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Matthias Koehl

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Matthias Koehl
Koehl waving the American flag in 1953
2nd Commander
of the American Nazi Party
In office
August 25, 1967 – October 9, 2014
Preceded byGeorge Lincoln Rockwell
Succeeded byMartin Kerr[1]
2nd and 4th leader
of the World Union of National Socialists
In office
April 9, 2009 – October 9, 2014
Preceded byColin Jordan
In office
August 25, 1967 – 1968
Preceded byGeorge Lincoln Rockwell
Succeeded byColin Jordan
Personal details
Born
Matthias Koehl Jr.

(1935-01-22)January 22, 1935
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, U.S.
DiedOctober 9, 2014(2014-10-09) (aged 79)
Wisconsin, U.S.
Political partyNational Renaissance Party
United White Party
National States' Rights Party
American Nazi Party
Alma materUniversity of Wisconsin–Milwaukee
OccupationUnited States Marine, politician, writer
Part of a series on
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Matthias Koehl Jr. (January 22, 1935 – October 9, 2014) was a U.S. Marine, neo-Nazi politician and writer. He joined the American Nazi Party in 1960 and in 1967 succeeded the assassinated founder of the party George Lincoln Rockwell as the longest serving leader of the ANP, from 1967 to 2014.

During that period, Koehl reworked the organisation to be more openly occult and religious, influenced by the Greek–French writer Savitri Devi, as he renamed the group 'New Order'. He was also a close friend of the Dutch World War II Nazi collaborator Florentine Rost van Tonningen.[citation needed]

Early life

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Koehl was born on January 22, 1935, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Hungarian immigrants of German descent,[2] Koehl's father claimed Matthias would rarely speak with him on personal matters, but was more talkative to his mother.[3] Koehl first professed admiration for Hitler at age 13,[4] by which age he had a reputation for being vocally antisemitic.[5] He distributed racial literature at his high school and served as a spokesman for the Nazi group the American Action Army.[4] He graduated from a high school in his home town in 1952,[3] becoming leader of the young elite guard of the National Renaissance Party, then moving to Chicago.[4] He worked in a print shop before entering the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee to study journalism,[3] where he played violin with the civic opera.[6] He subsequently enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and spent 2 years under them.[2]

Politics

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After joining the NRP, he subsequently moved between various white supremacist parties. He helped with the organisation of the United White Party and was the national organiser the National States' Rights Party,[2] where he first met George Lincoln Rockwell in 1958[5] as they worked on the campaign of John G. Crommelin.[7] By 1959 he was a member of the Fighting American Nationalists, a front group for Rockwell’s American Nazi Party,[4] before joining the ANP in 1960.[7] According to author Fredrick J. Simonelli, Koehl and Rockwell became close friends after meeting, as Rockwell's extreme personality complimented Koehl's introverted nature, which Simonelli compared to the relationship between Adolf Hitler and Martin Bormann.[5]

In 1953, he claimed to have met with the poet and fascist activist Ezra Pound during Pound's imprisonment at St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington, DC. In 1957, he became secretary-treasurer of the committee to Free Ezra Pound. Pound gave Koehl several signed volumes of his poetry during this period, signing them "Matthias Koehl / HEIL / Ezra Pound / 1953".[8]

With the American Nazi Party

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He left the National States' Rights Party to become the leader of the Chicago division of the ANP[4] in 1961 then moved to Rockwell’s headquarters in 1963.[2] This promotion of location accompanied his promotion to corresponding secretary of the World Union of National Socialists and national secretary of the ANP; in addition, he edited and published bulletins for both groups.[2] By late 1963 he had been promoted to major and national secretary, the chief administrative officer, ending the vacancy left by James K. Warner,[5] and by 1966 he was deputy commander in the aftermath of the resignation of Alan Welch.[9]

One frequent rumor that plagued Koehl during his period under Rockwell was the accusation of his homosexuality.[5][10] Allegations included that in 1951, when he was 16 years old, he had sexual relations with two older male members of the Committee to Free Ezra Pound, or that he alongside those two members sexually assaulted a 15-year-old man.[5] Rick Cooper, leader of the National Socialist Vanguard, claimed that he found Koehl engaged in sex with a man in 1958,[5] and the National Socialist Movement led by James Mason spread evidence-less booklets alleging that he was gay.[10] None of these have ever extended beyond claims, but deeply affected Rockwell, who attempted to 'prove' Koehl's heterosexuality by trying to marry him with a Nazi woman, but she did not appeal to Koehl, who ignored her.[5]

