How One Unknown Man Changed History and Turned the Tides of World War Two Against Hitler

Heinrich Pfeifer is not a name which springs to mind when we consider the major events of the twentieth century, but new evidence shows he might just be one of the key figures to decide the outcome of the Second World War, and hence one of the reasons why we are not all speaking German today instead of English.

Robert Temple explains.

Reinhard Heydrich, who was Heinrich Pfeifer’s boss. Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1969-054-16 / Hoffmann, Heinrich / CC-BY-SA, available here.

Pfeifer’s name only became known for certain recently, when it was revealed by some Swiss intelligence files. Before that, only the top people of the world’s security agencies of the 1940s knew who he really was, as he had about twenty different names and identities. Indeed, the voluminous American security files on Pfeifer are still classified, and until now no one could have asked to see them anyway because no one knew which name to ask for.

Pfeifer was the highest German espionage official ever to defect from the Nazi regime. His immediate superior was Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the SD, which was the intelligence service of Himmler’s SS. His special activities were counterintelligence and foreign operations. At one time he infiltrated the French spy service (the Deuxième Bureau) and acted as a double agent for Germany. He was a master of disguise and sometimes went around dressed as a tramp. Despite being anti-Communist, he was elected head of a Trotskyite society which he gracefully declined. Later he infiltrated the Polish intelligence service and tricked the General Staff of Poland with a false invasion plan. In all, he worked for the intelligence services of at least seven different countries.

Ultimately, Pfeifer turned against the Nazi regime because of its anti-Semitism, the concentration camps, and violent murders, all of which he despised. He defected to Switzerland in September of 1938, and worked for Swiss Army intelligence for three years, helping to prevent Hitler’s plan to annex the German portion of Switzerland. In 1938 and 1939, Pfeifer flew to London and met with Robert Vansittart, the head of British intelligence. Pfeifer was able to identify the two leading German spies in the UK, who had never previously been named, and they were both expelled in 1939.

Spies

The spies Pfeifer named were Baron Dr. Kurt von Stutterheim, who had been posing as an anti-Nazi activist, and Hans E. Friedrich, who had been posing as an arts journalist. Pfeifer gave huge amounts of detailed information to Vansittart which Vansittart then passed over to sympathetic American sources for circulation and partial publication, to help influence the American public about the need to join the War. Vansittart’s intense efforts to out-maneuver Neville Chamberlain and get Winston Churchill into power were greatly aided by Pfeifer’s defection and the enormous amount of material that Pfeifer supplied. The contact was made all the easier because Pfeifer was multi-lingual and spoke English as well as various other languages (being fluent in Italian, one of his duties had been to liaise with General Roatta, the head of Mussolini’s security services, on behalf of Himmler and Heydrich.)

Heinrich Pfeifer worked and was registered under a false name during his entire time in the security service. Starting in 1929 his first boss, Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s close friend and chief ideologue of the Nazi Party, insisted he be called Heinz Stein. Pfeifer was only 24 at the time.

Pfeifer was a devout Catholic all his life and he only became involved with the Nazis because he wanted to fight Communism. He then found himself immersed in an evil empire which he had not anticipated, and from which it was difficult to escape. He had, after all, joined the Nazis four years before Hitler actually came to power, and when their true nature was not entirely clear.

After the war

In 1949, at the age of 44, Pfeifer was assassinated by a Nazi vengeance squad for having betrayed Nazi secrets. His memoir published in 1945 in Switzerland was bought up and destroyed by Nazi sympathisers, and few copies survived. But Pfeifer’s meticulous description of the precise structures and methods of Nazi espionage ironically recorded the replicated version of the same thing which commenced about that time by the Russians. In that, they were guided by Heinrich Mueller, the head of the Gestapo who fled to the Russians at the end of the War. So, Pfeifer’s guide to Nazi infiltration techniques is equally a guide to the Russians’ techniques after 1945.

Pfeifer knew that he was risking his life by escaping from his boss Reinhard Heydrich, whom he described as ‘satanic’ and more dangerous than Hitler. He had risked his life many times before in the interests of Nazi Germany, but he was to pay the final price for his efforts to try to save the Allies, and especially Britain. However, if not for his bravery in coming forward and supplying crucial intelligence to Robert Vansittart, and ultimately to the American press, the tides of war may never have meaningfully turned against Hitler. History would likely have turned out much different if not for the courageous acts of this one man, who most have never even heard of.

Robert Temple is a London-based historian, archaeologist, publisher, and former journalist who has previously written for publications such as The Guardian, New Scientist, and Harpers. Temple is editor of the forthcoming book, Drunk On Power: A Senior Defector’s Inside Account of the Nazi Secret Police State, the long suppressed memoir of Nazi defector Heinrich Pfeifer. Temple was the first person to reveal the ‘forcible repatriation scandal’ during and after World War II and persuaded Lord Carrington, then U.K. Defence Minister, to release the sealed War Office files which blew away the secrecy of that forbidden subject, which had resulted in the deaths and incarceration of two million people by Stalin, with the shameful secret complicity of the Allied Powers. Temple has been a member of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies (RUSI) since 1972. Robert Temple is the author of numerous books on history and science. He has twice been appointed Visiting Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science and he has done archaeological work in Egypt, Greece, and Italy.

Republicans in the Presidency: Criminal Dealings?

Donald J. Trump is in court for a number of reasons currently, although he still remains favorite for the Republican nomination for the presidency. With that in mind, here Larry Deblinger looks at some of the criminal (or possibly criminal) dealings of some former Republican presidents.

Harding’s Gang? President Warren G. Harding’s first cabinet in 1921.

The Republican party of the United States is in flux as it seeks to forge its future with or without the leadership of former president Donald J. Trump. While Trump holds a commanding lead in the polls in the race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, he is also facing trial on four criminal indictments encompassing 91 separate charges. Republican politicians and rank-and file-voters must decide whether they will support Trump should he be both their party’s nominee and a convicted felon. Depending on the trial outcomes, it may be a stark choice of Trump or the law.

But the stakes of the present moment for the future of the Republican party, and, potentially, of American democracy, can only be fully appreciated in light of the GOP’s past. The history of the presidencies of the Republican party, which often brands itself “the party of law and order,” includes a long criminal record, spanning almost the entire existence of the party, of which the Trump administration, despite some unprecedented aspects of its law-breaking, is only the latest chapter. What Republicans decide today will help determine whether that heritage of lawlessness at the highest levels of national government, where a political party is expected to assemble its best and brightest and promote its core tenets, will continue to stain the character of the GOP.

Grant’s Invasion

The criminal record of Republican presidencies substantially begins a mere 15 years after the 1854 birth of the GOP, with the administration of Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877). At this time, corruption in government was common since the so-called “spoils system,” as in “to the victor go the spoils,” held sway in American politics, determining government jobs, favors and funding through political patronage.1 But federal executive branch corruption erupted to unprecedented and shocking levels under Grant. The scandals, too numerous to detail in total, ran from bribery, fraud, and extortion to embezzlement and financial market manipulation and permeated the departments of the Treasury, Interior, Justice, War (now called Defense), the Navy, and the Postal Service, reaching to top cabinet officers and the vice-president.2

The malfeasance by the end of Grant’s first term was such that it helped trigger a breakaway faction of his party who called themselves the Liberal Republicans and opposed Grant’s 1872 re-election. Among other points of opposition to Grant, the Liberals charged that “The Civil Service of the Government has become a mere instrument of partisan tyranny and personal ambition, and an object of selfish greed. It is a scandal and reproach upon free institutions, and breeds a demoralization dangerous to the perpetuity of republican government.”3

The Whiskey Ring

The most extensive of the Grant administration scandals was the Whiskey Ring. Grant had sent an old friend whom he had appointed to the Treasury, General John McDonald, to head up federal tax revenue collection in Missouri, a hotbed of support for the Liberal Republicans. Once there, McDonald observed that whiskey distillers had been bribing federal revenue agents for years to allow them to underpay what they owed in taxes. Rather than curtail the illegality, McDonald and other Republican operatives got in on the action, forming the Whiskey Ring in conjunction with distillers, ostensibly to divert the unpaid tax money to a slush fund for Grant’s re-election in 1872 and other Republican campaigns.4 Storekeepers, treasury clerks, revenue agents and others in the whiskey chain were forced to cooperate, sometimes through impressment and blackmail.4 After the 1872 elections, the Whiskey Ring outgrew its original, perhaps specious political purposes to become a nationwide crime syndicate operated entirely for the enrichment of the conspirators. After it was uncovered and investigated by Grant’s Justice Department starting in 1875, 110 conspirators, including MacDonald, were convicted of crimes (e.g., defrauding the US Treasury) and over $3 million in stolen revenues were recovered.5  

Despite the scandals of his administration and opposition of the Liberals, Grant, the former top general of the Union army and Civil war hero, won re-election handily. Grant appeared to be unaware of the various corrupt activities in his administration, and urged prosecution of the malefactors when informed of them.6 But he was drawn into the Whiskey Ring scandal when his private secretary, Orville Babcock, was indicted and tried in criminal court for involvement in the scheme. Grant testified on behalf of Babcock, denying his guilt and defending his character, in a deposition taken at the White House. Owing largely to Grant’s testimony, Babcock was eventually acquitted, but was later accused of complicity in another corrupt scheme.4,5 For years afterwards, fairly or not, the term “Grantism” was synonymous with government corruption.7

Harding’s Gang

Following Grant, the Progressive era of the late nineteenth and early 20th century in the US promoted “good government” policies which helped to curb government corruption. Progressive Republicans such as Theodore Roosevelt played prominent roles in this movement.8 But Americans came to tire of Progressivism under the strident leadership and activism of the Democratic president Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921), and in 1920, they voted a conservative Republican, Warren G. Harding, into the White House. Harding had run on the campaign theme of a “return to normalcy.”9 If by normalcy Harding meant a return to Republican officials criminally abusing the powers of the Federal government, he delivered in spades.

A handsome, statuesque, and genial man with a turbo-charged sex-drive, Harding had risen through the shady world of Ohio politics and brought his cronies from that milieu to the executive branch. Known as the Ohio gang, Harding’s associates generated a font of corruption.

The disclosures began in early 1923 at the Veteran’s Bureau  (now the Department of Veterans’ Affairs), leading to the resignation of the Director, Charles R. Forbes and the suicide of the General Counsel, Charles T. Cramer. Forbes was convicted in 1924 of conspiracy to defraud the government, involving the theft of more than $200 million in bureau funds, and sentenced to two years in prison.10,11

The odor of corruption led next to the office of the Alien Property Custodian, which adjudicated claims for properties confiscated from Germans during World War I. Congressional investigators the bureau to be a sump of bribery and graft. The Custodian, Thomas W. Miller, was convicted of conspiracy to defraud the government and imprisoned.12  Harding’s Attorney General, Harry Daugherty, a key member of the Ohio gang, was brought to trial on charges of involvement in the Alien Bureau schemes and was acquitted, although it was brought out that he had burned bank ledger sheets of his and other accounts to destroy evidence.13 Daugherty was also accused of running a bribery/protection racket for alcohol dealers trying to evade the Prohibition law then in effect but was never prosecuted.14 However, Daugherty’s secretary and close friend, Jess Smith, committed suicide under mysterious circumstances.15

Oil Money Bribes

The infamous Teapot Dome scandal, also occurring under the Harding administration, was named for a federal government reserve of oil-bearing land at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, intended for use by the US Navy and managed by the Interior Department. After a series of investigations and criminal trials revealing an intricate and scandalous web of corporate-government corruption, Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall was convicted and imprisoned for receiving bribes in return for leasing Teapot Dome and other federal oil reserves to private companies.16

The full extent of Harding’s knowledge of the corruption in his administration remains unknown, largely because he died suddenly while in office in 1923. In his classic 1931 history of the 1920s, “Only Yesterday,” Frederick Lewis Allen, author and Editor of Harper’s magazine, opined that “the Harding administration was responsible in its short two years and five months for more concentrated robbery and rascality than any other in the whole history of the Federal government.”17 

Nixon’s Criminal Cohort

It is sometimes forgotten that Richard M. Nixon set the tone for his administration (1969-74) well before the Watergate scandal with his choice for vice-president, Spiro T. Agnew, Governor of Maryland. Little-known outside of Maryland, Agnew was a tough, plain-spoken politician whom the Nixonites thought would be perfect for their campaign. It turned out that Agnew was a creature straight from the Grant-Harding school of politics as criminal enterprise. Agnew had not only run a bribery racket as County Executive and then Governor of Maryland, extorting public works contractors for kickbacks of government-appropriated funds, he continued receiving the payments—in envelopes stuffed with cash—as Vice-President of the US.18 Faced with criminal charges of extortion, bribery, graft, conflict of interest, and tax evasion, Agnew pleaded to the least embarrassing charge, tax evasion, in return for resigning his office and a $10,000 fine.19

The Watergate Scandal

Then there was Watergate. The infamous burglary of Democratic National Committee headquarters and cover-up, the latter personally engineered by Nixon and his White House staff, encompassed a vast scale of illegal activities and abuses of power. As in the Harding administration, the nation’s top legal official, Attorney General John Mitchell, was a key facilitator of illegality under Nixon. A century after Republican operatives under Grant used the Whiskey Ring to raise re-election campaign funds through intimidation and blackmail, Nixon re-election campaign officials also used an illegally derived slush fund, including campaign contributions from corporations, which were outlawed at the time, to finance the Watergate break in and other crimes and “dirty tricks,” laundering the money through banks in Mexico.20,21

Overall, 69 Nixon administration officials were indicted for crimes related to Watergate or other illegal activities and 48 were convicted, including Attorney General Mitchell.22 A grand jury was set to charge Nixon with bribery, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and obstruction of a criminal investigation but prosecution was deterred by questions over whether a sitting president could be indicted.23 In any event, like his vice-president before him, Nixon resigned in disgrace.

