George William Christians (5 August 1888 – June 1983) was an American engineer in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who lost a fortune in the

Wall Street Crash of 1929 The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, was a major American stock market crash that occurred in the autumn of 1929. It started in September and ended late in October, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange coll ...

and afterwards launched a "paper and ink" campaign for a "revolution for economic liberty" in the United States. He deliberately adopted extreme and sometimes contradictory political positions in order to publicize his economic ideas. He founded the American Reds and then changed their name to the American Fascists when

fascism Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultra-nationalist political ideology and movement,: "extreme militaristic nationalism, contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, a belief in natural social hierarchy an ...

began to rise. He also founded the Crusader White Shirts, an organization that allied itself with fascist causes. He defended the Nazi Oscar C. Pfaus, and the American Jewish press spoke of him in the same breath as American anti-Semites; but the journalist

John Roy Carlson Arthur Derounian (born Avedis Boghos Derounian (), (other quote elided) April 9, 1909 – April 23, 1991), also known as John Roy Carlson among many pen names, was an Armenian-American journalist and author, best-selling author of ''Under Cover' ...

, who spent years undercover in the

American right Conservatism in the United States is a political and social philosophy based on a belief in limited government, individualism, traditionalism, republicanism, and limited federal governmental power in relation to U.S. states. Conservative ...

, wrote that Christians was

anti-Catholic Anti-Catholicism is hostility towards Catholics or opposition to the Catholic Church, its clergy, and/or its adherents. At various points after the Reformation, some majority Protestant states, including England, Prussia, Scotland, and the Uni ...

but not anti-Semitic. In 1938, he described himself as so "red" (communist) that he made Russian "reds" look yellow, and planned a new American revolution for a visit by President Roosevelt to Chattanooga, which would take place under cover of darkness and during which his men would raise the red flag from the city courthouse. He was arrested in 1942, after the United States entered World War II, and charged with sending

seditious Sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that tends toward rebellion against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent toward, or insurrection against, establ ...

material to officers of the U.S. Army. He was convicted in the first trial of its kind during the war and sentenced to five years in prison with a recommendation by the judge that he not be released until after the war was over. From his jail cell, he repudiated his methods but not his beliefs.

Early life

George Christians was born in Eldred, New York, on 5 August 1888, to a Dutch father and a mother from New York. He received a technical education at the

Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute The New York University Tandon School of Engineering (commonly referred to as Tandon) is the engineering and applied sciences school of New York University. Tandon is the second oldest private engineering and technology school in the United St ...

. In 1916, he married Marie L. Stokes in Hamilton, Tennessee. In 1917, he was resident in Chattanooga, Tennessee, when he was drafted into the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the land service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army of the United States in the U.S. Constitution.Article II, section 2, cl ...

. His draft documents recorded his occupation as construction manager and that he had served as private in the field artillery of the

National Guard National Guard is the name used by a wide variety of current and historical uniformed organizations in different countries. The original National Guard was formed during the French Revolution around a cadre of defectors from the French Guards. Nat ...

in New York.George William Christians United States World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918.
Family Search. Retrieved 7 January 2020. However, the 1930 census does not record him as having served in

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

,George W Christian United States Census, 1930.
Family Search. Retrieved 7 January 2020. and he later declined to say where he was during the conflict."This Fascist Racket - 'Me, Hitler and Il Duce' Pose Favorite With U.S. Fascist Chief"
Pat McGrady, ''Jewish Daily Bulletin'', New York, 11 July 1934, p. 4
Original here

Business career

Christians was the owner of the American Asphalt Grouting Company,Carlson, John Roy. (1943
''Under Cover: My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld of America''.
New York: Dutton. pp. 149-150. a firm that owned a process that stopped dams from leaking. "This Fascist Racket - Self-Named U.S. Fascist Chief Has Points, McGrady Admits"
Pat McGrady, ''Jewish Daily Bulletin'', New York, 9 July 1934, p. 6
Original here
He made a fortune from the business but lost about $200,000 in the

