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
1932-1935
1932
- US
US actions in Latin America
warships fight the Faribundo Marti revolt in El Salvador. (ZMag) - Bao Dai,
Rise of communism in Indochina
the sophisticated, libertine teenaged son of the former Emperor of Vietnam, returns from exile in France and assumes the throne of what is called in Europe "Indochina" as a puppet of French rule. (Chronology of US-Vietnam Relations, Wikipedia)
World War I vets, known as the "Bonus March" protesters, attacked by US troops
- April - July: After the introduction of the Veteran's Bonus Bill (also known as the Patman Bill after its sponsor)
US veterans
that would immediately grant World War I veterans the bonuses promised them nine years before by the government, 10,000 to 20,000 veterans march on Washington, DC to pressure the government to pass the bill and pay out the bonuses. The veterans, wryly calling themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force, camp at Anacostia Flats, building temporary shelters which they mockingly call "Hoovervilles" after the President, and threatening to stay there until the bill is passed. The House narrowly passes the bill but the Senate defeats it. The angry veterans, after refusing to leave and resisting police attempts to drive them off, are driven out by US Army troops led by General Douglas MacArthur. A group of around 5,000 veterans who had decided to camp in abandoned buildings near the Capital bears the brunt of the Army attack; on July 28, a veteran is killed during a scuffle with police, and President Herbert Hoover calls in the Army. MacArthur, who will claim that the veterans are merely patsies for an overarching Communist conspiracy, mounts a ferocious attack on the unarmed veterans with cavalry troops with sabers, infantry with fixed bayonets, and even tanks. One of the first senior officers to arrive on the scene is Major George S. Patton, who leads the cavalry charge against the ragtag band of veterans. Sabres, bayonets, and gas grenades take a toll among the veterans, though miraculously there are no deaths. The troops move on to clear out the rest of the protesters camping in Anacostia Flats, with more loss of life and the firing of a number of shacks and tents. (Patton will later recall the attack with distaste, and will write several papers outlining how federal troops can restore order in such situations without such wanton bloodshed.) Hoover, who ordered the attacks, praises the action as driving back "[a] challenge to the authority of the United States Government...." Many military historians believe that MacArthur's heavy-handed tactics went farther than his instructions from Hoover allowed. (Bonus Marchers, America's Library, World War I.com) - October 3:
Middle East unrest
Iraq formally achieves independence, with a Sunni muslim minority exerting control over an economically and politically disenfranchised Shi'ite majority. Kurdish opposition is crushed by the British RAF. The next ten years are marked by political upheaval. (FactMonster, MidEast Web, A Timeline of Oil and Violence)
Roosevelt presidency
- November: Franklin Delano Roosevelt wins the US presidential election.
Roosevelt administration and the "New Deal"
Roosevelt will set the tone for progressive American liberalism well into the next millennium, with his "New Deal" economic policies successfully leading America out of the economic desert of the Great Depression, his creation of the Social Security system, his elimination of the gold standard as a basis for American currency and reform of the US banking system, the government's takeover of agricultural planning, the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority and the National Recovery Administration, and Roosevelt's unprecedented contact with the citizenry through frequent "Fireside Chats" broadcast over the radio. No stranger to political log-rolling, Roosevelt eventually succeeds in "packing" the Supreme Court with justices sympathetic to his agenda, eventually appointing all nine justices to the bench. (Roosevelt will fail in trying to expand the court to 15 justices.) Harry Truman in 1948 and John F. Kennedy in 1962 will win the White House by directly tying their candidacies to Roosevelt's legacy. (Wikipedia, Wikipedia) - November:
Rise of Nazi Germany
Wealthy Germans such as Fritz Thyssen and Hjalmar Schacht implore German president Paul von Hindenburg to appoint Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as leader of a non-democratic government "independent from parliamentary parties" which could turn into a a movement that would "enrapture millions of people." After much political maneuvering, Hindenberg appoints Hitler chancellor on January 30, 1933. (Wikipedia) - The US embassy in Berlin reports that the "costly election campaigns" and
Rise of Nazi Germany
"the cost of maintaining a private army of 300,000 to 400,000 men" has raised questions as to the Nazis' financial backers. The German republic orders the Nazi Party private armies disbanded. The U.S. embassy reports that the Hamburg-Amerika Line, owned by Brown Brothers Harriman and operated by Prescott Bush, is purchasing and distributing propaganda attacks against the German government, for attempting this last-minute crackdown on Hitler's forces. (George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography)
1933
- Nicaraguan leader Augusto Sandino, fresh from driving US troops out of Nicaragua, signs a peace pact with the US.
