The Suffragette Who Voted Against Two World Wars

She was a representative - the first female representative in American history - from a state that wasn't even a state when she was born just outside of Missoula, in the Montana Territory, in 1880. Jeanette Rankin was born to John - a Canadian rancher/builder - and Olive, who had moved herself 3/4 of the way across the country to teach school in Montana before marrying John and settling in as a housewife to take care of their soon-to-be seven children, of which Jeanette was the oldest. Montana's statehood, and entry into the Union, was nine years away when Jeanette was born.

In an effort to make sure that the state university was located in Missoula, the city leaders made a deal with Helena - 100 miles to its east - that Missoula would back Helena's push to be the state capital (opposing Anaconda, 100 miles to Missoula's southeast) in exchange for Helena's backing on the university issue. It worked. Montana State University - now the University of Montana - opened its doors in 1895. Jeanette graduated with a degree in biology seven years later. 

From there Jeanette Rankin criss-crossed the country. When John Rankin passed away in 1904, Jeanette visited an uncle in California and began volunteering at the Telegraph Hill Settlement House, the first of its kind in San Francisco, but modeled after Jane Addams' groundbreaking Hull House in Chicago, which made an effort to assist immigrants living in the United States. San Francisco had a large number of immigrants in need of help (thanks, in part, to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882), and so the settlement house formula of providing education services to children as well as health services for their families was followed by Telegraph Hill. Eventually they expanded to include a kitchen, garden, gymnasium, library, and an operating room. Telegraph Hill would launch the first school nurse program on the west coast. 

Armed with an interest in social work, Jeanette graduated from - the now-Columbia University School of Social Work in 1909. Jeanette again traversed the country, this time to Spokane, Washington to help needy children, and found herself as a student volunteer on a women's suffrage campaign. Washington State would end up becoming the fifth state to allow women to vote, and Rankin ended up working as a field secretary for the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA), whose previous presidents included Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Carrie Chapman Catt. 

NAWSA's strategy was hard but simple: getting enough states to give women the right to vote would force the federal government to act. In late 1910, Rankin found that her home state of Montana was about to introduce a women's suffrage resolution. The resolution was a hoax in some capacity, however, but Rankin was able to convince a state legislator to introduce the resolution, anyway. In February 1911 Rankin testified in support of women's suffrage, becoming the first woman to address the Montana legislature in the process. Her testimony likely swung the majority of the Montana House of Representatives to support women's suffrage, which the state adopted in 1914. 

Rankin spent much of the next two years organizing support through NAWSA where it was most needed, visiting 15 states from Delaware to Florida. She organized immigrant workers in Manhattan's Garment District after the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and ultimately helped win basic workplace safety regulations. With plenty of political experience came an opportunity: the women's suffrage brought women the right to hold office.

In 1916, when over 300 women were running for office in Kansas alone, Rankin declared her candidacy for one of Montana's two congressional seats. You may be asking yourself, "Self, how could she do this?" And I simply respond, "Women had the right to vote in Montana, which means women had the right to hold office." 

Rankin's campaign was managed by her brother Wellington, a Harvard grad and Rhodes Scholar who settled into public life as a lawyer who specialized in industrial accident cases, a niche that brought him into conflict with many of the state's largest corporations, like the Anaconda Copper Company, the largest employer in the state. Oh, the Anaconda Copper Company just so happened to own most of the state's newspapers, and completely ignored Rankin's campaign. It didn't work.

Rankin, who campaigned on many popular Progressive Party issues: nationwide suffrage, child welfare laws, and Prohibition, was the first woman to hold national office, the first female member of Congress. She would say in a statement after her election was official:

"I am deeply conscious of the responsibility, and it is wonderful to have the opportunity to be the first woman to sit in Congress. I will not only represent the women of Montana, but also the women of the country, and I have plenty of work cut out for me."

The 19th Amendment was still over two years away from being introduced.

Rankin's first day in office was April 2, 1917 and the House of Representatives paused for "sustained applause" when Rankin was sworn in. The day began, however, with a breakfast for Rankin hosted by both NAWSA and it's more militant faction, the National Women's Party led by Alice Paul - a rare show of unity between the two groups.

President Woodrow Wilson convened Congress eight months early to consider the United States' response to Germany's resumption of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare. However, just before the House adjourned for the afternoon, Rankin introduced the Susan B. Anthony amendment, guaranteeing women's suffrage in the Constitution. Her historic first day brought another first: the first woman to call for a constitutional amendment from the floor of Congress.

But of course this wasn't why Wilson brought Congress back. Later in the evening President Wilson asked Congress for a declaration of war against Germany to "make the world safe for democracy." Rankin was in a bind: she needed support for the suffrage movement, but voting against war - even as a lifelong pacifist - might cause support for suffrage to suffer. 

Ultimately, Rankin and 49 other congressmen - including House Majority Leader Claude Kitchin (D-NC) and Extremely Pro-Military congressman Albert Britten (R-IL) voted against war, as well. 49 of the 56 No War votes in the House and Senate, however, were from Midwestern or Western states, so Rankin's vote was in line with the geography. But 373 representatives voted in favor (after the Senate passed the war resolution 82-6 two days earlier), and so with Wilson's signature, the United States went to war against the German Empire. NAWSA distanced themselves from Rankin, issuing a statement that read, "Miss Rankin was not voting [on war] for the suffragists of the nation - she represents Montana." The Helena Independent (please do remember how many of Montana's newspapers were mouthpieces for the Anaconda Company) wrote that Rankin was "a dagger in the hands of the German propagandists, a dupe of the Kaiser, a member of the Hun army in the United States, and a crying schoolgirl."

In 1918 Rankin opened debate on the House floor regarding what would eventually become the 19th Amendment - giving women the right to vote - by addressing her colleagues, "How shall we answer their challenge, gentlemen? How shall we explain to them the meaning of democracy if the same Congress that voted for war to make the world safe for democracy refuses to give them this small measure of democracy to the women of our country?" That bill failed, but Rankin noted that she was "the only woman who ever voted to give women the right to vote."

And here's what's important about the 19th Amendment. The 19th Amendment didn't really, if we're picking nits, give women the right to vote. Women already had the right to vote in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Michigan, obviously Montana, Nebraska, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming, and Washington. That's 20 of the 48 states. What the 19th Amendment did do was tell the other 28 states they could not deny women the right to vote.

Rankin was busy supporting miners' rights back home in Montana (where a large amount of Montana's natural resources benefitted the War effort) and earning the already-established hatred of the Anaconda Copper Company. She also personally investigated poor treatment of female workers at the U.S. Treasury Department, which resulted in the immediate institution of an eight-hour work day.

Redistricting shenanigans in Montana led Rankin to not run for re-election in the House, and instead focus on a bid in the Senate. However, the extremely powerful Nonpartisan League, who opposed Big Banks and corporations, encouraged its members to vote in the Democratic primary, not the Republican one - a massive blow to Rankin's chances, which saw her lose the Republican primary by fewer than 2,000 votes.

After traveling the world and the United States for much of the 1920s, Rankin moved to northeast Georgia where she designed a house with no electricity, running water, or telephone. Again, a lifelong pacifist, Rankin responded to the unfolding events in Europe by becoming a lobbyist for the National Council for the Prevention of War. She publicized Senator Nye's (R-ND) investigation into arms manufacturers and their role in bringing America into World War 1. Rankin resigned after the Great Depression took its toll on the NCPW's finances, as well as her increasing opposition to FDR's stance on the likelihood of joining World War 2. 

