H. Keith Thompson

Thompson was born in New Jersey in 1922.{{Rp|85}}

Thompson began his political activism in his teenage years, joining the German American Bund and the America First Committee, and campaigning against involvement before America's entry into World War II.{{Rp|85}} He came to the attention of Nazi Germany and was appointed as a Special Agent of the Sicherheitsdienst (SD) Overseas Intelligence Unit on July 27, 1941, swearing a loyalty oath to Adolf Hitler.{{Rp|86}}{{Cite book |last=Levenda |first=Peter |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/896838400 |title=The Hitler Legacy : The Nazi Cult in Diaspora : How it was organized, how it was funded, and why it remains a threat to global security in the age of terrorism |date=2014 |isbn=978-0-89254-591-9 |location=Lake Worth, Florida |oclc=896838400}} Thompson served in the U.S. Navy during the war.{{Cite book |url=http://archive.org/details/THOMPSONHaroldKeithHQ100370871AndHQ10518598 |title=THOMPSON, Harold Keith, HQ 100-370871 and HQ 105-18598 |language=English}}

Thompson graduated from Yale University in 1946.{{Cite book |last=Atkins |first=Stephen E. |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/763156200 |title=Encyclopedia of Right-Wing Extremism in Modern American History |date=2011 |publisher=ABC-CLIO |isbn=978-1-59884-351-4 |location=Santa Barbara, Calif. |oclc=763156200}} He made an expedition to Antarctica as part of Operation Highjump under Rear Admiral Richard Evelyn Byrd.{{Rp|86}}{{Cite web|url=http://www.sharkhunters.com/EPThompson.htm|title=H. Keith Thompson, was with Operation "High Jump" in Antarctica.|website=www.sharkhunters.com|access-date=2018-08-23|archive-date=2017-11-16|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171116202112/http://www.sharkhunters.com/EPThompson.htm|url-status=dead}} In 1948, Thompson joined the United States Marine Corps. In 1949, he was court-martialed for sexual deviation and maltreatment. Following a conviction and the approval of the verdict, Thompson, who had already been under investigation for his Neo-Nazi activities, was dismissed from the military.

Alongside his political activities, Thompson found work in public relations and owned a PR firm by the 1950s.{{Rp|85}}

The writer Stephen E. Atkins describes Thompson as "the intermediary between American prewar Nazism and the postwar neo-Nazism". Thompson befriended the German Nazi Otto Skorzeny, who had been Hitler's commando leader, and worked with him to set up ODESSA.{{Rp|86–87}}{{Cite book |last=Goodrick-Clarke |first=Nicholas |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/47665567 |title=Black sun : Aryan cults, Esoteric Nazism, and the Politics of Identity |date=2002 |publisher=New York University Press |isbn=0-8147-3124-4 |location=New York |oclc=47665567}} Thompson also became a close ally of Otto Ernst Remer, a Nazi general who had defended Hitler against a 1944 coup plot, and in 1951, Thompson registered with the United States Department of Justice as the American representative for the German neo-Nazi Socialist Reich Party co-founded by Remer, a position Thompson held until the group was banned in 1952. Around the same time, he became involved with the National Renaissance Party, the American neo-Nazi party founded by James Madole.[http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=176 'The Ties that Bind'] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20091019043436/http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=176 |date=2009-10-19 }} from the Southern Poverty Law Center site{{Cite web |title=Pan-Aryanism Binds Hate Groups in America and Europe |url=https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2001/pan-aryanism-binds-hate-groups-america-and-europe |access-date=2022-05-02 |website=Southern Poverty Law Center |date=29 August 2001 |language=en}} Thompson campaigned with Francis Parker Yockey for Remer's release from prison during the 1950s. Thompson and Yockey remained close allies until the latter's suicide in federal custody in 1960.{{Rp|103–106}} Thompson also ran a campaign to release Karl Dönitz, Hitler's successor. Thompson worked with neo-Nazi presses in South America to distribute literature covertly in Germany.

