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Old Nazis and the New Right: The Republican Party and Fascists
by Russ Bellant*
Winter 1990
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
It is May 17, 1985: Ronald Reagan has been back in the nation's capital less than two weeks after his much criticized trip to the Bitburg cemetery in West Germany. Now, floodlights and television cameras that are part of a President's entourage are waiting at the Shoreham Hotel, as are 400 luncheon guests.
Ronald Reagan had recently characterized the Nazi Waffen SS as "victims" and these comments held special meaning for some of his afternoon luncheon guests. Although it was a Republican Party affair, it was not the usual GOP set, but a special ethnic outreach unit, the National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities) Council (RHGC).
The RHGC is an umbrella for various ethnic Republican clubs and operates under the auspices of the Republican National Committee. It has a special type of outreach and appears to have consciously recruited some of its members - and some of its leaders-from an Eastern European emigre network which includes anti-Semites, racists, authoritarians, and fascists, including sympathizers and collaborators of Hitler's Third Reich, former Nazis, and even possible war criminals. The persons in this network are a part of the radical right faction of the ethnic communities they claim to represent.
These anti-democratic and racialist components of the RHGC use anticommunist sentiments as a cover for their views while they operate as a defacto emigre fascist network within the Republican Party. Some of the unsavory personalities who were present in that 1985 luncheon audience would later join the 1988 election campaign of President George Bush.
This fascist network within the Republican Party represents a small but significant element of the coalition which brought Ronald Reagan into the White House. It is from this network that the George Bush presidential campaign assembled its ethnic outreach unit in 1988 - a unit that saw eight resignations by persons charged with anti-Semitism, racism, and even Nazi collaboration.
Axis Allies and Apologists
This network organizes support for its ideological agenda through national and international coalitions of like-minded constituencies which often work with other pro-fascist forces. This broader coalition ranges from Axis allies and their apologists to friends and allies of contemporary dictatorships and authoritarian regimes.
In the case of the Republican Heritage Groups Council, the nature of this network can be illustrated by briefly reviewing the backgrounds of some of the past and current leadership:
• Laszlo Pasztor: The founding chair and a key figure in the Council, Pasztor began his political career in a Hungarian pro-Nazi party and served in Berlin at the end of World War II. He continues to be involved in ultra-rightist groups and fascist networks while working with the GOP.
• Radi Slavoff: The RHGC's executive director is a member of a Bulgarian fascist group and leader of the Bulgarian GOP unit of the Council. He was able to get the leader of his Bulgarian nationalist group an invitation to the White House even though that leader was being investigated for concealing alleged World War II war crimes. He is also active in other emigre fascist groups.
• Nicolas Nazarenko: A former World War II officer in the German SS Cossack Division, Nazarenko heads the Cossack GOP unit of the Republican Heritage Groups Council and has declared that Jews are his "ideological enemy." He is still active with pro-Nazi elements in the U.S.
• Florian Galdau: He is a close associate and defender of Valerian Trifa - the Romanian archbishop prosecuted for concealing his involvement in war crimes of the pro-Nazi Romanian Iron Guard. Charged by former Iron Guardists and others with being the East Coast recruiter for the Iron Guard in the U.S., Galdau heads the Romanian Republican unit of the RHGC.
• Philip A. Guarino: He is a honorary American member of the conspiratorial P-2 Masonic Lodge of Italy, which plotted in the early 1970s to overthrow the Italian government in order to install a dictatorship. Guarino, an Italian Heritage Council member and Republican National Committee advisor, offered aid to those P-2 members being investigated.
• Anna Chennault: The newly-elected Republican Heritage Groups Council chairperson and fonder of the Chinese Republican affiliate, which for years has been closely linked to the authoritarian Taiwan regime.
The names of all but one of the persons listed above appeared on the invitational literature for the October 1987 meeting of the National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities) Council in Washington, D.C.
History of the Republican Heritage Groups Council
Many of the RHGC leaders of Central and Eastern European nationalities were part of the post- World War II immigration from displaced persons camps. It would be unfair to suggest that all or even a majority of Eastern and Central Europeans were anti-Semites or fascists. Most displaced persons were victims of the war who played no role in collaborating with Nazism. Yet quite a few persons in the displaced persons camps were there as political escapees to avoid the consequences of their collaboration with the German occupation of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
The Displaced Persons Commission, which worked from 1948 to 1952, arranged for approximately 400,000 persons to come to the U.S. [1] Initially it sought to bar members of pro-Nazi groups, but in 1950 a dramatic reversal took place. The Commission declared" ... the Baltic Legion not to be a movement hostile to the Government of the United States." [2] The Baltic Legion was also known as the Baltic Waffen (armed) SS.
The final report of the Commission noted that the decision "was the subject of considerable controversy,,,3 as well it should have been. The Waffen SS participated in the liquidation of Jews in the Baltic region because the SS units were comprised of Hitler's loyal henchmen, recruited from fascist political groups long tied to the German Nazi Party. Anyone opposed to the German occupation of the Baltic region (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia) was likely to meet a cruel death at their hands. They were now considered qualified to come to the United States, to become American citizens. Further, pro-Nazi elements from other parts of Europe came to the U.S. through nominally private groups associated with the Commission.
In 1952, the Commission completed its work. The Eisenhower- Nixon presidential campaign was on and the Republicans were charging the Democrats with being "soft on Communism." Talk of "liberating" Eastern Europe became part of the GOP message. That year, the Republican National Committee formed an Ethnic Division. Displaced fascists, hoping to be returned to power by an Eisenhower-Nixon "liberation" policy, were among those who signed on. This would become the embryo for the formation of the Republican Heritage Groups Council in 1969.