The looming crisis in Europe sent Rankin back home to Montana, where she ran against Jacob Thorkelson, a first-term Norwegian-born doctor who was a noted fascist and anti-Semite that would read selections from Sir Oswald Mosley into the Congressional Record. Mosley, a World War 1 veteran, was elected to Parliament at 22 years old and would eventually come to really appreciate the efforts of Benito Mussolini in Italy, and establish the British Union of Fascists. Thorkelson was A Problem that Rankin easily handled in the Republican primary.

Facing long-time Montana politician Jerry Joseph O'Connell in 1940, Rankin won endorsements from progressives such as Robert LaFollette and Fiorello LaGuardia. Rankin won the election with 54% of the vote - almost 25 years after her first election to Congress. What to do about Europe was the main topic House floor. When the Lend-Lease Bill (allowing the United States to let Britain and France borrow or rent war materials to fight Germany) was up for debate in February 1941 - ten months prior to Pearl Harbor - Rankin spoke from the floor and asked, "If Britain needs our material today, will she later need our men?" Her amendment to require congressional approval before sending American troops abroad failed. 

On December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - Rankin was on her way to Detroit when she learned of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and arrived in Washington on the morning of December 8 preparing to oppose American action in World War 2. When Roosevelt asked a Joint Session of Congress for a declaration of war on Japan, debate opened in the House of Representatives. 

Rankin "repeatedly sought recognition," but with her reputation going before her, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn - still the longest-serving Speaker of the House - refused to let her speak. Other representatives asked her to either vote for war or to not vote at all, in order to maintain solidarity. "A chorus of hisses and boos" rained down on Rankin as she stated from the floor, "As a woman I can't go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else." She voted no. The resolution to declare war on Japan passed 388-1. 

She faced immediate condemnation. Police officers had to escort Rankin to her office. Rankin's former campaign manager brother Wellington told her over the phone, "Montana is 110 percent against you."  Two days later, when Congress voted to declare war on Germany and Italy, Rankin simply voted "Present." The anger and indignation towards Rankin quickly turned to universal indifference. She focused on free speech issues and wartime fraud, and did not run for re-election in 1942.

The rest of her life was spent between Montana and Georgia, with trips to India - inspired by Gandhi. She led yet another protest against war - Rankin was nothing if not consistent - in Washington DC in 1968 against the Vietnam War, delivering a peace petition to the Speaker of the House. Two years later, Rankin was given a reception and a dinner in honor of her 90th birthday, and in 1972 Rankin was named the "World's Most Outstanding Feminist" by the National Organization for Women. Jeanette Rankin passed away in 1973, pondering yet another run for the House of Representatives. The year prior to her passing, a reporter asked if she would live her life all over again, to which she replied, yes "but this time I'd be nastier."

The Orteig Prize

The former bar porter had come a long way since emigrating to the United States as a 12-year old from southwest France with 13 francs in his pocket. In 1882, Raymond Orteig joined an uncle living in Manhattan and found a job working at a bar in Wengler's Restaurant on William Street. 

Orteig worked his way up through the hospitality ranks, becoming a waiter before joining Jean-Baptiste Martin as the maître d' at the Martin Hotel at 9th Street and University Place, in Greenwich Village. Martin, who had run a hotel in Panama, initially named his hotel the "Hotel de Panama" but, as this was around the same time as the failed French attempt to build the Panama Canal, the Hotel de Panama reminded potential clients of the Canal, who "associated it with fever and Spaniards, and neither were popular." Martin changed the name of the hotel in 1886 and billed it as New York's "only first-class French hotel," offering a café that appealed to the Bohemians of Greenwich Village, entertaining writers and artists such as Jean and Edouard de Reszke 

When Baptiste decided to move to the greener pastures of Uptown Manhattan and open a restaurant in 1902, the 32-year old Orteig was in a financial place to assume the lease of the hotel, which he renamed the Hotel Lafayette, after the Marquis de Lafayette. People still referred to it as "Old Martin's." Visitors to the Lafayette enjoyed the tile floor and marble-topped tables, where they could be entertained by an orchestra, or the foreign newspapers, or even the board games provided by Orteig. He was a subscriber of the Brasserie Universelle - a Parisian weekly newspaper whose recipes Orteig would introduce to his diners on a regular basis. 

World War I happened. American and French airmen alike gathered in the Lafayette to pass the time during the War, and in its aftermath as Europe figured out how to deal (harshly) with Germany, and it was here that Orteig became friendly with a number of them, gaining an interest in aviation. 

American and French diplomacy was on the rocks. As President Woodrow Wilson tried to whip up support for his League of Nations - sort of a peer-mediation group for countries to work out their differences and a forerunner to the United Nations - France was extremely interested in wearing Germany out for killing over 1.3 million of their soldiers and tearing up their countryside. 

Orteig had an idea to try to mend these diplomatic fences: a $25,000 prize to the first (Allied) aviator to fly non-stop from the New York to Paris, or vice versa. Orteig formally introduced this offer in a letter to Alan Ramsay Hawley, one of the early American aviators, Hawley was the first airplane passenger to fly from New York City to Washington, DC. A retired stockbroker, Hawley and his friend Augustus Post flew in a hot air balloon from St. Louis to...180 miles north of Quebec City, landing in the wilderness and hiking for three days until some fur trappers agreed to help them get back to civilization. Their 1,173-mile journey in a free balloon set an American record that stood for 95 years. 

Post is an interesting figure in his own right. A graduate of Harvard Law School, Post bought the first automobile in New York City and subsequently received the first tickets in the city's history, one for driving through Central Park at 5mph and one for driving on the sidewalk while trying to park. Post founded what would become AAA, and was an original member of what would become the Boy Scouts of America. He built New York City's first parking garage (underneath the St. Nicholas Skating Rink at 66th Street and Columbus Circle), and performed on Broadway. It was Post who gave Orteig the idea to put up his prize for the first Transatlantic flight. 

The $25,000 prize (equivalent to about $373,000 today), offered on May 22, 1919, came just a few weeks before British airmen John Alcock and Arthur Brown successfully flew a plane almost 1900 miles from Newfoundland to Ireland, collecting an earlier-awarded prize from the Daily Mail. It wasn't exactly an easy flight. Alcock and Brown almost clipped the trees upon take-off, an electric generator failed (cutting off the intercom through which the two could communicate, their radio communications, and their heating system), an exhaust pipe broke resulting in a terrifying sound so loud that they couldn't even yell at each other. Alcock and Brown flew through dense fog and a snowstorm, their instruments and carburetor iced up, the trim control broke which caused the plane to pitch forward as they used their fuel. Twice Alcock lost control of the plane, one of which resulted in a spiral dive from which Alcock recovered slightly before hitting the ocean nose-first. They landed in a bog near Clifden, Ireland, causing the plane to nose-over, but both men emerged unscathed. Arthur Brown drily noted that with better weather they could have flown to London. King George V knighted both men a few days later.

It would take a few years, however, for another serious attempt to be made at the Orteig Prize. Rene Fonck, by this point in his Age 32 season, was a legendary French fighter pilot who held the title of "the Allied Ace of Aces." The World War 1 veteran won the Legion d'honneur in 1917 before an incredible 1918 campaign when, over a bet of a bottle of champagne, Fonck shot down six German planes in a three-hour span on the afternoon of May 9 and went on to be a member of the French parliament from 1919-1924. To prepare to win the Orteig Prize, Fonck commissioned legendary helicopter and aircraft designer Igor Sikorsky to re-design his Sikorsky S-35 for the flight. On September 26, 1926 Fonck and three assistants took off for New York when the landing gear collapsed on take-off after hitting a sunken road that stretched across the runway. Fonck and his copilot survived, but the two other assistants died in the crash.

