WEBVTT - Death of a Demagogue 0:00:01.680 --> 0:00:09.680 Col Zone Media. It was just after noon on a 0:00:09.720 --> 0:00:13.120 warm day near the end of summer when the demagogue died. 0:00:14.560 --> 0:00:17.840 A single bullet fired from a rooftop by his assassin 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:23.680 killed him almost instantly. A man who'd seemed larger than 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:27.360 life bled out in front of horrified onlookers as his 0:00:27.440 --> 0:00:31.800 killer fled the scene on foot. He'd devoted his entire 0:00:31.880 --> 0:00:36.120 adult life to preaching hate. In the last few years 0:00:36.120 --> 0:00:38.880 of his hateful life, he'd spent much of his time 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:43.440 touring colleges and universities, delighting in the controversy. His appearances 0:00:43.479 --> 0:00:47.080 provoked and wailing about free speech. When venues refused to 0:00:47.080 --> 0:00:52.240 host him. On college campuses across the country, he gave 0:00:52.320 --> 0:00:56.040 fiery speeches about the evils of communism, telling his young 0:00:56.080 --> 0:00:59.720 audiences that they were being brainwashed by liberalism and force 0:00:59.760 --> 0:01:04.240 fed Marxist propaganda. He railed against the Civil Rights Act, 0:01:04.680 --> 0:01:07.720 which he called a mistake. He said it was a 0:01:07.720 --> 0:01:11.600 weapon wielded against the white race, and he publicly disparaged 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:16.120 Martin Luther King Junior. He likened homosexuality to a disease, 0:01:17.000 --> 0:01:18.760 and he dreamed of the day when he would have 0:01:18.800 --> 0:01:21.360 the power to strip queer people of their rights entirely 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:27.040 above all else, though he was preoccupied with his belief 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:30.640 that the white race was in danger of being replaced. 0:01:32.200 --> 0:01:36.160 Conspiracy theories about his death abounded, and his movement made 0:01:36.200 --> 0:01:39.679 him a martyr for their cause. But in the end, 0:01:40.640 --> 0:01:43.319 the man who fired the shot that killed George Lincoln 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:47.560 Rockwell wasn't a Jew, or a communist or an agent 0:01:47.600 --> 0:01:52.280 of the state. It was a man who'd loved him 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:58.640 like a father. I'm Molly Conger, and this I squere 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:18.880 the little guise. This is a story about history, that's all. 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:22.440 It's the story of an assassination that rocked the right 0:02:22.440 --> 0:02:28.280 wing reverberating through the white power movement for decades. Sometimes 0:02:28.360 --> 0:02:32.000 I'll open an episode by describing the meandering mental process 0:02:32.120 --> 0:02:35.280 through which I have arrived at that week's subject, some 0:02:35.639 --> 0:02:38.040 half formed thought that led me down a rabbit hole, 0:02:38.200 --> 0:02:41.160 or some tangent from a past episode that I'm following 0:02:41.240 --> 0:02:46.520 up on. Something like that. But maybe there's no reason 0:02:46.560 --> 0:02:50.160 in particular that I was thinking this week about the sudden, 0:02:50.240 --> 0:02:53.040 violent end a man who spent his entire adult life 0:02:53.080 --> 0:02:59.400 stoking violence against everyone else. George Lincoln Rockwell died in 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:01.720 the parking lot of a laundromat in a strip mall 0:03:01.800 --> 0:03:05.320 in Arlington, Virginia, at twelve oh two p m. On 0:03:05.360 --> 0:03:09.800 August twenty fifth, nineteen sixty seven. This isn't really an 0:03:09.840 --> 0:03:12.560 episode about George Lincoln Rockwell, except for the fact that 0:03:12.600 --> 0:03:17.639 he's dead. Rockwell was the commander of the American Nazi Party, 0:03:18.400 --> 0:03:22.239 a group he founded in nineteen fifty nine. There isn't 0:03:22.320 --> 0:03:24.640 much to say about Rockwell that hasn't been said before. 