FDR 1933-1939
AND THE ORIGINS OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR
by Mike Donovan
War Leader - The Brains Trust - Lawyer - Cousin of President Theodore Roosevelt – Harvard and Columbia – “President Rosenfeld” - Campobello – Louis Howe - Democratic VP Nominee 1920 – ‘Bob Dole,’ he put most of the country on it - King Roosevelt – Hyde Park – Married Teddy Roosevelt’s niece – VP’s John Nance Garner 1933-1941; Henry Wallace 1941-1944; Harry S. Truman 1945
TABLE OF CONTENTS (no page numbers because new material throws them all off)
A Disclaimer
FDR - The Basics
Short Take
Bio
Events
Election of 1932
Assassination Attempt - February 15 1933
Inauguration
The Brains Trust
Not So Happy Holiday - March 5 1933
The Great Depression - An Overview
The Hundred Days
Great Depression - Some More Thoughts
The Second New Deal and the History Books
Alphabet Soup (The List)
AAA - Agricultural Adjustment Act
CCC - Civilian Conservation Corps
CWA - Civil Works Administration
FTP - Federal Theater Project
FWP - Federal Writer’s Project
HOLC - Homeowner’s Loan Corporation
IRA - Indian Reorganization Act
NLRA - National Labor Relations Act
NRA - National Recovery Administration
NYA - National Youth Administration
PUHCA - Public Utilities Holding Company Act (“Pookah”)
RA - Resettlement Administration
REA - Rural Electrification Administration
RFC - Reconstruction Finance Corporation
TVA - Tennessee Valley Association
WPA - Works Progress Administration
Race Relations
Law and Order - Kelly Green
Origins of War 1933-34
US Military Preparedness - Or Lack of It
Japan Expelled From School for Cheating
Italian Troubles - The War in Ethiopia
The Underestimated and Understudied War
No Fascist Alarm
Wal Wal - Prelude to War - December 5 1934
Wal Wal Fallout
Germany 1933-34
Roots of the Holocaust
Johnson Act of 1934
Let Gulf be With You
Roosevelt’s Reactionary Critics
Congressional Elections of 1934
Down Goes Long - September 10 1935
Ludlow Amendment 1935
Mike Donovan Saves the Earth From Fascist Invaders
Italo-Abyssinian War Clouds - Summer 1935
Rearmament, Not Disarmament - March 1935
Stresa Front
Anglo-German Naval Treaty - June 1935
Churchill Also Onboard for Appeasement
911
Oil Ploy
Lions by the Tail
Courage on the Balcony - October 2 1935
Evil Prepares
Adowa Avenged
I’ll Be Seein’ Ya - The USA Weighs in on Abyssinia
GB Elections of 1935
Italy Moves in Africa
Hoare-Laval Plan of December 1935
League of Wimpy Nations
Battle of Denguina Pass - December 15 1935
LaGuardia is an Italian First
Back in England
Hold the Mustard - 12-23-1935 - Mai Timchet
Ethiopian War Continues 1936 - Tembien - January 23
Amba Aradam - Slaughter on the Mountain - February 1936
Somalia Front
Second Battle of Tembien
March 4 1936 - Attack on the British Red Cross
The Fighting Emperor
Flight From Addis Ababa
May 1935
Lion at the LON - June 1935
Mass Moose of a Murderer
Historians and the Second Italo-Ethiopian War
The Rhineland 1936
Rhineland Move
1936 Olympics
Rhineland Bastards
Background to the Spanish Civil War
Nat Gains 1936
Baggage Claims Fascist General
The International Brigades
Adolph and Benito - October 1936
Anti Communist International Pact - November 1936
Election of 1936
Dutchess County
FDR Inaugural - January 1937
Labor Front - 1934-9
Industrial Strikes
Pop Goes the Balloon - Lakehurst 5.6.37
Japan Invades China
Battle of Shanghai 1937
Nanking
Japanese Air Power
Panay Incident 12.12.37
A Mind is a Terrible Thing to Strafe
Panay Aftermath
Court-Packing Sent Packing 1937
Mexican Oil 1938
Movie Tones of 1936-8
Austria
Sex Scandals Consolidate Hitler’s Control
Munich
Public Opinion 1938 and 1991
Strike Up the Bund
Go Back to Germany, Deikhoff
Asian Front - 38 Caliber
Flying Toras
Mid-term Elections of 1938 - The FDR Purge
War Clouds of 1939
The Spanish Civil War Decided
Italy Invades Albania - April 1939
Polish Question - January to August 1939
Soviet Union on the Fence - Summer of 1939
Hitler’s Other Allies
Nazi-Soviet Negotiations
Chamberlain Letter - Oh, We’re Scared Now
The Other Date That Will Live in Infamy - 8-23-39
Pact Analysis
Poland Awaits its Fate
The Death of the American Communist Party
August 25 - Hitler Seeks a Stalin Deal With Chamberlain
New Anglo-Polish Treaty
Italy on the Fence as Usual
Hitler Thinks it Over
Historic Parallel
If a European Power Attacks Poland
Last Minute “Negotiations”
Musso backs off on Atolico’s Timetable
16 Excuses
The Last Hours of Peace
Dusseldorf
The US Armed Forces 1939
The World of Tomorrow 1939
Some Thoughts About the Nazis
Disunited Nazi Party Leadership
Case White Paper - War in the Morning
Nomanhan Manchuria - August 1939
Last Word
Sources
A DISCLAIMER
From 1933 to 1945 I consider American History to be one and the same with world history. World War II was the climax of all of history itself and the USA got in the middle of it and ended it with A-bombs. This chapter is just as much about a WWII internationally as it is about the USA.
The history of the Italo-Ethiopian War gets an extensive treatment, admittedly disproportionate to the pledge of a balanced general history.
I offer four sound reasons - 1) The Italian invasion of Ethiopia is very understudied, and its importance in setting off WWII is under-appreciated to the point of an historic injustice - 2) The USA ended up at war with Italy, so this African war is an extension of American history - 3) I hope to develop the Ethiopia story into a separate book - 4) Because the big book I read on it, I actually finished.
The Abyssynian War, the Spanish Civil War, and the Sino-Japanese War were all serious wars. World War II was already well under way when Hitler invaded Poland. We’re talking two million killed in these three pre-1939 wars. That’s no pre-game show. These three stories are priority stories in my book.
FDR - THE BASICS
Regardless of how one feels about FDR's politics, personality, or record as president, the man has to get a break for the difficulty of his task. Before he was finished in 45, Roosevelt had more problems on his plate to deal with than Coolidge, Harding, Ford, Arthur, Hayes, Tyler, Pierce, Fillmore, Taft and the two Harrison’s combined.
Quiz: Name the four men who lost to Roosevelt ...
“The only thing we have to fear is … a monstrous federal bureaucracy created by me!”
The first President to run for more than two terms, King Franklin in fact ran for four, and would have been President until about 1960 if his health had allowed it. It was Roosevelt who forced Congress to pass the 22nd Amendment limiting the President to two terms.
Considered by many to be our finest President, Roosevelt is the showpiece of capitol D Democratic history. He is the Jackie Gleason of the Democratic Party. FDR is, “The Great One.”
Who were the four men who lost to Roosevelt? The four losers were Hoover, Landon, Wilkie, and Dewey – Herbert Hoover in 32, Alf Landon of Kansas in 36, Wendell Wilkie in 1940, and NY Governor Tom Dewey in 1944.
Election of 1932
Electoral College---Roosevelt-Garner D) 472
Hoover-Curtis R) 59
Popular vote 1932-------Roosevelt D) 22,821,000
Hoover-Curtis R) 15,761,000
Norm Thomas S) 881,000
Election of 1936
Electoral College---Roosevelt-Garner D) 523
Alfred M. Landon R) 8
Popular vote-------Roosevelt-Garner D) 27,751,000
Landon R) 16,679,000
Mark W. Lemke U) 882,000
Election of 1940
Electoral College-----Roosevelt D) 449
Wilkie R) 82
Popular vote----------Roosevelt D) 27,244,000
Wilkie R) 22,305,000
Election of 1944
Electoral College-----Roosevelt D) 432
Dewey R) 99
Popular vote -------Roosevelt D) 25,602,000
Dewey R) 22,006
Was Roosevelt a socialist? Did Stalin bully him at Yalta? Was Eleanor rumored to be gay? Did he clearly make all the right decisions in handling the Great Depression?
Yes, yes, yes, no.
Roosevelt’s cabinet
Secretary of State---------Cordell Hull----1933-1944
E. R. Stettinius-----1944-1945
Sec. of War-----------George H. Dern-----1933-1936
Harry H. Woodring-1936-1940
Henry L. Stimson---1940-1945
Treas$ury--------------William H. Woodin-1933-1934
Henry Morganthau Jr.-1934-1945
Att. General-----------H. S. Cummings-----1933-1939
Frank Murphy-------1939-1940
Robert Jackson ------1940-1941
Francis Biddle--------1941-1945
Sec. of Navy--------Claude A. Swanson—1933-1940
Charles Edison--------1940
Frank Knox------------1940-1944
James “Frosty” Forrestal---------1944-1945
Sec of the Interior-----Harold L. Ickes -----1933-1945
SHORT TAKE
In 1932 Franklin Roosevelt campaigned hard against Depression fall guy Herbert Hoover. FD called Hoover a spendthrift and scolded him plenty for creating huge federal deficits. Then when FDR was elected he spent America's money like a drunken sailor. The US government under Franklin D spent 17 billion dollars by 1937. And remember, this was back when 50 cents could buy a new car.
The USA from 1932 to 1939 under Roosevelt is the closest thing to complete power by one political party that has ever occurred in America. The Democrats dominated both the Senate and the House. And what did the Dems give us? A lot of government spending, a lot of hope, a lot of moral support, and no genuine relief from the Depression. FDR treated the symptoms well enough in the form of government handouts to stave off revolution from the disgruntled masses below. But he didn't cure the Great Depression any more than my uncle Tommy Cormier cured malaria.
Franklin Roosevelt favored a “planned economy.” This was a euphemism for an economy free of free enterprise and controlled by the government. Fortunately his dream was never realized and the Supreme Court and the Congress, not to mention the threat of the popular vote, kept him and some of his cronies from fully implementing their socialist program. But they got plenty of it in also, and it's apparently permanent.
FDR admired “the Soviet experiment” and the first thing he did when he became President was to recognize the USSR. The US had refused to recognize the Soviet Union since 1918 because of its professed goal of overthrowing western governments and because it had reneged on its international debts, claiming that as a new regime it did not have to pay Tsarist Russia’s WWI and pre-WWI debts. Russia had changed its name to get away from its past and its creditors. Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover didn't accept it. FDR did.
The new government of Russia declared that capitalism was the root of all evil. Since Russia had a zillion rubles of capitalist debt, this was very convenient. They could renounce the debt by renouncing the system that spawned that debt.
Roosevelt did not live long enough to witness the ugly Cold War of 1946-90 with the USSR, and died in April of 1945 still believing that Stalin was his loyal friend, that the Russian experiment in communism was righteous and progressive, and that the USA had more to learn from the USSR than vice-verse.
Accusations against Roosevelt as red make shocking and unhip reading today. But in the 1930’s USA you would not be an oddball if you said that Roosevelt was red. And you wouldn’t be considered a weirdo if you said that you were red.
Being a communist was no great crime in America in the 1930’s. The debate hadn’t been settled yet. People didn’t have to be ashamed to be either communist or to be anti-communist. Was Roosevelt a Communist? No, but a pink rose by any other name looks just as sympathetic to Communist “economic planning.”
All of these political terms are general, of course. If you ask a hundred people, ‘what is a socialist?’ you would get 100 different answers. But government control over the economy, combined with confiscatory taxes which punish achievement would be my suggested starting point.
During World War II FDR tried to pass a law that no American could earn more than $25,000 a year. The government would take all other earnings. If that isn’t red, then Millard Fillmore had a black belt in karate.
FD wanted the 25,000 salary cap passed very much. Congress defeated it.
BIO
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882 at Hyde Park, New York. His mother, Sara, was the second wife of his affluent father James Roosevelt. Franklin was born two days after the proud parents were married. They had nothing to fear except scandal itself.
Franklin started his silver-spooned schooling at Groton.
Then he went to Harvard University from 1900 to 1904, majoring in chemistry. Like most future presidents, he was a joiner. Frank became prominent on the writing staff of the Harvard Crimson. One of his first political moves was to write a piece clearly taking sides with the Boers of South Africa in their 1900-02 war against England, which is ironic considering his later friendship with Churchill.
Franklin went on to Columbia Law School but he did not graduate. He disliked the study of law (he didn’t care for law when he was president either) but he had learned enough to pass the bar exam in 1907 (another source says 1910) and become yet another lawyer prez. He soon joined the New York law firm of Carter, Ledyard, McGillicutty and Milburn.
In 1910 the Democrats nominated Roosevelt for the New York state senate from Duchess County. Few expected him to win because no Democrat had won the Dutchess in almost a century. But FDR campaigned hard and with some unabashed help from his famous last name won a place at Albany.
It wouldn't be fair to say that he won it on his famous catchy name alone. The Republicans were on the decline, so it’s fair to say that the personable and talented Franklin might have won without his name. He was re-elected to the NYSS in 1912.
FD became Assistant Secretary of the Navy in 1914. Does this count as military service in a formal sense? I don’t know the answer. If we keep a chart of which Presidents served in the military, does head of the Navy count as Navy service?
In 1920 the incumbent Democrats chose James Cox for President and Franklin Delano Roosevelt for Vice President. Roosevelt conducted himself well in a losing campaign, increasing his prestige with the American public.
Then came a personal nightmare. In 1921 the vigorous Roosevelt was swimming at the family’s summer home on Campobello Island, Canada, just across the US border on the Atlantic coast. Roosevelt returned from the swim feeling something very wrong inside his body. What he had contracted suddenly was poliomyelitis. The young athletic man would never again have the full use of his legs and would be confined to wheelchairs, crutches and braces for the rest of his life.
Franklin handled the challenge with exemplary courage and fortitude. No one can ever recall him feeling sorry for himself. Roosevelt kept his handicap hidden from the public as often and as well as possible. Many Americans didn’t even realize he was confined to a wheelchair while he was president. The few times he could manage the strength to stand, there was an army of photographers there to spread the image. The photo equation was reversed when he was wheely. Trying to get a quick picture of FDR in his wheelchair might get you your camera cracked over your skull.
In 1928 Roosevelt ran for Governor of New York. It was a close race. Some morning editions of New York State newspapers reported that FDR had lost to Republican Hank Lashua III. Long before the famous “Dewey Defeats Truman” headline of 1948 there was the Binghamton Courier of 1928 that read in banner headlines, “Lashua Defeats Roosevelt.” But when all the votes were counted it turned out that the high turnout really elected the man from Hyde Park. Roosevelt was the new governor at Albany by a slim margin. Out of four million votes counted, he won by only 25 thousand.
Roosevelt ran for re-election in 1930 and this time rolled up the governorship in a landslide.
Roosevelt’s closest advisor was Harry Hopkins, nicknamed Harry the Hop. He was the Henry Kissinger of his time, influencing the President more than most members of his cabinet.
ELECTION OF 1932
FDR became a front-runner for the 1932 Democratic nomination for President the day he was re-elected for New York Governor in 1930.
When Roosevelt agreed to run for the gold he met with his advisors on how to win. They stressed one key piece of advice that he listened to, believed in deeply, and applied superbly. Don’t explain how you are going to solve anything. Just explain how bad things are as though everybody didn’t know it already. President Hoover's record was so bad, and things were so bad in general, that anyone who ran against Hoover was guaranteed to win. A zebra in a top hat could have beaten Herbert Hoover in 32. The key was to never go on record with any daring political platform. It was the Obama strategy. Just don’t say or do anything extremely foolish and the White House is yours. Keep it vague, give lots of articulate and emotional speeches, and above all, promise that magic word, “change.”
The collapse of the economy inspired many Democrat celebrities to toss their hat into the ring for 1932. The name of Governor Huey Looney Long of Looseyana was on a few lips. Also in the hunt was Al Smith, the nominee of the last election in 1928, and still the colorful and conspicuously Catholic Mayor of New York City.
Roosevelt made two-thirds of a mistake at the outset of the Democratic Convention in Chicago. A Dem candidate for the last hundred years needed two-thirds of the pledged delegates to win the nomination. Roosevelt radioed instructions to his floor leaders in Chicago to propose a rules change making the nomination for President a simple majority. 50.1% would be enough to win. Roosevelt knew that he did not have two/thirds of the delegates but that he did have more than half. Such transparent political greed was the weakness of Franklin D. The proposal was violently voted down, and the only thing that came of it was the creation of a lot of resentment towards Roosevelt in some people in whom none had been there before. But every the winning team makes mistakes along the way. The convention ploy was an early version of his Supreme Court fights later where he tired to change the rules to get his way. Roosevelt didn't make these mistakes often, but once he had a belief that he could do something he was going to do it, even if it exploded in his face. FDR had his famous “Brains Trust” but sometimes he didn't listen to them.
Roosevelt was ahead at the end of the first ballot, but as expected, not ahead enough to win. This went on all night. The proceedings were not adjourned until 9 a.m. the next day.
That afternoon two of the other Dem candidates called Roosevelt to tell him they would release their delegates to him. With that it was over. The next roll-call was a mere formality.
Candidate Roosevelt followed the proceedings by radio from the Governor's mansion at Albany. Eleanor made scrambled eggs and coffee for the reporters who were allowed to sleep in the garage.
Roosevelt won the nomination and decided to fly to Chicago. It was actually big news that he chose this mode of transportation. Flying was hardly routine back then, and it was considered dangerous activity. No candidate had ever flown to a convention before. Aides tried to talk FD out of it, but he made up his mind and told them,
“The only thing we have to fear is... a fiery plane crash”
This was at about the same time that Hitler was flying to the Nuremberg rally for the filming of Triumph of the Will. Flying was exciting and new.
The king was flying to the convention. Wow. It was a big propaganda deal, carefully calculated, a triumph of Roosevelt's will. The weather was rough, and the aircraft had to land in both Buffalo and Cleveland along the way. Sammy Rosemann got airsick twice, and was teased about it for the next ten years by Ray Moley and Rex Tugwell.
The Republicans met at Chicago in June and nominated Hoover for re-election. It was never really close although if Coolidge could have challenged Hoover if had a mind to but he had a mind not to and if there was one person on this planet who wouldn't change his mind once it was made up, it was Calvin Coolidge. His supporters tried to explain to him that he would not be violating the two-term tradition because it wouldn't be two consecutive terms. He explained that he simply didn't want the job. When they asked him to explain why he stared at them and walked away.
The presiding officer was New York Representative Bert Snell. Today the most famous historical New Yorker named Snell is Matt.
The Republicans made a mistake about booze. The party plank walked the plank on Prohibition when the nation was clearly chanting “booze! booze! booze! booze! booze!” The Republicans proposed to let the states decide on wet or dry and the feds could protect the drys from wet incursions. The Democrats came out openly for repeal. Two prominent Republicans, Senator Bingham of Conn. and Nicholas Murray Butler fought hard for booze but repealing the 18th Amendment failed to pass the convention by a vote of 681 to 471. The Republican platform statement praised Hoover's record and sad that the Great Depression was caused by events in Europe that were beyond his control.
On the first ballot Hoover took it all with 1,126.5 votes. The next best was 13 votes for Senator Blaine of Wisconsin, the only Congressman to vote against the Kellogg-Briand Pact of 1924 which made war illegal. Next was 4.5 votes for silent Cal Coolidge, and 4 for ex-senator Joseph France of Maryland. France had negotiated extensively in Bolshevik Russia after WWI. Charles Dawes of the famous “Dawes Plan” to help Germany recover economically from the war got one vote, as did James W. Wadsworth of whom I know nothing.
When France was addressing the convention, something strange happened, but accounts differ so much I can't blend them into a composite. One account said that his microphone went dead and he kept speaking as though everyone could still hear him. Another account says that he tried to start a rally for Coolidge by conceding his four delegates to him, and that he was physically whisked off the stage like a act at the Opollo getting the dance from Sandman Simms. Something unusual happened when France gave his talk.
A lot of Republicans didn't like Vice President Curtis and four men challenged him for the nomination. The President of the American Legion, Hanford MacNider put his reactionary hat into the VP ring. A General named Harbord harbored ill feeling for Curtis and ran for it. Alvin T. Fuller, the Governor of Massachusetts (who's son my father worked for at Peter Fuller Cadillac-Olds in 1953) was in the secondary hunt, as was Bertrand Snell, the podium leader.
After two ballots Curtis had a slim majority, but not two-thirds. When Hoover called up and said he stood behind Curtis, the others conceded.
On the Democrat side Al Smith steadily refused to enter the race but jumped in at the last second because his fans wouldn't let up. He and FDR ended up on bad terms for the rest of their lives as a result of this contested nomination.
In Hoover's home state of Iowa more than 6,000 farms had recently suffered foreclosure. That was quite a handicap for starters. Hoover was about as popular as a bumble bee at a picnic.
When Election Day approached and Hoover was clearly behind, he started to get out and campaign like a Truman. Both sides used the radio extensively in 1932. It had existed in 1928 but in four years the entire nation got hooked. FDR was much better on the radio than Herbert Hoover. I've taken tapes of both men out of the library. I think FDR is overrated a speaker, but compared to Hoover, he is as dynamic as advertised.
This time the Democrats weren't stuck with a Catholic and a Tammany New York City man like in 1928. FDR was a rich Protestant from upper Hudson New York who had made a career out of defying Tammany Hall. NYC's Al Smith had been a part of it and that hurt the Dems when he ran for them in 1928. The Democrats of 1932 also conducted an effective Smear Hoover campaign and did it unabashedly with little care for decorum.
When the returns came in, Hoover didn't have an electoral vote south or west of Pennsylvania. FDR had himself a mandate.
Roosevelt Trounces Hoover in the Battle of 1932
The Democrats took over both Houses of Congress along with the White House.
ASSASSINATION ATTEMPT - FEB 15 -1933
President-elect Franklin Roosevelt had nothing to fear except fear itself and an unemployed bricklayer named Guiseppe Zangara.
On February 15, 1933 Roosevelt was in Miami riding in a parade in the back of an open-air car waving and smiling to everyone. With him was the Mayor of Chicago, the colorful Anton Cermak. The motorcade stopped and Roosevelt began giving a speech.
Suddenly a deranged scum in the crowd drew a pistol and fired five shots at Franklin Roosevelt. All five shots missed, but four of them wounded bystanders and the other one struck and fatally wounded Mayor Cermak.
Anton keeled over out of the car and onto the cement street, heroically calling out for the car to speed off and get the president-elect to safety. Roosevelt ignored the request and ended up holding and comforting the bleeding Cermak all the way to the hospital.
“Chi Cermak” had only been elected mayor in 1931. He died on March 8, 1933. The assassin, a loser named Zangara was executed by the state of Florida on March 21, less than two weeks after Cermak passed away.
If FDR had died in the shooting, John Nance Garner would have been sworn in as President of the United States the next month, in accordance with the new rules of the 20th Amendment.
INAUGURATION
“The only thing we have to fear is, fear itself!”
That was of course the famous line from FDR's inaugural address. Franklin wrote the line himself. None of his speechwriters knew it was coming until he delivered it.
But did you know that FDR ripped the 'fear itself' line off from Henry David Thoreau? Henry David once wrote that “Nothing is so much to be feared as fear.”
Coincidence? Oh, come on, anyone could have thought of that similar line. As if FDR had a collection of Thoreau writings by his bedside the night he wrote his Inaugural Address. As a matter of fact FDR had a collection of Thoreau's writings at his bedside the night he wrote his Inaugural Address. The bible sized anthology of Thoreau's work was given to him by one of Eleanor's friends and he actually had it in his hotel room the night he wrote his speech. The only thing we have to fear is, socialist-plagiarists.
Roosevelt pledged to give the nation a ‘New Deal.’ That was the slogan. Down with slogans. No matter what any new President does, he can always call it a ‘New Deal.’ The same sort of drivel was in Clinton’s 1993 inaugural speech when he ripped-off FDR by pledging a ‘New Covenant’ about 20 boring times. FDR was ripping-off TR’s 1904 ‘Square Deal’ to begin with. Harry Truman later pledged a sloganism he called the “Fair Deal.” I don't care if I get a deal or no deal, just be a good president, and bag the slogans.
THE BRAINS TRUST
The group of advisors around Roosevelt were nicknamed 'The Brains Trust.' Sometimes it is called 'The Brain Trust,' but Rexford Tugwell, who was one of them, insisted in his book that the proper term was actually 'The Brains Trust,' so that's the one I'm going with. 'Tug' wrote a book in 1933. Its title? The Brains Trust.
Looking at the careers of the Brains Trust before, during, and after their service under Roosevelt, is a wide look at big part of American history. Some had served earlier under Woodrow Wilson, and some would serve later under Kennedy and Johnson.
The concept of the Brains Trust was a break with common political procedure. Past Presidents had always chosen their advisors from the ranks of experienced politicians, or close friends in the business world. Speechwriter Sammy Rosemann proposed to Roosevelt that the great minds of our nation's universities were an untapped resource. The FDR team should interview candidates from Universities who might be interested in becoming part of the new President's team. What professor would not be dazzled at the idea of even an interview for such a job? FDR loved the idea, and soon a bunch of eggheads invaded the White House and became Roosevelt's close advisors. The Trust had meetings and worked on problems and new ideas around the clock, then presented them to Roosevelt for rejection, acceptance, or revision.
The three top trustworthy brains were Rex Tugwell, Ray Moley and Adolph Berle. These were FDR's 3 stooges, Mo and Rexy and Berley.
Raymond Moley was the one who coined the term ‘New Deal.’ But Ray would later break with Roosevelt, join the Republicans and write a book criticizing FDR severely. It was called After Seven Years and was published in 1939.
Rexford Tugwell was a brilliant economics professor. Rex eventually broke with Roosevelt too, but not severely, not the way Ray Moley did.
Here are a few of the Brains Trust, along with some other important menders of the FDR team. As the years went by, anyone who was a part of the FDR team but had no important official job became known as part of the Trust. But at first the BT was limited to 8 or 9 charter members from America's University talent pool.
The New Dealers deck of cards
Jim Farley – Ace of Diamonds – Farley is not famous today, but he certainly was in his time. Farley managed FDR's campaigns for Governor in 1928 and 1930, as well as the runs for the White House in 1932 and 1936. Farley was to Roosevelt, what Karl Rove was to W. Bush, what Paul Begala was to Bill Clinton, and what Oprah Winfrey was to Barak Obama.
Farley also served as the Chairman of the DNC, and as Postmaster General. JF was active in American politics all the way into the 1970's.
James made an early name for himself in the 1920's defending the civil rights of African-American boxers.
Harry Hopkins – Ace of Clubs - In all of American history, there has perhaps never been a more powerful government official that never held an elected office, with the possible exception of Henry Kissinger than Harry Hopkins.
With the death of Louis Howe in 1936, Hopkins became the number one male intimate of Roosevelt.
Hopkins was Santa Claus 1 in the FDR Administration. Harry was leader of the dole in the early years. After 1941, Hopkins had little to do with domestic aide programs and became instead an active force in running the war until its completion in 1945.
Louis Howe – The Ace of Spades – Howe was possibly the closest personal friend that Franklin D. ever had. When Franklin won the presidency he thanked Howe and Farley in a public speech as being the two men that had made this success possible. Howe died in 1936. The Louis influence was greater in electing the president than it was after FDR was sworn in.
The other members of the Brains Trust didn't love Howe, for he was dedicated to Roosevelt like a dog that Roosevelt had rescued from the pound and raised to an old age. Howe might have died of starvation sleeping on Roosevelt's grave if Franklin had departed first.
Missey LeHand – Franklin's private secretary was far more than a typist. Missy was trusted with every state secret. LeHand was on hand for many (if not most) of the great meetings of FDR American History. She served as a personal assistant to Roosevelt in almost every way. Roosevelt listened to her opinion on many important issues, and in her position of making Roosevelt's coffee, she quietly had the second most powerful female post in the country. Eleanor was number one, and these two women got along well. There was no jealousy. They were both only there to help with Franklins' mission.
Ray Moley – RM is the charter member of the Brains Trust. FDR, Rosemann, and Sherwood each interviewed Moley first and explained to him their idea of organizing the egghead brains trust. Moley agreed to do the rest of the recruiting all around academia, and so Moley picked the rest. In a way the Brains Trust could just as easily have been called, “Moley's Think Tank.”
Rexford Tugwell – Agricultural brainiac from Columbia University who headed up Roosevelt's Utopian plans for relocating the poor people from the city into the country. When that Resettlement Administration was declared a failure in 1937, Rex retired from the Brains Trust.
Rex Tug was a lefty's lefty.
Tom Corcoran – Corcoran is the James Bond of the Brains Trust. 'TC' was at first recruited to work with Morganthau at Treasury where he helped reform the Securities and Exchange Commission.
In later life he Bonded. After World War II Corcoran became heavily involved in covert operations for the CIA in various locations all over the world. His later life is actually a little mysterious.
His name comes up in passing in so many important situations, but there isn't all that much bio out there on him. His son Tim played for the Detroit Tigers.
Adolph Berle – Prestigious educator and trusted FDR advisor who got mad when everyone mispronounced his last name like the comedian Milton Berle. He insisted that it was pronounced 'burly.'
Benjamin V. Cohen – Short in stature and good-natured, they called him “Big Ben” Cohen. For all his accomplishments working hard on the FDR team, Cohen is remembered mostly for being Jewish. It was daring and liberal for FDR to include Jews in the cabinet and Ben was prominently one. Some names can hide their ethnic heritage, but “Ben Cohen” doesn't work.
Big Ben Cohen drafted some of the major pieces of legislation sent to Congress during the New Deal. Cohen was not a yes man, and FDR appreciated having such a rarity around him. Cohen was about the only person who bluntly told Roosevelt in 1944 that he should not seek a fourth term in office.
Felix Frankfurter – Later a Supreme Court Justice, Roosevelt relished Frankfurter's advice. Its unusual for the President of the United States, having many disputes with the Supreme Court, to have at the same time a close friend on the Court, but that was the case with FDR and FF.
Hugh Johnson – Time magazine's Man of the year for 1933. - History has its ironies. The other famous Hugh Johnson is a wine writer, and this Hugh Johnson had a drinking problem.
HJ was a lifelong military man, and a hero of World War I. Roosevelt put him in charge of the NRA, the National Recovery Administration in 1934.
Some people called Hugh a fascist because he sometimes commented on the good things that Mussolini had achieved in Italy.
Johnson left the FDR team in a huff in 1937 when he thought Roosevelt had gone too far in trying to alter the structure of the Supreme Court. Hugh Johnson was so far off board that he supported the Republican candidate for President in 1940, and FDR was very mad about it. FDR never forgot a friend or a slight. He showed Hopkins the letter from Hugh Johnson in 1942 begging for an assignment to the Pacific and sadistically told Hopkins that, “Hugh Johnson will get a combat commission in the Pacific after I lead the National League in stolen bases!”
Charles W. Taussig – CT was at his most influential during the war years. Taussig had FDR's ear on the issue of European colonialism. Roosevelt was almost as against British and French colonialism as the revolutionaries and leftists in those colonial states. Taussig pushed FDR with some success on this issue. Charlie Taussig helped to shape the post-war world.
Through Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson would rise from the grave and see his dreams of self-determination for all states great and small realized at last.
Basil O'Connor: - Basil was a close friend and brains trusted legal advisor to President Roosevelt. O'Connor was a partner with FDR on the Warm Springs Foundation, a charity effort.
After WWII Basil headed up the American Red Cross.
NOT SO HAPPY HOLIDAY 3-5-33
The first thing Roosevelt did as President was to announce a national banking ‘holiday.’ Sounds like fun. On March 5 1933 he ordered all the banks in the United States closed for five days to give the nation a chance to catch it’s breath and plan a counterattack against the Depression. Some ‘holiday.’ Yeah, break out the noisemakers and party hats. The banks are closed and the economy is in a free-fall.
Roosevelt would have a united Congress to work with as the Democrats swept to large majorities in both Houses in the Congressional Elections of 1932.
Jackie Flynn insists that FDR closed the banks so that things could get worse before they got better. In the heightened emergency, Congress would give Roosevelt more emergency powers, and FDR was planning just such a sequence of events.
THE GREAT DEPRESSION/AN OVERVIEW
Roosevelt didn't say so patently, but dropped a few hints along the campaign trail that if he were elected, the government would take a more active role in depression relief. His record as governor of New York certainly contained clues. He had promoted state relief for the unemployed in the empire state long before the Feds did.
Columbia economics professor Tugwell gave FDR much advice during the campaign about how to radically combat the depression. Roosevelt listened, but in the end, according to Tug, he did little that was radical, or at least, little that Hoover had not wanted to do but couldn’t. The FDR measures did not solve the basic causes of the Depression.
Looking back from 1968, Tugwell wrote,
“FDR seemed heroic to those who measure him by
his predecessor, but that is because they cannot
accept his amazing resemblance to Hoover – under
a contrasting mask. … Hoover had wanted ... nearly
all the changes now brought under the New Deal
label. Some of them he was unable to achieve
because he was obstructed by the Democrats who
came into control of the Congress at the mid-term
elections of 1930. … Others his Republican
traditionalist colleagues would not countenance. So
not much was done; he was marked for exile, and
Roosevelt could carry on. But it was a carrying on,
not a reconstruction.”
The Depression, which devastated the country in the 1930’s, changed everything about America; its economy, its personal psychology. its national psychology, its defense structure, and its politics.
The United States had suffered though depressions before, but always with a small d. Times this time were so bad that the depressions of 1873 and 1893 seemed small by comparison. This time it was The Great Depression, not a great depression. My parents grew up during it and as any ‘baby boomer’ can tell you, we never heard the end of it. (“We got dead rat skeletons for Christmas, and we were thankful!”)
Unemployment was off the scales. Banks, businesses and factories shut down more often they stayed open.
The stock market crash was not the cause of the Great Depression any more than a trigger is the cause of the gunshot. It is a tripwire that sets off action but that action is based on more important factors than the trigger itself. Stock market prices actually made a solid recovery during the 1930’s but the Depression was not relieved by this. The nation’s woe was based on many factors, only one of which was over speculation in the stock market. It was these other woes that caused the stock market to crash, not the stock market crash creating these other woes. Its just politically comforting to blame everything on the bankers and business investors and so that’s what history has chosen to do.
Also, contrary to popular belief, FDR did not cure or end the Great Depression. But his unrestricted efforts to solve it at least gave Americans a hope-rope to hang on to. And he did put a lot of people to work with a lot of government created jobs, even if such moves did nothing for the overall economic structure. Dole jobs at least helped a lot of individuals, and a lot of those New Deal bridges are still working fine. FD's efforts made him a national hero. He was our father in the storm. No matter what one thinks of his decisions, there is little doubt that he was probably the most beloved President that has ever run the country, the first few months of Obama notwithstanding.
Today, Americans line up for hours around the block for tickets to see their favorite bad young singers in concert. In 1935, Americans did the same for a handout loaf of stale bread.
Humiliation is better than starvation – US Bread Line 1930’s
To try and combat the Great Depression, Roosevelt gradually built up a gigantic Federal bureaucracy of dole programs to help the poor. These programs were usually a combination of sincere desire to help people, a chance to create a grateful voter base, and an opportunity for socialist experiment. Some of these concepts and programs went too far and were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Some seemed to work, passed the legal tests and have remained part of our government to this time. Others landed somewhere in between these two results. The Great Depression was certainly a time of great change. In the middle of this great upheaval, an experimental lefty was in the White House. It was the perfect storm to explode big federal government.
No one could accuse FDR of being a Marie Antoinette, enjoying his fancy cigarette holder while the people went hungry. No, FD was the aristocrat who cared, the man of the people.
The causes of the Great Depression are still being debated today. Nothing is etched in stone because economics is a precise science only to the individual economist who is confident that he or she alone is completely right. There is always another economist that is absolutely confident that the other confident economist is completely wrong. The scroll of conflicting absolutely correct theories can only lead to the conclusion that all economic problems are elastic, debatable, and solve as you go. As the stage rube Will Rogers said sarcastically, “Oh heck I don't know about any more about all this than an economist does!”
What was most frustrating to the nation in the GD was that there was no food shortage, yet people were starving. There were plenty of factories in working order, yet there was mass unemployment and idle factories. There were plenty of new inventions to be exited about, but no one could afford to buy them and they sat unused in the factories.
A core base of well-to-do survived the Depression and by their presence kept the country from mass revolution. There were plenty of wealthy people driving around in fancy cars. Contrary to mythology, those who managed well during the Depression were not just a handful of privileged royalty eating caviar. If that had been the case there would have been a revolution. No, it wasn’t everybody that was hit and destroyed economically. There was a large enough wealthy and upper middle class that the mob did not storm the Bastille for bread. A staggering figure of one quarter of the population was unemployed but that still left a large base of 75% to hold the fort until stability returned. Millions of Americans were still packing the ballparks and movie houses. Things were desperate but not so desperate that the machine of the country was dead in the water, creating panic. The USA remained functional. For example there was never the kind of inflation that hit Germany in the 1920’s, or the kind of starvation that caused the death of millions of Russians in the same time period.
But things were very bad. The steel industry, to name one was operating at only fifteen percent of its normal output.
The eggheads were stymied because of all the nations of the world, the US thought it had reinvented and perfected financial growth and prosperity. A proud America gleefully named it ‘scientific management.’ Investment was supposed to stimulate industry, industry then was to create jobs, and then the working mass became spending consumers, creating more profits, which in turn created more investment. It was one big happy snowballing merry-go-round of financial growth and the future had limitless potential. When it all came crashing down, no one really knew what to do.
The farmers had been depressed even during the roaring twenties. Prices for their products fell steadily after WWI and they had all the classic problems of the earlier depressions of 1873 and 1893. They were in debt to the people who had lent them their farms and their equipment and now their produce was declining in value. They weren’t even paying their immediate bills, let alone their long-term loans. But no one paid much attention to the farmers in the cities where bankers, reporters, and economics professors generally lived. The poor farmers were the dirty little secret of booming America in the 1920’s. The nation swept them under the rug while the vamps danced the Charleston in Chicago and New York.
Some analysts say that the farm depression of the 20’s triggered the Great Depression of the 30’s by infecting the industrial and financial world. It just took a decade for the sickness to get off the farm.
The more traditional view is that there was too much speculation in the stock market, and when the growth trends began to reverse into the red, there was a precipitous drop in confidence. Suddenly no one wanted to invest anymore, which meant that the basis for profit for previous investors was knocked out of the equation. The stock market gamblers were out of luck and there was no basis on which to attract new buyers to keep the rotation in order. When the confidence problem reached the level where people lined up to take their cash out of the banks, it was all over.
Roosevelt who was later to defy the two-term tradition did manage to honor one sacred American Presidential tradition. He came to the White House ignorant on economics (Reagan is the only US president who had a college degree in economics).
Franklin’s advisors gave him contradictory strategies to consider. Generally they told him that the federal budget deficit must be reduced. The government had to start spending less money. The re should be new taxes. FDR began selling the idea to the public that he was going to reduce the deficit. He wisely did not mention the new taxes that would be needed.
But others told him that new taxes would only further discourage investment, the very start button essential for prosperity. They said the government had to create jobs, which meant it might actually have to spend more, in order to make more.
This flew in the face of the traditional sequence of investment creating industry. Now the government was supposed to add a new prequel round to the merry-go-round. Now the government created investment, which in turn created industry, which created jobs, which created consumers, which created investment. The government was supposed to start the carousel but then get off and let the old sequence get back up and running.
The government was supposed to prime the pump but there was no practical way that the government was going to get its initial money back. The only logical way this unorthodox plan could even be tried was for the government to run up huge deficits on purpose and keep them huge. This ran counter to the thinking of the conservative Republicans of the last three administrations. What was worse, it flew in the face of Roosevelt’s own campaign promises to reduce the deficit.
This is the plan that was put into operation to solve the Depression. FDR started his campaign to beat the Depression by breaking a major campaign promise, and continued to break it for the rest of his four administrations.
Installment buying in the 20’s also contributed to the misery of the 30’s. The ability of consumers to buy things outright was steadily diminishing by the mid 1920’s, so the sellers solved this by the new and delightful device of installment purchasing. A customer could buy a house, car or a sewing machine and make payments over the long term. In the short run this papered over the shaky credit problem. So later on, when the consumers became even more incapable of making their payments, things were that much worse for both parties. The manufacturers were delivering goods that they couldn’t collect on, and consumers were buying things that would be repossessed, leaving them with lost money and no car.
Big business was shooting itself in the foot in the 1920’s in two other key ways. The big companies were taking their profits and passing it on to their investors instead of their employees, thus strangling the national currency. The stock speculator with a fat dividend check is not anxious to pump that money back into the economy, but the same money in the hands of a hundred workers would put the dough back into the mix. Secondly, big business was sending huge amounts of money overseas as loans for great national projects in other countries. Foreign states were building stadiums and bridges with cash that would have served the US nation better at home. The world wide depression later on ensured that the money would never come back at all.
