Russ BellantOld Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party

Bellant, R. Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, South End Press, 1991, ISBN: 9780896084186. LINK

Russ Bellant's Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, published under the aegis of the anti-right "Political Research Associates," is likely his most well-known work.

The Harvard Educational Review found Bellant's report noteworthy for its unveiling of domestic fascism (our emphasis):

Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party
By Russ Bellant
Boston: South End Press, 1991. 148 pp. $11.00 (paper).

While the "Reagan Revolution" made it popular in the United States once again to be openly discriminatory, neofascist thinking is presently burgeoning among the extreme right in this country. Russ Bellant, in his important book Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, exposes the roots and growth of domestic fascist networks, which include Nazi collaborators, within the Republican Party. He reveals how such members, during the Reagan era, held positions of power on the Republican Ethnic Heritage Groups Council, an ethnic outreach division of the GOP. Bellant also scrutinizes the American Security Council for its participation in anti-Semitic and racist practices under the guise of anticommunism. It seems to me that any educator, or any citizen for that matter, interested in protecting what is left of democracy in this country needs to engage this type of research. For those who are sceptical of Bellant's conclusions, they can either take the word of Alan A. Ryan, Jr.—the former Director of the Office of Special Investigations for the Department of Justice—who says on the book's cover that it is "Well-documented and reliable," or they can begin to do some research of their own—which is what education for a responsible citizenry is supposed to be all about.1

Skeptical of Alan A. Ryan, Jr.'s assessment given he contended in his appeal of the government's loss in the Vilis Hāzners deportation case that Waffen-SS service alone proved someone a war criminal, we examined Bellant's contentions, applying Latvians as a litmus test.

A key component of Ballant's narrative emanates from his contention that all the Estonian and Latvian Legion (Waffen-SS) members had long-time ties to the Nazis before the war, and that a sinister government plot reversed their status as Nazis, war criminals, and inflictors of "cruel death"—thus allowing them to enter the United States. Bellant smears Latvians to smear the Republicans they support.

The Displaced Persons Commission, which worked from 1948 to 1952, arranged for approximately 400,000 persons to come to the U.S.a 1Initially 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 .... ”b The Baltic Legion was also known as the Baltic Waffen 2(armed) SS.

The final report of the Commission noted that 3the decision “was the subject of considerable controversy.”c As well it 4should 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. 5They 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.

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a	U.S., Displaced Persons Commission, Memo to America, The DP Story, The Final Report of the Displaced Persons Commission (Washington, D.C.: GPO, 1952), p. v.
b	Ibid., p. 101.
c	Ibid.

Bellant provides no corroboration for his fractured historical account.

...the foundation of the Republican Heritage Groups Council lay in Hitler's networks into East Europe before World War II. In each of those Eastern European countries, the 6German 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 ), 7the Latvian Legion, and the Byelorussian (White Russian) Belarus Brigade 8were all SS-linked. In each of their respective countries, they 9were expected to serve the interests of the German Nazi Party before and during the war.

Many of these groups formed SS divisions: the Ukrainian Nationalists formed the 14th Galician Division, Waffen-SS; 10the Latvians formed the 15th and 19th Divisions, Waffen-SS; etc.d These units and related German-controlled police units had several functions. 12The Ukrainian division unsuccessfully tried to impede the advance of the Soviet army against the Nazi army. Others hunted down those fellow countrymen who opposed the German occupation of Eastern Europe during World War II.

13More sadistically, many units rounded up hundreds of thousands of Jews, Poles, and others and conducted mass murders on the spot, sometimes decimating whole villages. 14They perfected “mobile killing teams” as efficient means of mass executions. Little is known about these units compared to the concentration camps, gas chambers, and ovens, but they were an integrated component of the "Final Solution." 15Approximately one-third of the victims of the Holocaust, perhaps as many as two million, died at the hands of these units.

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d	11For information on the Waffen-SS, see George Stein, The Waffen-SS: Hitler's Elite Guard at War: 1939-1945 (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1966); Alexander Dallin, German Rule in Russia, 1941-45: A Study of Occupation Policies (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1957).

Once Bellant sees "SS," distinctions don't matter. Our initial reaction to Bellant's diatribe to this point was to ask, is he so driven to smear the Reagan administration, Republican Party, and Bush election campaign that he doesn't care if it means maligning the innocent in the process? We then realized the true danger—Bellant actually believes what he writes.

The heart of Bellant's exposé is the premise that the Bush campaign has been infiltrated by outright Nazis, if not former sympathizers, if not individuals of a "dubious" past. As soon as he had a draft completed, Bellant began to circulate it to stir the pot.

