Silver Legion of America

History

Pelley was a former journalist, novelist and screenwriter turned spiritualist who began to promote antisemitic views by 1931, including the belief that Jews were possessed by demons. He formed the Silver Legion with the goal of bringing about a "spiritual and political renewal", inspired by the success of Adolf Hitler's Nazi movement in Germany.

A nationalist, fascist group, the paramilitary Silver Legion wore a uniform modeled after the Nazis' brown shirts (SA), consisting of a silver shirt with a blue tie, along with a campaign hat and blue corduroy trousers with leggings. The uniform shirts bore a scarlet letter L over the heart, which according to Pelley was "standing for Love, Loyalty, and Liberation." The blocky slab serif L-emblem was in a typeface similar to the present-day Rockwell Extra Bold. The organizational flag was a plain silver field with a red L in the canton on the upper left hand corner. By 1934, the Legion claimed that it had 15,000 members.

Legion leader Pelley called for the establishment of a "Christian Commonwealth" in America, a government that would combine the principles of fascism, theocracy, and socialism, along with the exclusion of Jews and non-whites. He claimed he would save America from Jewish communists just as "Mussolini and his Black Shirts saved Italy and as Hitler and his Brown Shirts saved Germany." Pelley ran in the 1936 presidential election on a third-party ticket under the Christian Party banner. Pelley hoped to seize power in a "silver revolution" and set himself up as the dictator of the United States. He would be called "the Chief", a title which would be analogous to the titles used by other fascist leaders, such as "Der Führer" for Adolf Hitler and "Il Duce" for Benito Mussolini. However, the Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt was re-elected, and Pelley failed to appear in the top four. By around 1937, the Silver Legion's membership had declined to about 5,000. In 1936, a small Silver Shirt office was established in downtown Spokane. About 200 members participated before the group's end.

When the Silver Shirts tried to hold a rally at the Elks Club in Minneapolis, the meeting was interrupted by senior local Jewish-American organized crime figure David Berman.

Pelley disbanded the organization soon after the December 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

On January 20, 1942, Pelley was sentenced to serve two to three years in prison by Superior Court Judge F. Don Phillips, in Asheville, North Carolina, for violating terms of probation of a 1935 conviction for violating North Carolina security laws. The same sentence had been suspended pending good behavior, but the court found that during that period, Pelley had published false and libelous statements, published inaccurate reports and advertising, and supported a secret military organization. For claiming that the devastation of the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor was worse than the government claimed, Pelley was arrested by federal authorities and sentenced to 15 years in prison for sedition and conspiracy to commit sedition, including for making seditious statements, obstructing military recruiting, and fomenting insurrection within the military.

In popular culture

• Sinclair Lewis's novel It Can't Happen Here (1935) depicts a fascist takeover of the United States by an anti-Roosevelt demagogue who claims that he is inspired to do so by the Silver Legion of America.
• In the Paradox Interactive video game Hearts of Iron IV, should the United States turn fascist, the Silver Legion of America will be depicted as the ruling party. Pelley can become president if certain conditions are met and the country will be renamed to the "Free American Empire".

References

Notes

Further reading

• Allen, Joe "'It Can't Happen Here?': Confronting the Fascist Threat in the US in the Late 1930s," International Socialist Review, Part One: whole no. 85 (Sept.–Oct. 2012), pp. 26–35; Part Two: whole no. 87 (Jan.–Feb. 2013), pp. 19–28.
• Ribuffo, Leo Paul The Old Christian Right: The Protestant Far Right from the Great Depression to the Cold War. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983.
• Spivak, John L. Secret Armies: The New Technique of Nazi Warfare. New York: Modern Age Books, 1939.
• Werly, John The Millenarian Right: William Dudley Pelley and the Silver Legion of America. PhD dissertation. Syracuse University, 1972.
• Yeadon, Glen. The Nazi Hydra in America. Joshua Tree, CA: Progressive Press, 2008.

References

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3. (27 February 2014). "The Would-Be Nazi Stronghold Hidden in the Hills of L.A.".
4. Lipset & Raab, pp. 162–64
5. (1989). "Silver Shirts in the Northwest: Politics, Prophecies, and Personalities in the 1930s". The Pacific Northwest Quarterly.
6. (September 2006). "William Dudley Pelley: A Life in Right-Wing Extremism and the Occult". Journal of American History.
7. (December 1951). "The Ideology of the 'Dixiecrat' Movement". Social Forces.
8. "From Nativism to White Power: Mid-Twentieth-Century White Supremacist Movements in Oregon".
9. (1999). "Fascist apocalypse: William Pelley and millennial extremism". Journal of Millennial Studies.
10. Van Ells, Mark D.. (August 2007). "Americans for Hitler". americainwwii.com.
11. David Brion Davis, ed. ''The Fear of Conspiracy: Images of Un-American Subversion from the Revolution to the present'' (1971) pp. xviii–xix
12. Diamond, pp. 5–6
13. Barkun, Michael. (1997). "Religion and the Racist Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement". UNC Press Books.
14. "Silver Shirts".
15. Bernstein, Arnie. (October 7, 2013). "6 Things You May Not Have Known About Nazis in America".
16. [http://www.ajcarchives.org/AJC_DATA/Files/THR-SS1.PDF "The Silver Shirts: Their History, Founder, and Activities"] {{Webarchive. link. (2013-02-16 . August 24, 1933)
17. "Pelley's Silver Shirts".
18. "Melee breaks out during a speech by the leader of the fascist Silver Shirts organization in downtown Spokane on July 18, 1938.".
19. Neil Karlen (2013), ''Augie's Secrets: The Minneapolis Mob and the King of the Hennepin Strip'', ''Minnesota Historical Society Press'', pp. 97–98.
20. (Winter 2018–2019). "'This List Not Complete': Minnesota's Jewish Resistance to the Silver Legion of America, 1936–1940". Minnesota History.
21. Associated Press, "Pelley of Silver Shirts Must Serve Prison Term," The San Bernardino Daily Sun, San Bernardino, California, Wednesday 21 January 1942, Volume 48, page 1.
22. "Imperial Valley Press 6 August 1942 — California Digital Newspaper Collection".
23. Horowitz, Mitch. (2009). "Occult America".
24. (18 December 2023). "'Assassin's Creed' in the Classroom: History's Playground or a Stab in the Dark?". De Gruyter Oldenbourg.