In the past, hard times would affect the farmlands more than the cities and there would be a movement into urban areas from the rural in search of jobs. But the Great Depression hit the cities just as badly and the growth rate of the cities actually came to a complete halt for many years. In fact the process was reversed as many young people who had left Hicksville for the big city lifestyle returned to their parent’s farm. Eating basic crops at home is better than five hours in a bread line on Broadway.
The national marriage and birth rates slowed down significantly during the Depression as fewer young people wanted to double their financial misery through marriage, or quadruple it through having children.
This is depressing to write about, let alone to have lived through.
THE HUNDRED DAYS
The first 100 days of FDR’s reign was marked by so many spectacular programs that it has acquired the historical nickname “The Hundred Days.” After that there was a short respite while the nation caught it’s breath and tried to absorb it all.
The first measure was the Emergency Banking Act which set some new rules under which banks could re-open after the ‘holiday.’ The government controlled banks more closely. Banks now needed a license from the US Treasury to operate. No more free-lancing.
Next, Franklin set up the FDIC, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation which restored confidence for the ordinary depositor. Each person was guaranteed reimbursement from the Feds for up to $5,000 in the case of bank failure. Billions of dollars of US working people’s money had under Hoover gone out the window in a windstorm, and the new Administration decided that this must never be repeated.
FDIC is still going strong today although the ante has been upped to $100,000, and there was talk in 2008 of raising it to $250,000 federally insured dollars per citizen. FDIC is certainly one of the New Deal moves that is an unqualified winner.
GREAT DEPRESSION – SOME MORE THOUGHTS
Franklin D was like a farmer who sold all his lumber and bought fireworks for Christmas with the dough. 'It all went up with a bang.'
This is a quote from Lyndon Johnson in 1967, and says it all for me.
THE SECOND NEW DEAL AND THE HISTORY BOOKS
After the 100 days there was a long lull in the radical programs.
Two years later it started up again. From 1935-37 came the so-called “Second New Deal” in which an even more thorough program of new progressive (socialist) programs were instituted.
In the history books there seems to be some difference of opinion about the “Second New Deal.” America and it’s Peoples denies that the changes were profound, leftist, or radical.
“On the whole, the Second New Deal merely sought to make capitalism more humane. The majority of Americans did not want dramatic changes, and
Roosevelt never contemplated, much less achieved, a social revolution. He made no attacks on private property; the well to do retained their privileges; wealth was not redistributed; and the poor remained poor.”
I disagree with every point except the last one and even on that score the poor that remained poor did get a lot of government checks to relieve the pain if not the disease. To suggest that a president who proposed that the government should take 100% of all personal income over $100,000 was a president who did not attack private property is untenable.
Even the liberal textbook The Enduring Vision admits that the Second New Deal was a clear leftish movement. The sub-chapter on the subject is titled “The Second New Deal; Turning Leftward”. In the body text they write that the Second New Deal represented “a sharp turn to the left.” (my italics)
So what’s up with America and It’s Peoples? Answer: it is an even newer text than Enduring Vision and represents the more dangerous liberal bias, one that exists in a state of denial. Perhaps Peoples wants to throw a bone to the center and right student by saying that leftism under Roosevelt was just a myth so don’t get all worked up about it.
ALPHABET SOUP
The New Deal programs and their acronyms were so numerous that they took on a nickname, ‘alphabet soup” programs. So here, stirred in alphabet order is an incomplete list…
AAA – Agricultural Adjustment Act
CCC – Civilian Conservation Corps
CWA – Civil Works Administration
FERA – Federal Emergency Relief Administration (forerunner of
todays FEMA)
FTP – Federal Theatre Project
FWP – Federal Writer’s Project
HOLC – Homeowners Loan Corporation
IRA – Indian Reorganization Act
IRA – Industrial Recovery Act
PUHCA – Public Utilities Holding Company Act
PWA – Public Works Administration
NLRA/NLRB – National Labor Relations Act and Board 1935
NRA – National Recovery Administration
NYA – National Youth Administration
RA – Resettlement Administration
REA – Rural Electrification Administration
RFC – Reconstruction Finance Corporation
TVA – Tennessee Valley Authority
WPA – Works Progress Administration
AAA – The Agricultural Adjustment Act – Triple A was one of the most controversial programs for obvious reasons. AAA subsidized subsoil farmers in return for their agreement to not grow crops! There were hungry people waiting in bread lines in America, plus millions starving to death in foreign lands and here was the new guy Roosevelt paying US farmers to not grow food. Millions of prime acres of fertile land were set aside to do no more than house ants and birds. You can imagine the criticism of the man in the street over the AAA.
The kill-fee food program was enacted so that food prices could climb. US farms since 1920 had been overproducing. Farmers were living in a paradox. The more they grew the less they could sell, and the lower the price they'd receive.
U.S. industrial profits left farmer profits in the dust. Roosevelt’s Brain’s Trust had proposed, and Roosevelt had agreed, that industry and agriculture had to find a level on which they could be mutually supportive of each other, and that meant solving the farm surplus problem.
CCC - Civilian Conservation Corps – Triple C was signed into law within the first month of Roosevelt’s tenure. Basically the idea was to take a half a million unemployed young men with strong backs and put them to work in rural area, and housing them in government camps. They got 35 dollars a month and a little dignity while helping to clear parks and sick forests and restore the soil suffering from erosion. There were no women allowed.
CWA – Civil Works Administration --- The logic was simple and who could argue with it? If we're going to put countless millions of unemployed Americans on the dole, why not put them to work while we're paying them?
The CWA was a division of FERA (Today's FEMA) so the jobs were openly part of a relief program. The CWA was an attempt to provide federal relief for the oncoming winter of 1933-34. When the summer heat wave came around in 1934 CWA was disbanded. The cost of providing contrived jobs to ten million Americans had cost Sam more than a billion dollars. The CWA was too expensive to continue.
Most of the jobs were menial, like cleaning up public parks or painting the high school library. There were some construction laborers, but most of the jobs were too obviously dole jobs. The derogatory talk going around was that CWA assignments were “leaf-raking” jobs.
FDR's close advisor Harry Hopkins approved these handout jobs. It was better to give people a little hope and dignity to go along with their federal checks. Hopkins was so forcefully supporting of the 'dole-labor' idea that Franklin put Hopkins in charge of the CWA.
Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes, on the other hand, thought that the Federal money should be spent on priming the money pump. The Ickes plan would take the money going to dole jobs and put the cash into into federal help for capitalists who would not only revive their own businesses, but would create jobs out of the private sector as a result. Ickes and Hopkins were at odds on a number of issues for the entire Roosevelt reign. They often had to be physically separated.
No they didn’t.
FTP - Federal Theatre Project – This one is staggering in its implications. Take every out of work actor in America during a depression and give them a Federal stipend for performing plays all around the country sponsored by Uncle Sam. Bad performers who can't get paid gigs in good times get all the work they need in bad times!
Wow.
I say, “let the actors buy their own leotards!” Free gigs from the government? No stand-up ever got a one dollar stipend. In the best of times there are countless armies of unemployed actors in California alone! How many could claim this title in the middle of a Great Depression is anybody’s guess. Every cabbie and waitress in LA today is technically an unemployed actor. If the FTP were revived today, 43% of the country would be on the road tonight doing dinner theatre.
So a coal miner in 1935 who worked hard all his life doesn’t get a dole mining job, but a third-rate actor who has one or two flimsy credits on which to stake a claim gets to travel the country performing in a lib-themed play for six months, getting a decent check in hard times, while the miner waits in a bread line fighting tears. Needless to say there were no plays produced and bankrolled which were critical of FDR’s policies and many were put on that had themes supportive of the king. Smart thinking; You get all these “artists” on the dole and also promote the administration with mid-1930’s politically correct plots. Other entertainers besides actors took FTP money but no stand-ups and only two jugglers. The FTP attracted a lot more critics than theatre patrons.
The man who carved Mt Rushmore, Forrest Bunkum took exception to all the snide criticism of the Federal Arts handouts. He defended them emotionally, threatening to take Washington's nose down if the complaining against the FTP didn't stop.
FWP – Federal Writer’s Project. – The expression is, “Those than cannot do, teach.” Back then it was “Those that cannot do, get to do it on the government dole.” A lot of good and deserving writers were helped by the FWP but millions of New Deal dollars were also spent getting people published on Sam’s tab who could never have been published on their own in normal times.
Like the FTP, The FWP didn’t often publish writers whose works were critical of the nation from the right, or of the Roosevelt Administration from either direction. The FWP gave a lot of mediocre artists a chance to leapfrog the merit system. It’s almost as nauseating a concept as the current ‘reality TV” mania in which people star in big TV shows because they are supremely ordinary, gauche, and untalented.
HOLC – The Homeowners Loan Corporation – The Homeowners Refinancing Act of 1933 created HOLC. The HRA passed Congress as part of the “Hundred Days” relief blitz that started the Administration off. HOLC was supposed to slow down or halt the epidemic of home foreclosures that was sweeping the country and creating a real estate dust bowl. Homeowners Refinancing provided new loans to desperate families, and renegotiated mortgages for others. Some politicians and journalist have recently revived the idea and are suggesting it to President Obama in the heat of the current housing market foreclosure crisis.
IRA – Indian Reorganization Act – Back in 1923 a white crusader for red rights named John Collier founded the American Indian Defense Association (or the NAARP). Collier had lived among the Pueblo Indians and had grown to love and respect their culture and their value system, such as honesty in business dealings.
Indian lands were sold to individual whites and white companies since 1887 when the Dawes Plan first came into being. US policy was to gradually break up the Indian enclaves and force them into an assimilation into the American mainstream which few of them wanted. Many Indians felt that something had to be done to preserve what was left of Indian lands and culture, before assimilation came to mean complete disintegration and annihilation. The federal bureaucrats of Coolidge and Hoover were threatening to finish the job for Custer. FDR would show more sympathy. He was in fact almost as sympathetic to American Redskins as he was to Russian.
Jack Collier got his chance to turn dreams into action when FDR appointed him Commissioner for Indian Affairs in 1933. Under Collier’s leadership the Indian Reorganization Act was passed in 1934. Funds were drawn from the CCC and other fed programs to improve life on the reservation. Hospitals, schools, and other building projects created red jobs and gave the Indians a new lease on life. America’s 170,000 Native American had known little but abject poverty for the first three decades of new century. So in contrast to most Americans, US Indians saw the Great Depression as a time when life got better! The IRA was called the “Indian New Deal.”
NLRA – National Labor Relations Act – In 1935 the long battle between labor and capitol over the right of labor to unionize was finally settled. With the passage of the National Labor Relations Act, labor won a clear victory. FDR was with labor all the way. From now on no US company could refuse to negotiate with a labor union. The NLR Act also made the “closed shop” legal. The closed shop is a place of work where every worker had to be part of the union or could be in essence fired by labor. The National Labor Relations Board was set up to enforce the provisions of the NLRA. The NLRB was a friend of labor in an obvious sense but it also began monitoring the honesty of elections within large labor unions. To a corrupt labor union official, the NLRB was a mixed blessing.
First proposed by a dashing Congressman named Robert Wagner, the NLRB became popularly known as the “Wagner Act.”
The NLRA was V-Day for the workers in their long fight with capital, a battle that started in 1842 when the first union was formed in America. It had taken 93 years to win but labor had won. There was no doubt about it. Howard Zinn was only four at the time but he wept with joy on being told the news.
The NLRA was reactive, not active. The country had been scared by the mass strikes that swept the big cities in 1934. The threat of civil disorder had been demonstrated. 100,000 people at a time were going on strike. They were fed up and needed to be fed and the feds intervened. FDR with the NLRA was fending off a left-labor movement, not creating one.
Big business could no longer play big bully. It became illegal to harass union workers or spy on them or make up lies about them or fire them for their union activities. Big business had only itself to blame for the left reaction of the NLRA. If big business had not been so abusive in the first place, who knows how long free enterprise without government regulation could have survived?
NRA – The National Recovery Administration - This was one of the most important, powerful, and controversial components of the New Deal. It lasted two years before the Supreme Court shot the NRA down.
NIRA created the NRA in 1933. NIRA was the National Industrial Recovery Act, a high and mighty piece of government regulation legislation. This created a government regulatory agency over American industry with police powers of enforcement called the National Recovery Administration. The NRA logo, the cartoon 'blue eagle' was everywhere.
The NRA could regulate wages and prices. But what was really radical, it could regulate profits. The NRA could challenge the profit motive with the threat of fines. NRA scolded companies who want to make profits, just for wanting that.
The NRA was supposed to be out for the good of the entire country in a time of crisis, as its name implies. But it sided with labor as if it was staffed by labor lawyers. The businessman had to pretend he loved the idea of being regulated because he didn't want to look unpatriotic. The NRA had 782 codes to enforce. It had its own army of cops with fancy suits and the blue eagle armband. Americans feared a visit from the NRA men like an arms dealer fears a visit from 60 Minutes.
In 1935 Fred Perkins of York, PA was paying his workers at the PBF (The Perkins Battery Factory) 25 cents an hour. Someone ratted him out to the NRA. They threatened to fine him if he didn't raise it to NRA standard minimum of 40 cents. But the PBF workers supported their boss! He had just given them a raise and they knew he would have to shut down if he paid them 40 cents (remember, this was back when ten dollars could buy a luxury ocean liner.) The NRA fined Perkins $5,000 with an option of going to jail instead.
Perkins chose to go to jail and work the press. Soon some of the most prestigious lawyers of the land were taking on his case pro bono. The “Two Bits Case” case was a national soap opera. Perkins' made it all the way to the Supreme Court and won. It was the NRA that was on trial, not Fred.
In the same year of 1935 another case involving the NRA and a chicken farmer went to the Supreme Court. The NRA lost that one.
When you can't win chicken cases, it's not looking good. The NRA knew when it was beat and closed down forever, a major defeat for the New Deal. 1936 opened up with no more NRA, leaving the name open for rifle lovers later.
NYA – National Youth Administration - The dole for teens. The NYA had Eleanor Roosevelt to thank for its existence. She never stopped reminding her husband about he was ignoring the young people of America and was leaving the toilet seat up and his socks on the floor.
Finally in 1935 Franklin had enough and shouted “All right good woman! I'll start up the National Youth Administration to provide jobs and educational assistance for the high school and college age citizens of America.”
The NYA had a budget of over $50 million a year until 1943 when it was dissolved.
PUHCA – Public Utilities Holding Company Act
Pooka was a law passed to curb abuses in the American utilities (gas - electric – telephone - water ect.) industries and services. PUHCA ('pooka' as it was nicknamed after a character in the movie Harvey) kept an eye on money rates. Public Utilities Holding determined if and when a utility was ripping the people off and could make them stop it.
US utilities had a history that was less than utilitarian. Their monopolies had to end. The utilities from now on had to operate under local companies, not national networks, and big corporations that had nothing to do with utilities could not own the utilities. At the worst moment of the Great Depression the utilities had gone bankrupt and made the national disaster worse. But their destroyed condition made intrusive change possible. FDR now wanted the nation’s power sources diversified for both political and practical reasons.
Pooka had legs. It only revoked after much debate in 2006 and the ramifications of PUCHA are still debated.
RA – The Resettlement Administration
The RA Expedition was formed in 1935 and lasted just over a year before it was absorbed in a modified form by the Department of Commerce. The Resettlement Administration would have made Lenin proud if he had lived long enough to read about it in the Moscow Tribune. The idea was to take farmers who were not producing, and “resettle” them in dole (“greenbelt”) communities built by the federal government.
The RA was Rex Tugwell's baby. The New Deal was treating the people riding in the wagon better than the people who were pulling it. Successful farmers getting by in hard times through hard work and sound management didn't get to go live for free in a modern new community far from the geographical home of their troubles. But the nations worst farmers got rewarded for their poor crop totals.
REA – Rural Electrification Administration
Zeke needs a light switch.
By 1935 city slickers took electricity for granted but down on the farm most people in the USA still had to go to bed at sunset. FDR saw a real need to give the gift of light to all Americans. The Rural Electrification Administration was set up with federal dough for the purpose.
The REA also enabled FDR to restore some of the lost goodwill from the utilities after he had broken them up with PUHCA. By throwing them some big contracts with which to implement Rural Electrification, FDR hoped to heal the pooka wounds.
RFC – Reconstruction Finance Corporation – This was a government corporation that lent large sums of money to states, cities, towns, and large US companies whose solvency was deemed important to the survival of the nation.
The RFC was begun in the Hoover era. It continued through the New Deal and the Second World War.
TVA – The Tennessee Valley Authority - During the First World War the US government had set up a massive water powered electricity plant on the Tennessee River in Alabama.
FDR proposed to expand this facility into a regional concept. The Tennessee Valley was relatively backwards in many ways and the TVA would create updated power resources, conservation, and recreational places for everyone. TVA was expensive and the funding of it was controversial because from it’s opening till of cash ran dry it tried to become a self sustaining economic unit within the Federal Government. TVA did plenty of good but it was an expensive failure in some ways too.
WPA – Works Progress Administration – This was the federal agency whose job was to create handout jobs for three and a half million of the most desperate Americans. Created in 1935 and disbanded in 1943, the WPA was for much of its life the largest employer in the USA. Only the unemployed could get a job with the WPA. The full and sometimes employed paid taxes to provide jobs for the unemployed.
The WPA jobs were almost always unskilled ones. Many practical projects were completed under WPA but others were considered superfluous and political. WPA Later changed its name to Works 'Project's Administration.
Harry ‘the Hop’ Hopkins the closest advisor to FDR was put in charge of the WPA. Through Hopkins, Roosevelt kept a close eye on the gigantic WPA.
Critics of the WPA began to claim that the organization was being used for partisan political purposes in a number of ways. The federal jobs created millions of loyal Democrats, not just grateful citizens. Many in the WPA were using the political power of their jobs to blatantly promote Democratic candidates, programs and positions.
The political abuses by the WPA reached a point where a Democratic Senator Carlton Hatch from New Mexico proposed a bill that said ‘enough is enough.’ The Hatch Amendment of 1939 was aimed at putting an end to the types of abuses that were committed in the Congressional elections of 1938. From now on federal job appointees could no longer make the job a vehicle for active political partisan (Democratic) campaigning.
In 1947 and in 1974 the Hatch Law was challenged but both times the Supreme Court stuck up for Carl Hatch and his Bill and it still is law today.
People with government jobs can't use their posts to help a party or candidate.
RACE RELATIONS
The Depression slowed down the ability of race relations to continue on its already retarded road to justice. Unemployment was already a burden on a race still trying to recover from the economic shackles of slavery and the long-lived Jim Crow era that followed it. But with the Great Depression white business owners were even more likely to favor whites when handing out scarce jobs.
In New York City blacks began to boycott white businesses that hired whites only. Race riots erupted in March of 1935 in Haarlem. Three blacks died in the violence and many businesses burned to the ground.
It is easy to get an idea today of how blacks were treated in the 1930’s by US society. Just rent all the Three Stooges videos, enjoy the fine slapstick comedy and note along the way what roles were available for blacks back then. The American fictional media is always an unwitting educating flashlight on society.
LAW AND ORDER – KELLY GREEN
The Democratic boss of Chicago was Eddie “Edzo” Kelly.
The big gangsters were on the run in Chicago when Hoover was President. Herbie Hoover was a real law and order guy, a square Republican with a core of holy goodness, even if he was a dullard. Hoover put Capone in the can.
FDR on the other hand, would make political deals with anyone. Ed Kelly was a mobbed-up Illinois Democrat who could deliver votes. Kelly could deliver votes from people who moved to California 10 years ago, from cemeteries, and from people who never existed in the first place. Eddy Kelly had money and he had political power.
Kelly and Frankie made a deal during the 1932 election, one that would have made Jack Kennedy or Rod Blagojovich proud. It was, more or less, you get me the votes and you can run all the after hours joints free from federal harassment
When FDR took over he held up his end of the bargain. The federal round-up of type-A crooks came to a mysterious halt in Chicago. FDR got his political favors, and a lot of Kelly Green made the rounds. Federal funds for Chicago public works projects poured into Illinois in 1933, making some of Kelly's friends a lot of money. (This is not the most important story in the world, but it's not easy to find any dirt on FDR and opportunities must be exploited.)
ORIGINS OF WAR – 1933-1934
US MILITARY PREPAREDNES – OR LACK OF IT
The United States for three main reasons continued to maintain an isolationist foreign policy under FDR.
One;
The rejection of the League of Nations was still in play and for all the campaign criticisms of Republican isolationism, the Dems had no intention of overturning the verdict of 1920.
Roosevelt was not rolling up his sleeves for a public relations campaign to get the USA to change its mind on the League. He was as happy to not have us wrapped up in that spider web as were the original (Republican) authors of that policy. Franklin D. could have his anti-isolationist rhetoric in theory and enjoy the political benefits of isolationism in practice. The Democrats were free to propose entry into the League of Nations any time they wanted to under FDR, and did not. So lets not forever blame failure of the USA to enter the LON only on the GOP, since FYI FDR made no effort to correct the alleged wrong against the great Wilson.
Two;
The mood of the country was overwhelmingly in favor of staying out of foreign entanglements, period. Even if FDR sincerely wanted to overturn Harding/Lodge isolationism, he would not have had public or Congressional support worth five dimes.
Third and not least, the nation was broke and hurting. An activist morality based interventionist foreign policy would cost a lot of money and the Government was spiraling down an abyss in the red.
Three
Besides all that, the USA didn't have a lot of military power to intervene with. The military was rusting and no one cared. The United States Army had only 136,000 men, only 36,000 more than the Treaty of Versailles allowed Germany (and Germany made max use of.)
The U.S. Army was organized into nine divisions, only three of which were capable of going to battle, and these were undertrained divisions sporting obsolete equipment. The Army in still used French 75 mm cannon made in 1907 that had to be pulled by horse. If motor vehicles pulled them they would snap off. The Navy had only 96,000 men under contract and a battle fleet that was primarily of pre-World War One vintage. Even if someone could convince the President that it was time to beef up the military, he would not have enough support in the public and in Congress to get it done. There was still a lot of bitter anti-military sentiment around the land. A restaurant in Oklahoma had a sign on the door that said, “No dogs or soldiers allowed” and it wasn't a joke. FDR deserves some blame for lack of military preparedness, but he was the symbol of the national sentiment, not the cause of it.
Isolationism was the formidable force assigned to protect The United States. The American Ostrich would do the work of a hundred infantry divisions. The United States only had to protect its shorelines. Let our oceans, white with foam, do the fighting for us, and let deadbeat Europe go to hell. After all, Billy Mitchell’s warning about the new age of long range air power was still just a theory. The oceans still worked, didn't they?
The war clouds of WWII were visible in the early years of FDR but they were still on the horizon and were not that dark except to a few especially wise observers. It was only gradually that the United States took the liberal blinders off. The Axis aggressions, beginning in 1935 with the Italian conquest of Ethiopia and culminating with the attack on Poland, gave America the impetus to re-arm in psychological increments.
Each book or documentary has its bias it seems. Some claim that the U.S. right up to the fall of France was ill prepared for war. Much more should have been done, and it is a stain on the FDR record that the United States was unable to win a major battle in World War II for six months after it got in (Midway June 42.) - Others say the opposite, that FDR was a heroic hawk who pushed so hard for military preparedness in the pre-war years that we should all thank God that he was in charge. The United States really got off its rocking chair to prepare for total industrialization for war long before Pearl Harbor. America turned hawk long before Hitler attacked on September 1 1939.
I favor the first view, the one that says we should have been five times more militarily prepared in each and every one of the ten years leading up to the fall of France. But I favor, not because of the warning signs from China, Ethiopia, and Czechoslovakia. U.S. armed forces were that behind the state of the art for the other leading powers in quality and quantity, and that should never be, even in peaceful times! That should have been corrected by FDR in the name of common sense, even if there were no Three Stooges of Tojo, Hitler and Mussolini stirring up war. It just should have been done. But people were in a liberal trance after the horror of World War I. Most of the adult world in the 1930's of course had a fresh memory of WWI. It wasn't something from history books and films. People didn't want the US heavily armed and dangerous because they were emotionally traumatized by the realization that war is evil and it hadn't dawned on mankind until one war got just too horrible. So the US armed forces deteriorated to fourth-rate because war is bad.
JAPAN EXPELLED FROM SCHOOLROOM FOR CHEATING
Japan was expelled from the League of Nations in 1932 for invading and keeping Manchuria and renaming it “Hiro’s Place.”
ITALIAN TROUBLES 1933-4 - WAR IN ETHIOPIA
Mussolini and the fascist PNF seized power in 1922. For ten years Italian domestic policy was radical right-wing change but in foreign policy the old school system still ruled. Mussolini did not institute any great shake-up in Italian foreign policy until he felt the time was right. He needed to secure control at home before he could embark on Italian adventurism abroad. Once the fascist felt they really had Italy in their pockets they switched the equation. Now they began to tone down domestic policy towards big business and even religious conservatism, while preparing for a dynamic expansion abroad.
The goal was a new Italian empire in the Mediterranean and Africa, a new Roman Empire in the same regions that Caesar had won his.
Italy had a boot hold on the other side of the sea in Tripoli. That had ben hard-won in 1912 in a war with the Ottoman Turks. The establishment of a little North African Empire had been won at a hard price. Italian military forces had barely managed to win and had suffered too many casualties to take a primitive land of desert. What benefit Tripoli provided Italy was barely worth the cost of acquiring it.
Italy had also tried to expand in the Adriatic after WWI with limited and controversial results.
But the best opportunity for Italian expansion was against Ethiopia from the two Italian colonies of Eritrea and Somalia. Italy conquered Ethiopia over the course of 1934-36 and this story will be told here in some detail.
THE UNDERESTIMATED AND UNDERSTUDIED WAR
I am torn between which to be more disturbed by, 1) the story itself in all its horrors, 2) the fact that it gets one paragraph in most history books while incidents and issues far less important get 10 pages, and 3) that most history books get the story wrong, remarkably wrong.
The so-called “Second Italo-Ethiopian War” is a good example of why I think more people should study history and stop watching garbage on TV. There is a need for fact-finders and history is too important to be left to the historians. The pros have their infrastructure and want to keep outsiders out so they can have their status and their salaries and their junkets to conferences of scholars all over the world. They keep their writing snobby (not all of them!) so that their work remains within the exclusive club of University scholars, when this world needs all the history students and story tellers (the words ‘history’ ands ‘story’ are essentially the same word) it can get. So much material is understudied and under-researched because the entire field had been cornered by the pros for personal career gain. The truth is more important than careers but history is mostly a racket for careers more than a noble search for the truth. With the internet, the history science is 500 times more accessible to the amateur than it was in 1980, yet the whole game is still seen as the exclusive province of the pipe and tweed set. Anyone with a six hour reservation at any computer can did up some remarkable facts on almost anything, can open up an e-mail correspondence with university professors from nations on the other side of the globe, and can play and compete.
When I see how many pros have their facts all wrong or distorted on Ethiopia I think I made the right decision in giving my time to history study. I may be wrong on many things, and surely I am, but so are the pros!
NO FASCIST ALARM
It's easy to forget that there was a time when the word fascism didn't automatically mean evil to the person who heard the word. It was only after the world saw the entire play acted out that fascism became the word symbol of all that is unfair and unjust. Today a teen-aged girl in a movie calls her father a fascist for not letting her stay out after 11. Every inarticulate critic of any politician just has to dig up the word and hurl it. In 1934 the fascist government of Italy was something of an experiment. Fascism had done an excellent job with the Italian economy and we all know that pocketbook issues decide most elections.
Italy was fascist, but Mussolini had a lot of people on the USA side of the sea who admired the Italian experiment, and wondered in print quite often whether a dose of this kind of new wave efficiency might even be good for this country. Benito was the lesser of two evil dictators. It is impossible to really understand the origins of WWII if you don’t get the fact that the jury was out all over the world on Fascism, Communism, and both Parliamentary Democracy the Democratic Republics. The post-war world finger-points at the pre-war world and says why didn’t you stand up to the obvious threat of evil fascism? Because we were in a depression and not close half the free populations thought that fascism was a clear danger, and some thought it was downright ok, a necessary evil to maintain law and order. Many People in Great Britain between the war embraced fascism openly, and the British public tolerated it. After the war the free world became 99% virulently anti-fascist and wonders why the pre-war west didn’t have the brains or guts to stop the coming of WWII. Because the west was not united in wanting or needing to stop fascism, period.
America disapproved of the Italian invasion of Ethiopia, but didn’t lose any sleep over it. If America had hated Mussolini a little more in 34, it might have helped with US preparedness in 41.
WAL WAL – PRELUDE TO WAR WAR – DEC 5 1934
You could easily make a case that this was the first major battle of the Second World War. Ethiopian and Italian troops fought a bloody battle in the eastern desert of Ethiopia on December 5 1934, a date which should live in infamy but lives in obscurity instead.
Ethiopia is a Greek word that means 'people to the south of Egypt.' The Latinized version is 'Abyssinia.' The two terms are used a lot in history and can be confusing, but Ethiopia and Abyssinia are the same thing.
In 1934 Italy had Ethiopia surrounded in East Africa. The northern border of Ethiopia was Italian Eritrea. The eastern border of Abyssinia was Italian Somaliland. Ethiopia was cut off from the prosperous seas and this was part of the reason for the poverty there. But Ethiopia did not have aggressive designs on either Italian Eritrea or Italian Somaliland. The same could not be said in reverse. Mussolini was planning to invade Ethiopia for years before it happened.
Italy enjoyed being an African colonial power. It made Italy feel like one of the big shots, like England, France and Germany. Most countries that hated big colonial powers would rather become one of them than destroy the system. That was the key to Japanese expansionism as well as Italian.
It all went back to the British acquisition of the Suez Canal. The British and French were good buddies in WW1 and 2, but at the time of the Suez Canal they were tough rivals. When Britain took over the SC it wanted to keep enemies away from it on land. England knew it ruled the seas, (even the 'Mare Nostrum' of Italy, Latin for 'our sea') but feared French colonial power from African land bases.
So England invited Italy to take over the Eritrean port city of Massawa, letting a friendly power cover the Queen's south desert flank. Italy not only took over the city of Massawa, it expanded outwards and created a desert colonial state in Africa called Eritrea. England more or less figured this might happen.
Italy next established a colonial base south of the Horn of Africa in East Somalia, land of the Black Hawk Down.
In 1895-6 Italy tried to conquer Abyssinia/Ethiopia. Italy got the early lead from its base in Eritrea. But when Italy outraced it's supply lines into the desert interior, the Ethiopian Emperor Menenik 2 gathered a force outnumbering the Italian invader by about 100.00, to 18,000. 20,000 of them had spears instead of rifles but that still a big advantage. This force pushed the Italians back until they stood and fought hard at Adowa. The date was March 1, 1996. The Italians lost badly. The Ethiopians iced more than 7,000 Italian troops and about 5,000 Ethiopians also died. 12,000 men and one woman were dead on the battlefield in one day. That is a big figure for a battle on the Russian front in 1943, let alone the Ethiopian desert in 1896.
Italy left a lot of weapons behind. Now the Ethiopians were fully armed. Italy agreed to a treaty recognizing the right of Ethiopia to exist as a free nation. Boundaries were drawn that were good to Ethiopia.
Ethiopia applied to membership in the League of Nations in the early 1920's and only barely got in. Britain objected because slavery still existed in Ethiopia. Half-measures against slavery were passed to appease the British and Ethiopia was the newest member of the Hall.
Mussolini rose to power and he decided he wanted to avenge Adowa and become a big conquistador. In 1933 he had secret meetings with Count Ciano and General Du Bono in which he explained that he was going to find a way to attack and conquer Anyssinia. “You get me an incident, I'll get you a glorious war,” he more or less told them.
For most of 1934 Italy conducted a campaign of propaganda lies that would have served a Jo Jo Goebbels proud. Italy broadcast bulletins to the world that Ethiopia had built up an army of fantastic strength and that it clearly had aggressive designs on Italian Somaliland and Italian Eritrea. Italy released news stories about violent incidents along the desert borders in which Ethiopian aggressors killed Italian soldiers. It was all a lie of course, but how was a reader in London or New York really to know that? Mussolini was setting Ethiopia up for a war and a beating. It was the sane technique Hitler used to justify all his conquests in the later thirties. Poland was about to attack Germany, that's why he had to attack Poland. Absurd but effective. If you can plant even a doubt to the outsider as to who started it, it counted for a lot.
The spark came in November 1934 came at a watering hole called Wal Wal in the far eastern desert region of Ethiopia. The exact location of Wal Wal was the issue. Italy claimed that Wal Wal it was within Italian Somaliland. The Ethiopians claimed that it was well within Ethiopian territory. In practice it was in Italian Ethiopia because the Italians had been controlling it for years.
On November 22 1934 a group of Ethiopian troops, accompanied by a few British officers and diplomats, went to Wal Wal for some water and to challenge the Italian claim to ownership. They called themselves the Anglo-Ethiopian Border Commission. Emperor Selassie had challenged Italian ownership of Wal Wal before, but this time they had British backing. There were only a couple of Brits there, but they outnumbered the 600 Ethiopians in a way.
The Italians wouldn't even let the Ethiopians drink the water, let alone admit that the place belonged to Ethiopia. The British representative at Wal Wal was Sir Douglas Clifford, and he gave no credence to the Italian claim that Wal Wal was Italian.
The British had largely themselves to blame for the standoff at Ual Ual (as it was spelled in one press report.) Back in the World War One years England had made one of those 19th century style agreements, giving Italy a free hand in its fiat of East Africa, provided Italy 1-was a good helpful ally in the war, 2- never cuts the railroad from Addis Ababa to Djibouti – 3 – never interfere with the flow of the White Nile.
The meaning of free hand in East Africa was up to the participants to decide through practice at their convenience. So Italy had ben illegally occupying much territory in Ogaden (the province where Wal Wal was) but England didn't care much about it and listened to Ethiopian complaints for years without responding to them. But recently the Ethiopians and the British had been discussion a land trade where Ethiopia would gain a strip of territory through British Somaliland which would give them access the seaport of Zeila. The British would gain the province of Ogaden. Now all of a sudden the British had a high and mighty moral interest in Italy obeying the exact measurements of the map of East Africa.
When I was a teen-ager, I did something stupid (and accidentally,) and a gang from the other side of town came looking for me. I was in a bad spot. A friend of mine was in good with two fairly well known bad guys and he got them to show up. So the other gang arrives to beat me up. My group is outnumbered 20-10. But sitting on the ground on our turf, saying nothing, are two fairly well-know South Boston bad guys. Nothing happened but a lot of talk. That gang never came back looking for me again.
That was the same as the two British representatives being with the 600 armed Ethiopians who just happened to show up with the survey party on November 22 1934. They were claiming to be there to survey the land, but they were there like the two guys that night in Southie.
The Italians offered to allow Ethiopian troops to come behind their lines and drink from the water wells. But that would have been admitting that the land belonged to Italy, so they refused. did not attack as long as the Brits were there. The Ethiopians outnumbered the Italians 600-60 and pushed the Italians back just far enough so that the Ethiopians had two wells to drink from.
Now a stand-off ensued that lasted several days. But the Italians sent back for reinforcements.
A stand-off ensued. Each side marked its boundaries with colored cloths on poles.
The Italian sent back word for reinforcements. Soon they outnumbered the Italians. On December 3 an Italian three-engine fighter-bomber buzzed the Ethiopian force as if to demonstrate that 'I could have just killed about 200 of you guys before you even knew what happened.'
Sir Doug Clifford was furious and protested to Funicello that this was an act of war. The Italian commander shrugged and said that this was Italian territory and that “The Ethiopians are here illegally ...you too.”
Clifford and the other Brit left Wal Wal in a sam huff to report back to British Foreign Minister Simon to see what Simon says about this insult. Now it was just the Ethiopians without their British bad guys in the way.
This was when World War II began.
Each claimed that the other attacked first. Someone fired the shot heard round the Horn. Then it was total war. The two Italian fighter lanes did surprisingly little damage, but the four armored cars ruled the day. They were shooting up a lot of people and bullets were bouncing off them. The Ethiopians tried to charge two of them and tip them over, but both efforts failed with casualties. December 5, 1934 was the opening number of the WWII at WWE (Wal Wal Ethiopia.
It was a victory for the Italians. 107 Ethiopians died in battle and 30 for Italy. The Ethiopians got out of Wal Wal.
Ethiopia had its share of faults. Ethiopian bandits had made life miserable all over East Africa and that certainly exacerbated the tensions between Italians and Ethiopians. The British had sharply protested to Selassie on more than one occasion that Ethiopian government expeditions supplied themselves along the way with brutal abuses of their own villages, and that the risk of the abuse of a British citizen or two in these General Sherman style replenishing operations was serious. And the British had allowed Italy to camp out at Wal Wal for 20 years before. It may not have been in Ethiopia, but it was, as understood, still certainly within Italy's 'sphere of influence.' And the mapmaker expedition of November 22 1934 could certainly be called unfriendly.
Funicello made some sense when he protested to Clifford that, “Why do you come to me with such aggressive posture. The Abyssinians all looked angry and threatening from the start. If you had given me advance notice I would have welcomed you and all our men could have drank from the wells as friends.”
Clifford responded, “But you would have refused to recognize that this was Ethiopian territory, refused to leave and the result would have been the same.”
WAL WAL FALLOUT
The Ethiopians fled in panic.
Italy sent out bulletins to all the world press agencies that the Ethiopians had attacked them and inflicted heavy casualties. The Italians reported that the Ethiopians outnumbered them 2-1 and had planes and tanks.
The New York Times reported these “facts” on December 8, but on the 9th the Times reprinted an AP story that challenged the original version. Now it seems that the Italians may have been the aggressors. No one knew what to believe in the outside world.
But the word did get out that a major and bloody confrontation had taken place at Wal Wal in the desert on December 5.
The Emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie talked it over with his foreign advisors at Addis Ababa. Not foreign affairs advisors, but his foreign advisors. He listened to an American unemployed diplomat living in the Abyssinian capital named Frank Santorelli more than he listened to his own foreign minister. Santorelli (an Italian from Cleveland) told Selassie that he would lose if he counter-attacked, and he would lose if he passively accepted the defeat. The only hope for Ethiopia, he advised, was to appeal to the League of Nations.
The key to this whole situation was the fact that Italy was not even remotely allied with Nazi Germany at the end of 1934. Italy was actually afraid of German ambitions. And the same was true in reverse. Hitler had a weary eye on Italian potential for dominance in the Mediterranean region. France and England were trying to maintain friendship with Italy and did not want to lose this friendship over Ethiopia. That's why France and England didn't come heroically to Ethiopia's rescue when world history later thinks it probably should have. If they had known that Italy would later ally itself to Hitler, they probably would have stood up to Mussolini over Ethiopia in 1934-35. As it all turned out they were guilty of appeasement, and the story of Ethiopia vs. Italy certainly got the appeasement ball rolling.
Italy first defended itself on the map. It said that Wal Wal was clearly in Italian Somaliland. The Abyssinians said, go dig up the very map you guys drew at the end of the first Italo-Abyssinian War. There was Wal Wal clearly about 60 miles inside of Ethiopian borders. The Italians dug up three more maps from three different decades and each one of them showed Wal Wal to be 60 miles inside Ethiopian territory.
“Then the maps are wrong!” cried the Italians with dictatorial logic.
Many accounts of the incident at Wal Wal suggest that no one knows who started it and others say that the Ethiopians fired the first shot. But the more knowledgeable the historian, the more the Italians clearly provoked the whole thing at Wal Wal, so even if an Ethiopian fired the first shot, the whole thing was instigated by Du Bono and Musso.
One well respected history books says that as soon as the British representatives took off, that was all clear signal for the Ethiopians to attack the Italians at Walla Walla. But that doesn't make much sense. By the time Clifford and the British map-makers left Wal Wal the Italians outnumbered the Ethiopians 2-1. Plus the Italians had a squadron of fighter-bombers, several armored cars, superior guns, and none of them were barefoot men with spears. Does it make any sense that the Ethiopians saw this as a great opportunity to attack and defeat the Italians at Wal Wal?
At the end of the year 1934, a major war in Ethiopia was just beginning to get into full swing.
GERMANY 1933-4
One of the ambassador hardest posts for FDR to fill was Berlin. Hitler had just taken power and Jews were being beaten up on the streets. He offered the post to the former candidate for President Cox, who turned it down. Then he offered it to several other prominent men who all said no but always gave a lame excuse that had nothing to dow with fear itself. Finally he settled on a relative unknown named Billy Dodd.
In March 1933 when FDR was sworn in as president, Adolph Hitler had been Reich Chancellor for only two months. The two men would lead parallel lives for the next 12 years. Both died in the spring of 1945. Hitler in fact outlived Roosevelt by three weeks, but FDR was buried reverently as a victorious hero, the other’s body was doused with gasoline and set on fire in his back yard, a hated and beaten bag of refuse.
Germany withdrew voluntarily from the League of Nations in 1933. The League had taken its sweet time allowing Germany in. Hitler paid it back by taking no time to take Germany out. Adolph did not want to get expelled like Japan. He told the League that was about to fire him that “I quit!”