US actions in Latin America
Shortly thereafter, he attends a banquet with the US ambassador to celebrate the peace pact, and is assassinated by right-wing forces led by the man who will become the first President Somoza. Many believe that Sandino's assassination was orchestrated by the US. (Larry Kolb) - January 23:
Minority rights
The 20th Amendment to the Constitution is ratified, ensuring the rights of women to vote. (US Constitution Online)
Hitler's rise to power, subsidized by US corporate interests
- January 30: Adolf Hitler becomes Chancellor of Germany.
Rise of Nazi Germany
Two months later he will become absolute dictator. His two-year rise to power is predicated on expensive and violent lobbying and electioneering. Two affiliates of the Bush-Harriman organization played great parts in the installation of Hitler, including supplying arms and material to the S.A.s (Brown Shirts) and the S.S. (Black Shirts). A later US Senate investigation will find: "German political associations, like the Nazi and others, are nearly all armed with American...guns. ...Arms of all kinds coming from America are transshipped in the Scheldt to river barges before the vessels arrive in Antwerp. They then can be carried through Holland without police inspection or interference. The Hitlerists and Communists are presumed to get arms in this manner." Hitler is obsessed with securing enough oil for Germany to rebuild its economy and its war machine. He particularly focuses on taking the rich Caucasus oil fields away from the fledgling Soviet Union. According to oil economist Daniel Yergin, Hitler's plans are strikingly similar to Imperial Japan's drive to secure the resources of the East Indies and Southeast Asia; both burgeoning empires believed that the success of these goals would make their empires invulnerable. Albert Speer will confirm in 1945 that a prime motivation for Hitler's invasion of Russia was for control of the Caucasus oil. Erwin Rommel's overall plan was for German forces to sweep through North Africa into the Middle East, securing the Mesopotamian oil fields, and joining other German forces in Baku and the Caucasus. If successful, this advance would have likely decided the war in Germany's favor. Instead, Rommel's forces were halted, lack of gasoline and problems fighting in the mountainous terrain stalled Germany's offensive in the Caucasus, US bombers destroyed Germany's synthetic fuels output, and Germany went down to defeat. - In the Pacific, similar denials of Japan's ability to procure oil led to Japan's defeat. In contrast, the US was able to supply huge amounts of oil both to its own forces and to its European allies throughout the war, though German U-boats did a creditable job of sinking US oil tankers, particularly in 1942 and 1943. During the entire war, Middle East oil supplies will make little impact on the war, producing only 5% of the world's oil supply in 1940 and little more in 1945. The war will help drain the American oil reserves, leaving the largely untapped oil fields of the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia as the next great prize for the world's superpowers. It has been effectively argued that the outcome of World War II is decided more by oil, its availability and its control, than any other single factor. Understanding this leaves little doubt of the motivations of the US in the Persian Gulf at the century's end. (George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography, Kevin Phillips)
- February 15: Roosevelt survives an assassination attempt by a mentally deranged Italian,
Attempted coup against Roosevelt
Giuseppe Zangara. Later in the year, General Smedley Butler will reveal to Roosevelt that he is the target of a potential coup d'etat by monied conservative and corporate interests. The planned coup never materializes, most likely because of Butler's warning. (Wikipedia)
Reichstag fire
- February 27: Nazi agitators set the Reichstag building, the assembly building for the German parliament, ablaze.
Rise of Nazi Germany
Adolf Hitler, Hermann Goering, and other Nazis quickly move to blame Communists for the fire, and use the incident to persuade aging German president Paul von Hindenberg to issue the "Reichstag Fire Decree," abolishing most of the civil rights decreed as law by the Weimar government. The Communist Party is banned in Germany as a result of the fire. A show trial convicts one Communist dissident of setting the fire, but evidence presented in the trial absolves other Communists of guilt and points the blame at Hitler's Nazis. A furious Hitler suspends the German court system and creates his own "People's Court" controlled by Nazi functionaries. (Some historians believe that the Nazis actually had nothing to do with the fire, but simply used it for political gain; Goering will admit to setting the fire during a luncheon in 1942, but during his Nuremberg trial, he will deny involvement.) (Wikipedia, Wikipedia) - March: Letters and cables exchanged between the German and American offices of Brown Brothers Harriman encourage the quashing of any anti-Nazi sentiment in America.