Reagan Restores a Republican Tradition

After the brief period of atonement known as the Ford administration (1974-77), which was most notable for President Gerald Ford’s pardoning of Nixon, the Republicans were back at it with the presidency of Ronald W. Reagan (1981-89). Reagan bore curious echoes of Harding as a genial, handsome, somewhat inattentive man promising to restore a nostalgic era of simpler times in America. And like Harding, Reagan presided over a viral outbreak of corruption in the federal government of a magnitude unseen since the days of the Ohio gang.24 Abuses of office occurred at no less than 20 different federal departments and agencies, according to Pulitzer prize-winning Washington Post journalist and author Haynes Johnson.25

“By the end of his (Reagan’s) term 138 administration officials had been convicted, had been indicted, or had been the subject of official investigations for official misconduct and/or criminal violations. In terms of numbers of officials involved, the record of his administration was the worst ever,” wrote Johnson, in his 1991 history of the Reagan administration, “Sleepwalking Through History.”26  

Cascading Corruption

The Iran-Contra affair is the most famous of the Reagan-era scandals, but that episode could at least be portrayed as a principled, if illegal, attempt to fight the spread of socialism in Central America. Less noted is that the Reagan administration was rife with raw, greed-driven corruption, which by one estimate amounted to a total theft of $130billion in public funds.27 A prime example was the Wedtech case, involving a Defense Department contractor, which Johnson described as “the kind of political corruption that extended back to the Washington (DC) of Grant and Harding: influence peddling, government contracts, cash, bribes, kickbacks, fraud and conspiracy.”28 The subsequent “Operation Ill Wind” probe by the FBI, investigating further corruption in Defense Department procurement, resulted in 50 convictions, including those of high-ranking military officers and administration officials.29

And on it went, across the federal government in a veritable feeding frenzy from the department of Housing and Urban Development, where an estimated $8 billion in public funds were stolen,30 to the Environmental Protection Agency where the director resigned rather than cooperate with a Congressional investigation of political manipulation of department funds.31 As in the Harding and Nixon administrations, the nation’s top law enforcement officer came under scrutiny for alleged lawbreaking. Edwin Meese III, Reagan’s Attorney General starting in 1984, was the object of a 14-month special prosecutor and federal grand jury investigation of alleged criminal financial improprieties. Although Meese was acquitted, he became an object of ridicule at the Department of Justice where morale plummeted.32     

Government-Sponsored Organized Crime

The Iran-Contra scandal involved a secret scheme concocted by high-ranking officials at the CIA and the National Security Agency to sell arms to Iran and use the proceeds to fund the Contras of Nicaragua, who were fighting the socialist regime of their country. The arms sales to Iran violated US policy of not negotiating with terrorists, and the Arms Export Control Act of 1976. The support for the Contras violated the 1984 Boland Amendment, which specifically prohibited all military aid to the Contras or other groups in Nicaragua.33 Moreover, the murky scheme involved an unholy host of money changers, drug dealers, arms dealers, and terrorists, amounting to what one writer has described as “American-sponsored organized crime.”34

The Independent Prosecutor on the case, Lawrence E. Walsh, ultimately indicted 14 individuals with criminal charges of whom 11 were convicted, including National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter, Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North, National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane, and Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams.35 Four counts of perjury and false statements were pending against Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger when he was pardoned in 1992 by President George H. W. Bush, who also pardoned Abrams and MacFarlane, among others. Walsh, a lifelong Republican, reportedly called Bush’s pardon of Weinberger, “one of the great cover-ups of American history at the highest levels of the executive branch.”36

Reagan pleaded ignorance of the Iran Contra scheme, while accepting responsibility for it. Although Reagan made multiple false statements regarding the activities in a televised speech to the nation,37 there was no evidence he knew they were false, and Walsh declined to indict him.38

And then there was Trump, who is now charged under one of his four indictments (from the state of Georgia) of running a “criminal enterprise” along with 17 co-defendants.

A Partisan Pattern?

Of the 19 total Republican presidencies, four, not including that of Trump, have each compiled a criminal record unparalleled by any other administration of any other party in US history. The outbreaks have been sporadic but persistent to this day. Yet, the question could be raised as to whether this record truly reveals a penchant for lawlessness specific to the GOP or simply a tendency endemic to all political parties. As the famous saying goes, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Over their history, the Democrats have surely demonstrated no blanket immunity to corruption. During the 1860s and 1870s, the era of the spoilsmen, the Tweed Ring of New York City, run by the notorious “Boss” Tweed of the Democratic party, was a nexus of corrupt rackets that dominated city politics and set a standard for “boss”-run “party machines” nationwide. The Democratic-run states of New York, Illinois, and New Jersey have long been known for systemic corruption. Former New York State Democratic Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver died a convict in 2022 after being found guilty of corruption in 2015, and Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey is currently facing bribery charges. Numerous other Democratic federal legislators have also been convicted of crimes in office.39 And the vast majority of Republican federal, executive branch office holders have been law abiding. The many Republicans who declared themselves ready to convict Nixon in his impeachment trial and forced his resignation demonstrated a courageous commitment to the law, as did those who testified for the January 6th Committee, and the two who served as committee members.

The Parties Compared

There is no comparison, however, between the criminal records of Democrats and Republicans in the presidency, the pinnacle of the US government, a fact supported by several media outlets using online data. Politifact, a nonpartisan website, found that there were 142 indictments against members of the past three Republican administrations (including Trump’s) versus just two under the past three Democratic presidents.40 The Huffington Post, a left-leaning news site, reported 91 criminal convictions connected to Republican presidencies versus only one under a Democrat since 1970.41 And the Daily Kos, another left-wing media site, tallied 120 indictments, 82 convictions, and 34 imprisonments for Republicans from the Nixon through the Obama administrations versus 4, 2, and 2, respectively, for the Democrats.42

What is next for the Republicans? If Trump is convicted, Republicans may or may not choose to move beyond him. The greater question for their party, and for US democracy, is whether the Republicans will leave behind or continue their heritage of criminal abuse of power at the highest levels of the US government, of which the Trump administration is but the latest chapter.

What do you think of the author’s argument? Let us know below.

References

1.     Calhoun CW (2017). The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant. Lawrence, Kansas; University Press of Kansas. Page 12.

2.     Scandals of the Ulysses S. Grant Administration. Wikipedia. https://wiki2.org/en/Grant_administration_scandals.

3.     The American Presidency Project. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/liberal-republican-platform-1872.

4.     Rives T. Grant, Babcock, and the Whiskey Ring. Prologue Magazine. Fall 2000; 32(3): https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2000/fall/whiskey-ring-1.

5.     Longley R. The Whiskey Ring: bribery scandal of the 1870s. Thought Co. March 29, 2022. https://www.thoughtco.com/the-whiskey-ring-5220735.

6.     Chernow R (2017). Grant. New York; Penguin Press. p.837.

7.     Sumner C. Republicanism vs. Grantism. Speech in the Senate of the United States. May 31, 1872.

8.     Swinth K. The Square Deal. Theodore Roosevelt and the themes of progressive reform. The Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/essays/square-deal-theodore-roosevelt-and-themes-progressive-reform.

9.     Wallenfeldt J. Return to normalcy. American campaign slogan. History and Society: Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/return-to-normalcy.

10.  Allen, FL (1931). Only yesterday. An informal history of the 1920s. New York; Harper Perennial, Modern Classics. p.129-30.

11.  Charles R. Forbes. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R._Forbes.

12.  Allen, FL (1931). Only yesterday. An informal history of the 1920s. New York; Harper Perennial, Modern Classics. pp.130-1.

13.  Allen, FL (1931). Only yesterday. An informal history of the 1920s. New York; Harper Perennial, Modern Classics. pp.131-2.

14.  Allen, FL (1931). Only yesterday. An informal history of the 1920s. New York; Harper Perennial, Modern Classics. p.132.

15.  Allen, FL (1931). Only yesterday. An informal history of the 1920s. New York; Harper Perennial, Modern Classics. pp.132-3.

16.  Allen, FL (1931). Only yesterday. An informal history of the 1920s. New York; Harper Perennial, Modern Classics. pp.118-29.

17.  Allen, FL (1931). Only yesterday. An informal history of the 1920s. New York; Harper Perennial, Modern Classics. p.133.

18.  Yarvitz M, Maddow R (2020). Bag man. The wild crimes, audacious cover up and spectacular downfall of a brazen crook in the White House. New York; Crown. pp. 50-75.

19.  Yarvitz M, Maddow R (2020). Bag Man. The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover Up and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House. New York; Crown. pp. 138-9.

20.  Genovese MA (1999). The Watergate Crisis. Westport, CT; Greenwood Press. pp.22-23.

21.  Emery F (1994). Watergate. New York; Random House, Inc. pp. 110-11, 124-5.

22.  Watergate Scandal. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal.

23.   Watkins E, Kaufman E. National archives release draft indictment of Richard Nixon amid Mueller probe. CNN.com. October 31, 2018. https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/31/politics/richard-nixon-watergate-national-archives-mueller/index.html.

24.  Scandals of the Ronald Reagan Administration. Wikipedia.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandals_of_the_Ronald_Reagan_administration.

25.  Johnson H (1991). Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years. New York, London; W.W Norton and Company. p. 169.

26.  Johnson H (1991). Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years. New York, London; W.W Norton and Company. p. 184.

27.  Suri J. Reagan and the Iran-Contra affair. American Heritage. 2021. 66(2). https://www.americanheritage.com/reagan-and-iran-contra-affair.

28.  Johnson H (1991). Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years. New York, London; W.W Norton and Company. pp. 172-3.

29.  Operation Ill Wind. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ill_Wind.

30.  Johnson H (1991). Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years. New York, London; W.W Norton and Company. p. 183.

31.  Johnson H (1991). Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years. New York, London; W.W Norton and Company. pp. 170-1.

32.  Johnson H (1991). Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years. New York, London; W.W Norton and Company. pp. 184-5.

33.  Suri J. Reagan and the Iran-Contra affair. American Heritage. 2021. 66(2). https://www.americanheritage.com/reagan-and-iran-contra-affair.

34.  Suri J. Reagan and the Iran-Contra affair. American Heritage. 2021. 66(2). https://www.americanheritage.com/reagan-and-iran-contra-affair.

35.  Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters. Volume 1: Lawrence E. Walsh, Independent Counsel. August 4, 1993, Washington, D.C. United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit. https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/walsh/summpros.htm.

36.  Rosenberg P. Republicans, a history: how did the party of “law and order” become the party of crooks and crime. Salon. November 24, 2019.

37.  Johnson H (1991). Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years. New York, London; W.W Norton and Company. pp. 296-7.

38.   Understanding the Iran-Contra Affairs. Good Government Project, Brown University. https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/profile-reagan.php.

39.  List of American federal politicians convicted of crimes. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_federal_politicians_convicted_of_crimes.

40.  Kertscher T. Many more criminal indictments under Trump, Reagan, and Nixon than under Obama Clinton and Carter. Politifact; The Poynter Institute. January 9, 2020. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jan/09/facebook-posts/many-more-criminal-indictments-under-trump-reagan-/.

41.  Grossinger P. Republican presidencies have 91x the conviction rate of Democratic presidencies. HuffPost. December 22, 2017. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/republican-presidencies-have-91x-the-convictions-rate_b_5a3d5406e4b0df0de8b064e5.

42.  RoyalScribe. Updated: Comparing presidential administrations by felony arrests and convictions (as of 9/17/2018). Daily Kos. September 18, 2018. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/9/18/1796668/-UPDATED-Comparing-Presidential-Administrations-by-felony-arrests-and-convictions-as-of-9-17-2018.