For all its overt violent internal fascism, the first years of Hitler’s Germany were cautious ones in foreign policy. Hitler was shrewd enough to keep his aggressive posturing to a bare minimum and in fact tried hard to maintain an image to the world of a Germany that only wanted to live in peace with its neighbors. As a signal to the world he kept as foreign minister the very conservative old-school Larry von Neurath.
Future Nazi Foreign Minister Johann Thug von Ribbentrop was still below decks, a caged carnivore waiting to be released. The cobra does not strike until and unless it knows it will land the bite. Hitler kept all his best tigers in cages until he took over completely first. The worst of them were not in power when Hitler first took over the joint.
INTERNAL GERMANY – ROOTS OF THE HOLOCAUST
The Holocaust was inflicted upon the Jews of Germany in stages. It did not reach Holocaust proportions until the war years when the inclusion if millions of Jews in the conquered territories provided the bulk of the victims. The Jews of Germany were a small but powerful and influential minority, not remotely as strong a percentage of the population as the Jews of Poland or Russia. Their minority status may be key to why the Germans hated them so. If Boston had a 33% Irish population in 1900 and they controlled 60% of the city's politics, well the old Brahmin protestant majority might resent that disproportionate influence. But if 7% of Boston were Irish and controlled 60% of the city's political structure, that might lead to 60 times more resentment.
That was how the German rednecks perceived jewish influence. They thought that the Jews had an inordinate influence on German culture, science, medicine, and banking. The Jews were destroying the German nation. They weren't taking all the bad jobs, like the Mexicans coming across the border of Arizona today, they were taking all the jobs that influenced the German national soul.
The Jews of Germany were well-treated in the early years of Nazi rule, as opposed to Polish Jews of the war years who were hurled into ovens as soon as they got tired on the job. No, the Jews of early Nazi rule were merely deprived of their rights, intimidated, harassed, insulted, ridiculed, forced to register officially as lowlife Jews, and beaten up. They were rarely murdered at this stage.
A lot of people still can't believe that the Holocaust could even happen, and I mean figuratively, not as in the Holocaust deniers. How could it happen?
Well, for sure, the mass of non-Jews in Germany would never have approved in 1933 a law that said all Jews were going to be rounded up, gassed and burned in concentration camps, starting tomorrow morning. A vote on that would be 99% no, don''t do that.
But the persecution and attempted extermination of the Jews was applied in stages, which made it more digestible in slow bites over the years 1933 to 1945. On top of that, in the extreme years of the war the Nazis made it possible for the common citizen to put the blinders on. They didn't exactly advertise what they were doing at the camps. There were rumors so widespread that they were no longer rumors as to what was really going on, but the German could pretend ignorance, and with the war going on, it was easy to make that matter not the top priority in one's list of things to worry about today.
The Holocaust began with sterilization, and this was not even directed at the Jews in particular. But it was part and parcel of the new thinking that all inferior people must be eliminated in the name of creating the superior all-German state.
People who had incurable disease must be sterilized. Operations were performed on unworthy men nd women so they could not recreate. Heck, for that matter, people who had curable disease had to be sterilized. The mentally retarded, the mentally ill, the clinically insane, those prone to criminal behavior, and even those who were too sexually promiscuous, all these undesirables had to be sterilized.
Even people who were alcoholics, if one of their parents were alcoholics, and it was evidently hereditary, they too had to be sterilized. That's a scary one since my father has been sober in A.A. for 40 years. I guess the Nazis didn't go for the slogan “Live and Let Live,” but they did apply their own spin on the A.A. slogan “Keep it Simple.” Simple problem, simple solution; sterilize them all.
The forced sterilization laws went into effect on April 1 of 1933. The Nazis were going to sterilize all the April fools in Germany. The elastic clause was the one that stipulated that “feeble minded persons” were subject to the crotch scalpel. That could be interpreted any way they saw fit. Feeble-mindedness didn't necessarily have to be mental illness or brain disorder. Political undesirables, people who openly criticized the nazis and Hitler could be dedicated “feeble-minded and sent to the “Crooked Cross-Black Shield” health care facility. Meanwhile, dim-wit overqualified Nazis and pro-Nazis could avoid sterilization, just because they were Nazis or pro-Nazi.
Can you imagine how this looked to the the more civilized peoples of American and England?
Sorry to let you down, but the United States and England employed forced sterilization long before the Nazis did. The United States took the lead in the first two decades of the 20th Century. The Mentally ill and the criminally insane were being sterilized in the United States in the early 1920's while in Weimar Germany, this was strictly forbidden by law.
In the USA! USA! USA! the evil insensitive practice was being preached by a lot of egghead jerks and some states were buying into it, snipping men and removing the ovaries of women against their will. The same was happening in England. Darwinian scholar/thugs in Germany were complaining that the United States was far ahead of Germany in this “progressive” practice.
Fortunately there as a backlash against sterilization, first in England, then in the United States. By the time the Nazis put it into law in 1933 it was recognized in the USA and UK as an evil mistake never to be reinstated.
JOHNSON ACT 1934
In the prevailing spirit of American isolationism, Congress in 1934 passed the Johnson Act in 1934. This legislation prohibited the United States from lending any more money to any country that still owed Sam money from the Great War. While overtly an act of anger over the unpaid war debts, the act was largely motivated by a naïve hope that if the nations of Europe didn’t get any more American money they couldn’t build up their armies and navies, and thus couldn’t start another war to drag the U.S. into.
The 34 Johnson might have worked to some extent in helping to prevent England and France from gaining military strength, but did not help keep the United States out WWII. Unfortunately the revival of Germany's military machine didn’t care about American financial help and the same went for Italy and Japan.
LET GULF BE WITH YOU
In the 1930’s the oil of the Middle East began its road to economic dominance in world affairs.
The US saved Kuwait in 1991. Little Kuwait in 1934 granted a concession to the Kuwaiti Oil Company. KOC was not a Kuwaiti company at all but a British company set up to develop Kuwait’s oil resources. Kuwait had the oil but not the means to develop it. Britian had virtually no oil but had the money and the means to develop it. This symbiotic relationship would grow as the decades went along, but abuses were in the cards on both sides. First the western oil companies could have given more benefits to the Arab states while still making tons of money, but didn’t. Later, in the 1970's and beyond, the Arabs said “now comes payback time.” The oil sheikdoms would in the 1970's put the squeeze on the west for past abuses and cause political tensions that would nearly lead to war. For the 30's they were grateful for foreign development help.
The Kuwaiti Oil Company was half British and was co-owned by an American oil company, Gulf. Every time you pass a Gulf gas station you can think ‘Kuwait’ in the back of your mind. So the 1990’s Persian Gulf war was partially fought to help the American Gulf oil corporation. Yet the name of Gulf refers to the Gulf of Mexico, not the Persian Gulf. Gulf was drilling in the Gulf of Mexico long before it had any interests in the Arab region.
Gulf made me mad in the 1980's with it's slogan, “Let Gulf Be With You.” It's a spin of the better known phrase “Let God be with you.” C'mon Gulf, give us a break.
ROOSEVELT'S REACTIONARY CRITICS
FDR and all his intimates relentlessly used the word 'reactionary' to describe anyone who disagreed with them. Roosevelt's fireside chats had reactionaries being tossed into the fire as a matter of course.
Roosevelt only made two of these famous “Fireside Chats” in 1934, the last one on October 30. He was greasing up the voters for the Congressional Elections around the corner. In this 10.30 speech FD was on the attack against anyone who dared to criticize his New Deal programs. He mocked anyone who referred to his programs as “socialism.” Then he ripped into the “reactionaries” that were opposing him.
That's quite the double standard, and it still exists today among the left. If anyone dares to refer to Obama's programs as “socialism” the libs hit the roof. Yet they can condemn with an epithet too. Just strike back with, “why you ... you no good... reactionary!”
At least there is a vague basis for the word “socialism.” It's a system that is the opposite of free-enterprise. Socialism means that to some extent, even if you fail in the free competition for success, you should still at least get enough of a handout from the government to survive. Not everyone can win the race and get rich, but no one should be absolutely poor and starving and homeless. Its a system of mercy and compassion, and sometimes, it might even help the economy if you believe in trickle up economics, as FDR did and Obama does.
On the other hand, what exactly is a “reactionary?” It is a word without a referent, a catch-all rank-out, that means only what you want it to mean. It's the “N-word” for liberals to hurl at conservatives. Don't answer the conservatives points, just answer with a hate word, and your work is done. There is nothing more that needs to be said.
Conservative: “Here are my twelve specific arguments about the wrongness of your policies. What is your response?”
Liberal: “Oh yeah? Well you are a reactionary! Your arguments are reactionary, and I don't know how anyone can take anything said by a reactionary seriously.”
So what is a reactionary? The dictionary says that the primary definition is a person who reacts to something. In others words, anyone can be one. There is no just reason why “reactionary” should be reserved only for conservatives. But that's the way it is, and the secondary definition of “reactionary” in most dictionaries is ' a term to describe a right-winger.'
There should be a third definition for 'reactionary' - “cheap-shot epithet used by partisan liberals to defame a conservative.”
You will notice that when the liberals think they are obviously right on something they take on the specifics. But when the conservatives make a telling argument, then, and only then, do they break out the big cannon, the 88 mm howitzer, the fatal missile against which there is no defense, the word “reactionary.”
According to Roosevelt, anyone who thought his planned-economy programs were unconstitutional were “reactionaries.” So apparently the Supreme Court in the 1930's was made up of nine reactionaries. They decided against him many times.
You've been labelled, tried, convicted and dismissed and sentenced with a word. You are a “reactionary.” Now go sit in the corner with your dunce hat on and don't speak anymore. You don't count now.
CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS OF 1934
A few no-good low down reactionaries did well in the Congressional Elections of 1934, but overall the good upstanding Democrats did better. Roosevelt, with considerable justification, considered the results an endorsement of his New Deal programs. The American voters were still in the middle of the Great Depression and still they were sending even more New Deal Dems to the Hill. One could argue of course, that he bought the hearts and votes of 1934 through the dole. What starving unemployed American who had survived on an FDR handout would not want to express gratitude in the polling booth? Those who benefited from dole socialism voted to keep it going.
The reactionaries lost seats in both Houses of Congress.
DOWN GOES LONG - SEPTEMBER 10 1935
A disgruntled doctor assisted decisively in getting Roosevelt re-elected to his second term.
Bombastic Senator Huey Long of Louisiana was the main challenger to FDR in 1936. It looked like it was going to be the King vs. the Kingfish. Long wasn't a heavy favorite but he certainly was no long shot.
Huey had it all. He was a powerhouse orator with charm, power, money, genuine political ideology (even if it was inconsistent and contradictory at times), a best selling book, a hit song (‘Every Man a King’), great slogans, an army of lieutenants, and the potential to carry the solid South just for openers.
Senator Long was no pawn of big business, so he couldn’t count on much help there, and the Louisiana newspapers had long been against him. But with the help of the common vote, the labor muscle, and his own well-oiled machine, Huey stood a strong chance of unseating the not as popular as you probably think he was Roosevelt. Long was going to take the presidency from below.
It’s hard to describe Long’s politics. It was radical socialism mixed with boss power politics now aspiring to a national level. Long believed that it was ok to be a millionaire but that it should be limited to three million dollars. After that you had to turn all income over to the people.
Long booster clubs, called Share-Our-Wealth Clubs, sprang up everywhere. On February 1, 1935 there were an impressive 27,431 registered SOWCs in the USA.
But Long unwittingly served to strengthen Roosevelt in a key way. Huey's economic radicalism made Roosevelt look like the conservative. Kingfish scared millions of disgruntled conservative Democrats into supporting FDR, whose leftism didn’t seem so disconcerting when he stood next to Long.
Kingfish had also made a lifetime army of personal enemies, and one of them was going to change the course of American history.
Huey Long was well aware that people wanted to kill him. He was famous for the heavy security around him at all times. But a determined assassin is hard to stop.
Doctor Carl Austin Weiss decided he was going to kill Huey Long. Long had deprived his father-in-law of a judgeship by means of ruthless gerrymandering. Weiss went to Baton Rouge to pay the governor a visit.
It was an otherwise ordinary day in 1935. Long was coming down a corridor in the capitol with his entourage when Doc Weiss pulled a pistol like Doc Holliday and shot the governor. Long’s henchmen instantly drew their revolvers and emptied them into Weiss. The perp went down in a hail of bullets worthy of a gangster movie, but it was too late to save Huey Long. Weiss and Long died on the same day. Long made it to the hospital.
The ‘Napoleon of the Bayous’ was no more. Dr. Weiss had changed history as surely as Mary Jo Kopechne, Sirhan Sirhan or Peggy Eaton. Long’s hat was now six feet under the ring.
Long might have beaten Roosevelt outright in 1936 but it’s going too far to say he probably would have. His campaign strategy in fact was to concede 1936 as a set up to victory in 1940. The Long team was willing to combine with the fanatic Father Coughlin to promote a third party candidate other than Long in 1936 but under the banner of his own “Share the Wealth” organization. This candidate would so divide the Democratic and leftist vote that a Republican would be elected in 36. More importantly, the power of Long’s organization would have been clearly demonstrated and then Long could step up in 1940 and win as the leader of his own Party without having to face the powerful Roosevelt.
THE LUDLOW AMENDMENT 1935
Congressman Louis Ludlow rode the wave of anti-war isolationist fever when he proposed an astonishing amendment in 1935. The Ludlow Amendment made a United States declaration of war subject to a referendum by the voters! The case of direct attack on US soil would have been excluded from the vote but other than that it was to be a trip to the polls before the troops moved. Roosevelt had to campaign hard to stop the Ludlow Amendment and it lost in the House by a close vote. One can only wonder how US history would have been different if Ludlow had become law. The Pearl Harbor attack probably still would have meant war with or without the Ludlow plebiscite. Korea would (I’m just guessing) have passed by a slight margin but there may never have been a Vietnam, Kuwaiti or Iraqi war if brother Louis Ludlow’s Amendment had passed. If there was a Ludlow Law in 1860 the South would have seceded in peace.
By 1938 a Gallup poll revealed that no less than 70% of American believed that the USA should never have entered The Great War of 1914-1918. There were anti-war rallies in the early thirties all over our college campuses. In the spring of 1936 for example, 500,000 students at various colleges staged a strike for peace and carried banners that read “Scholarships, not Battleships.” Of course it never occurred to these liberal bimbos that peace movements are lost on aggressors. Through most of the 1930’s the lefties patted themselves on the back for being morally superior to anyone who favored a strong military. Some things never change.
MIKE DONOVAN SAVES EARTH FROM FACIST INVADERS
One of the best sellers of 1935 was a controversial book about the rise of a fascist movement in the United States. It Can't Happen Here was written by the prolific Sinclair Lewis. But ICHH wasn't a warning about Hitler in America, it was a warning about some of the radicals already here like Huey Long of Louisiana or Father Lashua and his depraved followers in Wisconsin. The moral of the book was that it can happen here.
This story was remade into a mini-series by NBC in 1982. The writers thought it was time to warn about the possibility of new fascism in Reagan's America by reviving this tale of fascism in the USA. But NBC didn't want to rock the boat so they made the writers go back to the drawing board and rewrite it in a new way. The fascists who took over the country were aliens from outer space! And the lead character who saves the day and stops the alien invasion is named Mike Donovan. The Series was called V and was a big deal when it was out. It's still a popular sci-fi rental. You could now re-write It Can't Happen Here and base it on the suppression of free speech as told in the story of the making of “V.”
ITALO-ABYSSYNIAN WAR CLOUDS – SUMMER - 1935
We left off with Italy demanding an abject apology plus reparations of Ethiopia even though Italy was the aggressor state in the confrontation at Ogaden (Wal Wal in the province of Ogaden – 12.5.34.)
Ethiopia, and its Emperor Selassie, who claimed to be descended from the Queen of Sheeba, had one only threat up its shamma, only one good card to play. Selassie let all the diplomats of Europe know that he was ready and willing to submit the dispute over what happened at Wal Wal officially to the League of Nations. They key word is officially. The League was more than willing to have closed door hearings with all the principals involved. The League, dominated by the traditional states of Europe and always concerned first and foremost with those interests while pretending to be a true world body of fairness, was more than willing to negotiate a raw deal for Ethiopia behind closed League doors.
Simple Simon and firing squad Laval tried to work out a deal with the Ethiopians that was absurdly profitable for Italy even though the foreign ministers of Britian and France knew that Italy was at fault. It is all in all a sorry story and perfect for the origins of WWII, since that origin is the poster-boy for appeasement for all history.
The League had a series of meetings in January of 1935 in which all the general problems of Europe were discussed. Abyssinia came up as a problem attached to other greater concerns, but rarely as a problem to be discussed alone. That was probably a key to how the whole thing was resolved.
The Europeans also had racist bias. England and France were liable to let Italy get away with abuses against a black nation because it was abuses against a black nation. If Italy had tried the same aggression against Hungary, it would have been a different story at the League of Wimps.
Emperor Selassie had a few options besides the pathetically unhelpful League of Nations. Selassie could appeal to the Pope and the Catholic Church for help and support. He could appeal to the United States and to Roosevelt personally. He could try to work a behind the scenes deal at the League or one in the normal halls of diplomatic interaction outside the league. He could also try to appeal the the world public over the head of all the politicians of the world.
In fact Heyle Selassie tried all of these things to stop Italy from invading and swallowing his country. All of them failed miserably. Only the last tactic, of appealing to world public opinion produced anything positive at all, and that not concrete enough to actually do much good. In the end he did get the world to realize what was about to happen to his country, even if failed to prevent it.
On July 3, 1935 Selassie consulted the American Ambassador and gave him a letter to be wired to Roosevelt explaining that Mussolini was planning to conquer Ethiopia. Couldn't the United States, the champion of the underdog, the champion of independence do something?
The note reached Secretary of State Hull who responded to the Ethiopian Ambassador in Washington with a formal letter of support. But the support was weak, and that's being kind.
Hull essentially told Ethiopian that the United States was certain that the League of Nations would do it's job and that a peaceful solution would be found. Ethiopia responded with
“Mr. Hull, sir. You obviously don't get it. The League is not going to do anything. Italy is going to attack us as soon as the rainy season ends and everyone knows it. Mussolini isn't even hiding the fact any more. He is making public pronouncements that he wants all of Ethiopia and he doesn't even have to explain himself. We are only approaching you now because all other options have run as dry as the Sudan. You are our last desperate hope! Please help us!”
The Hull would answer with another pathetic vague note that a peaceful settlement must be found and he is confident that Italy will not resort to war. He again was sure that the two countries would consult their Treaty of 1928 which required that all disputes between the two countries would be always resolved peacefully.
Ethiopia responded,
“Mr Hull. Will you get the potatoes out of your ears? Italy had completely ignored the Treaty of 1928, the League of Nations, all attempts to settle the matter directly between the two countries, and all attempts to allow any mediation from third parties. Mussolini is telling the entire world every day that he is going to conquer Ethiopia and avenge Adowa. No one is doing anything to stop him. We are turning to America as a last desperate resort! God help us! America please help us!”
Hull would deliver a not the next day with the same vague words about how he was confident that Mussolini would find a way to settle the matter peacefully. Finally the Ethiopians threw in the towel-head and gave up on the United States. America wasn't going to do a damn thing and was going to add insult to injury by couching its flat refusal to help with pious statements about how confident it was that everything was going to work out fine.
Selassie next turned to the Pope for help. Ha ha ha ha ha ha!
And what country does the Pope live in? What nationality is Pious 11? Who just gave the Catholic Church a whole bunch of money?
Italy of course, housed the Pope. The spiritual compass of the world wasn't pointing north to justice. It was all over the selfish dial. The Pope and the Catholic Church sold Ethiopia down river like a church of atheism wouldn't ever do.
REARMAMENT, NOT DISARMAMENT – MARCH 1935
One year before he marched into the Rhineland, Hitler announced that Germany would no longer consider itself bound by the arms limitations of the Versailles Treaty of 1919. That treaty had limited Germany to an Army of 100,000 men.
In March of 1936 Hitler announced that the was building a big new Luftwaffe, and a big new Wermacht of 750,000 troops.
It was an act of open defiance. How the west reacted would influence his future behavior.
STRESA FRONT
Or.. The Beautiful Front. The Stresa Front was the diplomatic reaction to Hitler's decision to openly re-arm by Italy, France and England.
Stresa is a small town on Lake Maggione in Northern Italy about 40 miles long and very beautiful. In the middle of the Lake is little Beautiful Island. The big shots had to take a little boat to Beautiful and it was at a fancy hotel on this little island that three nations met to throw Abyssinia under the bus and issue a policy warning to Hitler.
All three states were playing a forked-tongue diplomatic game with Hitler. Italy France and England were all trying to get tough with Hitler and court him at the same time. Those who failed to pick a team in time were left holding the bag in 1939. In 1935 all three were afraid of Hitler and so all three tried the two track approach. Stresa was the get tough track for all three in combo. Or at least it was supposed to be.
The great diplomats of Europe came. The slimy Pierre Laval of France was there, a true python if there ever was one. Its too bad for history that he was ever born, let alone made Foreign Minister of France. For Great Britain came Ramsey Macdonald, a man whose conduct wold never be described as “Churchillian.”
Hosting this clambake was Benito Mussolini. He was the real grande prize here and he knew it. England and France were trying to woo him into their orbit and keep him out of Hitlers. They were happy when Mussolini got worried about German re-armament.
Stresa protested strongly against German re-armament and invoked the Treaty of Locarno as still operative. Rearmament wasn't the whole problem. The issue was really Austria. If Germany re-arms it then moves against Austria and this the three of them combined against. The Stresa proclamation of April 14 1935 at the end of the three-day conference made it very clear that Italy France and Britian were prepared to guarantee the independence of Austria. Hitler later took Austria in 38 but only because Italy had changed its mind about Stresa and allied itself to Germany. The Anschluss of 1938 would not have been possible for Hitler if the Sresa Proclamation had still been operative in 1938.
Ethiopia was out of luck at Stresa. The Europeans sold Heyle Selassie up the river and gave Mussolini a free hand in Ethiopia if he would support them against Hitler. France and Italy set themselves up like fools. Mussolini took Ethiopia then joined the Axis and repudiated Stresa. Suckaaaas!
By the way, it's pronounced 'stray-sa' not 'stress-a.'
Beautiful Island was loaded with about 3,000 fascist guards for the Straysa event. Newsreels spoke of it as either a ceremonial guard or that it was there to protect the foreign diplomats. In truth it was to protect Mussolini from his own people. A woman had shot him in a failed assassination attempt back in 1926 and he was 'how you say... paranoi' from then on. Like Sadaam Hussein, Mussolini was in control but knew he was a bad boy and if a truck backfired outside, only one man in the room hit the floor in terror and it wasn't the janitor.
ANGLO GERMAN NAVAL TREATY - JUNE 1935
England did something really stupid at about this time. It was a bad decision made with incredibly bad timing. Just a few weeks after Stresa Great Britian made the great blunder of concluding a separate naval treaty with Germany. The terms were bad enough, but the very fact that the Brits had made a separate treaty with the Nazis was disastrous in itself.
By terms of the spring treaty Germany was allowed to have 30% as much tonnage in capital ships as the UK and France. Since Germany was gung-ho to re-arm and the west was not, this meant that Germany could build a smaller number of superior battleships.
Germany was to be allowed a limited percentage of submarines, but that restriction was for a limited time. Germany within two years would be allowed to build as many submarines as it wanted. Considering the dreadful experience of the British at the hands of German U-boats in World War I, it is shocking that Britain agreed to this in the spring of 1935.
The reaction to this treaty was what it should have been to Britain's allies. France and others said to the UK, 'obviously you guys aren't remotely serious about collective security against resurgent Germany. You're just looking after yourselves, so I guess we will too. The United States could shake its head and thank goodness it was no longer involved with perfidious Albion.
Britian had worked hard to get France on board and now in one fell swoop tossed Pierre back overboard. France would look out for number one from now on since Britain was obviously going to do the same
The Stresa Front was destroyed in one afternoon. As vague as it was, the Stresa Front was at least an attempt in the direction of collective security.
The act of making a separate treaty with Hitler, and one that granted him the right to build up his military in violation of the Versailles Treaty meant the end of whatever was left of the Versailles Treaty. The VT was now “a scrap of paper.” Great Britain had enabled Hitler big time by legitimizing his defiance of the military limitations of 1919.
The Anglo-German naval treaty of 1935 isn't as famous as it deserves to be, partly because it never got a catchy name. If it had been drafted and signed in the Winchester Cathedral, and came to be called the Winchester Treaty it would get the nefarious attention it deserves.
Ben Musso certainly took notice of the AGN-35 treaty. It confirmed what he already suspected. That Britian and France were in an appeasement mode. He knew he could do as he pleased to Ethiopia. Britain wasn't going to stop him. All Britian had to do was close the Suez Canal to Italian shipping and he could not conquer Ethiopia. It was as simple as that.
Britain not only did not close the Canal to Italy, Britain never even threatened to! During all the diplomatic negotiations over the crisis in Abyssinia, Great Britian never used a threat to close the Suez Canal as a negotiating tool. Mussolini and Du Bono both feared this. They both discussed how they have to get all their military supplies into Eritrea and Italian Somaliland as soon as possible in case Britain closes the Suez Canal. But Britian wasn't about to. Italian ships provided more than 50% of the total revenue from the Canal. So there ya go. Greed is our creed.
One history book (Wheatcroft Road to War) says that Italy represented a serious threat to England from East Africa. They say the Suez Canal was a vulnerable hot spot, a target of opportunity for the Italians, rather than a pillar of strength through which Britain could choke Italy ambitions into submission.
Overy and Wheatcroft also claim that Italy was allying with the Muslim world in South Central Asia in order to scare England and that to some extent it worked, and that was partly why England backed down on Abyssinia. The fascist controlled Italian press began to print articles attacking Zionism, more as a tool to attract Arab allies than an expression of real heartfelt sentiment. Few countries in Europe hated the Jews less than Italy, but this was convenient for the Ethiopian situation. Italians all over Europe went out of their way to have their radios playing short-wave Arab broadcasts whenever they thought important westerners might be sitting at a table nearby.
Mussolini was the dictator who was oppressing the Seussi Arabs in Libya but now we are supposed to believe that he was the ally of the Arabs and that England bought it. I can buy into it just barely up to the last part.
There is one speech he made in Libya where he talks about it openly, but since all the other historians seem to omit the Arab-Italian alliance factor, it was probably a passing fancy that he tried out in test mode a little.
CHURCHILL ALSO ONBOARD FOR APPEASEMENT
The record is clear. Throughout most of 1935 Winston Churchill also supported the British policy of appeasing Mussolini at the expense of Ethiopia. WSP did not object to the idea that above all else, Italy must be courted in order to prevent it from uniting with Hitler. Churchill openly said that our interests are primarily in Europe and if we have to sacrifice some territory in Africa in order to save Europe we must do so. To paraphrase Churchill's later words, you chose appeasement to prevent war, so you lost in appeasement and you got your war anyway.
Churchill is deified by history as being the one guy who always wanted Britian to stand up to the fascist threats, and in the events of 1937-9 this was heroically true. But in the case of Ethiopia in 1935, Churchill was a racist appeaser who thought African lives were cheaper than European ones. Tony Eden has a much better record on Ethiopia as far as the judgement of history is concerned, and even Eden wasn't 'Churchillian,' as we understand the term.
911
On September 11 1935 British Foreign Minister Sammy Hoare went before the League of Nations to deliver a much anticipated speech. This was a long scheduled plenary session but everyone knew what was on everyone's mind at the moment: Ethiopia. The whole world now knew that Mussolini was planning to attack as soon as the rainy season ended. World public opinion was rising in defense of Ethiopia. In America and in England, there were demonstrations in favor of Ethiopia and against Italy. The pressure on France and England to step up to the plate and honor the principles of collective security were growing daily.
The great Briton stepped up to the podium and delivered a 65 minute speech that was exactly what most of the world wanted to hear from Hoare. The principles upon which the League were founded were to be honored more than ever in this time of crisis. Italy was clearly the aggressor. England and France would not simply stand aside and let Italy conquer Ethiopia. The very idea of the League if Nations was that small countries had a right to live in peace without being threatened by big countries. Every sentence was an Ethiopia spear hurled at Mussolini and a reassurance to the world that England would stand with France and stop this impending aggression in East Africa.
No one made a sound during the dramatic 911 speech. There were no applause breaks. But when he finished with the words, “Viva la Selassie,” and sat down, the room exploded into a six minute standing ovation. The Italians were the only ones who didn't stand or applaud. They had their arms folded in anger while the sea of approval swept the room and then the globe.
The Hoare speech of 91135 was headline news everywhere except inner Mongolia. When Selassie got his copy of the speech and the report of the response to it he broke out the 60 year old French champagne. There was genuine wild celebration in the streets of Addis Ababa.
What Selassie did not know was that the night before, on September 10, 1935, Hoare had met with Pierre Laval and the two had agreed that they would do nothing to stop Mussolini. The two scoundrels agreed that a rousing speech tomorrow at Geneva would help quell the clamor of public opinion in Ethiopia's defense, but that it was just a smokescreen for what they really intended to do about Ethiopia. What they really intended to do about Ethiopia was nothing at all. Hoare didn't have a moral bone in his royal body. He had no principles to sell. Hoare was a prostitute.
WWI diplomatic veteran leader David Lloyd George was one of the few who had the experience and wisdom to see through the smoke. He made a speech the next day 912 in Plymouth in which he remarked that the speech was fine, but there was nothing to indicate that the situation had really changed, and noted that no one had proposed any concrete measures to stop Mussolini.
Mussolini defied the speech and for the 100th time told the world that he was going to attack and that was that and what are you going to do about it.
England responded by sending battleships into the Mediterranean as an obvious warning.
Mussolini then made open threats to England that he was not the least bit afraid of going to war with England. Big Ben not only told England that if it tried to stop him it meant war between England and Italy, he even told England that if any nation so much as even imposed punitive sanctions against Italy it would mean war with Italy for that country.
The British Ambassador in Rome wired back that these threats were real, not so much because Benny thought he could beat England in a war, but rather that Italy was so geared for war that if attack were called off, the economic damage to Italy would be just as great as losing a war with England. Italy and Mussolini were willing to “commit national suicide” in a war with England with some glory involved rather than suffer the long term ignominy of backing down under English threats, and then going bankrupt and getting deposed.
Mussolini made statements day after day to the effect that, “I just spent 2 million lire to put an army in Ethiopia. Does anyone think I did this just for laughs?”
Here is the rest of the world pretending that a diplomatic solution was possible and going through the motions on that score in many channels, and at the exact same time Mussolini is making bald bold statements every single day to reporters, to intimates, to diplomats and to his butler that, “I intend to take all of Ethiopia as soon as the rainy season ends. Why should the rest of Europe care about a backward country like Ethiopia where there is still slavery. Italy has a mission to upgrade the life of those primitive people. Europe will thank me for it. I am going to avenge Adowa and that is that.”
The economy of Italy was precarious. The Great Depression was in full swing world wide. Mussolini was solving the Depression by putting the country on a war footing, and now he needed that war to make his economy work. BM had a 200,000 man of an army in place now in Ethiopia waiting to attack. If he had to power down that force and ship it back to Rome the Italian economy would collapse. As things stood it the Italian economy was a Potemkin Village anyway, but if Italy could win a war it might inspire the people to greater heights of confidence and in that way barely save the economy. Italy literally couldn't afford to back down in Ethiopia.
Perhaps the most insane thing in all of this (and I wouldn't believe it if only one historian said it, but several have,) is that the wild bombastic gestures of Mussolini's bluff oratory was the only thing Italy really had going for it, yet it fooled the statesmen of the west! Italy was a weak country, with a shattered economy in the middle of the world's shattered economy. Its armed forces were weak unless it faced an Ethiopia. The Italian Army Navy and Air Force couldn't last one round against a real power. And Italy was still isolated diplomatically
At face value, England and France should have laughed in Benito's face when he made his endless threats. They should have known better. They had all the stats, and all the experience, and all the military force to laugh in his face, and instead they bought his publicity kit.
Again, if one historian said this I would scoff it off. But several have said the same thing. Mussolini's pompous speech-making, his famous physical gestures of macho, actually worked on England and France at least as well as it did on his own people. This ugly squid's over-the-top angry defiant oratorical skills actually intimidated nations ten times stronger than him and triggered a chain of events that sent the world up in flames.
OIL PLOY
Selassie tried something clever, which almost worked. He granted an oil concession to Standard Oil of the United States to his country. Ethiopia had very little oil, but there was a pretty good chance that it had more that was yet untapped. It was a good idea. Now if Italy invaded Ethiopia, Mussolini would be trampling on the economic rights of the United States. Surely this might be a successful deterrent to war.
But Roosevelt and Hull played their isolationist-appeasement- ostrich role to perfection. Hull called the Standard Oil executives into his Washington office and let them have it. The United States was not going to be dragged into a conflict with Italy because Standard Oil wanted to make money in Ethiopia. Standard Oil was intimidated into canceling the deal with Ethiopia.
LIONS BY THE TAIL
Selassie kept wiring to Geneva looking for hope and Geneva kept wiring back reports of hopelessness.
The weather in Ethiopia all summer was rain and the whole world by now knew that as soon as the rains ended it was curtains for Ethiopia. The sun finally ruled the day on September 23. Just a couple of days of sunshine to dry out the mud and Italy was going to pounce. Selassie for weeks wanted to fully mobilize his limited army, but he knew that Mussolini might use that as a pretext to claim that Ethiopia was the aggressor. For diplomatic purposes, for diplomatic hopes, however limited, Haile was afraid to mobilize even though it was the obvious thing to do.
Selassie was an emperor's emperor. He had 17 pet lions. Most of them were cubs, and he used to walk around the streets with two or three lion cubs on a leash. On September 25 several adult lions escaped the Emperor's crib and sent panic through the streets of Addis Ababa. The lions were rounded up by nightfall. The domestic lion threat was settled, but the 200,000 turkey vultures were still on the horizon.
COURAGE ON THE BALCONY - OCT 2 1935
Mussolini held a war festival all over Italy in the early evening of October 2. Mussolini first ordered every church in Italy to summon the people to the squares. But the Pope had a conscience, even if he didn't exactly always act intrepidly on it. Earlier, the Pope refused to bless the Italian troops leaving Italian ports for Africa. Now the Pope told big Ben he could not use the church to summon up a national war mob. So the fascists used whistles instead. An estimated 15 million Italians gathered in city and town squares to hear him speak happily of war over the radio. In Rome the fascists whistled up 300,000 people to wait below the dictator balcony to hear him emerge and deliver it in person. It was a great speech in which he boldly announced that the war against Ethiopia had already begun (it actually had not at that moment.)
Mussolini specifically warned England and France to stay out of it and that if they responded militarily, they would have to face the wrath of powerful Italy.
This show of bombast bombed in Rome even though it killed in London and Paris. The more he threatened England and France in the speech, the weaker and shorter were the applause breaks. near the end of the speech the 300,000 listeners became notably sullen even began to drift away. He had a higher percentage of walkouts than my infamous show for the Manchester PTA back in 2006. The Italian people, like the German people later, enjoyed internal buildup and bloodless conquests of prostrate peoples with western seal of approval (Libya for Italy, Austria and Sudetenland for Germany,) but spit out their coffee in horror when these leaders then took it too far by really going to war. All accounts of Hitler's announcement of war with Poland in 1939 tell the same story. No cheering on Main Street, more like “oh oh, this isn't good.”
When the Americans and British liberated most of Italy in 1943-4, there was far more cheering for that than there was when Mussolini told them they were about to beat the sand out of Ethiopia.
EVIL PREPARES
General Bob De Bono was in command in Africa. He wasn't a hell of a guy. De Bono was a fascist licker of Mussolini's boots. he was also high strung, elderly and in ill health. Half of DB's troops were Eritrean blacks who for some reason thought the whole thing was a good idea. There were about 200,000 whites and 180,000 blacks in the army that started World War II.
“Bobintense” De Bono (his famous nickname) thought his forces were not ready, but Mussolini ignored his complaints and told General De Bono to do as he's told and go conquer Ethiopia for Italy.
De Bono thought it might be better to attack from Somaliland where the terrain was flat desert or easily traversable highlands. But Mussolini wanted Adowa avenged so he insisted that the main three Corps of the invaders (a corps is several armies, an army is several divisions, a division is 10,000 men, give or take) attack from Italian Eritrea in the north. This was militarily foolish since this was rough high mountain terrain, but Mussolini was a fool so it makes sense that he ordered this.
The three rainbow coalition corps of aggression crossed the border into Ethiopia at 5 in the morning on October 3 1935. World War II had begun.
It's hard for history to remember just how mean Italy was during this whole affair. Much greater events quickly pushed the Abyssinian affair into the background. By the time the war was on, Italy was a sideshow compared to Hitler and Hirohito. Italy had such a pathetic war record in military and even political performance that the image evolved of a pathetic laughing stock dictatorship, trying to shine Hitler's shoes and doing a bad job of even that. By the time the war ended Italy was just the butt of a million jokes. History was furious with German and Japan, but Italy was more of a laughing stock, plus the Italian people had deposed Mussolini and joined the invaders joyously.
History has been unfair to Italy. In fairness Italy should stand on the dock of history for its behavior in Ethiopia as one of the great war criminals of the family of nations. It really hasn't. Mussolini's empire was just as evil as Aushwitz and Nanking for the Ethiopians who died and suffered and lost their homes and their husbands in this evil unjust and totally unprovoked war.
Imagine that the story stopped after Italy conquered Ethiopia and somehow the larger war of 1939-1945 was avoided. England and France stood up to Hitler and Stalin didn't make a pact with him and the war never broke out.
If that had happened then you would have 200 books in the New York Public library on the Italian aggression against Ethiopia and how it stands out as perhaps the greatest crime of the 20th century. Universities would have professors of the Ethiopian War. Now its not even very important in the history science. Too much other stuff drowned it out. It's hard to get anyone to look back at WWII with any hatred of Italy, but its easy to stir up hatreds against Germany even today.
Germany was “conquered” in 1945. Italy was “liberated.” Just by using the word, the world exonerated the Italian people without a trial, as if they had been Mussolini's prisoner since 1922 and at long last someone came in and rescued them. That's hardly fair and doesn't square with the facts.
There was no Nuremberg hanging fiesta for Italian war criminals for history to feast on with pointed fingers as the detailed accounts of everything they did as printed in a thousand newspapers all over the world.. Conveniently, the Italians had hung their own war criminals before the victors could get their own ropes on them. The Germans also executed many Italian war criminals for betraying Germany after they had first supported Germany. In other words, the British would have hanged a Giovanni Giannelli after the war for what he did when he supported the Axis from 1936 to 1942. But they never got to him because when Gianelli had second thoughts about continuing the war, and when he openly supported Italian surrender in 1943, the Gestapo arrested him and shot him. Giannelli would have been tried after the war, but the Germans shot him in 43 for opposite reason the Allies would have tried them first and then hung them in 46.
History treats the Italian aggression of 1935 as a mere prologue, but it wasn't at the time. The aggression of Italy in East Africa was evil on the march and having its way. Italy was no laughing stock in 1935. Forget 1946. See Italy from the prism of 1935. There were demonstrations on New York City that brought thousands of people out in angry protest against Mussolini, and this was before the war even began. Benito was so obviously going to do this bad thing that mobs hit the streets of London and New York imploring their government to stand up and tell that this will not stand.
ADOWA AVENGED
The first goal of the Italian invaders was Adowa. Pride comes first. The Italian air force came in and dropped bombs on peaceful Ethiopian villages. It was just terror attacking of little military benefit.
Two if the first planes in to drop their bombs were sons of Italy. In fact they were sons of Benito Mussolini. Bruno and Vittorio Mussolini were in the first wave of three-engine fighter-bombers killing innocent people on the Ethiopian ground. This was like as if Sadaam Hussein's two sons Uday and Hassan were personally attacking Kuwaiti villagers in 1990 at the spearhead of the August 1 1990 invasion.
Also flying one of the attack planes and personally killing innocent Adowans who were just minding their own business and just happened to live in the town where Italy suffered a humiliating defeat back in 1896 was Count Galeazzo Ciano. He was the son-in-law in Benito Mussolini.
Ciano was a rising star in the fascist government. At this time he was in charge of Mussolini's security, quite an important job. Within a year he would become the foreign minister and would be the man who personally signed on with Hitler in the Axis pacts.
The soon-to-be Foreign Minister of Italy was bombing civilians from behind the controls of his plane. That's almost like if the US orders new air strikes in Afghanistan and Hillary Clinton drops the first smart bomb on the target in her Super-Hornet F-18.
Bruno Mussolini actually wrote a letter back home to Rome that he was disappointed with the size of the explosions when he bombed Ethiopian hut. “I was hoping for big explosions to the sky like in the American movies. These huts just do not go up like that,” he wrote scummily.
The Italians took Adowa and then had a celebration the next day. The people of Adowa were forced to cheer wildly for De Bono as he gave a speech in town square in which he promised liberty to all the audience. If they didn't clap and cheer loud enough for liberty they were threatened with rhino-whips. One crack and the Ahmerics cheered “Viva la Mussolini!”