Medal of Honor recipient and polar explorer Richard Byrd (descendant of Virginians John Rolfe and Pocahontas) wanted to win the prize. Byrd planned the flight path of the U.S. Navy's historic May 1919 transatlantic flight and volunteered to attempt to win the Orteig Prize in 1921. Theodore Roosevelt, Jr. - Secretary of the Navy - nixed the idea and instead assigned Byrd to the ZR-2 dirigible (blimp) which was going from Hull to Norfolk, UK. Byrd missed his train to the airship on the morning of its departure, which was lucky for him since the blimp broke apart in midair, killing 44 of the 49 crew onboard. In 1925 Byrd may or may not have completed the first aerial trip over the North Pole. We do know, however, that an Army Air Service Reserve Corps Lieutenant named Charles Lindbergh applied to be a pilot on Byrd's North Pole expedition, but his application was received too late. 

Two years later, in 1927, Byrd announced he had the backing of department store magnate and future PGA founding member Rodman Wanamaker's American Trans-Oceanic Company (which unsuccessfully attempted to win the Daily Mail's prize in 1919) and was attempting to win the Orteig Prize. On a practice takeoff with legendary Dutch airplane designer Anthony "The Flying Dutchman" Fokker - who had been commissioned by Wanamaker to design the plane, and whose planes Germany used during World War 1, and whose planes bore his name throughout the 1920s and 1930s - his plane, the America, crashed. Byrd was slightly injured, the plane more so, which was taken in for repairs.

Another serious attempt was taking place backed by the American Legion. Stanton Hall Wooster and Noel Guy Davis, two United States Navy airmen (the US Air Force wouldn't be officially established until 1947) took off on April 26, 1927 with a heavy load of fuel when the American Legion (named after their benefactors) crashed on its nose in Virginia, killing both men. 

On the other side of the Atlantic, Charles Eugene Jules Marie Nungesser - the third-highest ranking French ace pilot in World War 1 - and his navigator, a one-eyed pilot named Francois Coli, known for his long-distance flights pioneered by his 1919 double crossing of the Mediterranean, planned their attempt to win the Orteig Prize. Coli had been planning a transatlantic flight since 1923 but when an accident destroyed his plane and badly burned his flying partner Paul Tarascon. Tarascon lost his foot in a practice flight in 1911 but still went on to serve in both World War 1 and with the French Resistance in World War 2. Coli then joined Nungesser's attempt, both of whom disappeared over the Atlantic in l'Oiseau Blanc ("The White Bird" or "The White Dove") on May 8, 1927. The plane was never recovered. Maybe it crashed in the Atlantic, maybe it crashed in Maine. No one knows. Byrd told his team to suspend operations until their fate was known. 

Meanwhile a 25-year old Minnesota U.S. Air Mail pilot named Charles Lindbergh was preparing his a, attempt, a solo flight backed by St. Louis bankers, in a single-engine plane appropriately called The Spirit of St. Louis. Lindbergh arrived at Long Island's Roosevelt Field (named after Teddy Roosevelt's youngest son, Quentin, was killed in air combat on July 14, 1918) in the middle of May. A few days later, at 7:52am on May 20, 1927, he took off. The following day Lindbergh arrived at Le Bourget Airport, just northwest of Paris, completing a solo flight that took 33 hours. The solo flight removed any clashing personality/ideology conflict, the single engine allowed for less weight and more fuel, Lindbergh saying, "I'd rather have extra gasoline than an extra man." He didn't carry a radio or a parachute to save weight. It worked. 

A number of quality checks were required to verify Lindbergh's attempt: a sealed cylinder that measured atmospheric pressure to prove that the flight was one single leg, a measure of the remaining fuel (85 gallons) sealed in the tanks. 13 French officials, US Ambassador to France Myron Herrick (the only American ambassador to have a Parisian street named after him), Belgian Air Attaché Willy Coppens, and Lindbergh himself signed an official document to verify the effort. Lindbergh's 3,605-mile flight was acknowledged and approved as the world record for a non-stop flight. After 63 consecutive hours of being awake, Lindbergh went to bed.

Raymond Orteig was ecstatic. Orteig rushed to Paris from his vacation in Pau, France - about 500 miles in the south of France - as soon as his son telegrammed him of Lindbergh's departure - to congratulate Lindbergh at the American Embassy, eight years to the day after his prize offer to Alan Hawley. Orteig eventually awarded the purse to Lucky Lindy in New York. 

The popularity of aviation sparked a period of innovation around the world. For Orteig, who died in 1939, he held Lindbergh's achievement close to his heart, hanging the American flag Lindbergh carried on his flight on the wall of the Café Lafayette. Two years after Orteig passed, one of Orteig's sons moved it out of the Cafe to a private room, probably because Lindbergh was a Nazi sympathizer. "Too many pros and cons," Orteig's son told the New York Times. "Particularly for a restaurant. The flag hung there since 1927 when Lindbergh was an aviator and everyone was proud of him. But now he's talking politics. And lately when people noticed the flag a discussion began." 

That discussion probably centered around Lindbergh's involvement with the pro-Hitler "America First" movement. Nazis, man.

The Black Tom Munitions Explosion

Black Tom Island - a man-made island named after a "dark-skinned fisherman" who lived there - stood next to Liberty Island in New York City Harbor. It was the site of a rock of the same name which had proved costly to the shipping industry, so engineers used literal New York City trash to build up an island around the rock. By 1880, it was a 25-acre plot of land with a causeway and railroad to turn Black Tom Island into an important piece of New York City's economy. In an 11-year period from 1905 to 1916, the Lehigh Valley Railroad - which ran from Buffalo, through eastern Pennsylvania, then on into New York - used more trash to expand Black Tom Island before it was annexed by Jersey City. There was a mile-long pier with a depot and storage warehouses that also served as a munitions (military weapons and whatnot) depot. 

Tensions between the United States and Germany were rising...over Mexico. When Francisco Madero took power of Mexico in 1911, the United States approved. When Madero was assassinated in 1913, Victoriano Huerta took power. The US opposed Huerta, but Germany supported him basically to get a naval base out of the deal. Things escalated when the United States shelled Veracruz to stop a delivery of German weapons to Huerta, and had just simmered down between Germany and the United States when Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand was assassinated in Sarajevo, sparking World War 1. 

Weird things started happening in the United States. A DuPont powder factory exploded in Pompton Lakes, New Jersey in August 1914 - just weeks after Franz Ferdinand's assassination. Two months later a bomb went off at the Detwiller and Street fireworks factory in Jersey City, killing four.  The Roebling Works, an important cable factory in Trenton, burned down in January 1915. Boats were found sabotaged. But who was behind it?

Problematic as it seems now, American munitions companies could sell their stuff to whoever they wanted. However, as World War I erupted across Europe, the United Kingdom ran a blockade across the Atlantic in an attempt to cripple Germany. Despite the United States' official position of neutrality (Germany was the second-largest source of immigrants to the United States) in 1914, the US would only sell munitions to the Allied Powers of the United Kingdom, France, and Russia (it wasn't the Soviet Union until a few years later), mainly because the Allies were willing to pay, and the United States was in debt prior to World War 1 and out of debt by the end of it.

The Germans complained because how you gonna be neutral and then sell tons of weapons and ammunitions to only one side of a war? The United States shrugged their shoulders because cash ruled everything around them. The collective shoulder shrug of the United States was a direct cause of Germany issuing in February 1915 "unrestricted submarine warfare" against any ship - neutrals included - who were sailing to Great Britain. Germany placed a warning in American newspapers telling them that, if they sailed for Great Britain, they were at risk. Around the same time, Germany confirmed its previous authorization for military attaché in Washington - Franz Von Papen - to begin sabotage operations against "every kind of factory supplying munitions of war." Von Papen had served in the German Embassy in Mexico during the revolution, and spent most of his time forging documents for Germans in America to get through the blockade back to Germany. He also spent some time working with activists from India in California to acquire American weapons for a possible revolution. But Von Papen was a trained diplomat, not a spy, and he couldn't get much of anything done. 