In 1988 many of the key figures in the Republican Heritage Groups Council were named as leaders of the George Bush presidential campaign's ethnic outreach arm, the Coalition of American Nationalities. These included Anna Chennault, Walter Melianovich, Laslo Pasztor, Frank Stella, Radi Slavoff, Philip A. Guarino, and Florian Galdau. 16Other persons on the Bush ethnic panel with questionable views or pasts were Bohdan Fedorak and Akselis Mangulis....

17In August of 1988 draft copies of the first version of this report were mailed to several journalists. At the same time a reporter for Washington Jewish Week began collecting information on the backgrounds of the Bush campaign's Coalition of American Nationalities (CAN) members after hearing criticisms of the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations while covering the Republican Convention. Washington Jewish Week originally focused on CAN members Ignatius Billinsky and Jerome Brentar, but expanded the article after receiving documentation and background information on the Republican Heritage Groups Council from the author of this report. The Philadelphia Inquirer also began a substantial investigation of the charges in this report.

[After other CAN member resignations,] 18in early November [1988], 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....

Yet no matter what the intent or goal, the 19Republican Heritage Groups Council has incorporated racist, anti-Semitic, and fascist forces, and even rehabilitated some Nazi collaborators; legitimized them as ethnic leaders in their own communities and in the press; and provided a vehicle for expanding their influence in the Executive branch and Congress, where they have played a role in shaping American foreign policy.

The Bush campaign Thursday suspended Mangulis, 67, who chairs Latvians for Bush and the American Latvian Association, so he and his family could deal—away from the campaign—with allegations he was linked to the Nazi SS, said Bush campaign spokesman Mark Goodin.

Mangulis was the only Latvian in the Bush campaign's Coalition of American Nationalities. Seven of the coalition's original 88 members resigned or were dropped in September following published reports linking them to fascist or anti-Semitic organizations.

“We decided it unilaterally. We informed him, and he and his family are in sync with the decision,” Goodin said.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Friday that Mangulis, an architect, was a member of the Latvian Legion during WWII.

The newspaper said the Nazis organized the Latvian Legion in 1943 as an auxilary of the Waffen-SS from police battalions in Latvia that had been under German command, according to Andrew Ezergailis, a history professor at Ithaca College and an expert on the subject.

Mangulis told the Eagle Tribune he was forced to join the Latvian Legion under threat of death.

“There was a great struggle at the time,” he told the newspaper. “All girls is taken against their will to labor in German if we don't fight. We say we will fight. The Latvian Legion was formed at that time.”

Mangulis said the Germans warned the Latvian men, “If you don't fight, if you run, you will be shot. If they couldn't find you, punish you, they shoot your family.”

He said he was drafted in 1943 at age 19, served as a radio operator and was sent to the Russian front. Mangulis said he lost two fingers of his left hand to a Russian machine gunner in 1945, adding, “that was the end of my war.”

Mangulis said he had little to do with the Nazis during his service because his unit was primarily made up of Latvians, and that he had no contact with the SS and saw no concentration camps.

He denied a New York Times report Friday that he had resigned as chairman of Latvians for Bush because of the Nazi allegations and said he would continue to campaign for Bush.

“Politics,” he said. “It is all politics.”8

Before examining others of Bellant's contentions, it is worth reviewing how his report was portrayed in the press among those who cared the most: Holocaust survivors and the wider Jewish community. Following is a report as disseminated by the Jewish Telegraph Agency (JTA).

A new study charges that accused Nazis, fascists and anti-Semites hold or have held leadership positions in some of the Republican National Committee’s ethnic outreach groups.

The report, “Old Nazis, the New Right and the Reagan Administration: The Role of Domestic Fascists Networks in the Republican Party and their Effect on U.S. Cold War Politics,” by Detroit free-lance writer and researcher Russell Bellant, was released Sept. 15 and reported Friday in the Washington Jewish Week.

Bellant, 40, uncovered accused Nazis in the outreach groups formed under the umbrella of the RNC’s Heritage Groups Council.

He also found that four of the seven members of Vice President George Bush’s Coalition of American Nationalities who resigned in the past two weeks are still active in the Heritage Groups Council and its constituent groups.

In an interview, Bellant said that he could not uncover any remaining RNC link to Jerome Brentar, Bohdan Fedorak and Ignatius Bilinsky, the other three who resigned, but he said they might be involved in the RNC on the state level.

He said he was not calling for the resignations of the individuals in question, but, added that “it would be nice if some Republicans would call for the resignations instead of the Democrats.”