In a sense, however, the foundation of the Republican Heritage Groups Council lay in Hitler's networks in Eastern Europe before World War II. In many Eastern European countries the German SS set up or funded political action organizations that helped form SS militias during the war.
In Hungary, for example, the Arrow Cross was the Hungarian SS affiliate; in Romania, the Iron Guard. The Bulgarian Legion, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the Latvian Legion, and the Byelorussian (White Russian) Belarus Brigade were all SS-linked. In each of their respective countries, they were expected to serve the interests of the German Nazi Party before and during the war.
This should not be taken to suggest that all Eastern and Central Europeans were Nazi collaborators who participated in atrocities, but it is a historical fact that some rightwing elements from virtually every Eastern European nationality tied their nationalistic goals to the rising star of fascism and Hitler's racialist Nazism.
The Council's Leadership
The founding chair of the Republican Heritage Groups Council was Laszlo Pasztor, an activist in various Hungarian rightist and Nazi-linked groups. In World War II Pasztor was a member of the youth group of the Arrow Cross, the Hungarian equivalent of the German Nazi Party. [4]
When Pasztor came to the U.S. in the 1950s, he joined the GOP's Ethnic Division. One of the leaders of the 1968 Nixon-Agnew campaign's ethnic unit, Pasztor says that Nixon promised him that if he won the election, he would form a permanent ethnic council within the GOP, as the Ethnic Division was only active during presidential campaigns.
Pasztor was made the organizer of the Council after Nixon's victory. Pasztor claims, "It was my job to identify about 25 ethnic groups" to bring into the Republican Heritage Groups Council. "In 1972 we used the Council as the skeleton to build the Heritage Groups for the re-election of the President." [5]
Pasztor's choices for filling emigre slots as the Council was being formed included various Nazi-collaborationist organizations mentioned above. Each formed a Republican federation, with local clubs around the country. The local clubs of the various federations then formed state multi-ethnic councils. Today there are 34 nationality federations and 25 state councils that constitute the National Republican Heritage Groups Council.
According to RHGC delegates interviewed during the May 1985 conference, in setting up the Council, Pasztor went to various collaborationist and fascist-minded emigre groups and asked them to form GOP federations. It eventually became clear that it was not an accident or a fluke that people with Nazi associations were in the Republican Heritage Groups Council. In some cases more mainstream ethnic organizations were passed over in favor of smaller but more extremist groups. And it seems clear that the Republican National Committee knows with whom they are dealing. A review of the federations will illustrate this point.
Bulgarians
One of the organizations which Pasztor approached to help form the RHGC was the Bulgarian National Front, headed by Ivan Docheff. As early as 1971, the GOP was warned that the National Front was beyond the pale. A Jack Anderson column quoted another Bulgarian-American organization, the conservative Bulgarian National Committee, which labeled Docheff's National Front as "fascist." [6] Neither the GOP nor the Nixon campaign took action. Professor Spas T. Raikin, a former official of the National Front, says the group grew out of an organization in Bulgaria that in the 1930s and 1940s was "pro-Nazi and pro-fascist." [7]
Docheff, age 83, is semi-retired from GOP activity, and the National Front is now represented by Radi Slavoff, Republican Heritage Groups Council executive director and head of the Bulgarian GOP federation. Slavoff also represents the National Front in several other Washington, D.C. area coalitions, including one that is Nazi-linked. [8]
While Docheff was representing the National Front, the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) was investigating him for possible war crimes he was suspected of committing while the mayor of a German-occupied city in Bulgaria. Docheff denies he ever committed war crimes, and the OSI never brought charges.
Docheff's political history, however, is not in dispute. Founder of a Bulgarian youth group in the early 1930s, Docheff met with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement's leading philosopher, Alfred Rosenberg, in 1934, shortly after the Nazis came to power. [9] Docheff then established the Bulgarian Legion, a pro-Hitler group that agitated for government action against Bulgarian Jews.
Romanians
Romanian-American Republicanism is led by a retired priest who, in 1984, said that the most important issue for Romanian Republicans is stopping " ... the deportation of our beloved spiritual leader, Archbishop Valerian Trifa." [10] Faced with charges by the OSI that he participated in the murder of Jews as part of a coup plot in Bucharest, Romania in 1941, Trifa left the U.S. in 1984. But his political network stayed behind. The Romanian Republican priest, Florian Galdau, is part of that network.
After the war, Trifa was able to come to the U.S. and take over the Romanian Orthodox Church by means of physical coercion and with some help from the U.S. government. In 1952, Trifa became an Archbishop of the Romanian Orthodox Church. [11]
FBI documents from 1954 and 1955 (which were used in the prosecution of Trifa) show that Trifa "is bringing Iron Guard members into the U.S. and installing them as priests." One of those priests, according to a document dated October 5, 1955, was Florian Galdau, whom an FBI source described as "a Romanian Iron Guard member and who at Trifa's instructions was elected Pastor of St. Dumitru," a Manhattan parish. [12]
Credit: Russ BeHant.
George Bush stands next to Bohdan Fedorak at the 1988 Captive Nations banquet in Warren, Michigan.
