Heinrich "Heinz" Spanknöbel (27 November 1893 – 10 March 1947^[1]) was a German immigrant to America who formed, and for a short time led, the pro-Nazi Friends of New Germany as its Bundesleiter.^[2]

Heinz was born in Homberg, Germany to Konrad Spanknöbel (1866–1969) and Christiane Becker (1869–1966). He had an older brother, Karl Adolf (later Charles A. Noble; 6 September 1892, Homberg, Germany – 22 March 1983, Watsontown, Pennsylvania, USA) and younger brothers and sisters: Käthe (1897–1970), Anne (1898–1962), Wilhelm (1900–1980), August (1902–1969), Martha (1904–1966), and Frieda (1907–?).

In 1918, he married Elsa Fourier (1892–1957) in Würzburg, Germany.

In 1920, Spanknöbel was ordained as a minister on the Seventh-day Adventist Church Reform Movement in Würzburg.^[3] He was admitted to the US as a minister in 1929, but his relationship with religion was dubious while he was in the country.^[4] Spanknöbel was a member of the Free Society of Teutonia and an employee of the Ford Motor Company.^[5] Initial support for American fascist organizations came from Germany.^{[citation needed]} In May 1933, Nazi Deputy Führer Rudolf Hess gave Spanknöbel authority to form an American Nazi organization.^[6][7] Shortly thereafter, with help from the German consul in New York City, Spanknöbel formed the Friends of New Germany^[6] by merging two older organizations in the United States— the Society of American Friends of Germany (formed from the dissolved Gauleitung-USA or Gau-USA)^[2] and the Free Society of Teutonia; which were both small groups with only a few hundred members each. The Friends of New Germany was headquartered in Yorkville, Manhattan, but had a strong presence in Chicago.^[6]

The organization led by Spanknöbel was openly pro-Nazi, and engaged in activities such as storming the German language New Yorker Staats-Zeitung with the demand that Nazi-sympathetic articles be published.^[8] He attempted to infiltrate and influence other non-political German-American organizations, such as the United German Societies.^[9] One of the Friends' early initiatives was to counter, with propaganda, a Jewish boycott of businesses in the heavily German neighborhood of Yorkville.

In an internal battle for control of the Friends,^[10][11] Spanknöbel was ousted as leader and subsequently ordered to be deported in October 1933 since he had failed to register as a foreign agent.^[6] At the same time, Congressman Samuel Dickstein's investigation concluded that the Friends represented a branch of German dictator Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party in America.^[12] After a federal arrest warrant was issued for him, Spanknöbel boarded the S.S. Europa ocean liner bound for Bremen on 29 October.^[13][2] In December 1933, Spanknöbel's bodyguard, Walter Kauf, was sentenced to six months in jail in New Jersey on charges of carrying a concealed weapon.^[14]

Back in Germany, Spanknöbel reportedly became a director of the Propaganda School for Germans Living Abroad.^[15] In 1942, a company called Vereinigte Leder- und Lederwarenfabriken Heinz Spanknöbel & Co. [United Leather and leather goods factories Heinz Spanknöbel & Co.] was founded in Hohenbruck near Königgrätz in then Sudetenland.^[1]

After the occupation by the Soviet military, Spanknöbel was arrested on 4 October 1945 in Dresden by the NKVD secret police. He was held in captivity in the NKVD Special Camp No. 1 near Mühlberg, Brandenburg, where he died of starvation on 10 March 1947.^[1][16]

• German American Bund