From Reconstruction to the Present: A Small Place in Downtown Atlanta

Much of historic research relies upon an analysis of broad events through a general historical context. We as historians tend to put emphasis upon significant events and people and explore as far as we can to try to contribute to larger scholarly debate. However, sometimes its best to start small in a place that does not necessarily look like it has much to offer as to uncover histories that largely remain forgotten or undervalued. Here, Roy Williams considers a place in downturn Atlanta from Reconstruction to the present.

An 1887 depiction of Atlanta from Harper’s Weekly.

In exploring the Forsyth, Marietta, Farlie block going back to the train tracks, the current buildings do not necessarily show easily distinguishable historic buildings. Currently the Marietta Carrier hotel building stands at 56 Marietta Street with the company Digital Realty operating a telecommunications business. Behind the Carrier Hotel at the 10 Forsyth address, a parking lot stands next to the train tracks. The only other building which has a connection to the block is the abandoned Atlanta Constitution building on 143 Alabama street. While this building is not on the block it serves as a connection to the block in exploring the history of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution as both companies occupied the block at one point. The current Marietta Carrier Hotel building has a plaque commemorating the first Georgia State Capitol which stood on the block from 1869 to 1889 and was razed in 1900. Out of relative significance, the story of the block begins with the first Georgia State Capitol.

To describe the block effectively, a chronological order is established throughout this paper spanning from the 1860s to the present. A general history of the area also stands as accompaniment in understanding how the block changed throughout the trajectory of history and how certain events affected changes at the Forsyth, Marietta, Farlie block. Certain aspects of the block’s history are emphasized over others to contribute original primary source research as well as out of pragmatism due to the relative lack of sources on some businesses that occupied the block that were not necessarily as historically significant. References and pictures are detailed in footnotes as well as the end of the paper in the bibliography and index.

After the destruction of Atlanta at the hands of Union forces during the Civil War the state capitol was moved to Atlanta from Milledgeville as the center of Georgia government. Multiple primary source documentation exists detailing this move as well as the process by which the building was updated to house the Georgia State Capitol. Prior to serving as the first Atlanta based Georgia state capitol the building was the Kimball Opera House which was constructed by the brothers Edwin Kimball and Hannibal Kimball and would be purchased by the State in 1870. From 1869 to 1889 the Kimball Opera House served as the state capitol and post office. An advertisement from 1870 details this showing the new state capitol with its characteristic clock tower announcing the building as Kimball’s Opera House serving as the Georgia State Capitol and Post Office.[1] Hannibal Kimball was an entrepreneur and had a significant impact as a wealthy businessman in moving the state capitol from Milledgeville to Atlanta. The 1889 History of Atlanta, Georgia, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers describes Kimball’s significant role stating that, “The first work of a public character in which he took a prominent part was in relation to the location of the state capitol at Atlanta. He saw the advantage to accrue to the city by its selection as the legislative center of the state, and he lent all his influence and power to further this end.”[2] The city purchased the building for 100,000 dollars after originally leasing it.[3]

To Atlanta

In 1877 the Georgia Constitutional Convention voted to permanently move the capital to Atlanta, and in 1879 acquired the City Hall tract, which in 1880 was finally transferred to the state of Georgia. The legislature in 1883 agreed upon a budget of one million dollars for the new state capitol. This budget required that all materials for the new capital be sourced from Georgia rather than out of state.[4] Details of the construction of the new capital as well as the Austell building are present in the account book of William B Miles. Listing the costs, profits, and materials for the construction of such buildings as the Georgia State Capitol Building; Inman Building; Austell Building; Fulton County Court House Annex; and the police station and stables. William B Miles pocketbook July 1888 entry lists the costs of constructing the new building at 539,810.33 dollars not including labor with a net gain of 188,510.43 dollars.[5] The one-million-dollar budget established in producing the new capital as it moved from the Kimball Opera House to its permanent location stands as beneficial when considering the construction of the Austell building and the Forsyth viaduct.

The Austell Building was designed by the architectural firm, Bruce and Morgan and completed in 1897. The building was Financed by William W. Austell, and the twelve-story office building cost $300,000 to build. It was located on Forsyth Street adjacent to the Western and Atlanta Railroad in downtown Atlanta, Georgia where the current 10 Forsyth parking lot stands.[6] William B Miles account book also lists details regarding the Austell building in 1888. Since the building was completed in 1897, this entry appears to be something of a punch list of detailing finishing costs regarding the building such as an entry detailing the cost of paying for an architect report at 771.00 dollars.[7]Intriguingly there is another entry regarding the cost of bridgeworks materials and labors which could potentially point to the Forsyth Street viaduct beside the Austell Building and Kimball Opera House. The 1888 February entry right after the Austell building entry regarding bridgeworks details the cost of stock materials for the bridge at 4715.80 and the supplies at 1522.62 dollars, certainly a far cry from the massive budget of the Georgia State Capitol.[8] Whether this bridge entry refers to the Forsyth Street Viaduct is difficult to say but its proximity to the Austell building entry gives reason to consider its possibility. A photo from 1907 displays this viaduct with the Austell building in the background after the Kimball Opera House/Georgia State capital were razed in 1900.[9]

The 1907 Sanborn Fire Maps show the Austell building once again describing it as a fireproof building with another building occupying the grounds where the Kimball Opera House once stood. The Sanborn Fire maps list a lodge hall and general hardware and machinery regarding this other location.[10] The 1919 Foote and Davies Company Atlanta birds eye view atlas shows the block as having the Austell building facing towards the Forsyth Viaduct but also shows the site where the Kimball Opera House/Georgia State capitol used to stand as being listed as a multi-story building titled transport.[11] The 1910 building lists the Forsyth Marietta intersection as containing the Austell Building and Georgia News Co at 10 Forsyth with 8 and 9 Forsyth remaining vacant. It also lists the Brown-Randolph building at 56 Marietta Street with rooms being occupied by businesses such as Dunbar and Sewell Brokers, Ajax Lumber, Southern Flour and Grain Company, General Adjusting Company, Georgia Farm Mortgage Co, and the Brown and Randolph law practice.[12]

In addition to the city directory, there is a court case detailing the construction of the building in 1917 by the Brown-Randolph Company who paid an architect, A. V. Gude, Jr. The supreme court case lists that, “On July 30, 1917, petitioner determined to erect an eight-story building on its property at the southwest corner of Marietta and Forsyth streets in the city of Atlanta, Ga., employing Brown as architect and the Gudes (then partners under the name of Gude & Co.) as contractor. The contractor, in a letter to the architect on June 28, 1917, stated that the building would cost $375,000, including the commissions of Gude & Co. Following said estimate, on July 30, 1917, petitioner entered into a written contract with the contractor relative to the construction of said building. Under the terms of the contract the building was to be erected complete in every detail and delivered to petitioner, free of all liens, at and for the sum of not to exceed $375,000.”[13] The building was completed in 1919 but not within the 10-month contract and the price of construction ran over the agreed upon $375,000 cost of construction. The judgement was ultimately found for the defendant. The 1920s Atlanta city directory[14] lists the Austell building as well with dozens of businesses at the 10 Forsyth address, however the Brown-Randolph building was now listed as the Transport building just as it had been listed in the 1919 Foot and Davies Atlanta birds eye view atlas.[15] Finally the 1940 directory shows the Atlanta Union station behind the Austell building as well as the Western Union Building where the current Marietta Carrier hotel stands at present.[16]

Atlanta Union Station

The Atlanta Union Station was built in 1930 in Atlanta between Spring Street and Forsyth Street. It succeeded the two previous Union Stations. The previous 1853 Union Station ran from 1853 to 1864 and was ultimately burned by General William Tecumseh Sherman’s forces in the Battle of Atlanta. The second Union Station was built on the same site as the first in 1871 and would operate from 1871 until 1930 when it was torn down for the 3rd Union Station to be built.

The Atlanta Union Station served the Georgia Railroad, Atlantic Coastline, and Louisville and Nashville line. The structure was designed and built by McDonald & Company of Atlanta, Georgia. The station would eventually be razed in the early 1970s. The Union Station can be seen circa 1935 with the Austell building in the background across the Forsyth Street Viaduct.[17] The Atlanta Union Station would stand in operation until 1971 when it was closed and demolished in 1972. The destruction of the 1930 station is shown in multiple archival photos from the Atlanta History Center, displaying the utter loss of architectural history and cultural continuity that are significant to the buildings constructed in the late 19th century and early 20th century.[18]  A 1949 map of downtown Atlanta by the publication Gay Atlanta recirculated by the Atlanta Time Machine shows the block including the Union Station, the Western Union building, the Lucy Wood Cafeteria, and the Atlanta Journal as residing on the block.[19] While there are less sources pertaining to the Lucy Wood Cafeteria, there remains a litany of resources documenting the Atlanta Journal’s tenure at 10 Forsyth Street. A 1950 picture of the block confirms this map’s details, displaying the Western Union building, Lucy Wood Cafeteria, and the Atlanta Journal.[20]

Western Union building

The history of the Western Union building has a brief intersection with Atlanta labor history as, in 1971 the United Telegraph Workers went out on strike against the Western Union Telegraph Company. A 1971 New York Times article details the demands of the workers, saying, “The telegraph workers have asked for a two‐year pact with 16 per cent wage increases each year, Mr. Hageman said. Workers now average $3.37 an hour. The company said its offer included 10 percent increases in each of the two years.”[21] E. L. Hageman, the union president authorized the strike once negotiations with the Western Union Telegraph Company collapsed. A June 1971 photograph shows two AFL-CIO workers participating in the Strike.[22] The AFL-CIO was formed in 1955 when the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merged. A 1972 Atlanta Constitution article details how the strike left 450 Atlanta workers idle interviewing a soon to be retiring striking employee, James Maxwell who said, “You gotta do it, Itl be better in the end.”[23] The article also describes how the workers were not only picketing for better pay but also for a continued nationwide Western Union office presence of 1300 rather than the proposed cutback to 300 offices that was originally planned before the strike. While the strike was well intentioned in maintaining the livelihoods and economic liberty of Western Union employees in Atlanta and throughout the nation, the writing was on the wall for the telegraph industry. The expansion of the telephone at the expense of the telegraph in addition to the Western Union Telegraph Company’s aggressive diversification ultimately pointed towards the decline of the telegraph industry.[24]

The Atlanta Journal was founded on February 24, 1883, and the Atlanta Constitution was first published on June 16, 1868. Both newspapers bounced around multiple locations around the area ranging from Alabama street, Marietta, and different sides of Forsyth. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution were in direct competition with one another but ultimately in March 1950 became under common ownership. While under common ownership they would still work in competition until they were merged in 2001. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution worked with such journalists as Henry Grady who lobbied for the industrialization of the south during Reconstruction and coined the term “New South” in relation to this industrialization. As well as such figures as Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind, and Ralph McGill an early voice for racial tolerance in the south.[25]

10 Forsyth Street

The Atlanta Journal would occupy 10 Forsyth Street from 1949 to 1972. The Atlanta Journal building sat in between the Austell building which was then called the Thrower building at that point, and the Western Union Building. The Atlanta Constitution would soon move into the same building as the Atlanta Journal. While both media companies were under the same ownership, they worked in direct competition. This combination of both companies under the same roof would inevitably lead to the combination of both the Atlanta Journal and Constitution into the AJC of present. When both companies moved to their next location at 72 Marietta Street, the building which had once stood beside the Austell building and housed the historic Atlanta Journal and Constitution would be demolished in 1973 leaving the Western Union or Marietta Carrier Hotel as the only building left standing. [26] The Atlanta Journal demolition can be seen in the archival photo provided in the Central Atlanta Progress, Inc Photographs collection which displays the building being gutted beneath the iconic “Covering Dixie Like the Dew” motto.[27] The only remnant of the days of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution on the block stands in the dilapidated building across the train tracks at 143 Alabama Street which house the Constitution from 1947 to 1953.

The development of the block from reconstruction to the present and the change in buildings serves as a cautionary tale when considering its trajectory from a historical preservation perspective. The only remnants of the history of the block stand in the current Marietta carrier hotel building with a plaque commemorating the Kimball Opera House and a statue of Henry Grady in the middle of Marietta Street. The reality that the Austell building, Atlanta Journal, and Union Station were all demolished in the 1970s follows a broader trend in urban planning which saw the destruction of many historic buildings throughout the nation. While the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 provided the framework to preserve certain buildings, the 1970s saw the destruction of many buildings for new development. The most frustrating aspect of this development on the Forsyth, Marietta, Farlie block stands in the reality that no new buildings were built after the destruction of the previous historic properties. The area around the railroad tracks is near the Atlanta downtown area known as the Gulch, in which development projects have been planned but have never come to fruition. Jeremiah McWilliams detailed in a 2012 article how revitalizing the area into a transit hub would ultimately be a net positive economically, stating, “The city and state have struggled for years to gain traction on a transit hub envisioned for the area residents known as the “Gulch.” The sunken tract of downtown, spread for acres around CNN Center, is crisscrossed with railroad tracks and parking lots. Late last year, the Georgia Department of Transportation signed a $12.2 million contract for a new master plan with a team of contractors experienced in large-scale developments.”[28] This funding has not made any discernible change on the Forsyth, Marietta, Farlie block bordering the Gulch.

