended a German woman and her mother when we lived in Germany. Their last name was Brauning. Now, in Germany, this surname likely has no Jewish connation or association, but I can remember wondering whether the daughter had Jewish ancestry or was Jewish through her father. To me, she and her father (who had been a Nazi officer and died in WWII) "looked Jewish." They had "Semitic" noses that made Streisand's look small and there were no "Roman" bumps and lumps to be seen.
To this day I still wonder whether I was onto something. Even Nazis made exceptions in their strigent categorization schemes. It seems that a Dennis or a Felton can exist quite compatibly within seemingly contradictory racist mental ontologies if the space is made for them by the powers that be.
Posted: Tue 10 Apr 2007 04:14 Post subject: Hitler's Jewish Soldiers
This is a great book, though a more accurate title would be "Hitler's Part-Jewish Soldiers." The great majority of these men did not consider themselves Jews. The Third Reich's racial purity dramas remind me so much of the U.S.
Hitler's Jewish Soldiers: The Untold Story Of Nazi Racial Laws And Men Of Jewish Descent In The German Military (Modern War Studies) (Paperback)
by Bryan Mark Rigg (Author)
Joined: 27 Nov 2004 {Posts: 168 } Location: Mid-Atlantic States; USA
Posted: Tue 10 Apr 2007 07:09 Post subject: Re: Hitler's Jewish Soldiers
Ms. Sagascend and Ms. Powell, speaking of that nefarious monster, Hitler,
you ladies (and others here, too) may find this a bit interesting. I guess
it's true. Poor kids (sigh). It's sad, sad, scary stuff. Unfortunately folks
can't always pick their relatives. About the best one can do is pick one's
children's mother or father. My heart is broken for these two young men;
relatives of such infamy. It is a cruel burden they must forever bear. Yet,
at least they are alive. Millions of Jews and others cannot say the same.
With respect;
Leo Y. "Ireland" Abdulmalik
Quote:
Author talks about 'The Last of the Hitlers'
February 6, 2002 Posted: 4:34 AM EST (0934 GMT)
(CNN) -- Adolf Hitler left no offspring when he died in his bunker in 1945. But he wasn't the last of the Hitler line. He had a nephew, William Patrick Hitler, who grew up in England, moved to America, and had three sons.
The story of those Hitlers is told in a new documentary, "The Last of the Hitlers," based on the book of the same name by British journalist David Gardner. CNN's Paula Zahn spoke to Gardner on Tuesday's "American Morning."
PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Very remarkable story to share with you now. There are three brothers who live normal, anonymous lives with their mother in a modest house in Long Island, New York. But the three men have a darkly unique heritage. They happen to be the great nephews of Adolf Hitler, the last known living relatives of the murderous tyrant.
A new documentary, called "The Last of the Hitlers," tells the story of the brothers, and their bizarre pact with each other never to have children in order to sever the bloodline of their infamous relative.
The film is based on the fascinating book of the same name by journalist David Gardner, who joins us now from Los Angeles, California.
So David, how did you find these brothers?
Photos of Hitler's great nephews that appear in Gardner's book
DAVID GARDNER, AUTHOR, "THE LAST OF THE HITLERS": Well, it was a long journey. About 1995, I was working with a news agency in New York, and I was asked to try and track them down, track down William Patrick Hitler, who was Hitler's nephew. There had been some cuttings, old newspaper cuttings, from before the Second World War, and that's pretty much the last anyone heard of him.
So, I kind of started with a phone book, looking under Hitler in the phone book. Didn't get very far. It was a long journey. Took me about four years to find the family.
ZAHN: And once you found them, what proof did you have that these men were actually related to Hitler?
GARDNER: Well, for a start, I had birth dates, and documentary evidence before I actually approached the family, and then when I actually knocked at their door, this is the first time anyone had actually knocked at their door for 50 years. So it was something of a shock to them, but William Patrick's widow confirmed that her husband was indeed -- or had indeed -- been the nephew of Adolf Hitler.
ZAHN: Sorry -- sorry. I was just going to refer back to the head shots we just saw. There didn't seem to be any overt physical resemblance to Adolf Hitler. What were the similarities you found, if any, between these nephews and their uncle?
GARDNER: Well, I think that is the point. Apart from a very vague resemblance in looks, these -- this part of the family is so far removed from Adolf. They've lived all-American lives. They live in a small town in Long Island. ... They were born in America, and these are the American Hitlers, in effect.
But they've lived very different lives to the one that the Fuhrer lived, and indeed, a different life than then one their father lived. Their father actually grew up in England, spent six, seven years in Germany in the 1930s, where his uncle gave him a job, and then he came to America just before the Second World War, and the family's been here ever since.
ZAHN: Tell us a little bit about this blackmail letter that you learned of. Who had the letter and what did it tell us?