Friends of Dictatorships
Certain Republican Heritage Groups Council members have close allies in Italy who have plotted to overthrow the government and re-install fascism in Rome. Italy's problems with fascism have been much more recent than World War II. In 1981, Italian authorities uncovered a conspiracy in which a group of business, political, Mafia, military, and Vatican-connected figures planned to overthrow Italian parliamentary democracy and install a dictatorship. The group, called the P- 2 Masonic Lodge, had nearly a thousand members. The prestige of P-2 members (heads of the intelligence agencies, 38 generals and admirals, and 3 cabinet officers, for example), plus revelations of financial scandals, brought extensive European press coverage, the collapse of the Italian government, and a parliamentary inquiry. [13]
One American involved in this intrigue was Philip A. Guarino, 79, an adviser on senior citizens' affairs to the Republican National Committee, who was long active in Italian GOP politics. A theology student in Mussolini's Italy in the late 1920s and much of the 1930s, Guarino helped establish the ethnic division of the GOP in 1952. He was vice-chair of the Republican Heritage Groups Council from 1971-75. [14] He attended the 1985 Council convention to ensure that his friend, Frank Stella, won the chairmanship of the Council in a tight race with former Cleveland mayor Ralph Perk.
Guarino was also described in St. Peter's Banker, a book about activities involving P-2, as an "honorary member of P- 2.,,15 Foreign members of P-2 were rare. Another member of the select group was Jose L6pez Riga, founder of the Latin American death squad group known as the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance (AAA).
Credit: Coalitions for America
Laszlo Pasztor, founding chair of the Republican Heritage Groups Council.
Guarino was also involved in John Connally's Committee for the Defense of the Mediterranean, which disseminated propaganda on the Italian Communist Party (PCI) supposed threat to the West. [16] Connally was Richard Nixon's Secretary of the Treasury and member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under Nixon and Gerald Ford. [17] In 1978, Guarino's friend and ally, Frank Stella, became National Chair of the "Heritage National Committee of Connally for President," when Connally sought the 1980 GOP nomination for president. [18]
Later Stella got on track with Ronald Reagan. Mark Valente, a Stella protege and suburban Detroit City Council member now serving as a Republican National Committee Ethnic Liaison staffer, says, "Everyone at the White House knows Frank." Stella's name has gone through the White House appointment process on several occasions. In 1981 he was nominated for the little-known Intelligence Oversight Board, which is supposed to monitor the legalities of covert operations of the intelligence agencies. [19] He withdrew his name after it had been publicly released. Stella was being considered for the post of Ambassador to Italy in 1985, but withdrew his name again, according to Valente. In 1983 he was made a White House Fellow.
Taiwan's Input
The Chinese-American and Asian-American Republican federations are led by Anna Chennault, who gained fame in the 19505 and 1960s as an ardent advocate of Chiang Kai-Shek's dictatorship of Taiwan. Both federations appear to be little more than adjuncts to Taiwan government activities in the U.S. This fact was highlighted at the 1985 RHGC convention when an official Taiwan Republican Heritage Groups Council delegation arrived at the meeting as part of a nationwide tour belatedly celebrating Reagan's second inauguration four months earlier. While the foremost visitor from Taiwan was the Deputy Minister for National Defense, the honorary president of the delegation was Ben John Chen, who also chairs the Asian-American Republican Federation.20 Other Chinese and Asian GOP federation members are part of trade groups linked to Taiwan.
The Republican Heritage Groups Council agenda was interrupted at the Chinese federation's request so that the delegation could present awards from the Taiwan government to Michael Sotirhos, the outgoing Republican Heritage Groups Council chair (who later became Reagan's ambassador to Jamaica). Also receiving an award from the Taiwan regime was Anna Chennault, who funds the Asian-American GOP federation, according to Chen. Chennault became RHCG chair in 1987.
Ethnic Realignment
The Republican Heritage Groups Council's ethnicity is broad, ranging from Albanians to Vietnamese. But two groups are missing at the RHGC. There are no African-American or Jewish Republican federations. Remarks by a number of delegates at the 1986 RHGC meeting made it clear that there was no desire to have either community represented on the Council. [21] Republican leaders say that African-American and Jewish relations are "special" and are dealt with in separate units of the GOP.
The key issues for every one of the Eastern European Heritage Council leaders interviewed were foreign policy issues. All of them called for more support for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Most called for the abandonment of the Yalta agreement, the major treaty that set the post-war features of Europe, and all want a far more aggressive foreign policy against the Soviet Union. The most public activity the RHGC participates in is the annual "Captive Nations" rallies held in cities across the U.S. "Captive Nations" is the term used to describe countries which have communist governments.
The Republican National Committee seems to identify the RHGC as one of its keys to past electoral success and future opportunities. Republican Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf told the 1985 Council meeting, "On behalf of the Republican Party I want to express thanks for all of you in this room who were such a vital, integral part of the great victory we achieved on November 6 last year. We couldn't have done it without you, and I want you to know that." [22]
A few minutes later, President Reagan told the meeting, "The work of all of you has meant a very great deal to me personally, to the Party, and to our cause .... I can't think of any others who have made a more vital contribution to the effort than those of you who are in this room today ....I want to encourage you to keep building the Party. Believe me, bringing more ethnic Americans into the fold is the key to the positive realignment that we are beginning to see take shape."
Former RHGC chair Michael Sotirhos said in an interview that "The Council was the linchpin of the Reagan-Bush ethnic campaign .... The decision to use the Republican Heritage Groups was made at a campaign strategy meeting that included Paul Laxalt, Frank Fahrenkopf, Ed Rollins, and others." He claims that 86,000 volunteers for Reagan-Bush were recruited through the Council. [23]
Forgive and Forget
The GOP cannot be ignorant of the backgrounds of their ethnic leaders. When Nixon was encouraging the growth of the Republican Heritage Groups Council in 1971, Jack Anderson did a series of reports on the pro-Nazi backgrounds of various GOP ethnic advisors. Included in the reports were Ivan Docheff and Laszlo Pasztor. In November of 1971, the Washington Post did a story that elaborated on some of the fascist elements coming into the GOP. [24]
On August 2, 1988, many of the key figures in the RHGC were named as leaders of the George Bush presidential campaign's ethnic outreach arm, the Coalition of American Nationalities (CAN). These included Anna Chennault, Walter Melianovich, Laszlo Pasztor, Frank Stella, Radi Slavoff, Philip Guarino, and Florian Galdau. Other persons on the Bush ethnic panel with questionable views or pasts were Bohdan Fedorak and Akselis Mangulis.