THE UNITED STATES WEIGHS IN ON ABYSSINIA
On October 3, exactly ten minutes after the war began in Ethiopia, FDR left San Diego on the USS Houston for a three week vacation. I don't think a President could get away with that today, requisitioning a US warship for a personal vacation. FDR steamed off to the Cocos Islands in the South Pacific on the Houston for three weeks for a little R&R.
Before Houston left, FDR made the USA's position clear on Ethiopia. He gave a speech at a SD sports stadium before 55,000 fans in which he did his best Gerald Ford on Vietnam impression.
“It is not America's concern who is right or who is wrong in this conflict. We didn't start it, and we're not going to finish it for others like we did in 1918. The Ethiopian war with Italy is a foreign war and I promise you once again that your boys are not going to go off to die in a foreign war. Washington gave the warning and it must still be heeded. We must keep free from foreign entanglements.”
The crowd cheered like FDR had just scored the winning goal.
FDR had more than a speech up his ever-clever sleeve.
He had already drafted a Neutrality Proclamation, asserting that the United States would refuse to sell arms to either belligerent in case a war broke out. The NP applied to any foreign war. It just happened to the this one he was dealing with at the moment.
Franklin told Cordell to issue the Neutrality Proclamation the moment Italy openly invaded Ethiopia.
The United States was kicking sand in Haile Salassie's face. Italy had more than enough modern weapons to teach the Ahmerics a lesson. Mussolini didn't need to buy any more. The USA was proclaiming its neutrality by openly supporting the one side it privately claimed to be against.
Out on the Houston, FDR got word that the Italians had crossed into Ethiopia and wired Hull to issue the Neutrality Proclamation. Hull did not act because he wanted the League of Nations to act first. Hull did not want the United States front and center on this, no matter what America did. Three telegrams later, FDR got short with his Tennessee Secretary of State and asked him,
“My friend, - What are you waiting for? The return of the Crusades? Issue the Proclamation at once, as you were instructed to do several days ago.”
So Hull issued the official Proclamation of Neutrality. Ethiopia could not buy any weapons or anything that might be construed to help the cause, from the United States. The door was shut for American help. It was Uncle Slammed.
Ethiopia was desperate for weapons. Some of the soldiers were armed with rhinoceros whips. I couldn't make that up.
Nor is this made up; There was a military procession in front of the Emperor's box at Addis Ababa that was supposed to show off the martial spirit and warlike capabilities of Ethiopia. But every other soldier that passed by the reviewing stand shouted out a plea to the Emperor for a rifle. Instead of pledging to die bravely for Ethiopia they stopped and pleaded with him that they could not go into battle barefoot and unarmed. It became so embarrassing that the Emperors bodyguard actually had to break out the rhino whips. The guards had to actually whip dozens of soldiers to force these pleading Abyssinian bare footmen to keep moving and stop embarrassing Selassie. I love stories like that!
A third of the Ethiopian Army fought barefoot. 20% fought with spears. Only 55% the army had rifles and the vast majority of these were vintage 1890's. The Ethiopian Army was going to stop the Italian Army from avenging Adowa with rifles left over from Adowa. It was 70mm howitzers, 50 cal. machine guns, and three-engine monoplane fighter-bombers against rusty antique rifles, spears, and rhino whips. Who are you betting on? Vegas put Ethiopia at 500-1. Smart high rollers up a million and collected the $2,000.
Ethiopia was Davey and Italy was Goliath and the United States proclaimed that it was not going to sell a single slingshot or rock to Davey. But it wasn't going to sell one to Goliath either so therefore it a was moral and good proclamation.
FDR personally was much more of an interventionist than that, but he knew he didn't have the support, and refused to go out and try to get it. He personally hated what Italy/Mussolini was doing. But for FDR it was politics first, and if 10,000 Ethiopians paid
with their life and liberty, hey, Pontius Pilate is off to the Coco Islands for three weeks and he can't be reached.
When he got back from his cup of Coco, the war was on in full swing. The League was discussing an economic boycott nicknamed the 4A. The League members would ban the export of oil, coal, scrap iron, and copper.
The League pleaded with America to go along, but with money motive on the plate, and America at the dining table, there wasn't really much hope there.
Standard Oil supplied one fourth of Italy's domestic oil consumption. Standard oil sales to “East Africa” in July and August 1935 was up 650% over sales to the same region in the same two months of 1934. Not only was America not going to boycott oil sales to Italy, it was enjoying the economic benefits of the war situation already. Meanwhile Britian played a shell game. British companies like Shell were selling large quantities of oil to East Africa from Aden, a short trip for the Queen's tankers.
GB ELECTIONS OF 1935
The Stan the Man Baldwin “Coalition Government” won re-election in October 1935. Samuel Q. Hoare remained the Foreign Minister. Baldwin gave a speech in the Commons that was packed to overflow to hear what the new administration had to say about the war in Africa. He pledged England to “eternal support for the League of Nation and its principles, now more than ever.”
But as usual, he was planning a behind the scenes deal with France and its scrupulously unscrupulous man in power, Pierre Laval. The Laval-Baldwin deal would have France and England completely bypass the League of Nations, ... as usual.
ITALY MOVES IN AFRICA
De Bono had an e-mail fight with Mussolini about when to move, where to advance, and how far to advance before stopping to consolidate gains. It was a classic McClellan-Lincoln spat, and ended typically, when De Bono got de commissioned.
When De Bono finally advanced south from Eritrea he met no opposition for week, but when his force advanced into a place called Ende Gorge, De Bono got a sneaky feeling something was wrong.
It was like a cowboy and Indian movie. De Bono stopped his horse, looked around the gorge and said, “I don't like the looks of this. There's high ground on all sides of us. Its too quiet. Oliveri! Demartino! I want you to go go out in front and have a look around. I don't like the way this feels.”
Just as Oliveri got off his horse and started to advance cautiously a shot rang out and Oliveri went down with a severe leg wound. Then the shouts of 3,000 Ethiopians rang out and they came charging down the edges of the gorge like deranged animals. Invading your homeland tends to make people act like that.
The Battle of Ende Gorge lasted all afternoon of November 12 1935. Casualties were about 200 total for both sides. The Italians fought hard but got the worst of it.
At the end of the day the battle ended abruptly. The Ethiopians did not believe in night fighting. This was a lucky break for the Italians, who realized that it was hopeless and that they were surrounded. They would have make a brief show of fight in the morning and surrender. The Ethiopians could just lob shells and shoot them like ducks in a barrel all day. In the morning the Italians waited for the attack that would force them to surrender.
But all was quiet. What's going on?
“Panini! Go up top and look around!”
“But what if the Ethio ...
“Do as I say!”
Corporal Panini went up thinking it was a suicide recon. Instead he found nothing. The Ethiopians had left town!
The Abyssinians weren't cowards, they were slaves to culture. The Ethiopians were trapped in an emotional antiquated concept of warfare. They thought that an army was supposed to slug it out for a glorious historical afternoon and then it was all over, no matter what happened. Exploiting gains and opportunities wasn't part of their thinking. The idea of considering a battle to be merely one component of a larger strategic campaign plan was not on the Ethiopian radar. The chumps had an Italian brigade trapped in their pocket and walked away.
It was bad enough that it %3 of the Ethiopian Army went into battle barefoot, and carrying rhino whips. They were even more backward in tactics than they were in weaponry and logistics. The emerging Axis of Italy, Germany and Japan were at the cutting edge of the latest developments in military science, and the first victim on the Axis menu was just the opposite.
HOARE-LAVAL PLAN OF DECEMBER 1935
Pierre Laval and Sam Hoare sold Ethiopia up the creek in December of 1935 with a plan that they pretended was fair to both sides. The plan was a partition of Ethiopia with Italy gaining much ground in Ethiopian East Africa without war. Even if it was “acceptable” to all parties, could anyone use the word “fair?”
What fairness was Italy entitled to as an aggressor? Even a fair settlement was unfair because one side was right and the other was wrong. The only fair thing would be to punish Italy with severe sanctions, openly support, Ethiopia, demand that Italy withdraw its troops from where they had entered Ethiopia, and demand reparation from Italy for Ethiopia for all it had done going back to Wal Wal. That wasn't about to happen but when they talked about “fair,” they were dishonest if they proposed or settled for anything less.
LEAGUE OF WIMPY NATIONS
The League of Wimpy Nations did indeed try to get tough with Italy for its invasion of Ethiopia. It passed limited sanctions against Italy for a limited list of products. Everything that Italy needed to conduct war was not sanctioned. The League made it temporary illegal to sell to Italy reading glasses, combs, desk lamps and cologne. As far as oil, steel, copper and gunpowder were concerned, hey no problem.
The League passed just enough sanctions to help Mussolini, and not enough to hurt him. How did the limited sanctions actually help the fascist? Simple. He had his hands full trying to sell a needless war to a people already suffering from economic depression. The League of Nations passed limited sanctions and that gave him a rallying point to garner home support for his war. Once the League branded Italy the aggressor, support for Mussolini and his war jumped forward. It's like when you criticize members of your family to other members of the family, and that's fine, but when an outsider does it there is hell to pay and suddenly the same family person you condemned yesterday you praise today. The LWN, the League of Wimpy Nations, united the Italian people behind Mussolini's African adventure without damaging his logistics, either military or political by enacting half measures designed to appease their home governments more than the principles of Wilson and 1919.
BATTLE OF DENGUINA PASS – DECEMBER 15 1935
When Mussolini was yelling at De Bono to get moving, and when De Bono finally got on with it and took Adowa and Makalle, one if the unanticipated consequences was an exposed left flank. Two Italian corps were advancing, but the one under Mussolini's anger was pushing far forward of the other. So the advanced corps had an exposed flank.
The Ethiopians had the upper hand on the flank at the Matsuzaka River. Two Italian brigades (80% of these troops were Uncle Ben African blacks in service to Italy) saw the light and retreated north. But a force of 2,000 angry Ethiopian nationalists was waiting in ambush for them. This force had cut the Italians under Captain Belzero off at the Denguina Pass.
The Italians did have one advantage. They had tanks. Captain Ricardo Belzero decided to smash a hole through the roadblock with his 9 I-tanks.
But the Ethiopians attacked the tanks successfully.
I'm the first to make fun of a mismatch when it's modern weapons against spears, but in this amazing story of history, spears did stop tanks. The warriors used spears and rods as wedges between the wheels and treads of the tanks. All nine were disabled and had to surrender.
One half of the Italians got away through the trap. The other 500 were killed, wounded or captured. The Ethiopians lost more than 300 killed.
Dembeguino Pass wasn't a strategic victory, but it was a major psychological one. The Italians were retreating and had left more disabled vehicles in the desert than Jimmy Carter.
LAGUARDIA IS AN ITALIAN FIRST
You don't have to hate another race to be a racist. Its just as racist to be overly patriotic towards your own race as it is to hate another race. On December 14, 1935 20,000 Italian Americans packed Madison Square Garden at a pro-Mussolini rally. Here was the rest of the world condemning Italy for its aggression and the Garden is filled with people who said, my race, right or wrong.
To justify the crime, the rally was ostensibly to raise money for the Italian Red Cross. But every time one of the speakers mentioned Mussolini, the place gave an ovation like Mussolini just scored a goal for the home team to win the game. Outside the arena, 2,000 anti-fascists protested the event for what it was, a racist rally for evil. These people all would probably have the kindest heart towards an Ethiopian neighbor in need next door. But in distant African it was racial loyalty first. The Mayor of New York was an Italian named Fiorella LaGuardia, the airport guy. He sat in a luxury box near the stage. Italian speakers blamed Ethiopia for the conflict with Italy, and condemned the League of Nations as a place where the old colonial powers continued to divide the world while making secret and corrupt deals. They tried to get La Guardia to get up and make a speech but he wasn't that foolish. He did get up and take a bow a couple of times.
BACK IN ENGLAND
On December 16 the British Cabinet tried to distance itself from the actions of Sam Hoare. The Prime Minister and the League Ambassador spoke to Hoare about all the reaction to the well-publicized plan to dismember Ethiopia like an 18th century partition of Poland. Hoare told them not to worry.
They warned him that this might bring about the downfall of the government. Hoare got angry with his British colleagues and said that the agreement would work and he had worked hard to arrange it and he wasn't going to back down now, and in fact would resign before he threw in the towel on the Hoare-Laval agreement.
Eden and Baldwin handed Hoare a giant stack of telegrams from all over the Commonwealth denouncing the H-L agreement. Hoare said the subject was closed. As Eden and Baldwin began to leave his office, Hoare to show his defiance, tossed the pile of angry telegrams to the ceiling and they floated down as Eden and Baldwin left.
“He's lost his mind,” said Eden.
“He's all right,” said Baldwin. “But he doesn't realize how much trouble he's in.”
Sure enough the Parliament denounced the Laval-Hoare plan so thoroughly that Hoare had to resign and the Hoare-Laval plan was no longer in effect.
Mussolini then announced that as far as Italy was concerned, the Hoare-Laval plan was still operational and that was the basis on which he was proceeding. But it was a joke since England had most officially rejected it. When the plan first became public, both Laval and Hoare asked Mussolini to approve it so they could then take it to Selassie and if Selassie rejected it the three of them could try to make it seem as if Ethiopia, not Italy was the obstacle to peace. But Mussolini waited two weeks before responding because he enjoyed having the whole world looking to him for his response. Now that Mussolini wanted to tell everyone that he accepted, it wasn't on the table any more. Now the world would brand him the aggressor even if they didn't employ any tough oil sanctions.
Eden was named the new Foreign Minister, after his semi-tough stands at the League made him palatable to those who were mad a Musso now.
HOLD THE MUSTARD - 12-23 1935 MAI TIMCHET
The Italians couldn't cut the mustard so they used it as a weapon.
In the northwestern segment of the war front, the Ethiopians were not only in the ascendant, they were threatening a counter-invasion of Italian Eritrea. But the fascist had a Christmas present for the fighting Abyssinians.
On December 23, 1935 near the town of Mai Timchet on the Takazze River the Italian Air Force dropped canisters of poison gas on Ethiopian troops. The big bullies couldn't beat a backwards African Army equipped with spears and rhino whips, so they cheated.
The Abyssinians didn't know what hit them. They weren't trained in the particulars of WWI mustard gas. But hundreds of them knew something was horribly wrong when thy went around screaming in pain from their skin and their lungs blistering and boiling. More than a hundred soldiers wailed their way to the Makaze River somehow thinking the water would save them. But the water was poisoned too. Many civilians from the town were afflicted also and joined the soldiers at the river. They all did their Jonestown impression and died on the banks.
The mustard gas stopped the Ethiopian advance northward.
Mussolini had personally authorized the use of the mustard. This was a medium sized battle, by WWII standard. The big one's were to come in 1936. The two Tembiens decided the war.
ETHIOPIAN WAR CONTINUES 1936 – TEMBIEN 1-23
The first large-scale battle of the so-called “Second Italo-Ethiopian War” took place on January 23, 1936 near Mt. Aradam on the northern front.
At Warieu Pass a force of almost 50,000 Ethiopian nationalists attacked and besieged a force of about 30,000 uncle tom Eritreans and 10,000 white Italians.
The WP held the key to the whole front. If the Ethiopians broke through here, it was a wide open door to the open plains of the north. The main force at Makalle would be threatened from the rear and would probably have to retreat. Military strategy would make it almost mandatory that the Italians go back from whence they came.
To Mussolini and Badaglio this was the oxymoron of an unthinkable reality. The entire war was political and psychological to begin with. There was really no need to take Ethiopia except to satisfy Italy's need for prestige after a less than spectacular performance in World War I. Mussolini wanted to show the world that he was just as much of an exiting and threatening military hero as was Hitler. He wanted to show the western powers that he was just as worth courting as was Hitler, and maybe by winning Ethiopia he could join the old school bullies in some new alliance system against the rising star Nazis whom he admired and feared at the same time.
Now, if Mussolini had to forsake all that slow and hard-earned advance into central Ethiopia and retreat back to Italian Eritrea he would lose the war just by the psychological image of retreat in and of itself. Even if the Italian forces regrouped in Eritrea and resumed the offensive a few weeks later, the war was still lost because it had not been won gloriously, and glory was the whole point of the war, not winning the deserts of Ethiopia for profit.
That's why the Battle of Wareiu Pass (my name for it – the history books call it the First Battle of the Tembien) was so important and why it had to be fought to the death, and why the Italians used mustard gas to win it. These conceited hot dogs had to use mustard because the braggarts couldn't win a war against barefoot troops with spears and rhino-whips fair and square.
For three days the Ethiopians, led by Ras Kassa, hurled themselves at the trapped Fascist Italians and Black quisling soldiers (who didn't know they were quislings because the word hadn't been invented yet.) The Italians were desperate for food and especially water. Some of them resorted to drinking boiled .... I don't even want to say it.
A relief column left Makale for Warieu Pass, but the defenders knew it would take several days for them to get there, and they could not be sure they would get there at all. What if Ras Mulugetta's force of 80,000 intercepted the relief column?
There was savage fighting up close for three long afternoons, and no fighting at night because the Ethiopians didn't believe in night fighting, and Italy could thank its lucky stars for that. The 23rd of January was the day of the heaviest fighting.
The Italians were losing and desperate and the Italian air force dropped tons of mustard gas containers well behind the Ethiopian lines. This insured that there were no friendly mustard casualties. The gas did what Italian boasting could never do. It won the war against a weak opponent. Thousands of Ethiopian warriors began screaming in horrific pain and staggered off aimlessly to a miserable death. Thousand of animals also paid the price for Mussolini's shiny white suits and $300 felt hats. Sheep, mules, horses, and all sorts of God's beasts ran to a cliff and actually committed suicide, hurling themselves to death off the edge. They might not have understood exactly what was happening but they knew it was better to die as soon as possible. I am enraged to read about this! If I'm a cop and you kill an innocent man in front of me I'll arrest you and put you away for life. You kill an innocent dog in front of me I'll shoot you in the head and then put the cuffs on.
Three days of fighting depleted the Ethiopians decisively. More than 8,000 were killed or wounded. The Italians lost 1,100, but were still trapped.
Just as Ras Kassa decided he had to fall back because he no longer had the resources to continue, the relief column arrived at the Pass. The Battle of Tembien was over. The Italians had been humiliated and almost totally defeated but had hung on and won the larger strategic victory of preventing the grand loss of the war image for Italy. The Ethiopians had won a major psychological victory, but had quit the field in the end. Tambien One was a tie and one of the first big battles of WWII. The Battle was won only because the Italians had dishonorably used poison gas, which was banned by many treaties after the horror of WWI. Even Adolph Hitler never resorted to use poison gas in WWII. Only Mussolini did that. Benito made it very clear to Badolglio that it was ok, in fact urgent, that he use it. The telegrams didn't spell out the terms “poison gas” or “Mustard gas” but they were clear enough,
“Bado,
You must hold on and defeat the Ethiopians. Use any means necessary. Use the Air Force and make sure they use every single weapon they have. Use it all. Hint hint. You can take a hint, yes? We are short on oil, but we have plenty of gas...if you know what I mean. Hint hint.” -
Moose
I'm playing with the text, but this is an accurate recreation of how Mussolini personally ordered the use of poison gas.
AMBA ARADAM – SLAUGHTER ON THE MOUNTAIN 2-36
The next Italian victory came at a mountain called Amba Aradam. 75,000 Ethiopians were camped in and around the mountain when Badoglio's 80,000 troops surrounded it.
When the Italians began to scale the mountain the Ethiopians came out of the caves and charged down to attack. the fighting lasted nearly three days from Feb 11-14. On Valentines day the mountain was covered with the crimson blood and hearts of 6,000 dead Ethiopians. Once again it was modern weapons against barefoot guy with spears, machine guns vs. ... you know I can't resist....rhino whips. Its easy to figure out who will win. There were no tanks scaling the rocky mountain, so the Ethiopians couldn't get lucky with their spears as they had earlier.
The Commander of the Ethiopian troops, Ras Bagalia ordered a battalion to blast away an escape route which his men did after hard fighting. Just as he was joining some of the fleeing troops Ras saw his son killed. His men pleaded with him to keep running, but he went back and consoled the dead body. A machine gun cut him down as he cradled the corpse of his dead son.
The Battle of Enderta (the other name for the Battle of Amba Aradam) ended on the 15th but the worst was yet to come. 20,000 Ethiopian troops were fleeing to the south. They were ducks in a barrel for Italian planes and their yellow mustard gas. The yellow Mussolini had once again ordered Badoglio to let the mustard fly
on the retreating troops.
For three days, from dawn to dusk, the Italian pilots dropped more than 60 tons of mustard gas on the poor Ethiopian troops. How evil can you get? These poor souls were the victims of an unprovoked outside aggression by a fascist imperialist upstart nation led by a despicable conceited hateful pig and buffoon. They were only trying to put up and honest fight to defend their homeland. They were the one's being attacked, and it was the aggressors using the desperate mass murder weapon. If any side might barely find some justification in using WMD, it would be the side being invaded. That's why in 2003, there was fear that the Iraqi's would resort to chemical weapons to answer the American invasion. What was unspoken but understood was that it would almost be forgivable if they did do that, but fortunately they didn't.
The descriptions of the suffering from the mustard gas are hard to read. Small lakes became yellow-colored water and around the edges were thousands of dying men, women, children and animals. Trees were made of yellow tinged leaves.
More than 20,000 Ethiopians were slaughtered like cattle by the mustard gas, not to mention the cattle slaughtered like Ethiopians. The World Trade Center took 2,000 lives. This was ten WTC's in three days, and that's not to mention the other gas attacks and the other conventional casualties from an evil invasion of a peaceful member of the league of Nations.
It's appalling how little history remembers this holocaust. Imagine if it had happened to British troops in Kenya in, say, 1956? Imagine how many movies books and memorials would be dedicated to it. General history books of WWII give entire chapters to the Holocausts in Europe and Asia, and deservedly so, but the use of Italian grey poupon gets one sentence in passing.
If the Ethiopians has won as Amba Aradam it might have made for an even worse atrocity. The Italians were stocked with bacteriological weapons at the ready. Mussolini wired Badoglio and asked him if would be necessary to unleash the bacteria bombs on the Ethiopians. Badoglio e-mailed back that this would not be necessary as the Ethiopians were on the run and he had plenty of mustard gas in the bottle to do the job.
SOMALIA FRONT
The flat desert in the east towards Black Hawk Down country was the quiet front. This would have been an easier approach to Addis Ababa, but the Italians did not choose to exploit it.
One military expedition did make it as far as the border at Dolo, but chose not to advance seriously into the interior of the inferiors.
Only one important military action took place around Dolo. The Italian Air Force deliberately bombed and strafed International Red Cross station there, killing several doctors without borders. There was no hiding what was happening, it was deliberate, unprovoked and provocative. The purpose of this war crime was to inspire the Red Cross to get the hell out of Ethiopia, period. The reason why the Italian air force did this was because, as is well known, the mafia doesn't like to have any witnesses when it murders people. The Italians were beginning to use mustard gas in serious quantities and there was more to come. They didn't want the Red Cross around to report this back to the international community. Red blood drove the Red Cross out successfully. The bombing of the Red Cross at Dolo was one of the few complete military victories for the Italian armed forces in World War II,
SECOND BATTLE OF THE TEMBIEN
This time the main battle wasn't much of a battle at all, but the Italians planes dropped yperite (the technical term for mustard gas) by the ton on the troops fleeing south towards Quoram. This was the town where Heile Selassie was holding on with his last 30,000 troops.
Selassie had taken his royal guardsmen north from Addis Ababa to meet the enemy as far above the capital as possible, but this was almost certainly a military mistake. If the Ethiopians had fallen back as far south as possible with as many forces as possible it would have forced the Italians to outrun their lines of supply and communication. Ethiopian probably would have lost anyway, but it might have extended the war another year with the arrival of the rainy season. Guerilla tactics rather than pride tactics might even have saved Ethiopia at the League of Nations as the reports of Italian atrocities became more widely verified.
MARCH 4 - ATTACK ON THE BRITISH RED CROSS
The Italian Royal Air Force attacked a British Red Cross station south of Makalle on March 4. There were giant Red Cross markings on top of every tent. There was no way the Italian pilots did not know exactly what they were doing. They bombed and strafed the Red Cross medical facility for two hours. One plane in particular spent the afternoon leisurely bombing and strafing the doctors and the patients. Several eyewitnesses swore that the plane came in close several times and the number S62 was marked on the tail. That was the personal plane of the son of Benito Mussolini. Vittorio Mussolini personally committed these war crimes all afternoon on the 4th. After the war he became a successful movie producer and was never charged with war crimes.
One poor Ethiopian man was under anesthesia for a major mouth operation when the attack got under way. The doctors tried to keep working on him but eventually fled the scene for their lives, leaving the man to actually take a severe shrapnel wound in the leg while he was unconscious. After the attack finally ended the doctors came back to him, removed the shrapnel, stitched up the wound, completed the mouth surgery and the poor guy woke up with a pain in the leg wondering what was going on.
THE FIGHTING EMPEROR
Imagine Adolph Hitler or FDR manning a machine gun while Berlin or Washington was under attack. That was not far from the scenes that Selassie gave to history. The man jumped personally into several battles at the helm of an olerion anti-aircraft gun.
People begged him to run for cover and he shouted them to get away and kept firing at the Italian planes.
In one battle, the Ethiopian ack-ack shot down 15 Italian planes and since the Emperor was manning one of only a handful of antiaircraft guns, its safe to say that the Emperor of Ethiopia personally downed at least one aircraft. He is certainly the major leader of World War II who actually took part in the hard work of fighting. There was probably a moment or two when Emperor Selasie was actually fighting one-on-one with Vittorio or Bruno Mussolini in their planes. Like this guy isn't enough of a heroic figure, we add that he risked his life in actual combat operations.
FLIGHT FROM ADDIS ABABA
Selassie fell back to Addis Ababa in late April. He wanted to take his core troops to the mountains due west and wage a guerilla war from there. But wifey would hear none of it. Mrs. S made her king face the facts. The war was lost and any more defensive measures would only add to the death toll.
Selassie had ordered a famous war drum out to action, calling on all warriors to gather before him for their orders. Heile consulted with his chiefs and they told him that, yes, we can gather a few thousand troops, and we can march them north of Addis Ababa to make a stand, but they are too beaten to fight. It would just be mass suicide.
When Selassie asked his foreign advisors what to do, the Brit and the Yank both told him that the best thing he could do for Ethiopia would be to escape. Getting captured or killed would not help the cause one bit. The Emperor’s only hope was that he could live to fight another day with words at the League of Wimpy Nations.
With great reluctance and sadness, Haile Selasse threw in the towel-head. He agreed that it was time to take the midnight train to Djibouti, and from there escape the ongoing (and later forgotten) holocaust that was once independent Ethiopia.
The Italians were one day away in the north and were closing in on the Addis Ababa-Djibouti railroad in the eastern desert. There was no time to lose. The Emperor ordered his own people to sack the city of Addis Ababa so that there would be little left for Vittorio, Bruno, Badoglio and Graziani to parade through in triumph.
As Heile travelled the 18 hours to Djibouti, Addis Ababa burned in his rear view mirror. It was lawless looting and brutality for two days. More than 500 people died as Ethiopians sacked their capital. It was almost as violent as if they had won the World Cup! 16 foreigners died in the AA rioting. One British Red Cross doctor named Jimmy Mullen was bent over a wounded Ethiopian civilian when a riot-bullet tore him a bleeding heart.
The French at Djibouti gave Haile a ceremonious welcome and then helped him get on a ship to Jerusalem, which was fitting since his innocent nation had just been unjustly crucified by the Romans.
MAY 1935
The Italians occupied Addis Ababa. Badoglio was named ruler of the East African Empire. The King of Italy became the King of Ethiopia too.
SELASSIE'S GUILT TRIP – LION AT THE LON – JUNE 1936
Heile Selassie made it safely to England by way of Gibraltar. The British wanted to distance themselves from him officially, so he had to catch a private British merchant ship to Southampton and then a train to London. Heile was surprised that no one gave him surprise party. he had heard that the British people were wholeheartedly behind him even if the snob politicians were not.
MASS MOOSE OF A MURDERER
Mussolini was a vicious mass murderer, just like Hitler and history should hate him, not laugh him off as a pathetic buffoon, which I'm afraid is what has happened as a result of the way events played themselves out to 1945. The larger events of WWII have buried the record of the war crimes of Italy in the years before 1939. The general perception of WWII is that Germany and Japan were brutal mass murderers, and perpetrators of a Holocaust, with Italy a reluctant and far less vicious Axis hanger-on, and a wandering sheep that even joined the good guys later in the war.
This image is false. Italy was the baton waving leader of the parade of evil in the march to WWII. It was Hitler that followed Mussolini's lead, not the other way around.
HISTORIANS AND THE SECOND ITALO-ETHIOPIAN WAR
The general histories of the era usually get it wrong. It is the curse of the general historian to usually get it wrong. The ones who research one isolated field for three years get it right, and even they have to be cross-examined. But the general historians tend to get everything wrong, just by the nature of their task. The more you know, the more you know you don't know, and the general historian has to move on even realizing this accurate statement ruins everything. But you have to give it a shot and move on. The general historian can't stop for 8 months on one focused subject just to make sure he or she gets it right. Leave that to the debunking specialists.
So I'm not being condescending towards pros when I cite two examples of historians getting it completely wrong about Ethiopian. One is the great AJP Taylor, the other is the great Robert Leckie.
Taylor is one of the giants in the history of history. Leckie is more of a popular-audience historian, was a Marine in the pacific in WWII and his tone, however tamed by books, reflects that accordingly. Leckie is prolific and widely read..
Taylor's book The Origins of World War II is one of the most respected works of all time, it is a holy book.
Do you remember some pages ago when Selassie desperately needed America or someone to sell him weapons and the Italians already had as many weapons as they needed? Do you remember how throughout the story, everyone continued to sell oil and almost everything else to Italy? Do you remember how FDR passed the Neutrality Declaration single-handedly, making sure that Ethiopia was hung out to dry?
Taylor writes that the U.S. Neutrality Declaration “was in effect a sanction against Italy.”
That is unbelievably incompetent work.
In the following description of the war by Leckie, he makes it seem as if the mustard gas was a minor factor, when it was decisive. You take out 30,000 killed with gas, I'd say that's worth more than a passing reference when analyzing the action. He says that Italian air power was decisive. Yeah - icing 30,000 soldiers and 15,000 civilians is a pretty “decisive” form of “air power.”
Leckie,
“Italian air power was decisive. Il Duce had 400 aircraft while Selassie had only thirteen, of which but eight took off, and these without arms. The emperor's troops were also stricken and demoralized when Marshall Graziani sprayed them with phosphene and mustard gas. Nevertheless the Italians staggered on along mule tracks and stream beds weighed down by 50-pound packs and their weapons in temperatures as high as 140 degrees. But they kept advancing, chiefly because 30,000 Italian engineers had managed to build thirteen bridges and 300 miles of new roads. En route, the Ethiopians struck at them repeatedly in misguided mass attacks; they would have done better by adopting the tactics of guerilla warfare. By May of 1936, Selassie had fled aboard a British warship.”
This is a very typical account. Gas gets a pass, as though it was just one small sideshow in a large circus. Rather than blame the Italians for resorting to the war crime of gas attack, Leckie blames the Ethiopians for failing to heed his monday morning quarterback advice on guerilla tactics. Bob doesn't appreciate the important fact that the Ethiopians almost drove the Italians back into Eritrea but failed only in the face of the mustard gas. The record is very clear. Most books get this wrong. The use of mustard gas was strategic, widespread, and decided the war in favor of Italy. Failing to understand this is failing to understand the story of the Second Italo-Ethiopian War, and failing to understand WWII.
Many books that have only a page to spare for Ethiopia actually say that the Italians conducted a “brilliant” campaign. They say that the tactics and strategy of the Italians was exemplary and admirable. In fact, the Italians conducted a badly planned and managed campaign, failed to take the easy route from the eastern desert for no discernable reason other than to avenge Adowa, and only won because of mustard gas.
Richard Overy and Andy Wheatcroft in “The Road to War” say that the Ethiopians were “equipped with weapons supplied by Germany and Japan.” I see no evidence that any of this alleged equipment was ever actually used in the war. Unless the Japanese sent the Ethiopians a shipload of rhino whips, and the Germans sent them three vintage 1919 Fokker aircraft with no guns on them, I find no evidence to support this scholastic claim.
THE RHINELAND - 1936
In assessing the Hitler invasion of the Rhineland in 1936 history usually forgets that at the time, the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (it really is barely worthy of being called a “war) was still ongoing. The point that Hitler took his cue from Mussolini and not vice-verse, and that the way the west responded (or failed to) gave Hitler the inspiration to move himself, has been told. What is less often mentioned is that the Ethiopian conflict had the League of Nations tied down in a major way, and that gave the Nazis a great advantage. Not only was it psychologically a trigger for Hitler to act, it was also concretely helpful. If the League was occupied in Ethiopia and doing nothing for all its involvement, then Hitler saw his time to act as now. If there had been no Italian invasion of Ethiopia in 1935-36, would Hitler have occupied the Rhineland in March of 1936? My guess is no, what's yours?
RHINELAND MOVE
The Treaty of Versailles couldn't hold the Germans any longer. Will Rogers said of the Versailles Treaty, “It took them a year to write it. It took Hitler a minute to tear it up.”
On March 7, 1936 Adolph Hitler defied the Treaty and its authors with an sudden open act of military aggression. The bold invasion of the French Rhineland had direct military, political, diplomatic and psychological significance for all. To this day, political pundits name drop 'what about the Rhineland' as a warning to liberals of the consequences for not believing in ‘peace through strength.’
On 3.7.1936 Hitler against the advice of all of his advisors, ordered 35,000 soldiers of his allowed 100,000 man Army to march into the Rhineland, a province of Germany that had been demilitarized by Versailles Treaty terms ending the First World War. The Rhineland was occupied by French troops. After several years as direct occupiers, the French departed the Rhineland. But the province had been declared de-militarized. No German troops or military facilities of any kind were allowed there.
In occupying the Rhineland, Hitler was making what is today called an ‘in-your-face’ move. He knew that France was militarily stronger than Germany. But he also knew that the French national psychology hated war more than it hated Germany and hated war more than Germany hated war (Germany actually liked war.) France, he gambled, that weak democracy, had no stomach for a new war and so would avoid it to the point of foolishness. Germany was already living the life of the loser, so she had less to lose. Germany was the toothless laborer picking a bar-fight with a rich businessman. Hitler made his move. The occupation of the Rhineland was a titanic headline worldwide.
What was the Western response? The United States was more worried about the opening of baseball’s spring training. Britain was in the hands of a left-wing Labor Party, so you know what they decided to do. France was in the hands of a Socialist coalition, so you know what they decided not to do. Not a thing was done in response and Hitler smiled a lot (he did have an easy laugh in the right situation, which is a real scary thought.)
The Rhineland was not just a political victory. It changed the military logistics of any potential major land clash later between Germany and France. It removed a dangerous French controlled salient poking into the center of Germany’s western front, and changed it into a dangerous salient poking into the center of France’s eastern front.
There is no doubt that if France had mobilized and challenged Hitler immediately, the German troops would have packed up and withdrawn. Hitler admitted this in boast later. Rhineland 3.7.36 had been a total bluff.
Hitler exploited fear of World War One to pile up his early victories in World War Two. Although France and England hated Hitler and recognized the threat he posed, all decisions had to be weighed against the fear of the burden of war. War was bad. Very bad. So was Hitler. Hmmm. Decisions, decisions.
Hitler took more than the Rhineland. He took the balance of power on the continent. The French Army was now vulnerable to an attack by Germany, and had showed itself a paper tiger, unwilling to strike. Politically the allies of France, especially the smaller ones that France was supposedly looking out for like a big brother, could no longer feel safe. How was Poland or Hungary supposed to trust that France would help them when France wouldn't even defend itself? France's continental allies began to look elsewhere for protection after the Rhineland, many embracing the threat instead of its antidote.
THE 1936 OLYMPICS
The Olympic Summer games of 1936 were scheduled to be held in Berlin. Hitler attended many of the games. He was an avid sports fan, especially soccer, and believed that the German was a superior athlete by nature.
But the Germans did not dominate the 1936 games they way they could dominate Jewish shopkeepers. Bullyhood had no clout in a fair contest. An African-American named Jesse Owen stole the show by winning three gold medals. When a black won the gold, Hitler turned blue. He refused to attend the awards ceremonies.
Nazi philosophy was just as racist against blacks as it was against Jews. It’s just that there were more Jews on hand in Germany to persecute. If there had been a million blacks in Germany, they would have joined the condemned on the road to Aushwitz. During the war, a black PW was more likely to be executed for no reason at all than a white.
Hitler later complained to Al Speer that the African had learned to hunt lions in the jungle and had an unfair advantage in sports. He actually said that the Olympics should ban blacks from these competitions because they had an unfair advantage.
RHINELAND BASTARDS
While there were virtually no blacks in Germany, there were some in the Rhineland. When victorious France occupied the Rhineland after the First World War, many of the despised occupation troops came from French colonial territories in Africa. So from 1920 to 1936 racially conceited Germans were being policed by blacks in the Rhineland. Other decent Germans did not. Some German women married black men and had mulatto babies. When the Nazis took over the Rhineland these mulatto children were punished. Hitler had specifically discussed this problem of the “Rhineland Bastards” in his worst-seller Mein Kampf. He wrote that he would someday do something to correct this insult to German racial purity. And the Bavarian bastard kept his promise. The devil punished the angels. The mulatto children of the Rhineland were all forcibly sterilized.
BACKGROUND TO THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
A right wing extremist world in Spain in the 1920's led to a left wing extremist reaction in the 1930's and that in turn led to a reaction by the displaced right wing, and that in essence was the terrible Spanish Civil War of 1936-9 which ended in defeat for the lefties. The fascists had won in Ethiopia, they were winning in China, and then they won in Spain.
The real problem was the dominance of the church, both Catholic and Jesuit.
SPANISH CIVIL WAR BEGINS 1936-7
The Spanish Civil War is one of the ugliest matches of World War II, with no clear good guy in the ring. The Spanish Civil War was scum vs. scum.
Pick a team!
The SCW was political terror. Thousands of non-combatants were deliberately singled out for execution as a warning for their protector armies to surrender. Like South Vietnamese peasants in 1966, the Spanish civilians in 1936 risked execution no matter which side they chose, even while trying to avoid choosing.
Here are the two teams you can root for if you're an America citizen observing from afar;
In this corner the left-wing Spaniard extremists who are blowing up churches and murdering priests and nuns while strongly supported by Stalin's Soviet Union. Meanwhile in this corner the right-wing Spanish nuts are overturning a fair and free election with fascist military force while being supported by Facisti Italy and Nazi Germany.
In February of 1936 a left wing-government won the Spanish national elections. The right wing tried to swallow its pride for a few months but after a while it just couldn't take it anymore. The Spanish Army in Morocco mutinied on July 16, 1936, taking over the civilian government there, putting some lefties in jail and shooting others. The rebellion spread quickly across the Straights of Gibraltar. Soon all of Spain and North African Morocco were all in a bloody Civil War. The Nationalists (the fascists) took over half the country very quickly and it looked like fascism would win in a cakewalk. But the Loyalists (a left-leaning broad-based coalition) re-grouped and held the line. Spain was a checkerboard map of Loyalist and Nationalist held territory for the next three years. In the end the blackshirts won over the redshirts.
They Loyalists weren't all red or pink. The Loyalists consisted of communists, liberals, anarchists and other socialists, plus anyone who hated and feared the fascists. Conscientious and moderate conservatives who condemned lefties yesterday, ran today to join them on a team for the Civil War. Politics makes strange bedfellows and terror even more so. Considering the wide range of factions in the Loyalist camp, Franco might have chosen to do nothing and watched it fall apart through internal bickering in a few years. Then he could have walked in without firing a shot.
But the Fascists chose force.
The right-wing reaction to the new liberal government was led by Franco. This man would rule Spain as a dictator until 1975! Francisco Franco y Bahamonde was born in the province of Galicia Spain on December 4 1889, making him 44 at the time of his rise to power. Franco had shown himself a brave man in combat in the war between Spain and the Riff tribes of Morocco in 1907, and please don’t ask me to tell you all about the Riffs, because I can’t riff my way through that one.
Franco headed the Falange. This is a terrible term, which at least honestly identifies the right wing side for all it is. The right wing coalition in Spain was determined to specifically stamp out democracy. So it named itself after the Falange army of ancient Greece which marched on Athens in the BC days and exterminated democracy and then celebrated like they had just advance the cause of humanity. That’s how the Spanish Falange felt about democracy.
So it’s these jerks against a few million lefty jerks who wanted chaos destruction, anarchy and the mass murder in the name of lefty progress. Who can pick a team in this one? I don;t know how anyone did. Those who preached compromise or moderation were laughed out of the room as naive fools.
The lefty government had exiled Franco to the Canary Islands.
