Frightening facts about Nazism in America continue to be exposed by Professor Rex Curry. http://rexcurry.net/bellamy-edward-german-connections.html  Dr. Curry showed that the salute of the National Socialist German Workers' Party originated from a National Socialist in America -Francis Bellamy- who wrote the Pledge of Allegiance in 1892. http://rexcurry.net/pledgesalute.html  New discoveries expose the "swastika" of the first American National Socialists (below).

Francis Bellamy was the cousin of Edward Bellamy, the head of the Nationalism movement in America at that time, the inspiration for Nationalist Clubs worldwide, and the founder of the Nationalist Party. Edward Bellamy was also the author of the national socialist fantasy Looking Backward (1888), an international bestseller, and in November, 1888, Edward Bellamy personally made a contract with an interpreter to translate his book into German (see the biography by Arthur Morgan, p. 65).  In 1891, American advertisements listed German-language editions of Bellamy's book and stated that the socialist's novel "Lays the foundation of the Nationalist Movement." http://rexcurry.net/bellamy-charles-edward1891.pdf  The adverstisements coincide with Edward Bellamy's "Nationalist" magazine, published by the "Nationalist Educational Association." http://rexcurry.net/nationalistmagazine.jpg   It has been said that the Bellamys were "more Nazi than the Nazis."

Bellamy's comments in the Sprinfield Union newspaper show his glorification of German folk life. According to the biographer Sylvia E. Bowman, "To Bellamy, Americans had much to learn from the Germans who enjoyed nature, had outdoor summer houses and beer gardens, and from all of these, had found a placid contentment which contrasted to the hustle and bustle of American life."   

In 1935, Columbia University requested three people (John Dewey, a philosopher; Charles Beard, a historian; and Edward Weeks, the editor of Atlantic Monthly) to list the ten most influential books of the preceding 50 years (from 1885 to 1935). On all three lists, prepared independently, Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward appeared second on the list, the first being Karl Marx’s Das Kapital. It is important to remember that during this time of Bellamy's great influence, the National Socialist German Workers’ Party had been in existence since 1920, with electoral breakthroughs in 1930, and dictatorship in 1933.  Many writers have suggested that Bellamy was viewed as an alternative to Marx, and that view raised his influence among German National Socialists.

According to Gail Collins "...far more American workers read Looking Backward than ever made it through Marx..." Tomorrow Never Knows, The Nation, Vol. 252, Issue # 2, January 21, 1991.  The book was "debated by all down to the bootblack on the corner," reported Henry Demarest Lloyd in 1894.

The book, Edward Bellamy Abroad, by Sylvia E. Bowman, is an amazing 543 pages of evidence that Edward Bellamy's scheme for an "industrial army" (openly modeled after the military) was a bad influence upon WWII and the socialist Wholecaust (of which the Holocaust was a part): the National Socialist German Workers' Party (21 million people slaughtered); the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (62 million slaughtered); the People's Republic of China (35 million).  (Also see http://rexcurry.net/socialists.html and http://rexcurry.net/socialists.jpg )  In Bowman's chapter on Germany alone, there are 54 pages, with comments about the monstrous National Socialist German Workers' Party, mentioning the similarities in Bellamy's philosophy.

Looking Backward became an international bestseller, translated into every major language, including German, and it inspired military socialism worldwide. The book, described by socialists as the "Bible of Nationalism," inspired the creation of 167 “Nationalist Clubs” worldwide, including Germany.  Bellamy nationalists focused on nationalism (“my country over others”), rabid patriotism (e.g. Pledges of Allegiance with the original straight-arm salute), and their interest in nationalization, or public ownership and management of everything.  Bellamy's influence was still going strong in 1938 with the publication of Bellamy's “Talks on Nationalism.”  President Franklin Delano Roosevelt imposed national socialism and socialist slave numbers (social security) in 1935 as a "worker's" program for Roosevelt’s vision of the industrial army that coincided with similar numbering programs of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. During that time, children in government-schools were required by law to salute the flag with the straight-armed salute in military formation daily on the ring of a government bell, like Pavlov’s lapdogs of the state.  Bellamy's "Talks on Nationalism" is a terrifying look at the parallels between American National Socialists and German National Socialists.

German National Socialism was supported by American National Socialism via German-Americans who joined the German American Bund movement (Deutsch-Amerikanischer Volksbund) to support national socialists in Germany before WWII. http://rexcurry.net/pledgebund.html   The bund began as the Friends of New Germany in Chicago in 1933. This group traced its roots to the Teutonia Society and National Socialist Party, both active in the USA during the 1920s.  

From 1868 to 1869, Edward Bellamy spent a year in Germany, learning to speak and write German and attending lectures and studying German socialism. Edward Bellamy even wrote A Süd Deutsch Volklied (South German Peoples' Song) in German on the inside cover of his notebook, and dated "Granada, Jan. 4, 1878." (see Arthur Morgan's Edward Bellamy from Columbia University Press 1944).

Edward's brother Frederick stated that Edward had talked and read about socialism before Edward went to Germany. Frederick wrote that Edward's letters to him from Germany were full of German socialism which "he had read and studied much at home." (see Sylvia E. Bowman's 1958 book The Year 2000).

While Bellamy was in Germany, the first German unions were founded and the German Workers' Party (Die Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) issued its program of socialist cliches that Bellamy repeated in his bestseller (Looking Backward) and his other writings for the rest of his life.  The German Workers' Party was the Party that later added the very phrase "National Socialism" to the front of its name and became the
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