In September 1988, Pasztor, Slavoff, Guarino, Galdau, Fedorak, Brentar, and Ignatius Billinsky resigned from the Bush panel following revelations about their pasts or views appearing in the Washington Jewish Week, Philadelphia Inquirer, and the extended version of this article which was published by Political Research Associates.
Bush adviser Fred Malek resigned from the Bush campaign after the Washington Post identified him as having compiled lists of Jews working at the Bureau of Labor Statistics on orders from the Nixon White House.
In early November, the Philadelphia Inquirer raised questions about a Latvian member of CAN, which prompted the final resignation, that of Akselis Mangulis, charged with having belonged to the pro-Nazi Latvian Legion which had connections to the SS.
Credit: RHGC
Frank. Stella and Florian Galdau at RHGC Convention.
While Bush campaign spokespersons pledged there would be an investigation into the backgrounds and views of the CAN members whose resignations it had announced, no serious investigation ever took place, and the campaign repeatedly referred to the charges as unsubstantiated politically-motivated smears. Several of the persons who had been reported as resigning told journalists they had never been asked to resign and considered themselves still active with the Bush campaign. Furthermore, Guarino, Slavoff, Galdau, and Pasztor are still active with the Republican Heritage Groups Council.
As a candidate, President Bush defended Galdau, Pasztor, Guarino, and Slavoff as innocent of all accusations of collaboration, and insisted they are all honorable men. But the historical record belies his assertions.
The GOP for decades has misread ethnic America's concerns about crime, employment, anti-ethnic discrimination and the future of its youth. It has offered instead the fascism and ethnic prejudices of the Heritage Council, which focuses primarily on funding Radio Free Europe and stopping Justice Department prosecutions of Nazi-era war criminals who illegally entered the country.
_______________
Notes:
* Russ Bellant is a researcher who has written extensively on the rise of the New Right in the U.S. This article is an edited version of a monograph by Political Research Associates. The monograph entitled, "Old Nazis, The New Right and the Reagan Administration," is available for $5 from: Political Research Associates, 678 Massachusetts Ave., Suite 205, Cambridge, MA 02139.
1. U.S. Displaced Persons Commission, Memo to America, The DP Story, The Final Report of the Displaced Persons Commission (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1952), p. V.
2. Ibid., p. 10l.
3. Ibid.
4. Jack Anderson, "Nixon Appears a Little Soft on Nazis," Washington Post, November 10,1971, p. B17; Nora Levin, The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry 1933-1945 (New York: T.Y. Crowell, 1963; Schocken Books, 1973), pp. 610-11, 644, 653-55, 662-64.
5. Interview with Laszlo Pasztor, Washington, D.C., May 15, 1985.
6. Anderson, op. cit., n. 4, p. B17.
7. Interview with Spas T. Raikin, by telephone, August 1986.
8. Interview with Ivan Docheff, by telephone, September 1984.
9. Interview with Professor Frederic Chary, Detroit, MI, August 1984. Chary is author of Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972).
10. Interview with Florian Galdau, by telephone, September 1984.
11. Howard Blum, Wanted: The Search for Nazis in America (New York: Quadrangle/New York Times Book Co., 1977), pp. 109-11, 114-16. Trifa offered an opening prayer for the U.S. Senate on May 10, 1955, at the request of Richard Nixon, who presided over the Senate as part of his vice-presidential duties.
12. "Viorel Donise Trifa," FBI Memo (April 6, 1954), p. 1; on Galdau, "Viorel Donise Trifa," FBI Memo (October 5, 1955), p. 2. Copies of these memos are in the possession of the author.
13. New York Times, May 25-June 10, 1981; Thomas Sheehan, "Italy: Terror on the Right," New York Review of Books, January 22,1981, pp. 23- 26. Also, Luifi Di Fonzo, St. Peter's Banker (New York and London: Franklin Watts, I983); Larry Gurwin, The Calvi Affair (London: MacMillan, 1983).
14. Who's Who in American Politics: 1987-1988, 11th ed. (New York and London: RR Bowker Co., 1987), p. 258.
15. Di Fonzo, op. cit., n. 13, p. 229.
16. Gurwin, op. cit., n. 13, p. 189.
17. Who's Who in America: 1984-1985, 43rd ed. (Chicago: Marquis Who's Who, 1984); Gurwin, op. cit., n. 13, pp. 12, 189-190.
18. Stella's curriculum vitae, 1986, p. 2.
19. Op. cit., n. 14, p. 767. The announcement was made October 20, 1981, according to an undated White House letter received by the author in February 1984.
20. The delegation's membership, their backgrounds and planned itinerary were described in a booklet distributed at the Republican Heritage Groups Council meeting, "President Reagan's (sic) Reinauguration Celebration Delegation" (Room 8, 11F, 150, Chi Lin Road, Taipei, Taiwan: Chinese Times, 1985).
21. A proposal to create such affiliates was roundly denounced by delegates at the June 1986 convention.
22. Quotations from the 1985 Republican Heritage Groups Council convention are from the author's own notes of the event.
23. Interview with Michael Sotirhos, Washington, D.C., September 1984.
24. Peter Braestrup, "GOP's 'Open Door': Who's Coming In?," Washington Post, November 21, 1971, p. A1.
by Russ Bellant*
Winter 1990
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It is May 17, 1985: Ronald Reagan has been back in the nation's capital less than two weeks after his much criticized trip to the Bitburg cemetery in West Germany. Now, floodlights and television cameras that are part of a President's entourage are waiting at the Shoreham Hotel, as are 400 luncheon guests.