The Canadian-Pacific Railroad crosses the St. Croix River at Vanceboro, Maine and St. Croix, New Brunswick. On February 2, 1915 Werner Horn, an officer in the German Reserves was ordered from his job managing a coffee plantation in Guatemala to go to Maine and help sabotage the bridge, which was being used to transport food and supplies to St. John, New Brunswick, bound for the Allied front, and other bridges on the Maine-New Brunswick border. The saboteurs met up in Portland, Maine and decided that due to the cold (30-below temperatures) and wind, the plan should be scrapped. Horn didn't make it to that conspirator meeting and, instead of bailing like everyone else, he checked into a Vanceboro hotel on February 1 before taking a briefcase filled with dynamite to the bridge. He waited for hours in the cold before placing the suitcase on the Canadian side of the bridge and lighting the fuse with his cigar. The bomb did enough damage to blow out windows in both Vanceboro and St. Croix and when the German returned to his hotel, suffering from frostbite, the police had already been called. Horn surrendered in his uniform so as not to be accused of being a spy - a capital offense. The bridge was out of commission for about a day, Horn spent 30 days in jail. A reporter asked Horn how much he was paid, to which he responded in a heavy accent, "I did not blow up the bridge for money. I am a soldier, not a mercenary. I acted for the good of the Fatherland!" Horn snitched on Von Papen real quick.

In May 1915, the Lusitania was torpedoed and sank in 15 minutes off the coast of Ireland (I highly recommend Erik Larsen's "Dead Wake" on this subject). That German attack on the Lusitania, a passenger ship secretly modified to deliver war materials, killed 1,195 people including 128 Americans and re-heightened tensions between Germany and the United States. The United States' government, thanks to diplomatic immunity, could not arrest Von Papen and instead requested that Von Papen be recalled, to which Germany acquiesced. (Von Papen would later go on to naively assume he could hold power and keep the newly-formed Nazi Party in check, thus facilitating the rise of Adolf Hitler).

Germany replaced Von Papen in April 1915 with Capt. Franz Von Rintelen, an English-speaking aristocratic naval captain with a Swiss passport and a ton of dirty tricks up his sleeve, ordered to carry out a coordinated sabotage operation in the United States. He knew about as much about clandestine operations as Von Papen did, but had some creativity about him and decided to go all-in on it because, as a member of the New York Yacht Club, he knew Manhattan society. Dude had five aliases. Von Rintelen got his funding directly from Berlin and operated independently. Before departing for the United States, Von Rintelen told Admiral Alfred Von Tirpitz, "I'll buy what I can and blow up what I can't."

Germany was still trading with the United States, and Von Rintelen used the 80-ish German ships hanging out in New York harbor as a new network of problems for the United States. One of the ships' workrooms became a bomb factory. Von Rintelen convinced a German chemist in New Jersey to build cigar-shaped firebombs and allegedly used Irish dockworkers to place them on ships bound for Europe. The "pencil bombs," as they were known, could be timed to detonate days after their placement on the ships.

At this time the United States didn't have much of a national intelligence service. Though the Secret Service was founded in 1865, they were basically told to just watch the president and...counterfeiters. That changed a bit in 1915. The Secret Service didn't find Von Rintelen, but they did manage to steal a briefcase from a New York City streetcar in July belonging to German Interior Minister Heinrich Albert. In the briefcase, the Secret Service found documents related to the sabotage of American munitions plants, as well as documentation related to what is now known as the Great Phenol Plot.

Phenol is a major precursor compound in organic chemistry that could be used to make the salicylic acid used to make aspirin, as well as picric acid - a highly-explosive compound. Thomas Edison also used phenol to make his "Diamond Disc" phonograph records. By the time World War 1 was underway, Great Britain was using phenol almost exclusively for the war effort, severely reducing the amount available for export. Supply-and-demand rules went into effect and the price of phenol skyrocketed. German manufacturer Bayer had to drastically cut production of aspirin right at the time that the patent for aspirin was expiring. Bayer was undergoing a rebranding in advance of the expectation of expiration, and they were not happy about the supply chain. Counterfeiters, Canadian manufacturers, and smugglers tried to make up the demand for phenol, but it wasn't enough. Thomas Edison built a factory in Pennsylvania to produce it. Hugo Schweitzer, a Bayer employee-turned-agent for the German Interior Ministry, set up a front where he bought as much phenol as he possibly could from Edison to send on to Germany. When Edison found out what was happening, he tried to cover it up, but that only made it worse when the New York World - an anti-German newspaper - ran an explosive (haha) story on the plot. Edison tried to make amends and repair the damage to his reputation when it came out that he had basically supplied the German government with enough phenol to produce 4.5 million pounds of explosives. 

Von Rintelen was recalled to Berlin. A decoded message tipped off the British on his way through the English Channel, and he got detained. The Swiss passport threw them off for a bit, but he was quick to chirp that he was an enemy officer. By late 1915 Von Papen got expelled from the United States. When his ship was detained he claimed diplomatic immunity, which the British interpreted as not extending to his luggage, where they found a whole handful of incriminating documents. The British shared these documents with the United States, hoping to nudge them towards joining the war against Germany. Von Rintelen was arrested and spent three years in a jail in Atlanta.

Next problem: Once the US expelled those "diplomats," they didn't know where to continue the investigation. The NYPD had to take the case and had a hard time working with New Jersey authorities and any other agency tasked with figuring out just what, exactly, was happening. Eventually, they realized that, in order to catch German saboteurs, you needed German-speaking friendlies. After spending countless nights in dockside bars, the ship bombings largely stopped.

There were about 2,000,000 pounds of ammunition - three-quarters of the total American munitions output - stored at Black Tom Island, including 100,000 pounds of TNT and 417 fuses on a barge docked there, all waiting to get shipped to the Allied front. The barge with all the TNT was there so as not to have to pay a $25 fee in New York City. 

Just after midnight on July 30, 1916 guards noticed small fires on Pier 7. Some took off, fearing an explosion, others called the Jersey City Fire Department. At 2:08am, it exploded. Just over 30 minutes later there was a second, smaller explosion. The first explosion was absolutely massive, lifting Jersey City Fire Chief Roger Boyle out of his boots and into the air, the result of a detonation wave that traveled 24,000 feet per second. A police driver told the New York Times:

The things were red-hot when they fell, and we had a lively time keeping out of their way. All at once, everything turned black. The last thing I knew, I was lifted up and thrown away. When I came to, it was raining steel and bricks and shells and shrapnel.

Fragments from the explosion lodged in the Statue of Liberty, shrapnel popping the rivets on the statue's extended right arm, and the torch has been closed to the public ever since. Over a mile away, the clock tower of the Jersey Journal building was hit by debris, stopping its clock at 2:12am. The blast was felt as far  as Philadelphia - 90 miles away. Windows were broken as far as 25 miles away. The stained-glass windows at St. Patrick's Cathedral in Jersey City were shattered. The explosion cracked the wall of the Jersey City City Hall. It shook the Brooklyn Bridge. The blast shook the PATH system under the river connecting Jersey City and lower Manhattan. Cemeteries in Jersey City had tombstones knocked over, and vaults "jolted askew."