US corporate ties to European fascists
On March 31, the American-Jewish Committee, partially controlled by BBH partner Max Warburg, and the B'nai B'rith, heavily influenced by the Sulzbergers (New York Times), issues a formal joint statement, counseling "that no American boycott against Germany be encouraged," and advising "that no further mass meetings be held or similar forms of agitation be employed." The American Jewish Committee and the B'nai B'rith, parent organization of the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, will continue with this hardline, no-attack-on-Hitler stance all through the 1930s, blunting the fight mounted by many Jews and other anti-fascists. (George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography) - March 5: German chancellor Adolf Hitler, after successfully engineering the dissolution of the German Reichstag,
Rise of Nazi Germany
wins 44% of the parliament for Nazi representatives in the new election. This is enough to form a coalition of representatives which together vote to trigger the "Enabling Act," a set of emergency decrees which essentially destroy German democracy. Most non-Nazi political parties will shortly be banned, and Hitler will move to become Germany's dictator. (Wikipedia, Wikipedia) - May: An agreement is reached in Berlin for the coordination of all Nazi commerce with the US.
US corporate ties to European fascists
The Harriman International Co., led by Averell Harriman's first cousin Oliver, heads a syndicate of 150 firms and individuals, to conduct all exports from Hitler Germany to the United States. The agreement is negotiated in Berlin between Hitler's economics minister, Hjalmar Schacht, and John Foster Dulles, international attorney for dozens of Nazi enterprises. Dulles would later be US Secretary of State, and a great power in the Republican Party of the 1950s. Foster's friendship and that of his brother Allen (head of the Central Intelligence Agency), will later help Prescott Bush become the Republican senator from Connecticut. It will also be of tremendous value to George H.W. Bush in his ascent to the heights of US intelligence that both of these Dulles brothers were the lawyers for the Bush family's enterprises. Kevin Phillips writes, "Quite literally, Prescott Bush spent the first two decades of his financial career in the company of people whose actions and ideas would shape the War Department, the OSS, the CIA, and other pivots of the emerging US national security complex. A British writer, Godfrey Hodgson, has pointed out that 'the War Department was directed by a tiny clique of wealthy Republicans, and one that was almost as narrowly based, in social and educational terms, as a traditional British Tory Cabinet.' The importance of these connections is almost as neglected as the family links to the arms trade." (George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography) - During the 1930s, while investment in Hitler's Germany was falling off across Europe,
US corporate ties to European fascists
many US businesses sharply increase their investments, with the largest focus on rearming Germany. Brown Brothers Harriman, Dillon Read, and the National City Bank, among others, broker huge, and hugely profitable, deals with Hitler's regime. It is unlikely that Hitler could have mounted such a massive attack on Europe in 1939 without the industrial subsidiaries of such US companies as Ford, General Motors, ITT, and General Electric cranking out arms, materiel, and supplies for the German invasion forces. (Kevin Phillips) - August 12: The repressive government of Cuba is overthrown; a new, populist government under Carlos Cespedes is formed.
US actions in Latin America
Less than a month later, a group of dissatisfied military officers, including future dictator Fulgencio Batista, overthrows the Cespedes government. Instead of a military dictatorship, the new government is quite populist, so much so that the US government, spurred by the interests of US businesses with their own Cuban interests at stake, considers it "communistic" and never recognizes it. (History of Cuba) - September 5: The executive board of the Hamburg Amerika Line meets with the North German Lloyd Company board in Hamburg.
US corporate ties to European fascists
Under official Nazi supervision, the two firms will merge. Prescott Bush's American Ship and Commerce Corp. installs Christian J. Beck, a long-time Harriman executive, as manager of freight and operations in North America for the new joint Nazi shipping lines on Nov. 4. A supervisor from the Nazi Labor Front rides with every ship of the Harriman-Bush line. Employees of the New York offices are directly organized into the Nazi Labor Front organization. Hamburg-Amerika provides free passage to individuals going abroad for Nazi propaganda purposes. The line subsidizes pro-Nazi newspapers in the US, as it had done in Germany against the constitutional German government. (George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography) - September 8:
Middle East unrest
Iraq's King Faisal dies; he is succeeded by his son Ghazi. Ghazi will retain power as a figurehead after a number of military coups. (FactMonster, MidEast Web) - Late October:
US actions in Latin America
Terrorism and repression instead of populist reforms mark Cuba's government, which becomes more and more heavy-handed in its attempts to repress dissent and resist the influence of US corporations. (History of Cuba) - After
Oil profiteering and the "oiligarchy"
a long struggle between the British and American governments, Gulf Oil and British Petroleum agree to split Kuwait's oil industry equally between themselves. (Global Policy Forum)
1934
- A book titled Merchants of Death blames munitions makers for World War I.