Responding to Bellant’s accusations, Albert Maruggi, the RNC’s press secretary, said there are no plans to investigate the backgrounds of any of the ethnic group members cited in the report.

He repeated a comment made by Kathryn Murray, RNC director of communications, in the Washington Jewish Week story that the study’s conclusions were “patently ridiculous and absurd.”

Marshall Breger, President Reagan’s former liaison to the Jewish community and now chairman of the Administrative Conference of the United States, said some of the charges in the report may be true, but said its suggestions that the involvement of the ethnic individuals represents “a Republican conspiracy is ridiculous.”

The study concluded that “a combination of ignorance, amnesia and in some cases political sympathy, have allowed both American and European abetters of the Third Reich to play a prominent and respectable role inside the Republican Party.”

Breger said those in question are part of a larger “problem of American history,” that after World War II, “the U.S. government assisted persons with anti-communism backgrounds who had neo-Nazi backgrounds to enter this country.” He added that both political parties have received support from such individuals.

The 87-page report was published by Political Research Associates of Cambridge, Mass. The research organization was founded in 1981 to investigate the extreme right in the Chicago area following Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi rallies in Skokie and Marquette Park, III.

20While Murray of the RNC told the Jewish Week that the research firm “makes its money from trashing right-wing groups,” Bellant simply characterized the firm as “politically progressive.”

The four Bush ethnic coalition members who recently resigned but are still active in the constituency groups of the Heritage Groups Council, or the council itself, are:

Philip Guarino, former vice chairman of Bush’s Coalition of American Nationalities. He once chaired the Italian-American Republican Club and, from 1971 to 1975, was vice chairman of the Heritage Groups Council. Guarino has been listed as a member of P-2, a fascist group.

Radi Slavoff, who was national co-chairman of Bulgarians for Bush, chaired the Heritage Groups Council from 1985 to 1987. Slavoff reportedly served in a national front aligned with the Nazis.

Florian Galdau, honorary chairman of the ethnic coalition, who heads the Romanian-American group and allegedly was a member of the Iron Guard, an anti-Semitic, pro-Nazi movement.

Laszlo Pasztor, a former coalition member who set up the Heritage Groups Council in 1969 and has served as head of the Hungarian-American group. Pasztor served in Hungary’s pro-Nazi Arrow Cross regime.

Before 1969, the Heritage Groups Council “was not an ongoing thing,” Bellant said. But since 1969, Republican presidential nominees have “utilized the Heritage Groups Council as the shell for setting up their own ethnic campaigns,” he added.

He said he studied the council’s precursor, the so-called Ethnic Division, in existence from 1952 to 1969, only superficially.

Bellant said Republicans who helped the RNC organize the Ethnic Division also had set up programs to recruit former Nazis to serve in U.S. paramilitary operations in Europe in 1952.

Bellant said that since 1969, several dozen alleged Nazis, fascists and anti-Semites have held leadership posts in the Heritage Groups Council.

The alleged Nazis include:

Nicholas Nazerenko, accused of having been a former World War II officer in the German SS Cossack Division. He heads one of the two Cossack-American units in the RNC.

Ivan Docheff, the mayor of a German city during World War II and founder of a pro-Hitler youth group.

Joseph Mikus, a former diplomat to Rome for the Nazi puppet state of Slovakia.

Stanislav Stankevich, mayor of a Russian city in 1941 when police massacred 6,500 to 7,000 Jews in one night, Bellant said.

21The late Alfreds Berzins, charged with committing war crimes in Latvia.

In a related development, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported Sept. 18 that in 1972, 22convicted Nazi war criminal Boleslavs Maikovskis of Mineola, N.Y., served on the advisory board of the Latvian-American Section of the Heritage Council for the Re-Election of the President.

Bellant starts off with the direct predecessor of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) being "formed in 1943" by Hitler's allies." We examine some of his general assertions as well as what he has to say about the Latvians.

A booklet published in 1960 by the ABN 23acknowledged its members' alliance with Hitler: "That many of us fought on the German side against Russian imperialism and Bolshevism, was in our national interest . . . the fact that some of us fought on the German side against Russia can be justified from the national, political, and moral point of view."e

The ABN in more recent years has maintained the impression that they 24opposed the Nazis and Soviets simultaneously during World War IL This historically dubious impression is conveyed by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN ) that leads ABN. But other groups that make up the ABN do not bother with an anti-Hitler pretense.

Other ABN affiliates include: . . .