0:03:25.520 --> 0:03:29.200 He was the founding father of American neo Nazism. He 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:32.280 was a pioneer in the field of Holocaust denial. Barely 0:03:32.320 --> 0:03:36.720 a decade after the Holocaust ended, he invented the term 0:03:36.920 --> 0:03:41.400 white power. He took a Volkswagen bus full of Nazis 0:03:41.400 --> 0:03:45.040 across the country to Montgomery, Alabama, just to antagonize the 0:03:45.080 --> 0:03:49.400 Freedom Riders. He followed Martin Luther King Junior all over 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:53.720 the country holding Nazi counter demonstrations, and when one of 0:03:53.720 --> 0:03:56.080 his stormtroopers punched King in the face in front of 0:03:56.080 --> 0:04:00.400 a crowd in Birmingham, Rockwell promoted the assailant to the 0:04:00.440 --> 0:04:04.880 head of the party's Chicago office. Rockwell was a monster, 0:04:08.160 --> 0:04:11.880 But this isn't a story about George Lincoln Rockwall it's 0:04:11.920 --> 0:04:16.120 about the Nazi who killed him. When that man was 0:04:16.160 --> 0:04:19.640 convicted of first degree murder in nineteen sixty seven, his 0:04:19.760 --> 0:04:24.120 name was John Patler, but it wasn't always and it 0:04:24.200 --> 0:04:29.159 isn't any more. The Nazi best known as John Patler 0:04:29.760 --> 0:04:33.040 was born John Pazzalos in New York City in January 0:04:33.080 --> 0:04:36.400 of nineteen thirty eight. He was the first of two 0:04:36.520 --> 0:04:41.480 sons born to Cristos and Athena Pazzalos. Cristos, so often 0:04:41.520 --> 0:04:44.880 referred to by the Anglicized version of his name, christ 0:04:45.560 --> 0:04:48.120 emigrated to New York as a teenager in nineteen thirteen, 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:53.599 three years before his future wife was born. He married 0:04:53.600 --> 0:04:57.000 Athena manro Gianis, the daughter of Greek immigrants, in the 0:04:57.000 --> 0:05:00.000 fall of nineteen thirty seven, just a few months before 0:05:00.040 --> 0:05:03.559 for their son, John was born. His younger brother, George, 0:05:03.600 --> 0:05:07.440 would follow a year later. In nineteen forty three, when 0:05:07.480 --> 0:05:10.400 the Pazzalos boys were just four and five years old, 0:05:10.960 --> 0:05:15.440 their father murdered their mother. Newspaper articles from the time 0:05:15.560 --> 0:05:17.720 say the couple had been arguing for hours on the 0:05:17.760 --> 0:05:22.200 afternoon of August seventh. Cristos Pazzalos then took a taxi 0:05:22.240 --> 0:05:25.400 to a nearby police station and announced my wife has 0:05:25.440 --> 0:05:28.640 been fighting with me. Now she is shot with my revolver, 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:33.480 for which I have a permit. None of the newspaper 0:05:33.560 --> 0:05:36.840 articles from nineteen forty three that I can find mention 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:41.839 the boys. It's almost unbearable to imagine that these two 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:44.960 little boys had been left alone in the home with 0:05:45.040 --> 0:05:49.800 their dying mother. But in a later autobiographical essay that 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:53.960 Patler wrote for the American Nazi Party's Stormtrooper magazine, he 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:56.320 said that she'd actually dropped them off at her mother's 0:05:56.360 --> 0:06:00.880 house before heading back home to pack her bags. She 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:07.040 was planning to leave her husband. Cristos was initially booked 0:06:07.080 --> 0:06:10.640 only on a charge of felonious assault, but when Athena 0:06:10.680 --> 0:06:13.120 died the next day, his charges were upgraded to first 0:06:13.120 --> 0:06:19.559 degree murder. After unsuccessfully pleading temporary insanity, Cristos was allowed 0:06:19.560 --> 0:06:22.640 to plead guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter in 0:06:22.680 --> 0:06:25.919 early nineteen forty four, and he was sentenced to just 0:06:26.000 --> 0:06:30.360 seven and a half years. While their father was away 0:06:30.400 --> 0:06:33.680 at sing Sing, George and John lived with their maternal grandmother, 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:38.159 Bessie mauro Giannis, was only a few years older than 0:06:38.200 --> 0:06:40.760 her son in law, and she was recently widowed and 0:06:40.800 --> 0:06:44.320 still had a teenager of her own at home. Patler 0:06:44.320 --> 0:06:46.839 would later write that she supported them by selling flowers 0:06:46.839 --> 0:06:49.800 at a stand on Park