Ronald Reagan had recently characterized the Nazi Waffen SS as "victims" and these comments held special meaning for some of his afternoon luncheon guests. Although it was a Republican Party affair, it was not the usual GOP set, but a special ethnic outreach unit, the National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities) Council (RHGC).
The RHGC is an umbrella for various ethnic Republican clubs and operates under the auspices of the Republican National Committee. It has a special type of outreach and appears to have consciously recruited some of its members - and some of its leaders-from an Eastern European emigre network which includes anti-Semites, racists, authoritarians, and fascists, including sympathizers and collaborators of Hitler's Third Reich, former Nazis, and even possible war criminals. The persons in this network are a part of the radical right faction of the ethnic communities they claim to represent.
These anti-democratic and racialist components of the RHGC use anticommunist sentiments as a cover for their views while they operate as a defacto emigre fascist network within the Republican Party. Some of the unsavory personalities who were present in that 1985 luncheon audience would later join the 1988 election campaign of President George Bush.
This fascist network within the Republican Party represents a small but significant element of the coalition which brought Ronald Reagan into the White House. It is from this network that the George Bush presidential campaign assembled its ethnic outreach unit in 1988 - a unit that saw eight resignations by persons charged with anti-Semitism, racism, and even Nazi collaboration.
Axis Allies and Apologists
This network organizes support for its ideological agenda through national and international coalitions of like-minded constituencies which often work with other pro-fascist forces. This broader coalition ranges from Axis allies and their apologists to friends and allies of contemporary dictatorships and authoritarian regimes.
In the case of the Republican Heritage Groups Council, the nature of this network can be illustrated by briefly reviewing the backgrounds of some of the past and current leadership:
• Laszlo Pasztor: The founding chair and a key figure in the Council, Pasztor began his political career in a Hungarian pro-Nazi party and served in Berlin at the end of World War II. He continues to be involved in ultra-rightist groups and fascist networks while working with the GOP.
• Radi Slavoff: The RHGC's executive director is a member of a Bulgarian fascist group and leader of the Bulgarian GOP unit of the Council. He was able to get the leader of his Bulgarian nationalist group an invitation to the White House even though that leader was being investigated for concealing alleged World War II war crimes. He is also active in other emigre fascist groups.
• Nicolas Nazarenko: A former World War II officer in the German SS Cossack Division, Nazarenko heads the Cossack GOP unit of the Republican Heritage Groups Council and has declared that Jews are his "ideological enemy." He is still active with pro-Nazi elements in the U.S.
• Florian Galdau: He is a close associate and defender of Valerian Trifa - the Romanian archbishop prosecuted for concealing his involvement in war crimes of the pro-Nazi Romanian Iron Guard. Charged by former Iron Guardists and others with being the East Coast recruiter for the Iron Guard in the U.S., Galdau heads the Romanian Republican unit of the RHGC.
• Philip A. Guarino: He is a honorary American member of the conspiratorial P-2 Masonic Lodge of Italy, which plotted in the early 1970s to overthrow the Italian government in order to install a dictatorship. Guarino, an Italian Heritage Council member and Republican National Committee advisor, offered aid to those P-2 members being investigated.
• Anna Chennault: The newly-elected Republican Heritage Groups Council chairperson and fonder of the Chinese Republican affiliate, which for years has been closely linked to the authoritarian Taiwan regime.
The founding chair of the Republican Heritage Groups Council was Laszlo Pasztor, an activist in various Hungarian rightist and Nazi-linked groups.
The names of all but one of the persons listed above appeared on the invitational literature for the October 1987 meeting of the National Republican Heritage Groups (Nationalities) Council in Washington, D.C.
History of the Republican Heritage Groups Council
Many of the RHGC leaders of Central and Eastern European nationalities were part of the post- World War II immigration from displaced persons camps. It would be unfair to suggest that all or even a majority of Eastern and Central Europeans were anti-Semites or fascists. Most displaced persons were victims of the war who played no role in collaborating with Nazism. Yet quite a few persons in the displaced persons camps were there as political escapees to avoid the consequences of their collaboration with the German occupation of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.
The Displaced Persons Commission, which worked from 1948 to 1952, arranged for approximately 400,000 persons to come to the U.S. [1] Initially it sought to bar members of pro-Nazi groups, but in 1950 a dramatic reversal took place. The Commission declared" ... the Baltic Legion not to be a movement hostile to the Government of the United States." [2] The Baltic Legion was also known as the Baltic Waffen (armed) SS.
The final report of the Commission noted that the decision "was the subject of considerable controversy,,,3 as well it should have been. The Waffen SS participated in the liquidation of Jews in the Baltic region because the SS units were comprised of Hitler's loyal henchmen, recruited from fascist political groups long tied to the German Nazi Party. Anyone opposed to the German occupation of the Baltic region (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia) was likely to meet a cruel death at their hands. They were now considered qualified to come to the United States, to become American citizens. Further, pro-Nazi elements from other parts of Europe came to the U.S. through nominally private groups associated with the Commission.
In 1952, the Commission completed its work. The Eisenhower- Nixon presidential campaign was on and the Republicans were charging the Democrats with being "soft on Communism." Talk of "liberating" Eastern Europe became part of the GOP message. That year, the Republican National Committee formed an Ethnic Division. Displaced fascists, hoping to be returned to power by an Eisenhower-Nixon "liberation" policy, were among those who signed on. This would become the embryo for the formation of the Republican Heritage Groups Council in 1969.
