Here is the radio show companion to my March 13th & 20th and June 19, 2025 articles in the Weekly View newspaper, all of which are available to read on this site.
Original publish date June 19, 2025.
https://weeklyview.net/2025/06/19/nazi-ideology-on-the-eastside-a-contnuance/
Last March, I wrote a two-part article on Eastsider Charles Soltau, the “Nazi at Arsenal Tech”. This Saturday (June 21st) at noon, I will revisit those articles on Nelson Price’s “Hoosier History Live” radio show WICR 88.7 FM. Nelson, a longtime friend of Irvington, has a personal connection to that story, which he will share for the first time ever during that broadcast. As it happens, weeks after that article appeared, quite by accident, I ran across a few documents that spoke directly to that time in Indianapolis history.
While perusing a few boxes of vintage paper at a roadside antiques market, I found a pair of cards from February 1938, advertising one of the first 35 mm camera photo exhibitions in Indianapolis at the Hotel Lincoln. The Hotel Lincoln, built in 1918, was a triangular flat-iron building located on the corner of West Washington St. and Kentucky Ave. The hotel was named in honor of Abraham Lincoln, who made a speech from the balcony of the Bates House across the street in 1861. Afterwards, that block became known as “Lincoln Square.” The Hotel displayed a bust of Abraham Lincoln on a marble column in its lobby for decades. The Lincoln was a popular convention center and was once the tallest flat-iron building in the city. The Lincoln was the site of the arrest of musician Ray Charles (a subject covered in depth in one of my past columns). It also served as the headquarters for Robert Kennedy and his campaign staff, who leased the entire eleventh floor of the hotel during the 1968 Indiana primary. The Lincoln was intentionally imploded in April of 1973.
It was the Hotel Lincoln’s history that originally piqued my interest. The front of each card read, “You are invited to attend the Fourth International Leica Exhibit on display in the Hotel Lincoln, Parlor A, Mezzanine Floor, Indianapolis, Ind., from February 23 to 26 [1938], inclusive. Hours: 11 A.M. to 9 P.M. (on February 26, the exhibit will close at 5 P.M.) More than 200 outstanding Leica pictures will be on display, representing the use of the camera in various fields…Candid, Amateur, Commercial, Press and Scientific Photography. Do not fail to view this show which represents the progress in miniature camera photography throughout the year. Illustrated Leica Demonstration will be given at the American United Life Insurance Co., Auditorium, Indianapolis, February 24, 8:30 P.M. by Mrs. Anton F. Baumann. ADMISSION FREE. E. Leitz, Inc. New York, N.Y.” Research reveals that the winner of the contest was W.R. Henkel, who resided at 2936 E. Washington Street. Henkel received the Oscar Barnak Medal, named for the inventor of the Leica camera.
The Leica was the first practical 35 mm camera designed specifically to use standard 35 mm film. The first 35 mm film Leica prototypes were built by Oskar Barnack at Ernst Leitz Optische Werke, Wetzlar, in 1913. Some sources say the original Leica was intended as a compact camera for landscape photography, particularly during mountain hikes, but other sources indicate the camera was intended for test exposures with 35mm motion picture film. Leica was noteworthy for its progressive labor policies which encouraged the retention of skilled workers, many of whom were Jewish. Ernst Leitz II, who began managing the company in 1920, responded to the election of Hitler in 1933 by helping Jews to leave Germany, by “assigning” hundreds (many of whom were not actual employees) to overseas sales offices where they were helped to find jobs. The effort intensified after Kristallnacht in 1938, until the borders were closed in September 1939. The extent of what came to be known as the “Leica Freedom Train” only became public after his death, well after the war.
While my interest was drawn to the printed text, it was the handwritten pencil notations on the back of the cards that sparked that purchase. The cards contained a contemporary essay about the political atmosphere in the Circle City less than a month after the Soltau family’s Nazi incident. Written in pencil, the cards, numbered 1 and 2, read: “Hitler! Hitler Dictator of Germany! Is he to blame for the present aggressive stand of Deutchland? No! He is not. Directly, it is the German people that are to blame but additionally and more importantly, this aggressive attitude is the result of the great war to “make the world safe for Democracy!!” This is only a natural outcome of any war, whether large or small. After a war there is a spontaneous decline of morals. This is particularly evident on the defeated side because they have lost men, money, power, land, and consequently, resources. At the lowest ebb of a people’s hope they look to a leader, a strong, fearless, aggressive man. When this superman is found, the people raise him to great heights as their leader. One must remember that a dictator, or any other national leader, has only the power that his people are willing to give him. That, and that alone, is the secret of a powerful man’s ability to rule and bulldoze. Once the backing has failed, his power collapses much as a top-heavy construction with a weak foundation. Hence, Hitler is, shall we say, a victim of circumstance. In case you should still disagree, consider yourself as being in the United States after a war in which it has been defeated; the odds are against ever winning the next war. After this defeat the U.S. would not be as it is today. It would probably consist of three or four of our present states without so much as a seaport or adequate resources. Put yourself in this predicament and imagine your feelings. Don’t kid yourself but actually get down in that part of your mind that refuses to be heard and realize what you would favor to regain lost territory, lost prestige, lost power, lost resources, and lost men.”
