THIS FAR AND NO FURTHER
A Timeline of Events Surrounding the Radical Right's Attempt to Subvert American Democracy
Written and Compiled by Black Max
1897-1960
1921-1931
1921
- Irish terrorist/freedom fighter Michael Collins accepts an offer for peace from Britain,
Irish "Free State"
which would create an Irish Free State under a similar agreement of tacit "dominion" as enjoyed by Canada, save for the six northernmost counties of Ireland, which would remain part of Great Britain. Collins, formerly a hero to the Irish, returned home a target of criticism and accused of treason; he would be murdered eight months later. The peace for which Collins died would be short-lived; fighting would continue in Ireland against British rule for the rest of the century. (Pat Buchanan) - Former socialist and labor syndicalist Benito Mussolini enters the Italian parliament as the right-wing founder of a new political movement called the Fasci di Combattimento, or more colloquially, the Fascisti.
Rise of Italian fascism
Mussolini's Fascisti forms armed squadrons that terrorize socialists and Communists, and works along with the government to break labor strikes through violence. In October 1922, King Vittorio Emanuele III invites him to form a new government. Mussolini's Fascisti government proves an inspiration and a model for Adolf Hitler's own National Socialist government in Germany. Like Hitler, Mussolini used the citizenry's fears of Bolshevism, a deep-rooted bigotry against Jews and other minorities, a hatred for the repressive policies stemming from the post-World War I peace treaties, and many Italians' feelings that their country was at a nadir of power and influence to rally many citizens to Mussolini's banner. His Fascisti movement incorporates elements of jingoistic nationalism at its worst, corporatism, totalitarianism, and anti-Bolshevik zeal. Using his political power to repress Italy's press and suppress dissent, Mussolini soon becomes known as Il Duce, an all-powerful, all-knowing leader whose popularity eclipses the widely despised king's. Within a few years, Italy is a full-blown police state with Mussolini its undisputed dictator. Like Hitler, he has a gift for propaganda and for rhetoric, and like Hitler, Mussolini is quite militaristic, with an aggressive foreign policy that quickly manifests itself in the 1923 bombardment of Corfu, his success in setting up a puppet regime in Albania, and his extension of Italy's influence in Libya. His dream is to make the Mediterranean Sea Italy's own, with Italy in charge of, or running puppet regimes in, every neighboring country. (Wikipedia) - August 23: Britain allows a constitutional monarchy in Iraq, under King Faisal I, to take limited control of the country.
Iraq monarchy created by Britain
Faisal is a Syrian whose father was the last emperor of the Ottoman Empire; his previous enforced departure from Syria is a major blow to Palestinians, who had hoped Faisal would help them achieve recognition and alliance with Syria. Faisal, a Sunni, has never actually been to the area that has become Iraq. From now until the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iraq would be governed by a Sunni Muslim minority, with the Shi'a Muslim majority, along with its large population of indigeneous Kurds, underrepresented in its governments. (Before Faisal dies of natural causes, he writes an illuminating letter in which he despairs of ever getting Iraq's Shi'ites, Sunnis, and Kurds to cooperate in anything, complaining of their endless warring, their intractable refusal to cooperate, and the endemic corruption that plagues his nation.) (FactMonster, MidEast Web, BBC, Buzzflash, Dawoud el-Alami, Mark Etherington)
1922
The Bush and Walker families help subsidize the Nazis
- W. Averell Harriman sets up the Berlin branch of W.A. Harriman and Co. under the presidency of George H. Walker, George H.W. Bush's father-in-law.