In a sense, however, the foundation of the Republican Heritage Groups Council lay in Hitler's networks in Eastern Europe before World War II. In many Eastern European countries the German SS set up or funded political action organizations that helped form SS militias during the war.
In Hungary, for example, the Arrow Cross was the Hungarian SS affiliate; in Romania, the Iron Guard. The Bulgarian Legion, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), the Latvian Legion, and the Byelorussian (White Russian) Belarus Brigade were all SS-linked. In each of their respective countries, they were expected to serve the interests of the German Nazi Party before and during the war.
This should not be taken to suggest that all Eastern and Central Europeans were Nazi collaborators who participated in atrocities, but it is a historical fact that some rightwing elements from virtually every Eastern European nationality tied their nationalistic goals to the rising star of fascism and Hitler's racialist Nazism.
The Council's Leadership
The founding chair of the Republican Heritage Groups Council was Laszlo Pasztor, an activist in various Hungarian rightist and Nazi-linked groups. In World War II Pasztor was a member of the youth group of the Arrow Cross, the Hungarian equivalent of the German Nazi Party. [4]
When Pasztor came to the U.S. in the 1950s, he joined the GOP's Ethnic Division. One of the leaders of the 1968 Nixon-Agnew campaign's ethnic unit, Pasztor says that Nixon promised him that if he won the election, he would form a permanent ethnic council within the GOP, as the Ethnic Division was only active during presidential campaigns.
Pasztor was made the organizer of the Council after Nixon's victory. Pasztor claims, "It was my job to identify about 25 ethnic groups" to bring into the Republican Heritage Groups Council. "In 1972 we used the Council as the skeleton to build the Heritage Groups for the re-election of the President." [5]
Pasztor's choices for filling emigre slots as the Council was being formed included various Nazi-collaborationist organizations mentioned above. Each formed a Republican federation, with local clubs around the country. The local clubs of the various federations then formed state multi-ethnic councils. Today there are 34 nationality federations and 25 state councils that constitute the National Republican Heritage Groups Council.
According to RHGC delegates interviewed during the May 1985 conference, in setting up the Council, Pasztor went to various collaborationist and fascist-minded emigre groups and asked them to form GOP federations. It eventually became clear that it was not an accident or a fluke that people with Nazi associations were in the Republican Heritage Groups Council. In some cases more mainstream ethnic organizations were passed over in favor of smaller but more extremist groups. And it seems clear that the Republican National Committee knows with whom they are dealing. A review of the federations will illustrate this point.
Bulgarians
One of the organizations which Pasztor approached to help form the RHGC was the Bulgarian National Front, headed by Ivan Docheff. As early as 1971, the GOP was warned that the National Front was beyond the pale. A Jack Anderson column quoted another Bulgarian-American organization, the conservative Bulgarian National Committee, which labeled Docheff's National Front as "fascist." [6] Neither the GOP nor the Nixon campaign took action. Professor Spas T. Raikin, a former official of the National Front, says the group grew out of an organization in Bulgaria that in the 1930s and 1940s was "pro-Nazi and pro-fascist." [7]
Docheff, age 83, is semi-retired from GOP activity, and the National Front is now represented by Radi Slavoff, Republican Heritage Groups Council executive director and head of the Bulgarian GOP federation. Slavoff also represents the National Front in several other Washington, D.C. area coalitions, including one that is Nazi-linked. [8]
While Docheff was representing the National Front, the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations (OSI) was investigating him for possible war crimes he was suspected of committing while the mayor of a German-occupied city in Bulgaria. Docheff denies he ever committed war crimes, and the OSI never brought charges.
Docheff's political history, however, is not in dispute. Founder of a Bulgarian youth group in the early 1930s, Docheff met with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement's leading philosopher, Alfred Rosenberg, in 1934, shortly after the Nazis came to power. [9] Docheff then established the Bulgarian Legion, a pro-Hitler group that agitated for government action against Bulgarian Jews.
Romanians
Romanian-American Republicanism is led by a retired priest who, in 1984, said that the most important issue for Romanian Republicans is stopping " ... the deportation of our beloved spiritual leader, Archbishop Valerian Trifa." [10] Faced with charges by the OSI that he participated in the murder of Jews as part of a coup plot in Bucharest, Romania in 1941, Trifa left the U.S. in 1984. But his political network stayed behind. The Romanian Republican priest, Florian Galdau, is part of that network.
After the war, Trifa was able to come to the U.S. and take over the Romanian Orthodox Church by means of physical coercion and with some help from the U.S. government. In 1952, Trifa became an Archbishop of the Romanian Orthodox Church. [11]
FBI documents from 1954 and 1955 (which were used in the prosecution of Trifa) show that Trifa "is bringing Iron Guard members into the U.S. and installing them as priests." One of those priests, according to a document dated October 5, 1955, was Florian Galdau, whom an FBI source described as "a Romanian Iron Guard member and who at Trifa's instructions was elected Pastor of St. Dumitru," a Manhattan parish. [12]
Credit: Russ BeHant.
George Bush stands next to Bohdan Fedorak at the 1988 Captive Nations banquet in Warren, Michigan.
