Arnold Leese

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Arnold Spencer Leese (* 1878 in Lytham , Lancashire , Great Britain ; † 1956 ) was a veterinarian and British fascist who co-founded and led the Imperial Fascist League .

Early life

After training as a veterinarian, Leese went to British India for six years , where he worked with camels and in 1925 wrote a standard work The Camel in Health and Disease . During World War I he served in the Royal Army Veterinary Corps and on the Western Front and in the Middle East as a captain.

Political life

In 1925 he became a member of the British Fascisti , where he came into contact with people such as Henry Hamilton Beamish , founder of The Britons movement and owner of The Britons Publishing Company , which distributed anti-Semitic literature such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion . Beamish, who greatly impressed and influenced Leese, would later become vice president of the Imperial Fascist League . From him, Leese took over the solution to the Jewish question , which consisted in the deportation of all Jews to Madagascar in accordance with the Madagascar Plan. In 1935, Leese proposed that the “Jewish problem” be resolved radically and cleanly through “death chambers”.

Inspired by various political contacts and especially by Beamish, Leese decided to become a politician and therefore gave up his practice in Stamford . Since he did not agree with the British Fascisti on all questions, he founded the Imperial Fascist League in 1928 with J. Baillard and L. H. Sherrard , which according to its own information had 1,500 members. The British Home Office put the members at 150 and a London hard core of 50 people who called themselves after the SS Imperial Guard . When his co-founders retired in 1932, Leese appointed himself general manager.

He ran in Stamford for the Imperial Fascist League and was elected to the city parliament with another fascist.

From 1929 he published the monthly magazine The Fascist with an edition of about 3000 copies, which appeared until October 1939 and in which he wrote most of the articles.

In contrast to the British Union of Fascists of Oswald Mosley , who was based on Italian fascism, Leese was a supporter of German National Socialism, was based on the German publications such as The striker and world service and met personally with Julius Streicher . He is also said to have been present at the Nuremberg party congresses of the NSDAP in 1935 and 1936.

The Imperial Fascist League was by no means as important as the British Union of Fascists . Mosley made several attempts at amalgamation, which Leese refused because he believed Mosley's movement was too lenient with Freemasons and Jews. Leese became known in the UK in 1936 for being imprisoned for six months for slander and public nuisance after spreading that Jews would commit ritual murders and use Christian blood to make matzo .

Leese also had contacts with the leading member of the fascist Australia First Movement Alexander Mills . In 1939 he dissolved the Imperial Fascist League and made contact with fascist organizations in Norway and the Netherlands . In a letter he complained that Hitler had started wars not only against the Jews but also against the Aryan peoples. He gave his last speech on May 3, 1940, after which he was imprisoned for the duration of the war.

plant

  • Igirisu seikai ni okaru Yudayajin no seiryoku. Yudaya mondai shiryō; dai 13- <> -shū. Dairen: Mantetsu Chōsabu, (1938) Shōwa 13, LCCN  72-000168 .
  • My irrelevant defense: being meditations inside gaol and out on Jewish ritual murder . IFL Printing and Publishing, London (1938), LCCN  46-000653 .
  • Out of step: events in two lives of an anti-Jewish camel-doctor . Guildford 1951, LCCN  53-000974 .
  • My Irrelevant Defense being Meditations Inside Gaol and Out on Jewish Ritual Murder . London 1938, LCCN  2001-000913 .

literature

  • Magnus Brechtken : Madagascar for the Jews: Anti-Semitic Idea and Political Practice 1885-1945 . Studies in contemporary history. 2nd Edition. Oldenbourg, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-486-56384-X Google Books
  • John Morell: Arnold Leese. Anti-Semite and Fascist . In: Vienna Library . Bulletin 23, 1969, No 4, pp. 32-26

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Brechtken: Madagascar . P. 64 f.
  2. ↑ a b Brechtken: Madagascar , p. 65.
  3. ↑ Brechtken: Madagascar , p. 65 f.
  4. ↑ Brechtken: Madagascar , p. 66.
  5. ↑ Brechtken: Madagascar . P. 67.
personal data
SURNAME Leese, Arnold
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Leese, Arnold Spencer (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British fascist politician
DATE OF BIRTH 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Lytham , Lancashire , UK
DATE OF DEATH 1956