The economic growth and development that ultimately led to the demolition of many historic Atlanta buildings led to conflict in managing the city’s urban planning. As stated by Michael Elliot, the population of Atlanta grew by over 25% over the 1980s and the office inventory of the central city increased by 50% in the central city. By this point the Forsyth, Marietta, Farlie block had lost all its historic buildings but the Maritta Carrier Hotel, however this growing opposition to development in the interest of historic preservation follows the larger trend in historical preservation in Atlanta in attempting to conserve what was left from the demolitions of the 1970s.[29]

Rather, Elliot describes how a new mediation process was initiated in attempting to soothe tensions between the forces of economic development and historic preservation. This mediation process required a 9-month negotiation in finding consensus regarding development and preservation of properties but most importantly established a new system for categorizing, designating, and protecting historic properties. Mayor Andrew Young while originally in opposition to historic preservation eventually relented and supported the concept arguing that it was in the public’s interest to preserve certain aspects of the city’s history.[30]

Changes

It is important to consider that while the properties that once stood at the Marietta, Forsyth, Farlie block can be argued to have historic merit especially the first Atlanta based Georgia State Capitol, the trajectory of history and historic identity is infinitely malleable and changing rapidly with each passing generation. The history of the Western Union building, and the Western Union telegraph Company may intersect with both economic and labor history but the nature of its waning importance economically and practically indicates why its story is not preserved or considered significant. Much like the rapid change from horse drawn carriages to automobiles over the course of the early 20thcentury, the decline of the telegraph and the rapid advancement of the telephone warrants that the story of the Western Union Building only exist as a relatively forgotten footnote in Atlanta history. Timothy J Crimmins utilizes the Walter Havinghurst quote, arguing, “The past is not the property of historians, it is a public possession. It belongs to anyone who is aware of it grows by being shared.”[31] This quote allows Crimmins to segway into the realm of public history describing the expansion of the field stemming for the NHPA of 1966 and the growing cooperation between historic preservation and urban planning. This quote also helps to understand that the fields of historic preservation and public history have an inherently more democratic role in establishing what is significant than individual historians. The reality that the story of the Western Union Building is not as prevalent as others shows directly that there is a popular consensus in determining what stands as significant to historic identity and therefore what should be preserved and studied.

Crimmins describes how Atlanta serves as a unique example in attempting to piece together the connection to the past through the present. Specifically, Crimmins says that the changes wrought by economic and technological advancements regarding Atlanta have left much of the heart of Atlanta with little remains in linking the present to the past. Crimmins states that, “The public history issue is one of devising a course of action which would permit citizens to identify the present configuration with that of the nineteenth century.”[32] This problem of reorienting and reconnecting the present area of downtown Atlanta with its historic identity remains a challenge.

In considering the challenges in piecing together historic identity from the remaining built environment of Atlanta, Elizabeth A. Lyon argues that the fields of history and historic preservation must work together in a more efficient manner. Lyons states that, “The problem, however, is not so much the removal of history from historic preservation, as others have observed. The problem is that we often lack the historical information needed to measure and evaluate the historical significance of archeological and structural properties.”[33] This argument points to the heart of the problem, that sometimes changes in the built environment necessitated by technological and economic changes move faster than historic research and preservation. With the example of the Marietta, Forsyth, Farlie block, the most historic property, the Kimball Opera house, and Georgia State Capitol had been razed in 1900, 66 years before the National Historic Preservation Act was passed and 6 years before the Antiquities Act was passed. The Atlanta Union Station, Austell building, and Atlanta Journal were all demolished in the 1970s as well. While it can be difficult to piece together the identity of the past through the present when considering the built environment and the buildings which were demolished along the way, the most important remaining action stands in preserving what is left.

Conclusion

The only remaining building, the Marietta Carrier Hotel currently occupied by Digital Realty may not be on the National Register of Historic Places, but its significance as a grounding point for all the buildings that have been on the same block makes it worthy of local historic preservation. Though the first Atlanta based Georgia State Capitol may have been razed 123 years ago, and all other buildings on the block have been demolished, the history of all the structures of the block can be reoriented through the preservation of the current building. Once again, this topic returns to the introspective nature of historic identity and preservation of this identity through the built environment. While the current state of the block may not seem to have historical significance on a surface level observation, the simple reality that the seat of Georgia’s government was moved to this location from Milledgeville set in motion significant changes that ultimately defined the history of Atlanta. While the structures that made this history cannot be replaced, the importance of reconnecting the present to the past in the Atlanta downtown area is still a worthy aspect of preservation.

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Bibliography

  "Telegraphers Call a Strike at Western Union Tonight." New York Times. May 31, 1971. https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/telegraphers-call-strike-at-western-union-tonight/docview/119326236/se-2.

  1972 September. Central Atlanta Progress. Inc. Photographs. VIS 139.21.01. Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

  Account Book 1885-1889. William B Miles Account Book. MSS236f. Folder 1. Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

AJCN005-041b. Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photographic Archives. Special Collections and Archives. Georgia State University Library, 1950. https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/ajc/id/14049/ .

 Atlanta Georgia Government. "Georgia State Capitol.” Accessed October 1, 2023. https://www.atlantaga.gov/government/departments/city-planning/office-of-design/urban-design-commission/georgia-state-capitol.

    Atlanta. Map. Atlanta Georgia. Foote and Davies Company. 1919. From Library of Congress. Map Collections. https://www.loc.gov/item/75693190/. (Accessed September 28, 2023).

  Brown-Randolph Co. V Guide Et Al., No.2032. 106 S.E. 161,151 GA 281, Supreme Court of Georgia, 1921.

  City Directory. Atlanta Georgia. 1910.  https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/imageviewer/collections/2469/images/12245934?ssrc=&backlabel=Return.

Atlanta, Georgia, City Directory, 1920, 583-584, https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/imageviewer/collections/2469/images/12230775?ssrc=&backlabel=Return

Atlanta, Georgia, City Directory, 1940, 837, https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/imageviewer/collections/2469/images/12164878?ssrc=&backlabel=Return

  Cleaton, J. D.. "Forsyth Street Viaduct, 1907." 1907. September 28, 2023. http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/guidebook/id/141.

Corson, Pete. “Photos: Former Atlanta Constitution and Journal buildings.” The Atlanta Journal Constitution, June 14, 2018. https://www.ajc.com/news/local/photos-former-atlanta-constitution-and-journal-buildings/ndwtDtspsH27pLQvT3H98L/.

Crimmins, Timothy J. “The Past in the Present: An Agenda for Public History and Historic Preservation.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 63, no. 1 (1979): 53–59. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40580077.

  Downs, Billy, Photographer. AFL-CIO United Telegraph Workers on Strike Against Western Union. 1971, Atlanta Journal Constitution. https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/ajc/id/1270/rec/3.

  Elliott, Michael. “Reconceiving Historic Preservation in the Modern City: Conflict and Consensus Building in Atlanta.” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 16, no. 2 (1999): 149–63. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43030496.

“Gay Atlanta Map of Downtown Atlanta.” Atlanta Time Machine. Accessed September 30, 2023. http://atlantatimemachine.com/.

Kimball Opera House. Atlanta History Photograph Collection. VIS 170.2583.001. Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

  Lyon, Elizabeth A. “Cultural and Environmental Resource Management: The Role of History in Historic Preservation.” The Public Historian 4, no. 4 (1982): 69–86. https://doi.org/10.2307/3377048.

  McWilliams, Jeremiah. “Study: ‘Gulch’ impact hefty.” The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Jan 29, 2012. https://www.ajc.com/news/study-gulch-impact-hefty/YNv4JB0YYk77PDSBbvg34L/.

  Miles, Richard. Western Union Strike Idles 450 in Georgia. The Atlanta Constitution. 1972. https://www.newspapers.com/article/118359555/the-atlanta-constitution/.

  Nonnenmacher, Tomas. “History of the U.S. Telegraph Industry”. EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples. August 14, 2001. URL http://eh.net/encyclopedia/history-of-the-u-s-telegraph-industry/

  Perry, Chuck. "Atlanta Journal-Constitution." New Georgia Encyclopedia, last modified Sep 11, 2019. https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/atlanta-journal-constitution/

Reed, Wallace Putnam. History of Atlanta, Georgia, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers. Syracuse, NY: D. Mason & Co. 1889.

  Sanborn Map Company. "Insurance maps, Atlanta, Georgia, 1911 / published by the Sanborn Map Company." 1911. Accessed September 28, 2023. https://dlg.usg.edu/record/dlg_sanb_atlanta-1911#item.

  Union Station. Floyd Jillson Photographs. VIS 71.72.25, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

  Union Station. Kenneth Rogers Photographs. VIS 88.625.05, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

  Unknown. "Austell Building." 1906. September 28, 2023. http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/athpc/id/1242.

References

[1] Kimball Opera House, Atlanta History Photograph Collection, VIS 170.2583.001, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

[2] Wallace Putnam Reed, History of Atlanta, Georgia, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers, (Syracuse, NY: D. Mason & Co., 1889), 163.

[3] Wallace Putnam Reed, History of Atlanta, Georgia, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers, (Syracuse, NY: D. Mason & Co., 1889), 165.

[4] "Georgia State Capitol”, Atlanta Georgia Government, Accessed October 1, 2023, https://www.atlantaga.gov/government/departments/city-planning/office-of-design/urban-design-commission/georgia-state-capitol.

[5] Account Book 1885-1889, William B Miles Account Book, MSS236f, Folder 1, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

[6] Unknown. "Austell Building." 1906. September 28, 2023. http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/athpc/id/1242.

[7] Account Book 1885-1889, William B Miles Account Book, MSS236f, Folder 1, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

[8] Account Book 1885-1889, William B Miles Account Book, MSS236f, Folder 1, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

[9] Cleaton, J. D.. "Forsyth Street Viaduct, 1907." 1907. September 28, 2023. http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/guidebook/id/141 .

[10] Sanborn Map Company, "Insurance maps, Atlanta, Georgia, 1911 / published by the Sanborn Map Company", 1911, (Accessed September 28, 2023), https://dlg.usg.edu/record/dlg_sanb_atlanta-1911#item .

[11] Atlanta, Map, Atlanta Georgia, Foote and Davies Company, 1919, From Library of Congress, Map Collections, https://www.loc.gov/item/75693190/. (Accessed September 28, 2023).

[12] Atlanta, Georgia, City Directory, 1910, 64, 116, https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/imageviewer/collections/2469/images/12245934?ssrc=&backlabel=Return.

[13] Brown-Randolph Co. V Guide Et Al., No.2032. 106 S.E. 161,151 GA 281, Supreme Court of Georgia, 1921.

[14] Atlanta, Georgia, City Directory, 1920, 583-584, https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/imageviewer/collections/2469/images/12230775?ssrc=&backlabel=Return

[15]Atlanta, Map, Atlanta Georgia, Foote and Davies Company, 1919, From Library of Congress, Map Collections, https://www.loc.gov/item/75693190/. (Accessed September 28, 2023).

[16] Atlanta, Georgia, City Directory, 1940, 837, https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/imageviewer/collections/2469/images/12164878?ssrc=&backlabel=Return

[17] Union Station, Kenneth Rogers Photographs, VIS 88.625.05, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

[18] Union Station, Floyd Jillson Photographs, VIS 71.72.25, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

[19] “Gay Atlanta Map of Downtown Atlanta”, Atlanta Time Machine, Accessed September 30, 2023, http://atlantatimemachine.com/ .

[20] AJCN005-041b, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photographic Archives. Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library, 1950, https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/ajc/id/14049/ .

[21] "Telegraphers Call a Strike at Western Union Tonight." New York Times, May 31, 1971. https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/telegraphers-call-strike-at-western-union-tonight/docview/119326236/se-2.

[22] Billy Downs, AFL-CIO United Telegraph Workers on Strike Against Western Union, 1971, Atlanta Journal Constitution, https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/ajc/id/1270/rec/3 .

[23] Richard Miles, Western Union Strike Idles 450 in Georgia, The Atlanta Constitution, 1972, https://www.newspapers.com/article/118359555/the-atlanta-constitution/

[24] Tomas Nonnenmacher, “History of the U.S. Telegraph Industry”. EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples. August 14, 2001, http://eh.net/encyclopedia/history-of-the-u-s-telegraph-industry/.

[25] Chuck Perry, "Atlanta Journal-Constitution." New Georgia Encyclopedia, last modified Sep 11, 2019. https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/atlanta-journal-constitution/.