The Army rebellion against the new Republic began in Morocco in the coastal town of Melilla. The idea was to gain strength in Morocco and then cross the straits of Gibraltar and take down the government lime Mussolini’s March on Rome in 1922.
By the time the Army crossed the straits, Madrid was already in Army right-win control and a lot lefties had been executed. A lot.
The Spanish Civil War cemented the alliance between Germany and Italy. Previously there was a chance that Italy might have joined an alliance against Germany. The SCW became a great advertisement for fascism when it emerged victorious in 1939. It inspired others to look to fascism if they wanted that championship ring.
The left in the United States completely supported the Loyalists. The US Communist Party considered this war their fight too. On the other hand, the Spanish Loyalists were so violently against the Catholic Church that many religious Americans could not in good conscience take their side. Most liberals believe in God and this 'hang the priests' business was a little hard to swallow, even for a lefty. For millions of Americans it was impossible to choose a side in this fight.
Ernest Hemmingway the famous novelist went to Spain and fought actively on the side of the Loyalists while writing a novel about it called For Whom the Bell Tolls. I’ve seen the movie but never read the novel (mostly because I never read novels - Mila 18 is the only novel I ever finished. I may have finished A Tale of Two Cities in high school but that was at knifepoint - I have white lied to several people that I read Moby Dick, but I really read the first half.)
ITALY AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
Mussolini sent between 50,000 and 100,000 combat troops to Spain to fight on the fascist side. Benns says 100,000 but most historians say a little more than 50,000. That's a lot (although Obama is pretending in 2010 that the 50,000 US Army soldiers he left behind in Iraq means there are 'no combat forces' left, but only some advisors.)
The Italian troops were there for a number of reasons, some of them practical, some just emotional and not practical.
On the practical side, Mussolini did not want a Communist state in Spain at the gates of the Mediterranean. Italy was also interested in testing out its troops, ships and aircraft in fighting conditions, and if the fascists won, Italy wanted to be there to share the reflected glory.
On the negative side, Italy was destroying its already bad economy even further by keeping the stress of war payments on the budget. It was W Bush funded war for Musso. It could only be paid for on credit at a time when Italy had no money to begin with. The economic fallout should be obvious. On top of that the Italian troops performed poorly. There were a couple of disastrous battles in which Franco might well have wished the Italians had never showed up to help at all. So much for fighting for prestige.
When Franco finally won in 1939, 67,000 Italians troops (my new estimate) marched past Franco in Madrid at the victory parade. They got a Desert Storm style welcome home party when they all got back to Rome.
HITLER AND THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR
Italy in Spain was being played for a sucker by Hitler. Mussolini wanted franco to win as soon as it could be done and with his strained economy he broke Italy in two by sending out an expensive 75,000 troops (my compromise estimate.)
Hitler on the other hand wanted to see the Spanish Civil War prolonged for years. This would keep the West occupied while he re-armed. More importantly, it would insure that Italy remained estranged from the western powers. If one side or the other won, Italy could go back to neutral and entertain the idea of an alliance with France and England against Germany. But if Italy stayed on the bad side of the France and England in Spain, Hitler wouldn't have to worry about losing Italy to them. Hitler openly said that to his intimates. It is not speculation that he wanted to see the Spanish Civil War prolonged.
AH was shrewd enough to send a small contingent of troops to Spain, but a large contingent of planes and tanks and artillery pieces. Hitler preserved his monetary resources, and gained glory, while testing out his military hardware and his tactics. Many German generals got in some excellent work on the Spanish proving grounds. A trial and era war for blitzkrieg and air-to- ground support tactics served Germany well in 1939-40.
So Hitler got all the prestige out of it that Mussolini was looking to get, and did it without spending too much in blood or money. He played Mussolini like a violin.
NAT GAINS 1936
In the summer of 1936 the fight was still pretty even. A the beginning of August the Nationalists (the bad guys) held only about 36% of Spain, all of it in the northwest. But the Nats also controlled Spanish Morocco, enabling them to pour fighters across the straights and open up a second front in “Southie” (southern Spain.) By the time the leaves turned brown in 1936 the momentum had swung from the Republicans (the good ones, not the evil ones that rule America today.) The fascists were advancing, while pockets of Republicans held out. Plus there remained the left strongholds in the east.
In 1937 the Nationalists gained more ground but it was a long and bitter battle. Madrid held out heroically.
BAGGAGE CLAIMS FASCIST GENERAL
One of the fascist Spanish Generals was so fond of himself that he had eight different military uniforms he liked to take along with him in his travels. In 1936 he had to fly to a recently conquered zone to get things in order and make a few speeches.
His friends told him to travel light but he insisted on bringing the two heavy travel cases with the uniforms. The weight of the extra bags prevented a proper take-off and the little plane crashed into a forest in a ball of flame. Adios.
Ha ha ha ha! I love that story.
THE INTERNATIONAL BRIGADES
40,000 Euro-lefties put their skin on the line when they formed the International Brigades of the Spanish Civil War. Some Americans got into it too. These intellectual toughs (including Ernest Hemmingway) fought on the side that was against Franco.
They fought and died for their beliefs. This wasn't even their fight. They chose to make it their fight. It was very admirable.
The whole of Spain was a dress rehearsal for World War II.
A group of 2,800 fighting USA lefties formed the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. The ALB saw much fighting in the SCW. More than half of the ALB were members of the YCP, the Youth Communist Party of the United States. Stalin ordered all good Communists to join the effort in Spain to fight the fascists and many American Communists responded and went off to die.
In the McCarthy era of the 1950's many US veterans of the Abe Lincoln Brigade were stigmatized because of their earlier life in the brigade. The Glenn Becks of the 1950's saw the brigade as a tool of Stalin and therefore anyone who had ever been in it as a fool of Stalin.
FASCIST BRIGADES
The answer to the International Brigades was 100,000 Italian troops who fought in Spain on the side of the Franco-fascists. In early 1937 France and England decided to enact a naval blockade around Spain for the specific purpose of localizing the conflict by preventing any more outside brigades from getting in, or at least slowing it down.
In may of 1937 Left-Loyalist aircraft bombed an Italian and a German warship (the Deutchland and the Barletta.) The Germans responded by sending five German light cruisers to shell the city of Almeria, which didn't ameliorate the situation.
ADOLPH AND BENITO OCTOBER 1936
Hitler was anxious to gain the alliance of fascist Italy. It wasn’t so much that he needed Italy’s strength, it was a more a case of him not wanting to compete with Italy for prizes in central Europe. He needed to neutralize Italy's vast potential for obstruction.
Most Nazis, by the way, did not consider themselves to be 'fascists' but rather liked to think of themselves as 'national socialists.' Italy was the only avowed fascist state in Europe as far as most top Nazis were concerned, but the Allies and history consider both Axis states to be fascist states (plus Franco).
Germany and Italy signed a treaty of alliance on October 24, 1936. It was called “The Pact of Steel.” It was really the “Pact of Steal.” The Pact of Steel wasn't actually ratified by both sides until 1939, but it made its point from the time it was essentially agreed to.
Chills ran up the spines of millions. The Rhineland had been scary enough, now Frank Nitti had a partner. The steal-pact was also called the Rome-Berlin Axis. It gradually became known the world over simply as ‘the Axis.” The term stuck for the length of the war. George W. Bush used a callback when he referred to troublesome states of Iraq, Iran, North Korea, as the “Axis of Evil.”
The pact of 10.24.36 was a major setback for England and France. These two nations had been courting Mussolini for years, trying to get Italy to join in an alliance against Hitler. This was the only reason they had had let Italy get away with its invasion of Ethiopia. Now they had allowed the Italian Empire to grow and had lost Italy too. Courting Italy was the only reason they had sold large quantities of oil to Mussolini when others cried out for an oil boycott in response to Italian aggressions in Africa.
The two fascist dictators were now a team, all set-up to unleash hell upon the earth. Happy Halloween!
ANTI-COMMUNIST INTERNATIONAL PACT - NOVEMBER 1936
The next month, on November 25, 1936 Japan, Germany and Italy signed the “Anti-Comintern Pact.”
The ACP was the reactionary solution to the Communist International operating out of Moscow. The “Comintern” was a Moscow-based revolutionary organization dedicated to starting Communist revolutions in all the western capitalist countries since 1917. The price the world must pay for the existence of this kind of left-wing militant conceit is the rise of right-wing militarist conceit in reaction. These extremists start wars and drag the reasonable millions down.
The Steelers recognized that the purpose of the Moscow-based Communist International was to subvert and destroy all the civilized nations of the world. FDR, by comparison, admired the “Soviet experiment in a planned economy” and didn't seem very concerned about the activities of the Comintern in the United States. Democracy under-reacted and fascism overreacted to the Comintern.
The Anti-Comintern Pact signers pledged to consult with each other in case of any aggression coming from the Soviet direction. They pledged not to make any separate deals with Russia, a pledge Hitler would break in August 1939. Japan and Germany signed first. Italy signed the Pact a year later marking the first time the three fascist states came under the same Axis.
It’s too bad the Anti-Comintern Pact had been created and signed by the only three nations on earth as bad as the Comintern. If only FDR hadn’t also been so liberal, a similarly worded pact might have been signed between the US the UK and several other decent nations. The Anti-Comintern Pact reads like something Ike or JFK would have signed in their time.
ELECTION OF 1936
One of the reasons that Roosevelt became more openly leftist in the Second New Deal in 1935 was to help win the election of 1936. This may seem like a paradox. Usually shrewd politics says court the center and a move to either extreme would be politically disastrous. Roosevelt had won in 1932 with votes from all ends of the political spectrum and his first new deal had wide popular support, some criticisms notwithstanding. The Hearst papers called it the ‘Raw Deal.’
But by 1935 there was so much criticism of Roosevelt’s programs that there was a real danger of his being outflanked on the left by any organized coalition under the leadership of rogues like Coughlin, Long and Townsend. The center was beginning to drift away from Roosevelt and the right had never been much in his corner in the first place. Since his programs were taking heavy criticism from all sides and the left was saying they weren’t radical enough, why not embrace the criticism of the left and at least win that power base since it was the most winnable in light of the general direction his programs were heading? So Roosevelt went ‘sharply” to the left and insured that no leftist political movement would divide the Democratic Party and hand the House over to the Republicans.
It was generally understood that whomever the Republicans nominated at their Cleveland Convention in early June 1936 was doomed to lose. FDR was very popular. According to one recent textbook this popularity was due to “the administration’s achievements and FDR’s enormous political skills.” But could it not be easily argued that when you give federal handouts to 50 million voters, it’s a pretty sure bet they will vote for you at election time, with or without ‘political skills’? That formula was in the words of critic Rudy Ray Moore, “Dole-myte!”
Dolemyte was a form of bribery little elevated above the 1800’s when they gave our hard cider and turkey dinners for votes. No doubt FDR’s dole was for high and sincere socialist motives and his heart did bleed for the poor. He was not deliberately buying re-election through federal handouts. But that was the inevitable result. How could anyone not vote for the President that gave them a job and a stipend when they were starving and on the verge of eviction?
The Republicans held their convention in Cleveland, which should give you some idea of how badly things were going for them. The Democrats had ripped them up pretty good in the Congressional Elections of 1934 and had the mo.
The star Republicans were mostly dead, and the rest, for all their hopes, might as well have been. The Republican Triple-A teams had no all stars to graduate. There simply weren't many well-known, talented, likable, and politically powerful Republicans available. (Come to think of it, I could say the same about right now - Sarah Palin is the current R front-runner for 2012, which is a main reason I switched my voter registration to Independent after 28 years as a fairly reliable Republican.) Hoover was famous but the ex-President wanted no part of the job and the nation generally returned the sentiment. The radio comedians were still making Hoover jokes. It wasn't exactly the time to ring his bell.
Frank Knox was actively seeking the nom. Knox owned the Chicago Daily News. Senator “Borah the Boor” jumped in when the party asked him not to, and his famous nickname tells you all you need to know as to why.
It really came down to four mildly popular Republican legislators. Senators Charles McNary of Oregon, and Art Vandenberg of Michigan were in the hunt. Governor Cary Granite of New Hampshire tossed his 8 months of winter hat into the ring as well. Alf Landon the Governor of Kansas was the best choice be default. He carried no baggage and hopefully could help carry the midwest with his Kansas credentials. Midwest newspaper editors backed him, especially William Allen White.
The Republican nominated Alf Landon for President, and Frank Knox from Boston for Vice President. “Knoxie” would become Secretary of War at crunch time, in a sop to Republicans. Their slogans for 1936 were, “Down With King Roosevelt” and “What's it All About, Alfie?”
The Dems met in Philly a week later and nominated the King to remain on the throne.
The only man who could have stopped FDR was eliminated by the ballot, ... I mean bullet. The top long shot was eliminated when Long was shot in Baton Rouge on 9.10.35.
There were other third party challengers, but none of them had a serious chance to win. Father Charlie Coughlin and Frances Lester Townsend were the two lead Indy-nuts. Coughlin was a radio preacher who had a national following of mean spirited bigots, xenophobes, and red-baiters. There are never quite enough of them to elect a president in this country, thank God.
Frankie Townsend was well-meaning enough, compared to the Father Coughlin at least, but his plan to save the economy by giving the elderly a monthly handout and forcing them spend it or lose it by the end of the same month, thus stimulating the economy, was too convoluted to work, or at least to be adopted.
The Democrats met in Philadelphia from June 23 to 28, and there was virtually no opposition to the king. A few favorite sons got some votes. The main achievement at the Philly bash was the elimination, at long last, of the two-thirds rule. Back in the ante-bellum years the Plantocracy fended off an insurgent movement from the cracker counties at the Democratic conventions by instituting the the-thirds rule. No motion could pass, no candidate could win nomination, unless two thirds of the delegates approved. The two-thirds rule handicapped the Democratic party at several turns of history. The 1932 Convention voted to rescind it beginning with 1936. The Philly convention confirmed the move and official pronounced the two-thirds rule, in the words of Chairman Snell, “As dead as Governor Long!” From now on the Democrats would be more democratic, asking only for a simple majority.
Roosevelt campaigned on his past four years of the New Deal. The critics charged that the New Deal had destroyed capitalism and free enterprise. FDR did not duck the charges but took them on. He countered that the New Deal had saved capitalism and free enterprise. In his speeches he stated that, on the contrary, if the do-nothing approach of Hoover had continued, the nation would have collapsed, and free enterprise and capitalism would have collapsed with it.
He said that these same businessmen had begged him for help in 1933 and he had given it to them. Now they were condemning him. They were like the rich man in the silk had who was drowning. The New Deal had jumped into the icy water to pull him out. In the background of the rescue, the silk hat floated away. Now, four years later, these men were berating the New Deal for stealing the silk hat.
As usual, FDR never referred to his opponent by name. In fact he didn't even speak of him indirectly. You never heard an Alf out of Roosevelt. Why give the Republican campaign free advertising? Roosevelt, the genius politician, understood that as President anything that had anything to do with him was big news. So if the President criticized Landon on the campaign trail, the press would be crowded around Landon waiting for his response to the criticism. Why put the spotlight on your opponent when he was desperately looking for publicity? Even if charges against Landon had merit, they helped Landon by giving him the stage for an eloquent response and a counter-charge in front of 25 microphones.
This was no “Rose Garden Strategy” either. Roosevelt went out and campaigned hard, crisscrossing the country by rail, giving speeches at formal banquets and to dozens of crowds from the back of the train. A crew of reporters even had their own railroad car. Some of them gave advice to the FDR team. They analyzed his speeches and the response to them, and suggested changes to help FDR win. Some of the reporters who offered advice were actually employed by newspapers that were anti-Roosevelt. But they whispered to FDR's closest aides that they were actually on the Democratic side.
That seems like a lot of media bias in his favor. Yet FDR clearly believed that most of the newspapers were against him.
Press coverage of the New Deal was probably a lot closer to even handed than Franklin Roosevelt or his reactionary critics would care to admit.
Roosevelt liked to wonder what he would do to defeat himself if he were managing the campaign for the other side. Although he tossed out this subject at lighthearted moments for the gang to kick around like self-effacing good-humor, it was really a telling tale of his political intelligence. What better way to map out a strategy than to get into the other camp's frame of thinking? Roosevelt thought that if he were running against himself he would first repudiate the support of some of the right-wing newspapers. Then he would focus on the corruption that was discovered in some of the WPA programs.
Landon didn't do anything that wise and lost big.
Election of 1936 – The Dolees Show Their Appreciation
Maine voted for President a few days before the rest of the country and chose Republican Alf Landon. But this was not a portent. On November 2, 1936 FDR carried every other state except Vermont. The Dem got 61% of the vote. One politician wisecracked afterwards that “As Maine goes, so goes Vermont.”
A young George Gallup had predicted these results based on a survey of 49,000 voters nationwide. The good work built his good name and the Gallup Poll was born. The GP is now as much a part of American politics as the voting booth, the cheap shot, and the fake smile, and the promise for 'change.'
DUTCHESS COUNTY
During the last weekend prior to voting day, Roosevelt campaigned exclusively in his home Duchess County. The locals bonded with him as he pressed the flesh with the same people who had sent him to the state senate a while back and started him on his march to Washington.
Try as he might, Roosevelt only once managed to carry his home town of Hyde Park, New York and once again he failed to carry it in 1936.
On Election Night 1936 Roosevelt stayed home at Hyde. By midnight the entire country knew that Landon was toast. In Duchess county, a parade gathered momentum and marched with songs and torch-lights to the home of FDR. By the time it reached Franklin's place, the crowd had grown to 5,000 people. The Secret Service was worried. Any drunken psychopath boob with a pistol could have mingled into this parade, and here it was camped on the President's front lawn at 12:30 in the morning, and here was FDR sitting before them giving a friendly speech as though there was not the remotest chance that anyone would want to kill him.
The front lawn victory party was an FDR tradition and the Secret Service could not convince him to abandon it (in 1944 the crowd gasped at how bad he looked when he first came out.)
INAUGURAL 1.37
In January of 1937 the 20th Amendment to the Constitution applied to the Presidency for the first time. Until 37, the new American President was sworn in on the first Monday (and hey, everyone, it’s not pronounced ‘Mon-dee’) in March in the year following the November election.
This law was an anachronism that had to go. It was initially written because of the transportation difficulties of 1787. The distant rural politicians might take three months to make it to New York or Philadelphia to begin duties in public service. Give them a full four months to sell their house and take the horse carriage or sailing ship to the national capitol.
Lincoln and FDR had taken over the government in times of crisis, and both might have done a better job getting started if they didn't have to wait 4.2 months before taking over. That law was outdated even in Lincoln’s time. There were enough trains to get anyone anywhere in a short short even in 61 (short short is CB radio slang for a short period of time.)
By 1932 it was clear that the four plus month delay between Election and Inauguration was past its value. There were planes and highways to get anyone to Washington in a single day. New administrations had to sit around and stare at the clock for almost five months. Enough.
Congress passed the 20th Amendment in 1932 which changed the date the new people took over from March to January. For the House, the new rule was for the new members to be sworn in on January 3.
Congress only ratified Amendment - 20 in January of 1933, just before FDR took over. But it did not apply until October 15, 1933, so the new rule wouldn't apply for the President and Vice President until 1936, and not until 1934 for Congresspersons.
Roosevelt was sworn in for a second term on January 19, 1937 on the wettest Inauguration Day in American history. Heavy winds and heavy rain mauled the event.
LABOR FRONT 1934-39
Labor and capital were still slugging it out in the states while war was looming in Europe and Asia, a dangerous situation. Fortunately things leveled off to a reasonable level of dispute just in time for Pearl Harbor. It would have been bad to have had a virtual civil war at home between capital and labor while we were trying to fight overt enemies abroad in full scale conflagration. (According to Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States labor and capital were indeed in a conflagration during WWII. In fact that's the only thing his alleged history of the United States has to say about WWII. There's a 30 page chapter about how labor and capital still hated each other and the country was still racist and that's his take on WWII.)
The poor agricultural workers of the west fired up a series of strikes in the early months of FDR’s term that got the nation’s attention. In 1933 had a bunch of strikes. Pea pickers went on strike in Hayward California, cherry pickers abandoned their trees in Sunnyvale CA, grape pickers walked off the vines in Fresno, cotton pickers walked off in the San Joaquin Valley, and the pomegranate-picker strike in Needles shocked the world. A labor organization was formed for these workers called CUCOM, which stood for the Confederation of Unions of Mexican Workers and Farm Laborers. CUCOM called more strikes in the next few years. Some critics charged that many CUCOM leaders were radical leftist outsiders who had a political agenda far beyond compassion for these individual laborers.
While California Mexican cotton pickers were striking, another problem was hitting New Mexico and Arizona. The westward migration of unemployed whites from the heartland displaced thousands of Mexican workers in the southwest. The legitimate migratory citizens were displacing illegal aliens and racial tensions resulted.
INDUSTRIAL STRIKES
A major steel strike was settled in 1936-37 and the net result was official recognition of the Steelers Union. Then it was the turn of the auto industry.
In late 1936 the United Auto Workers staged a major sit-down strike. It began in the General Motors factory at Flint Michigan. By sitting down inside the plant and carrying out the strike through occupation, the workers had removed the ‘scab’ option for capital. Scumbag scab imports could not replace the legitimate workers since the factory was filled to the rim with angry workers. Labor leaders carefully instructed the workers not to destroy or damage any equipment. The message was that we don’t hate capital and we aren’t leftist radicals, we just want better and more equitable rewards for our part in making the wonderful capitalist system work.
The strike went on for six long weeks. GM sent spies to Union meetings and threatened workers secretly. GM asked Roosevelt to send in troops to force the workers out of the factory. Franklin said no. What a surprise. GM then asked Michigan Governor Frances Murphy to send in state troops to bounce them out. Murph held his turf and he too said no to force.
On February 11, 1937 GM surrendered. The workers (all men) had refused to shave until the strike was settled. On that happy day thousands of Abe Lincoln’s bounced triumphantly out of the GM plant. The UAW was recognized and by the end of the year had almost half a million members. Chrysler gave recognition to the UAW soon afterwards.
Henry Ford the anti-Semite admirer of Hitler was not as easy to win over to unionism as GM or Chrysler. The Ford Motor Company kept a private army of violence-friendly strikebreakers known as the “service department.” A brawl between workers and ‘servicemen’ at the River Rouge in 1937 resulted in so many injuries that even Walter Reuther the UAW leader went to the hospital. The River Rouge lived up to it’s name. Ford didn’t throw in the bloody towel until 1941.
The big steel industry had recognized unionism as noted earlier. But the smaller steel factories, known as ‘little steel’ were still holding out. A riot near Chicago between labor and capital at the Calumet River plant of Republic Steel in on May 30 of 1937 resulted in ten dead on the side of the workers with no KIAs on the side of the steel police. Republic and the rest of ‘little steel’ recognized the right of labor to unionize at the 11th hour in 1941. The USA secured the home front just in time to take on the Axis.
POP GOES THE BALOON - NEW JERSEY MAY 6 1937
The German Zeppelin Hindenburg exploded over Lakehurst New Jersey on May 6, 1937 killing everyone on board. Few of us have not seen the footage 1,000 times by the time we reach voting age. Its one of the most overplayed video-bytes of American history.
The fact that there is the video and also the audio report of the guy choking up and saying “oh the humanity!” helps keep it in the top ten spectacular moments of the century.
The Nazis swastika was prominent on the blimp as if caught fire and crashed. The official explanation for the disaster or many years was static electricity. But it's fairly certain that the explosion was an act of sabotage. My grandfather Julian told me he did it.
JAPAN INVADES CHINA 1937
John Hay’s Open Door was finally slammed officially shut in 1937 when Japan invaded China.
The USA entered the Pacific War in 41because of its objection to the Japanese conquest of China.
Manchukuo had been ruled by the Japanese since 1935. But by 1937 it was time for more. The Japanese Army was ready to make a big move into the heart of China.
The border between Manchukuo and China proper was ripe for friction. On July 7, 1937 a Japanese soldier was shot and killed at the Marco Polo Bridge a structure that was built in the 1200’s. The bridge was located in Liokachiao, on the outskirts of Beijing. The Japanese claimed that Chinese soldiers had murdered the soldier. No one knows to this day if the soldier had been murdered by the Chinese, or whether he had been shot in a fair fight, or whether he had been a dead Japanese that was offered as a prop but had not been killed by the Chinese at all. In any case it was hardly justification for conquering the most populous nation on earth.
What is certain is that a corpse in a Japanese Army uniform was dragged before the gate of the town where the Chinese troops were hiding. When the Chinese troops resisted a forced entry into the city gates the war was on. But the entire incident at the Marco Polo Bridge was almost certainly a pretext for the overt invasion of China by the Kwangtung Army. By the middle of the day on the 8th of July 1937 the invasion was in full swing on a broad front across the length of China. Gee, it was almost as if the entire thing had been planned all along.
No more limited goals with puppet governments nominally under Chinese rule. Now it was just the little giant attacking the big giant. The shark was trying to eat the whale.
For months the Japanese Army moved deep into China marking one conquest after another. But China had what was known as a “limitless rear.” The deeper the invading army penetrated into China, the more the Chinese under Chaing Kai fell back. The Japanese Army won victory after victory but the victory had its price. The administering of such a large land mass would bog down the Japanese. A million troops would be required just to hold on to what they had. And there was no end to how far inland the Chinese could retreat. The fall back positions became more mountainous and easier to defend, while the attack positions became more dangerous and difficult to support with logistics. The Japanese were winning every battle but could not win the war.
This Sino-Japanese War went on for more than two years before Hitler invaded Poland. 7-7-37 is arguably the true outbreak date of World War II. Far more soldiers and civilians died in the Sino-Japanese War than died in the invasion of Poland in 1939 (the concentrations camps would come later for the Poles.)
During this invasion, the Chinese people became heroes to Americans. Japan was the clear enemy and China the clear friend. Americans had little understanding of some of the anti-western resentment that infested the giant country and would show it self in the Maoist Revolution later. But for now on a basic level, we were totally on the side of China and went to war with Japan largely in defense of China.
BATTLE OF SHANGHAI 1937
Chaing Kai Shek ('CKS') deliberately drew the Japanese into a major battle for the great city of Shanghai because he was hoping to draw the west into the war. Shanghai had areas owned and operated by foreigners. A few accidentally dropped bombs on the French or American legations might do the trick.
The Chinese Army put up a brave and stubborn fight for Shanghai. Not an acre went down easy. But he made the classic mistake of expending most of his best resources to look good in one spot, only to lose anyway. Now for the sake of a few weeks of heroic headlines, the Chinese had lost the power to put up a rugged defense over the long haul.
NANKING
During this invasion Japan committed atrocities that are hard to believe. What was worse they were done at all levels of the Army and Navy (many of the ground troops were Japanese Marines) and with approval of commanders at all level. This was no isolated incident of undisciplined troops. These were disciplined actions of terror by disciplined troops.
These atrocities were committed in all of China, in Korea, in Hong Kong, in the Philippines, Malaya and the Dutch East Indies, and anywhere else the Japanese invaded. The worst single instance of this terrorism has come down to history under the title of ‘The Rape of Nanking’.
The defense of the peninsula leading up to the City of Nanking was the finest hour of the Chinese Army. They fought hard and resisted well. Every mile was surrendered in blood. These were the best of Chiang’s divisions giving it their all. Nanking was the capitol city. Later in the war, the limitless rear strategy would be used more frequently employed, but here in the last weeks of 1937, the Chinese were making a good showing.
The Chinese were outclassed nevertheless in military prowess and armaments. They lost slow and hard but they lost. Nanking fell. Then all hell broke loose. Literally.
Tens of thousands of male civilians and surrendered soldiers were used for bayonet practice while deranged soldiers laughed and took pictures.
20,000 women or more were gang raped and then murdered. Their babies were murdered before their eyes. This went on routinely for two weeks. It was hell on earth. Soldiers send home pictures of the atrocities to their families with pride. A few Chinese civilians were sheltered in the foreign legations, but for everyone else death was around every corner.
I am not the world’s easiest cry. But when I first learned of this story in a chapter of a book I was reading in the Northeastern University Library I had to go into a stairwell and cry. For a long time I could not come out of the stairwell. The Rape of Nanking is an incomprehensible horror show that proves decisively that Japan was on the side of evil in World War II.
The Nanking massacres were an international outrage but nothing material was done in direct response by any other nation. They took note of it and brimmed with overconfidence. The toothless League of Nations was very mad at Japan for invading Manchuria.
The League decided to expel Japan from the organization. As the decision to expel was being read, the Japanese delegation walked out. You can’t fire me, I quit. Now they were free to bayonet innocent people without fear of moral reprimands from enemy political leaders in tuxedos.
China had a large Army to defend itself with under the leadership of Chiang Kai Shek. But Chiang had his forces primarily deployed to fight his civil war against the Communists, not to resist a potential Japanese invasion. Japan had this huge strategic advantage at the start along with its clear superiority in armaments, training and discipline. Japan’s Army was obedient and under unified purpose and command whereas China was divided and 75% of Chiang's own army was not dependably under his command. The first loyalty of a majority of his army was to local war lords and these troops could not be counted on in a war.
Throughout this Sino-Japanese War (‘Kang-Ri’) which lasted from 1937-1945 the Communist Chinese put up a more aggressive fight against the Japanese than did the forces under Chiang, although it should be recognized that the Nationalist forces engaged in many courageous full-scale struggles and suffered more than a million casualties. But the Communists used the “limitless rear” retreat less and aggressive counterattack more. This produced political results for the Communists in the Civil War which followed World War II. The people in 1949 had not forgotten which side had more tenaciously stood up to the Japs.
JAPANESE AIR POWER
The Japanese air force employed the first mono-plane fighter in the invasion of China. This was the Type-96 Mitsubishi, known in US parlance and code as “Claude.”
History has forgotten the Claude because of the spectacular success of its successor, the Zero, but Claude in its day was on the cutting edge of fighter plane technology.
The Claude ended the debate about bi-plane fighters versus monoplane fighters. There were still plenty of experts who believed the bi-plane to be the best format because of its undeniable superiority in turning radius and general maneuverability. The proponents of the monoplane argued that speed, altitude, safety, and firepower more than made up for losses in turning geometry. The Claude performed so well that it
settled that argument and the rest of the military powers took due notice of how Claude hopped up and down the Shanghai-Nanking theater.
The Claude 96 was originally intended as a land-based plane. But failures of but the Japanese carrier bi-planes were performing so poorly in combat that the Claude was modified for carrier take-offs and landings.
The later Zero was built from the blueprint on up as a strictly carrier-based fighter aircraft.
The Japanese “Betty” bombers were also advanced machines. They went out on missions deep into China knowing that they were superior to any Chinese bombers.
Japanese technologically superior bombers were no match, however, for even technologically backward fighters. The Betty missions that went deep unescorted by Japanese fighters came back decimated. Even old bi-planes like the Gloucester Gladiator, could take a toll on unprotected bomber formations. No matter how new and advanced the bomber was, it was still a bomber and was no match for fighters. Essentially, a Sopwith Camel can shoot a B-17 down in a one-on-one, to exaggerate the point a little.
Claude had yet another job to do. It was not just used exclusively for ground support, as initially planned. From now on it was also in charge of bomber mission escort. This concept of bombers needing fighter escort became, in time, common knowledge. But all the way up to the end of 1942 the jury was still out. The question was a big deal because these fighters were also desperately needed on ground support. Every time a commander sent out 30 fighters on a bomber mission escort, there were men who would die in the trenches because the air help they needed wasn't there.
PANAY INCIDENT – 12-12-37
On December 12, 1937 a major international incident, the Panay Incident tested and strained relations between the United States and Japan. Japanese planes attacked and sank a US gunboat, the Panay in the Yangtze River killing three US sailors. Japan later apologized and paid an indemnity, but the act itself was almost certainly deliberate, and act of war probably designed to test US reaction, like a soldier that puts his helmet up over the trench line on a pole to see how long it takes to get shot off.
I pronounce the 498 ton Panay it as it is spelled but some call it the 'pin-eye,' for whatever reason. The Panay was no stranger to the Yangtze River. Built in China strictly for US River gunboat escort service, the Panay's main mission other than a diplomatic presence for the US in China, was to escort western oil tankers plying the river between Chunking and Shanghai. The oil tankers may have been the key to the whole incident.
The US, along with other European countries had extracted some extraordinary extraterritorial rights from China earlier in the century and now it was a recipe for trouble pie. Japanese resentment over the special privileges of the traditional western powers was part of the reason for Japan's aggression against China to begin with. The right to exploit China was won by America and Europe at a time when Japan had recently beat China in a real war and then had its gains taken away from them by tough European diplomacy. This was all part of the anger in those Japanese machine guns in the sky.
The Panay was an exploiter oil escort doubling up as a diplomat with a hull, a cordwood hull. By old treaty it had extraterritorial rights. This meant that Panay was a virtual American Embassy on water. Where it carried the flag, it was United States territory on Chinese water. This type of concession would not be granted today to the United States by a foreign country except Kuwait. It may have been morally reprehensible that the Panay had rights in China that were based on an earlier time when the USA jumped the helpless Chinese carcass. Nevertheless, the United States was 800 times friendlier to China than Japan, and Japan certainly what the rules were. The Japanese Naval air force knew that Panay was US territory.
The Japanese later claimed that the pilots mistook Panay for a Chinese ship. The US said that the Panay was clearly marked with U.S. flags. This question has come down to history as controversial. Why don't you look up the actual footage of the attack for yourself. Let's put that controversy to rest once and for all. The Panay was like a floating 1968 Woodstock hippie with a US flag shirt, a US flag hat, US flag pants, and US flags painted on their sneakers. The Panay was in a hot war zone in China and went to extra lengths to show the flag, just to avoid getting blown up. Panay had US flags flying like it was the 4th of July in Boise.
The Panay was docked in Nanking when the Japanese Kwantung Army of murderous savages closed in. Captain Phil Buckingham decided to flee upriver. He did not care to run the gauntlet to the China Sea, since it was a war zone every yard of the way, so he decided to head upstream towards Chunking. But first he needed to evacuate the Americans from Nanking.
It was last helicopter out of Vietnam for two days as the Panay took on as many Europeans as could make it to the dock. Japanese bombs were hitting the city and Panay held on as long as it could. When the full staff of the American Embassy was accounted for onboard Panay heaved to and headed upriver.
Panay was escorted by two oil tankers, or more like it, the Panay, even in retreat and in ferrying diplomats to safety was still carrying out its primary mission of escorting precious oil tankers.
It was cruel that whitey got first priority, although Panay did take on more than 200 Chinese refugees. But if you were in a foreign country and a revolution broke out and a rescue gunboat showed up, you'd take the seat ahead of the line and say a prayer for those left behind. You know it, and I know it.
30 minutes into its flight, Japanese planes began circling overhead like vultures. Then they strafed the Panay with machine gun fire. No one died, a few were wounded, the Panay was slightly damaged and everyone was in shock.
Foreign diplomats and various news reporters couldn't wait to get out of danger and sent their fantastic reports back home. But the horror show show wasn't over. Two hours later the Claude's and Zeroes came back and this time they bombed the Panay in addition to hitting it with machine gun fire. The dive bombers were like the Stukas in Spain, the dropped like a rock, bombed their target at close range and then pulled out in a last second turn. They tore the Panay up and Buckingham ordered abandon ship. Some men got into lifeboats and others jumped in the water. The Panay was returning machine gun fire as it listed, but no planes were splashed, just the sailors. The last lifeboat had the captain and a few reporters in it. As they motored away in their little boat they watched the Panay roll over and sink as one man from Reuters said glumly... “going ...... going ..... gone.”
Making land, the survivors were lost in an upriver wilderness of weeds and water. One man was dead and many of the wounded were being carried on makeshift stretchers. The motley crew of sailors, diplomats, refugees and reporters plus 48 wounded trudged through the Chinese wild-lands for a day before finally finding a friendly Chinese village.
Oh, and by the way, the Claude's also sank the two oil tankers in the river.
A MIND IS A TERRIBLE THING TO STRAFE
The Japanese Air Force always went out of their way to attack Chinese Universities in the earliest stages of any regional campaign. It had been the same in Korea. The Japanese made Kent State look like chump change.
The Japanese knew that the most stubborn organized resistance and local leadership talent, were often concentrated at the largest universities. People who know how to think are less likely to kow-tow than illiterate dopes. Intellectuals die first.
The students at Shanghai Tech, for example, woke up on the morning of December 7 1937 to an attack by a full squadron of Zekes and Vals from the carrier Hiryu. By noon the Yuan Shi Kai Dining Commons was a flaming ruin and there were dead and wounded students all over the campus when the cruel pilots few off. The frat houses were completely demolished. Kegs of beer were leaking from bullet holes while dead students bled beside them. Some students, still drunk on all night benders, thought it was all just part of a hallucinatory blackout. It was a poignant and tragic scene.
It does go to show that that butchery of the Japanese was not as spontaneous as many historians like to think. Combat pilots don't accidentally find the local colleges and destroy all the classrooms, and then single out snobby looking professors running or cover and gun them down unless it was a calculated move.
PANAY AFTERMATH
The next morning the Japanese Army was used shore artillery to sink the British freighter Ladybird as it puttered up the Yangtze not far from the Panay's corpse.
Japan soon apologized for the incident, which it said had been an accident. Japan also agreed to pay an indemnity of exactly $2,214,007 and 36 cents. I have no idea how they arrived at that figure, maybe a buck for every Chinese woman or child killed so far, plus 36 cents for the one who lost both legs to a machete but survived.
Some rich Japanese offered private donations to the families of the victims but this charity was rejected. Much has been made of this outpouring of Japanese private apology. Ambassador Grew had a stack of apologetic mail up the ceiling of his Tokyo office. This supposedly proves that the Japanese people had big hearts and were not cruel like their few bad soldiers.
Give me a break. Each and every letter of apology, was only apologetic to the United States. These caring Jap. souls cared not a whit about the hundreds of thousands of Chinese civilians that were suffering torture, rape and murder. That which you do to the least of my brothers. What do I care that the Japanese people were sincerely apologetic for what they did to Americans on December 12? Grew didn't get so much as a note on a carrier pigeon toe apologizing for what Japan was doing to China.
The Japanese were just as guilty of sick militarism as Nazi Germany. Hitler also had no hatred for Americans and tried to avoid war with the US until the end of 1941. He thought that a zillion Jews should be shot just because, but he had no hatred for the Americans until they started shooting it up with him.
Japophile historians admit that the Government of Japan was probably guilty because it knew what it did and then just paid a price tag for the experiment in terror. But they suggest that the Japanese people must be seen tenderly for look at all the flowers they sent sincerely to the American Embassy after Panay. Selective love is not love.
But a trial balloon had been floated. The Japanese were demonstrating that the western powers were paper tigers and no match for the real tigers of Asia. In the US there was a brief outcry against the Japanese for the attack but the rage died down fast. The Panay was lot like the Iraqi attack on the USS Stark in 1987. Iraq was testing the waters of US reaction in strategic preparation for a contemplated invasion of Kuwait.
In another time and setting an incident like that could have led to war but the world was stuck in a depression, the Nazis had everyone scared, and the American people were getting used to incidents from the Japanese. The Japanese apology stifled American anger perhaps more than it should have.
Another explanation for Panay is the two oil tankers. The Japanese military was more than capable of defying the expressed wishes of the home government. The oil shortage in Asia was desperate. It was the root cause of the entire Pacific War. One oil tanker was a very powerful thing. Two was strategic. (In 1942 Rommel's entire war plans were ruined by the sinking of one Axis oil tanker in the Mediterranean.) The Japanese pilots were some of the more intelligent men in the armed forces. Maybe they just took it upon themselves to not let China get its hands on these oil tankers. They needed the oil and were watching it chug its way upriver to Chunking. They were in a full-scale war with China, regardless of who started it. All that oil was going to come back and kill them or their comrades in arms. This was a matter of military principles. You don't let that oil get in away. It might have a matter of splashing the oil, not the Panay, and the Panay was simply in the way and had to go down to Sun Yat Sen's locker.
Western news-cameras actually got close up shots of the smiling faces of the Japanese pilots as they strafed and bombed the American gunboat, but FDR personally censored the footage out for national consumption. he didn't want the American people to get too mad at Japan for what happened. Never mind that a Colonel Hashimoto told western reporters a week later that he was under orders from Tokyo to bomb the Panay. FDR just wanted to block his ears and sing a song loud so that he wouldn't have to face the truth.
This was quite possibly the very reaction Japan was testing for, to see just how much it could get away with. Japan was using the Panay attack as a weather vane to see which way the pacifist vs preparedness wind was blowing in America, and they more or less got the answer they were looking for.
The other explanation is less diabolical, but no less evil. Japan was so caught up in Nanking fever that it could not control any branch of its military from going berserk and killing any people they thought was remotely in their way.
COURT PACKING SENT PACKING - 1937
In the 1930’s the Supreme Court consisted of nine very old white guys, few of whom had a liberal leaning. Franklin decided that this would not stand. The number 9 was not written in the US Constitution, but like the two-term tradition for President, was a custom that had evolved into virtual law. Franklin challenged the letter and spirit of the 9 law in early 1937 when he proposed to add a new Supreme Court Justice for every man on the court over the age of 70. The reaction against this proposal was enormous. Liberals, conservatives, and socialists were aghast. Anarchists making bombs and winos in blackouts condemned the idea. What was he thinking?