Military-industrial complex
The phrase catches on, prompting Roosevelt to later use the phrase "merchants of engines of destruction," explaining that "the grave menace of peace to the world is due in no small measure to the uncontrolled activities of the manufacturers and merchants of engines of destruction." A Senate investigation into the munitions and arms manufacturing industries also begins in 1934, an investigation that probes into the activities of both the Bushes and the Walkers, but in the subsequent years, the oncoming war with Germany rehabilitates the reputation of the arms merchants in the eyes of the American public, and the committee loses the support of Roosevelt. While evidence later shows that collusion between the various arms industries helped to bring about World War II, and that these arms merchants were making vast profits arming the Nazi regime, public and political resistance to the committee's investigation ensures that most of its findings never make much of a public impact. However, the investigation will reveal that the ones who profited most by the rearming of Germany before World War II were the industries who sold the Nazis the arms, as well as those who profited from the fright that a rearmed Germany would provoke among other countries, who would -- and did -- race to increase their own arms purchases. Unfortunately, the investigation does not proceed past 1936, and worse, the most damning evidence of American business's support for the Nazis will be suppressed by the State, War, and Commerce Departments, not surfacing until years later. (Kevin Phillips) - January 15:
US actions in Latin America
Fulgencio Batista and his allies force a coup in Cuba; Batista directs the new government from behind the throne. (History of Cuba)
Night of the Long Knives
- June 30: The "Night of the Long Knives:" Nazi leader and German chancellor Adolf Hitler orders the purge of dissident and politically unreliable elements in the SA paramilitary wing of the Nazi party.
Rise of Nazi Germany
Up to 400 people are murdered. Hitler supporter Heinrich Himmler forges evidence showing SA head Ernst Rohm, whose violent organization is considered the source of a potential coup, to have been paid 12 million marks to overthrow Hitler. (Himmler is already retooling the SS from a corps of personal bodyguards into the feared Nazi secret police. Rohm was a threat to Himmler's own position.) Under pressure from German and foreign industrialists to purge perceived socialist tendencies from the party, and with Himmler's evidence against Rohm (who has admitted socialist sympathies), Hitler acts. He orders all SA leaders to meet at a hotel outside Munich, personally oversees Rohm's arrest, and sends SS forces in to arrest or murder the assembled SA leaders. Rohm is eventually executed. Hitler uses the purge to rid himself of other political rivals, including former Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher and Conservative Revolutionary figure Edgar Jung, who are both murdered. The current Vice Chancellor, Franz von Papen, is put under house arrest. The Nazi-led government issues a decree stating that the murders are simply a matter of national self-defense; Hitler himself tells the nation, "If anyone reproaches me and asks why I did not resort to the regular courts of justice, then all I can say is this: In this hour I was responsible for the fate of the German people, and thereby I became the supreme judge of the German people." The SA is rolled into the SS and soon marginalized. (Wikipedia, Wikipedia) - August 2: German president Paul von Hindenberg dies.
Rise of Nazi Germany
Instead of holding new elections, Chancellor Adolf Hitler merges the two offices and takes further control of Germany. He then forces all military members to swear an oath of personal allegiance to him. Under Nazi rule, Germany begins an era of aggressive industrialization and military expansion. Women are encouraged to stay at home and raise children; the claims of near-full employment during this time are almost certainly propaganda issued from the office of Dr. Josef Goebbels. (Wikipedia) - November 20: The House's McCormick-Dickstein Committee, the precursor to the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee,
Attempted coup against Roosevelt
hears testimony from retired Marine major general Smedley Butler about an abortive 1933 coup attempt plotted by business leaders to oust Franklin Roosevelt as president. Butler says he was approached to lead the coup by Gerald MacGuire, a Wall Street bond salesman, and Massachusetts American Legion commander Bill Doyle, who were representing a consortium of businessmen. Butler testifies that he was promised an army of 500,000 men for a march on Washington, $30 million in financial backing, and media spin control. The coup attempt would replace Roosevelt with some sort of fascistic "secretary of general affairs," though Roosevelt would remain in office, wielding little real power. MacGuire told Butler, according to Butler's testimony, "We have got the newspapers. We will start a campaign that the President's health is failing. Everybody can tell that by looking at him, and the dumb American people will fall for it in a second." Butler is a Roosevelt supporter and is well-known as a strong critic of military-industrial capitalism, but the plotters apparently saw him as a powerful figurehead whose military record -- two Medals of Honor, among other decorations -- would attract public support. Butler had also made a reputation as supporting the World War I veterans who marched on Washington in 1932. According to Butler, Roosevelt's chief political foe, Republican Al Smith, and chemical