Heinz Spanknöbel

Heinrich "Heinz" Spanknöbel (rendered Spanknoebel or Spanknobel; 27 November 1893 – 10 March 1947[1]) was a German immigrant to America who formed and, for a short time led, the pro-Nazi Friends of New Germany as its Bundesleiter.[2]

Heinz Spanknöbel
Born(1893-11-27)27 November 1893
Homberg, Kingdom of Prussia, German Empire
Died10 March 1947(1947-03-10) (aged 53)
NKVD Special Camp No. 1, Brandenburg, Allied-occupied Germany
NationalityGerman
Known forFormed and led the pro-Nazi Friends of New Germany

Family

Heinz was born in Homberg, Germany to Konrad Spanknöbel (1866–1969) and Christiane Becker (1869–1966). He had an older brother, Karl Adolf (later Charles A. Noble; 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.

Career

In 1920, Spanknöbel was ordained as a minister on the Seventh-day Adventist Church Reform Movement in Würzburg.[3] He was admitted to the US as a minister in 1929, but his relationship with religion was dubious while he was in the country.[4] Spanknöbel was a member of the Free Society of Teutonia and an employee of the Ford Motor Company.[5] Initial support for American fascist organizations came from Germany. In May 1933, Nazi Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess gave Spanknöbel authority to form an American Nazi organization.[6][7] Shortly thereafter, with help from the German consul in New York City, Spanknöbel formed the Friends of New Germany[6] by merging two older organizations in the United States— the Society of American Friends of Germany (formed from the dissolved Gauleitung-USA or Gau-USA)[2] and the Free Society of Teutonia; which were both small groups with only a few hundred members each. The Friends of New Germany was headquartered in Yorkville, Manhattan, but had a strong presence in Chicago.[6]

The organization led by Spanknöbel 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.[8] He attempted to infiltrate and influence other non-political German-American organizations, such as the United German Societies.[9] One of the Friends' early initiatives was to counter, with propaganda, a Jewish boycott of businesses in the heavily German neighborhood of Yorkville.

In an internal battle for control of the Friends,[10][11] Spanknöbel was ousted as leader and subsequently ordered to be deported in October 1933 since he had failed to register as a foreign agent.[6] 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.[12] After a U. S. Federal arrest warrant was issued, Spanknöbel boarded the S.S. Europa ocean liner bound for Bremen on 29 October.[13][2]

Back in Germany, Spanknöbel reportedly became a director of the Propaganda School for Germans Living Abroad.[14] In 1942, a company called Vereinigte Leder- und Lederwarenfabriken Heinz Spanknöbel & Co. [United Leather and leather goods factories Heinz Spanknöbel & Co.] was founded in Hohenbruck near Königgrätz in then Sudetenland.[1]

Death

After the occupation by the Soviet military, Spanknöbel was arrested on 4 October 1945 in Dresden by the NKVD secret police. He was held in captivity in the NKVD Special Camp No. 1 near Mühlberg, Brandenburg, where he died of starvation on 10 March 1947.[1][15]

See also

References
  1. Leonhardt, Heike; Steinhoff, Uwe (12 May 2013). "Heinz Spanknöbel" (PDF) (in German). Retrieved 11 November 2013.
  2. Bernstein, Arnie (2013). Swastika Nation: Fritz Kuhn and the Rise and Fall of the German-American Bund. St. Martin's Press. pp. 24–28. ISBN 978-1250036445.
  3. "Heinz Spanknoebel No Desperado, Only Ridiculous German". Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 29 October 1933. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
  4. Zalampas, Michael (1989). Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich in American Magazines, 1923–1939. Popular Press. pp. 42–43. ISBN 9780879724627. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
  5. Wallace, Max (2003). The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich. New York City: St. Martin's Press. p. 133. ISBN 0-312-29022-5. Retrieved 29 November 2017. Spanknobel.
  6. Bredemus, Jim. "American Bund: The Failure of American Nazism: The German-American Bund's Attempt to Create an American 'Fifth Column'". TRACES. Archived from the original on 18 May 2011. Retrieved 29 November 2017.
  7. Kaplan, Jeffrey (2000). "Adolph Hitler". Encyclopedia of White Power: A Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 131. ISBN 9780742503403. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
  8. Arbuckle, Alex Q. (27 July 2016). "When Nazis held mass rallies in Madison Square Garden". Mashable. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
  9. MacDonnell, Francis (1995). Insidious Foes: The Axis Fifth Column and the American Home Front. Oxford University Press. pp. 42–43. ISBN 9780195357752.
  10. Diamond, Sander A. (1974). The Nazi Movement in the United States, 1924–1941. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell U.P. pp. 113–123. ISBN 0801407885.
  11. Johnson, Ronald Wayne (1967). The German-American Bund, 1924-1941. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin. pp. 6–10.
  12. Shaffer, Ryan (Spring 2010). "Long Island Nazis: A Local Synthesis of Transnational Politics". Long Island History Journal. 21 (2). ISSN 0898-7084. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
  13. "Foreign News: Fomenter Ousted". Time. 6 November 1933. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
  14. "United States v. Bregler, et al. —Decision". www.uniset.ca. District Court, New York. 16 June 1944. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
  15. "Freed American Gets a Passport; Says Brother, Ex-Nazi Here, Died; Noble Asserts Heinz Spanknoebel, Who Was Indicted by U. S., Succumbed to Illness While in Camp in East Germany". The New York Times. 22 August 1952. Retrieved 12 December 2017.
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