Bush family involvement in rise of Nazis
Two years later, the company will oversee the establishment of the Union Banking Corporation, under the direction of Prescott Bush, Sr., George H.W. Bush's father. In conjunction with the German Steel Trust, the two companies will produce nearly half of the Third Reich's iron and steel, and over a third of the explosives used by the Hitler regime. Harriman will later become an influential diplomat and foreign policy advisor for the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administrations. The Walkers and the Bushes are old, well-established Northeastern families with a long line of financial and political influence. James Smith Bush attended Yale in the 1850s before becoming an Episcopalian minister, and his sons flourished in the business community, where they forged connections with the Rockefeller and Harriman business empires. David Walker built a huge dry goods import firm, and sent his son, George Herbert Walker, to school in Britain during the 1880s. Most Bushes who have sought political office have downplayed their family's financial and political connections. Prescott Bush pretended that his family could not afford to send him to law school during his successful runs for the US Senate. George W. Bush carried on this tradition by portrying himself as a Texan of modest means, a product of San Jacinto Junior High School, instead of what he is, the scion of a plutocratic family given the best private education money could buy. - By the Wilson presidency, both the Bush and Walker families were quite rich, sending their children to exclusive private schools and, in the case of the Bush family, becoming quite prominent in national politics. During the 1920s, an informal consortium of US business magnates, including George H. Walker, John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen Dulles, Clarence Dillion, and Averill Harriman, forge deep business and financial ties with Germany. After the advent of the National Socialist regime under Adolf Hitler, these US business tycoons increase the amount of business they did with Germany, especially in war armaments and other materiel, but were careful to cloak their dealings with Hitler due to public disapproval. Harriman, the Dulles brothers, and the Bush/Walker families became heavily involved in the intelligence and national security industries during and after World War II. It is highly doubtful that Germany could have rearmed itself enough to launch its invasions of its European neighbors, much less continue their war effort after Britain and France joined to oppose their incursions, had not these American business leaders worked so hard to ensure that the Nazis received all the armaments and raw materials they needed. It is ironic that so many of these American businessmen, including Harriman and the Dulles brothers, were so involved in the American war effort while simultaneously feeding the Nazi war machine. (Kevin Phillips, George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, William Averell Harriman)
- Averill Harriman,
Oil profiteering and the "oiligarchy"
George Walker, and their New York financial cronies contract, against the wishes of the US government, to refurbish the oil fields of the Russian Caucasus. The venture fails, partially because of revolt in the Baku region. Baku is not far from the northern border of modern Iraq, which shows that the Bush/Walker family's interest in the region's petroleum goes back four generations. (Kevin Phillips) - During the 1920s, a number of major US firms buy or begin establishing major German subsidiaries and joint ventures, including ITT, General Motors, Ford, Standard Oil, and General Electric.
Rise of Nazi Germany
Between 1929 and 1940, US business investments in Germany will increase by nearly 50%, while declining almost everywhere else in continental Europe. These joint US-German business ventures become linchpins of the Nazi war machine as well as critical portions of the US companies that sponsored them. These connections go far to explain the strong resistance of many in the US business community to joining Britain and France in opposing Hitler's military advances in Europe. (Kevin Phillips)
Teapot Dome scandal
- Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall illegally conveys the rights to oil in the Teapot Dome area of Wyoming to Sinclair Oil without competitive bidding.
Oil profiteering and the "oiligarchy"
Fall, working in collusion with Attorney General Harry Daugherty, also gives the rights to oil leases in California to private developer Edward Doheny in return for interest-free personal loans. A Senate investigation led by Democrat Thomas Walsh exposes the crimes, and the extent of the corruption in the Harding administration. Fall will be sent to prison in 1931, and the oil fields will be returned to the government via a 1927 Supreme Court decision. Thomas Miller, head of the Office of Alien Property, will be convicted of accepting bribes. Jess Smith, personal aide to the Attorney General, will destroy papers and then commit suicide. Charles Forbes, Director of the Veterans Bureau, who skims profits, earns fat kickbacks, and runs alcohol and drugs, will be convicted of fraud and bribery and draw a two-year sentence. Charles Cramer, an aide to Forbes, also will commit suicide. The Teapot Dome Scandal, as it comes to be called, becomes synonymous with the Harding administration, which, fairly or not, garners the reputation as one of the most corrupt in American history. (Wikipedia) - July 24: The League of Nations Council passes the Mandate for Palestine,
Creation of Jewish nation
and the British government proposes a Palestine Constitution to represent Arabs as a majority and Jews as a strong minority in a new Palestinian government. Although Palestinian Jews accept the idea, Arabs strongly resist the establishment of the government, and boycott the proceedings, insisting that the Balfour Declaration first be repudiated. (Dan Cohn-Sherbok)
"In all cities, the better classes -- the business men -- are the sources of corruption, but they are so rarely pursued and caught that we do not fully realize whence the trouble comes."
