Yockey was born in Chicago in 1917. He graduated with honors from Notre Dame in 1941. After a short wartime stint in the Army he served as Assistant Prosecuting Attorney for Wayne County (Detroit, MI). He took a position with the War Crimes Tribunal in 1946 (a legal bit of gobbledygook which preceded a hanging orgy*) and shortly quit in disgust. Later, in 1948, he wrote Imperium while living in Ireland. Our State Department refused to renew his passport. He was seized when he entered the country, and thereafter jailed where he mysteriously died on June 21, 1960.
* So sadistic was this Purim execution, that the trap door and rope length were calculated in a fashion that the victims would drop and smash their faces on the ledge before the slack was taken up. In addition, most were brutally beaten and tortured prior to their hanging.