Silver Legion of America

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The Silver Legion of America, commonly known as the Silver Shirts, was an American Nazi organization founded by William Dudley Pelley on January 30, 1933. Many believe that Pelley's choice of the name was a reference to the German SS.

The Silver Legion’s emblem was a scarlet 'L', it stood for Loyalty to the American Republic, Liberation from materialism and, of course, the Silver Legion itself. Their uniforms consisted of a cap identical to those worn by German Stormtroopers, blue corduroy trousers, leggings, tie and silver shirt with a red "L" over the heart.

The Silver Shirts had about 15,000 members, mostly middle-class, by 1934. The movement's strength dwindled to 5000 four years later. The attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 led to the immediate collapse of the Silver Legion.

[edit] References

• The Millenarian Right: William Dudley Pelley and the Silver Legion of America by John Werly (Ph.D. diss. Syracuse University, 1972)
• Ribuffo, Leo Pual, Protestants on the Right: William Dudley Pelley, Gerald B. Winrod and Gerald L.K. Smith, two volumes, Yale University, 1976 Liberation magazine, January 1936, New York City Library

[edit] See also

• William Dudley Pelley
• In the 1972 George Roy Hill movie Slaughterhouse-Five, which is based on the Kurt Vonnegut Jr. novel, the character Howard W. Campbell Jr. who comes to the German POW camp and attempts to proselytize the American prisoners into joining the "anti-bolshevik" struggle of Germany is a clear reference to the Silver Shirts.
• A fictionalised depiction of the Silver Shirts forms a large part of the plot in the thriller The Night Letter by Paul Spike.

[edit] External links

• The Holocaust Chronicle PROLOGUE: Roots of the Holocaust, page 89

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The Silver Shirts are also a British political movement in Harry Turtledove's American Empire and Settling Accounts series of novels. They are likely an analog of the British Union of Fascists.