-- Lincoln Steffens, The Shame of the Cities. 1904
1923
- A
Creation of Jewish nation
tripartite government is established in Palestine, with Jewish, British, and Arab representation. (Dan Cohn-Sherbok) - The
Oil profiteering and the "oiligarchy"
American oil giant Chevron pays $250,000 for a 60-year concession of Saudi Arabian oil, outbidding the Iraq Petroleum Company. (Global Policy Forum) - August 23:
Coolidge presidency
Vice-President Calvin Coolidge assumes the presidency upon the death of Warren Harding. Coolidge, a laissez-faire free market advocate, presides over a roaring economic boom, and wins a second term in 1924. (Wikipedia) - November 8: Adolf Hitler attempts to seize power in Munich, the capital of Bavaria, in an abortive coup known as the "Beer Hall Putsch."
Rise of Nazi Germany
Nazis under Hitler's leadership march from a beer hall to the Bavarian War Ministry, intending to overthrow Bavaria's right-wing separatist government and then march on Berlin. The army quickly disperses them and Hitler is arrested. To protect his own position, Hitler appoints Alfred Rosenberg as temporary leader of the Nazi Party. During his trial for high treason in April 1924, sympathetic conservative magistrates left over from pre-Weimar allow Hitler to turn the court case into a propaganda stunt. Hitler is allotted unlimited amounts of time to present his arguments to the courts as well as a large body of the German people, and gives his popularity a boost by voicing sentiments shared by the public. For a crime of conspiracy against his nation, Hitler is sentenced to five years' imprisonment at Landsberg prison, where he receives favored treatment from the guards and receives much fan mail from admirers. While at Landsberg he dictates his political book Mein Kampf (My Struggle) to his deputy Rudolf Hess. The first volume, called "Abrechnung" (Payback), is later published and becomes the platform of the Nazi party. Hitler receives an early amnesty in December 1924, and sets about rebuilding the flagging Nazi Party. A key element of Hitler's appeal is his ability to convey a sense of offended national pride caused by the Treaty of Versailles imposed on the defeated German Empire by the Allies. Germany had lost territory in Europe and its colonies, had had to admit to sole responsibility for the war and pay a huge reparations bill totaling $6,600,000 (32 billion marks). Most Germans bitterly resent these terms, but early attempts to gain support by blaming these humiliations on "international Jewry" were not particularly successful with the electorate. The party learned quickly and soon a more subtle propaganda emerged, combining anti-Semitism with an attack on the failures of the "Weimar system" and the parties supporting it. (In 2004, it will be discovered that Hitler spent years dodging taxes on sales of Mein Kampf. He owed the German goverment the current equivalent of $8 million by the time he takes power and has the tax debt forgiven.) (Wikipedia)
1924
- 1924: Congress votes to give $3.5 billion in bonuses to American veterans of World War I,
US veterans
to be paid out over a 20-year period; the bill passes over a veto by President Coolidge. The average payout will be around $1000 per veteran. After the Great Depression of 1929 hits, many veterans decide that they have more need for the money now, rather than waiting until 1945 or later to receive the final payments. The money is to be raised by annual installments into a trust fund managed by the government; by 1932, the money has grown to a lucrative $991 million. Because of the depression, and the fiscal mismanagement of the Hoover administration, much of the trust fund had already been raided in secret by Hoover and his administration colleagues. (Bonus Marchers, World War I.com) - November:
Coolidge presidency
Calvin Coolidge wins a full term as president. Though he is eligible, he refuses to run for a second term in 1928. (Wikipedia)
1925
- The newly formed Iraq Petroleum Company, led by Calouste Gulbenkian, talks Iraq's King Faisal into giving his company the exclusive rights to all of Iraq's oil production.
