YORKTOWN, Virginia - Members of a group calling itself "America's Nazi Party" waved flags bearing swastikas and shouted slogans like "Sieg Heil" at a rally on a historic American battlefield, while some 500 counter-demonstrators gathered on a field nearby.About 150 members of the National Socialist Movement and their supporters gathered at the Yorktown Battlefied to honor George Washington and other founding fathers whom they claim held separatist and anti-Semitic views - a position disputed by
Many wore Nazi uniforms with swastika armbands, while others identified themselves as members of the Ku Klux Klan and various skinhead groups. "This is sacred ground," said Jeff Schoep of Minneapolis, Commander of the National Socialist Movement, which bills itself as the largest Nazi party in the United States.
| It's sacred ground allright, so get your ass off of it. |
| The counter-demonstrators are just as nutty. Police should have let them have at each other and arrested the survivors, if any. |
The NSM had wanted the rally to be on the spot where the British army surrendered to Washington to end the siege of Yorktown - and the Revolutionary War - on October 19, 1781. Much of the park can be used by outside groups, but Mike Litterst, a spokesman for the National Park Service based at Yorktown, said Surrender Field has always been off-limits.