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Silver Legion of America

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Also known as
  
"Silver Shirts"

Leader(s)
  
William Dudley Pelley

Country
  
United States

Foundation
  
January 30, 1933 (1933-01-30)

Dissolved
  
December 7, 1941 (1941-12-07)

Active region(s)
  
All United States, mainly American South and California

The Silver Legion of America, commonly known as the Silver Shirts, was an underground American fascist organization founded by William Dudley Pelley that was headquartered in Asheville, North Carolina and announced publicly on January 30, 1933.

Contents

History

A white-supremacist, antisemitic group modeled after Hitler's Brownshirts, the paramilitary Silver Legion wore a silver shirt with a blue tie, along with a campaign hat and blue corduroy trousers with leggings. The uniform shirts bore a scarlet letter L over the heart: an emblem meant to symbolize Loyalty to the United States, Liberation from materialism, and the Silver Legion itself. The blocky slab serif L-emblem was in a typeface similar to the present-day Rockwell Extra Bold. The organizational flag was a plain silver field with such a red L in the canton at the upper left.

By 1934, the Silver Shirts claimed about 15,000 members. Circa 1935, a Nazi agent befriended mining fortune heiress Jessie Murphy, convincing her to contribute cash, and the use of her ranch, recently purchased from screen cowboy Will Rogers, to the Fascist movement. The Silver Shirts began construction of the Murphy Ranch, situated on a secluded 55 acre site in the Los Angeles hills, meant to serve as a fortified world headquarters after the expected Fascist global conquest.

Silver Shirt leader Pelley ran for President of the United States in the 1936 election on a third-party ticket. Pelley hoped to seize power in a "silver revolution" and set himself up as dictator of the United States; the presidency remained in the hands of incumbent Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt. By around 1938, the Silver Legion's membership was down to about 5,000.

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Sunday, December 7, 1941, local police occupied the "world headquarters" bunker compound and detained members of the 50-man caretaker force. The declaration of war on the United States by Nazi Germany and the Kingdom of Italy led to the rapid decline of the Silver Legion.

  • 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 mentioned in Kurt Vonnegut's novel Mother Night.
  • The character of Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, loosely modeled after Silver Legion founder William Dudley Pelley, was elected U.S. President in 1936 and became the dictator of America in the cautionary 1935 novel by Sinclair Lewis, It Can't Happen Here. Some literary scholars contend instead that the Windrip character was modeled after Louisiana politician Huey Long, who was not associated with the Silver Shirts.
  • 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 real-world British Union of Fascists, because Oswald Mosley is a prominent leader.
  • The Silver Shirts appear in James Lee Burke's novel Dixie City Jam, a novel in the Dave Robicheaux series.
  • Silver Shirts are also mentioned in James Ellroy's novel Perfidia
  • Silver Shirts are mentioned in William Faulkner's novel The Mansion.

    • Silver Shirts are mentioned in Philip Roth's 2004 novel "The Plot Against America."

  • The Silver Legion of America is a political party in the video game Hearts of Iron IV. The in-game USA can turn into the Silver Legion led "Free American Empire" if a fascist coup occurs.

    • References

    Silver Legion of America Wikipedia
    (Text) CC BY-SA


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