Lincoln Rockwell: A National Socialist Life
On the 100th anniversary of the birth of George Lincoln Rockwell, we present William Pierce’s piece on his life and work.
by Dr. William L. Pierce
ON THE eighteenth of June, 1945, a little over six weeks after the death of Adolf Hitler, Rudolf Hess wrote the following words in a letter to his wife, from his prison cell:
You will readily imagine how often during the last few weeks my thoughts have turned to the years gone by: to this quarter of a century of history, concentrated for us in one name and full of the most wonderful human experiences. History is not ended. It will sooner or later take up the threads apparently broken off forever and knit them together in a new pattern. The human element is no more and lives only in memory. Very few people have been privileged, as we were, to participate from the very beginning in the growth of a unique personality, through joy and sorrow, hope and trouble, love and hate, and all the manifestations of greatness, and further, in all the little indications of human weakness, without which a man is not truly worthy of love. . . .
Even when one has been privileged to witness the manifestations of greatness, it may be exceedingly difficult to describe adequately in words those manifestations and thereby to paint a true picture of a unique and great personality. When one has not the basis of a quarter-century of participation in the growth of such a personality, but less than two years, the task is especially difficult. It would be a vain hope, then, to expect the pages which follow to reflect the true greatness of the man. That greatness will be best reflected in the fruition of his life’s work in years to come.
Here, however, we can at least hope to evoke an image of the man, imperfect and incomplete though it may be, which will serve to inspire those National Socialists who did not have the privilege of knowing him personally.
George Lincoln Rockwell was born on March 9, 1918, in Bloomington, a small coal-mining and farming town in central Illinois. Both his parents were theatrical performers. His father, George Lovejoy Rockwell, was a twenty-eight-year-old vaudeville comedian of English and Scotch ancestry. His mother, born Claire Schade, was a young German-French toe-dancer, part of a family dance team. His parents were divorced when he was six years old, and he and a younger brother and sister lived alternately with their mother and their father during the next few years.
The young Rockwell passed the greater part of his boyhood days in Maine, Rhode Island, and New Jersey. His father settled in a small coastal town in Maine, and Rockwell spent his summers there; attending school in Atlantic City and, later, in Providence during the winters. Some of his fondest memories in later years were of summer days spent on the Maine beaches, or hiking in the Maine woods, or exploring the coves and inlets of the Maine coast in his sailboat, which he built himself, starting from an old skiff. Rockwell acquired what was to be a lifelong love of sailing and the sea during those early years spent with his father in Maine.
Aside from a bit more traveling about than the average child, it is difficult to find anything extraordinary in his childhood environment. He lived in the midst neither great poverty nor great wealth; he had an affectionate relationship with both his parents, despite their divorce; he was a sound and healthy child, and there seems to be no evidence of prolonged unhappiness or turmoil in his childhood. If he later recalled with greater pleasure the times spent with his father than those spent with his mother, this can be attributed either to the greater opportunities to satisfy his youthful longing for adventure that life on the Maine coast offered relative to that in the city, or to the fact that his mother lived with a domineering sister of whom young Rockwell was not fond.
And yet, even as a boy he displayed those qualities of character which were later to set him off from the common run of men. His most remarkable quality was his responsiveness to challenge. To tell the boy Rockwell that a thing was impossible, that it simply could not be done, was to awaken in him the irresistible determination to do it. He has described an experience he had at the age of ten which illustrates this aspect of his character.
A juvenile gang of some of the tougher elements at the grammar school he was attending in an Atlantic City coastal suburb had singled him out for hazing. He was informed that he was to be given a cold dunking in the ocean, and that he should relax and submit gracefully, as resistance would be futile. Instead of submitting, he ferociously fought off the entire gang of his attackers on the beach…
Read more:
https://nationalvanguard.org/2018/03/rockwell-a-national-socialist-life/
