Heinz Spanknöbel
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Heinrich "Heinz" Spanknöbel (27 November 1893 – 10 March 1947<ref name="muehlberg">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>) was a German immigrant to America who formed, and for a short time led, the pro-Nazi Friends of New Germany as its Bundesleiter.<ref name=Bernstein/>
Family
Heinz was born in Homberg, Germany, to Konrad Spanknöbel (1866–1969) and Christiane Becker (1869–1966). He had an older brother, Karl Adolph (later Charles A. Noble; 6 September 1892, Homberg, Germany – 22 March 1983, Watsontown, Pennsylvania, USA) and younger brothers and sisters: Käthe (1897–1970), Anne (1898–1962), Wilhelm (1900–1980), August (1902–1969), Martha (1904–1966), and Frieda (1907–?).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 1918, he married Elsa Fourier (1892–1957) in Würzburg.
Career
In 1920, Spanknöbel was ordained as a minister on the Seventh-day Adventist Church Reform Movement in Würzburg.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> He was admitted to the US as a minister in 1929, but his relationship with religion was dubious while he was in the country.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Spanknöbel was a member of the Free Society of Teutonia and an employee of the Ford Motor Company.<ref name="Wallace">Template:Cite book</ref> Initial support for American fascist organizations came from Germany.Template:Citation needed In May 1933, Nazi Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess gave Spanknöbel authority to form an American Nazi organization.<ref name="Bredemus">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Shortly thereafter, with help from the German consul in New York City, Spanknöbel formed the Friends of New Germany<ref name=Bredemus/> 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)<ref name="Bernstein">Template:Cite book</ref> 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.<ref name=Bredemus/>
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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He attempted to infiltrate and influence other non-political German-American organizations, such as the United German Societies.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> 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,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Spanknöbel was ousted as leader and subsequently ordered to be deported in October 1933 since he had failed to register as a foreign agent.<ref name=Bredemus/> 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.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref> After a federal arrest warrant was issued for him, Spanknöbel boarded the S.S. Europa ocean liner bound for Bremen on 29 October.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref><ref name=Bernstein/> In December 1933, Spanknöbel's bodyguard, Walter Kauf, was sentenced to six months in jail in New Jersey on charges of carrying a concealed weapon.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Back in Germany, Spanknöbel reportedly became a director of the Propaganda School for Germans Living Abroad.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> 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.<ref name="muehlberg" />
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.<ref name="muehlberg" /><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>