Avenue, and he remembers her 0:06:49.839 --> 0:06:52.160 hatred of the Jewish venders that she had to share 0:06:52.160 --> 0:06:56.840 space with at the market. It isn't entirely clear if 0:06:56.880 --> 0:07:00.080 their father actually wanted them back, but the great my 0:07:00.120 --> 0:07:02.720 mother died in nineteen fifty four, just a few years 0:07:02.720 --> 0:07:06.680 after Christos was released from prison. John and George were 0:07:06.680 --> 0:07:10.040 placed briefly in a youth home before ultimately being returned 0:07:10.040 --> 0:07:14.080 to their father's custody. After a decade of hearing their 0:07:14.120 --> 0:07:17.280 grandmother curse his name as the murderer of her daughter. 0:07:18.320 --> 0:07:21.240 Suddenly they were living with their father in the very 0:07:21.240 --> 0:07:23.480 same home in the Bronx where he'd killed their mother. 0:07:26.560 --> 0:07:29.160 Patler started getting into trouble with the police that year. 0:07:30.680 --> 0:07:33.440 In September, he and another sixteen year old boy stole 0:07:33.480 --> 0:07:36.440 a car, got into a police chase, crashed into a tree, 0:07:36.840 --> 0:07:39.040 and then ran off into the woods, evading the police 0:07:39.040 --> 0:07:44.480 for hours. That story sounds completely made up, and if 0:07:44.520 --> 0:07:47.680 it was just Patler's retelling of it years later, I 0:07:47.680 --> 0:07:51.360 wouldn't believe it. But there really is a nineteen fifty 0:07:51.400 --> 0:07:55.080 four newspaper headline that reads, twenty five cops seized two 0:07:55.120 --> 0:07:59.520 teens after hot car crash. The other boy was sent 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:02.600 off to a reform school, but Patler hadn't been in 0:08:02.640 --> 0:08:07.200 serious trouble before, so he just got probation. By his 0:08:07.240 --> 0:08:11.040 own account, this was when he quote began to take 0:08:11.080 --> 0:08:17.200 a keen political interest in the Jews. Most biographies of 0:08:17.200 --> 0:08:20.560 George Lincoln Rockwell have a few pages devoted to Patler's childhood, 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:24.320 and they all seem to agree that Cristos Patsalos and 0:08:24.440 --> 0:08:29.720 Bessie Malrogianis were very outspoken in their anti Semitism, so 0:08:29.760 --> 0:08:32.199 it's not like he hadn't been exposed to the idea before. 0:08:33.840 --> 0:08:37.040 But at sixteen years old, John Patler found a copy 0:08:37.040 --> 0:08:41.600 of mindcomp in the school library, and he was really 0:08:41.720 --> 0:08:46.640 vocal about his newfound interest in national socialism. His admiration 0:08:46.720 --> 0:08:49.640 for Hitler was no secret and it was causing him 0:08:49.679 --> 0:08:53.920 problems in school. One afternoon, while he was boxing in 0:08:53.960 --> 0:08:57.200 the park, he was chatting with another teenage boy about 0:08:57.400 --> 0:08:59.320 the need to do something about how the Jews are 0:08:59.320 --> 0:09:03.920 responsible for the malevolent influence of communism. As teenage boys 0:09:04.480 --> 0:09:08.200 did in the fifties, I guess and his friend offered 0:09:08.200 --> 0:09:12.320 to introduce him to some like minded individuals, a newly 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:19.720 formed group called the Nationalist Youth League. Dust Hooker, a 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:24.120 wealthy businessman, had formed the Nationalist Youth League ostensibly as 0:09:24.160 --> 0:09:28.360 the youth arm of his Nationalist party, but it mainly 0:09:28.400 --> 0:09:31.600 functioned as a teenage gang run by a middle aged man. 0:09:33.080 --> 0:09:36.559 The boys warm matching black uniforms and busted up Communist 0:09:36.559 --> 0:09:40.960 meetings and marched around the city handing out anti Semitic pamphlets. 0:09:42.120 --> 0:09:45.560 Patler idolized Hooker and quickly grew attached to this man 0:09:45.600 --> 0:09:49.160 as a sort of surrogate father. He later wrote that 0:09:49.160 --> 0:09:52.080 Hooker gave him his first political training and taught him 0:09:52.160 --> 0:09:57.280 quote everything he knew about the Jews. Part of that training, 0:09:57.880 --> 0:10:02.000 I guess, was making his own anti Smith flyers, and 0:10:02.040 --> 0:10:05.280 in nineteen fifty six Patler tried his hand at drawing 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:08.280 up his own pamphlets, and he was subsequently arrested on 0:10:08.320 --> 0:10:11.760 a charge of criminal libel because the leaflets targeted a 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:16.760 specific Jewish businessman by name. He was still on probation 0:10:16.880 --> 0:10:19.199 for that midnight joy ride in a stolen car two 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:22.160 years earlier, so he was sent to a psychiatric hospital 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:28.200 for evaluation. Usually we only have people's recollections after the fact. 