WORLD FEDERATION OF FREE LATVIANS

A member organization of the Coalition for Peace Through Strength, the federation has branches in six countries. Its U.S. branch, the American Latvian Association, is active in the campaign against the Justice Department's Office of Special Investigations, discussed in the next section. The book Inside the League describes the ABN Latvian affiliate as 25“a band of Latvian leaders who assisted the Nazis in exterminating the Jews of their Baltic homeland.”f

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e	Niko Nakashidze, The Truth about ABN (Munich: ABN Press and Information Bureau, 1960), p. 14. Although the ABN claims a direct lineage from the 1943 Committee of Subjugated Nations (CSN), some scholars emphasize that the CSN went through a variety of splits and reorganizations immediately after WWII, and that ABN did not emerge in its current manifestation until several years after the war.
f	Anderson and Anderson, p. 45.

26The ABN is the high council for the expatriate nationalist groups that formed the police, military, and militia units that worked with Hitler during World War II. Some were organized as mobile killing teams that exterminated villages and sought to murder whole ethnic, racial, and cultural groups. These mobile killing teams are the forerunners of the modern death squad.

The case against Vilis Hāzners presented a microcosm of the Soviet-INS/OSI12-Israeli (source of coached witnesses) connection. That is not the focus of our examination here; however, the salient point is that Alan A. Ryan, Jr. and the OSI have staunchly stood by the legitimacy of Soviet evidence and maintained they never accepted any "unsolicited" evidence—ignoring that the original list of alleged Latvian collaborators came from confirmed Soviet propaganda, raising legitimate concerns on the part of the communities accused. And while critics denounce émigrés for "circling their wagons" as if their entire community were under attack, recall that Elizabeth Holtzman declared that "all Latvians are Nazis."

There is perhaps no current issue which sets 27the émigré fascist network apart from mainstream American society more than the campaign against the Office of Special Investigations.

The OSI was established by a 1978 act of Congress to discover and deport Nazi war criminals who entered the U.S. after World War II. 28Almost immediately the Ukrainian Quarterly (published by the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America) denounced OSI, as did the quasi-Nazi Liberty Lobby and the neofascist Lyndon LaRouche organization. Soon the Lithuanian-American Council, the American Lithuanian Community, and the Joint Baltic American National Committee—all members of the ASC's Coalition for Peace Through Strength—joined in the anti-OSI campaign. Other Coalition for Peace Through Strength groups that 29actively opposed the OSI pursuit of Nazi collaborators were the Byelorussian-American Association, Congress of Russian-Americans, and the 30World Federation for a Free Latvia.g

While some organizations 31claimed they only opposed the methods employed by OSI, others called for its abolition. The specific method used by OSI which drew the sharpest criticism concerned the use of evidence from Soviet citizens, archives, and prosecutors. 32Even though such evidence is independently scrutinized and tested by the U.S. government and must meet U.S. rules of evidence in court, the anti-OSI groups call it “KGB evidence” without offering any proof of their own to back up that assertion. All of the above groups claim there is an “OSI/KGB partnership.”h None of the groups has supported the legal proceedings against even one suspected war criminal, even when the accused has publicly confessed his crimes. The charges of KGB plots, according to the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, appear to be a "propaganda smokescreen that seeks to exploit anti-communism," in an attempt to stop the OSI investigations and legal proceedings.i

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g	Ad in Darbininkas, a Lithuanian newspaper, Sept. 7, 1984, p. 4.
h	Ibid.
i	The Campaign Against the U.S. Justice Department's Prosecution of Suspected Nazi War Criminals (New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1985), p. 12. (Hereafter cited as ADL Special Report)

Intense emotions and rhetoric have accompanied the anti-OSI efforts. The World Jewish Congress has charged that the motivating factor behind such activity is "the fear that the 33Justice Department's prosecutors are exposing the American public to the historical facts that Hitler's annihilation of six million Jews was carried out not by the Germans alone, but rather with the extensive collaboration of Lithuanians, Latvians, Ukrainians, Estonians, and other Europeans."j

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j	Kevin Freeman, Charges Emigre Groups are Thwarting OSI Activities," Daily News Bulletin, Jewish Telegraph Agency, April 3, 1985, p. 3.

Bellant engages his Political Research Associates cohort to validate his "findings" and to provide a chronological account of events pertaining to the Nazi invasion of America. Berlet recounts the "Coalition of American Nationalities Republican and Bush Campaign responses to charges (with selected other responses)". The appendix is adapted from a news article Berlet authored.

