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Secret Nazi Youth Group Smashed in New Jersey School

May 1, 1959
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John Martin, Superintendent of the Wayne school in nearby Wayne Township, said today that a secret society of students who planned a Nazi regime in America has been uncovered and broken up.

Martin said that the organization was made up of 12 students, in whose lockers school authorities found pro-Nazi literature. Martin, who declined to name the youths, said formal police complaints will be signed against six of the students, including their reputed leader. He contended the movement of the teen-age bomb-and-gun armed gang was “very real.”

Declaring that the students “represent a cross-section of upper-middle class suburbia,” the superintendent said that the FBI was investigating the group. The FBI office in Newark, however, declined comment.

The superintendent said that the students “would meet in each other’s homes and dress in Nazi uniforms.” He said they bought Nazi war souvenirs from a mail order house, collected guns, and had built a six-inch bomb from a length of pipe.

The youths ran into trouble in seeking to enroll members from among fellow-students. The school has 1,500 students.

“We are very proud of the bulk of our students, who responded contemptuously and antagonistically to the recruiting attempts,” Martin said. Some of the students, he admitted, had been interested in the swastika symbols and the recruiting theme of forming a “master race.”

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