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:31.440 You know, years later, with the benefit of hindsight, people 0:10:31.480 --> 0:10:34.880 will say, oh, I knew him back then. I remember 0:10:34.920 --> 0:10:38.280 he used to say this or that. You have to 0:10:38.280 --> 0:10:40.600 take it with a grain of salt. Usually when a 0:10:40.640 --> 0:10:43.840 biography says that a man has always been an anti Semite. 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:48.760 But in John Patler's case, there is an incredible trove 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:53.599 of archival evidence. For his nineteen ninety nine biography of 0:10:53.600 --> 0:10:57.760 George Lincoln Rockwell, historian Frederick Simonelli was actually able to 0:10:57.840 --> 0:11:02.440 access Patler's case file at the Morrisania Hospital Mental Hygiene Clinic. 0:11:03.760 --> 0:11:05.760 I don't know how that's possible, come to think of it. 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:10.080 I mean, those are medical records, but the footnotes are 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:15.320 very thorough In American fury, simon Eli writes that a 0:11:15.320 --> 0:11:17.960 caseworker at the hospital made a note in Patler's file 0:11:18.040 --> 0:11:21.679 in nineteen fifty six about his frequent anti Semitic comments 0:11:21.720 --> 0:11:26.480 to the hospital staff. A psychiatrist wrote that Patler told him, quote, 0:11:26.800 --> 0:11:30.280 I go to church every Sunday morning and fight the Jews. 0:11:31.160 --> 0:11:34.240 The same doctor later wrote in the file quote the 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:38.440 patient may become dangerous. He appears as a potential murderer. 0:11:40.280 --> 0:11:43.200 After a short stay in the hospital, Patler was released, 0:11:43.960 --> 0:11:46.720 but he had to continue with court bandated outpatient treatment. 0:11:47.960 --> 0:11:50.760 In nineteen fifty seven, the doctor's notes show Patler's mental 0:11:50.760 --> 0:11:55.720 state was deteriorating. He was paranoid, delusional, and exhibiting violent tendencies, 0:11:56.880 --> 0:11:59.840 and the doctor again wrote that the patient may one 0:12:00.120 --> 0:12:05.280 day commit murder inexplicably. His case file was actually closed 0:12:05.280 --> 0:12:07.800 out soon after that, and there's a note that his 0:12:07.840 --> 0:12:13.000 probation officer felt that he was making satisfactory adjustments. And 0:12:13.040 --> 0:12:16.319 it's around this time that John Patler first met George 0:12:16.360 --> 0:12:23.800 Lincoln Rockwell at a party at Dust Hooker's home. Rockwell 0:12:23.840 --> 0:12:26.719 hadn't yet formed the American Nazi Party, but he was 0:12:26.760 --> 0:12:30.440 an up and coming right wing extremist. It was actually 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:34.760 dust Hooker who encouraged Rockwell to come out, so to speak, 0:12:35.280 --> 0:12:37.640 to stop speaking in coded language and just put on 0:12:37.679 --> 0:12:43.000 the swastika armband already. In that autobiographical essay Patler later 0:12:43.040 --> 0:12:46.480 wrote in the Nazi magazine, he claims that he chose 0:12:46.520 --> 0:12:48.840 to leave high school and enlist in the Marine Corps 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:52.440 in nineteen fifty eight, but the timeline is a little 0:12:52.480 --> 0:12:57.520 muddy here. In simon Elli's book, he writes that Patler's 0:12:57.520 --> 0:13:01.280 probation violation had actually landed him back in and this 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:04.199 time he was given two choices. He could face the 0:13:04.280 --> 0:13:08.560 charges as an adult, or he could enlist, and he 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:14.040 chose to enlist. In nineteen fifty nine, his father, Cristos 0:13:14.080 --> 0:13:19.520 Pazzalos died. Deus Hooker had moved away to