The next week, I revisited that roadside market. Lo and behold, the same dealer was there, and he brought more boxes of paper. I found two more of those cards, numbered 3 & 7, with more of that essay featured on the reverse. “Since we are already ankle deep in international politics, let’s go all the way and look at the present lineup of nations. The United States of America, being our own country, we should, of course, consider it first. The U.S. is not as yet, nor shall it be for many years to come so clever as to ever become involved in a foreign war. With this conclusion drawn, we assume that we will become entangled in the next war. We, due to racial and linguistic likenesses, would align ourselves to Great Britain. Great Britain’s alliance with France ia a generally accepted fact . Now the most important and, disastrous as I see it, would be Russia’s inevitable junction with France, which is already showing decided…Couldn’t we be a little more consistent one way or the other?”
“There are innumerable other points that could be brought up for discussion, but they all point to one solution to all world affairs in regard to the United States. (1) It is this: maintain an adequate army and navy as determined by Army and Navy officials. (2) Keep this army and navy in home waters always for our defense and not aggression or the means of producing another “Grave international incident.” (3) Keep out of foreign treaties, alliances, or agreements. (4) Make a referendum of the people mandatory in declaring war. These points, and these alone, will make us a nation at peace with happy, interested people striving for more knowledge of lifesaving methods and of culture, instead of new and improved methods of warfare. Think it over!”
All four of these cards were authored (and signed) by Bob Shoemaker, Jr. of Anderson, IN. Robert W. Shoemaker, Jr. (1921-2022) Bob was born in New Philadelphia, Ohio, the only child of Robert W. Shoemaker, Sr. (1898-1968) and Irene English Shoemaker (1900-1988). The family moved to Anderson in 1935. Shortly after settling in Indiana, Bob became a Boy Scout. While attending the 1937 National Boy Scout Jamboree in Washington DC, Bob received his Eagle Scout award. It is likely that the seeds of this essay were planted when he sailed to Europe to participate in the 1937 World Jamboree in the Netherlands. Here, young Bobby Shoemaker witnessed the changes taking place in Hitler’s Germany firsthand. After graduating from Anderson High School in 1939, Bob enrolled in Harvard College and was on course to graduate with the Class of 1943 when the war came calling. Among Bob’s hobbies and interests were amateur radio, reading, history, and photography. Through slides, home movies, and videos, Bob compiled a remarkable visual history of his life and the life of his family from the 1920s to the current century. His many slides and movies taken during the 1937 Jamboree trips provide a fascinating glimpse of life in Washington DC, and Europe before the tragic onset of World War II. It was that love of photography that drew Bob to that Leica Exhibit at the Hotel Lincoln in Indianapolis back in 1938.
Bob was commissioned as an ensign in the U.S. Naval Reserve in 1942 and attended officers’ training programs in the Bronx, NY, and Washington, D.C, before being assigned to the Naval Mine Warfare Test Station at Solomons Island, MD, where he served as Naval personnel officer. After requesting a shipboard assignment, Bob was transferred to the Pacific for duty aboard the escort aircraft carrier U.S.S. Corregidor (CVE-58) as Lieutenant Junior Grade and Signal Officer until the ship’s decommissioning after the war in 1946. After World War II, Bob earned two graduate degrees from Harvard: an MBA and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Government in 1947. Upon his return to Anderson in 1947, Bob remained active in the U.S. Naval Reserve Division 9-31. In 1949, Bob and his parents purchased Short Printing, Inc., then located on 20th Street near Fairview Street in Anderson. He successfully operated the business as President for almost five decades, which included building a larger one on Madison Avenue in 1961 and changing the name to Business Printing, Inc. He retired and sold the business in 2000. Bob was a Scoutmaster and Skipper of a Sea Scout ship in Anderson. He also held a variety of district and council leadership positions in Scouting for many years.