Friends of Dictatorships
Certain Republican Heritage Groups Council members have close allies in Italy who have plotted to overthrow the government and re-install fascism in Rome. Italy's problems with fascism have been much more recent than World War II. In 1981, Italian authorities uncovered a conspiracy in which a group of business, political, Mafia, military, and Vatican-connected figures planned to overthrow Italian parliamentary democracy and install a dictatorship. The group, called the P- 2 Masonic Lodge, had nearly a thousand members. The prestige of P-2 members (heads of the intelligence agencies, 38 generals and admirals, and 3 cabinet officers, for example), plus revelations of financial scandals, brought extensive European press coverage, the collapse of the Italian government, and a parliamentary inquiry. [13]
One American involved in this intrigue was Philip A. Guarino, 79, an adviser on senior citizens' affairs to the Republican National Committee, who was long active in Italian GOP politics. A theology student in Mussolini's Italy in the late 1920s and much of the 1930s, Guarino helped establish the ethnic division of the GOP in 1952. He was vice-chair of the Republican Heritage Groups Council from 1971-75. [14] He attended the 1985 Council convention to ensure that his friend, Frank Stella, won the chairmanship of the Council in a tight race with former Cleveland mayor Ralph Perk.
Guarino was also described in St. Peter's Banker, a book about activities involving P-2, as an "honorary member of P- 2.,,15 Foreign members of P-2 were rare. Another member of the select group was Jose L6pez Riga, founder of the Latin American death squad group known as the Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance (AAA).
Credit: Coalitions for America
Laszlo Pasztor, founding chair of the Republican Heritage Groups Council.
Guarino was also involved in John Connally's Committee for the Defense of the Mediterranean, which disseminated propaganda on the Italian Communist Party (PCI) supposed threat to the West. [16] Connally was Richard Nixon's Secretary of the Treasury and member of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under Nixon and Gerald Ford. [17] In 1978, Guarino's friend and ally, Frank Stella, became National Chair of the "Heritage National Committee of Connally for President," when Connally sought the 1980 GOP nomination for president. [18]
Later Stella got on track with Ronald Reagan. Mark Valente, a Stella protege and suburban Detroit City Council member now serving as a Republican National Committee Ethnic Liaison staffer, says, "Everyone at the White House knows Frank." Stella's name has gone through the White House appointment process on several occasions. In 1981 he was nominated for the little-known Intelligence Oversight Board, which is supposed to monitor the legalities of covert operations of the intelligence agencies. [19] He withdrew his name after it had been publicly released. Stella was being considered for the post of Ambassador to Italy in 1985, but withdrew his name again, according to Valente. In 1983 he was made a White House Fellow.
Taiwan's Input
The Chinese-American and Asian-American Republican federations are led by Anna Chennault, who gained fame in the 19505 and 1960s as an ardent advocate of Chiang Kai-Shek's dictatorship of Taiwan. Both federations appear to be little more than adjuncts to Taiwan government activities in the U.S. This fact was highlighted at the 1985 RHGC convention when an official Taiwan Republican Heritage Groups Council delegation arrived at the meeting as part of a nationwide tour belatedly celebrating Reagan's second inauguration four months earlier. While the foremost visitor from Taiwan was the Deputy Minister for National Defense, the honorary president of the delegation was Ben John Chen, who also chairs the Asian-American Republican Federation.20 Other Chinese and Asian GOP federation members are part of trade groups linked to Taiwan.
The Republican Heritage Groups Council agenda was interrupted at the Chinese federation's request so that the delegation could present awards from the Taiwan government to Michael Sotirhos, the outgoing Republican Heritage Groups Council chair (who later became Reagan's ambassador to Jamaica). Also receiving an award from the Taiwan regime was Anna Chennault, who funds the Asian-American GOP federation, according to Chen. Chennault became RHCG chair in 1987.
Ethnic Realignment
The Republican Heritage Groups Council's ethnicity is broad, ranging from Albanians to Vietnamese. But two groups are missing at the RHGC. There are no African-American or Jewish Republican federations. Remarks by a number of delegates at the 1986 RHGC meeting made it clear that there was no desire to have either community represented on the Council. [21] Republican leaders say that African-American and Jewish relations are "special" and are dealt with in separate units of the GOP.
The key issues for every one of the Eastern European Heritage Council leaders interviewed were foreign policy issues. All of them called for more support for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. Most called for the abandonment of the Yalta agreement, the major treaty that set the post-war features of Europe, and all want a far more aggressive foreign policy against the Soviet Union. The most public activity the RHGC participates in is the annual "Captive Nations" rallies held in cities across the U.S. "Captive Nations" is the term used to describe countries which have communist governments.
The Republican National Committee seems to identify the RHGC as one of its keys to past electoral success and future opportunities. Republican Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf told the 1985 Council meeting, "On behalf of the Republican Party I want to express thanks for all of you in this room who were such a vital, integral part of the great victory we achieved on November 6 last year. We couldn't have done it without you, and I want you to know that." [22]
A few minutes later, President Reagan told the meeting, "The work of all of you has meant a very great deal to me personally, to the Party, and to our cause .... I can't think of any others who have made a more vital contribution to the effort than those of you who are in this room today ....I want to encourage you to keep building the Party. Believe me, bringing more ethnic Americans into the fold is the key to the positive realignment that we are beginning to see take shape."
Former RHGC chair Michael Sotirhos said in an interview that "The Council was the linchpin of the Reagan-Bush ethnic campaign .... The decision to use the Republican Heritage Groups was made at a campaign strategy meeting that included Paul Laxalt, Frank Fahrenkopf, Ed Rollins, and others." He claims that 86,000 volunteers for Reagan-Bush were recruited through the Council. [23]
Forgive and Forget
The GOP cannot be ignorant of the backgrounds of their ethnic leaders. When Nixon was encouraging the growth of the Republican Heritage Groups Council in 1971, Jack Anderson did a series of reports on the pro-Nazi backgrounds of various GOP ethnic advisors. Included in the reports were Ivan Docheff and Laszlo Pasztor. In November of 1971, the Washington Post did a story that elaborated on some of the fascist elements coming into the GOP. [24]
On August 2, 1988, many of the key figures in the RHGC were named as leaders of the George Bush presidential campaign's ethnic outreach arm, the Coalition of American Nationalities (CAN). These included Anna Chennault, Walter Melianovich, Laszlo Pasztor, Frank Stella, Radi Slavoff, Philip Guarino, and Florian Galdau. Other persons on the Bush ethnic panel with questionable views or pasts were Bohdan Fedorak and Akselis Mangulis.