Italy, apparently 0:13:19.520 --> 0:13:24.120 to run a seven up bottling factory. John Patler was 0:13:24.120 --> 0:13:27.199 a twenty one year old marine alone in the world 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:30.120 when he was assigned to a duty station in northern Virginia, 0:13:31.120 --> 0:13:33.480 just a short drive away from the headquarters of the 0:13:33.559 --> 0:13:39.319 newly organized American Nazi Party. Now I've been calling him 0:13:39.400 --> 0:13:43.199 John Patler all this time, just for the sake of simplicity, 0:13:43.600 --> 0:13:46.760 because that's how we know him. But from the time 0:13:46.800 --> 0:13:49.800 he was born in nineteen thirty eight until this point 0:13:49.840 --> 0:13:53.560 in the story in nineteen sixty, his name is John Pazzalos. 0:13:55.320 --> 0:13:57.560 But in nineteen sixty, after he became one of the 0:13:57.559 --> 0:14:01.320 first stormtroopers in the American Nazi Party, he legally changed 0:14:01.320 --> 0:14:06.000 his name to John Patler. Not only did it sound 0:14:06.080 --> 0:14:08.559 less Greek, which was a little too ethnic for the 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:12.480 Nazi Party. He liked it because it sounded like Hitler. 0:14:14.600 --> 0:14:16.800 There are some sources that claim that he was actually 0:14:16.840 --> 0:14:23.160 born Yanaki Pazzalos, and I can't quite make sense of that. Yannis, Sure, 0:14:23.360 --> 0:14:25.680 that's just Greek for John. I wouldn't be surprised if 0:14:25.680 --> 0:14:29.720 his grandmother probably called him that, But there's never any 0:14:29.720 --> 0:14:34.920 citation for the claim that he was born Yanaki. I mean, 0:14:34.960 --> 0:14:40.040 I don't think that's anyone's name. Sometimes you see a Yanakis, 0:14:41.280 --> 0:14:44.320 but this mysterious fake name is always spelled y A 0:14:44.680 --> 0:14:48.600 n ac k I, and I don't think that's a 0:14:48.680 --> 0:14:53.120 name at all. Mostly I saw this claim repeated in 0:14:53.200 --> 0:14:57.040 old Stormfront posts, so that's not a great source. I 0:14:57.040 --> 0:15:00.200 don't need to track that down. That's just trash. But 0:15:00.280 --> 0:15:03.600 it was on his Wikipedia page without a citation until 0:15:03.600 --> 0:15:07.080 someone removed it in twenty eleven, and it still shows 0:15:07.160 --> 0:15:11.800 up on the German and Finnish language Wikipedia pages, and 0:15:11.880 --> 0:15:15.240 it even appears in a recently published doctoral dissertation about 0:15:15.240 --> 0:15:19.760 the white Power movement. I guess it doesn't matter that much. 0:15:20.240 --> 0:15:22.160 But I did track down a copy of the nineteen 0:15:22.240 --> 0:15:25.200 forty census and his father recorded his two year old 0:15:25.280 --> 0:15:30.800 son's name as John Adam Patsalos when he was arrested 0:15:30.800 --> 0:15:34.240 at sixteen and nineteen fifty four, the newspaper recorded that 0:15:34.280 --> 0:15:38.760 the boy who was arrested was named John Patsalos. When 0:15:38.760 --> 0:15:41.440 he enlisted in the Marines in nineteen fifty eight, Marine 0:15:41.440 --> 0:15:47.120 Corps muster records list him as John C. Patsalos. But 0:15:47.200 --> 0:15:49.880 I do think I found the original source of this 0:15:49.960 --> 0:15:53.760 strange mistake, and I think it's the faded recollection of 0:15:53.800 --> 0:15:59.680 a former rival before William Luther Peers wrote the Turner Diaries, 0:16:00.400 --> 0:16:02.960 before he founded National Alliance. All the way back in 0:16:03.040 --> 0:16:07.800 nineteen sixty six, Pierce picked up his family and moved 0:16:07.800 --> 0:16:10.960 them to Virginia to be closer to George Lincoln Rockwell. 0:16:12.600 --> 0:16:15.560 His time at the American Nazi Party headquarters only overlapped 0:16:15.560 --> 0:16:18.960 with Patler for about a year, but in that year, 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:22.480 Patler and Pierce were pretty open in their hatred of 0:16:22.480 --> 0:16:26.240 one another, and Pierce made no secret of the fact 0:16:26.280 --> 0:16:31.160 that he thought Patler was not white. So maybe that's 0:16:31.200 --> 0:16:34.200 why he gave Patler a much more ethnic sounding, made 0:16:34.280 --> 0:16:36.720 up name. When he was recounting that period of his 0:16:36.760 --> 0:16:42.920 own life to his biographer in two thousand, who knows. So. 0:16:42.960 --> 0:16:48.520 In nineteen sixty, the Marine Private John Patsalos became Nazi 0:16:48.520 --> 0:17:06.200 Stormtrooper John Patler. From his duty station in Quantico, he 0:17:06.320 --> 0:17:09.160 was making weekend trips to Arlington to attend American Nazi 0:17:09.240 --> 0:17:13.119 Party meetings and rallies, and he very quickly became quite 0:17:13.160 --> 0:17:16.760 close to Rockwell. At a rally in Washington, d c. 0:17:17.080 --> 0:17:21.160 Over Memorial Day weekend in nineteen sixty, Rockwell proudly told 0:17:21.160 --> 0:17:23.880 the crowd that the man standing right next to him 0:17:24.040 --> 0:17:28.800 was in fact a United States Marine, and that fact 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:32.560 quickly made it back to the military police. The man 0:17:32.640 --> 0:17:37.040 the Marine Corps knew as Private John Pazzalos was arrested, questioned, 0:17:37.080 --> 0:17:42.119 and given a psychiatric evaluation. In July nineteen sixty, he 0:17:42.200 --> 0:17:47.679 was given a general discharge under honorable conditions, so not 0:17:47.800 --> 0:17:52.520 a dishonorable discharge, but it isn't an honorable discharge either. 0:17:55.000 --> 0:17:57.840 There's a brief mention in one New York City newspaper 0:17:57.880 --> 0:18:00.679 after his discharge that he was going to file a 0:18:00.760 --> 0:18:04.199 lawsuit alleging that it had been a conspiracy to violet 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:07.560 his rights, naming the Marine Corps as well as a 0:18:07.600 --> 0:18:11.280 group called Jewish War Veterans of the United States as defendants. 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:15.720 He was asking for one five hundred seventy five dollars 0:18:15.720 --> 0:18:19.440 in back pay and five hundred thousand dollars in damages 0:18:19.480 --> 0:18:23.560 for the harm to his reputation. Again, this is a 0:18:23.600 --> 0:18:26.520 man wearing a Nazi uniform outside of the White House. 0:18:26.640 --> 0:18:29.440 I don't know what reputation he thinks is being damaged. 0:18:31.520 --> 0:18:34.640 He didn't have an attorney, And aside from that one 0:18:34.720 --> 0:18:38.000 news story about the Jewish Veterans Group telling a reporter 0:18:38.119 --> 0:18:41.720 that they had received service of the complaint, I can't 0:18:41.720 --> 0:18:44.800 find anything else about it. And it's possible he never 0:18:44.880 --> 0:18:50.439 actually filed it. But now in the summer of nineteen sixty, 0:18:51.359 --> 0:18:58.560 he's completely untethered. He's an orphan, he's not a marine. 0:18:58.600 --> 0:19:02.440 He has no day job, he has no family. There's 0:19:02.480 --> 0:19:08.399 only Rockwell Marine Corps Private John Pazzalos is dead and 0:19:08.520 --> 0:19:13.800 Stormtrooper John Patler quickly rose through the ranks of Rockwell's party. 0:19:14.119 --> 0:19:16.879 He was promoted to editor of the party's official publication, 0:19:17.040 --> 0:19:20.439 the National Socialist Bulletin, before the fourth issue was published 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:23.959 in the fall of that year. He appeared right by 0:19:24.040 --> 0:19:27.640 Rockwell's side at countless rallies that year, and in nineteen 0:19:27.680 --> 0:19:30.760 sixty alone. He was arrested at so many Nazi Party 0:19:30.840 --> 0:19:33.800 rallies that it's hard to sort out which news stories 0:19:33.840 --> 0:19:38.719 about his court appearances are connected to which arrests. There 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:41.679 were disorderly conduct charges after a brawl broke out at 0:19:41.680 --> 0:19:43.960 a rally near the White House, and then a week 0:19:44.040 --> 0:19:47.119 later another disorderly conduct charge when they came back to 0:19:47.160 --> 0:19:50.399 protest the original arrest, and then a week after that 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:53.560 he's arrested again for putting up swastika stickers at the 0:19:53.560 --> 0:19:58.960 ADL headquarters. Rockwell gave Patler his blessing to marry Erica, 0:19:59.480 --> 0:20:02.600 a blonde women of German descent, and she was already 0:20:02.600 --> 0:20:04.879 heavily pregnant with their first son when she had to 0:20:04.960 --> 0:20:06.560 drive to d C in the middle of the night 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:09.159 to bail her husband out of jail for defacing the 0:20:09.200 --> 0:20:15.080 offices of the ADL. The January nineteen sixty one issue 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:19.840 of the National Socialist Bulletin lists Lieutenant John Patler as 0:20:19.880 --> 0:20:24.000 both the editor and the art director. A few pages 0:20:24.040 --> 0:20:27.760 into the issue, there's an announcement congratulating Lieutenant Patler and 0:20:27.800 --> 0:20:33.240 the birth of his firstborn son. Now, Patler's children are 0:20:33.280 --> 0:20:38.760 private individuals. They're not part of their father's story voluntarily. 