[26] Pete Corson, “Photos: Former Atlanta Constitution and Journal buildings”, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, June 14, 2018, https://www.ajc.com/news/local/photos-former-atlanta-constitution-and-journal-buildings/ndwtDtspsH27pLQvT3H98L/.

[27] 1972 September, Central Atlanta Progress, Inc. Photographs, VIS 139.21.01, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

[28] Jeremiah McWilliams, “Study: ‘Gulch’ impact hefty”, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Jan 29, 2012, https://www.ajc.com/news/study-gulch-impact-hefty/YNv4JB0YYk77PDSBbvg34L/.

[29]Michael Elliot, “Reconceiving Historic Preservation in the Modern City: Conflict and Consensus Building in Atlanta.” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 16, no. 2 (1999): 149–63. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43030496.

[30]  Michael Elliot, “Reconceiving Historic Preservation in the Modern City: Conflict and Consensus Building in Atlanta.” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 16, no. 2 (1999): 149–63. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43030496.

[31]Timothy J Crimmins, “The Past in the Present: An Agenda for Public History and Historic Preservation.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 63, no. 1 (1979): 53–59. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40580077.

[32] Timothy J Crimmins, “The Past in the Present: An Agenda for Public History and Historic Preservation.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 63, no. 1 (1979): 53–59. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40580077.

[33]Elizabeth A Lyon, “Cultural and Environmental Resource Management: The Role of History in Historic Preservation.” The Public Historian 4, no. 4 (1982): 69–86. https://doi.org/10.2307/3377048.

The Similarities Between the World War One and the U.S. Civil War

Picture trenches. Miles of trenches with knee-deep mud. Pulverized trees and rusty barbed wire. These are just a few images that bring World War One or the Great War to mind. Others show endlessly firing machine guns, mowing down soldiers as they charge toward their opponents.

However, the Great War was foreshadowed by the U.S. Civil War. Matt Whittaker explains.

A German trench occupied by British soldiers in World War One at Ovillers-la-Boisselle, July 1916 during the Battle of the Somme. The men came from A Company, 11th Battalion, in the Cheshire Regiment.

Sadly, many of these battles started this way. Troops went “over the top,” using mass infantry tactics, and suffered. An often-cited example is the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Between all the machine gun fire and more, some 19,000 British soldiers died on the first day. Technology simply moved faster than tactics had evolved.

Yet, some fifty years before the American Civil War provided a glimpse of what would come. In that war, new thinking was required, too.

But in this solely American war, what prompted such a change? There wasn’t just one reason but a combination of technology, tactics, a shift to total war, and perhaps the biggest foretelling – trench warfare.

The American Civil War began after much complex political, economic, and social issues boiled over in April 1861. With the bombing of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, the war started.

Trench warfare

Though a significant point, trench warfare occurred later in the Civil War. The first similarity was industrialized warfare. America’s industrial industry capacity built up faster than most countries, Britain aside.

How is this important? Such capability allowed rapid technological advancements like railroads, ironclads, and repeating weapons.

Both sides in the war would depend on railroads for supplies and movement. With good rail lines, troops could be moved quicker and in more significant numbers with their stores. The North used its great network to move troops swiftly for battles or offensive build-ups.

In 1914, the French used trains to rush troops to stop the German Army at the Battle of the Marne. Like this, the 1862 First Battle of Bull Run demonstrated what rail lines and a clever commander could do.

Confederate General Beauregard's 20,000 troops faced a Union army of 35,000. Beauregard utilized cavalry to screen a second Union force to his west, allowing trains to hurry 11,000 soldiers east and attack almost immediately. The Union troops, surprised, fled after a sharp battle with these unexpected reinforcements.

Gatling gun

A more ominous omen came with the Gatling gun, a six-barreled hand-cranked precursor to the machine gun like the Maxim or Hotchkiss. Patented in 1862, the Gatling was not a common sight. In 1865, Union commander General Butler purchased twelve to defend positions during the siege of Petersburg.

Any movie aficionado knows that movies about the Great War show troops getting mowed down by machine guns. Like the new Gatling, using the rifled musket and repeating rifles ended the smooth-bore, single-shot musket era. Their greater range or sustained fire proved to be game changers.

The dated tactic of double infantry rows formed up to blast away at their opponents ended. Soldiers got wounded or killed by their foes before being in effective range. Beyond sixty yards, musket balls simply were not accurate. The new Minie ball used with a rifled musket could be effective out to 500 yards, though either side rarely took advantage of this.

Besides rifled muskets, the Civil War pioneered repeating arms like the seven-shot Spencer or fifteen-shot Henry rifle. Soldiers no longer had to halt, pull out powder to pour down the barrel, followed by a slug. The next step meant ramming all down the barrel. The soldier put a percussion cap to ignite the black powder.

At best, a soldier could fire three or four times during the Civil War. During the Great War, the Royal Army trained their regulars to fire a brisk fifteen rounds per minute. Now, that means quite a lot of lead going out. Ouch.

Charges

In another ill-omened battle for the future, repeating arms demonstrated what Great War soldiers would face. At the 1863 Battle of Hoover's Gap in Tennessee, the famed Lightning Brigade squared off against five Confederate brigades.

The Southerners charged against the Brigade’s defenses, only to be cut down by the constant stream of gunfire. They bravely charged into a hail of lead using the same bad tactics. The Confederate colonel leading this attack thought he was outnumbered 5 to 1. A flanking attack on both sides met the same, losing 250 men in the first five minutes. The retreat became a rout, and Chattanooga rejoined the Union.

Beyond all these battles, the nature of this war changed and continued with the Great War. The philosophy of "hard war” was termed. Similar to total war, the concept is the same. In April 1863, President Lincoln decided on total war to shorten the conflict.

Like Imperial Germany decades later, the Confederates reeled under its impact. Lincoln instructed his commanders like Grant and Sherman to “do what was necessary.” Like the Royal Navy’s four-year blockade crippling the German economy, the South’s economy withered.

In a tough march, Sherman’s 1864 March to the Sea campaign cut a sixty-mile-wide path from Atlanta to the sea. He directed his men to burn, loot, destroy whatever they could, and live off the land. Germany, too, by 1918, became an economic mess, suffering from food shortages, astronomical inflation, and political turmoil.

Sadly, total war worked, wreaking havoc on the defeated that would take years to recover.

Trenches

The last Civil War peak into the World War One future was the most terrible – the trenches. The Civil War trench war began at Petersburgh, Virginia, in 1864. Generals Grant and Lee battled constantly around Richmond, the Confederate’s capital.

Despite Grant’s great numbers and big guns, each fight ended in a deadlock. In a switch, Grant made a go for Petersburg – a critical regional supply hub. However, Lee fought the North to a standstill. Let the siege begin!

Most of the fighting around Petersburg ended in stalemates, with no room to maneuver. More than forty miles of trenches appeared, the most of any Civil War campaign. Grant’s best option was to batter his way in to capture this vital hub. Terrible fighting, like the Battle of the Crater, resulted in much death.

Attempting to end the stalemate, the Union detonated explosives under a big trench redoubt, leaving a massive crater and stunning the defenders. Northerners rushed into cavity, attempting to climb into the trenches, followed by the city. The Confederates rallied and bloodily pushed back the invaders, leaving the status quo of back and forth intact.

Like all trenches in World War One, the Petersburg ones became filthy pits filled with muddy water, empty ammunition boxes, and trash. Diseases followed next, making both sides miserable. Eventually, the Union Army forced Lee to give up the city, ending the siege and losing the war. All told, the trench warfare around Petersburg killed or wounded 70,000 men.

The American Civil eerily predicted much of the despair that ensued during the Great War. Whether death tolls from obsolete infantry tactics to the wholesale change to “total war,” few predicted this in their rush to win.

What do you think of the similarities between World War One and the U.S. Civil War? Let us know below.

A Great Boat Tragedy in New York: General Slocum Disaster

As soon as the fire became visible beyond the ship, bystanders from nearby boats and on shore rushed to aid the stricken steamer. One rescuer story that got extensive newspaper coverage was that of teenager Mary McCann, a recent immigrant from Ireland who was recuperating from an illness at the isolation hospital on North Brother Island. Mary ran to the shore and swam out time after time to pull as many children as she could to safety. Reports of the number she saved range from six to twenty depending on the newspaper account.

Here, Richard Bluttal looks at the June 1904 General Slocum disaster in New York City in which over 1,000 people died.

A picture of the General Slocum.

The New York Times wrote about the staff at the North Brother Island hospital, who immediately rushed to aid the beached ship. They not only pulled people from the water using ladders and human chains, but also resuscitated victims and provided medical care. The New-York Tribune described a story similar to Mary’s, in which a hospital employee named Pauline Puetz swam out multiple times to pull victims ashore, even rescuing a child who had been caught in the ship’s paddlewheel.

The New York Evening World wrote about 12-year-old Louise Galing, who jumped into the water with the toddler she was babysitting and managed to keep ahold of the child until they were pulled from the water. The World also recounted that when young Ida Wousky would have fainted, 13-year-old John Tishner kicked his friend in the shins to wake her up. John then managed to find a life preserver and put it on Ida, pushing her into the water when she wouldn’t jump. He held onto her by her n hair until they were rescued by a boat. 

It was, by all accounts, a glorious Wednesday morning on June 15, 1904, and the men of Kleindeutschland—Little Germany, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side–were on their way to work. Just after 9 o’clock, a group from St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church on 6th Street, mostly women and children, boarded the General Slocum for their annual end-of-school outing. Bounding aboard what was billed as the “largest and most splendid excursion steamer in New York,” the children, dressed in their Sunday school outfits, shouted and waved flags as the adults followed, carrying picnic baskets for what was to be a long day away.

A German band played on deck while the children romped and the adults sang along, waiting to depart. Just before 10 o’clock, the lines were cast off, a bell rang in the engine room, and a deck hand reported to Captain William Van Schaick that nearly a thousand tickets had been collected at the plank. That number didn’t include the 300 children under the age of 10, who didn’t require tickets. Including crew and catering staff, there were about 1,350 aboard the General Slocum as it steamed up the East River at 15 knots toward Long Island Sound, headed for Locust Grove, a picnic ground on Long Island’s North Shore, about two hours away. The Slocum headed out from its berth at 3rd Street on the East River at about 9:30 am with a band playing and the passengers joyously celebrating the smooth ride and beautiful weather. The excursion vessel had been chartered to take the group—almost all of them women and children—from Manhattan to picnic grounds on Long Island.

The Fire

As the ship reached 97th Street, some of the crew on the lower deck saw puffs of smoke rising through the wooden floorboards and ran below to the second cabin. But the men had never conducted any fire drills, and when they turned the ship’s fire hoses onto the flames, the rotten hoses burst. Rushing back above deck, they told Captain Van Schaick that they had encountered a “blaze that could not be conquered.” It was “like trying to put out hell itself.”  A fire began in the forward cabin, the steamboat General Slocum caught fire in the East River of New York City, including many children. In the course of 20 minutes an estimated 1,021 people died, mostly women and children.

In the neighborhood of Little Germany families were decimated, many losing a mother and two or more children. In some cases entire families were killed. At the Lutheran Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens, over 900 victims were buried, including 61 in a mass grave for the unidentified.

Addressing the disaster

Onlookers in Manhattan, seeing the flames, shouted for the captain to dock immediately. Instead, Van Schaick, fearing the steering gear would break down in the strong currents and leave the Slocum helpless in midriver, plowed full speed ahead. He aimed for a pier at 134th Street, but a tugboat captain warned him off, fearing the burning ship would ignite lumber stored there. Van Shaick made a run for North Brother Island, a mile away, hoping to beach the Slocum sideways so everyone would have a chance to get off. The ship’s speed, coupled with a fresh north wind, fanned the flames. Mothers began screaming for their children as passengers panicked on deck. As fire enveloped the Slocum, hundreds of passengers hurled themselves overboard, even though many could not swim.

The crew distributed life jackets, but they too were rotten. Boats sped to the scene and pulled a few passengers to safety, but mostly they encountered children’s corpses bobbing in the currents along the tidal strait known as Hell Gate. One newspaper described it as “a spectacle of horror beyond words to express—a great vessel all in flames, sweeping forward in the sunlight, within sight of the crowded city, while her helpless, screaming hundreds were roasted alive or swallowed up in waves.”  Although the captain was ultimately responsible for the safety of passengers, the owners had made no effort to maintain or replace the ship's safety equipment. The main deck was equipped with a standpipe connected to a steam pump, but the fire hose attached to the forward end of the standpipe, a 100 ft (30 m) length of "cheap unlined linen", had been allowed to rot and burst in several places. When the crew tried to put out the fire; they were unable to attach a rubber hose because the coupling of the linen hose remained attached to the standpipe. The ship was also equipped with hand pumps and buckets, but they were not used during the disaster; the crew gave up firefighting efforts after failing to attach the rubber hose.   The crew had not practiced a fire drill that year, and the lifeboats were tied up and inaccessible. (Some claim they were wired and painted in place.) 