Roosevelt claimed that his only motive was to assist these elderly Justices with their heavy workloads. It was a low artifice and only added to the angry reaction. Roosevelt only wanted to increase his power over the Supreme Court because it had already ruled several of his programs unconstitutional.
Even Roosevelt’s legion of adoring historian supporters admit that the court-packing affair is a true stain on his record. The Court wasn’t giving Franklin his way and its members wouldn’t die. So every time a 69-year-old Justice had a birthday party coming up, Franklin was to have one too.
The Court had been unhappy with Roosevelt even before he tried to pack it in. FDR had been taking shots at how the Court was comprised of old tottering men who were way behind the times in their thinking. Too bad, Frank. That's their job. They're supposed to be old people adding a reserved and cautious second look at new ideas. That's part of their reason for being. But Franklin could not accept this.
The Court showed its displeasure informally. There had long been a Washington tradition that whenever the Supreme Court was about to begin a long session, the secretary to the Chief Justice would call the President and tell him the Court was about to convene. Then the president would send out an invitation inviting the men to pay a social visit to the White House. The Justices would come into the Oval office on the eve of the first session, have a few drinks, and shoot the breeze with the President about informal matters, such as their relationships with past presidents.
In the fall of 1936, FDR never got the call from Chief Justice's secretary and could not respond with an invitation. The Justices were tired of Roosevelt insulting them in the press. Franklin had recently said that they were,
“Men so hard of hearing they fail to hear the real desires of the American people. They are fossils who cough dust!”
The Supremes had snubbed FDR socially in 1936 and he answered in spades with his packing plan in 1937
The Court-Pack affair hurt Roosevelt and helped the Republicans gain seats in the Congress in 1938. But the threat produced results. Several old Justices soon thereafter announced plans for retirement. He had eased them out after all and soon did pack the court with his personal favorite liberals Justices.
Samuel Rosemann, an FDR speechwriter has an interesting theory on why the Court Packing plan failed. Sam thinks it had nothing to do with the Constitutionality issues, or the problems of checks and balances. Nor did it have anything to do with the stubborn Congressional opposition of Republican backstabbers. Rosemann thinks that the reason the country was so outraged by the court packing plan, was because they Court had already turned in the direction of the New Deal. The Court had gone along with so much change that it was unfair to punish it. FDR thought the court had not given him enough, but the public thought the opposite, according to Rosemann.
Roosevelt didn't call off the dogs. He had his mind made up in early 1937 that he was “going after those nine mummies” that were holding back his planned economy, and no one was going to talk him out of it. Rosemann describes FDR as disturbingly very cocky about how he was going to teach that Supreme Court a thing or two. Rosemann adores Roosevelt so he is the last person whose criticisms can be dismissed as biased. It never even crossed Roosevelt's mind that every element of the country would be outraged, even his own party.
Rosemann argues that if the Court had not changed its ways 'in the nick of time,' then Roosevelt's court-packing plan would have been accepted by the country as a whole and approved by Congress. Sam thinks that the entire populace was as caught up with New Deal zeal as he was, so he projects a scenario where the Supreme Court won't do as told, and the President breaks it up and rewrites the whole branch, while the country applauds because they love the New Deal that much. It is an interesting historical argument by a brilliant person. But no way.
FDR’s first Supreme Court nominee was Hugo Black in 1937. ‘Blackie’ served with distinction until 1971. Black handed down the famous “Lansdowne Decision” in 1956 which prevented the elimination of the street behind the Left Field Wall.
FDR also named Felix Frankfurter who served for three decades and relished his job. Frankie was a trusted advisor and friend to FDR during World War II. Justice Frankfurter was there for most of the top national security meetings of WWII.
MEXICAN OIL - 1938
In March of 1938 Mexico under its assertive new President Leo Cardenas expropriated that last remaining foreign oil concessions. The UK was so outraged that it severed diplomatic relations with Mexico. Some of Roosevelt’s cabinet (especially Hull) wanted the United States to also break relations at the Rio.
But FDR had no sympathy for the oil corporations. He also needed Mexican oil and Mexican political support in the event of another world war. The British exit enabled infiltration by Nazi agents into Mexico. Roosevelt was worried. An oil settlement was reached just in time for the war. The US companies settled for approximately 40 million in expro cash and the matter was over.
MOVIE TONES OF 1937-8
The world situation in 1936-9 was unique in all of history. It is hard to try to recapture with words the feeling of impending doom that existed everywhere.
There are dozens of top rate Hollywood movies from the years 1936-8 in which the feel of the movie is that war is coming - it’s sad - and we have to prepare for it. The history books will describe a story of a war that was brewing and may or may not come, depending on the flow of events. But the movies subtly say more. In a lot of these movies the characters engage in their dialogue on the common knowledge assumption that a major world war is on the way. There’s dozens of melancholic celluloid characters who feel a great evil force rising in the world that will soon cause this war.
Movie characters reflect the national self and the movie folk in 1938 are in a unique and sad position. Many of the male actors in these movies will die in the war. The movie people show the true mood of the country in one way better than history books do. They provide less info but more tone.
Hitler alone didn't cast that dark shadow on everyday life and thinking. It was several armies of evil on the march, as opposed to the good old days when it was only armies. Fascism, totalitarianism, dictatorship, oppression of individual rights in the name of the state, racism, Communism, militarism, all were bearing down on the characters in these movies. It was not merely the three nationalist factors of Japan, Germany and Italy.
Even if the fighting did not break out yet, the political/ideological war was actively being fought and lost every day and week. Evil was on the rise all over the world.
Some wise people actually had a fear that there wouldn’t be a war! If Axis empires continued to grow and flourish with a cautious but effective expansion, probing for opportunities and weak spots and nothing was done to stop this gradual expansion, then peace might become a greater enemy of mankind than war!
World War I was a conflict that many had been predicted for 20 years. It broke out gradually and erupted in terrifying scale. But it was nation vs nation, not really a clear case of good vs evil. Except for Prussian militarism, political ideology was never the bottom line behind the fighting. Grand aggression and racist ideology played comparatively little part in the outbreak of the war in 1914.
WWII was unique in that it was almost completely political and ideological. Everyone saw it coming a mile away and no one could stop it. Americans in 1938 did not so much wonder if war would come, but wondered when. They wondered if the USA could and would stay out of it. The American citizen had a 1,200 lb safe hanging over their head.
Isolationism was less pronounced in the movies in 1938 than it was on the editorial pages. Which arena more accurately represents the general state of the average American? Rent every movie you can get their hands on from 1936-1938 and look for clues. These films and the attitudes they convey are extremely instructive. There was an emotional groundswell in America over the tragic impending war, and the screenwriters were not off-key. The USA may have been isolationist in policy but not in heart. The movies did not have their dead in the sand.
AUSTRIA
First came Austria. For years Hitler's biggest problem in seeking to control Austria was Italy, a nation which also coveted its neighbor's land. If Hitler had tried to invade Austria in 1933, he would have risked a shooting war with Austria.
But since Hitler had supported Mussolini in the Abyssinia issue, his Italian partner was no longer so obstructionist in Austria. The Moose wouldn't be exactly pleased if Hitler took Austria but the two were now on the same “Axis” so there wasn't a whole lot Benito could do about it.
Hitler was born in Austria, just across the river from Germany. He spoke German, as did everyone else in his village. Western Austria was thoroughly German. So when people mocked Hitler as not even being German because he was born in Austria, they were a little off the mark. “The little Austrian corporal,” they called him. But he was very much made of German, not Austrian blut.
Hitler probably would have wanted to conquer Austria even if he had not been born there and even if only 11 people inside Austria spoke German. But he had an extra emotional reason to go after Austria as a great prize, since it would make him that much more of a German once he made Austria a part of greater Germany. This was the one country he could seize with sincere rationalization
(pardon the oxymoron) that it was German and it was only just that it should be united with Germany. The truth of course was that most of Austria spoke Austrian, and that the Germans and pro-Nazi Austrians in Austria were a substantial minority, but nevertheless a clear minority.
The chancellor of Austria was Kurt von Schnuschnegg, whom I will call KVS for short, since it's not fair to ask you to remember a name I can't even pronounce.
Nazis in Austria committed acts of violence sabotage and revolution in order to get KVS to react violently against Germans in Austria. That would give Hitler an excuse to invade Austria and take it over. KVS outlawed the outlaws of the AZP, the Austrian Nazi Party. By the beginning of 1938 KVS was begging AH to put a leash on Nazi activities in Austria. Hitler told him to dream on. He was going to take over Austria soon and KVS ought to face that facts. The two men, (at least one was a man) met on February 12 at the Rat's Lair in Bavaria. As soon as KVS began to speak, Hitler went into his Donald Trump impression (that's when no one else is allowed to talk because the big arrogant ego always has the floor.) Hitler demanded that KVS make the ANP legal again or else he would turn Austria into another Spain. He would make Austria a wasteland of civil war, anarchy and horror. And if that didn't work, he;d really get mad. Hitler demanded that the leader of the Austrian Nazis, Seyss Inquart (pronounced sice as in 'dice') be made the Minister of the Interior, in effect giving the Nazis control of the national police within the nation they sought to conquer, a demand that no reasonable resolute leader could accede to.
KVS agreed to this unreasonable demand, but countered when he got back to Austria by arranging a national vote for March 13 which asked Austria whether it wanted to remain independent or become part of Nazi Germany. This was the Austrian chancellor's clever way of defying the German chancellor and both knew the chances of Austria voting to go Nazi in a fair plebiscite were slim to none. On March 11 the Nazis marched to the borders of Austria. They were not going to let democracy rear its ugly head and ruin their plans. That vote was not about to happen. Hitler demanded that KVS resign, and he did. He probably wanted to live to see another Christmas. Seyss Inquart became the new Chancellor. His first act a leader of Austria was to destroy Austria as an independent state by inviting the German Nazis in to takeover the country.
The Anschluss was complete. The Nazis did the Vienna Waltz into Austria. They didn't even have to march, let alone fight. There were enough Nazis and pro-Nazis to make good movies of Hitler seig Heiling himself through the streets of Vienna as thousands lined the streets to cheer him, many with real tears of joy in their eyes. This footage was shown round the world as if to say that Austria wanted to be conquered by the Nazis. CNN showed all the footage of Iraqis cheering and welcoming the Americans into Baghdad in 2003 also. That didn't mean all Iraqis welcomed that invasion either (and I'm not comparing the moral situations qualitatively, just the fact that film lies more than people can ever dream to and the principle of select cheering crowds is the same.)
Hitler may have rode in that open Vienna limo as a happy as he ever was in his entire life. This was the city that had treated (properly) like dirt. This was the city where he had lived in flophouses and painted houses because he could not sell his bad post-card paintings. From homeless shelter to ruler of not only the city, but that nation plus his own, The Count of Monte Cristo could not have invented such revenge.
SEX SCANDALS CONSOLIDATE HITLER'S CONTROL
In 1938 Hitler still had to deal with Wermacht Generals who didn't like him and didn't agree that Germany should prepare for a war of aggression that they would have to lead and fight.
The Nazis never had complete control over Germany, not even during the war. The one group over which this was always particularly true was the Army.
The Nazis had more control over Denmark in 1943 than they ever had over Germany. The Nazis were a blanket of oppression tossed over the sound ancient infrastructure of a great power. The Nazis could not intimidate Germany as easily as they could a small foreign country. On his best day, 60% of Germany was against the Fuehrer. But he seized power with a minority of bullies and thugs and a nation was intimidated. But that 60% had to be appeased with a little bit of autonomy, a little bit of power. There was sort of a Vichy France within Germany, a majority who agreed to let the Nazis rule, but complained and conspired and tried to maintain the old school infrastructure in the face of Nazi oppression.
You look to the famous Nazi Press, and newspapers like The Storm Trooper, and you think the nation was reading a sea of lies. But many large German newspapers were a sniping griping pain in Hitler's neck. They criticized him and the Nazis openly on many occasions, and had to get a visit from an angry Nazi official with a warning to tone it down. It was the same with the churches, the judiciary, the police, the radio, the arts and with labor. The Nazis had the power, but they had to allow their slaves some freedom in order to avoid a rebellion. If the 60% got pushed too far they could overthrow Hitler in three days. Hitler and Goebbels and Himmler knew this and had to watch their step. Part of why they went so far with the Holocaust was because this was the one group of people who could not fight back. The Jews were a fairly small minority in Germany, and even Germans who didn't like Hitler were anti-Semitic enough to let the Nazis have their way with the Jews. After having to kiss up to all the other established groups in Germany, the Nazis took their frustrated power ego trip out on the Jews.
Goebbels was forever confiding in his diary that the German press, or the church, to name two, would be dealt with severely after the war was won, but for now we have to go along with some of their demands. It was like the Southern slave owner, who could not get too cruel or dominant with the slaves otherwise they wouldn't do good work. Germany had to accommodate its ancient institutions in order to rule them.
They could not dominate all of Germany, in spite of appearance. They didn't have the human resources even if they wanted to get tough about it. In order to rule Germany the way history thinks the Nazis actually did, Hitler would have to have been sincerely adored by 90% of the population, and 70% of the population would have to be in the Nazi Party.
So unless you were a Jew, it was actually surprisingly easy to criticize Hitler and the Nazis for most of the life of the Third Reich, provided of course that you were a German. The Nazis had more absolute power in Poland than they ever did in Germany.
This is all background on the problem Hitler had with the Generals, because I am going to tell you a great story about these weirdos.
Of all the institutions that didn't fear Hitler, none feared him less than the Army. The Wermacht always knew (at least up until 1939) that they could always stage an old fashioned coup and take over the country and put Hitler in jail. Hitler knew that they knew and they knew that he knew and they all tried to pretend it wasn't so. They also knew they had that capability and he had to cater to many Generals who openly disliked him. Just look at the section in Triumph of the Will where he sings the praises of the Generals in the front row and the mass audience forces a polite applause. You can cut the tension with a knife. Its the weakest power moment for AH in the propaganda masterpiece movie by Leni Nazenfraker, or whatever her name is.
Some generals in 1938 were alarmed at what they were hearing and had the guts to tell Hitler to his face that he was doing the wrong thing preparing Germany for an unnecessary war. The Hitler gang agreed that certain unfriendly generals had to go. But they couldn't just bump them off. Blomberg and Fritsch weren't Rhoem and Strasser. The Wermacht wasn't the SA. These guys had to go. But how to do it without stirring up a coup.
The top offender was General Blomberg. He was Army chief of Staff and he never hesitated to tell Hitler that Germany would end up losing if it started a new world war.
So Himmler and Hitler started acting real nice to Blomberg. Then they introduced him to this hot babe. She and Bloomberg fell in love. General Blomberg married her. Himmler served as best man and Adolph Hitler was in the wedding too!
Three weeks later the Gestapo released news reports that Blomberg's new wife had once been a prostitute. The whole thing had been a complete set up. Hitler sent a letter to Blomberg saying that the general had to resign, “The Fuhrer attended the wedding of a whore and if you do not resign in apology, the entire nation, and the Fuhrer personally would be disgraced.”
Von Blomberg resigned from the Army but did not divorce his bride. The man had his priorities.
Scum SS hyenas Himmler and Heydrich were howling with delight when Blomberg resigned. But their work was only half done. A General Fritsch replaced Blomberg and he also was a 'just say no to Hitler' sort of man. Fritsch had also told Hitler to his face without blinking that if he started a war Germany would lose and that it was morally wrong to start a war anyway. Fritsch also had to go. He didn't have a Nazi bone in his Wermacht body (unlike Rommel who was Nazi to the core.)
Himmler and Heydrich decided to 'out' Fritsch, even though he wasn't gay. The Gestapo leaked rumors that Fritsch was a homosexual. Formal charges were brought against him for gay sex (they didn't call it that back then, by the way.) The accuser was a man who made a living giving sworn testimony for the SS or SD that some person was a homosexual.
Fritsch was never known to have a girl friend, but the gay charge was false. He was just a workaholic Army man who didn't chase either branch.
Fritsch fought back. He refused to resign and demanded an official army trial. This threw the Gestapo smear squad off. Fritsch was no lightweight opponent, but a venerable general with a lot of powerful friends in the Army who would swear that he wasn't gay. General Frikert, for example, was willing to swear under oath that Fritsch had never even seen a play.
The trial date was set for March 1938. Fritsch had so many powerful friends that they began to seriously consider using the Fritsch trial as a trigger for an insurrection against the Nazis. The Gestapo heard the rumors of an impending gay trial day coup and grew concerned. Himmler began to panic. Imagine the Nazis getting overthrown in a coup because a heterosexual had refused a false gay outing. That's what stops Hitler and prevents WWII in 1938? Could have happened.
Then, just in the nick of time, Hitler carried out the Anschluss of Austria. Overnight the strength in popularity of the Nazi party jumped up by 30%. The chance to use the Fritsch trial as a starting point for a coup were over.
But Fritsch still wanted the trial. The Germans knew they couldn't win so they told the court that their star witness had made a mistake. The guy he knew to be homosexual was actually named Frisch, not Fritsch. The prosecution witness apologized for his error and Fritsch was acquitted. But he felt humiliated and decided to resign anyway. His fellow officer could never look at him again without wondering.... where there's smoke there's fire.
So Hitler had eliminated the top two Generals who opposed him by fixing one up with a whore and spreading lies that the other one was queer.
The Nazi prosecution witness died in an unfortunate accident about a week after the Fritsch acquittal. He fell down three long flights of stairs. Actually the same set of stairs three times in a row. General Fritsch went back to service when Hitler invaded Poland, but in a reduced capacity. He died in battle in the Polish campaign. Fritsch may have deliberately put himself on the most dangerous areas of the front lines in order to commit semi-suicide, a death by cop in war situation. He went out looking for land-mines on his own, took a bullet in the thigh and bled to death in a remarkably short time span. Yeah, I guess the gay thing got under his skin a little.
MUNICH
Once he had taken his beloved Austria, Hitler set his eyes next on Czechoslovakia. But it was more for defensive than offensive reasons that he coveted Czechoslovakia, particularly the Sudetenland. The Fuhrer told his staff that Czechoslovakia was a springboard for the Red Army to bust out into the Ruhr and spread out all over the plains of Germany.
Hitler took Czechoslovakia in two stages, the first in the Sudeten.
Then he divided it administratively into a Czech and a Slovak province of the new Germany.
British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain is the appeasement poster boy for all of history. He appeased Hitler at a conference there and came home to wave a paper at the airport exclaiming peace in our time. He was wrong of course and to this day he is ridiculed and condemned for his Munich performance.
But was Chamberlain the instigator of an appeasement movement or a mere representative of a movement that pushed him to the front to represent it? Revisionism is the cancer of history. Once it finds a place in the historic body is grows and spreads until it consumes it. But the Munich compromise was only called appeasement later. At the time it was widely praised as wisdom and a sigh of relief and appreciation swept the civilized world.
President Roosevelt sent Chamberlain a telegram that read simply, “Good man.”
At Munich Germany bullied Czechoslovakia into surrendering the Sudetenland, the area in black on the map, in 1938. The ability of Czechoslovakia to defend itself against Germany depended on this mountainous outer border. It was no coincidence that this was exactly the same region Hitler was demanding.
What made things tough for those opposing Hitler was that there was some validity to the Fuhrer's claim that he was merely enforcing the Woodrow Wilson principle of self-determination as promised at Versailles in 1919. Most of the population in the black area on the map were in fact German speaking Germans with little loyalty to the checkered Czech flag.
After taking Sudetenland he then took the rest.
As you can see, Hungary and Poland got their slice of the pie too. Poland would later play victim to Germany while Hungary would be a moderately supportive ally of Hitler through most of the coming war. In 1938 they were vultures enjoying the carcass that Hitler had killed. The entire eastern half of the carcass went to Poland and Hungary. The history books all casually say that “Hitler then took all of Czechoslovakia.” But you can see by the map that this is a myth. He took about 60% of it in the German western part and let Poland and Hungary take the east.
Hitler assured the worried world that they could relax now. This was his last land demand. His exact words were “There is for Germany no territorial problem in Europe.” Read my lips, no new territories. His words were as good as fool's gold.
The democracies conceded the Sudetenland. Chamberlain has been vilified by history for the sell-out. Munich is now such a dirty word that it can be tossed as an accusation at anyone who for any reason favors peaceful diplomatic solutions in any situation.
But the democracies also told Hitler that this would be their last territorial kow-tow. Neither side held completely true to their promises.
PUB,IC OPINION 1938 1991
College professors are still debating Munich. Every few years a new scholar offers a new book with a new look at Munich.
The lesson of Munich for me is what a deceitful two-faced slimy lying sack of bile public opinion is. Never mind the diplomats. I saw it in the aftermath of the first Gulf war of 1991 and I couldn't believe it when I saw happen. The people who praised Bush Sr. in the spring of 1991 as a hero for the way he conducted and the way he ended, the Gulf War were the exact same people who by the end of the 1990's were screaming holy hell that “He didn't finish the job!.” As if you thought that at the time, you sanctimonious bozo! We never heard a word of this strategy out of you in 1991. Everyone was celebrating the termination of the terrible war. No one was screaming “On to Baghdad!” at the time. Nine years later the war was seen by the whole country as a failure and if only Bush had listened to the cab driver and the housewife of 1999, the war would have been handled right in 1991. Of course these same people shut up real fast when the invasion of 2003 bogged us down in the Iraqi Civil War. This Gulf War experience makes the Munich thing seem only normal. The praise for Chamberlain's peace settlement was something close to %90 in England, and higher than that in the United States and in Germany. Crowds of German people gave Neville prolonged ovations everywhere he went on his trip to Munich and back. Even these loonies wanted peace! (I'm half-German, btw.)
The west bought time at Munich. Churchill was begging his country to rearm at a desperate pace, but did not get his way. The labor (read left) party was still in power in London. The opposition party made speeches but not decisions. England did not prepare for certain war in the interim between Munich and the outbreak of world war in September 1939.
However, half a loaf of re-armament was better than none. England did not re-arm at at pace to earn the smiles of post-war historians, nor at the pace
Churchill wanted, but it did begin to re-arm. When in the spring of 1939 Hitler swallowed up the rest of Czechoslovakia, England shifted into fourth gear and began to re-arm at a Churchillian rate.
The real problem for the Allies in the fall of 1938 was air power, particularly French air power. There wasn't any.
Britian had only one squadron of modern one-winged fighter planes when Neville went to Munich in 1938. When Germany attacked Poland on 9-1-39, England had 26 first-rate fighter squadrons ready to defend England.
The French air force was of second rate quality with no first rate planes about to be hopefully deployed soon, as was at least was the case in England and the United States. France was a great power, but it was mostly on land. Even the French Navy was a formidable and modern fleet when compared with the French Air Force.
The British French military chieftains knew they could not tell a Chamberlain or a Daladier that in case of war with Germany, the west would clearly win.
So what would have likely happened if Chamberlain had listened to the revisionist finger-waggers of later history and stood up to Hitler at Munich?
Would Hitler have backed off? That is the common presumption. And secondly, if they had stood up to Hitler and called his bluff, would Hitler have still taken the Sudetenland, calling the Allies bluff in turn? The allies then would presumably have declared war on Germany, per order of later generations.
Would France have then launched offensive operations against Germany? France didn't attack on the offense when Hitler had already conquered Poland in September 1939. It's not likely it would have attacked in late 1938 over the Sudetenland.
Would Britain then send several expeditionary divisions to France to help attack Germany? If not, what kind of war would Britian be able to fight at this time. The RAF simply was not ready to defend Britain's cities against Germany's bombers. St. Paul's might not have made it through a London Blitz that started in November of 1938
There wasn't a lot of support in Britain or France in late 1938 for going to war again for any reason except in the case of an actual invasion or attack by an enemy power. How could Chamberlain go to Munich playing tough guy when he didn't have the people to back him up? The mass of western people of 1968 and 2008 backed him up, but unfortunately they couldn't do anything to help him. He was stuck with the British people of 1938 and they did not want to go to full-scale war for the Sudetenland.
The British dominions would have had a bad time of it trying to support going to war in late 1938 to help it's Queen Mother if the cause was the Sudetenland, and if Britain was proposing to take offense actions to start the war. Australia protested that it didn't want to go to war over this, while recognizing that it would if so obliged in the case of a formal declaration of war. New Zealand aid the same. South Africa made it clear it would not help out in any way.
The Munich failure did have one or two other silver linings. By giving in to Hitler on the basis of Wilson’s 14 points, the democracies placed him in a position where he could advance no further under the umbrella of morality and proper international relations. The liberals in England, France, and the USA would condemn their own countries at that time if they had mobilized for war against Hitler at the time of Munich. They would have said that Hitler was bad but in this instance his arguments were legitimate. It would not have been a clear unified war effort with excellent morale if war had come over the Sudetenland in 1938. A year later after Hitler had proven himself a liar and a scum by taking over other territories, in violation of both his pledge and Wilsonian principles the democracies could then prepare openly for war and with the full backing of its human resources.
In the interim between Munich and war the Allies cracked the German secret codes for military and political intelligence. This was a great asset in the war that would not have been available in 1938. Nevertheless Munich has come down to history, not unfairly, as a word that means a base form of political appeasement.
A great American once said that victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan. How true. When Chamberlain came back from Munich with the peaceful settlement of Munich on a piece of paper Britain welcomed him as a hero, and the world cheered and raised a toast to his name. It was hard to find anyone to really condemn him at the time. But in hindsight it seems that everyone hated the settlement at the time and knew full well it was low appeasement and a knave’s mistake.
On the same day as the Munich sell-out, the worst hurricane in the American 20th century hit the New England and Long Island region and killed more than 700 people. The city of Providence Rhode Island was submerged in 14 feet of water. The town of Westerly Rhode Island was wiped off the earth.
As the storm was approaching Boston a baseball game was under way at Fenway Park. The winds were getting so strong that a pop fly in the infield was blown over the left field wall for a home run and the game was immediately cancelled.
STRIKE UP THE BUND
The German-American Bund was a pro-Nazi organization in the United States, led by a scum by the name of Fritz Kuhn..
GAB members wore Nazi uniforms and imitated the Nazi organization in Germany. There were thousands of Nazi Bundsmen in the USA in the pre-war years. One day they actually filled Madison Square Garden in New York for a rally.
But Hitler understood that the American Bund was not doing his cause any favors. Hitler instructed his ambassador to the US, Mr. Hans Deikhoff to offer no support for the German-American Bund, and asked German citizens to give it no support either. The Nazis wanted to keep the United States out of a war they knew would come soon enough as it was. The goose-stepping imitators in America were bad publicity. The Bund was bad for US isolationism, which is what Hitler wanted America to maintain. The blatant pro-Nazi Bund was alarming the average American citizen and giving Roosevelt a fine propaganda tool for war preparedness.
What Hitler did want out of Nazis in America was secret financial support for isolationist newspaper advertisements, and secret financial help in transporting isolationist politicians to important political events. This did happen with the public and even the US government unaware.
When war broke out in Europe in 1939, the Germans in America were under strict instructions to not engage in any overt acts of sabotage. It had been tried in World War I and it backfired. There were some successful acts of destruction over here, but Wilson and the US government exploited the incidents well. Hitler was scummy but no dummy. He knew that in the event of war, the plants destroyed would not compensate for the morale boost that would result. Every blown up fuel truck meant another thousand volunteers at US Army recruitment. Sabotage was not cost effective.
GO BACK TO GERMANY, DEIKHOFF
In November of 1938 a Polish Jew murdered a German diplomat and the Nazis used the incident as a pretext to launch a mass pogrom on the all the Jews in Germany. Nazis beat up and killed Jews all over the country. Thousands of Jewish homes, businesses and Synagogues were burned to the ground. Descriptions of the atrocities committed against Jews in Germany could fill ten thousand books, and this was before World War II even started.
President Roosevelt was outraged by Nazi anti-Semitism and its deeds, as were all decent people. In November 15 Franklin asked the American Ambassador in Berlin Hugh M. Wilson to come home for Thanksgiving dinner, “and bring your toothbrush.” Hitler responded by asking Ambassador Deikhoff to come back to Berlin on the next available zeppelin.
Formal withdrawal of an ambassador is tantamount to declaring a state of imminent belligerency, so FDR was careful to keep the recall of Wilson informal, a matter of a personal request, and not an official diplomatic act. But the meaning was plain enough, and it just so happened that neither ambassador ever went back to their assigned capitol. So in effect, the United States and Nazi Germany severed diplomatic relations on November 15 1938.
ASIAN FRONT - 38 CALIBER
In the Far East Japan and China were engaged in full scale war along a front as wide as China itself. The casualties ran over the one million figure on both sides before Pearl Harbor was attacked. This war is usually neglected by the historians as worth the slightest nod or none at all. But the Sino-Japanese War was massive, and our support of China in this war led directly to our enmity with Japan which led directly to war.
China had two strategic advantages against a superior military foe, which Japan overwhelmingly was in Army, Air and Navy. China had an anthill of people with which it could endlessly replenish its depleted divisions. Its army could be pushed around but it could hardly be eliminated as a fighting force even if it stood its ground and took more than 50% casualties. Japan had a much smaller population base and its army had to be maintained over long supply lines.
The other advantage the Chinese had was an endless mountainous interior to which it could forever retreat and still remain strong. The ‘limitless rear.’ Japan could win fight after fight, which it generally did, but the Chinese armies could give ground and live to fight another day. The Japanese army would then with each advance, require more troops of occupation, extend its lines of communication and encounter progressively difficult and disadvantageous terrain. With each defeat China came closer to victory. Japan was however in complete control of about half the country when the US entered the war.
Japanese atrocities in the Middle Kingdom were not state secrets. The news of their dastardly behavior was traveling the world just as was the mistreatment of Jews in Nazi Germany. In 1938 we would have to say that Japan was far ahead of Germany in physical crimes, maybe one or two light years ahead. The Rape of Nanking speaks for itself. But that 1937 horror show was no isolated incident condemned by Japanese authorities. Rape, torture, and murder of captured Chinese civilians was a matter of course in the Sino-Japanese War, and it was condoned at all levels. These were not the actions of rogue drunk privates defying disciplinary orders. It was all part of the racist militarist national illness in Japan. The proof is that Japanese soldiers regularly sent back photographs of their atrocities to their families back home.
It is often explained that to the Japanese way of thinking, no man should surrender in war, so these Chinese (and later American and British and Philippine) prisoners deserved to be spit on and kicked just for openers. So therefore prisoners of war were routinely tortured and beheaded.
Even if we concede the point, why the civilians? Civilians were given the same treatment! What’s the apologist revisionist rationalization for that policy? As if mothers and babies and elderly men should be ashamed of themselves for surrendering to 10,000 guys with guns and bayonets.
The Sino-Japanese War was unthinkable hell. Some kind of poison was sweeping through the Japanese Army during this China War, some evil force beyond our ken. It was the evil god of macho conceit, and it just happened to find its way here at this time, but it has lived since the beginning of cave man, and has already poisoned a trillion men and a thousand states. Who knows what it has in store for us in the future?
FLYING TORAS
The lines were clearly drawn between right and wrong as far as 99% of Americans were concerned, and a squadron of US fighter pilots enlisted in the service of China to fight the Japanese. These were the famous ‘Flying Tigers’ in their P-40 Warhawks, with the mean teeth painted on the nose of the fuselage. Tiger means ‘tora’ in Japanese.
For short money these guys fought and died in the Second World War before we were in it. The P-40’s under Claire Chennault had amazing success in kills versus losses in their two years of combat in the China/Burma area.
MID TERM ELECTIONS OF 1938 – THE FDR PURGE
The Great Depression made a sad and large comeback in late 1937 and continued into 1938. Although dole checks and dole jobs had been given to multi-millions of Americans, the essential GD infrastructure of mass unemployment, farm foreclosures and a handicapped industrial base was still standing as tall and strong in 1938 as it had stood in 1933. The New Deal had treated the symptoms but not the disease. It had been a mission of mercy, not solution. The Republicans were rubbing their hands in delight waiting for Election Day 1938.
Consequently 1938 the Republicans gained seats in both Houses in the Congressional Elections but not enough in either case to win control. The GOP also picked up 13 governorships across the states.
FDR decided to get very involved in the election campaign of 1938, but not in the way you might think. He didn't hit the trail fighting Republican candidates late in the game, on behalf of the broad spectrum of Democratic friends. Instead he campaigned early in the campaign against Democrats!
FDR was mad at the Democrats who came into office on the coattails of his popular New Deal programs and his New Deal reputation, yet became obstructionist to these very programs once they were seated on Congress. There were quite a few of these Democrats around, especially from the South. It's pretty easy to understand his anger towards those who exploited his name to power then showed a marked lack of support and cooperation for FDR's policies. FDR decided he would “purge” these bad Congressmen.
He felt that most of the American people were unaware of the voting records of these “two-faced phony backstabbers” and that if he went out and campaigned against them in the primaries, he would unseat most of them and send an effective warning to those few who survived.
So in the early fall of 1938 Roosevelt spent all of his political capitol on an effort to punish disloyal Democrats in the Democratic primary contests. He went to many states campaigning for Democratic challengers to Democratic incumbents.
To his surprise and chagrin, he was only able to show results in one case, and that person might well have lost anyway. All of the other Democratic candidates he campaigned against in 1938 won their primaries.
The Republicans fared fairly well in the general election. Thanks to the new recession, combined with a serious backlash against Roosevelt for his “court-packing” scheme of 1937 the Republicans gained seats in both Houses in the Congressional Elections in 1938, but not enough in either case to win control. The GOP also picked up 13 governorships across the states.
The signs were clear to Roosevelt that he had to slow down his grand left strategy. The political capital of novelty was wearing out.
The New Deal was in fact coming to close, or close to it (the War would finish it off.) In his State of the Union address in January of 1939 Roosevelt did not propose a single new federal program and kept his speech focused entirely on foreign policy issues. The War clouds in Asia and Europe were overshadowing even the crisis of the Great Depression and the attempted answers of the New Deal.
WAR CLOUDS OF 1939
THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR DECIDED
In 1939 a victor was declared in the ugly Spanish Civil War, fought between 1936 and 1939. This was a complex and highly political blood bath between the two extremes of left and right, their extremism making them both violent and dictatorial. Someone had to give. An incredible 700,000 people died in this merciless clash.
Generalissimo Francisco Franco (who was to rule Spain until 1975) headed the right wing group, with the support of the church and big business. He won. Hitler and Mussolini supplied Franco’s side with guns, planes and troops. There were called “volunteers”, 85,000 of these so-called ‘volunteers” fighting for fascism in Spain.
The Soviet Union strongly supported the anti-Catholic leftists.
It was hard for nations like the USA and the UK to decide on which side they were on. Ernest Hemmingway volunteered to fight on the side of the leftists. For most it was a tough choice. Hmmm … do I support the democratic left, a gang that is blowing up churches and hanging nuns and priests from the church belfry? Or do I support the fascist right with Hitler and Mussolini supporting it? The USSR firmly supported the anti-clerical anti-fascist side. The left in America was also largely anti-clerical so they fell in with the Soviets in spirit (or anti-spirit.)
The violence was unspeakable and deliberately targeted civilians. It was a blend of terrorism and military maneuvers on a canvass of revolution and counter-revolution, with all kinds of involvement from the outside. The mountainous terrain of Spain increased the turmoil and chaos. There were Spanish places where decisive military strategic campaigns could be conducted. It was nothing like the America Civil War with enormous armies clashing on reasonably flat terrain and settling matters once and for all. The pain in Spain was not mainly on the plain. The suffering was instead scattered in kaleidoscopic fashion in rugged little villages all over the nation.
The German Air Force used Spanish cities for training practice. The townspeople of Guernica were attacked in 1937 by planes from the air, and by machine guns on the ground. 1,600 died. One entire town was thrown down an abandoned mine shaft. Priests were murdered as special prized targets. Terror begot terror. Spain was a political Dante’s inferno for four years.
By the middle of 1939 the Fascist faction was the clear winner. When the World War began Hitler wanted fellow fascist Franco to join the scrap, but Franco dutifully kept Spain out of World War II to the frustration of the Fuhrer. Franco never joined or helped the Allies either. Spain was strictly neutral officially. But in action and deed Spain was moderately friendly to the Germans through the Second World War. Hitler settled wisely for this and maintained friendly relations with Franco.
ITALY INVADES ALBANIA – APRIL 1939
People tend to false remember that this happened during WWII, when it happened before WWII. Italy for no good justifiable reason attacked a tiny and weak neighbor on the other side of the Adriatic and incorporated it into the new Italian Empire. 19 Italians and 8 Albanians died in the fighting between April 1-12 1939.
The invasion of Albania was supposed to maintain the balance of power within the Axis. Since Hitler had taken Austria and Czechoslovakia, Mussolini would show the world that Itlay was no junior partner. Italy could play that game too. Watch us take Albania, Adolph, we aren't jealous of your greatness because we have greatness too. That is exactly the reason Italy invaded Albania in April of 1939.
The idea came mostly from Mussolini's brother in law, Count Ciano, the Foreign Minister. Ciano had married Edda Mussolini, who was, I presume, not as fat as her brother. Ciano fought in the Ethiopian war, rose to national prominence and now proposed to Mussolini that Italy take Albania. A lot of people thought Ciano was smug, arrogant, condescending and insincere. He would have made a good radio talk show host.
The other reason Italy took down little helpless Albania was to block Hitler out of the Mediterranean. It was a move to both impress his Ally and defy it, a move designed to make sure that Germany kept its greedy eyes north, west and east only.
The King of Albania, Zog I resigned at gunpoint. On April 15, Albania “voluntarily resigned” from the League of Nations. That was wise since the League was about to declare the new Albania illegal under international law.
POLISH QUESTION JAN-AUGUST 1939
The nominally independent city of Danzig had been de facto part of Hitler’s Nazi state for several years. Hitler continued to threaten Poland over this city. (map) It was only a matter of time before it had to be handed back over to Germany. Jews were being persecuted there, even though it was technically independent under international control.
By the spring of 1939 France and Britain had come to their senses and were ready to stand up to Hitler. They would not allow him to take any more territory in Europe.
As a result, these former enemies in the Hundred Years War gave a guarantee to Poland that if Hitler attacked it, they would come to the rescue militarily. Poland was a bit surprised by the offer. Relations between Warsaw and these two had been fair at best. It just so happened that Poland appeared to be next on Hitler’s plate, so this was where France and England had decided to take a stand.
Poland had not endeared herself to the west when she helped Hitler in dismembering Czechoslovakia. Poland greedily took its slice in the Teschen area.
Poland had reason to fear that joining an alliance with Britain and France would be a provocation to Hitler, who seemed to be just looking for an excuse to attack. Also Poland thought its military forces were strong enough to hold off the Germans if they invaded. They had foolish faith in their large horseback army, and felt a little lost pride in being protected by big brothers France and England. They saved face by providing in return that if Germany attacked to the west, Poland would come to the aid of France.
There was plenty of talk going around about France invading Germany from the west should Hitler attack to the east into Poland. There was talk about the British bombing German cities if Hitler attacked Poland. After a while Poland believed these pledges. But there was not a firm commitment.
There was no legal document or treaty and they were pledges that would not be honored.
The vague commitment to Poland also mislead Hitler. He honestly thought that England and France would not go to war over Poland, and that their rhetoric had no teeth.
Poland feared and distrusted Russia almost as much as Germany. London and Paris wanted Russia on board with Poland against Germany, but there was too much ill feeling between the Pilsudski’s and the Ivanov’s, so it had to be Poland alone. Russia never made it to the Allied camp against rising Nazi Germany for many reasons, one of which was Churchill.
SOVIET UNION ON THE FENCE – SUMMER OF 1939
By the summer of 1939 the entire world knew that Hitler was a man of war, and that a second world war was almost inevitable. But there was still some faint hope that it could be prevented with deterrence through united strength. London and Paris, as well as shrewd observers world-wide, knew that the only certain way to stop Hitler from invading Eastern Europe was to bring the Soviet Union on board in an alliance with the western democracies against Hitler. The USSR would decide whether there would be a World War II and if so, what it would be made of.
Stalin was on the fence. He knew that the Nazi regime of Hitler had its greedy eyes on Mother Holy Russia. Joe was not deluded as to the real long-term intentions of Hitler, but he also did not care too much for the terms being offered by the west for an alliance against Hitler.
In this situation, the USSR found itself in the position of Italy a couple of years earlier except the stakes were much higher. The good guys and the bad guys were both trying to get the Soviets into their Entente, and the Russian dictator had to make a call. There was an angel and a devil on his shoulders each pleading their case in his ears. The problem was that the devil was offering better terms, and the angel was not even making a firm commitment to the second rate offer it was making.
The Nazis were offering specifics. Hitler offered Russia peace, time, and a slice of Eastern Europe all on the same plate. If the USSR would ally itself with Germany in a non-aggression pact, Russia would buy a couple of years to prepare for the war it knew would come later. In other words, Stalin could pretend to be friends with Hitler for now in order to hit the gym for two years or so and be better prepared to fight him later. Both men knew what was what and could at the same time pretend otherwise for publicity purposes.