0:20:40.240 --> 0:20:42.960 Aside from a handful of notable public comments from his 0:20:43.040 --> 0:20:48.359 son Nick, his children aren't your business or mine, But 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:51.280 in the interest of being thorough, I did do my 0:20:51.320 --> 0:20:57.320 own background research. This Nazi newsletter proudly announces that Patler 0:20:57.400 --> 0:21:03.480 had named his firstborn son Horst Vessel. There's a photo 0:21:03.520 --> 0:21:07.520 of Patler wearing his Nazi party uniform cradling his infant 0:21:07.600 --> 0:21:11.119 son in his arms, underneath text that reads, in all caps, 0:21:11.640 --> 0:21:18.080 Horst Vessel lives. Horst Vessel was a Nazi. I'm not 0:21:18.240 --> 0:21:21.720 talking about this baby boy. I'm talking about the original 0:21:21.720 --> 0:21:25.600 Horst Vessel. And he wasn't a Nazi the way John 0:21:25.640 --> 0:21:28.080 Patler is a Nazi. He was a real one in 0:21:28.160 --> 0:21:32.480 Nazi Germany. He joined the Sturmob Tailoh in nineteen twenty six, 0:21:32.640 --> 0:21:34.920 and he made quite a positive impression on a young 0:21:35.000 --> 0:21:39.760 Joseph Goebels. By nineteen twenty nine, Vessel was living in 0:21:39.800 --> 0:21:42.440 Berlin and serving as the street cell leader of the 0:21:42.480 --> 0:21:47.720 Alexander Plotz unit of the stermop Tilo. As Stormfuurer, Vessel 0:21:47.800 --> 0:21:50.080 led a gang of young Nazis that got into violent 0:21:50.119 --> 0:21:55.399 altercations with Communists around Berlin. In nineteen thirty, one of 0:21:55.400 --> 0:21:59.320 them shot and killed him. As the leader of this 0:21:59.600 --> 0:22:03.399 Nazi street fighting gang, Vessel had received a lot of 0:22:03.480 --> 0:22:08.320 encouragement from Gebels, and now that he's dead and Gebels 0:22:08.359 --> 0:22:12.360 is the party's chief propagandist, he sees this death as 0:22:12.359 --> 0:22:17.760 a golden opportunity. In death, Horst Vessel is more than 0:22:17.760 --> 0:22:21.800 a violent man. He's a symbol. He's a martyr for 0:22:21.800 --> 0:22:27.639 the Nazi cause. So by naming his son Horst Vessel 0:22:28.440 --> 0:22:32.000 Hatler is invoking the Germany of nineteen thirty, a nation 0:22:32.240 --> 0:22:36.040 on the eve of the Third Reich. I get it. 0:22:36.520 --> 0:22:40.360 I get what he's going for. The problem is it's 0:22:40.400 --> 0:22:43.320 not true. And this is a big part of why 0:22:43.359 --> 0:22:47.120 every episode takes me. I would say three times longer 0:22:47.760 --> 0:22:54.760 than is healthy. I can't trust anybody, even mostly reliable sources, 0:22:54.840 --> 0:22:57.720 you know, books that are well researched and well regarded. 0:22:58.880 --> 0:23:02.520 Sometimes people forget the number one rule of writing about Nazis. 0:23:03.880 --> 0:23:08.439 Nazis lie. You can't take a Nazi newsletter at face value, 0:23:08.480 --> 0:23:11.879 not for anything. Just because the birth announcement in the 0:23:12.000 --> 0:23:15.959 National Socialist Bulletin says that the baby's name is Horst 0:23:16.040 --> 0:23:21.120 Vessel Patler doesn't make it true, but the claim does 0:23:21.160 --> 0:23:25.800 appear in several books, always without a citation. I'm assuming 0:23:25.960 --> 0:23:30.160 they got it from this Nazi newsletter, and it isn't true. 0:23:31.720 --> 0:23:35.719 Like I said, Patler's kids aren't our business. They're private 0:23:35.760 --> 0:23:38.960 individuals who did not choose to involve themselves in this. 0:23:40.320 --> 0:23:41.920 So I'm not going to tell you what his name 0:23:42.000 --> 0:23:46.879 actually is. It was actually really hard to find, which 0:23:47.160 --> 0:23:49.840 tells me he's gone to some trouble to prevent people 0:23:49.920 --> 0:23:52.720 like me from finding it. And as an adult, he 0:23:52.760 --> 0:23:56.280 actually changed his name again, swapping the last name Patler 0:23:56.359 --> 0:24:00.960 for something unrelated. But his first name was never hors Vessel. 