Among the stranger aspects of Thompson´s life he was friends with the Jewish Communist publisher, Lyle Stuart, who he used the assistance of on several occasions to attack people with whom he had come into conflict including King Farouk of Egypt, and maintained warm relations with many members of the CPUSA.{{cite book |last1=Coogan |first1=Kevin |title=Dreamer of the day: Francis Parker Yockey and the Postwar Fascist International|page=386 |date=1999 |publisher=Autonomedia |location=Brooklyn, New York |isbn=1-57027-039-2}}

In his article "I Am an American Fascist" for the obscure Exposé magazine in 1954, Thompson praised the Third Reich and Hitler and condemned the Nuremberg Trials as "vicious and vilely dishonorable".{{Cite book|url=http://www.press.uillinois.edu:80/epub/books/tucker/ch3.html|title=The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund|last=Tucker|first=William H.|date=2002|publisher=University of Illinois Press|isbn=9780252074639|language=en|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20070503082757/http://www.press.uillinois.edu/epub/books/tucker/ch3.html|archive-date=2007-05-03|access-date=2007-08-15|url-status=dead}} He became linked to the International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics and published a number of pamphlets on its behalf.

Thompson visited Cairo in an attempt to forge links to the Nasser regime.{{Cite web|url=http://world-news-research.com/harabr.html|title=From Hitler to the "Arab Reich"}}{{Better source needed|date=August 2018}} More concrete links were established with Mohammad Amin al-Husayni and Johann von Leers as part of efforts to build the ties of the extreme right in the West and the Islamic world.{{Cite journal|last=Lee|first=Martin A.|date=Spring 2002|title=National Alliance, Holocaust Deniers React to 9/11 Attacks|url=https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2002/national-alliance-holocaust-deniers-react-911-attacks|journal=Intelligence Report|language=en|publisher=Southern Poverty Law Center|access-date=2018-08-23}}

Along with a number of right wing activists Thompson was also involved on the fringes of the Republican Party. Independently wealthy, he contributed to the campaigns of such right wing figures in the GOP as Jesse Helms, Oliver North and Pat Buchanan. His monetary contributions to the party were such that he was awarded membership of its Presidential Legion of Merit as a result.{{Rp|387}}

In his later years, Thompson largely disappeared from public view. In the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing he re-emerged, initially welcoming the attack; afterward, however, he later revised his position and denounced it as a government act designed to destroy the reputation of the far right.{{Rp|354}}

He would also speak positively about the Russian nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky saying that, "Zhironovky certainly seems a good man to me in many ways, certainly better than Yeltsin".{{Cite book|title=The Beast Reawakens|last=Lee|first=Martin A.|date=1997|publisher=Little, Brown and Company|isbn=9780316519595|language=en}}

Thompson died in 2002.

In the early post-war years, Thompson worked as a publisher and literary agent (his clients included Fulgencio Batista, Carol II of Romania and Hans-Ulrich Rudel).{{Rp|114}} Thompson was offered a position on the board of policy of the Liberty Lobby, although he turned it down, stating that he only wanted to take one loyalty oath in his life (to Hitler when he joined the SD).{{Rp|225}}

{{reflist|2}}

• FBI files on H. Keith Thompson, obtained under the FOIA and hosted at the Internet Archive:
• [https://archive.org/details/foia_Thompson_Jr._H._Keith-HQ-1 FBI headquarters file part 1]
• [https://archive.org/details/foia_Thompson_Jr._H._Keith-HQ-2 FBI headquarters file part 2]
• [https://archive.org/details/foia_Thompson_Jr._H._Keith-HQ-3 FBI headquarters file part 3]
• [https://archive.org/details/foia_Thompson_Jr._H._Keith-NYC-1 New York office file part 1]
• [https://archive.org/details/foia_Thompson_Jr._H._Keith-NYC-2 New York office file part 2]
• [https://archive.org/details/foia_Thompson_Jr._H._Keith-WFO-1 Washington field office file]

{{Neo-Nazism}}

{{Historical revisionism}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Thompson, H. Keith}}

Category:1922 births

Category:2002 deaths

Category:20th-century American businesspeople

Category:America First Committee members

Category:American male non-fiction writers

Category:American criminals

Category:American neo-Nazis

Category:American political writers

Category:American public relations people

Category:American segregationists

Category:American spies for Nazi Germany

Category:German American Bund members

Category:People from New Jersey

Category:Yale University alumni

Category:New York (state) Republicans

Category:20th-century American male writers

Category:United States Navy personnel of World War II

Category:United States Marine Corps personnel who were court-martialed