Koehl had clashes with Rockwell.[11][12] In August 1966, Rockwell angrily rejected a suggestion from Koehl that they should have more staff (at the time, the ANP did not have enough money for food and could not pay for new employees).[12] On August 24th, 1967, Rockwell and Koehl had another verbal dispute; an “acrimonious showdown” according to Rockwell biography Fredrick Simonelli, where an eyewitness reported that Rockwell claimed Koehl would be expelled from the Party, and the following day, Lincoln Rockwell was assassinated.[11][5] While due to the argument there was speculation Koehl may have been involved, a theory supported by various people who knew Rockwell like his lover Barbara von Goetz, the man convicted for the assassination was a former ANP member named John Patler.[11][5] Dissident Nazis spread posters stating that Koehl was wanted for Rockwell’s murder, despite the arrest of Patler.[4] During Patler's time in the Party, he hated Koehl for their disagreements on race - Patler supported Rockwell's pan-white supremacy, while Koehl cared only for 'nordic' whites.[5] Koehl was the one who sent Patler out of the party, at the request of Rockwell.[5] At the time, Koehl claimed to newsmen the party "[didn't] know of anyone who [could] fill his shoes",[13] but Koehl succeeded the assassinated Rockwell as commander of the National Socialist White People's Party, the-at-the-time name of the American Nazi Party.[2]

As party leader

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Soon after achieving the position he became unpopular; his style of leadership alienated old members and made many new members leave.[9] Shortly after Koehl gained power, two other high members of the Party, Robert Lloyd and William Luther Pierce requested that he sure power between the three of them - however Koehl responded distastefully and Pierce was forced to leave the organisation.[10] Atomwaffen Division advisor James Mason lost faith in Koehl’s leadership because of the incident, but stayed in the organisation because he “didn’t know what else to do”.[10] Many famous former members of the group were purged of their positions in Koehl's attempt to compose the Party of people completely loyal to him.[9] Koehl focused on an adherence to the original fascist principles, and had a strong love for the original dictator Hitler.[9] He took control of the World Union of National Socialists, a group which his leadership of was also criticised.[9] In an attempt to disperse this view of him, Koehl travelled to West Germany and had his photograph taken with several former members of the original Nazi Party, publishing many of the images, chief among them one in which he shook hands with Hans-Ulrich Rudel.[14] These photographs were published alongside photos of people he had shaken hands with doing the same with Hitler, suggesting a connection between the leader of the Third Reich and Koehl.[14] Another attempt to boost his opinion amongst extremists was his alliance with Danish Nazi leader Povl Riis-Knudsen, who became General Secretary of the WUNS.[14]

Splits in the party occurred due to his leadership; an article in The Record Herald claimed he lacked the way Rockwell carried himself and commanded respect.[15] Koehl had suspended Joseph Tommasi, and soon after the group’s Cleveland organiser Casey Kalemba left - both of these people would form their own Neo-Nazi groups outside of the ANP.[10] Similarly an article in the American Jewish Year Book stated these splits were due to Koehl lacking Rockwell’s leadership ability amongst other things; a few units, example including the division in Los Angeles, split off from the Party rather than following him.[16] Koehl was criticised by loyalists of Rockwell like Robert Surrey for not maintaining the founder's direction for the organisation,[5] and former members of the party like Harold Covington actively pushed for Koehl to be overthrown in his leadership.[9] James Mason called him an "orthodox, cultist conservative" with "no talent" and "no charisma".[10] Nonetheless this lack of trust in Koehl was not universal, and the Party remained strong for years following the leaving of Pierce - Koehl was praised by Australian nationalist Jim Saleam as "[standing] above his contemporaries", claiming his ideas "appear to be the basis of American Nazi thinking".[10]

During Koehl’s leadership of the group he backed away from their attacks on other racial groups to instead focus on “positive” aspects of the Neo-Nazi ideology.[7] Koehl did, however, still feature extremist anti-minority speech within the organisation; Urban Milwaukee pointed to a line on the website from 2007 saying that trusted supporters must "be non-Jewish, white, and not a fugitive, drug addict or homosexual".[17] Koehl largely stopped the organisation from pursuing the publicity stunts Rockwell had become known for, and instead the spreading of his message was based primarily through pre-recorded messages from Matthias sent to telephones urging the receiver to follow the “White Power message”; one example being his request that people in Washington, D.C. disobey the gun control laws and keep at least 100 rounds for every weapon they own.[15] One plot Koehl's party became known for during the 1980s were "Victory Bonds", a scheme mimicking War bonds where money invested would be given back once Koehl achieved power.[9] The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission shut down Victory Bonds after they became aware of it in a failed suit from Rick Cooper to get his money back.[9]

Koehl believed that "all the problems [faced] in North America are fundamentally spiritual in origin", and claimed that Hitler said at the end of his life that Nazism could be revived "as a religious movement".[18] He came to believe that the Party was inherently religious, and should stop attempting to pursue politics.[18] Therefore,[18] in 1983, Koehl renamed the organization "New Order" and made it more overtly religious, espousing that Hitler had been sent down to Earth by a divine entity, reflecting his inspiration from Savitri Devi.[7] In the book Black Sun, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke emphasises the extents to which the organisation’s discussion of Hitler was religious; the New Order produced literature praising Hitler in a manner Goodrick-Clarke considered to be imitative of Jesus, Koehl himself directly compared the cause and followers of Hitler to that of the Christian messiah in a 1991 speech to European members of the New Order,[2] and, while talking about Rockwell after his death, compared his role within the Nazi ideology to that of St. Paul within Christianity.[5] Koehl made claims that Hitler was "a gift of Almighty Providence" and that by rejecting him, "we rejected God himself", and claimed in 1985 that Hitler had "risen from the grave".[18] He wrote in 1993 that the New Order was the only group dedicated "totally, exclusively, uncompromisingly and without reservation to the Cause of Adolf Hitler."[19] His language explicitly rejected democracy as having ruined the world, citing that the victory of the Allied powers led unfavourably to concepts he opposed like Miscegenation, rock music, Alternative lifestyles, HIV/AIDS, crime and corruption.[2] This near-cult of Hitler was what led Povl Riis-Knudsen to become disillusioned with Koehl and his group.[14]