The 34charges [that the Bush campaign "recruited an ethnic support coalition which included racists, fascists, anti-Semites, Nazi apologists, and even aging Nazi collaborators"] primarily came from three sources: a report by Detroit-based free-lancer Russ Bellant (published by Political Research Associates in Cambridge); a series of articles by reporter Larry Cohler and Walter Ruby appearing in Washington Jewish Week; and articles by David Lee Preston in the Philadelphia Inquirer. Both press sources focused on the Bush campaign's recruitment of Eastern European nationalists who had emigrated to the U.S. after World War II, having fled countries such as Latvia, Rumania, Bulgaria, and the Croation [sic.] section of Yugoslavia. As the Bellant report revealed, these ethnic activists had gravitated towards the Republican Party due to a shared emphasis on rolling back communism and 35gaining independence for the nations near the Baltic coast and the Balkans which now are under Soviet domination.

From Berlet's subsequent chronology:

9/18/88—Philadelphia Inquirer reporter David Lee Preston reports that since 1969, several dozen alleged Nazis, fascists, and anti-Semites have held leadership posts in the Heritage Groups Council. He quotes Alan A. Ryan, Jr. (now with the legal office of Harvard University but formerly director of the Justice Department's OSI war criminal probe) as saying 36he had read Bellant's report and found it to be "well documented and reliable." Preston also reports that in 1972 a 37convicted Nazi war criminal Boleslavs Maikovskis of Minneola, N. Y. served on the advisory board of the Latvian-American section of the Republican's Heritage Council for the Re-Election of the President.

...

11/1/88—Author 38Charles R. Allen Jr., an expert on the emigre Nazi network, questions the candor of Bush when he "professed ignorance of [the] pro-Nazi backgrounds" of the ethnic campaign supporters. In a Village Voice article, Allen produces a 1983 photograph of George Bush shaking hands with Yaroslav Stetsko, then leader of the pro-Nazi Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. The photo was taken at a White House reception. Bush signed the photo: "To the Honorable Yaroslav Stetsko with best wishesGeorge Bush." Allen also produced a 1976 RNC memo in which Bush, as RNC Chair, is reported to have reviewed the past work of the Republican Heritage Groups Council and set goals for the coming year.

11/4/88—The Philadelphia Inquirer reports charges concerning the background of Bush ethnic coalition leader Akselis Mangulis. Even before the story appears in print, the Bush campaign announces Mangulis has resigned, although the woman who answers the phone at the Mangulis residence tells reporters Mr. Mangulis was not asked to resign and would not resign.

• 39Mangulis, a Latvian member of CAN, is accused of belonging to the Latvian Legion which during World War II was connected to the Nazi SS.

Among the sources in Bellant's bibliography:

WAR CRIMINALS AND NAZI COLLABORATORS IN THE U.S.

• Allen, Charles R. Nazi War Criminals in America: Facts...Action. New York: Highgate House, 1985.
• Blum, Howard. Wanted! The Search for Nazis in America. New York: Quadrangle, 1979.
• Lasby, Clarence. Project Paperclip. New York: Atheneum, 1971.
• Simpson, Christopher. Blowback: U.S. Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War. New York: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988.

OTHER WORKS OF INTEREST

• Anderson, Scott and Anderson, Jon Lee. Inside the League: The Shocking Expose of How Terrorists, Nazis, and Latin American Death Squads Have Infiltrated the World Anti-Communist League. New York: Dodd-Mead, 1986.
• Codreanu, Corneliu Z. For My Legionaries. Madrid, Spain: Editura Libertatea, 1976. This is an English translation of the original 1936 work.
• Cook, Fred J. The Warfare State. New York: MacMillan, 1962; Collier Books, 1964, 1969.
• Eisenberg, Dennis. The Re-emergence of Fascism. South Brunswick, New Jersey: A.S. Barnes, 1968.
• Sklar, Holly. Washington's War on Nicaragua. Boston: South End Press, 1988.

We have reviewed the highlighted books for their claims regarding Latvians and Nazism and found them wanting:

•  Review ►Blowback — Simpson dennounces "the myth that the Baltic Waffen-SS legions were simply anti-Communist patriots," and falsely contends that "some of the Vanagis’ [sic.]15 leaders had served as the Nazis’ most enthusiastic executioners."
•  Review ►Inside the League—A morass of misspellings, misidentification, misinformation and blatant falsehoods. In a work otherwise copiously annotated, the Andersons fail to provide a single source for their baseless accusations against Latvians.

While we have not read Howard Blum's book, in this online snippet he mistakenly accuses Latvians of graduating the "Nazi Baltic University in Pinnenberg, Germany.":

Blum's bogus allegation of a "Nazi Baltic University," snippet at Google Books™

The Baltic University was founded after WWII to continue the education of Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian refugees. Founded in Hamburg, it later moved to Pinnenberg. It had nothing to do with Nazism.