In 1946, Bob obtained his amateur radio license, and in 1952, he was asked to organize amateur radio communications for the Madison County Civil Defense, which led to his appointment as County Civil Defense Director, a position he held for 12 years. This period witnessed rising tensions with the Soviet Union and the threat of nuclear attacks, including the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. As CD Director, Bob gave many educational slide presentations regarding proper preparations in the face of nuclear threats, oversaw the selection and stocking of emergency fallout shelters throughout the county, and helped organize the conversion of the old Lindbergh School north of town into a CD emergency command headquarters. His slide show included photos taken in his capacity as an official observer at the Yucca Flats, Nevada, nuclear test in 1955. Later, Bob was invited by NASA to Cape Canaveral to observe the launch of Apollo 8, which carried astronauts into orbit around the moon for the first time, and the Apollo 15 moon mission launch. As a seven-decade member and officer of the Rotary Club, Bob secured NASA astronaut Al Worden, command module pilot for Apollo 15 and one of 24 people to have flown to the Moon, as a special speaker for the Madison County Rotary Club in 1971.
When Bob Anderson Jr.’s life is measured against that of his “peer,” Arsenal Tech grad Charles Soltau, it is easy to see that while both shared the same isolationist mentality as young men, one chose to follow that Nazi ideology of Adolf Hitler and the other followed that of Uncle Sam. Soltau faded into the obscurity that Gnaw Bone, Indiana, maintains to this day. Anderson became a public-spirited pillar of Madison County society whose shadow is still cast in that community — proving that idealogy comes and goes with the flow of generations. What often sounds like an attractive idea can easily morph into an unexpectedly bad outcome. Mark Twain is often quoted as having said, “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes,” and, if so, it applies today.
I will be talking about this series of articles with Nelson Price on his radio show “Hoosier History Live” this Saturday June 21, 2025 noon to 1 (ET) on WICR 88.7 fm, or stream on phone at WICR HD1. See the link below.
Part I
https://weeklyview.net/2025/03/13/nazis-at-arsenal-tech-what-part-1/
Original publish date March 13, 2025.
It’s true. In the years leading up to World War II, there was at least one eastside Indianapolis family openly identifying with the American Nazi Party. And three of those proud young Nazis graduated from Arsenal Technical High School. It all came to a head 87 years ago this Saturday when the Soltau home on North Summitt Street (where the La Parada Mexican restaurant now stands) came under attack by an angry mob of Circle City citizens seeking to enact their own “Night of Broken Glass” on March 15, 1938, seven months before Adolph Hitler’s Kristallnacht in Berlin, Germany in November of that same year. In March of 1938, Indianapolis newspapers were dominated by reports of German Wehrmarcht invaders poised at the gate, prepared to annex Austria into a “greater German Reich” and threatening the entire Western European theatre. Those same front pages reported on an organization of Hoosier ethnic Germans who were resolutely pro-Nazi, vehemently anti-Communist, deeply anti-Semitic, and staunchly American isolationists. In 1938, an estimated 25,000 Americans were members of this German American Bund. Indianapolis boosters hoped to swell that number by appealing to the large German immigrant community by advocating “clean American nationalism against Communist international outlawry.”
However, the German-American Bund secured very few Hoosier followers and gained little sympathy for their cause. Indiana had a well-deserved reputation for xenophobia and white nationalism that is most clearly reflected in the Ku Klux Klan’s ascent to power just over a decade before. The number of Hoosiers in league with the German-American Bund was certainly much smaller than the number of members of the 1920s KKK. Still it was committed to many of the same ideological issues as the Klan. Its history confirms the complex range of xenophobic sentiments simmering in the 20th-century Circle City.
The Soltau family was closely associated with Indianapolis, particularly the east side and Irvington. John Albert Soltau (1847-1938) was a German immigrant who founded the first grocery chain in Indianapolis, the Minnesota Grocery Company. Soltau arrived here in 1873 at the age of 10. After marrying Miss Elizabeth Koehler (1851-1920), Soltau opened the first of what would become a chain of twelve grocery stores at 208 North Davidson Street. The couple had five children: William, Edward, James, John, and Benjamin. The elder Soltau remained in the grocery business for over fifty years. Three of his sons joined him, managing stores of their own. Mr. Soltau was a member of the First Evangelical Church near Lockerbie Square (where New York crosses East Street). The family residence was located at 837 Middle Drive in Woodruff Place.