Stalin needed time to rebuild the command structure of his military since he had already had murdered most of the top officers of the Red Army in his sick purges.
The Nazi offer of much of Eastern Europe was quite the carrot in addition to Nazi withdrawal of the raised stick. If and when Hitler attacked in the east, Russia could have a slice of the conquered cake, even though she hadn't helped to bake it. She was the little Red Hen of 1939. The Eastern half of Hitler's eastern conquests was quite a temptation for a fascist dictator, and especially for a Godless knave like Stalin. It's fairly well-known that Russia got a major slice of Poland when war broke out. What is less remembered is that Russia took over the Baltic states and eventually got a slice of Romania and Bulgaria.
France and England were making a counter-offer. They wanted the Soviet Union to join them in a new and improved Triple-Alliance (the term used in WWI) in order to stop Hitler. The Franco-Brit idea was to guarantee the safety of the smaller states of Eastern Europe. If Germany attacked Poland or Romania, or the Baltic states, then the UK, France and Russia would come to the rescue with their combined military might. This would be enough to deter Hitler from trying anything funny, like destroying 50 million people.
This looked like a good offer on paper, but in practice there were many problems. First of all the geography of Europe made it impossible for England and France to even dream of really rescuing Poland, Romania, or the Baltic states from a German invasion. The only thing England and France could genuinely offer was a punitive continental invasion a year or two or three down the road with a goal to restore these original governments. Even that was highly unlikely in any event. The West would almost certainly have to get through Germany and Italy first before it could directly invade eastern Europe. And by that time, Russia could speak for itself in Eastern Europe anyway.
The only member of the proposed trio that could do anything to stop a Hitler invasion of Poland was Russia and there were problems with that idea both in Russia and in Poland. In fact, they were more than problems, they were immovable obstacles. First and foremost the Poles did not want any Soviet troops moving into Poland at any time, even if they were actually being invaded from Germany. They feared the Russians at least as much as the Germans. Throughout the spring and summer of 1939 the Poles just said no to any plans to have Russia help them stop Germany. The British and the French were understandably frustrated.
Russia and Poland had been historic enemies for centuries. Russia had helped to partition (dismember) Poland three times. Poland had attacked and invaded Russia in 1920, occupying most of the Ukraine and Lithuania before a Red Army counterattack under Trotsky had beat them back to the gates of Warsaw. Only Allied diplomatic intervention prevented the Russian conquest of Poland at this time. Poland was severely anti-communist. Between historic enmity and political hatreds, one can understand the position of Poland. Historians call Polish diplomatic stubbornness in 1939 things like “unbelievably stupid.” But Poland was being asked to welcome one mugger to rescue them from the threats of another. Romania felt about the same way. The livestock of Eastern Europe didn't want a contract with the leopard in order to gain protection from the cougar.
Another factor in Polish stinkin thinkin was (if you can believe this) 1- military overconfidence, and 2- an honest lack of faith in Russia's military ability to make much difference one way or another. Beck, the Polish leader, thought that if Hitler attacked, that Poland could defend itself, and if it failed, Russian intervention would not save the day and would only prolong the suffering and fighting. Poland had a vivid memory of almost conquering Russia back in 1920. Poland had conquered Russia completely in the 1600's. It had a historic prejudice about it's military power.
Russia for its part did not want to be the only one of the three partners to have to actually send its boys to die to save Polish, Romanian or Latvian independence. England and France wanted the Soviet Union to “guarantee” the integrity of these countries, but at the moment of truth, only Soviet divisions would be deployable and Stalin found this deplorable. France and England would get around to intervention only after the matter was pretty much settled. They might contribute some fast air and naval power, but little else, and France, as events would prove in September, was not seriously interested in any offensive actions against Germany's undefended rear in the case of a German invasion of Poland. France was militarily dependent on its famous Maginot Line of super-pillboxes, trenches and tunnels. The Maginot Line was impressive but it was as immovable as it was impregnable. Stalin was probably aware of French literal military 'intransigence' on this point.
In fact, the Russians had dreams of swallowing up these East European countries themselves, not protecting them. What was more important, and much worse, none of these East Europe states trusted Russia as far as they could throw Herman Goering. The states of Eastern Europe flat out rejected even the theoretical offer of help from the Russians.
This refusal of Poland to accept Soviet help led many politicians in the west to reconsider their commitments to Poland. Why should we go to war to protect Poland when Poland won't take the necessary steps to protect itself, they asked. There was a movement to tell Poland that if it did not agree to accept Soviet help, then the Allies in the west would withdraw their pledge to go to war with Germany if and when those demons attacked. As far back as April 3 Lloyd George had asked Parliament to make this a strict condition if Poland expected England to go to world war for her. It made sense and it might have worked, but it was never tried. Parliament said no. The west was in the end roped in to committing itself to defending a nation it could not defend, while the only country that could have defended it chose to help conquer it instead.
The monkey wrench in all of it was the Cold War. It wasn't going by that name at the time, but the political war between a strident Communism hell-bent to destroy all democracies by revolution from within, and western industrial democracies who would not like to see that happen, ruined the chance for the alliance that could have stopped Hitler. Britian and France considered their own governments by their very nature to be the natural enemies of the Communist government of Russia. Even the lefty Labor party in Britian hated Stalin and the Communists. The Conservative Party couldn't sleep at night they hated them so much. Now the UK was being asked, for expedience, to embrace and ally itself with their sworn political enemies, the Communists.
Is it any wonder then that Britian and France only went through the motions of courting a Soviet alliance but did not take the important steps to make it a reality? The western democracies continued to send low-level emissaries to Berlin and Moscow to meet with Soviet diplomats. The Russians correctly were insulted by the low level celebrities they were meeting.
When the British negotiated with Poland for military and political discussions, they sent their most famous generals and diplomats. But when the British negotiated with the Soviet Union they sent unknown warm-up acts. Stalin was got the message.
What the British and French were trying to do was stall the Nazi-Soviet Pact by dangling vague promises of a military and political alliance. They gambled that the Russians would break off these sinister talks with the Nazis in order to maintain the opening for an alliance with them. But the west was sending too many signals of disrespect to the proud Russians, for example sending emissaries to key meetings on slow ships when they could have flown them in. Stalin was no fool, and was not a man who handled insults particularly well.
The Soviets enjoyed their position as the double-courted lady. When the Germans began to make their offer more concrete, the Russians feigned hesitation. 'How can we take your friendship seriously,' they asked, 'when the Nazis had done so many things against us recently.
“Like what,?' asked the Nazi rep.
“Like the anti-Comintern Pact, your support of Japan against us, and refusing to allow us participation in the important Munich Conference of 1938 when we specifically asked to be included,” they replied.
“So what is it you want?” asked the Germans, “Surely there are no territorial questions between the Baltic and the Black Sea that we cannot solve between us amicably.”
“Now you're talking,” replied the Russians.
The Soviet Union wanted a specific deal to divide Eastern Europe between the two fascist predators. In the end they got it and the pact was thus sealed.
On July 26, two Russian and two German diplomats had a fancy dinner at one of Berlin's finest restaurants and for the first time, they essentially agreed the the time had come to make a deal. The German waiter had no idea that he was serving a table that was plotting to serve up Eastern Europe to massive death and destruction. In the meantime, British diplomats were sailing the North Sea at 15 knots on their way to what was supposed to be the same dinner to save Europe from massive death and destruction.
The only country on earth that stank badly enough to treat with these Communist stinkers, was the vilest smelling nation in all of human history, the Third Reich. Stalin and Hitler weren't even strange bedfellows, they were two Satanic peas in a pod. It is no wonder that they signed their infamous pact of 1939 and it is almost silly that the world found it shocking. Stalin had already starved, imprisoned or murdered millions of his own people. What was the big surprise that he teamed up with Adolph Hitler?
HITLER'S OTHER ALLIES
Italy and Hungary, Hitler's other allies, wanted no part of a war. When it began to seem that Hitler was planning to invade Poland, Mussolini sent the Foreign Minister Count Ciano to meet with German foreign Secretary Ribbentrop (hanged at Nuremberg I'm delighted to report) for talks.
Ribbentrop took Ciano to one of the best restaurants in Germany and listened coldly while Ciano told Ribbentrop that Italy was hoping there would be a diplomatic solution of “the Polish Problem.”
Germany never told Italy that it was definitely going to invade Poland but people were yapping about in diners. Italy was hoping that Hitler was just bluffing for a free win in Poland, just as he had bluffed his way to victory in Austria, the Rhineland, and Czechoslovakia. If Italy had known all along that Hitler was definitely going to do it, the diplomatic history of these final weeks of peace would have been different.
Italy was still three times allied to Germany by the Pact of Steel, the anti-Comintern Pact, and the Tripartite Pact, but Italy didn't want to have to go to Germany's aid in a war started by Germany. Hitler would gain territory in Eastern Europe that wouldn't be shared with Italy in any case. Italy had no quarrel with Poland, and Italy was not prepared for war, was in bad shape financially, and fascist gold reserves were almost empty.
Count Ciano warned Ribbentrop against invading Poland. He told Ribbentrop that if Germany invaded Poland, then Britain and France would declare war on Germany.
Ribbentrop responded is the worst tone of voice,
“That shows how much you know, Ciano. France and Britain cannot forget the mass casualties of World War One. They will run from war. They are soft. The men of Munich will never go to war with Germany to save Poland.”
Ribbentrop was speaking the mind of his Fuhrer, word for word.
Ciano replied, “You're wrong, Ribby. My spies have been all over Europe, and my contacts in Paris and London are better than yours. Britain and France intend to go to war with you if you attack Poland.”
Ribbentropp dared him, “I'll bet you six ounces of solid gold that they never will declare war on Germany on behalf of Poland.”
“You're on.” said Ciano. The Count was all in favor of small limited bully local wars, but big wars were another matter.
Ciano continued to plead that there must be some diplomatic way out of this brink of war. Finally Ribbentrop interrupted him by pounding the table one time with his fist. He leaned over to Ciano with eyes of a black heart and said, “You obviously don't get it. We want war.”
Ciano gulped and called for the check.
Three years later, when Ciano was still waiting to get paid on his bet, the Nazis shot him for alleged disloyalty to Hitler. Maybe Ribbentropp ordered the hit to beat the debt.
On August 19 the Germans finally got word that the Russians had agreed to the non-aggression pact between the two super-powers of evil. It was all done but the details. The devils made the deal and there were more devils to come in the details
NAZI-SOVIET NEGOTIATIONS
The Soviets tried to proceed with caution when the Germans first approached to rapproach. The Nazis needed the deal sealed quickly or else the invasion of Poland would have to be postponed beyond the target date of August 26, 1939 with the last feasible date September 1. Any date beyond that and the autumn rains would arrive before the German Army could finish the job on the wide plains of Poland. At least that was Hitler's opinion.
By the 19th of August Hitler basically had to beg Stalin to conclude a deal now, not later. He warned in a personal telegram to Stalin that, “the tension between Poland and Germany has become intolerable.”
Any fool could read between the lines. Hitler was tipping his hand that the invasion of Poland was moments away, so deal now or never.
For two days Hitler, Keitel and Ribbentrop paced the floors of their Nazi mountaintop lairs, waiting to hear back from their pen-pal in Moscow. Hitler had never been in such a humiliating spot since he had taken power in 1933. It was all up to Stalin. If the Marshall said no, then the invasion of Poland might never happen, Germany would probably soon crash financially, and Hitler might die before winning the jackpot. Without this war, and a victory in it, Hitler knew he might not remain in power indefinitely. Not only that, Hitler would suffer a personal humiliation at Stalin's hands, a rejected suitor to a hated Communist leader, and rival.
AUGUST 22 - LASHBRUKEN - HITLER HAPPY
Hitler held a meeting with his top brass on August 22 at Lashbruken.
As usual the meeting consisted of an endless lecture by Hitler. As a private in World War I, Corporal Hitler used to give unsolicited long political speeches that bored his comrades to tear gas. As dictator, this personality disorder would understandably be that much worse.
According to all accounts of this crucial war council, Hitler talked non-stop for seven hours. Not even Bill Clinton could match that! No one dared to interrupt him. All the big Nazis and military leaders were there. The reports from Ribbentrop assured AH that the Russians had officially turned his way. Now it was only a matter of formal ceremonies. Hitler was elated. He now knew he could take Poland with no interference from Russia. He did not fear England or France. “Our enemies are little worms,” he told the gathering, “I saw them at Munich.”
Poland was on the menu. England and France might have intervened if Russia had been part of their team, and that was only might have.
Money was the secret motive. The Third Reich launched the Second World War largely because it was busted. Germany could not pay its debts so it had to conquer them. Germany was about to go completely bankrupt. It had dodged the Great Depression with radical borrowing and stealing and national restructuring, but it couldn't hold out forever. The bill for rebuilding had come due and he was going to march down to the bank and take it over with tanks and troops.
Hitler confirmed this at the 8/22 conference as Lashbruken,
“It is easy to make this decision. We have nothing to lose; we
can only gain. Our economic situation is such that we cannot
hold out more than a few years.”
Then there was his personal power, his madness, his acute awareness of his historical mission. Germany had to attack now, because the immortal Fuhrer could actually die,
“No one will ever again have the confidence of the whole German people the way I have it. There will probably never again in the future be a man with more authority than I have. My existence is therefore a key factor. But I can be eliminated at any time by a criminal or lunatic.
No one knows how long I shall live. It would not be safe to put off the showdown for four or five years. It has to take place now!”
He was correct in his assessment that his personal safety was precarious. Hitler was certainly wrong in thinking that only a lunatic or criminal would want to off him. Pacifists wanted to kill Hitler by 1939. And he knew that he had never been a particularly healthy guy. Adolph knew that either way he didn't have long to live and he wanted to take the world down with the ship if and when it sank.
With considerable accuracy he said, “I have made the political preparations. The way is now open for the soldier.” Clauzevitz could not have said it much better. His only fear was that “some dirty dog ('schveinhund') will make a proposal for mediation.” The guy wanted World War II. He couldn't wait to get started. He was terrified of a diplomatic solution
“Close your hearts to pity!,” he cried with an exclamation mark, as if his heart had ever been open to it. “Act brutally! Be harsh and remorseless! Be steeled against all signs of compassion!” These orders would be obeyed.
If only Alois hadn't beaten little Addie as a boy! One loving father who laid off the booze and the strap might have saved 20 million lives. Hitler's crummy father murdered millions of people from his grave.
The Lashbruken meeting adjourned with Hitler predicting absolute victory in a rousing speech to his intimates. Herman Goering was so pumped up for war that he jumped up on Hitler's table and danced.
The HG table dance story came from two persons who testified at Nuremberg in 1946. Goering was enraged at this allegation. He didn't mind being accused of mass murder and conspiring to conquer the world. But he did mind someone telling a false story making him look like a twit. He admitted that he was there and the he led the applause at the end of Hitler's eve of war speech. But Goering made sense when he said the dancing story was completely absurd. No German officer would behave like that at an official meeting. Goering was fat and could have severely hurt himself by dancing on a table, and no sane person would dance on anyone else's living room table ever. Not even a madman would dance on Adolph Hitler's table.
One of the interrogators told Herman, “Don't worry, you'll be dancing soon .... at the end of a rope.”
CHAMBRLAIN LETTER - OOH WE'RE SCARED NOW
By August 21 it was apparent in all diplomatic circles that the deal was about to go down between the Nazis and the Soviets. The British cabinet held an emergency meeting the next afternoon.
The cabinet and its leader, the less than intrepid Neville Chamberlain correctly figured that Hitler expected Britian to back off from going to war over Poland. They were incorrect in thinking that if they warned Hitler that they would still go to war with Germany if he invaded Poland, the Fuhrer would back off on his war plans. They didn't count on Hitler thinking they didn't really mean what they said, and they didn't figure that in the end, Hitler wanted war so badly, that it didn't make any difference anyway.
Chamberlain signed off a letter to Hitler composed by the entire cabinet that was delivered to Hitler on the afternoon of the 23rd, or, at about the same moment that the Nazi-Soviet Pact was being signed in Moscow. It said in essence,
Dear Adolph,
A lot of people in Germany, probably yourself included, are saying that if Germany and Russia sign a non-aggression pact, then Great Britain will not dare intervene over a Nazi invasion of Poland. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Some people say that if England had made its pre-war position more clear in 1914 then the entire bloodbath of World War One could have been avoided. If that may be so, let's make things crystal clear this time round. We will go to war with you if you invade Poland. If you want one of our barnstorming pilots to skywrite it over Berlin we can do that too. But make no mistake. We will declare war on Germany if Germany invades Poland. If you cut a deal with Stalin it won't change anything on our end.
Once a war like that begins, it will probably go on for a very long time and it might make the First World War look like a skirmish. Munich was one-shot deal.
Signed,
Neville
Neville David Henderson, the British Ambassador to Germany drove up the mountaintop to Berchtesgaden and delivered the note personally to the man on the top. Weizaeker, the Nazi State Secretary was present and recorded the event in his memoirs.
For the umpteen-thousandth time, Hitler was furious. This is the gist of the conversation according to Weizacres notes,
Hitler: “You English have a lot of nerve. We were close to resolving our differences with Poland but England interfered and ruined everything. Now Poland is intransigent only because of English prodding and you dare to come to me with this warning? It was England that caused Czech intransigence last year, and now this. Poland is persecuting native Germans within their borders. Poland is conducting a race war against Germans.”
Henderson: “I contest all that you say, Mr. Hitler, Poland is not the troublemaker here. Poland does not want war but apparently Germany does and you are using false stories about Polish persecution of Germans to justify you aggressive intentions.”
Hitler: “Wrong again Mr Henderson. England, the most aggressive imperialist empire building nation in the history of the world is accusing my country of being a bully? That is a laugh. Life for Germans in Poland today is a living hell. Poland tortures German men. More than six cases of forced castration of German men have been confirmed!”
Hitler used the alleged castration story repeatedly in the year before he attacked Poland. I kid you not. I wouldn't joke about something like that. How does Henderson come back from that argument?
When Henderson walked out the door, Hitler waited patiently until the Ambassador's fading footsteps could no longer be heard. Then he looked at Weizaecker and broke into a satisfied laugh, slapped his knee in delight and said, “Chamberlain won't survive that conversation; his cabinet will fall this evening.” - So Hitler hadn't been that furious after all. Hitler was crazy like a fox, a method to his madness. The scariest thing about 'Shorty' was how crazy he wasn't.
Ambassador Henderson returned to Hitler's den that same evening after spending the afternoon at the Salzburg Hilton. This time Hitler was calm in tone but not in words.
“Mr Henderson, you should know that I am now 50 years old. I do not intend to make war when I am 58 or 60. Now is the time for me to fight while I still have the physical energy.”
Henderson could not believe his ears. This was even worse than what Hitler had shouted angrily in the early afternoon.
“Make no mistake about who I am,” the maggot continued, “I was a frontline soldier in The Great War and I know what war is and how to conduct it. I think it should also be clear to you and everyone else by now that if I had been in command of Germany in 1914 the official language of France today would not be French.”
Then Hitler returned to the great lie of Polish persecution of Germans, warning Henderson that an “appalling wave of Polish terrorism has been unloosened against one and a half million Germans there. The Fatherland will not tolerate this mistreatment of it's children any longer.” Henderson cringed as he waited to hear the castration story one more time. Hitler brought it up again. Henderson in this spot was like Marylyn on the Munsters, a normal person among lunatics, with no one else in the house he could turn to for consolation.
Henderson in the rat's den also could not have known that the Nazi-Soviet pact was already being champagne toasted in Moscow.
THE OTHER DATE THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY – AUGUST 23, 1939
Foreign Minister Ribbentrop and his entourage flew to Moscow for the formal ceremonies making the Nazi-Soviet Pact official.
The deal was finalized on August 23. Pictures of the signing ceremonies show Stalin with a happy smile.
There were two agreements. The larger one, the one that was made very public was the agreement to not make war on each other, and to not join in the war if a third party or coalition third party made war on the other. This gave both sides what they wanted. The Russians got time and security, the Germans got the green light to put the lights out on Poland.
The smaller agreements were just as powerful in the long run. There was a secret protocol dividing Eastern Europe into Russian and German spheres of influence. This was the price for Hitler to keep Russia neutral. While he conquered Poland, Hitler would have to share the turkey with his new friends. The USSR would get the eastern portion of Poland along the connecting paths of the Gooblinki, Washivka and Winskii Rivers
There were two full meetings on 8.23. The one in the later evening including all the signing ceremonies and quite a few toasts.
Everyone got pretty well hammered. Ribbentrop, Molotov, Stalin and their aides got sloshed on vodka and whiskey raising toasts to their new friendship. Russians don't trust anyone who won't get drunk with them and the Germans tried their best to keep up their end of it.
Stalin at one point raised his glass and said, “We are well aware of the great love in your country for your Fuhrer. He is a great man. A toast! To Adolph Hitler!” Everyone downed another one.
Ribbentrop proposed a toast “To Holy Russia, our new and eternal friend!” More booze down the hatch. Ribbentropp was so drunk that he actually made a joke, “Anyone who doesn't leave here passed out drunk on a stretcher is a Chamberlain!” That one got a hearty group laugh straight out of an old pirate movie.
PACT ANALYSIS
The irony of the Nazi-Soviet Pact was that Hitler thought it would induce France and England from declaring war on Germany after he attacked Poland. That was one of the main reasons he arranged the this Pact of Steal. He trusted his genius would pave the way for a small war against Poland. But such was not the payoff. It also helped those two Western powers in a way because it freed them from having to continue to pursue an alliance with the USSR that they did not really want.
Hitler was only a genius when he could take one country at a time, whether by thug diplomacy or by war. He always had a vision of conquering Europe and Russia one country at a time. This was a wise vision but once France and Britian declared war on Germany, and once he attacked Russia and then declared war on the USA, his genius was out the window. He was then fighting a war that was not based on his brilliant visionary plans.
The West was having trouble uniting against the Nazis because they couldn't get the USSR on board. When the Nazi-Soviet Pact put the Russians on the passive enemy sidelines, the road to Allied unity was now clear and wide, even if less formidable without Stalin. With Russia out of the Allied picture, France and Britian could do whatever they wanted to do.
POLAND AWAITS ITS FATE
Now Poland was alone. Russia would not defend her old Polish enemy. The allies France and England were pledged to help but… they didn't have the will, the material or the geographical access to do it. Poland was toast.
Hitler had been threatening to settle his feuds with Poland by invasion. Now he had Stalin smiling on the sidelines with folded arms, and he could launch his war.
THE DEATH OF THE AMERICAN COMMUNIST PARTY
The Nazi-Soviet Pact decimated the American Communist Party and its fellow-travelers. Prior to August 20, 1939 the American Communist Party had been openly pro-Soviet and openly supportive of Joseph Stalin. The ACP was respected and powerful in the 1930's but after the NSP, the ACP took a nosedive off the cliff. American Communism plummeted when Russian Communism made its deal with fascism, the sworn enemy of the proletariat. Most of the American apostates were sincerely shook up and deserted with relish. But many others were just too afraid to belong anymore and they concealed their true feelings. They still believed in Communism but they merely thought that Stalin had betrayed it. They waited for a better day and a better ay to revive their radical socialist beliefs.
The American Communist Party had always taken their orders directly from Moscow and had been funded by the Kremlin as well. When Hitler invaded Russia in June of 1941, America re-invented Russia as our great friend. Then the American Communists waded slowly back into the water.
It is important to note that a large number of Americans who were simply disillusioned by Communism in the 1930’s and learned their lesson properly on 8.20.39 were later persecuted in the 1950’s for their actions two decades earlier. The fact that they had correctly admitted error the first day after the Nazi-Pact did not absolve them and it probably should have. The judgment of presentism in 1953 or 1956 was not fair to many men and women who had been Communists long before it became a dirty word.
But other extremists who had truly sought to overthrow the US under the USSR’s surreptitious direction deserved what they got in the 50’s. These pawns of the Comintern were not innocent in 1955 any more than they had been in 1935 or 1955. What was wrong was to lump them all together in the same red basket. And by the way, anyone who laughs off the threat of Communism in America in the 1930’s is an ignoramus.
The Communists of the Great Depression along with their fellow-travelers later became known as the “Old Left.” Many of the hippie rads of the 1960’s were children of these parents. The opposite of the kid who joins an anti-war rally partly to defy his parents, many of the Jerry Rubinesque Yuppies were actually trying to win their parent’s respect!
AUGUST 25 – HITLER SEEKS A STALIN DEAL WITH CHAMBERLAIN
Hitler was a genius with a dummy streak a mile wide. On the afternoon of August 25 he met with the British Ambassador in his Berlin office. Mr. Chamberlain listened as Hitler proposed to make a deal with England like the one he made with Stalin.
Hitler actually liked the English and had much admiration for the British Empire. This is a theme of Nazi history up until 1941. The Poles, Russians, and the French are the bad guys, in that order. But the English are way down the list, even though there was that World War One business. So he was probably in ernest when he said to Chamberlain,
“I am prepared to make a personal pledge to look out for the
safety and the continued existence of the British Empire. I am
prepared to formally commit the power of the German Reich
for this.”
Hitler told Henderson that the German armed forces would come to the aid of Britian if her empire was threatened anywhere on the planet. The price of course was for England to stay out the way in Poland,
“The German-British Mutual Assistance Pact will be drafted and signed only after I have first settled the Polish problem.”
Chamberlain sat there in amazement thinking, “yeah, rite, when a burning tugboat wins the America's Cup.”
Hitler would have looked smart here only if the whole thing was a gag and Goering and Goebbles were suppressing giggles from behind some two-way mirror. The foreign policy of the British Empire for centuries had been the absolute prevention of any single state dominating the continent of Europe. Hitler was messing with 1815 and Metternich, and you don't want to go there with the British. If the UK would go to war against Russia in 1853 over the Crimea, it would certainly go to war with Germany over Poland in 1939. He should have known that, but unlike Jack Kennedy, Hitler did not like to surround himself with the most intelligent talent in the land. schveinhunds like Keitel, Frank, and Ribbentropp were only going to tell him what he wanted to hear.
Hitler added a nauseating personal note about his tender nature,
“Mr. Henderson, I am by nature not warmonger. I am an artist.
Once I settle this Polish question I will retire and return to my
true love, which is painting. But if England rejects my offer of
mutual assistance and eternal friendship, there will be a war.”
Yes, please do. Go back to your paintings, AH.
NEW ANGLO-POLISH TREATY
As soon at the Nazi-Soviet Pact was official, Hitler gave the order for the invasion of Poland. The latest possible date for the Nazi assault upon the Polish nation was to be August 26 at 4:30 in the morning. General Halder was in charge of the operation and his diary of August 24 records that after 4:40 am on the 26th “Everything is going to roll automatically.” (This bears a remarkable and chilling resemblance to the message sent to the Japanese envoys in Hawaii in early November of 1941 that after November 26, “Things are automatically going to happen.”
But as history knows, things did not roll on the 26th. The war began on September 1 1939, not November 26.
There were two reasons for the delay, the Anglo-Polish Treaty of August 25, and complications within the “Pact of Steel.”
In London on August 25 Poland and Great Britian upgraded their alliance. What was already in place was an one-way agreement whereby Britian guaranteed the independence of Poland. The new treaty was an old-fashioned mutual military assistance pact, its terms a clear warning to Hitler.
Hitler frowned when he read about this. he was hoping to pick up the Bavarian Times and read about the resignation of the Chamberlain government. Instead he read of new resolve.
ITALY ON THE FENCE AS USUAL
Meanwhile in Rome the Duce began to dodge. Mussolini was offended that Hitler had negotiated the pact with the arch emery of fascism, the USSR, and that he had done it behind his back. No one in Nazi diplomatic circles had even hinted to the Romans what was going down. The imminent invasion of Poland was not to Mussolini's liking either. The pact of Steel wasn't supposed to be an excuse to drag Italy into war whenever Hitler felt like taking another country.
Count Ciano, the foreign minister was anti-Nazi and had Mussolini's ear. The Italian Ambassador in Berlin, Attolico was also anti-Nazi. They kept trying to convince the Duce to renounce the alliance with Germany entirely, suggesting in rough terms that Hitler was, among other things, “a backstabbing lunatic who could not be trusted.” German spies in Rome were on to Ciano but couldn't do much about it.
The terms of the Pact of Steel pretty much said that Italy was supposed to join up with Germany in the event of war with anybody, but there was a secret protocol that Germany wasn't going to start the fire until 1942. Mussolini felt that Italy needed that long, at least that ling, to get its armed forces in shape.
Both Musso and Count C felt that a war in 1939 might leave Italy vulnerable to attack from France and England. Germany would settle its problems in the east while enjoying its protected geographic location in the center of the continent while the British and French could exact their revenge on Italy.
It was a logical thought process considering the exposed position in the Mediterranean of the Italian peninsula. The British indeed considered the Mediterranean of top strategic importance, especially with the British controlled Suez Canal at stake there. A British offensive against Italy before dealing with Germany was not an unrealistic fear. This was especially true of the naval aspect. Judging from Churchill's memoirs, the Brits were ready to pounce on the Italian Navy in the Mediterranean as soon as Italy entered the war. The Italian Navy was not a negligible force, but the British Navy alone was superior, and combined with the formidable French Navy, an Italian declaration of war on Poland in 1939 would have probably meant the prompt annihilation of the Italian Navy. By waiting until France was on the verge of surrender and the Brits were trapped at Dunkirk before entering the war (June 1940) Mussolini probably made the wise dagger in the back call.
The Duce was definitely tempted though, when he learned of Hitler's imminent invasion. Benito enjoyed the thought of being on the winning side and he thought if he committed Italy to the impending war he could pick up some territorial compensation in Dalmatia and Croatia. Ciano kept telling him that the Nazis were no-good, and so Mussolini was torn.
On the same day that Hitler got the news of the Anglo-Polish agreement he got the word from the Italian Ambassador that Italy was not going to make a military commitment to his war, although Mussolini was all in favor of the Nazi-Soviet Pact.
But there was a chance that Mussolini would back out of backing out. Mussolini told to Hitler that Italy would join in the war with all its might under one condition. Hitler had to send troops, tanks, and planes to Italy. The Duce felt that France could invade Italy on land and win. Italy would pay the price for Hitlers victory in the east.
Hitler was angry - what else is new? He regained his limited composure and wrote Benny a letter asking him exactly how much military hardware and raw materials it would take to bring on board the war train. Mussolini dispatched Ambassador Attolico with a list designed to price himself out, like when I ask for $2,000 to play a hell gig. Italy wanted 7 million tons of petroleum. That alone made it impossible. Oil was the life blood of war and it was in short supply in Germany in good times, let alone during full-scale war. In addition Italy wanted 6 million tons of coal, 2 million tons of steel (the Pact of Steel had to live up to its name,) 1 million tons of timber, 400 tons of titanium, and 600 tons of molybedenum. Hitler read this list and exclaimed, “I don't even know what the hell molybdenum is!”
BM also needed 75 tanks and 150 anti-aircraft batteries to protect the coastal cities from carrier based-air strikes. If Hitler had this much material to spare for a friend he probably would have won World War II. Obviously Mussolini wanted no part a war against Poland, a nation which Italy had no real quarrel with.
The Italian Ambassador to Berlin delivered the word to Hitler that Mussolini wanted an enormous supply of German military hardware before he could make a commitment to war for Germany. But he added a further stipulation that the materials had to be in place before the attack began. This was scientifically impossible and Attolico knew it. Mussolini had not made this a condition, but he was making this a condition on his own because he hated Hitler and wanted no part of his awful plans for war.
Even the King of Italy had warned Benito that Italy's armed forces were only impressive on newsreels for propaganda purposes. In fact, all three services were two years away from becoming a first rate force. Mussolini told the King that he knew that and that was exactly what he was trying to tell Hitler. Mussolini reminded Hitler that the Pact of Steel called for Axis instigated war in 1942 and that was a long way off. The Duce did not have to honor the agreement until then.
Mussolini was in a Catch-22. He wanted a strong neo-Roman Empire so that he could stand tall against all the great powers of Europe. But the only way he cold get it was to piggy-back his nation on Germany, one of the strong states of Europe. Germany was down on its luck but it was still a much stronger state than Italy, and it was a rising star. Italy was the little punk who wanted to prove it could fight, but did not dare start up with anyone without his big brother behind him.
Hitler was all shook up. In fact, he called off the invasion temporarily. The decision to postpone had more to do with the English than with the Italians, but combined, they two factors were serious.
The Hitler presumption was that Italy could still help by remaining neutral. England and France might hesitate to act against Germany not knowing what Italy was going to do. But it also worked the other way. England and France were perhaps emboldened by the knowledge that Hitler did not have Italy firmly committed to the cause of war. What hesitation England and France may have had were relieved by the lack of a united Pact of Steel front.
The bottom line was the Ribbentropp naïve insistence that Germany and France would treat the whole thing like a second Rhineland, when in fact the west had woken up completely by now and that attitude was as dead as Disraeli. Mussolini warned Hitler bluntly several times that England and France would intervene this time and that it “wasn't 1937 anymore.” Mussolini met with Hitler in early march 1940 at the David Brenner Pass and rubbed it in that “I told you England and France would intervene!” It's probably not wise to take the 'I told you so approach with Hitler but Mussolini wanted some pride back. It was all about pride with Musso, even more so than Hitler of Hirohito and Tojo. The entire Italian war effort was based on Mussolini's vanity.
The Italian secret police conducted several top secret surveys among the people and there was no enthusiasm for a possible war at the side of Germany. In fact the entire nation was turning Germophobic. By this time there was even very little ideological alliance between them. The image of two fascist nations united for glory and conquest is misleading. It was good war propaganda at the time in the west and it has carried down to general historical image. In truth the two fascist countries were each out for themselves and their own empire only. Neither dictator thought with a warm smile of the idea of a great German-Italian fascist empire.
Like the Germans, the Italian civilians had definitely enjoyed the easy conquests against small or foreign nations, but a real war was only something that nuts like Hitler and Mussolini wanted. WWII was definitely launched over the heads of the European people who wanted no part of the idea, and that was far different from 1914.
Hitler sent the order to halt the war out to the field at a time when two divisions were already on the move and artillery was shelling positions across the border into Poland. Fortunately for him, there had already been so many border incidents provoked by the Germans (and blamed on the Poles) that when the orders came to halt the assault and the units retreated into Germany, the Polish government interpreted this as merely a larger than average instance of the same harassment, not an invasion that was pulled back at the last moment.
HITLER THINKS IT OVER
Hitler met on August 28 with about 30 of the top military and political leaders in a dramatic conference in the Berlin Chancellery. He admitted that the deal with Stalin was not ideal but said that “We have made a pact with Satan to cast out the Devil.” The Nazi brass applauded gently a few times when it seemed called for, but there was not an air of real confidence and excitement. All the Nazi leaders felt that Austria and Czechoslovakia got what was coming to them. They had occupied German lands after World War I, and Hitler had forced them to give it back. That was exiting and good. But Poland was less of a WWI war criminal and, except for Danzig, had not (Hitler's lies about the Corridor notwithstanding) taken any truly German lands. Besides, England and France were pledged to go to war with Germany if Poland were invaded. There was a gulp in the throat of most of these men as they pretended to applaud Hitler at the right cues.
The reader might wonder who was this “Devil” he was referring to. It was none other than that evil threat to world peace, Poland.
All over the world the headlines spoke of the impending Nazi aggression against a Poland sitting still and hoping it would not be invaded by the monster Germany. You could pick up a newspaper in the Arctic Circle or in Tasmania and read the same sad stories about how Hitler was going to start a world war and no one could think of a way to stop it.
But inside Germany was a mirror image of reality. The Nazi propaganda machine was up and running full tilt with the crazy idea that the Poles were the aggressors. The Poles were lusting for war, they were starting up one incident after another against Germany. They were obviously the ones who wanted war. It made no sense and it makes no sense now but the average German actually believed it.
The following are actual headlines from major German newspapers in the days before war. These are verbatim from the notes of William L. Shirer.
“COMPLETE CHAOS IN POLAND – GERMAN FAIMILES FLEE”
“POLISH SOLDIERS PUSH TO EDGE OF GERMAN BORDER!”
“THIS PLAYING WITH FIRE GOING TOO FAR – THREE GERMAN PASSENGER PLANES SHOT AT BY POLES – IN CORRIDOR MANY GERMAN FARMHOUSES IN FALMES”
“WHOLE OF POLAND IN WAR FEVER! 1,500,000 POLISH TROOPS MOBILIZED!
“UNINTERRUPTED POLISH TROOP TRANSPORT TOWARDS THE FRONTIER! CHAOS IN UPPER SILESIA!”
It is unspeakably false and evil propaganda of course.
There is no instance of human history where a weak country deliberately provokes a powerful neighbor with official acts of military provocation.
HISTORICAL PARRALLEL
A sidebar now note on two other historical situations with parallels. In 2003 the United States claimed that Iraq was provoking conflict. America built up an armed force around Iraq to invade it, while Iraq was sitting still and doing essentially nothing. The United States wanted war. Iraq did not, and the United States kept releasing statements that Iraq was the one looking for trouble, and had better back down or else. Then the United States invaded. The build-up to that invasion was ugly to this American, and there is some valid comparison to the Nazi 1939 attack on Poland.
But there was a major difference. The specifics were similar but in the larger picture, the United States was essentially provoking war to promote good and trying to take down a country in the grips of evil. This makes all the difference for me. The face value situation was USA provoking war against a weak nation and claiming that the victim was the one who wanted war. Iraq was the most evil nation on earth at the time, it routinely tortured innocent civilians all day in political prisons. The Vulcans wanted a war to clean out that evil. The Nazis provoked a war so that evil could grow stronger and march on to conquer the world, while Poland, for all its faults, was not an evil empire at all.
The other example for comparison is 1979 when China invaded North Vietnam. The press (and you can look it up) was full of reports of Vietnam making raids and incursions into China for weeks before China finally decided it had had enough and invaded.
This makes no sense. The only way it adds up is if the two nations conspired to stage a fake war to convince the west that the Communist bloc was totally disunited. This would disarm the west, and lead to massive cuts in military spending. If the Communist bloc were a hoax, then there was no need to spent a trillion on a new long range B-1 bomber or MX missile.
There is no sane logical reason why Vietnam would launch harassment land attacks deep inside China and use Vietnam PT boats to shoot up docks at Chinese port facilities. Yet this supposedly happened. It is beyond illogical, yet no one ever questioned it. almost no one. You'll have to go to my Carter book for more on this one. As far as I'm concerned, these reports of raids into China by Vietnam are in the same class as the German newspaper headlines mentioned above.
IF A EUROPEAN POWER ATTACKS POLAND ...
The Anglo-Polish treaty that set up the start of WWII stated that if any European Power attacks Poland, England would go to war with that power. But in the style of the 19th century, there was an important secret protocol that specifically said that “any European power of course, means specifically Germany.”
This secret protocol came in plenty handy when Germany invaded Poland and then the USSR piled on from the East. England not only did not have to go to war against Russia in mid-September 1939, it remained free to make the Russians an English ally after June 1941. We can only imagine how the history of the world would have been different if not for this powerhouse secret protocol. Imagine England at war with both Germany and Russia, and then Germany attacks Russia in June 1941. It would be like three men playing a game of one on one basketball.
LAST MINUTE “NEGOTIATIONS”
A Swedish businessman named Birger Dalerus played a role in trying to avert war in the last days of peace. He was a friend of both Goering and of some prominent English politicians and he though he could do a good deed and try to arrange a diplomatic settlement of the so-called “Polish problem.”
Dalerus met with Goering several times then flew to London for talks with Foreign Secretary Halifax. At first they did not take him very seriously but as days went by, it became clear that he had as much inside access to most of the top Nazi officials as the German Ambassador to London did.
Hitler's top demand was that direct negotiations between Poland and Germany begin at once. He had a list of conditions for Britian to hopefully avoid war between the UK and NG. He wanted Britian to lean on Poland to give the Polish corridor and Danzig back to Germany, something he knew the Poles would never do. He was pricing himself out of peace, opting through his special brand of diplomacy for “war at any price.”
If Britian would force the Poles to capitulate to all German demands, then Hitler would personally guarantee the new Polish borders. Oh, wow. Thanks so much.
Then he declared he would also guarantee the security and protection of the British Empire! If Britian would force Poland to surrender, Hitler would thank them both by offering protection. Protection from what? From whom? He and Germany were the only threats out there. This was like Mafia protection, except at least the mob left you alone if you paid the protection, and might even actually protect you once in a while if you played by their rules. In this case you pay the Mafia, they kill your family anyway, and when you need them later when another gang threatens you, they beat you up and hand you over to the other gang in a tattered state. The Nazis made the Mafia look like the Paulist Fathers.
Nevertheless, in the vague game of diplomatic speak, with messages flying back and forth in the vaguest friendly terms possible, Dalerus flew back to Berlin to deliver a British note saying it was quite possible that everyone could reach a peaceful settlement, and that even Hitler's list of demands could serve as a “basis for discussion.”