Survivors reported that the life preservers were useless and fell apart in their hands, while desperate mothers placed life jackets on their children and tossed them into the water, only to watch in horror as their children sank instead of floating. Most of those on board were women and children who, like most Americans of the time, could not swim; victims found that their heavy wool clothing absorbed water and weighed them down in the river.

Passengers trampled children in their rush to the Slocum‘s stern. One man, engulfed in flames, leaped over the port side and shrieked as the giant paddle wheel swallowed him. Others blindly followed him to a similar fate. A 12 year-old boy shimmied up the ship’s flagstaff at the bow and hung there until the heat became too great and he dropped into the flames. Hundreds massed together, only to bake to death. The middle deck soon gave way with a terrific crash, and passengers along the outside rails were jolted overboard. Women and children dropped into the choppy waters in clusters. In the mayhem, a woman gave birth—and when she hurled herself overboard, her newborn in her arms, they both perished.

The captain beached the burning vessel on North Brother Island, but the stern of the ship, where most of the passengers had been forced by the fire, was left in ten to thirty feet  of water. Though there were life preservers  and lifeboats aboard, poor maintenance and neglect had made many of them useless. 

Unlike the Titanic which sank eight years later, where the crew was organized and disciplined in evacuating the ship, most of the Slocum crew of thirty six men pushed passengers out of the way and abandoned ship. The crew had never been trained in a fire drill and the few lifeboats on board were never lowered – they were wired down.

The panicked passengers were left to fend for themselves. The life preservers were strapped to the ceiling of the ship’s deck and were out of reach of many of the women and children. Those who could grab a life preserver had a nasty surprise waiting for them.

The Slocum and its life preservers had “passed inspection” only weeks before, without ever actually being checked. In reality the life preservers were rotten – filled with dried, pulverized cork.

When some passengers tried putting them on, they disintegrated in their hands. Others  who managed to jump into the water wearing the “good” life preservers, sank like a boulder was weighted around them.

Not only was the pulverized cork filling of the life preservers waterlogged without an iota of buoyancy, it seems some of the life preservers had metal weights added to them to bring their weight specifications up to standards. Fire hoses of the cheapest kind were also rotten from age and neglect, ruptured when activated and were rendered useless.

Women who strapped life preservers onto their children and tossed their small, loved ones overboard, watched in horror as they disappeared without ever coming back to the surface.

Weighed down by their heavy clothing and struggling against a strong tide, 400-600 passengers drowned after the ship was beached. Though estimates vary, a government report commission  into the disaster reported 955 passenger deaths—or about 70 percent.

Van Shaick was believed to be the last person off the Slocum when he jumped into the water and swam for shore, blinded and crippled. He would face criminal charges for his ship’s unpreparedness and be sentenced to 10 years in prison; he served four when he was pardoned by President William Howard Taft on Christmas Day, 1912.

Aftermath

 Within an hour, 150 bodies were stretched out on blankets covering the lawn and sands of North Brother Island. Most of them were women. One was still clutching her lifeless baby, who was “tenderly taken out of her arms and laid on the grass beside her.” Rescued orphans of 3, 4 and 5 years old milled about the beach, dazed. Hours would pass before they could leave the island, many taken to Bellevue Hospital to treat wounds and await the arrival of grief-stricken relatives.

At Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island, where patients with typhoid and other contagious diseases had been quarantined, staff spotted the burning vessel approaching and quickly prepared the hospital’s engines and hoses to pump water, hoping to douse the flames. The island’s fire whistle blew and dozens of rescuers moved to the shore. Captain Van Schaick, his feet blistering from the heat below, managed to ground the Slocum sideways about 25 feet from shore. Rescuers swam to the ship and pulled survivors to safety. Nurses threw debris for passengers to cling to while others tossed ropes and life preservers. Some nurses dove into the water themselves and pulled badly burned passengers to safety. Still, the heat from the flames made it impossible to get close enough as the Slocum became engulfed from stem to stem.

Since there was no manifest of passengers the final death toll will never be exact, but it was probably more than 1021.  The official police report put the number at 1031 and The Brooklyn Eagle newspaper listed 1204 as dead or missing.

In the neighborhood of Little Germany families were decimated, many losing a mother and two or more children. In some cases entire families were killed. At the Lutheran Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens, over 900 victims were buried, including 61 in a mass grave for the unidentified.

The owners of the General Slocum, The Knickerbocker Steamboat Company escaped jail time for negligence. Knickerbocker President Frank Barnaby was indignant at people wanting to sue him or his company. Knickerbocker filed suit that a limit be fixed to their liability claimed by the plaintiffs as the number of suits grew for loss, damage and injury.The liability limit they wanted was not to exceed the value of the boat. That is the value of the boat after the fire and beaching and termination of the excursion should not exceed the sum of  for all the victims collectively — $5,000. That would amount to less than $5 paid per fatality and injured.

The owners then had the gall to claim that under maritime law that sum should be subject to the fees of the salvage and wreckage services performed. Essentially, they were claiming they should be limited to the current value of their wrecked boat which would be close to nothing. Sure enough, besides a fine they had to pay, Knickerbocker ended up paying nothing to the survivors or the victims’ families.

Ship safety inspectors Henry Lundberg and John Fleming who had passed the General Slocum despite numerous violations were indicted. Lundberg was tried three separate times for manslaughter but was never convicted.

Eight people were indicted by a federal grand jury after the disaster: the captain, two inspectors, and the president, secretary, treasurer, and commodore of the Knickerbocker Steamship Company.

Most boatmen felt that Van Schaick "was unjustly made a scapegoat for the resulting tragedy, instead of the owners of the steamer or the effectiveness of the life saving and fire fighting equipment then required — and the inspections of it by government inspectors". He was the only person convicted. He was found guilty on one of three charges: criminal negligence, for failing to maintain proper fire drills and fire extinguishers. The jury could not reach a verdict on the other two counts of manslaughter. He was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. He spent three years and six months at Sing Sing prison before he was paroled. President Theodore Roosevelt declined to pardon Van Schaick. Van Schaick was finally released when the federal parole board under the William Howard Taft administration voted to free him on August 26, 1911. He was pardoned by President Taft on December 19, 1912; the pardon became effective on Christmas Day. After his death in 1927, Schaick was buried in Oakwood Cemetery (Troy, New York).

The neighborhood of Little Germany, which had been in decline for some time before the disaster as residents moved uptown,  almost disappeared afterward. With the trauma and arguments that followed the tragedy and the loss of many prominent settlers, most of the Lutheran Germans remaining in the Lower East Side eventually moved uptown. The church whose congregation chartered the ship for the fateful voyage was converted to a synagogue in 1940 after the area was settled by Jewish residents.

What do you think of the General Slocum Disaster? Let us know below.

Now read Richard’s article on the role of baseball in the US Civil War here.

A Brief History of Russian Museums - From Stalin to Putin

Russia has a very rich cultural history, and its museums have played an important role in the country. Here, Tim Brinkhof considers how Russia’s museums helped bring down one dictatorship only to build up another.

Soviet troops by the portico of the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg (then Leningrad) during the Siege of Leningrad in 1943.

One of the most shocking museum exhibits to ever take place in Russia was about…underwear. “Memory of the Body: Underwear of the Soviet Era” opened at the City History Museum in St. Petersburg in 2000, offering an intimate look at life under communism by way of bras and boxers. Protests from embarrassed officials reinforced the curators’ message: that socialist prudishness survived the fall of the USSR itself.

There is more to museum exhibits than meets the eye. This is true everywhere, but especially in countries obsessed with (or haunted by) their own history. They not only preserve cultural memories from the past, but also reveal how that culture wishes to be perceived in the present. A change in exhibits, writes German historian Karl Schlögel in his newly translated book The Soviet Century: Archaeology of a Lost World, means “an alteration has taken place, a revision, a revaluation or a change in perspective.” Numerous revaluations happened inside Russia’s museums over the past century, and – when viewed in succession – they mirror the transformations of Russian society at large.

Bolsheviks

When the Bolsheviks took charge in 1917, they didn’t know what do with museums. According to his wife, Vladimir Lenin “was no great lover” of them, seeing them for what they arguably were at that point: trophy rooms of the fallen elite. Instead of disbanding museums, however, the revolutionaries opted to organize exhibits of their own.

For better or worse, Russia’s museum culture was reimagined along socialist lines. For better, because the Communist Party took collections from Saint Petersburg and Moscow and redistributed them across the countryside in an effort to decentralize cultural goods. (“This,” Schlögel writes, “is how masterpieces by Boris Kustodiev or Kazimir Malevich can still be found in remote locations where no one would ever expect to find them.”) For worse, because museums became places not of learning, but indoctrination. There were exhibits about atheism, railways, the Great Patriotic War, but not the Terror or the Holodomor. These topics were removed from museums, just as they were removed from schools.

Where Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Joseph Stalin permitted criticism of Stalinism in particular, Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika policies of the mid-1980s normalized criticism of the Soviet system in general. A “Ten Years Khrushchev” exhibit in Moscow’s Komsomol'skiy Prospekt confronted visitors with their own, uncensored past, from daily life inside the kommunalka or communal apartments, to the return of inmates from Stalin’s gulags. Many exhibits from this period featured objects from mass graves which were, at long last, allowed to be opened up.

Post-Soviet era

Of all chapters in the history of Russian museums, the one situated between the USSR’s collapse and the country’s return to contentious order under the Russian Federation is the foggiest. Dwindling political and financial security led to a boom in antiques smuggling, just as it had in 1917. Many museums were closed, while others issued massive layoffs. As Christianity returned to Russia, so did calls to convert locations like Petersburg’s St. Isaac’s Cathedral (turned into a museum by Bolsheviks) back into churches. On the other side of the spectrum was the progressive “Memory of the Body” exhibit, which had visitors giggling at how uncomfortable and unsexy their state-issued undergarments used to be.

Museums in Vladimir Putin’s Russia heavily resemble their Soviet counterparts. Not just in their choice of subject – exhibits applaud military campaigns in Afghanistan and Chechnya while museums dedicated to LGBTQ history are closed – but also in their approach. Rather than letting visitors loose and allowing them to draw their own conclusions from the exhibits, as they are in western countries, Russian museums have – as Schlögel’s puts it – “an order of their own, much like that of old-time school textbooks, so that whoever follows the narrative line cannot really go astray. They follow the red threat and at the end of the trail, having successfully negotiated all the vicissitudes and dangers, arrive at an end point, which is indispensable in any historical narrative.”

Under the Communist Party, this narrative was Marxism: the preordained process of dialectic materialism that guided humanity from prehistory to feudalism to capitalism and finally, following the USSR’s example, towards communism. Under Putin, Marxism has been replaced by a new narrative of Russian exceptionalism, in which the proudly illiberal country – a civilization onto its own – is destined to become the world’s one and only superpower. It is, as historian Ian Garner shows in his new book Z Generation: Into the Heart of Russia's Fascist Youth, a narrative full of inconsistences and contradictions, but which – thanks to state-owned television, social media, and museums – is accepted by a frightening number of Russian citizens.

What do you think of Russian museum culture? Let us know below.

Can Neville Chamberlain’s Career be Defined his Failed Appeasement Policy?

Neville Chamberlain will without a doubt continue to be a controversial figure in British history. His tenure as a British Prime Minister will be always overshadowed by his last seven months in that position as German forces swept across France and Belgium forcing the British and French evacuation from Dunkirk. His appeasement policy has been portrayed as a weak and ineffective Prime Minister who sold out to Hitler. This perspective has been allowed to stand as the defining feature of his career but there was more to Chamberlain than his appeasement policy and the disaster that ensued.

Steve Prout looks at Neville Chamberlain’s career.

Neville Chamberlain holding the signed Munich Agreement in 1938 after meeting Hitler. The agreement committed to peaceful methods.

Lloyd George and the First World War

Chamberlain first started out in life as a successful businessperson before serving as the Lord Mayor of Birmingham between 1914-16. Afterwards he took the post as Director-General of National Service during the First World War under David Lloyd George. It would not be a successful start in his political career because he was often at odds with Lloyd George who was particularly critical of Chamberlains’ techniques. Chamberlains and his supporters would argue that he frequently lacked the support and clarity needed from Lloyd George to be successful in that role.

Both would harbour mutual dislike of each other that would continue up to Chamberlains death. Lloyd George would state that Chamberlain was “not one of my most successful selections” and in later added, ‘When I saw that pinhead, I said to myself, he won’t be of any use.’ Chamberlain in return referred to Lloyd George as "that dirty little Welsh Attorney.” Suffice to say it was a relationship that would never repair and resurface much later at when Chamberlain was at his most vulnerable.