industrialist Irenee DuPont, were the financial and organizational backbone behind the plot. The coup plotters would install Butler as "Secretary of General Affairs," and the masterminds would control the government through Butler. - The committee finds Butler's evidence credible, with a number of witnesses verifying Butler's story, but the reaction among the media, the business elite, and the general public is dismissive, with Time magazine, the New York Times, and others ridiculing Butler's claims. (It is noteworthy that at the time, 82% of American newspaper dailies hold a monopoly in their communities, and a very small, insular group of business magnates own most of the newspapers.) Everyone cited by Butler denies all involvement, and MacGuire is the only member of the plot to testify in front of the committee. The committee's final report deletes extensive material relating to Wall Street financiers, including J.P. Morgan, the DuPont interests, Remington Arms, and others allegedly involved in or sympathetic to the plot attempt. After the committee's final report, no action is ever taken against anyone involved in the coup. Part of the problem was the overblown expose of the attempt to suppress information about the coup in a 1935 series of newspaper articles by Jules Spivak, in the pro-Communist magazine New Masses; Spivak combined unpublished excerpts from the committee's transcripts, supplied to him by vice-chairman Samuel Dickstein, with outrageous and unsubstantiated rantings about Jewish-backed conspiracies. Spivak's axe-grinding overshadowed his revelations about the committee's suppression of information. Historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr later writes, "Most people agreed with Mayor La Guardia of New York in dismissing [the coup] as a 'cocktail putsch'" that had little real chance of success; many historians dismiss it in its entirety as a hoax, though some disagree. Vice-chairman Dickstein will later be shown by Soviet archive records to have been a Soviet spy, lending credence to the belief that the Spivak article was an attempt at disseminating "Red propaganda." (Wikipedia)
1935
- The
Oppression of Jews
Nuremberg Laws enacted by Hitler suspend most rights for German Jews, depriving them of their citizenship, banning them from government employment and most economic activity, and subjecting them to a barrage of hate propaganda orchestrated by Hitler's media director Dr. Josef Goebbels. (Wikipedia) - Marine General Smedley Butler,
Military-industrial complex
a two-time Medal of Honor winner considered "unreliable" by the US military leadership for his outspoken criticism of the burgeoning military-industrial complex and his popularity with pacifists, Communists, and others opposed to European intervention, writes the groundbreaking book War is a Racket. (Excerpts from the book can be found here.) The book documents the profiteering behind US war plans, and charges that the US's intervention in Europe is largely profit-driven. He summed up many of the views presented in his book in a 1935 article for the magazine Common Sense, saying in part, "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902–1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. - "War is just a racket. A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small inside group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses.
- "...I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.
- "There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its 'finger men' to point out enemies, its 'muscle men' to destroy enemies, its 'brain men' to plan war preparations, and a 'Big Boss' Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism."
- Butler dies in 1940, of inoperable cancer. (Wikipedia, Veterans for Peace)
- March:
Rise of Nazi Germany
Hitler repudiates the Treaty of Versailles and mandates military conscription in Germany. He sets about rebuilding the German Navy and building a new air force, the Luftwaffe. (Wikipedia)
Huey Long assassinated
- September 8: Louisiana governor, US senator, and presidential hopeful Huey Long is assassinated.
Domestic terrorism
A powerful Democrat and populist, Long, nicknamed the "Kingfish," is best known for a wide array of public works programs in Louisiana, along with the establishment of Louisiana State University. Although Long portrayed himself as a "man of the people," and enjoyed the wide support of the poor and downtrodden in Louisiana, many saw his style of governance as almost dictatorial (with good reason), and his willful flaunting of the law is legendary. (Long will narrowly survive impeachment proceedings brought in 1929 on charges of bribery and gross misconduct.) Long was a vocal supporter of FDR in 1932, but when Roosevelt denied him a cabinet post, Long turned against him. Privately, Roosevelt considered Long a demagogue and said of him that "he was one of the...most dangerous men in America." In August 1935, Long announced his bid to challenge Roosevelt for the Democratic nomination for president. A month later, on September 8, Long is shot by the son of a political opponent, and, possibly due to medical incompetence, dies two days later. Long's family, including flamboyant governor Earl Long and his son, US senator Russell Long, will enjoy a long reign of political dominance in Louisiana politics. Many speculate that the character of Senator Buzz Windrip, the genial fascist president of Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here, is partially based on Huey Long. The classic novel of American politics, Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, is closely based on Long's life and political legacy. (Wikipedia)