0:24:02.240 --> 0:24:07.119 It's something perfectly ordinary, the kind of boring white American 0:24:07.240 --> 0:24:09.879 name that you probably went to elementary school with a 0:24:09.920 --> 0:24:16.280 dozen of Nineteen sixty one was a tumultuous year for 0:24:16.320 --> 0:24:20.399 the Patler family. That spring, his young wife, Erica was 0:24:20.440 --> 0:24:24.000 home alone with baby horse Vessel because John Patler was 0:24:24.040 --> 0:24:26.520 the driver when the Nazis went on tour in the 0:24:26.560 --> 0:24:30.359 hate bus. I assume he had a great time with 0:24:30.400 --> 0:24:32.480 his friends on the Nazi road trip in the spring, 0:24:33.040 --> 0:24:36.160 but by the end of the year, John Patler quit 0:24:36.200 --> 0:24:39.919 the American Nazi Party, for the first time. He and 0:24:40.000 --> 0:24:43.120 another member named Dan Burros had decided to strike out 0:24:43.160 --> 0:24:46.960 on their own to form a new splinter group. This 0:24:47.000 --> 0:24:51.800 is a classic problem in American neo Nazi organizing. Everybody 0:24:51.840 --> 0:24:56.200 wants to be Hitler. In November of nineteen sixty one, 0:24:56.440 --> 0:24:59.399 John Patler packed up his pregnant wife and their infant 0:24:59.440 --> 0:25:04.520 son and moved to New York City in a converted 0:25:04.520 --> 0:25:07.560 garage and queens. A handful of disaffected members of the 0:25:07.560 --> 0:25:10.960 American Nazi Party formed a new group that they called 0:25:11.119 --> 0:25:16.080 the American National Party. Patler was the group's chairman and 0:25:16.200 --> 0:25:20.439 Dan Burros was his second in command. Patler also edited 0:25:20.480 --> 0:25:25.399 the party's magazine, a publication called Kill with an exclamation point, 0:25:27.000 --> 0:25:29.160 but the whole endeavor never amounted to much at all. 0:25:29.880 --> 0:25:34.359 There were never more than about a dozen members. In 0:25:34.400 --> 0:25:37.399 the January nineteen sixty two issue of The Rockwell Report, 0:25:37.800 --> 0:25:41.680 a secondary publication of the American Nazi Party, George Lincoln 0:25:41.760 --> 0:25:45.920 Rockwall wanted to make sure that everyone knew he wasn't mad. 0:25:46.920 --> 0:25:49.000 He actually didn't care at all, and it did not 0:25:49.160 --> 0:25:51.480 hurt his feelings that he'd been abandoned by his most 0:25:51.480 --> 0:25:57.360 devoted lieutenant. He wrote, quote in the attempt to justify 0:25:57.400 --> 0:25:59.960 their failure in the Nazi Party here and overthrow our 0:26:00.080 --> 0:26:06.720 leadership of the right wing. This group of selfish malcontents, loafers, fakers, sissies, cowards, 0:26:06.800 --> 0:26:11.280 or damn fools is beneath mentioned. They are held together 0:26:11.359 --> 0:26:14.480 solely by their hatred and jealousy of my person and 0:26:14.560 --> 0:26:18.119 the American Nazi Party, and will disintegrate soon enough from 0:26:18.240 --> 0:26:24.480 lack of leadership and idealism. See he doesn't care at all, 0:26:25.320 --> 0:26:33.080 He's not mad, but he was exactly right about their 0:26:33.119 --> 0:26:38.119 motivation and how they'd end up. In March, the New 0:26:38.160 --> 0:26:42.000 York Daily News ran a headline ten youths in Hollis Shack, 0:26:42.960 --> 0:26:45.760 poking fun at these young men playing make believe Nazi 0:26:45.840 --> 0:26:50.040 living in a shanty in this neighborhood and queens. In April, 0:26:50.080 --> 0:26:53.560 another newspaper in New York speculated that the group might 0:26:53.600 --> 0:26:56.920 actually be a front group rather than a splinter of 0:26:56.960 --> 0:27:01.680 the American Nazi Party, writing, a little band of eccentrics 0:27:01.800 --> 0:27:04.600 calling themselves the American Nazis has sent a few gal 0:27:04.680 --> 0:27:10.040 lighters into the New York Long Island area, and Rockwell 0:27:10.080 --> 0:27:13.280 played KOI with the reporters. I think he may have 0:27:13.320 --> 0:27:16.280 been trying to save face. He didn't want to admit 0:27:16.359 --> 0:27:20.399 that he'd been abandoned, so he refused to confirm or 0:27:20.440 --> 0:27:24.320 deny any connection to this group. But he hinted that 0:27:25.040 --> 0:27:28.399 sometimes sometimes I do use a front group, and maybe 0:27:28.440 --> 0:27:31.600 I am working on something in New York City, sort 0:27:31.600 --> 0:27:35.639 of insinuating that, yes, these men do still answer to me. 0:27:37.560 --> 0:27:42.160 The same article, though, quotes John Patler saying Rockwell hates 0:27:42.200 --> 0:27:47.000