Not all of Chamberlain’s peers agreed with Lloyd George’s comments. John Dillon, an Irish Nationalist MP, stated in a rather flowery fashion that "if Mr. Chamberlain were an archangel, or if he were Hindenburg and Bismarck and all the great men of the world rolled into one, his task would be wholly beyond his powers".  Bonar Law in a more succinct manner called Chamberlain’s role an "absolutely impossible task" and would later rescue Chamberlain’s career. Meanwhile Chamberlain's successor Auckland Geddes received more favor and support than Chamberlain ever received.

In 1918 when Chamberlain became a Member of Parliament he refused to serve under Lloyd George and in 1920 he refused a junior appointment offered by Andrew Bonar Law in the Ministry of Health. In October 1922, the situation changed when Lloyd George’s Coalition Government collapsed and presented Chamberlain new opportunities and a succession of top-level posts would follow.

Despite Lloyd George’s disparaging comments Bonar-Law was impressed with Chamberlain’s administerial abilities and appointed him as Postmaster-General. A promotion to Minister of Health in March 1923 soon followed and his advancement would continue. In August 1923 Bonar Law was forced to resign due to his ill health and Stanley Baldwin who took over as Prime Minister appointed Chamberlain as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

His ascent to the top levels of government was as fast as it was brief. Within five months Baldwins Conservative government was defeated in the December 1923 general election and the first Labour government took power in January 1924. Chamberlain’s contribution almost went unnoticed, but renowned historian AJP Taylor said of Chamberlain “nearly all of the domestic achievements of Conservative governments between the wars stand to his credit.”  The work he did in the interwar years was considerable.

Domestic affairs – politics in the interwar period

Neville Chamberlain was highly active in all the offices he held. He possessed a drive to reform and promote efficiency. By 1929 he had presented twenty-five bills to Parliament of which twenty-one of this number had become enacted into law and practice. Despite this Opinion remains divided concerning Chamberlains effectiveness as politician and Prime Minister. His achievements were numerous.

The introduction of the Local Government Act of 1929 abolished and reformed the obsolete poor laws in Britain that were not fit for purpose. The administration of poverty relief was placed in the hands of local authorities. One aspect of this act made medical treatment of the infirmaries free to those who could not afford it. In a pre-1945 Welfare State Britain this was a forward-thinking piece of legislation.

The Housing Act in 1922 addressed another set of issues. The necessity for this piece of legislation arose due to the shortfall in housing created by the previous Liberal Government, who under Christopher Addison had promised “homes fit for heroes” for the returning soldiers but the reality was that this promise had not delivered upon. Chamberlain was tasked to address this shortfall. He was of the belief that Government high subsides were the reason building costs were remaining too high and so stunted progress. Being a former businessperson and quintessential conservative, he believed the private building sector would perform the task more efficiently and so reduced these subsides. He was not entirely wrong because by 1929 438,000 houses were built. This was in the words chosen by AJP Taylor’s “the one solid work of this (Baldwins) dull government.” But critics viewed the Housing Act as only helping the lower middle classes and not the industrial workers giving the impression that he was the “enemy of the poor”. This perception would contribute to losing the Conservatives a substantial number of votes.

The introduction of the Widows', Orphans' and Old Age Contributory Pensions Act 1925 lowered the age for entitlement to receive the old age state pension from 70 to 65 (there has been little change since until the twenty first century), and it allowed provisions for dependents of deceased workers. Although it was met with criticism for not extending far enough it was still nevertheless a progressive step forward for pre-welfare state Britain. Chamberlain’s justification to his critics was that the act was not intended to replace private thrift and that the sum was the” maximum financially feasible” within budgetary means.

The Factory Act of 1937 was another successful and progressive piece of legislation for the time. Whether the motive out of altruistic reasons or due to a growing, effective opposition from the Labour Party and the unions it still was particularly far reaching. This Act set various standards factory working condition which addressed working hours, sanitation, lighting, and ventilation. This had significantly improved working conditions set by an earlier Act in 1901. The official wording by the Home Office, signed by Samuel Hoare was that the act presented an “important milestone on the road to safety, health and welfare in Industry.” The Holiday Pay Act of 1938 would follow which allowed workers one full week’s holiday pay. By modern times this seems paltry, but in the context of the time it was a significant move forward for the working population.

Chamberlain had his supporters although much of this support came posthumously. AJP Taylor said that “Chamberlain did more to improve local government while serving as Health Minister than did anyone else in the 20th century” and from an American perspective, according to Bentley Gilbert, Chamberlain was "the most successful social reformer in the seventeen years between 1922 and 1939… after 1922 no one else is really of any significance."

Dutton considers, later in 2001, that Chamberlain's accomplishments at the Ministry of Health were "considerable achievements by any standards" and of Chamberlain himself “a man who was throughout his life on the progressive left of the Conservative Party, a committed believer in social progress and in the power of government at both the national and local level, to do good” - but the war clouds that were gathering above Europe and his domestic achievements would be forgotten.

Munich, Churchill, and the road to war

In his last few months as Prime Minister Chamberlain and his appeasement policy was attacked from his own party and opposition parties with accusations of being blinkered, narrow and supporters of appeasement were now labelled cowards whereas before they were saviours for averting war. This is not entirely fair as for Chamberlain’s government these were not normal times and the problems placed before his government left his few alternatives that sat comfortable or palatable with little or no alternative but to acquiesce to Hitler’s demands.

Chamberlain’s bellicose opponents were either suffering from a delusion that Britain could face the many growing threats abroad alone. There were no suitable allies to form effective alliances with, the USSR was as untrustworthy as Germany, and therefore any containment from the east for the time being was unlikely. There were other threats outside of Europe such as Japan which threatened Britain in the Asia. The USA, a power in the Pacific, was following an isolationist policy. Adding to this were Italian aspirations for empire building in North Africa, and there Britain needed a cautious approach.

Churchill would ignore all of this, re-write history, and instead portray Chamberlain in a poor light whilst at the same flattering his own place in history. On the one hand he said “I have received a great deal of help from Chamberlain. His kindness and courtesy to me in our new relations have touched me. I have joined hands with him and must act with perfect loyalty.”  Then on the other hand he said "Poor Neville will come badly out of history. I know, I will write that history" and he ensured that this happened in his memoirs, The Gathering Storm, in 1948 by referring to Chamberlain as “an upright, competent, well-meaning man fatally handicapped by a deluded self-confidence which compounded an already debilitating lack of both vision and diplomatic experience”.

For many years, his version of events remained unchallenged, but we wonder how much of this can be taken as a gospel of those times. We forget that whereas Chamberlain sought to work with Hitler and was later reviled for doing so, Churchill had no qualms with working with other dictators as we would see for example with Stalin in 1941 and in the 1930s his praise of Mussolini. Stalin’s relationship with the democracies would prove equally toxic. After the war Eastern Europe would be subjected to further totalitarian rule which would last longer than Hitler’s domination of Europe.

Chamberlain was not fooled by the outcome of Munich affair, and he knew by that point in time that Hitler could not be contained nor trusted. He immediately started in earnest an ambitious rearmament programme. This programme was on no small scale and challenges the accusations of complacency that history critics accuse him of. In May 1938 after four months elapsing since Munich agreement, Chamberlain told the annual Conservative Women’s Conference that “we have to make ourselves so strong that it will not be worthwhile for anyone to attempt to attack us”.

Rearmament

Chamberlain began a vast expansion in Britain’s armed services. Whilst doing so he was attacked by the Labour Party for ‘scaremongering, disgraceful in a responsible politician’ because of his support of expansion of Britain’s military capacity. By April 1939, rearmament was swallowing 21.4 per cent of Britain’s Gross National Product, a figure that reached 51.7 per cent by 1940. War was delayed but it was to no avail to “a man of no luck.” The failure of the Norwegian campaign and the subsequent invasion of the Ardennes quickly changed the political landscape for Chamberlain, eroded the support of his own party and of the majority of as in May 1940 British troops were being evacuated off Dunkirk.

The results of Chamberlain’s rearmament programme were not immediately appreciated but the advances made in Air Power and Sonar were vital for the Battle of Britain. The British Spitfire for instance was one of the most up to date fighter planes of the time. The British expeditionary force at the time of its mobilisation was one of the most modern and mechanised armies in the world. Within the disaster of the Norway there was one redeeming feature - that naval battles crippled the German Navy so much it could not be relied upon by Hitler in his plans to invade Britain. All these subtle factors brought Britain a chance, albeit a hairs breadth, of resisting an invasion if nothing more. The realists also knew there was little chance of an offensive and Britain could only consider her meagre defensive options.

Although Chamberlain was assigned the blame for the failure to hold Norway he was not the architect of the plan. This plan was in fact devised and supported by Churchill as First Lord of the Admiralty who made many unpunished errors in the matter. He had the diminished confidence of his Conservative peers owing to his costly actions in The First World War and India. Some feared that Norway would be a repeat of Gallipoli. In the debate in The House of Commons in May 1940 when questioned about the campaign Churchill said “I take complete responsibility for everything that has been done by the Admiralty, and I take my full share of the burden” only to be rebuffed by Lloyd George who vented his criticism out on Chamberlain whose fate was already sealed.

Chamberlain was not alone in his naivety that Germany was economically stretched and that a simple naval blockade would deprive her of her natural resources. Churchill even displayed lack of foresight over Germany’s strategic position when the Soviet Union invaded Poland when he immediately proclaimed, “Hitler’s Gateway the East was closed.” Under the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact, the Soviet Union was providing vast quantities of war materials to Germany. It was a spoken folly equal to “Hitler has missed the bus.”

The war materials the Soviet Union provided to Germany throughout the early years of the war were enough to render any Allied blockade ineffective. Whether Churchill knew the quantities and the extent is not known but it is likely that this would have been available via the British intelligence services. The true extent of the aid the Soviets gave was over 820,000 metric tons (900,000 short tons; 810,000 long tons) of oil, 1,500,000 metric tons (1,700,000 short tons; 1,500,000 long tons) of grain and 130,000 metric tons (140,000 short tons; 130,000 long tons) of manganese ore. This considerable amount of material excludes rubber and other industrial outputs that enabled Germany’s war machine. If Chamberlains political judgements were flawed then equally so were Churchills, but he was not in the Premier’s seat and so escaped much of the fallout.

Critics

Old adversaries and new would be particularly visceral in the debates that followed in parliament. It is interesting how some of Chamberlain’s most vocal and loudest critics were also the most hypocritical. Leo Amery famously quoted “You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!". Leo Amery was a supporter in the 1930s of Italian aggression in Abyssinia and Japanese ambitions in Manchuria. Lloyd George, who held a deep dislike of Chamberlain, also could not resist but he also conveniently forgot his courting of Hitler in September 1936 and his praising of a “pro-English Hitler”. Chamberlain’s premiership ended but he continued to serve in the higher levels of government until his death.

Chamberlain’s political career continued long after Munich and it was not yet over. He still served cordially under Churchill in the war cabinet. Despite the war controversy Chamberlain, in Churchill’s absence due to Prime Ministerial duties, still deputised and chaired the war cabinet meetings until cancer finally forced him to resign in 1940.

Chamberlain spoke of Churchill, “Winston has behaved with the most unimpeachable loyalty. Our relations are excellent, and I know he finds my help of terrific value to him.” Churchill reciprocated: “I have received a great deal of help from Chamberlain. His kindness and courtesy to me in our new relations have touched me. I have joined hands with him and must act with perfect loyalty.” And upon Chamberlains death he said. “What shall I do without poor Neville?,” as Churchill admitted that he “was relying on him (Chamberlain) to look after the Home Front.” Chamberlain had remarkable administrative skills Churchill recognised and still was of value to Britain’s war effort. Churchill himself admitted that the two men could work respectfully and professionally with each other.

In a eulogy in the House of Commons Churchill spoke highly in praise “He had a precision of mind and an aptitude for business which raised him far above the ordinary levels of our generation. He had a firmness of spirit which was not often elated by success, seldom downcast by failure and never swayed by panic…He met the approach of death with a steady eye. If he grieved at all, it was that he could not be a spectator to our victory, but he died with the comfort of knowing that his country had, at least, turned the corner.”

Churchill would conveniently forget this in the post war period and be one of many to blight Chamberlain's career and reputation. Dr Adam Timmins, reviewing the book Appeasing Hitler by Tim Bouverie sees that too much emphasis was put on one event and one person and no other factors that guided that decision which at the time appeared the only sensible option only hindsight offers other alternatives. Without the benefit of hindsight, the phenomena of Hitler were something that had never been witness or confronted before, and with that it is of no surprise that the states people of the 1930s failed to accurately judge him.

Conclusion

Neville Chamberlain’s presence in British history will always be overshadowed by Munich and the road to war. This will always continue to be enforced by surviving accounts such as Michael Foot’s Guilty Men or Churchill’s post war memoirs, which places the failure to contain Hitler together with the early misfortunes unfairly on his shoulders.