In 1894, John was a Republican Ward delegate in Indianapolis. In 1902, he was an unsuccessful candidate for Marion County Recorder on the Prohibition ticket, and in 1916, he was a delegate to the national Prohibition Party convention. His long adherence to the temperance cause smacks of social conservativism, but offers no clear evidence for why his family embraced the Nazi ideology. Hoosier Prohibitionists allied themselves with the Klan’s cause in the 1920s, and in 1923, John’s brother James Garfield Soltau (1881-1932) was identified as one of the first 12,208 Ku Klux Klan members in Indianapolis. John died of “uremia and carcinoma of the prostate” on July 18, 1938, and is buried alongside his wife, Elizabeth, at Crown Hill Cemetery in Indianapolis.
John’s eldest son, William Soltau, was a realtor who operated his agency in room 202 of the Inland Building at 160 East Market Street in the city for a quarter century. William and his wife Laura E. (Hansing) Soltau (1879-1943) were the parents of three children: Pearl Brilliance Soltau (1905-1968), Charles William Soltau (1909-1971), and Opal Margaret Soltau (1920-2008). All three children graduated from Arsenal Technical High School, Pearl, in 1922, Charles in 1926, and Opal in 1938. Pearl graduated from Butler University in 1925, Charles from Purdue in 1931 (with honors and a perfect 6.5 GPA), and Opal attended Butler University until at least 1940. The Soltau’s moved to 339 North Summit Street in 1916 and while the Soltau family was residing under that roof, it appears that all five were emersed in and sympathetic to the Nazi cause.
The front page of the March 9, 1938, Indianapolis News ran a photo of the Soltau House with a notice that a meeting of the German American Bund, described as a “Patriotic Fighting Organization of the German Americans”, was to be held there. Regardless, the Soltau family denied that a meeting was to be held in their home. The next day, the news ran a copy of the invitation with the address of the home and the announcement that Wilhelm Kunze, National Publicity Director of the Bund, would be the speaker and that admission was free and open to the public, especially to “All Truth-Seeking Americans”. Again, the family denied that Kunze was in the city at all, let alone scheduled to appear at the house. Kunze was fresh off his January 1938 appearance in a March of Time newsreel that the Library of Congress called “the first commercially released anti-Nazi American motion picture.” The News article announced the meeting’s date as Monday, March 14, at 8:30 pm.
Hoosiers were shocked. After all, in February, the Athenaeum, the Liederkranz Hall (1417 E. Washington St.), and the Syrian-American Brotherhood Hall (2245 East Riverside) had all canceled the Bund’s reservation and refused to host the event. On February 25th the Indianapolis Star identified “an American-born Nazi agent…born in Indiana” attempted to secure a venue “to organize Brown Shirt Nazi units in Indianapolis.” That local organizer was revealed as Charles W. Soltau from the near-Eastside. Charles wrote a letter to the Star complaining that “the German-American Bund has been accused, maligned and condemned without a trial” and suggested that the Bund’s right to meet had been undermined by “Jewish business interests”, arguing that “a certain powerful minority group, which seems to have gained almost complete control of the press, fears the effect of public enlightment.(sic)” Charles further declared that the Soltau family was “anxious to have our house filled with German-Americans who have enough backbone to assert their constitutional right of peaceable assembly in the face of opposition by these boycott racketeers.” He closed his letter as “Yours for a cleaned-up, white man’s U.S.A. Charles Soltau.” Shortly after that revelation, 27-year-old Soltau announced that the meeting was called off.
The front page of the March 15, 1938, Indianapolis Star reported, “Rocks hurled through the windows at the home of William A. Soltau, 339 North Summit Street, broke up an organization meeting of the Indianapolis affiliate of the Nazi Amerika Deutschen Volksbundes (German American bund) late last night.” William Albert Soltau (1875-1950) called the police for help after it was learned that Gerhard Wilhelm “Fritz” Kunze (1882-1958) and a small entourage had joined the Soltau family for dinner earlier that evening. Fritz Kuhn, often referred to as the “American Führer”, was the leader of the fledgling German-American Bund (Federation). Fearing for his dinner guests’ safety, Soltau asked police to escort Kunze and his guests to safety. Although Kunze refused to divulge his identity to any of the officers present, his “tooth-brush mustache”, proper Sturmabteilung brownshirt, and swastika tie-clasp made the physical connection to German Chancellor Adolph Hitler unmistakable.