People in Maryland woke up thinking it was an earthquake, which is understandable considering that the explosion registered between a 5.0 and a 5.5 on the Richter scale. For comparison, when the North Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed on 9/11, it registered as a 2.3. Immigrants awaiting processing at Ellis Island had to be evacuated. Debris rained down for two hours. Fort Wood, which was on Liberty Island, had a 4" thick door at its main entrance wrenched off its hinges. The next morning, when the smoke literally cleared, four people were killed (including a 10-week old baby who had been thrown from his crib). Damage was estimated at $20 million, nearly half a billion dollars today. adjusting for inflation.

Attention turned to the cause of the explosion itself. Was it just an unfortunate accident, or was there something more sinister to suspect? At the scene, there was only confusion. Three Lehigh Valley Railroad Company officials were arrested for manslaughter. Two guards who had lit oil-burning smudge pots to keep mosquitos away were questioned for hours by officials trying to determine if the smudge pots were the cause of the explosions. Figuring that the pots were too far away to have been the cause, the incident was initially designated as an accident. 

But all of these "accidents" started to fit a pattern. Count Johann Von Bernstorff was a longtime German diplomat, and was appointed as German Ambassador to the United States in 1908. Raised in London, Von Bernstorff spoke fluent English and was married to Jeanne Luckemeyer, an American raised in French private schools. Days after Franz Ferdinand was killed, Von Bernstorff was recalled to Berlin and inducted into the German intelligence service. He returned with $150 million from the German government to spend on his disruption/terror campaign. 

Why didn't Wilson raise hell? 1916 was an election year, and his campaign slogan for crying out loud was "He Kept Us Out Of War." You can't go to war if your whole campaign is "He Kept Us Out Of War." In March 1916 a German U-Boat torpedoed the French passenger steamer Sussex in the English Channel, apparently thinking that it was a British ship laying underwater mines, killing 50. On April 19, 1916 Wilson addressed Congress, saying that if Germany didn't immediately stop unrestricted submarine warfare, the United States would sever diplomatic relations. U.S. Ambassador to Germany James W. Gerard spoke to Kaiser Wilhelm on May 1 to complain about Germany's penchant for treating any ship around Great Britain as fair game. Kaiser Wilhelm complained about the United States supplying Germany's enemies with munitions. In the end Kaiser Wilhelm didn't want to risk adding the United States to Germany's list of official enemies and three days later, and six months before the election, the United States and Germany agreed to the Sussex Pledge, in which Germany agreed to stop the unrestricted submarine warfare. War was averted, for now, but Gerard was skeptical that the Germans would hold up their end of the Sussex Pledge, writing a letter to the State Department that Germany would resume unrestricted submarine warfare by Fall 1916 at the earliest, and January/February 1917 at the latest.

In April 1916 the United States indicted Von Papen and Von Rintelen for their involvement in a plot to blow up Canada's Welland Canal, a major shipping lane near Niagara Falls. Assistant US District Attorney Roger B. Wood noted that it was a break in precedent to indict a foreign diplomat but said:

I suppose he was immune so long as he was military attaché, but he is not the military attaché now. We are breaking a precedent, no doubt, for I do not know of any similar instance where a man in Von Papen's position has been indicted in this country. However, I do not see where there is any reason why he should be protected after he ceases to hold the position that made him immune from arrest.

The charges against Von Papen were dropped when he became Chancellor of Germany in 1932. He was forced to resign a year later in favor of Adolf Hitler. 

Out of about 18 million votes cast in the 1916 election, which was basically a referendum on the neutrality of the United States, Wilson won by about 600,000 votes - a 50.01-46.78 popular vote margin. The Electoral College count was 277-254, the 5th-narrowest Electoral College margin in US history. 

Michael Kristoff, a 23-year old Slovak immigrant with relatives in nearby Bayonne, New Jersey was suspected in the Black Tom Island explosion, with documentation that he set the initial fires for $500 along with two Germans - Lothat Witzke and Kurt Jahnke. Kristoff died in a Staten Island hospital in 1928. 

Theodore Wozniak went to work on January 11, 1917 at the Canadian Car & Foundry plant at the edge of the Meadowlands in Kingsland, New Jersey cleaning empty artillery shells using gasoline-soaked rags. This was his job. When a fire broke out among a pile of rags next to Wozniak, he tried to put it out using a clear liquid. Wozniak's boss found this suspicious - company policy was to put out fires with buckets of sand. The fire spread, thanks to the liquid and high winds. Soon the entire plant was engulfed in flames, the home of stockpiles of dynamite, TNT, and about half a million artillery shells. When the factory exploded, the ground shook from Yonkers to Staten Island. You could see the black cloud in midtown Manhattan. Wozniak also had a second job, getting paid $40/week from Frederick Hinsch, a German spymaster with a network of spies and saboteurs along the East Coast. Amazingly, no one out of the 1,400 people working at the plant that day was killed. Many literally slid up the frozen Hackensack River to safety in Secaucus.  

President Wilson's chief aide sent him a memo, warning him of an impending German offensive, "Mr. President, you have to worry that bridges are going to be blown up, skyscrapers are going to be attacked, and the New York City subways are going to be filled with 'germs.'"

German Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann sent a telegram to Heinrich Von Eckhardt, Germany's Minister to Mexico. The telegram told Von Eckhardt to offer the territory the United States gained in the Mexican-American War (which was shady as all get out) in exchange for helping Germany in World War 1. The Zimmermann Telegram was intercepted by the British and released on March 1, 1917. Four days later Woodrow Wilson was inaugurated for his 2nd term as president. It would have been three days later, but March 4 - Inauguration Day for presidents prior to the ratification of the 25th Amendment, was on a Sunday, so Wilson was privately sworn in by Chief Justice Edward White and his public inauguration was the day after. When Gerard's prediction proved correct - Germany announced the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare on January 31, 1917 - combined with the emergence of the Zimmermann Telegram, Wilson could no longer justify keeping America out of war. 

Days after the United States declared war on Germany, yet another unexplained fire destroyed the Hercules Powder Company in Eddystone, Pennsylvania, killing over one hundred workers - most of them women and children. Theodore Wozniak, seemingly responsible for the fire in Kingsland, was working as a grocery store clerk in Manhattan's Lower East Side when he was arrested in 1942. The German government never claimed responsibility for any of the reportedly 43 attacks on American factories between 1915-1917. Why did the attacks essentially end in 1917? The U.S. had declared war in April by June Congress passed the Espionage Act, a sweeping "re-adjustment" of civil liberties in wartime, but did give legal basis to deport German agents and agitators. 

In 1921 Werner Horn - the lone ranger of the Vanceboro bridge plot - who had been sentenced to ten years in a New Brunswick prison, was deported to Germany. Classified as "insane," he actually was in the advanced stages of syphilis. That same year the Lehigh Valley Railroad - owners of Black Tom Island - brought charges of sabotage against the German government under the 1921 Treaty of Berlin. In 1939 the German-American Mixed Claims Commission ruled that Germany was, in fact, responsible for the sabotage at Black Tom Island and was ordered to pay $50 million in restitution. Of course, Hitler was just about to invade Poland, so that was the least of his concerns.

Johann Von Bernstorff died in exile in Geneva in 1939. By 1940, Franz Von Rintelen had rescinded his allegiance to the Nazi regime in order to help Great Britain, but admitted in an interview with the New York Times to having a network of 3,000 agents working for him in the United States during World War 1. In 1953 Germany agreed to pay $50 million to the United States and made its last payment in 1979.

Despite a long list of various accidents and explosions, the Black Tom Island explosion is considered to be the first terrorist attack on U.S. soil, one of the largest non-nuclear explosions to have ever occurred.

A Few Words about the Battle of Belleau Wood

On September 3, 2020 The Atlantic published a story written by Jeffrey Goldberg in which President Trump claimed that he could not travel to the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery outside of Paris because it was raining, and the helicopter wouldn't fly and the Secret Service wouldn't drive him there. Both of these statements, according to Goldberg, were not true. 

