This column first appeared in June 2011.
Today he is virtually unknown to all but a few dogged devotees, students of 20th century history, readers of obscure books, and researchers into the paranormal and bizarre. William Dudley Pelley, a truly fascinating fellow, was one of our countries’ best known public figures during the Great Depression. Now, he is largely forgotten and rests in peaceful anonymity in a quiet Noblesville cemetery — an ironic outcome when you consider how he lived. If you happen to encounter anyone who knows anything at all about Pelley, you are likely be told that he was a “fascist,” “Nazi,” “new age crank,” “occultist,” “racist cult leader,” or just plain “nut.” All true, to be sure, but William Dudley Pelley was viewed as a genuine threat back in his day, and the Roosevelt administration took notice. In Pelley’s story, you’re liable to find several strikingly eerie and foreboding parallels and similarities that just may ring in a bell in our current event consciousness.
Pelley’s political ideology essentially consisted of anti-Communism, racism, extreme patriotism and isolationism. He was perhaps the most vocal opponent of FDR’s New Deal program. His activities angered Roosevelt and his supporters so much that Federal charges were drawn up against the Silver Shirts in 1940. His Asheville headquarters was raided by federal marshals, his followers there arrested, and his property seized. Pelley was called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Ironically a decade later Senator Joe McCarthy would use this same committee to root out Communists from the U.S. Government and Hollywood.
Pelley’s Silver Legion was unique in that, although there were permanent barracks for Silver Shirt training and local units in every region of the U.S., there was no central headquarters building. Instead, the Chief, as he was known to his followers, ran the Legion from his Ford touring car. Never staying in any place for more than a couple of weeks, constantly traveling from one headquarters to another, he staged outdoor rallies and mass meetings along the way. Reportedly, he went through several cars per year, traveling a then astounding 20,000 miles annually. This constant traveling served several purposes; it tied the various headquarters closely together, gave Pelley an intimate understanding of Americans at all levels, from all regions and exposed millions of people to his wicked ideology. His grassroots plan resulted in his name being placed on the presidential ballot, but he too got lost in the 1936 landslide re-election of Roosevelt.
According to Pelley, FDR’s re-election brought closer the “conflict between the Light and Dark forces on earth” and he accurately predicted the coming war against the Third Reich in his first national radio speech. His failed election bid increased Silver Legion membership threefold. Soon Pelley was winning praise and support from important figures like aviator Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. and Walt Disney — both of whom attended Silver Legion rallies and shared the podium with the Chief. Not only did Pelley and his group openly support the Nazis and Adolph Hitler, Pelley himself announced that he considered Japan to be the only true power in Asia and the only hope of blunting the Soviet attempt at total domination in the region.
Flush with success, Pelley was feeling invincible. When in 1938, Democratic Congressman Samuel Dickstein of New York called for a national ban on public display of the Silver Shirt uniform. Pelley was quick to respond: “Any k*** who thinks he can tell me what kind of shirt I can wear, or that I can’t wear a scarlet L on it, will get a punch in his nose that he’ll remember until he lands in Abraham’s bosom!”
Soon, the government charged Pelley with tax evasion and although he eventually beat the rap, the great expense, in both time and money, required to defend himself ruined his chances of entering the 1940 Presidential campaign. By now, Pelley was furious with the government and his Silver Shirts joined up with the American-German Bund, the Ku Klux Klan and numerous other “uber” patriotic organizations to keep America out of war. Pelley’s effort became so popular that national polls taken a week before Pearl Harbor showed more than three quarters of Americans were against war with the Axis powers. That is, unless the United States was physically attacked. As you can imagine, everything changed on December 7th, 1941 with the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Soon afterward, German atrocities in the concentration camps of Europe were revealed and Pelley and his Silver Shirts were banished from the American scene forever.
Pelley had married a Hoosier girl named Helen back in 1935, but spent little time with his new wife, by whom he had a daughter. After his fall, Pelley joined them in Noblesville, where he attempted to forget the world he had tried to save. Pelley being Pelley, he could not resist the urge to criticize FDR and his war time policies in print as he continued to publish radical newsletters and minor magazines, but he never again rose to his level of pre-war prominence. It’s interesting to note that although Pelley was just as radical as ever, he was evidently fearful of the might of the U.S. government from his previous ruinous encounter, as Pelley now sent pre-publication review copies to the Attorney General’s office for government approval.
However, Pelley just could not keep his big mouth shut. Just weeks after Pearl Harbor, he published an un-proofed article charging President Roosevelt with understating the damage caused at Pearl and claiming, contrary to FDR’s reports, that the U.S. Navy was destroyed in the attack. Pelley rushed into print with an article titled: “Japanese bombers made Pearl Harbor look like an abandoned W.P.A. project in Keokuk!” The special edition hit the streets like a bombshell, and when FDR saw it, he exploded, demanding Pelley’s arrest on April 4th. The charge: high treason!
Pelley was charged with twelve felony counts of violating the Alien and Sedition Act — an obscure ancient set of laws originally designed to deport troublesome foreigners during the American Revolution. The Sedition Act provided for fines or imprisonment for individuals who criticized the government, Congress, or president in speech or print.
The highly publicized trial for treason of William Dudley Pelley was broadcast nationwide. National hero Charles Lindbergh personally testified as a character witness on the defendant’s behalf, to no avail as Pelley was sentenced to 15 years in a maximum security federal prison. The trial ruined Pelley in many ways, leaving him penniless and unable to mount an appeal. Lindbergh stayed true to the end, telling a Chicago Tribune reporter that Pelley was “no traitor, but a true patriot who was obviously being persecuted for saying publicly what a growing number of Americans were discussing privately.”
Pelley remained unrepentant throughout, saying: “Some day, we Americans will see in true perspective what an alien horde of four million Jews did to us, and why we have been so stupid to suffer it.“ In 1952, with FDR dead, World War II over and McCarthy in full “Red Scare” stride, Pelley was paroled on the condition that he participate in no “political activities of any nature,” a flagrantly unconstitutional requirement I must point out. Frail and sickly, his daughter and her husband nursed him back to health at the family home in Noblesville, Indiana.
William Dudley Pelley died peacefully in his sleep on July 1, 1965, at the age of 75. During his private viewing and funeral, someone burned a cross on the front lawn of the funeral parlor. It was never determined if the fiery cross had been set there by friend or foe. Ironically, the violent connotations of the cross burning gave the media one last shot at remembering Pelley and his hate-filled life. But soon his name lapsed into obscurity.
In 1982, Noblesville was once again propelled into the national spotlight “Pelley Style” when, on a midsummer’s eve, a young boy playing outside his room was narrowly missed by a falling meteor that landed at his feet. The local paper declared: “Not since the death of fascist leader, W.D. Pelley, seventeen years ago, has the rest of America taken notice of our community.” What better metaphor for the life of William Dudley Pelley? A man whose life as a White Patriot was enigmatically meteoric and whose end came with a smoldering thud back to earth. Sadly, Pelley was our nation’s first leader of a White Power Movement. A man whose obvious brilliance and talent took a wrong turn somewhere along the line. Blinded by racial hatred and intolerance, he ended up a forgotten historical footnote in a lonely Noblesville graveyard called Crownland.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