When escorted from the home, Kunze declared to the officers and crowd gathered on the sidewalk, “I am a guest of Mr. Soltau, and he does not want my name known.” Kunze eventually admitted his identity to the police after they discovered the Bund application blanks Kunze held in his hands, wrapped up in a newspaper. An Indianapolis News article claimed that visible through the broken windows were, “Fifteen chairs had been arranged around a dining room table, and on it were application blanks for Bund membership.” The article noted that the “photographer for the Associated Press was ordered off the Soltau property by a man who carried a gun.” Soltau repeated his denials that a Bund meeting had been held in his home, claiming it was just “a few guests in for dinner.” The shades of the house were drawn, and a police squad car remained in front of the house from dusk to 10:30 pm when the officers went off duty. At 10:43 pm, a barrage of rocks crashed through the north windows of the Soltau house. Cars buzzed Summit Street for days afterward as curious motorists drove past the Soltau home and a near-constant gang of 40 or 50 youngsters “milled in the neighborhood”. Further exacerbating the situation, on July 18, 1938, just 4 months after the attack at his son’s home, family patriarch and Indianapolis grocery chain magnate John Albert Soltau died at age 90. Over the years, the elder Soltau and his son had purchased 4 tracts of land totaling 234 acres along State Road 46 in Gnaw Bone, 8 miles east of Nashville in Brown County. Newspapers speculated that the land was to be used as a Bund camp for Nazi activities, but the Soltau’s denied it.
Next Week: Part II: Nazi’s at Arsenal Tech…What?
Nazi’s at Arsenal Tech…What?
Part II
https://weeklyview.net/2025/03/20/nazis-at-arsenal-tech-what-part-2/
Original publish date March 20, 2025.
On March 15, 1938, an eastside Indianapolis house was rocked (quite literally) by an angry crowd after the city learned about a formational meeting of the German-American Bund, an organization formed to follow the ideals and edicts of Adolph Hitler’s Nazi party. The Soltau family, who lived at 339 North Summit Street, welcomed a controversial visitor to their home, a German transplant named Fritz Kunze. The Nazi’s visit was greeted by Circle-City residents hurling rocks through the front windows of the Soltau home. Gerhard Wilhelm Kunze was the Bund’s publicity director who invented derogatory names for people (Franklin D. Rosenfeld) and programs (The Jew Deal) he disapproved of while extolling Jim Crow laws, warned against immigrants, and advocated for the Chinese Exclusion Act. Fritz warned white Americans: “You, Aryan, Nordic, and Christians…wake up” and “demand our government be returned to the people who founded it…It has always been very much American to protect the Aryan character of this nation.”
Despite the Eastside Indianapolis Nazi recruitment session debacle, the Soltau family stayed committed to Nazi ideology. In November 1938, Charles and his youngest sister, Opal, fresh off her graduation from Tech High School, returned from a Bund indoctrination trip to Germany. Some of these trips included meetings with Joseph Goebbels, Heinrich Himmler, and Hitler himself. Whether the siblings were in the Rhineland to attend a German youth camp or to enjoy a post-graduation vacation is unknown. While 18-year-old Opal fit the profile, Charles was almost 30 and may have aged out of that group. They left Hamburg on November 3rd, arriving back in New York on the 11th. The Soltau family quietly supported the Bund cause by subscribing to The Free American newsletter and other Nazi propaganda publications including a liturgy of anti-Semitic tracts like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and Hitler’s Mein Kampf manifesto. A November 1941 FBI investigation identified the Soltau family as 4 of 38 stockholders in the Press (The publishing house had issued 5000 shares of preferred stock at $10 a share in 1937). The FBI noted that the Soltau family were the only stockholders from Indiana. While the Free American had local news columns in Fort Wayne and South Bend, there were none in Indianapolis.
The German-American Bund was at its zenith in 1938-39, but after 20,000 people attended a Bund rally at Madison Square Garden in February 1939, New York City Mayor Fiorello La Guardia instigated a series of investigations that would ultimately bring them down. In September 1939, after the Nazis invaded Poland the FBI and federal government went after the Bund. Fritz Kunze was detained by the South Bend Police on May 12, 1941.
In the inventory of Kunze’s papers confiscated by the Police were cards with the names and addresses of Bund members, including the Soltau family, the only members from Indiana. Kunze was charged with espionage, and in November 1941, just a month before Pearl Harbor, he fled to Mexico, hoping to escape to Germany. Kunze was captured by the Feds in Mexico in June 1942 and sent to jail for espionage, where he spent the rest of the war. The German-American Bund disbanded officially immediately after Pearl Harbor. Regardless, some Bund members had their American citizenship revoked and were deported, while others were prosecuted for refusing to register for the draft. Kunze was eventually deported himself in 1945.