In the article, Goldberg quotes sources who said that the president said, "Why should I go to that cemetery? It's filled with losers," before referring to over 1,800 marines who are buried in the cemetery as "suckers," for getting killed fighting the Germans. 

The Aisne-Marne American Cemetery is a 42.5-acre memorial that sits at the foot of Belleau Wood. There are 2,289 graves and over 1,060 soldiers who are still missing, over 100 years later. 

World War I is a complicated story for the United States. The History Teacher in me wants you to know that there are four main reasons for why World War I was even fought: Militarism, Alliances, Imperialism, and Nationalism. Thankfully we don't have to worry about that today [eyes roll completely out of my head]. 

When the United States finally declared war (President Wilson ran for re-election in 1916 under the slogan "He kept us out of war") in April 1917, the military was woefully unprepared. The Germans, and even the US' allies, were doubtful about how actually helpful the United States would be. The United States had never maintained a large standing army, following Thomas Jefferson's belief that a large standing army was a threat to peace. Jefferson helped draft and approve and promote the Military Peace Establishment Act (1802) which reduced the size of the military, yet also established a military academy north of New York City at West Point. In his 6th Annual Message (1806), Jefferson wrote:

Our duty is, therefore, to act upon things as they are, and to make a reasonable provision for whatever they may be. Were armies to be raised whenever a speck of war is visible in our horizon, we never should have been without them.

As the events of World War I unfolded across Europe, the United States continued to resist building up for the possibility of entering the War. The last major wars the United States were even involved in relied on cavalry, which wasn't going to help in this particular war, what with mustard gas, trench warfare, machine guns, and tanks. 

The Russians bounced from World War I in early 1918, after the Bolsheviks overthrew Czar Nicholas before (probably!) assassinating him and his wife Alexandra and their children. This freed up a not-insignificant number of German troops, who decided to mobilize on the Western Front in April 1918, hoping to win the war before whatever the US could throw at them was fully operational.

At the Third Battle of the Aisne, the Germans (they weren't Nazis yet) launched a massive surprise attack with over 4,000 pieces of artillery on May 27, 1918 at Aisne. French General Auguste Duchene was in charge of the defense, and ordered British soldiers to huddle together in the front trenches, which made them a much-easier target for the German artillery. Then they dropped poison gas on the trenches, and followed that up with an infantry assault. The Germans, under Erich Ludendorff (who would go on to be an early Hitler supporter, gaining notoriety for his completely false "Stab-In-The-Back" theory which blamed Jews, liberals, communists, democrats, and war profiteers for Germany's defeat in World War I), took advantage of a 25-mile gap in defense and advanced to within 35 miles of Paris. The Allies didn't stand a chance. Over 50,000 Allied soldiers and 800 Allied guns were captured.

On June 6, 1918 the German assault was neutralized. 137,000 Allied soldiers were killed or wounded while the Germans had 130,000 casualties. This was the first major action American soldiers - mainly the US 3rd Division - had seen in World War I, and they impressed their counterparts. 

This is where the battles overlap. Five days earlier the Germans had secured Chateau-Thierry and Vaux, and the Germans moved into Belleau Wood. The Marne River is a little over 300 miles long and runs behind Belleau Wood, which is about 60 miles northeast of Paris. The US 2nd Infantry Division (containing a brigade of Marines), the 9th Infantry, and the 6th Marine regiments all joined to plug the gap in the defense. There were French troops between them and the Germans. General James Harbord overrode an order from the French to dig trenches further back and instead ordered the Marines to "hold where you stand" and use their bayonets to dig a shallow trench that would allow them to fire at the advancing Germans from a prone (laying down, facing-forward) position. On the afternoon of June 3, 1918 the Germans attacked. US troops waited until the Germans were within 100 yards before opening fire, cutting down wave after wave of German soldiers until they retreated into the woods.

The Germans dug in, then they attacked. A French colonel told the US troops to retreat, to which Marine Captain Lloyd W. Williams replied, "Retreat, hell. We just got here." June 6, 1918 (a date that echoes through history) saw the heaviest single-day losses in Marine Corps history. On June 11, 1918 Capt. Williams led an assault on the Germans in which only one in 10 German officers and 16 of 250 German troops survived or escaped injury. Told to withdraw by a French major, Capt. Williams told him to "Go to hell." The next day, after getting gassed and injured by shrapnel, Capt. Williams responded to approaching medics, "Don't bother with me. Take good care of my men." He died on June 12. The building which holds Virginia Tech's Depts of Political Science, History, Geography, Philosophy, and Foreign Language and Literatures is named after him.

1st Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates said during the battle:

I have only two men out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold.

24-year old 1st Lt. Cates wrote his mother:

It has been a living hell. We were shelled all night with shrapnel and gas shells...It was mustard gas and a lot of the men were burned.

Marine Fred W. Stockham died of gas poisoning and was given a posthumous Medal of Honor for giving his own gas mask to a fellow soldier whose mask had been shot off.

44-year old Marine sergeant Dan Daly allegedly yelled at his men, "Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?" Colonel Albertus W. Catlin, who was shot in the chest during The Battle of Belleau Wood, later wrote:

The minute they got into the woods our boys found themselves in a perfect hornets' nest of...gunners, grenadiers, and riflemen. There were machine gun nests everywhere - on every hillock...every ravine...and every gun was trained on the...Marines.

Bayonet and hand-to-hand combat ensued. At the end of it at least 1,600 German soldiers were captured. The Americans had 9,777 casualties and over 1,800 killed. After the Battle of Belleau Wood had ended, the French renamed it "Bois de la Brigade de Marine" or "Wood of the Marine Brigade." General John J. "Black Jack" Pershing said after the Marines' performance, "the deadliest weapon in the world is a Marine and his rifle." An official German report said, after the battle, that the Marines were "vigorous, self-confident, and remarkable marksmen."

We could really get into some strong military strategy stuff here, but you can click on any of these links to really get into it. Basically, like the rest of World War I, the Battle of Belleau Wood was a bloodbath. Over 10,000 Americans were dead, wounded, or missing in action. Marine Corps Commandant General Charles C. Krulak referred to Belleau Wood as the "Marines' first crucible," and said:

The flower of America's youth fought and bled to wrest this wood from the Germans....I walked toward the tree line through waist-high wheat, just as they did 80 years ago. History books describe that 800-yard advance, but I never fully appreciated it until I walked it myself. The Germans had every square inch of that field covered by machine gun and artillery fire. The Marines paid dearly with every step they took.

Army General James G. Harbord, who was after the fact made an honorary Marine said in 1923:

Now and then, a veteran...will come here to live again the brave days of that distant June. Here will be raised the altars of patriotism; here will be renewed the vows of sacrifice and consecration to country. Hither will come our countrymen in hours of depression, and even of failure, and take new courage from this shrine of great deeds.

In April 2018 French president Emmanuel Macron commemorated the battle by saying at a ceremony, "The blood [of Americans] was spilled to defend France."

The result is the temporary defeat of Germany as a threat to world peace. It's also the rebirth of the Marine Corps, who may or may not have earned the "Devil Dogs" nickname at the Battle of Belleau Wood. Or, you know, "losers," and "suckers," according to the 45th president of the United States.

