Bill Cleary interviewed cartoonist and custom car icon Ed "Big Daddy" Roth in 1966. Roth, creator of the wildly popular bulging-eyed Rat Fink character, had just scored a novelty hit with his Surfer's Cross pendant, which replicated a German military bravery medal. It was reported that 24,000 Surfer's Cross units were being shipped daily to variety stores across the nation. Roth's newest creation was a plastic copy of German Wehrmacht iron helmet. "You know,” Roth said in a Time magazine interview, “that Hitler did a helluva public relations job for me.” Cleary's interview with Roth, titled "The Sign of the Kook," ran in the September 1966 issue of SURFER. Roth was 35 years old.

Roth: Now you take anybody that's called a rebel, and whether he's a surfer or a Hell's Angel, it's all the same thing. A surfer rides his surfboard, an Angel rides his cycle. Surfers are setting the pace right now because basically they are hotrodders. These kids are not trying to be Hitler.

Cleary: The Surfers' Cross is inscribed with the year "1939," the year Hitler invaded Poland. How would you explain that to surfers?

I just tell 'em it was a big year for surfing.

It was the surfers who picked up the Iron Cross because they were looking for a good luck symbol. They started painting it on their woodies by hand. We just made it easier for them when we came up with our 12-inch [Iron Cross] decals

No real surfer would have anything to do with an Iron Cross. So just how did you get started calling this Nazi souvenir a Surfers' Cross?

To get away from the Nazi idea, as I said, the surfers picked the cross for a good luck symbol. But the real reason it’s become so popular with surfers is that basically the Iron Cross is good design. Not because they’re pro-Nazi. It’s the same with the Chiquita Banana stickers, which were a huge fad. That’s a good design too. That’s why kids dig ’em. Not because they’re pro-banana.


Big Daddy, a number of people still associate the Iron Cross with Nazi Germany and the murder of six million Jews. No surfer who is a surfer craves such an association with his sport.

The cross itself has not hurt the sport! For anyone who’s not hip to what’s happening, I want to say that these surfers who wear the cross are not neo-Nazis.

Very commendable. But are you so sure they’re surfers in the first place?

Sure. We see surfers everywhere. Denver, Chicago, wherever we go we always see surfers. They may not be able to surf, but they act and dress like surfers.

Look, the German helmet fad is something I don't agree with. I don't think a kid should buy anything that represents another government. But if it's an "in" thing, [and] if it's basically a good design, like the Wehrmacht helmet, then I'll make it.

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