At the end of his life, Koehl was the leader of the World Union of National Socialists, despite his affiliation with Esoteric Nazism having alienated some members.[citation needed] He and the Order came under heavy financial troubles in the 1980s from both the IRS[7] (who had given him and his group a lien for $37,000 in unpaid taxes)[4] and the cost of living in Washington, D.C., which culminated in him dispersing the Order to Wisconsin and Michigan.[7] Although he maintained a low public profile, Koehl granted an interview to the mainstream writer William H. Schmaltz in Arlington, Virginia, in April 1996 during the preparation of Schmaltz' biography of Rockwell.[citation needed]

Death

[edit]

Koehl died in the night between October 9 and 10, 2014, at the age of 79 of complications related to cancer.[7]

Works

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  • Some Guidelines to the Development of the National Socialist Movement (1969)
  • The Future Calls (1972)
  • The Program of the National Socialist White People's Party (Cicero, IL: NS Publications, 1980)
  • Faith of the Future (1995)

References

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  1. ^ "City a Leader in White Nationalism". urbanmilwaukee.com. February 26, 2025. Koehl remained based in New Berlin until he died in 2014 and as an obituary published by the New Order noted: "Under his tenure, the NSWPP flourished into a national organization, with headquarters in many US cities. In the mid-1970s, it ran candidates for local office in Milwaukee and elsewhere."...The group's new leader is Martin Kerr.
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h Goodrik-Clarke, Nicholas (2001). Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity. NYU Press. pp. 15–18. ISBN 0-8147-3155-4.
  3. ^ a b c "Former State Resident New Boss Of Nazis". The Daily Telegram. August 26, 1967. p. 1. Retrieved March 6, 2025.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g Newton, Michael (2024). The Ku Klux Klan: History, Organization, Language, Influence and Activities of America's Most Notorious Secret Society. McFarland, Incorporated, Publishers. p. 157. ISBN 9781476605081.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Simonelli, Frederick J. (1999). American Fuehrer: George Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party. University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-02285-8. and ISBN 0-252-06768-1
  6. ^ "Old Berlin". Milwaukee Magazine. December 1, 2008. Retrieved November 16, 2022.
  7. ^ a b c d e f g "Longtime Neo-Nazi Matthias "Matt" Koehl Dies". Southern Poverty Law Center. October 13, 2014.
  8. ^ Hanson, Bradford (June 20, 2017). "Matt Koehl and Ezra Pound: The Untold Story". National Vanguard. Retrieved January 4, 2023.
  9. ^ a b c d e f g h Kaplan, Jeffrey, ed. (2000). Encyclopedia of White Power: a Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Tight. Walnut Creek, Calif.: AltaMira Press [u.a.] ISBN 978-0-7425-0340-3.
  10. ^ a b c d e f g Sunshine, Spencer (2024). Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason's Siege. Routledge studies in fascism and the far right. Abingdon, Oxon New York, NY: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-429-57601-0.
  11. ^ a b c Berry, Damon T. (2017). Blood & Faith: Christianity in American White Nationalism (1st ed.). Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press. p. 48. ISBN 978-0-8156-3532-1.
  12. ^ a b Simonelli, Fredrick J. (Spring 1995). "The American Nazi Party, 1958–1967". The Historian. 57 (3): 561. JSTOR 24451464.
  13. ^ "Rockwell's Slayer Former Aide". The Daily Telegram. August 26, 1967. p. 1. Retrieved March 6, 2025.
  14. ^ a b c d Lee, Martin A. (1999). The Beast Reawakens: Fascism's Resurgence from Hitler's Spymasters to Today's Neo-Nazi Groups and Right-Wing Extremists. Hoboken: Taylor and Francis. ISBN 978-1-135-28124-3.
  15. ^ a b "Deep splits develop in Rockwell's party". The Record Herald. August 8, 1968. p. 12.
  16. ^ Ellerin, Milton (1968). "Rightist Extremism". American Jewish Year Book. 69: 269. JSTOR 23604346.
  17. ^ Murphy, Bruce. "Murphy's Law: City a Leader in White Nationalism". Urban Milwaukee. Retrieved February 27, 2025.
  18. ^ a b c d Gardell, Mattias (2003). Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism. Durham: Duke University Press. pp. 84–85. ISBN 978-0-8223-8450-2.
  19. ^ Atkins, Stephen E. (2011). Encyclopedia of Right-Wing Extremism in Modern American History. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO. ISBN 979-8-216-13985-0.
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