The Adjustment Compensation Act of 1924, the Bonus Army, and a Hurricane

Five years after the Treaty of Versailles, Congress approved the Adjustment Compensation Act of 1924, in which World War 1 veterans would get a financial bonus for their service. This was a far-too-late effort by the government to thank the American Expeditionary Force, seeing as how the government did almost nothing to support returning veterans. World War I killed more people than all European wars from 1790-1914 combined. This bonus for veterans was years in the making. Congress had attempted to give veterans a bonus in 1922, but President Warren G. Harding vetoed it, saying a balanced budget took precedence over compensating veterans. This capped off a year that saw Harding's administration rocked by the Teapot Dome Scandal, the creation of the Federal Narcotics Control Board - a forerunner to the DEA - and the United Mine Workers v. Colorado Coal Co. Supreme Court case that held striking workers liable for damage inflicted (an effort to get labor unions under control). Anyway, Harding was a terrible president, and a worse husband.

Harding died of a heart attack just over two years into his term, succeeded by his vice president Calvin Coolidge. Coolidge came to national prominence in 1919 when, as governor of Massachusetts, he stamped out a police strike as they tried to unionize. "Silent Cal" was sworn in to the office of the presidency in the middle of the night by his father, a justice of the peace, and then went back to bed. This is the most Calvin Coolidge thing ever. He then proceeded to try to say and do as little as possible to get in the way of the growing post-WW1 recession economy. His most famous quote is "the business of America is business," but the actual wording isn't quite right, though the sentiment is probably spot-on.

The bill to compensate WW1 veterans with a bonus was introduced by Rep. Wright Patman (D-TX, who represented an area just southwest of Texarkana), himself a WW1 veteran. With Harding out of the way, millions of people signed a petition to compensate the WW1 veterans - since their regular wages were far less than military wages, if they were able to get their jobs back - for their service. Even Congressmen who supported the bonus dismissed the petition. Rep. Walter Lineberger (R-CA) said the petition was "pageant" to "commercialize or politicize patriotism," and would require a sales tax to pay it. Coolidge vetoed it, saying, "Patriotism which is bought and paid for is not patriotism." The Republican-controlled House of Representatives overrode Silent Cal's veto.

The bonus, $1 for each day of domestic service in the military and $1.25 for each day of overseas service (on average it would be about $500 - maybe half of the average annual income), was scheduled to be payable in 1945. If the total owed was less than $50, the bonus was to be paid immediately. Veterans referred to this as the "Tombstone Bonus," as the easiest way to collect the reward for "shell-shock" (the 1920s definition of PTSD) was to simply die and let your family reap the benefits.

Fast forward five more years to October 1929 and the stock market crash. Herbert Hoover had been in office for not even eight months yet. Unfortunately for Hoover, he gave a campaign speech in which he declared:
We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land. We shall soon, with the help of God, be in sight of the day when poverty will be banished from this nation.

That quote aged...poorly. The unemployment rate in 1929 was about 3.2%, then the stock market crashed. In 1930 it was 8.7%. By 1931 it was 15.9%. In 1932 it was 23.6%, and would peak in 1933 at an astonishing 24.9%. Part of Hoover's issue was that he was orphaned by Age 9 and had grown up in poverty, but overcame those obstacles to graduate from the newly-established Stanford University. Hoover became a geologist, earning a fortune in mining and consulting. He proposed by telegraph (his wife, the only female geology major at Stanford, accepted in a return cable). In World War I, Hoover oversaw the evacuation of 120,000 Americans in Europe and privately helped raise millions of dollars for Belgium. He ran the U.S. Food Administration, convincing millions of Americans to ration for the war effort. Hoover was a contender for the Republican nomination for President in 1920, but was blocked because of his support for Wilson's League of Nations. Instead he became Harding - and Coolidge's - Secretary of Commerce.

Hoover believed in what he referred to as "Rugged Individualism." In a 1928 campaign speech, Hoover:
When [WW1] closed, the most vital issues both in our country and around the world was whether government should continue their wartime ownership and operation of many [instruments] of production and distribution. We were challenged with a...choice between the American system of rugged individualism and a European philosophy of a diametrically opposed doctrines - doctrines of paternalism and state socialism. The acceptance of these ideas would have meant the destruction of self-government through centralization...[and] the undermining of the individual initiative and enterprise through which our people have grown to unparalleled greatness.

Essentially, the more the government is involved, the worse it is. Rugged Individualism, or a fancy way of saying "self-reliance" was what Hoover knew. What separated Europe from America, according to Hoover, was that Americans weren't coddled by their government. Relying on government programs to get by was one thing in a war, but anything else? That's a conversation-ender, for Hoover.

So when the stock market crashed, ushering in the Great Depression, and then the double-whammy of the Dust Bowl, Hoover wasn't psychologically prepared to lead a government response worthy of the crisis. If the government intervened too much, so Hoover's philosophy went, it would impede capitalism and the will of the people to incentivize work. As banks foreclosed on homes, American citizens built make-shift homes out of scrap metal and cardboard and called their neighborhoods "Hoovervilles," quite a departure from just 10 years earlier when to "Hooverize" something meant a valiant, patriotic effort to conserve goods for the greater national interest.

In his 1930 State of the Union address, given in December - a full 14 months after the stock market crash - Hoover doubled-down:
No matter how devised, an increase in taxes in the end falls upon the workers and farmers, or alternately deprives industry of that much ability to give employment and defeats the very purpose of these schemes...Prosperity cannot be restored by raids upon the Public Treasury...Many of these measures are being promoted by organizations and agencies outside of Congress and being pushed upon Members of Congress. Some of them are mistaken as to the results they will accomplish and they are all mistaken as to the ability of the Federal Government to undertake such burdens. Some of these outside agencies are also engaged in promoting political purposes. The American people will not be misled by such tactics. 

Hoover believed that most of the relief should come from volunteer efforts of churches and other charitable organizations, and anyone who still might be rich. But what he wanted in regards was far too voluntary.

Anyhow, back to the wave of veterans marching towards Washington in May 1932 wanting their Congressionally-approved bonus to be paid in the middle of the Great Depression: "This country is not broke," said Will Rogers of the Tombstone Bonus, "If we owed it to some Foreign Nation you would talk about honor and then pay it."

Rep. Patman's bill caught the attention of former U.S. Army sergeant Walter W. Waters of Portland, Oregon, who found himself unemployed. As Patman's bill didn't...really gain any traction in Congress, Waters got frustrated with the realization that various special interests were getting taken care of financially, while WW1 veterans and pretty much every other group of Regular People languished.

To be fair, Hoover tried to do a few things, but it was literally too little and way too late. In early 1932 - an election year - Hoover signed into effect the Reconstruction Finance Corporation "to provide emergency financing facilities for financial institutions, to aid in financing agriculture, commerce, and industry," as well as the Banking Act of 1932 "to improve the facilities of the Federal Reserve system for the service of commerce, industry, and agriculture, to provide means for meeting the needs of member banks in exceptional circumstances."

Waters met with other unemployed Portland veterans and started to discuss the idea of meeting in person with Congress. When Patman's bill got shelved around May 11, Waters' mind was already made up. He started giving speeches in support of the early payment of the bonus, transcripts of those speeches made their way into the West Coast newspapers. On May 17, 1932 the Bonus Expeditionary Force (a nod to the American Expeditionary Force) - counting members from all over the west coast, the majority of them wearing their old khaki shirts - departed from Portland on a train bound for Washington. Rail officials loaned a freight train to the "Bonus Army." People met the trains with foodArriving in Iowa the following day, the Bonus Army hitched rides or walked the rest of the way to Washington. By June 1, there were over 1,500 men (and some families) were in Washington.

World War I veteran and novelist John Dos Passos said, "The March was a spontaneous movement of protest, arising in virtually every one of the forty-eight states."