Wall Street Crash The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash, was a major American stock market crash that occurred in the autumn of 1929. It started in September and ended late in October, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange colla ...

of 1929 and in 1930 was working as an electrical engineer. As a result of the loss of his fortune, he became a campaigner for economic reform and developed a philosophy based on "human effort instead of gold"" "Revolution" bound to come"
''Daily Middlesboro News'', 16 December 1938, p. 1. Retrieved from newspaperarchive.com 9 January 2020. that encompassed the abolition of the

gold standard A gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold. The gold standard was the basis for the international monetary system from the 1870s to the early 1920s, and from the l ...

, the repudiation of the national debt, and a refusal to pay taxes.

Crusader White Shirts

In the early 1930s, Christians founded the Crusader White Shirts in Chattanooga, Tennessee, claiming in 1934 to Pat McGrady of the ''

Jewish Daily Bulletin The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) is an international news agency and wire service, founded in 1917, serving Jewish community newspapers and media around the world as well as non-Jewish press, with about 70 syndication clients listed on its web ...

'' that the organization had 10,000 members. Having inspected the records, however, McGrady could find no evidence of any subscriptions or that any meetings of the organization had been held. He described his politics as neither Communist nor Fascist, and deliberately adopted apparently conflicting names and positions in accordance with his belief that a revolutionary leader should promise support to all interests in private and adopt any cause in public that would draw supporters and publicity without accruing too much opposition. He claimed to have started strikes to obtain publicity and to be preparing to send armed men to settle them to gain more. When fascism was on the rise in the early 1930s, he re-branded his American Reds, whose emblem was a red flag with the stars and stripes on top, as the American Fascists, but in 1938 was still claiming to be "so red the Russian Reds are pale yellow in comparison". In practice, he associated himself most closely with far-right and anti-Semitic organizations. His "Secretary of State", C. A. Hester, was a former senior member of the Ku Klux Klan. He tried to raise money from Jews to circulate an edition of the hoax ''

Protocols of the Elders of Zion ''The Protocols of the Elders of Zion'' () or ''The Protocols of the Meetings of the Learned Elders of Zion'' is a fabricated antisemitic text purporting to describe a Jewish plan for global domination. The hoax was plagiarized from several ...

'' for the ostensible purpose of exposing the origins of the unjust persecution of the Jews. In 1934, he complained to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the "persecution" in Chicago of the Nazi propagandist Oscar C. Pfaus, chairman of the Germanic Alliance."The Bulletin’s Day Book"
A.R.Z., ''Jewish Daily Bulletin'', New York, 3 April 1934, pg. 6
Original here
C. F. Fulliam of the alliance chapter in Muscatine, Iowa, wrote to Christians saying that as "Heil Hitler!" was popular in Germany, "let me salute you as you will be saluted in days to come. Hail! Christians.""Fascists Flock to Christians’s Crusaders"
Pat McGrady, ''Jewish Daily Bulletin'', New York, 23 April 1934, p. 3
Original here.
In 1936 he founded the Crusaders for Economic Liberty in Chicago with the American fascist and anti-Semite Lois de Lafayette Washburn. He posed for photographs with a form of crusader's cross or

cross potent A cross potent (plural: crosses potent), also known as a crutch cross, is a form of heraldic cross with crossbars at the four ends. In French, it is known as '' croix potencée'', in German as a ''Kruckenkreuz'', all translating to "crutch cross ...

on a white shirt and a gun in his belt. More than one observer commented that with his toothbrush moustache he bore a resemblance to

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

. An inveterate letter writer in the cause of his "paper and ink revolution", he sent twenty for every one he received, on letterheads showing the Statue of Liberty, crossed American flags, and a torch with a red, white, and blue flame and in green and brown type. In November 1938, he figured in the proceedings of the House Special Committee on Un-American Activities of the United States Congress which noted the large number of organizations with which he was associated or had founded. These included the American Reds and the American Fascists, the Liberty Party, the Crusaders for American Liberty, the Crusader White Shirts, and the Fifty Million Club for Economic Liberty. He was once a candidate for Congress from the third Tennessee district.

Roosevelt and revolution

On 1 December 1932"Dr. Moley Gives Clue to Wirt's Karensky Story"
''The Daily Independent'', 28 March 1934, p. 5. Retrieved from newspaperarchive.com 11 January 2020. Christians was granted an interview with President-elect

Franklin D. Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...

at Warm Springs, Georgia, after driving there with his "Minister of Economics", Walter M. Higgins, a Catholic and former salesman for a stocking manufacturer, and insisting that unemployed steel workers were on the point of revolution. Roosevelt listened to Christians' economic ideas and promised to take them into account. According to the ''Jewish Daily Bulletin'', Christians was subsequently questioned for two days by Federal agents who doubted his sanity. "This Fascist Racket - Asylum Inmate Seems Saner to Writer Than Fascist Leader"
Pat McGrady, ''Jewish Daily Bulletin'', New York, 26 July 1934, p. 5
Original here
It was at that meeting, Christians claimed, that he put it to Roosevelt that he was "only the Kerensky" of an upcoming American "revolution", a moderate who would be overthrown by an American

Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...

. The ''Jewish Daily Bulletin'' wondered whether Christians saw himself as that Stalin. The idea gained traction in the press and in Washington after William A. Wirt, an opponent of Roosevelt's New Deal who was at Warm Springs at the same time as Christians, alleged that there were communists in the American government who were seeking to undermine the Roosevelt administration and the New Deal, allegations that led to the Bulwinkle investigation in the United States

House of Representatives House of Representatives is the name of legislative bodies in many countries and sub-national entitles. In many countries, the House of Representatives is the lower house of a bicameral legislature, with the corresponding upper house often c ...

in 1934."Reference to Roosevelt as Kerensy Investigated By Department of Justice"
''Syracuse Herald'', 1 April 1934, p. 7. Retrieved from newspaperarchive.com 10 January 2020. In December 1938, Christians told the press that "revolution" was bound to come to America, and that the American people were in the mood for it. He had timed it for the president's recent visit to Chattanooga before that was cancelled. He planned to cut the power (he had a patent for an electrical fuse), saying "lots of things can happen in the dark", after which his men would seize the town and fly the red flag from the court house, before taking the state capitol of Nashville and moving on California, Chicago, New York, and Washington. He explained that the plan did not go ahead because by the time the President did visit in November, conditions were less suitable for a revolution.

Assessments

Christians was investigated by U.S. Army military intelligence who described him as having "a brilliant mind but of erratic temperament", and as posing no threat.

Raymond Moley Raymond Charles Moley (September 27, 1886 – February 18, 1975) was an American political economist. Initially a leading supporter of the New Deal, he went on to become its bitter opponent before the end of the Great Depression. Early life and ...

described him as a "harmless lunatic".George W. Christians, American fascist.
''Appalachian History'', 9 March 2018. Retrieved 6 January 2020. In 1934, Pat McGrady, author of ''Fascism in America'', visited Christians in Chattanooga for New York's ''Jewish Daily Bulletin'' and reported that he was mostly ignored there and "quite without honor", unable to get a letter printed in the city's newspapers despite his many attempts. Christians attributed this to a "campaign of silence" by the press but McGrady thought it was because Christians was a crank of the type found in every town and with whom newspaper editors were all too familiar. Nonetheless, he thought that Christians was not as much of a "nut" as some made out, saying:

He is a clever fellow with a fine appreciation of the limits of our broad liberties of speech and action which he strains in promoting his personality and an economic scheme which, if effective, is enough to surrender the rights and properties of the people into the hands of whoever may be strong enough to grasp control of a despairing nation.

Despite his intelligence, McGrady identified in Christians a deep ignorance of the principles of Fascism and of its practice in Germany and Italy, fostered, he thought, by the narrow sources on which Christians was able to draw in Chattanooga in understanding world affairs. This made the question of whether Christians was really a fascist, a

moot Moot may refer to: * Mootness, in American law: a point where further proceedings have lost practical significance; whereas in British law: the issue remains debatable * Moot court, an activity in many law schools where participants take part in s ...

one. In 1935,

Jay Franklin John Franklin Carter a.k.a. Jay Franklin a.k.a. Diplomat a.k.a. Unofficial Observer (1897–1967) was an American journalist, columnist, biographer and novelist. He notably wrote the syndicated column, "We the People", under his pen name Jay ...

of ''Vanity Fair'' cited Christians as an example of the inability of American radicals to capitalise on the weakness of an antiquated government due to their inability to lead, to follow, or to co-operate, opining of him that what could have been a mass movement was reduced to a one-man-show by his policy of double-crossing and the destruction of local movements in order to attract personal publicity. In his 1943 book ''Under Cover: My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld of America'', Christians was described by

(Arthur Derounian) as "an odd combination of comedian and sinister revolutionist", strongly anti-Catholic but not anti-Semitic.

1940s

In 1940, in an editorial piece titled "Shirts marked Down", ''The Daily Independent'' wrote that since the start of the European war (World War Two), the price of Black, Brown, and Red shirts had been reduced and the "1001 leagues, legions, associations, federations, friends of this and that, committees, knights" and similar organizations were in retreat. Leaders were arrested or inactive and with respect to Christians, in Chattanooga the locals "simply refuse to recognize him as a Fascist Menace". In March 1942, after the United States had joined the war, Christians was arrested under the

Smith Act The Alien Registration Act, popularly known as the Smith Act, 76th United States Congress, 3d session, ch. 439, , is a United States federal statute that was enacted on June 28, 1940. It set criminal penalties for advocating the overthrow of th ...

which aimed to counter sedition. He was only the second person to be charged under the act, after Rudolph Fahl of Denver who was arrested simultaneously. It was alleged that Christians had sent communications to the officers of Fort Oglethorpe, Georgia, and

Camp Forrest Camp Forrest, located in a wooded area east of the city of Tullahoma, Tennessee, was one of the U.S. Army's largest training bases during World War II. It was an active army post between 1941 and 1946. History The camp, named after Civil War cav ...

, Tennessee, that might demoralize the army. His literature stated that even in wartime it was permitted to ask questions and posed a series of them, among which was "Are we fighting to make Roosevelt the dictator of the world?" Christians was convicted of four counts of edition in June, in the first trial of its kind during the war and sentenced to five years imprisonment."Five Years Assessed on Sedition Charge"
''The Port Arthur News'', 8 June 1942, p. 1. Retrieved from newspaperarchive.com 9 January 2020. The judge, Leslie Darr, recommended that he should not be paroled until after the end of the war."Chattanooga Engineer Sentenced to Five Years on Sedition Charge"
''Kingsport Times'', 8 June 1942, p. 8. Retrieved from newspaperarchive.com 9 January 2020. From his cell, Christians told reporters that he felt that his work had been done and that his conviction had concluded his "paper and ink revolution for economic liberty". He also said that he regretted his "objectionable" methods and that he was glad not to have harmed anyone. Of his economic theories, he said that he had brought them to the attention of the American people and it was up to them what they did with them. Christians died in Chattanooga, in June 1983.George Christians United States Social Security Death Index.
Family Search. Retrieved 7 January 2020.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Christians, George W. 1888 births 1983 deaths 20th-century American engineers American construction businesspeople People from Sullivan County, New York New York National Guard personnel American collaborators with Nazi Germany American electrical engineers American people of Dutch descent American revolutionaries American fascists American prisoners and detainees People from Chattanooga, Tennessee Tax protesters in the United States American activists 1930s in the United States Activists from Tennessee People convicted under the Smith Act