Silver Legion of America

The Silver Legion of America, commonly known as the Silver Shirts, was an American fascist organization founded by William Dudley Pelley on January 30, 1933, coincidentally, the same day Adolf Hitler, whom Pelley admired, seized power in Germany.

American Silver Shirts

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.

The uniform of the Silver Legion members consisted of a campaign hat, blue corduroy trousers, leggings, tie, and silver shirt with a scarlet "L" over the heart. Pelley hoped to seize power in a 'silver revolution' and set himself up as dictator of the United States.

By 1934, the Silver Shirts had about 15,000 members. Most members were of the lower classes. The movement's strength dwindled after 1934. Four years later, the Silver Legion's membership was down to about 5,000. In 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent declaration of war on the United States by Nazi Germany and the Kingdom of Italy led to the immediate collapse of the Silver Legion.

In fiction

• A fictionalized depiction of the Silver Shirts forms a large part of the plot in the thriller The Night Letter by Paul Spike.
• The Silver Shirts are also a British political movement in Harry Turtledove's American Empire and Settling Accounts series of alternate history novels. They are likely an analog of the British Union of Fascists, as Oswald Mosley is a prominent leader.

See also

• German American Bund
• Ulrich Fleischhauer
• Authoritarianism

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
• Spivak, John L., Secret Armies: The New Technique of Nazi Warfare, Modern Age Books, New York, 1939.
• Yeadon, Glen (2008). The Nazi Hydra in America. Progressive Press. pp. 700. ISBN 0-930852-43-5. 

External links

• Photo of a Silver Legion of America meeting in the 1930s:
• The Holocaust Chronicle PROLOGUE: Roots of the Holocaust, page 89
• The American Jewish Committees' archive on the Silver Shirts: