Six Nazi spies were executed in D.C. White supremacists gave them a memorial on federal land.
Six Nazi spies were executed in D.C. White supremacists gave them a memorial on federal land.
By John Woodrow Cox June 2
A memorial commemorating Nazi spies remains in storage at a National Park Service facility outside Washington. A white supremacist group placed the stone on federal land decades ago. (Photo by Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post)
A team of power company workers was trudging through a seldom-visited thicket in Southwest Washington when they spotted something odd in a ditch. ... Protruding from the grass was a rectangular slab of granite. ... They looked closer, and an inscription on the surface came into focus. What they saw astonished them. ... It was a memorial. In honor of Nazi spies. On U.S. government property.
In memory of agents of the German Abwehr, the engraving began, executed August 8, 1942. ... Below that were six names, and below those was another cryptic line: Donated by the N.S.W.P.P.
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The line at the bottom referencing the N.S.W.P.P. offered a clue. ... Until the mid-1960s, the National Socialist White Peoples Party had gone by a more familiar name: the American Nazi Party. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the groups founder, George Lincoln Rockwell, had given it the new title shortly before his assassination in 1967.
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John Woodrow Cox is a reporter on the local enterprise team. Prior to joining the Post, he worked at the Tampa Bay Times in Florida and at the Valley News in New Hampshire. He attended the University of Florida, earning degrees in journalism and business. Follow @JohnWoodrowCox