In September 1940, when the draft began, the Bund instructed its members to boycott registration, and soon, former Bundist members began to be prosecuted by the Selective Service System for failure to register. 33-year-old Hoosier Charles William Soltau was among those who refused to report for induction. In August 1942, draft dodger Soltau was arrested, and his home was raided by US Marshals who discovered a large cache of Nazi propaganda there. It included issues of The Free American, a portrait of Hitler, Swastika banners, and Nazi memorabilia. In a four-page letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Soltau argued that “in all my association with the German-American Bund I never was guilty of any subversive activity.” After spending a couple of nights in jail, Soltau posted a $5000 cash bond. When he appeared in court in November, he argued that, “My conscience will not permit me to bear arms against the German people.” He informed the court that “This war is a war of aggression by the United States against the Germans. I am a man of German blood, and I don’t think it is right or fair or just for a man of German blood to bear arms against the German people.” It took the jury six minutes to deliberate and deliver a five-year sentence to Soltau. Judge Robert C. Baltzell concluded that “I have never seen a more contemptuous fellow in this court,” and “I am going to do all I can to see that you serve as much [time] as possible.” In December 1943, while serving his sentence at the Federal Correctional Institute in Milan, Michigan federal prison, Soltau’s mother Laura died. Charles was released in 1946, and with his sisters, Opal and Pearl, he moved to their secluded Brown County property near Gnaw Bone.
Their father, William Albert Soltau, died there on October 6, 1950, at age 75. His funeral service was held at Shirley Brothers Central Chapel in Irvington, and he is buried at Memorial Park Cemetery on Washington Street alongside his brothers, whose funeral services were also held at Shirley Brothers. At least one brother, Benjamin Harrison “Ben” (1889-1963), was a member of Irvington Masonic Lodge 666, and another, James Garfield Soltau (1881-1932), was an admitted member of the KKK. The Soltau siblings quietly left Indianapolis and moved to Gnaw Bone, where they lived together in Brown County for the remainder of their lives, and none of the three ever married. The siblings started with three goats in 1952, and by 1962, their “trip” (or tribe) had reached 44 head, so they created Pleasant Valley Goat Farm on their 200-acre Gnaw Bone property. The family sold goat’s milk and yogurt in local farm markets. Pearl Soltau also moonlighted as an accountant for a local hosiery mill, preparing tax returns on the farm. After a two-year illness, Pearl died at the Gnaw Bone farm in May 1968 at the age of 62. Charles died there on July 5, 1971, at age 61. Although Charles’s membership in the “German-American National Congress” was mentioned in his obit, Pearl betrayed no history of continued xenophobic activism after the war. Both are buried at Henderson Cemetery in Gnaw Bone.
However, the youngest sibling, Opal, remained committed to neo-Nazi causes for more than a half-century after the war. Even after the deaths of her siblings, Opal continued to agitate for unpopular political causes. Opal had been a standout at Arsenal Tech High School. She was a straight-A Honor Roll Student and received the scholarship medal from the Tech faculty in 1938. In the 1980s, Opal Soltau was accused of mailing neo-Nazi propaganda from the post office in Nashville, In. In September 1996, Opal sold her parcel of 120 acres in Brown County and by January 1997, she had moved to Nebraska. That same month, she became a Director for the National Socialist German Workers’ Party-Overseas Organization. Opal Soltau died in Lincoln in August 2008 and is presumed buried there. No one knows how the pilot light of Nazi fervor was lit in the Soltau family and, for that matter, how it burned out of control within the hearts and minds of these three Arsenal Tech graduates. Political ideology grows unchecked when surrounded only by like-minded individuals living in a silo of misinformation. Sometimes, it is the better part of valor to explore divergent opinions. The flame of Nazism burns through everything it touches. Characterized by extreme nationalism and steered by blind faith in misguided authoritarianism, its victims don’t realize what has happened until it’s too late. And by then, no matter what, they will never admit that they were ever wrong in the first place.
For a more thorough study of the Soltau family, I recommend the blog Nazis in the Heartland: The German-American Bund in Indianapolis by the late Paul R. Mullins (1962-2023), Anthropology Professor at IU Indianapolis (formerly IUPUI).
Alan E. Hunter 