I saw a short video recently about American Nazis. I didn't watch the whole thing but, it mentioned something about the American Nazis taking orders from Berlin.
Did this actually happen, was German high command communicating and or taking orders from them? If so, were those orders anything of significance?
What happened once the Nazis fell? They the American faction disband?
Absolutely there were, the World War II Era and before are somewhat of a golden period for American Fascism, as in much of Europe, Fascism breached the New World quite heavily. There were several popular Far-Right/Fascist Movements in Mexico, Canada and the United States. From this point on i'll be using the general term "Fascist" to denote any Far Right or Nazi Party in the US just for semantics and simplicity's sake.
Between 1933 and 1945 with the ascension of Hitler to German Chancellor and the fall of Nazi Germany, many groups would be organized to support Hitler and the German Government. Groups with names like "The American Fascist Party," "The American National Socialist Party," "The Christian Front," and "The Order of '76."
One of the largest and most powerful was "German-American Bund" headed by German Fritz Kuhn. Organizations of this type spread virulent racist, anti-semitic and Isolationist propaganda far and wide in the United States. Including the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and The Secret World Government, publications blaming many of the world's problems on a Judeo-Bolshevik Conspiracy for World Domination.
In 1933, an American of German descent, and paid agent of the Nazis, by the name of Edwin Emerson set up shop in New York, editing the Amerikas Deutsche Post a Nazi Propaganda Organ and founding the "Friends of Germany" which later merged with a group called the "Friends of New Germany" and eventually becoming "The German-American Bund" in 1936, one of the largest Pro-German organizations in the United States, with thousands of members and heavy political sway. Emerson would be recalled to Germany and derided by the German High Command for his blatant anti-Semitic propaganda, and no, not because Nazis were into Jews at that time (they weren't) but because Emerson was antagonizing the wider American populace at little to no benefit for the German Government. A German National and World War I veteran by the name of Fritz Kuhn would take charge of the German-American Bund. Under the leadership of "The American Fuhrer" the Bund expanded and even set up training camps in states across the United States. The Bund, and groups like it would be financed and ideologically supported by the Nazi Government in Berlin.
Many of these Organizations disbanded within weeks of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, most of their popular support was lost, tied with the fact that many of its leaders had been jailed, fined or deported during the course of Federal investigations from 1933-1941 and after. Though many of these groups did collapse several of them went underground as well, forming rifle and sport clubs and seeking to overthrow the American government.
After the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945, there arose a second Generation of Fascist and Neo-Nazi Groups in the United States under leaders like George Lincoln Rockwell and Willis Carto, though this is a largely different story.
Sources
John Roy Wilson, Under Cover: My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld in America
Sander Diamond, The Nazi Movement in the United States: 1924–1941