Birger went to the Herman House at 11 p.m. on August 27 and Goering was as exited as he was at the prospect for peace on diplomatic terms. Goering never wanted this war, even though he was a scum in general.
Goering and Birger Dalerus went to Hitler House and actually woke him up at 1: a.m. to tell him the good news. No one likes to be woken up out of a sound sleep, and this guy could lose his temper when a cloud blocks the sun for 40 seconds against his expressed orders. You can imagine the mood he was in as Dalerus read him the long-wined British diplomatic paper.
Birger Dalerus had never met the Fuhrer before and was in awe to be in his company. That is, at first. But Hitler interrupted him with some illogical angry outburst every time he tried to read a sentence from his paper. Dalerus didn't get it. Hitler wanted war and was only using diplomacy as a smokescreen for evil intent.
Dalerus put the paper down and tried to wing it, telling Adolph how he knew the British people as well as anyone could and knew that they wanted peace and that war was certainly not necessary.
Hitler interrupted him and then went off the deep end. His eyes blurred and he began stammering out bizarre disconnected statements about his greatness and how Germany “is irresistible. Irresistible! Irresistible!”
He paced the room and stopped and stared at Dalerus and said (to Birger's shock because he never dreamed of such immaturity from any political man, let alone the man in charge of a great power,)
“If England wants war, I will build airplanes! Airplanes! Airplanes! Airplanes! Airplanes! Airplanes! Airplanes! Airplanes! Airplanes!”
Dalerus tried to explain that he was here to tell him that England in fact did not want war and that....
“Silence! Let me finish! If England wants war I will build U-boats! U-boats! U-boats! U-boats! U-boat! U-boats! Then I shall build more airplanes! Airplanes! Airplanes! Airplanes! I shall annihilate all of my enemies!”
By now Hitler was screaming. He was red in the face and surely would need some cough drops in the morning. Who was he trying to intimidate, for Pete's sake. Birger was just a messenger. There wasn't an enemy in the room to threaten and was acting more maniacal than he had in any fiery speech at the Nuremberg Peace Rally (and yes, that was the official title of the Nuremberg rally.)
Hitler went on to more tirades, but it got worse in this sense: As he went on and on, Dalerus, who spoke fluent German, could not understand but a fraction of the words in any given sentence. Hitler was just ranting and couldn't even articulate his syllables. What was perhaps worse, when Dalerus looked over at Goering expecting to see a look of shocked concern, he saw a calm demeanor, as far as Herman was concerned though this was the normal Hitler.
Dalerus left the meeting with his eyes finally open.
This should give the reader some idea that a diplomatic settlement was not in the cards. The fate of the world was in the hands of a seven year old boy playing with toy soldiers and plastic tanks and ships in his back yard. But there was nobody to spank him when he had a tantrum.
MUSSO BACKS OFF ON ATOLICO'S TIMETABLE
Hitler protested to Mussolini about the impossibility of getting the materials to him before the attack began. Mussolini apologized for Attolico's exaggerated conditions, and said of course they don't have to all be in place before the attack starts. But Mussolini asked him to throw in 40 Stuka dive bombers too. Hitler got the point and told him that what you can do for us is to make a lot of public noise indicating that Italy might be about to join in, even though we both know you are not. That way the French and English would have to keep one eye open in the west before they thought about intervening in the east.
16 EXCUSES
Hitler knew that the world was going to correctly name him and his insane nation the bad guys. “I have to have an excuse” he admitted to Schacht in a moment of confidence.
So first of all he tried to bait the Poles into sending a special envoy to Berlin for last minute desperate negotiations for peace. Poland protested that this was a set up so that Hitler could personally intimidate that envoy the way he and Ribbentrop had done to others. No one would even volunteer for a mission of predestined humiliation, and perhaps even personal danger. Hitler insisted that he was asking for this envoy in good faith, and that he was a man of peace. Yeah, and I am a man without sarcasm.
The Poles protested additionally that the standard way of doing business was with the Polish Ambassador in Berlin. Mr Lipke was more than capable of passing on messages back to Warsaw. No, said Hitler, you must send a special ambassador to negotiate for peace.
The folks in Warsaw and London both saw through the hoax. Hitler wanted to make it look like he was making a sincere attempt at a diplomatic settlement. Then when the Polish special envoy got yelled and screamed at by the Nazi pigs they could make an announcement to the world that negotiations had collapsed. A few hours later the world would read the German divisions had invaded Poland as if Hitler had no longer any choice after all his efforts for peace.
It seems that the only one who couldn't see the light of darkness was the British Ambassador to Berlin Mr. Neville Henderson. Apparently the first requisite to be a disastrous appeaser of Hitler was to have the first name of Neville. He liked the idea and he kept pushing it on the Poles and on his bosses in London. The British Ambassador in Poland told London to ignore whatever Neville Henderson told them, that it was all a hoax.
Henderson had a meeting with Herr Ribbentropp on the 29th in Berlin. Ribbentropp had a list of 16 conditions for peace. They were more than reasonable. He read them so fast that Henderson couldn't understand what he was saying. He asked Ribbentropp for a paper copy. Ribbentropp refused angrily. He threw the paper on the table and said that he had read them to Henderson and that was enough. Neville said that he was not going to be treated this way. The two men began actually screaming at each other so violently that the interpreter had to get between them because he thought they were going to start fist-fighting right in the foreign ministers office (if you could call that thug a foreign minister.)
The 16 conditions were thus a secret because Ribbentropp had read them too fast to be heard.
That was where matters stood until Birger Delarus got involved again. He asked Ribbentropp if he could see the 16 conditions for peace. Ribbentropp reduced them to the six most important conditions and let Birger read them and memorize them but he wouldn't let him have a paper copy. Delarus then flew hastily to London with the new terms Hitler was offering for peace.
The terms were actually generous by Hitler standards. Now instead of demanding the return of the Polish corridor and Danzig, Hitler was only demanding the return of Danzig (today's Gdansk.) The people of the Polish Corridor could decide for themselves through a plebiscite, which nation should rule them.
Delarus was exited to bring these new terms to London and Neville Henderson was just as exited. Henderson began telling anyone who would listen that the Poles were now the intransigent ones. These terms were more than reasonable. Henderson wanted London to tell the Poles that they should send that special emissary to Berlin to “negotiate” with Hitler.
The trouble was it was all a lie. Hitler was getting ready to attack and these relatively lenient terms were just a smokescreen for blitzkrieg. Besides, Ribbentropp had added that these new terms were more or less irrelevant because the Poles had not sent the emissary immediately. The Poles had missed their chance to gain Hitlers lenient terms. The only way they could have gotten the special emissary there in time would be if they had one of those machines from Star Trek that zapped people molecularly through time and space in an instant (I'm proud to say I don't know the name of the Trekkie machines because I only saw one episode in my life, but you get the point.) So Hitler made generous demands that could not be met, because the special emissary could not get there in time if he had his own Lear Jet, and even if he could, Hitler was simply lying anyway.
The word got out about the 16 terms and how he had dropped the demand for the Corridor. It was broadcast all over Germany and the world. The terms Ribbentropp hadn't been allowed to tell Henderson, over which they had almost had a barroom brawl, were being printed in the newspapers of the world. Even Billy Shirer fell for it, and broadcast back to America by radio that Hitler's terms were something the Poles should probably accept and war could mercifully be avoided.
On August 30th Hitler and Ribbentropp met with Henderson and told him that since the Poles hadn't got the special peace diplomat to Berlin in time, the offer was off the table and it looked like there would be war. Henderson lost his cool yet again and actually out-shouted Hitler for about 20 minutes. The two of them went at it ferociously like they had been married for 20 years.
Henderson told Hitler that if this means war, then England would back Poland.
At this point Hitler calmed down a little. He really thought he would wrangle a second Munich out of a second Neville. Hitler deluded himself into thinking England would not go to war over Poland, not because logically he didn't realize it would, but because illogically he lusted so bad for war that he refused to believe the obvious. He deluded himself because he wanted to be deluded.
Thank God he was a delusional infant. For all the suffering of World War II, the world would have been worse off if Nazi Germany had ben left alone and grew in power for the un-foreseeable future. Because Hitler was such a baby boy he started the only thing that could have 'purged, expunged, and blasted from the surface of the earth', the evil that was Nazi Germany: war. Thanks for the favor, Adolph. You gave the rest of the world a chance to clean house. They didn't want to do it, but it was for the best in the long run.
THE LAST HOURS OF PEACE
On August 31 German radio broadcast Hitler's new terms. Poland wouldn't have surrender the Corridor, only Danzig. Poland refused to even send a special envoy to meet with Hitler, who was pleading for a peaceful settlement.
The Polish Ambassador in Berlin was trying to get a meeting with Ribbentropp who kept him in the waiting room of his office all day. When he was finally ushered in, Ribbentropp asked him if he was here as an Ambassador or as a special representative to negotiate. He replied of course that he was fully authorized to speak for his country so what did it matter what his title was. Ribbentropp said that this was typical of the intransigent Polish attitude. The Ambassador said that he was more than willing to negotiate directly with Germany to settle their differences. this was one of the pathetic arguments over the past week. Hitler making this demand that Poland negotiate directly with Poland, as opposed to negotiations conducted through British or Vatican intermediaries. As though it made a damn bit of difference either way. It was just an issue to throw sand in the face of the world while Germany got the guns greased for action. It was all a joke, for Hitler's armies were preparing to invade Poland at dawn.
DUSSELDORF
Citizens in Germany who lived near the Prussian border were generally supportive of the idea that Poland needed to be taught a lesson. But across the rest of Germany, the impending invasion inspired uneasy misgivings. Gasoline suddenly disappeared for the private citizen. That last week-end some motorists could not get back home from their vacation. There were angry confrontations when Nazis jumped to the head of the gas lines while those at the back ran out of fuel. In Dusseldorf there was a small riot and Nazi posters were ripped down and stamped on. Rumors were around that the Army was plotting a revolt against Hitler to stop the war that was apparently coming.
There were indeed several plots in the works to topple Hitler. Admiral Canaris was involved. Some Generals were involved. But the plotters held out too much hope that diplomacy might work. Or else they used that as an excuse not to act because they didn't want to hang from piano wire when the plot failed. In any case, nothing happened to stop Hitler from within. The Dusseldorf riot at the end of August didn't change much, but it is worth noting.
US ARMED FORCES 1939
Even the conservatives in Congress who favored a strong national defense knew that the Great Depression meant that where there was a will did not mean there was a way. It would be a fine idea to beef up US armed forces in light of the growing war clouds of Europe and Asia, but the money was simply not there and there was no support for instituting the draft.
General George C. Marshall became Army Chief of Staff on July 1, 1939. The Army at that time consisted of less than 200,000 men, about enough to provide a decoy flank movement in one major battle in 1944, and far less than the total number of British troops evacuated from Dunkirk in 1940.
By July 1, 1941 the United States Army would comprise 1,400,000 men. By the time Japan surrendered in 1945, the US Army had more than eight million men and 100,000 women in uniform.
The US Navy in 1939 was still using depth charges from World War I on its destroyers, and it would pay when the undeclared war in the Atlantic began and it found itself behind the Nazi 8-ball in the war of science.
The Air Force did not exist except as a sub-division of the Army and it had only 20,000 men in it at the beginning of 1939. Training facilities were so poor that civilian flight training schools were bought out to teach the Army air pilots until our Army training facilities could be developed and built. President Roosevelt asked for and got from Congress a large appropriation for more warplane production on January 12, 1939.
On August 31, 1939 the US Marine Corps had only 19,000 troops, just a few good men. At the end of World War II there were 484,000 proud Marines. In 1945 these guys with a helmet for their pillow could hardly call themselves the “few.”
THE WORLD OF TOMORROW 1939
In the summer of 39 a great world’s fair was held in New York City. It was called the World of Tomorrow and almost every major nation in the world provided exhibits. It was supposed to be a positive and exited look at a new and better world of tomorrow.
The grim news from the world of impending war was meticulously kept off the grounds. Newspapers and radio sets were absent and silent. In the waning days of the summer, Hitler launched World War II. World of Tomorrow packed up and closed for the winter. When it opened again in 1940 the Soviet Union pavilion had been replaced by a recreation of an old New England town. Latvia and Lithuania no longer had exhibits since they were no longer nations. The television set was displayed to the amazement of viewers. A major league baseball game was shown. TV for the average Joe was a long way off but the World of Tomorrow was a tease for toys in the next generation.
SOME CONCLUDING THOUGHTS ABOUT THE NAZIS
Before September 1 1939, Hitler and the Nazis were one group, and after the war began they were another. They were yet another when the war began to go very badly in 1944.
Anyone who thinks Hitler was insane is so far off the mark it's incredible. He was so ordinary, so human, so easily understandable, it is frightening. Hitler didn't have great social skills, but he had enough that you could have chatted with him about a thousand things in the right setting and if you didn't realize he was the Fuhrer you would have thought that he was actually an ordinary sort of guy. The world is full of quirky people who are nevertheless quite ordinary. That, again, to me, is the scariest thing about him. He fit that description.
Hitler's intimates were that much more in awe of him because they saw the natural man and that made them feel privileged. On stage he was this dynamic fireball of political frenzy, leading the masses to the coming victory of the forces that were oppressing the great fatherland, but then off-stage he'd be hanging out with a Speer or a Doenitz or his chauffeur Hoffman and having the most natural small talk conversation about the movies, or architecture, or the weather, or which restaurant made the best lasagna in Munich. Those who were on the inside end of the regular Joe Hitler were even more dazzled than those who only saw his awesomeness. Nothing makes a movie star today more powerful than a reputation of being just a regular sort in real life. Those few who act like prima donnas hurt their star power. President Obama hangs out with all sorts of people at one “after-six” function or another an impresses all by not acting like he's something special.
Of course, once Hitler got to work and politics was involved, the monster emerged, but even then, not all the time.
The sickness in Hitler grew as he became more powerful and especially grew when he launched a world war. After they tried to kill him in 1944 he really went off the deep end, but here we are looking at this little man in the 1930's with the intense eyes who was fond of hanging out with his lady secretaries and shared laughs and stories over tea. He'd take a nap after a long and lazy chat with his pals, resting off to dreamland while everyone kept talking, just as easily as he's bark an deadly order at a subordinate the next day. The Hitler before the war would even let most of his close friends disagree with his ideas and plans, something he would never do in 1944. But remember, if he was in the first place the sort of guy who wouldn't listen to any disagreement ever, he never could have risen to such power as no one would have wanted to get close to him and help him rise to power.
Hitler had quite a large number of political intimates in the pre-war years. He was part of a team. He was the boss, but he was the boss of a team. He wasn't the team. In the latter stages of the war he lost all but two or three of his teammates. In 1934 50 men and 5 women were allowed to speak frankly with him. Not so many in 1944. By the end he had bought his own publicity. In the early and mid stages he and his team knew that it was just a game.
Back in 1923 he was at the head of the November 9 Beer Hall Putsch that failed and he spent a few months in prison. Those who fought on the streets with him were part of the pioneer Nazi group. He was just an aspiring leader among many at the time.
When he came to power he held an annual meeting with the original Putsch gang, remembering the good old days with those who were there in the beginning.
What is telling is that with each passing year he hated going to this annual reunion more and more. By the end of the 1930's when he was all powerful he hated going to the Beer Hall Reunion with a passion. They knew him when he was nobody and he didn't want to remember, and he didn't want to be with people who could see through the publicity kit. It was a fun thing in 1928, but a painful November 9 1938. He was caught up in the “Booger Johnson syndrome.”
That needs explaining. A comedian I know had a funny routine about how you can't live down your childhood no matter how far you go. He knew a kid that had a booger on his collar in the school picture and everyone laughed about it so hard that he got the nickname “Booger Johnson.” 30 years later he's a brain surgeon and the kids see him walking down the hall of the hospital and start calling out, “Hey! It's Booger Johnson!” They grab the hospital p.a. microphone and tease him, “Booger Johnson to room 311. Booger Johnson, you're wanted in 311.”
The bit worked because it's dead on. Hitler hated the November 9 reunion because in essence these people saw him as Booger Johnson. “You're no Fuhrer, Addie, come on have another beer!” they could joke, and he'd have to pretend to laugh and go along with it. It really irritated him, and he was easily irritated to begin with. Pretending to like it made it even worse.
Every movie star in Hollywood today has a pack of old friends who don't take their stardom one one thousandth as seriously as public strangers do. You can reinvent yourself all you want, but you'll always be Booger Johnson to someone.
(One of the things I'm eternally grateful for is that the kids I grew up with in South Boston never came to any my comedy shows. Not even one of them one time. Hmmm. I think I know why. They spared me from Booger Johnson syndrome by not showing up.)
LESSONS OF NUREMBERG
One thing about Nazi propaganda is that it worked so well that it still works. The best was to sell a lame novel is to make a cover design with a swastika on it.
The annual “Nuremberg Rally for Peace” is a case in point. Most of you have seen the film of the pictures of Zeppelin Stadium filled with jaw dropping masses of German soldiers at attention. My wife recently saw a picture of the masses of soldiers and commented on how incredibly powerful the Nazi army was at that time and no wonder they conquered all of Europe. It certainly impressed me that way too until I studied up on it.
That stadium held 100,000 people. Altogether, 100,000 men isn't enough to conquer North Carolina, let alone all of Europe and Russia, plus North Africa. But in one stadium it looks like its enough conquer the world. The Nuremberg rally was just a great big publicity stunt to make the German Army seem much bigger than it really was. At the time the German Army was small compared to France or Russia, but those two countries didn't pack their entire army into one stadium, cover the area at night in searchlights and red flags and then get slick photographers to do their thing and maximize the effect.
Goering protested to Hitler that this was all the searchlights in Germany and it was bad for national defense to deplete them from the four corners of the country. Hitler told Hermie to smarten up. That was the whole idea. Make the west think that Germany must be swimming in searchlights if they could spare that many just for a party rally. The same with the troops. The image was supposed to mean that this is just a sample of the power of Germany, when in fact it was all of it. On tactical nuke could have won the Second World War in three seconds if one had been invented and available to a Brit terrorist at the Nuremberg rally.
The amazing thing is how the Nuremberg 1930's photos still fool people into thinking that it represented awesome power, when it really represented a desperate shortage of it. By the time Germany really did have two million troops to attack Russia with in 1941 the Nuremberg Rally had become superfluous and a waste of resources.
The Nuremberg propaganda game helped scare France and England from intervening at the time Hitler marched into the Rhineland in 1936. For a supposed madman, the guy had some serious Hollywood brains. He loved to brag later that at the time his army was so small it could not dare go to war against Poland, yet it had intimidated France and England.
The other point I'd like to make about Nuremberg and Hollywood propaganda is that Hollywood picked up Third Reich jive where Hitler left off and then even improved it. There is nothing so perfect as a Hollywood depiction of any Nazi organized gathering in the post war world. During the war the USA made Three Stooges shorts mocking the Nazis. After the war Hollywood glorified the Nazis for monetary reasons.
Look at any real footage of Hitlers Nazi party. Sure, you see some men perfect and strong and eyes focused with discipline, their body language at textbook attention. But scattered in all of this real footage there are always men who look over their shoulders to peek at the Fuhrer, other men coughing, some restless, some are short and chubby with glasses, some unstable and swaying from standing at attention too long. And that's after the Lena Wurtburger or whatever her name was done editing. They are a human group. But post-war Hollywood makes them the superhuman race that Hitler tried to sell the world they were. Hollywood enables the Nazi legend. In any Hollywood depiction of the Nazis every man is a perfect specimen, rigid as a steel statue. If anyone dares to move, the director yells “cut!” and threatens to fire the extra and send him back to Burger King if he doesn't act like a real Nazi.
“We're trying to recreate the Nazi party, not a sloppy imitation! Let's try it again. Take it from the line, 'Bourgeois Jews wouldn't understand this.' ”
But the sloppy imitation would be the accurate one. The perfect version is a manifestation of Hitler's fantasy that he never saw in real life. In the real footage, a Himmler or Hess makes a speech and every shot of the audience is loaded with bits of imperfection. Someone leans over and subtly whispers something to someone. Here and there a face that betrays a sense of, 'when is this boring ceremony going to get over with?' Yet in any Hollywood film version we see more rapt attention on every face than any famous public speaker ever saw on their best day.
If I'm the L.A. director I'd say, “OK, everyone whose first or last name includes the letter p or w, act like you wish there was somewhere else you'd rather be or that you have a sciatic nerve problem and are having trouble standing.” I'd throw in a scene where the p.a. feeds back and the Nazi speaker has to repeat some lines and maybe even make a joke about how the Third Reich perhaps has some work to so on building a master race sound system. I'd have Otto Strasser yell at someone in the front row to “keep your mouth shut while I'm talking.” A pile-driver might be going in the distance to everyone's annoyance. Then you'd see the real Nazi party. Don't make these bastards superhuman when they were anything but.
A couple of stories about Nuremberg illustrate the point. The N rally was a three day affair climaxing in speeches by the top figures like Goebbels and Hitler. The first day was warm-up time. It was much like the DNC or the RNC today in this sense.
The first night was a tribute to the Nazi civil service. The non-military Reichers got their day in the sun, their praise from the Party. They were to march into the Zeppelin field and take medals and cheer for the cameras at the end of rousing speeches in their honor.
But the planners of the rally became acutely aware that about half of these guys were patently fat old bald guys with glasses and canes. This was not the stuff of which great propaganda films are made.
Publicity Director Deitrich and Speer came up with a bright idea. Let's hold the Civil Service Party party at night so no one could see how out of shape these supermen were. The idea was approved. In fact that was why every searchlight in Germany was brought to Germany. They were there to cover up the NBA basketballs these guys were packing. In fact the original idea for the Nuremberg Rally was for most of it to take place in the day with one final ceremony at night. But the searchlights aimed at the black and red giant Nazi flags not only blotted out the excessive beer and knockwurst these guys had been eating for 30 years, they inspired the Nazi planners to change the entire event to primarily a night game. All three nights the top gun motivation speakers came on stage when it got dark, like a good outdoor summer rock concert. The opening acts did their 20 minutes of hack material as the sun set, then Goering or Hitler showed up amidst a great buzz.
The other story is about the Opera. On opening night, while the civil service fatties were getting their bellies kissed at the stadium, the top Nazis were supposed to attend the Nuremberg Opera. Hitler happened to love the opera as much as I hate it and every person I know hates it. The entire Nazi Party party was supposed to kick-off with these two events going on at once; The rally for the nobodies at the stadium and a moving performance at the Opera for the Party leaders with Hitler in the front row wiping tears from his eyes and glancing over his shoulder at the assemblage of important Fascists behind him.
But Hitler had forgot to make attendance at the Opera mandatory. He presumed that all these dregs in newfound power loved the opera too. Ten minutes into the show he got restless because so many of them seemed to be late. 25 minutes into the show he realized he had been burned by these uncouth barbarians he had taken to the top with him. They had stayed away in droves. The Nuremberg Opera House was only 20% full. Adolph hit the roof. He got up from his seat, went up to the back and gave out some serious orders to go round up these nebulous Nazis and get them to the theatre on time for the second half. He ordered the intermission period lengthened so the order could be carried out. All over Nuremberg, Nazi officials were dragged out of pubs, brothels, and hotels and forced to go to the opera. By the time the show ended the place was full. When Hitler went back out into the street everyone kept a terrified distance. He was totally steamed. He fancied himself quite the cultured one and had projected that onto his cronies when it wasn't there.
The guys never made that mistake again. For the rest of the 1930's the opening night at the Nuremberg Opera House was packed to the hilt with Nazis. Even then, many of them fell asleep during the show out of boredom and beer. They’d arrived loaded
The stories of how these men were dragged out of their brothels to make it to the opera on time became legendary food for funny over beer for years to come.
I think this story is instructive on Hitler and his contradictions and his naivete, and on the blatant imperfection of the Nazi rulers. No Hollywood producer is going to depict anything like that in a retro look at Nazis. Hollywood has made them the supermen they never were, and more threatening as individuals than they ever were. That is part of why they rose to power. No one took these clowns seriously until it was too late. In the early 1920's the European hip mocked them for the harmless dolts they actually were, but these weeds grew out of control and ruined the garden.
DISUNITED NAZI PARTY LEADERS
Speer makes an interesting point about the Nazi leaders. Socially they had nothing to do with each other. They got together at big public rallies, but as individuals they wanted nothing to do with each other. Goering never had lunch with Himmler. Goebbels never had lunch with Hess.
They were all on huge ego power trips and had their own gang of sycophant hangers-on. One big shot walked into a room with his 40 lackeys and gave a begrudging perfunctory nod to the other big shot and the two gangs went off to separate corners. Hitler had his own personal gang of boot lickers too. Even the Fuhrer played by these rules. To each his own little power circles. Only for business, did even two of them ever get together. I think this says a lot about the true nature of the Nazi Party. It was all about the lowest instincts in human nature.
I don't think most people would guess that things were this way. If the Third Reichers all loved the same cause they would have spent some social time together. Comedians truly love comedy and always hang out with each other before and after the show. They play softball together on their free time. Even those who have professional differences have a bond they share socially because they love the comedy business. Yet here are these Nazis with a grand purpose to change the world for the better, and they can't even spend a minute together socially unless they absolutely have to. That's because it was all really about power and never was about anything else.
CASE WHITE PAPER – WAR IN THE MORNING
On the last day of Peace, Hitler issued “Case White” the official marching orders for war. It is full of some profound hidden messages. The orders reveal many of his personal disorders. Most little babies don't get their way and toss their bottle in anger. But someone picks them up and spanks them, so they don't make it a habit. But this little infant had an adult body and brain to go along with his diapered personality. He had the power to throw his bottle in anger and then punish his parents for daring to try to spank him. It was a psychotic nightmare and someone should run him over with a trolley car back in 1913 in Vienna on his was to the flop house while the world still had a chance. He wasn't so much evil to me as he was infantile. Hating Hitler is like hating the baby when it throws its bottle and cries in anger.
Here is the order to war. Everything in parenthesis is my commentary)
SUPREME COMMANDER OF THE ARMED FORCES
MOST SECRET
(You know Hitler wrote this. Any normal leader would write “eyes only” - The baby has to play big spy big shot - “Most secret”)
Berlin August 31, 1939
Directive No. 1 for the Conduct of the War
(He knows was in advance that he is not merely punishing Poland by an incursion. He is living his lifelong fantasy come true. A war! He gets to have his very own war! And he gets to decide on the 'conduct of the war.')
1. Now that all the political possibilities of disposing by peaceful means of a situation on the Eastern Frontier which is intolerable for Germany are exhausted, I have determined on a solution by force.
(Sometimes it seems that he may even be deluding himself that he is a man of peace, a real diplomat among diplomats, who made every effort to avoid war. He's like the Hollywood egomaniac who wants to live up to many ego trips. The actor who has 48 cameras in his living room explaining that he really has no need for extra publicity. The selfish bastard that appears at all the high profile charity events but doesn't write a personal check. What Hitler the versatile diplomat really wanted was to win all of continental Europe by diplomatic intimidation, not real diplomacy. That was never on his radar on his best day, but his ego wanted him to believe that, like the bozo movie star who can't play the guitar well, but has the money and power to create a band that tours big rooms while he plays mediocre up front and thinks he's great. If course it isn't Germany that has decided to settle things by force. it is he personally that must settle things by force. And he has to underline the message of time to use force. The little man who never had a fistfight in his life to the best of my knowledge after reading 11 thick biographies of him, has decided in bold letters that it is time to use FORCE! - This is Hitler proving at last that he is the best lay in all of Germany. Millions have to die to make up for his sexual inadequacy.)
The attack on Poland is to be carried out in accordance with the preparations made for Case White, with the alterations which result, where the Army is concerned.
NOMANHAN MANCHURIA – AUGUST 1939
World War II began when Hitler attacked Poland on August 1 1939. But did it really?
Throughout August 1939 the Soviet Union and Japan were engaged in a massive battle in Manchuria in which each side lost more than 10,000 killed in action in four weeks of hard fighting between armored divisions, infantry divisions and air support combat.
Nomanhan is understudied partly because it happened in a remote area with no foreign observers, partly because both sides sort of were fighting the war they didn't want to fight and hadn't planned to fight, and partly because events in Europe dominated the news both at the time and from a history perspective.
The USSR spent five weeks hurling 100,000 troops 400 planes and 1,000 tanks at a Japanese force about half that size.
The Japanese were the aggressors, thinking themselves so superior in every way that they would win against this larger force but they got their lunch handed to them by the Russians. The Japanese thought they could advance into the Russian controlled part of Manchuria like a hot knife through cooked rice, but their sword ran into the stone of General Zhukov and his army.
The “Strike North” faction and the semi-independent Kwantung Army were happy to be finally attacking Russia, the sworn enemy of Japan. But both were being used as political pawns in Hirohito's political chess with Germany.
The Nomonhan campaign went through three stages. Few books mention the important fact that the entire thing was fought on ostensibly Mongolian soil. The USSR had political control over Mongolia, but allowed it to pretend to be independent. Most books call it the Nomonhan Incident. Others call it the war for the Koonala River. One author who respects the scale of the third phase of the battle calls it the “Second Russo-Japanese War.” The first had come in 1904-1905. Certainly the fighting n august was worthy of the title of “war.” I'd like to call it the “War for Mongolia.” Whoever won the war would maintain political control over Mongolia. The Japanese saw Mongolia as a temptation on the edge of their Manchukuo (invaded Manchuria) and a chance to show the world how strong was the Japanese Army and how weak the USSR Army.
First came a skirmish between Mongolian tribesmen in May of 1939. It was like the American frontier in 1763 with British controlled Indians fighting in the wilderness with French-controlled Indians. On the surface it was an Indian war, but in reality it was a clash between advanced powers.
The Japanese controlled Mongolian warriors advanced a few miles into Mongolia and won small battles with native warriors who were in the Soviet sphere.
Normally, these inner Mongolians resented their Communist masters, but when the Japanese hit them with a second attack they turned to their big Soviet brother for protection. They sent back word to their Russian commanders that they needed to be resued from these aggressor Japanese. The Russian leader at Ulan Bator sent a formal Mongolian brigade and some Soviet Army troops to the area and they chased the pro-Japanese Mongolians back out to Manchuria. But many Japanese observers and advisors were spotted, so no one was fooled that this was a purely native Mongolian initiative.
The two sides regrouped for the third and final phase of the campaign in August. This time the Japanese Kwantung Army attacked in full Corps force. The Kwantung had been doing whatever it wanted all over Asia for three years plus, and this was just another arrogant adventure. The Kwantung Army felt free to ignore civilian orders from Tokyo and instigate aggressions any time and place it chose. They knew that the Russians had more planes, tanks, armored cars, and troops but they were so conceited that they though that would just make the easy victory that much more glorious. It never even crossed their crossed up minds that they might lose. I take great delight in reading accounts of how the Russians beat their brains in at Nomonhan. It's not that often I root for the Russians in anything, but this is one spot where they were so much the lesser of two bad guys, so much the clear victim of unprovoked aggression, that you'd have to admit it. The Russians, for once were the good guys, and that's all there is to it.
The Nomonhan campaign was launched in order to discourage Hitler from making the rumored non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union. Japan feared this. If the Soviet Union had nothing to fear on its European front, then the dream of taking down the Communist neighbor and expanding into Siberia would be ruined. Stalin could concentrate his forces in the east if he needed to without fear of losing security in the west.
Japan was sending Hitler a reminder that the three Axis states had signed the anti-Comintern Pact by starting up with the focused enemy of that Pact. If the Japanese could advance into Mongolia (where Nomonhan was) and demonstrate just how weak the Soviet fighting forces were, Hitler might be tempted to attack Russia rather than settle up with it.
The attack was also supposed to dissuade Stalin from making an alliance with Britain, something Japan feared. The message here was, 'if you make a pact with Britian you will surely make an enemy of Hitler and then the threat of a Soviet war on two fronts will come true. We are starting the war on the eastern front, now do you really want to make a treaty with Britain?' Japan didn't want the USSR to make pact with anyone. Japan wanted Russia isolated so it could attack it.
Japan also hoped to put Germany in a position where it was indebted to Japan for putting Hitler's arch-enemy Russia on the defensive. Japan was so conceited about its fighting ability that it never even considered the possibility that the advance into Mongolia might be repulsed, and its political import boomeranged.
When the Russians completely demolished the Japanese in Mongolia, the entire “Strike North” faction was ruined forever. The Army lost preponderant prestige, and the Kwantung Army no longer was a roving nation unto itself. All three of these factors led to the attack on Pearl harbor and war with the United States. For now the Strike South faction and the IJN were the cat's pajamas.
Japan had outlawed surrender in 1908, but 3,600 Japanese soldiers surrendered at Nomanhan anyway. So much for the myth of the Japanese fanatical dedication and the myth that they never surrendered. One was a law, not a choice, the other a myth.
LAST WORD
1919-1939, the time between World War One and Two was World War One Point Five. It was 20 years of warfare all over the world. The Spanish Civil War alone took half a million lives, and history dares to call this the period between the wars.
SOURCES
The complete list of sources is at the end of the “FDR 1945”
Here is a short list.
The American Pageant, A History of the Republic, by Thomas A. Bailey of Stanford – c) 1961 D.C.
Bailey is exceptionally strong on foreign policy in general and especially knowledgeable on the pre-war years of FDR. He wrote a book about the undeclared naval war of the US Navy between Germany and the USA from late 1939 to the day of Pearl Harbor.
Bitter Glory, by Thomas Watt
Poland from war to war. This is a great book. I love TW's work and his writing. The war (the second world one) really started over Poland, so knowing Polish history in detail from the end of World War One to the beginning of World War II is super-instructive. And for a guy this good to take on a subject this important and this understudied is a public service he can be proud of. No student of World War II can do without this read.
The Brains Trust, by Rexford Tugwell – The story of the FDR insiders by one of the main men. Very informative book.
Delivered From Evil, by Robert Leckie c) 1987
This 948 page general history of WWII by a Marine fighter of the Pacific Battles is readable and double chauvinist. He not only is biased towards the United States, he is biased towards his beloved Marine Corps.
The opening chapters on the rise of the dictators are relevant here.
A Diplomatic History of the American People, by Samuel Flagg Bemis, Farnam Professor of Diplomatic History in Yale University -c) 1934 Henry Holt
The dean of diplomacy historians, Bemis died in 1973 and a fifth edition of this book came out in 1965. My 34 edition gives his look a the state of the world before he knew it would all turn so bad. He is the editor of the 18 volume The American Secretaries of State and their Diplomacy. I wish I owned it.
Eagle Against the Sun, The American War With Japan, by Ronald H. Spector - c) 1985
40% of EAS is about the pre-war years, which is annoying. For purposes of this chapter, it is a useful book, but if you’re going to write a book about the war, write a book about the war. If you’re going to write a book about the origins of the war, write a book about the origins of the war. But a history of a war should not be 40% about the pre-war years, even if the work is excellent.
The Growth of the American Republic, Vol II 1865-1937, by Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager – c) 1940 Oxford U. P.
They adore FDR. They hate Republicans.
History of a Free People, by Henry W. Bragdon of Phillips Exeter Academy and Samuel P. McCutchen of NYU – c) 1954 MacMillan
Standard tough US history textbook for the 54 student.
A History of Presidential Elections, by Eugene Roseboom – c) 1957
I have no problem with writers being totally partisan. I welcome that and I go out of my way to read points of view I do not share. But I am offended when the partisan writer makes a pretense of objective reporting and face-value story-telling. 'Rosie' is completely pro-Democrat and anti-Republican throughout the book, or at least beginning with Jefferson.
In the Civil War years section, he reveals himself to be, in my estimation, a bigot.
Japan's Imperial Conspiracy, by David Bergamini
Lion by the Tail, by Thomas M. Coffey – c)1974 – The story of the Italian invasion and conquest of Ethiopia from 1934-1936. This is a great book, and as far as I'm concerned the last word on this important conflict.
The March of Democracy: Vol II, From Civil War to World Power, by James Truslow Adams – c) 1933
Jimmy voted for FDR in 1932. He doesn't say that, but he obviously did.
The Memoirs of Field-Marshall the Viscount Montgomery of Alamein K.G. - c) 1958 - World Publishing, Cleveland
I don’t know where the title begins or end so I’m going with the full Monty. MFVMA has a chapter about England between the wars.
The Mighty Endeavor, by Charles B. McDonald – c) 1969 – This is a history of the war, but has a good opening chapter or two on US military strategic planning in the pre-war years.
The National Experience – Part Two A History of the United States Since 1865 by John M. Blum (Yale), Edmund S. Morgan (Yale), Willie Lee Rose (The Johns Hopkins), Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. (CUNY), Kenneth M. Stampp (UC Berkeley), and C. Vann Woodward (Yale) – c) 1981 Fifth Edition
It always reads like it’s almost about to get lively but never does.
The Nazi Doctors, by Robert Jay Lifton – c) 1986 – The primary source for the awful story of sterilization in Germany.
Out of Many; A History of the American People, by John Mack Faragher (Yale), Mari Jo Buhle (Brown), Daniel Czitrom (Mount Holyoke), and Susan H. Armitage (Washington State) - c) 1994 - Prentice Hall
General modern textbook history of the USA by a group of professors who would never use the term USA.
The Oxford History of the American People, by Samuel Eliot Morison – c) 1965 Oxford University Press
This is supposed to be a 'history' book, but when it comes to FDR it's just a 41 page polemic in his favor. My only question is, how much money did Sam contribute to FDR's campaigns?
Morison is blunt to a fault at times, and sexist too. He notes that Francis Perkins was successful in FDR/'s cabinet because “she had a man's brain.” Of 1936 Presidential hopeful Huey Long he writes that he was “a coward who evaded the wartime draft and went about surrounded by armed bodyguards.”
Huey Long was one of about 40 million men who evaded service in WWI. They were all yellow, according to Sam. Just because you served in WWII, a war so clearly patriotic that even I would have enlisted, doesn't mean that anyone who ducked out of WWI was a coward. Two different tests, Sammy. As for Long being a coward because of his armed bodyguards; hey Sam, doesn't it mean anything that Long was assassinated while his armed bodyguard was there on the spot? That doesn't prove that the guards were a mark of wisdom? If Sam Morsion got 300 death threats a day, I wonder if he wouldn't change his lifestyle a little but too.
My favorite Morison example of FDR foot-licking comes when he states, with no awareness of the absurd oxymoronic aspect of the statement that,
“Roosevelt had no intention of emulating his predecessor in relying on exhortation. 'This nation,' he said, 'asks for action and action now!' ”
Doyeeeeeee!
Presidential Campaigns, by Paul F. Boller, Jr. of Texas Christian University - c) 1984 – Oxford University Press.
Boller served in the US Navy in WWII and is still teaching at TCU in 2011! When the human life span averages 130 years, we can remove the exclamation mark.
The Road to War, by Richard Overy and Andrew Wheatcroft
c-) 1989 – Two British scholars on the causes of WWII. Each nation gets its own chapter, so its not sequential, but this unusual format adds a positive touch.
I like the writing but they are guilty of slick deliberate deceptions. They are pro-Soviet Union to the max. They make it seem as if the USSR was entirely the victim of western aggression in all the post 1917 years, which is preposterous since the Bolos were advocation and promoting the violent overthrow of the western industrial states. When they failed, and then had to deal with the angry reaction of the west, they became in these authors eyes the innocent victims of western hostility.
They are the only historians in the world who think that Germany supplied heavy weaponry to the Ethiopians in 1935.
The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, by William L. Shirer -
You've either heard of this book or read it. It's deservedly famous. It is the must read of WWII and about 700 pages are about the years leading up to the outbreak of war on 9.1.39.
A Short History of the American Nation, by John A. Garraty of Columbia – c) 1966 c) 1977 Harper & Row
Any Supreme Court Justice or decision that doesn't suit FDR's or Garraty's taste is “reactionary,”
“Four of the nine justices, James C. McReynolds, Willis Van Devanter, Pierce Butler, and George Sutherland, were intransigent reactionaries. Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes and Justice Owen J. Roberts, while more open-minded, tended to side wih the reactionaries on many questions.”
When anyone ever says “you need to be more open minded” they mean one thing and one thing only, and never mean anything else. “You must be open minded” means “you must agree with me.” Anyone who doesn't agree with a liberal is a reactionary, whatever that elastic epithet means at a given moment, or they are closed minded.
A Time for Angels, The Tragicomic History of the League of Nations, by Elmer Bendiner – c) 1975
The League if Nations gets a bum rap. It tried and failed to keep the peace. Those who did nothing to try and keep the peace condemn it as a sport. The League of Nations is like the neighborhood crime watch force of volunteer citizens that try but can't stop the gang wars so they actually get blamed for them.
The United States: The History of a Republic, by Richard Hofstadter of Columbia, William Miller, and Daniel Aaron of Smith College - c) 1957 Prentice-Hall
Aaron and Hofstadter are famous historians. Miller is a nobody who co-authored only one book,
The Age of Enterprise, by Thomas Cochran and William Miller
COMEDIANS
I switched a Barry Crimmins line in this chapter. I won’t say where. “Switched” means stole the joke but changed it around in some way so it’s not ostensibly the same joke.
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