In September 1988, Pasztor, Slavoff, Guarino, Galdau, Fedorak, Brentar, and Ignatius Billinsky resigned from the Bush panel following revelations about their pasts or views appearing in the Washington Jewish Week, Philadelphia Inquirer, and the extended version of this article which was published by Political Research Associates.
Bush adviser Fred Malek resigned from the Bush campaign after the Washington Post identified him as having compiled lists of Jews working at the Bureau of Labor Statistics on orders from the Nixon White House.
In early November, the Philadelphia Inquirer raised questions about a Latvian member of CAN, which prompted the final resignation, that of Akselis Mangulis, charged with having belonged to the pro-Nazi Latvian Legion which had connections to the SS.
Credit: RHGC
Frank. Stella and Florian Galdau at RHGC Convention.
While Bush campaign spokespersons pledged there would be an investigation into the backgrounds and views of the CAN members whose resignations it had announced, no serious investigation ever took place, and the campaign repeatedly referred to the charges as unsubstantiated politically-motivated smears. Several of the persons who had been reported as resigning told journalists they had never been asked to resign and considered themselves still active with the Bush campaign. Furthermore, Guarino, Slavoff, Galdau, and Pasztor are still active with the Republican Heritage Groups Council.
As a candidate, President Bush defended Galdau, Pasztor, Guarino, and Slavoff as innocent of all accusations of collaboration, and insisted they are all honorable men. But the historical record belies his assertions.
The GOP for decades has misread ethnic America's concerns about crime, employment, anti-ethnic discrimination and the future of its youth. It has offered instead the fascism and ethnic prejudices of the Heritage Council, which focuses primarily on funding Radio Free Europe and stopping Justice Department prosecutions of Nazi-era war criminals who illegally entered the country.
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Notes:
* Russ Bellant is a researcher who has written extensively on the rise of the New Right in the U.S. This article is an edited version of a monograph by Political Research Associates. The monograph entitled, "Old Nazis, The New Right and the Reagan Administration," is available for $5 from: Political Research Associates, 678 Massachusetts Ave., Suite 205, Cambridge, MA 02139.
1. U.S. Displaced Persons Commission, Memo to America, The DP Story, The Final Report of the Displaced Persons Commission (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1952), p. V.
2. Ibid., p. 10l.
3. Ibid.
4. Jack Anderson, "Nixon Appears a Little Soft on Nazis," Washington Post, November 10,1971, p. B17; Nora Levin, The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry 1933-1945 (New York: T.Y. Crowell, 1963; Schocken Books, 1973), pp. 610-11, 644, 653-55, 662-64.
5. Interview with Laszlo Pasztor, Washington, D.C., May 15, 1985.
6. Anderson, op. cit., n. 4, p. B17.
7. Interview with Spas T. Raikin, by telephone, August 1986.
8. Interview with Ivan Docheff, by telephone, September 1984.
9. Interview with Professor Frederic Chary, Detroit, MI, August 1984. Chary is author of Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972).
10. Interview with Florian Galdau, by telephone, September 1984.
11. Howard Blum, Wanted: The Search for Nazis in America (New York: Quadrangle/New York Times Book Co., 1977), pp. 109-11, 114-16. Trifa offered an opening prayer for the U.S. Senate on May 10, 1955, at the request of Richard Nixon, who presided over the Senate as part of his vice-presidential duties.
12. "Viorel Donise Trifa," FBI Memo (April 6, 1954), p. 1; on Galdau, "Viorel Donise Trifa," FBI Memo (October 5, 1955), p. 2. Copies of these memos are in the possession of the author.
13. New York Times, May 25-June 10, 1981; Thomas Sheehan, "Italy: Terror on the Right," New York Review of Books, January 22,1981, pp. 23- 26. Also, Luifi Di Fonzo, St. Peter's Banker (New York and London: Franklin Watts, I983); Larry Gurwin, The Calvi Affair (London: MacMillan, 1983).
14. Who's Who in American Politics: 1987-1988, 11th ed. (New York and London: RR Bowker Co., 1987), p. 258.
15. Di Fonzo, op. cit., n. 13, p. 229.
16. Gurwin, op. cit., n. 13, p. 189.
17. Who's Who in America: 1984-1985, 43rd ed. (Chicago: Marquis Who's Who, 1984); Gurwin, op. cit., n. 13, pp. 12, 189-190.
18. Stella's curriculum vitae, 1986, p. 2.
19. Op. cit., n. 14, p. 767. The announcement was made October 20, 1981, according to an undated White House letter received by the author in February 1984.
20. The delegation's membership, their backgrounds and planned itinerary were described in a booklet distributed at the Republican Heritage Groups Council meeting, "President Reagan's (sic) Reinauguration Celebration Delegation" (Room 8, 11F, 150, Chi Lin Road, Taipei, Taiwan: Chinese Times, 1985).
21. A proposal to create such affiliates was roundly denounced by delegates at the June 1986 convention.
22. Quotations from the 1985 Republican Heritage Groups Council convention are from the author's own notes of the event.
23. Interview with Michael Sotirhos, Washington, D.C., September 1984.
24. Peter Braestrup, "GOP's 'Open Door': Who's Coming In?," Washington Post, November 21, 1971, p. A1.