Oil profiteering and the "oiligarchy"
Gulbenkian promptly flips 95% of his concessions over to a combine of Western oil giants, including Anglo-Persian (later British Petroleum, or BP), Royal Dutch Shell, CFP of France, and Standard Oil (now Exxon). Gulbenkian keeps the remaining 5% for himself. The oil consortium does not immediately begin pumping endless barrels of oil from the rich Iraqi oil fields, but instead seals it up to keep cheap Iraqi oil from flooding the markets. The sequestering of the Iraqi oil fields ensures high oil prices for the next 80 years and beyond. Anglo-Persia will pump the majority of its oil from Persia (later Iran); the Standard Oil combine, later named Aramco, limits almost all of its pumping to Saudi Arabia. The consortium agrees to limit Iraq pumping to ½% of the country's total area; in 1976, author John Blair writes in his book The Control of Oil, "[d]uring the Great Depression, the world was awash with oil and greater output from Iraq would have simply driven the price down to even lower levels." - When the British Foreign Office realizes that the lock on drilling Iraqi oil is sparking nationalist anger in 1948, BP simply pretends to drill lots of wells, but drills them at ridiculously shallow levels and in places where, in the words of one company manager, "there was no danger of striking oil." The moratorium on drilling Iraqi oil will continue into the 21st century. In the 1960s, Iraq, frustrated with the tiny amount of oil being pumped and the resulting tiny profits, cancels the BP-Shell-Exxon concession and seizes the oil fields; Britain is ready to invade to regain control of the Iraqi oil fields, but American president John F. Kennedy prevails upon Britain to restrain itself, preferring to allow the Iraqis to drill their own oil. Kennedy did not realize that the OPEC cartel, created in 1960 and controlled by Saudi Arabia, would soon cap Iraq's production at a level equal to that of Iran, in a failed attempt to prevent a war between the two countries. (When war did break out between the two countries, Saudi Arabia mollified Iraq's Ba'athist leaders by funding Iraq's war effort and giving Saddam Hussein $7 billion for his nuclear bomb program.) In 1974, Senator Edmund Muskie breaks the news of the then-50-year moratorium on Iraqi drilling, revealing the contents of a secret Senate report regarding the "fantastic" oil reserves in Iraq undeveloped because US oil companies refused to add pipeline capacity. Muskie, coming off a losing bid for the presidency, is lambasted and ignored. And the Iranian bombing of Iraq's Basra oil fields further limits Iraqi oil production. In 1990, Iraq's Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait, in large measure because Kuwait insists on pumping oil from fields owned jointly by the two countries; Hussein's plan is to take over Kuwait and increase his own OPEC quotas by combining Iraq's quota with Kuwait's. The US, and the US oil companies, have no intention of letting such a thing happen, and crush the Iraqi invasion forces, in the process bombing the Basra oil facilities into rubble.
- The UN oil embargo on Iraq, lasting from 1991 through 2003 and labeled the "Oil-for-Food" program, limits Iraq's oil sales to 2 million barrels a day. (Greg Palast)
- US
US actions in Latin America
forces land in Panama to suppress a general strike. (ZMag) - The
US actions in Latin America
US begins a canal across the Central American country of Nicaragua, but eventually abandons the effort, leaving a huge scar halfway across the country, and moves its efforts to Panama. (Larry Kolb) - September:
Iranian monarchy
Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi becomes ruler of Iran. (Friesian) - December 16:
Middle East unrest
The League of Nations decides to keep the Mosul region in Iraq against the wishes of the Kurds. (MidEast Web)
1926
- Prescott
Bush family
Bush Sr. becomes vice-president of W.A. Harriman and Co. (George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography)
1927
- Averill
US corporate ties to European fascists
Harriman signs a contract for his companies to do business with Italy's Benito Mussolini. (George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography) - US
US actions in Latin America
troops land in Nicaragua. Six years of guerrilla warfare led by General Augusto Cesar Sandino ensue, until the US removes its troops in 1933. (Larry Kolb)
1928
- November: Republican Herbert Hoover wins the US presidency, succeeding "Silent" Calvin Coolidge.