GARDNER: Well, William Patrick, as I said, was working in Germany in the '30s, and he'd gone there hoping to benefit from his uncle's position. At that time, having a Hitler in Germany, there was a good chance he was going to get a good position, but he found that he was kind of knocked around -- he worked at a lowly bank job, he worked in a car factory, never really getting any decent money or any position. He sent a blackmail letter to Adolf, basically saying: If you don't give me a better job and treat me a little bit better, I'll go public with the speculation within the family that Hitler himself had a Jewish grandfather.
ZAHN: Whatever became of that threat?
GARDNER: Well, in fact, Hitler kind of bowed down to it, this lowly nephew, and did give him some money, which is kind of curious. I mean, of all the terrible things that Hitler did, the one person that stood up to him seems to have been his own nephew, and who went away with the equivalent now to a quarter-million dollars.
ZAHN: Let's talk about the reality of the lives these nephews live. Did they all change their names so they could live in relative obscurity here?
GARDNER: Yeah, that's the case. In fact, when William Patrick, Adolf's nephew, came to America, he went on to serve in the U.S. Navy and fought against his uncle. But after the war, obviously, it became clear that having the name Hitler was not a good thing to have. And he changed his name, and went on to have -- to marry, have a family, and they lived in total anonymity. That was for the last 50 years.
ZAHN: And David, is it true the nephews signed a pact making the agreement that none of them would ever bear children so that the bloodline would basically stop with them?
GARDNER: They didn't sign a pact, but what they did is, they talked amongst themselves, talked about the burden they've had in the background of their lives, and decided that none of them would marry, none of them would have children. And that's something that -- a pact they've kept to this day.
ZAHN: Well, it's amazing, it took you four years to find them. The story is absolutely fascinating, as is the book. We very much appreciate your getting up at this ungodly hour on the West Coast to join us this morning.
GARDNER: It's a pleasure. Thank you.
ZAHN: David Gardner, thank you very much for your time this morning.
The subjects of this photograph are 'Lawrence Dennis, the Boy Evangelist' and his adoptive mother. It was taken about 1905, while they were on a preaching tour of Britain, and is one of a small collection of photographs of preachers assembled by John Mason of Alford.
Lawrence Dennis (1893-1977) was born in Atlanta, Georgia, USA, the son of a prominent white lawyer and his mixed race mistress, and was adopted by a mixed race family. His career as a boy preacher was followed by service in the First World War and Harvard University, after which he spent several years in the United States diplomatic service. http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/sandino/sandino5.gif (Inauguration of Conservative President Adolfo Díaz (center), with U.S. diplomat Lawrence Dennis and
former president Emiliano Chamorro.)
He became a controversial figure in the United States in the 1930s and during the Second World War because of his right-wing economic writings and isolationist political views. He was one of 30 defendants in a case of Sedition brought by the US Government in 1944. However, it became clear that the government could not prove its case, and the sudden death of the Judge led to the abandonment of the trial.
The First World War
Foreigners from opposite sides of the conflict both appeared in Lincolnshire during the course of the First World War. an Prisoners of War, c.1919.
See the "Attachments" section below for one of a series of landscape scenes and portraits by W. Schmid, a Prisoner of War labourer working on the Sutton Bridge Land Reclamation Scheme.
See the "Attachments" section for a photograph of Emilienne Reeth, one of a Belgian family in Market Rasen who became refugees when Germany invaded their country. 'Albert Day' was a fundraising effort for Belgian refugees and refers to King Albert of Belgium, whose portrait can be seen on the side of the perambulator. 1915.
Author, economist, diplomat, seditionist, prophet of the global justice movement, Lawrence Dennis was born Christmas Day 1893 to a prominent Atlanta lawyer and his mulatto mistress. Raised by mulattos, he was preaching at the age of five and being pushed for a life in the pulpit, but was clearly destined for other things. When he was 12 his father sent him, with no prior formal education, to the prestigious Phillips Exeter Academy and then to Harvard. During World War I he commanded a company of military police in France. After graduating from Harvard in 1920 he entered the foreign service.
Lawrence Dennis was an outsider in a movement of outsiders, a unique and largely solitary figure whose career as a writer and notorious "seditionist" embodies the tragedy and bravery of the Old Right, the pre-World War II "America First" generation of conservative intellectuals and activists. In many important ways, Dennis is the prototype of modern "paleo-conservatives." His career as a controversialist and the leading American nationalist intellectual of his time charts the rise and fall of the Old Right – and, perhaps, holds a lesson for us today. Born in Atlanta in 1893, Dennis had what historian Justus Doenecke describes as "a varied career," which included a stint as a "boy evangelist." A recent article on Dennis in The Baffler – in which the author, transcending his own leftist politics, seems to appreciate if not fully understand his subject – informs us that he was born Lonnie Lawrence Dennis, adopted by a mulatto couple, and was undoubtedly of mixed race: his mother was black, but his father was in all probability white. To say that young Lonnie was a precocious kid is a definite understatement: by the age of five he was preaching before large audiences in Atlanta, and was soon bringing the Word to congregations around the country as "The Mulatto Boy Evangelist," and taking his road show as far as England. He published his autobiography at the ripe old age of ten.
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That's the most ridiculous and absurd statement I have read in a long time.