The Bonus Army set up Hoovervilles in three major places in and around Washington: 12th Street & B Street NW (less than a mile from the White House), 3rd Street & Pennsylvania Avenue NW (less than half a mile from the U.S. Capitol building), and the largest camp was in the Anacostia Flats, and called their new home "Camp Bartlett" in honor of the former assistant postmaster general and former governor of New Hampshire John H. Bartlett, who let them stay there.

Hoover's press secretary, Theodore Joslin, said "The marchers have rapidly turned from bonus seekers to communists or bums." Over at the Bureau of Investigation, a young J. Edgar Hoover began efforts to coordinate evidence of communist activity within the Bonus Army.

Brigadier General Pelham D. Glassford was the police superintendent for Washington, D.C. He asked Congress for $75,000 to provide food for the Bonus Army. Congress said no. On June 15, the day after Rep. Edward Eslick (D-TN) died of a heart attack while speaking on the floor of the House of Representatives in favor of the bill, with the Bonus Army's numbers in Washington numbering 20,000, the Democratic-led House of Representatives voted to approve immediate payment of the bonus. The Republican-controlled Senate rejected it on June 17 (by a 62-18 vote, and the majority wasn't *that* large) and Hoover had already said he would veto the bill were it to have passed the Senate.

Glassford provided almost $800 of his own money for supplies. The camp quickly became a local attraction. Washingtonians brought sleeping bags, food, and cigarettes to the veterans. Evalyn Walsh McLean, a Washington socialite and the wife of Washington Post owner Edward McLean (and the last private owner of the Hope Diamond), went with Glassford to a diner in the middle of the night and ordered one thousand sandwiches and a thousand packs of cigarettes to give to the Bonus Army. The camp was led by Waters, who ran it like a military outpost. They had named streets, a post office, a library, a barber shop. There were educational classes for the children, a newspaper for the residents, as well as Vaudeville acts and boxing matches. Alcohol was prohibited, as were weapons, fighting, and begging. Communists weren't allowed to join in at all, so their motives couldn't be misconstrued by Congress, or Hoover, or anyone who was following along with the newspapers that their goal was simply a handout. The camps were integrated, as well, with one black Bonus Army member saying it was "the first massive integrated effort I can remember." Civil rights activist Roy Wilkins wrote, "There was one absentee [in the Bonus Army]: James Crow."

By July 1932, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation was approved to loan money to state and local governments for infrastructure projects which would look remarkably like Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal legislation. Vice President Charles Curtis was reportedly "unnerved" at the sight of the Bonus Army near his office on July 14 - the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille. Later that month, as the temperature soared, so did the tensions. On July 28, 1932 Hoover sent in the troops to clear out the Bonus Army from Washington. You may wonder about the recently-referred to 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, which prevents the military from enforcing the law. Washington DC was exempt from this law, as DC was under direct Congressional control.

Among those getting a taste of military action were George O. Patton and Douglas MacArthur. The Army used tear gas and bayonets to clear out the camps. Tanks with machine guns attempted to clear out the 3rd Street camp. Patton beat the piss out of a veteran named Joe Angelo, who had actually saved Patton's life when he was but a Colonel in World War I. Asked about this, Patton said, "Undoubtedly this man saved my life, but his several accounts of the incident vary from the true facts." Fire from detonating grenades set shanties on fire, tear gas mixing with black smoke.

Active duty military tasked with clearing the vets out said, "We hate this more than they do, but they brought it on themselves." Two veterans were killed by gunfire. Douglas MacArthur burned the camp at Anacostia Flats. A 16-year old named Fred Blancher said:
Those guys got in there and they start waving their sabers, chasing these veterans out, and they sart shooting tear gas. There was just so much noise and confusion, hollering and there was smoke and haze. People couldn't breathe. 

A bystander yelled at Douglas MacArthur, "The American flag means nothing to me after this!" and only piped down when MacArthur threatened him with arrest. Hoover gave a statement that read, "An examination of a large number of names discloses the fact that a considerable part of those remaining are not veterans, many are Communists and persons with criminal records." This, obviously, flew in the face of Waters' rules, regulations, and efforts to legitimize the Bonus Army from the jump. Future Supreme Commander of Allied Forces, and president, Dwight D. Eisenhower told Stephen Ambrose of MacArthur, "I told that dumb son-of-a-bitch he had no business going down there."

At 11pm that night (July 28) MacArthur gave a press conference:
Had the President not acted today, had he permitted this thing to go on for twenty-four hours more, he would have been faced with a grave situation which would have caused a real battle. Had he let it go on another week, I believe the institutions of our Government would have been severely threatened. 

Hecklers disrupted Vice President Curtis' speech in Las Vegas the next day, to which Curtis replied, "You cowards! I'm not afraid of any of you!" These were the optics they chose. The Associated Press released a list of editorial reactions and found that 21 out of 30 newspapers generally supported the government's response. The Chicago Herald and Examiner dissented, referring to Hoover's actions as "Sheer stupidity...without parallel in American annals." Hoover biographer David Burner:
In the minds of most analysts, whatever doubt had remained about the outcome of the presidential election was now gone: Hoover was going to lose. The Bonus Army was his final failure, his symbolic end.

The 1932 election was a rout. Combining Hoover's lack of response to the Great Depression with that summer's tear-gassing and bayoneting of veterans that was showing in newsreels across the country, Franklin D. Roosevelt (D-NY) handily won the Electoral College 472-59.

Now what was left of the Bonus Army - about 3,000 - was FDR's issue. Eleanor Roosevelt went out to a camp that FDR had repurposed to house them, and participated in a sing-along, in the mud and rain. FDR's New Deal legislation was hiring people to go to work. Almost 2,600 Bonus Army members accepted an offer to join the Civilian Conservation Corps for $1 a day plus room & board. A number were sent to Florida, where they were put to work in the Upper Keys building bridges for a highway from Miami to Key West.

On September 2, 1935 a hurricane slammed into the Upper Keys, a direct hit on the camp, with estimated winds of 200mph. The barometer near the eye of the storm fell to almost 26.00. September 2 was Labor Day Weekend, and so trucks that could have been used to evacuate the area were locked up. The government sent a train to rescue the veterans. At first the train was delayed. The storm surge then derailed the train when it was just a couple of miles from the camp. At least 256 Bonus Army members plus a number of locals were killed for a death toll of at least 408. Key West resident Ernest Hemingway wrote, "the veterans in those camps were practically murdered."

In 1936, the House and Senate finally passed a bill to pay World War I veterans early. President Roosevelt vetoed it, twice. Roosevelt said, of the Bonus Army:
The veteran who is disabled owes his condition to the war. The healthy veteran who is unemployed owes his troubles to the Depression.

Congress overrode FDR's vetoes and the payments were distributed. $2 billion was eventually given to three million World War I veterans. By this time Walter W. Waters of Oregon had become inspired by the images of the fascist black- and brown-shirt movements in Europe, and tried to become the head of a "Khaki Shirt Movement" to deal with the emergency of the Great Depression. The newspaper published by the Bonus Army had this to say:
Inevitably such an organization brings up comparisons with the Facisti (sic) of Italy and the NAZI (sic) of Germany...for five years Hitler was lampooned and derided, but today he controls Germany. Mussolini, before the war was a tramp printer driven from Italy because of his political views. But today he is a world figure. The Khaki Shirts, however, would be essentially American.

You do not, under any circumstances, gotta hand it to Hitler and Mussolini. Waters, referred to as "Hot Waters" and rejected by various veterans groups, enlisted in the Navy in World War 2 and died in 1959.

Determined to take better care of veterans, Congress passed (and FDR signed) the Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944, better known as the GI Bill. Almost eight million veterans of World War II took advantage of the GI Bill to go to school, begin paid on-the-job training, buy a house or a farm, or start a business. This program did more to fuel the rise of the postwar American economy than any other.