Hoover administration
Hoover comes into office with a powerful reputation as an international humanitarian, but is challenged almost immediately by the stock market collapse of 1929. Hoover's enormous tax increases and his signing of the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act do nothing to improve the plummeting economy; neither does his heavy spending and his tightening of the US money supply. Historians are divided on whether Hoover is a well-meaning leader who makes tremendous mistakes, or a laissez-faire, do-nothing president who cares little for the regular citizenry and favors his corporate backers. It is a fact that, mainly because of the depression and his economic policies, unemployment soars to nearly 30%. He does implement the first unemployment relief act in US history, and hounds the New York Stock Exchange for fraudulent activities. He is accused of being a closet supporter of Hitler's Nazi regime; evidence to prove this is strong but circumstantial. Hoover will be roundly defeated in 1932 by Franklin Roosevelt, whose economic policies weather a secondary recession in 1937-38 and eventually rebuild the US economy. Hoover will enjoy a long, influential retirement, becoming the most active ex-president in his country's affairs until Jimmy Carter. (Wikipedia)
1929
Great Depression
- October 24 - 29: The financial markets around the world collapse, in what is known in the US as "Black Tuesday."
Great Depression
The collapse of America's stock market heralds the Great Depression, an era of horrific unemployment and an economy in free fall. The weakened financial status of Harriman's companies prod Prescott Bush and other Anglo-Americans into promoting the installation of Adolf Hitler as leader of Germany. The collapse bankrupts German Steel Trust. When the German government later takes over the Trust's stock shares, interests associated with Konrad Adenauer and the anti-Nazi Catholic Center Party attempt to acquire the shares. But Montagu Norman and the Harriman-Bush bank ensure that Nazi sympathizer Fritz Thyssen regains control over the shares and the Trust. Thyssen's bankrolling of Hitler can now continue unhindered. (George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Wikipedia)
Late 1920s
- The Kikuyu Central Association, an organization of East African Kikuyu, is formed to oppose the colonization of their homeland by the British.
British colonization of Kenya
One of its early leaders is the young, charismatic Johnstone Kenyatta, later nicknamed "Jomo." Like many of the KCA's early membership, Kenyatta is relatively conservative and upwardly mobile, and sought not to chase the British out of their homeland, but to ensure their own participation and enrichment in the process. Kenyatta, like many of the KCA leadership, is a product of a Christian missionary education. One of the first polarizing issues that sets the KCA apart from the British is the British ban on female circumcision, a practice hotly defended by many Kikuyu on religious grounds. The issue begins to mobilize the Kikuyu peasantry, and provides the KCA with a mass political base. While the KCA is initially quite reasoned and restrained in its opposition to the British ban, the response from the British is to try to demonize and marginalize the KCA, radicalizing the group and stiffening Kikuyu opposition to British rule. (Caroline Elkins)
1930
- Germany
Rise of Nazi Germany
suffers an economic depression, further destabilizing the tottering Weimar government. Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party wins almost a fifth of the seats in the Reichstag, making it the second-largest party in Germany and giving Hitler a political platform for further gains. (Wikipedia) - The
Rise of communism in Indochina
Indochinese Communist Party, formed to opposed French rule, is organized by Ho Chi Minh and his followers. (Chronology of US-Vietnam Relations)
1931
- January 31: W.A. Harriman and Co. merges with the British-American investment house, Brown Brothers, with Prescott Bush as one of the new firm's senior directors.
US corporate ties to European fascists
Brown Brothers shipped 75% of the slave-produced cotton from American to Britain in the previous century. Bank of England Governor Montagu Collet Norman is a former Brown Brothers partner, whose grandfather had been boss of Brown Brothers during the U.S. Civil War. Montagu Norman is one of Britain's most prominent supporters of Adolf Hitler. Prescott Bush runs the New York branch of Brown Brothers Harriman; Prescott's partner is Norman's close friend Thatcher Brown. Bush concentrates on the firm's German activities, while Brown sees to business in England under the auspices of his mentor Norman. (George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography)
