The National Police Gazette presents readers with an interesting array of hat wearing Harry Trumans on this February 1952 cover, offering up the president in a fedora, pith helmet, fez, and more. Truman collected hats, but the Gazette’s real purpose here is to call Truman a flip-flopper. Of course, that term didn’t exist in 1952, at least not with regard to politicians, but Gazette journo Tris Coffin claims Truman changes his mind quite a bit, issuing “conflicting orders, one after the other, with a cheerful smile.” Coffin goes on to cite Truman reversing his stance on price controls on meat, anti-trust controls on oil companies, security commissions keeping tabs on American citizens, and more. All very interesting, but what really caught our eye was Truman’s response to questions about nuclear proliferation. He said the U.S. was the only country with atomic bombs, and he’d keep it that way. Of course, that proved impossible, and it remains impossible today, because nuclear weapons are the only true national security. Many IAEA officials expect the number of nuclear states to double within twenty years. In addition, they expect the rise of at least ten virtual nuclear states—i.e., countries that develop the technology to the point where they can make the bombs, if needed, more quickly than an invasion against them can be mounted. We’ve uploaded some Gazette pages below, including a nice pin-up of Barbara Nichols, and a poster of old time boxer Peter Jackson. And since this is the Gazette, editors remind readers for the umpteenth time that Hitler lives.

Yes, neo-Nazis can have a laugh too, as George Lincoln Rockwell seems to prove on the cover of this October 1961 National Police Gazette. Rockwell was the founder of the World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists, which became the American Nazi Party, which then became the National Socialist White People’s Party. Rockwell admired Adolf Hitler to the point of worship, thought the Holocaust was a lie, believed the U.S. was heading toward a race war, and agitated for the hangings of ex-presidents Truman and Eisenhower. Espousing these beliefs, he raised hell on the U.S. political circuit for about fifteen years, until he was assassinated by fellow neo-Nazi John Patler in August 1967. Patler, née Yanacki Christos Patsalos, was feuding with his colleagues because, instead of just using Hitler’s old trick of falsely calling himself socialist, he had actually begun reading Karl Marx and had developed actual socialist leanings that were of course abhorrent to the neo-Nazi leadership. This friction eventually led to Patler’s expulsion from the party. So in retaliation, he put two bullets through Rockwell from the rooftop of a beauty salon. But that came later—on this Gazette cover, Rockwell was on his way up, using a veneer of charm to soften his message. But as Smoky Robinson once memorably sang: “If there’s a smile on my face, it’s only there trying to fool the public…”