When we remove all of this from the emotional equation Neville Chamberlain has been unjustly criticised and maligned by political opportunists of the time who failed to understand the limitations Britain faced. Chamberlain was proof of the adage that “history is written by victors”, a phrase invented by Churchill who did just that when writing about Chamberlain. He conveniently chose to omit his own failures and ill judgement in the early days of the war. It is that context that the Director of Military Operations, Major-General J.N. Kennedy, remarked on later during the campaign in North Africa. "He (Churchill) has a very keen eye to the records of this war”, Kennedy wrote in his diary, “and perhaps unconsciously he puts himself and his actions in the most favourable light.” Churchill’s contradictions and self-aggrandization are unhelpful and misleading.

Chamberlain was the unfortunate victim of circumstances. AJP Taylor terms him a man of no luck whom the cards always ran against. He had a shaky start against Lloyd George and his humiliation at Hitler’s hands bookended his political career. The tide of the war would turn against Hitler and deliver Churchill two titanic allies with immense resources, the USA and T=the USSR, to form a formidable alliance. It was a matter of fortunate timing that Chamberlain would be denied and that Churchill would enjoy.

Chamberlain’s other work, which brought about significant and successful social reform, went unnoticed. At the outbreak of war, he said in Parliament "Everything I have worked for, everything that I have hoped for, everything that I have believed in during my public life, has crashed into ruins." Chamberlain’s legacy would be marred by his unwavering desire to avoid war that was further tainted and twisted by the hypocrisy of his critics. Neville Chamberlain will always be a subject of polemical debate and his reputation will continue to be blighted.

When do you think of Neville Chamberlain’s career? Let us know below.

Now read about Britain’s relationship with the European dictators during the inter-war years here.

References

Stuart Ball - Professor of Modern British History at the University of Leicester. Portrait of a Party: The Conservative Party in Britain, 1918–1945 (Oxford, 2013).

Leo McKinstry - In Defence of Neville Chamberlain – Article the Spectator Nov 2020

David Dutton – Reputations – Neville Chamberlain – May 2001 – Bloomsbury Academic

AJP Taylor English History 1914-45 and Origins of The Second World War

Graham Hughes, history graduate (BA) from St David’s University, Anglo-Nazi Alliance Debate

Paraguay’s 1936 February Revolution and its Lessons for the Paraguayan Left

Like most of Latin America, Paraguay is a nation whose history has been sadly tarnished by social inequities, reactionary politics and civil war, but also one where exceptional circumstances have resulted in the emergence of leaders with bold programmes of reform and the drive to carry them through to the bitter end. One such event was the February Revolution of 1936, which led to the coming to power of a reformer by the name of Rafael Franco.

Vittorio Trevitt explains.

Rafael Franco

This 1936 February Revolution, which saw the old establishment being overthrown and replaced by a military leader, was the culmination of a series of unfortunate events. From the time of its independence from Spain in 1811 Paraguay had been led by a mixture of dictators and civilian leaders who presided over a nation often racked by injustice and instability. In 1883, a law was passed under which land that had previously been universally accessible was enclosed and transformed into large private estates, with peasants, as noted by historian Peter Calvert, “either forced to leave or to work for a pittance.” A bloody war involving Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina lasting from 1864 to 1870 proved a traumatic one, with Paraguay losing an estimated 50% of its people not just through fighting, but also as a consequence of famine and disease. Nor would this usher in a brighter age. In the five decades following the war’s end 32 presidents assumed and were deposed from office in a series of revolts and coups, while the two parties that came to dominate politics for most of that period, the Colorados and Liberals, had little to distinguish themselves in their management of the country.

In 1932 a conflict between Paraguay and Bolivia erupted owing to a dispute over territory that ended in 1935 after much suffering. Criticism was levelled against the government for its handling of the war, with José Félix Estigarribia, a noted hero of that conflict, claiming that at the war’s first major battle his men fought without adequate arms, food, medical supplies or ammo. The authorities had aroused the ire of the army by refusing to provide pensions to disabled war veterans, with the country’s legislature (dominated by the Liberals, one of the main parties that had led Paraguay since independence) rejecting this proposed measure in a 1935 vote, “pleading an exhausted treasury,” as noted by one study. Economic difficulties led to thousands of troops being demobilized; a decision that resulted in many unemployed and disaffected former soldiers wandering aimlessly around the capital. The seeds of revolution were therefore sown long before Franco’s ascension.

The end

The end of the old establishment came in February 1936 when a coup (an event that became known as the February Revolution) brought to power a nationalist coalition. Rafael Franco, the man who headed this alliance, was a war hero and officer of the Chaco War whose fair treatment of soldiers had earned him their support. The social measures rolled out by the new administration seemed to indicate a clear break from the past. A public health ministry was inaugurated, along with the first labor code in Paraguayan history. A National Labor Department was set up to handle matters such as the regulation of women’s employment, and new labor rights were rolled out including a day off on Sundays, an 8-hour workday, bonuses and paid holidays.

Other spheres of life fell under the umbrella of the government’s radical agenda. Public works were introduced, together with a National Patronage of Indigenous People to improve conditions for the nation’s aborigines. To widen land tenure in a nation where only 5% of the people owned land, a law was passed under which the government was given authority to expropriate up to five million acres of uncultivated land and divide it into plots of 25 to 250 acres to sell on favourable terms to farmers without land. By December 1936, over 200,000 acres of land had been expropriated; benefitting thousands of families. Perhaps affirming the faith Franco’s men had in him during his time as a soldier, the revolutionary government devoted much of its time to helping former combatants. Pensions were awarded to Chaco War veterans unable to work due to service-related illness and injury, while those who were crippled were entitled to necessary orthopaedic parts. For a population long accustomed to war and injustice, Franco’s presidency appeared to mark a turning point for the better.

The Franco administration’s tenure was not an isolated incident. Instead, it was part of a trend in Latin America at that time that saw the coming to power of radical reformers committed to policies geared towards the masses instead of the elites. In Colombia, an election in 1930 saw a conservative party being voted out after 70 years in power and the election of a liberal administration that over the course of a decade would roll out a social and economic reform programme akin to the American New Deal. In neighbouring Chile, a similar agenda was pursued by a reform-minded Popular Front following elections in that country in 1938. Further north in Mexico, a populist socialist came to power in 1934 by the name of Lázaro Cárdenas, whose tenure would become legendary amongst the Mexican Left with his radical reforms in areas like land distribution that won the hearts and minds of many.

Short-lived

The administration Franco led, however, did not last as long as the aforementioned governments, with certain actions contributing to its downfall. The administration lacked, for instance, a commitment to democratic values, as demonstrated by decisions made to abolish all political parties and implement press censorship. Also, while the revolutionary period brought tangible gains to workers, the functioning of labor organizations was prohibited at the same time. Nor was the government an ideologically homogeneous one, with socialists, fascists, and individuals harbouring Nazi sympathies amongst its ranks; an attempt on Franco’s part to bring together the different factions within the revolution under one umbrella. This turbulent situation allowed a successful coup to take place in August 1937, one that enabled the Liberals to return to office once more.

Although the return of Paraguay’s traditional hegemonic party seemed to spell the end of a dream for a fairer Paraguay, Franco’s revolution had, in the words of historian Paul H. Lewis, “unleashed expectations of change that couldn’t be ignored.” Traditional Liberals were put to one side and in 1939 a former hero of the Chaco War, José Félix Estigarribia, assumed office. Reflecting the reform impulses of a generation of “New Liberals,” positive measures reminiscent of the Franco era such as agrarian reform were pursued. At the same time however, Esitgarribia responded to unrest (such as conspiracies among some military cliques) following his restoration of political freedoms by suppressing opposition after he declared himself a temporary dictator. Following his death and that of his wife in an airplane crash, his successor Higinio Morínigo clamped down on civil liberties while relying on the army to rule. Pressure from the United States to democratise Paraguay’s political system, however, resulted in Morínigo putting together a new cabinet including the Febreristas (followers of Franco), who during the Forties succeeded in accumulating a support base amongst labor unionists and students. It seemed that the Febreristas had an opportunity to replicate the social justice ethos of the Franco years, but this wasn’t to be. Protests against the president, combined with conflict between backers of the 3 main parties in the cabinet (the Colorados, Liberals and Febreristas), led to Morínigo removing the Febreristas from their posts and allying himself alone with the Colorados. Partly due to violence conducted by a Colorado group who sought to use force to return their party to power, numerous opposition groups rallied to support Franco, who instigated a revolt backed by the overwhelming majority of Paraguay’s army officers and enlisted men. The Colorados, however, mobilised a force strong enough to beat Franco, whose revolt ended in August 1947. In an ironic case of political intrigue, Morínigo would still end up being forced from office. Despite joining the Colorados and endorsing its victorious candidate in elections held the following year, Colorado-leaning officers uncertain of promises made by Morínigo giving up the presidency forced him to leave Paraguay. For the next 6 decades, Paraguay would know the rule of no party other than that of the Colorados.

Lugo

Paraguay would not again see a Franco-esque reformer come to power until 2008 when that year a priest by the name of Fernando Lugo, who headed a broad-based left-right alliance that included the Febreristas won the presidency; marking the end of Colorado hegemony. Despite divisions in his alliance (with echoes of Franco’s), Lugo was able to initiate bold reforms like free dental care, pensions for elderly persons on low incomes, and school snacks. His alliance however, lacked a majority in the legislature, plaguing Lugo’s ability to advance much in the way of meaningful reform. He was also plagued by scandals over paternity claims from his time as a bishop, and was eventually impeached in 2012 on numerous grounds, such as failure to tackle increased insecurity. Much controversy surrounded Lugo’s impeachment, but this failed to generate enough support for a leftist alternative to win the next election, which instead saw the return of the Colorados, who have remained in power to this day.

The Franco interlude provides two worthwhile lessons. The first is that when elites fail to meet the needs and aspirations of its citizenry certain individuals will take drastic measures such as attaining power by force. The second is that acquiring power in this way is doomed to failure, as authoritarian administrations are prone to corruption and, in the case of Franco’s government, badly divided. Achieving a peaceful revolution through the ballot box, with a leadership united with clear goals and progressive values, is the best chance Paraguay has of a brighter future.

What do you think of Paraguay’s 1936 February Revolution? Let us know below.

War Photography Through the Ages

War photography and Photojournalism are an essential part of war reporting and have been in every conflict since the art of photo-taking was invented. As Susan Sontag notes in her seminal work Regarding The Pain of Others, ‘war-making and picture-making are congruent activities.’ But why do we have such a fascination with photos and footage of war? What is Photojournalism? And how has Photojournalism changed over the years? Let us first put photojournalism into context.

Chris Fray explains.

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima by Joe Rosenthal.

A photojournalist is a reporter who uses photos or film to tell a news story. Every war since the first photographed conflict - the Mexican-American War (1846-48) - has been photographed and recorded by images.(1) Images can have a decisive effect on public opinion and perceptions of war. A photograph is a snapshot of a memory, frozen in time, allowing those un-connected to the situation to view the conflict up close and personal.

I would like to take you on a journey spanning over a century, detailing the way in which Photojournalism has progressed and what this means for war photography and for us, the public. I will touch on photography in the major conflicts of the 20th and 21st Centuries, beginning with the First World War (1914-18). We will then explore the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), the Second World War (1939-45), Vietnam (1959-75), the Gulf War (1990-91) and finally the use of photojournalism is our own time using the devastating examples of the ongoing Syrian and Ukrainian conflicts.

First World War

At the start of the 20th Century, cameras were large and cumbersome. Immobility was an issue and the heavy camera required tripods. The fragile glass negative plates were easily broken and darkroom chemicals were required by the photographer to be immediately on hand in order to develop the negative quickly after exposure.(2) Obviously, this did not lend itself to conflict photography.

By the start of the First World War, however, handheld cameras such as the Vest Pocket Kodak were being produced, a favourite of soldiers in the First World War.(3) The quality of the images produced was poor and the camera was prone to blurring, but the negatives had much quicker exposure times than before and most importantly it was small enough to carry in an army pack. War photography was progressing at a fast pace yet the command structures of both sides of the conflict were suspicious of the technological progress.

Almost as soon as war was announced, both the Allies and Germany set hardline policies in place to limit photographer’s abilities to publish images related to conflict and access conflict zones. Each side were deeply concerned with the effect that photography could have on spy-work and espionage as well as domestic morale. Professional photographers were restricted from war zones and could only gain access with written and signed agreements of the war council although censorship was lightened later into the war. The images which were taken have had a lasting impact on the memory of the war and shows the value of photography as a means of mass communication- elements of which have been replicated in every conflict since.(4)

Servicemen were banned from owning or using cameras. But as we know, as soon as rules are made, there are those who are willing to break them. The pictures taken by servicemen on the front lines, in the trenches make up some of the most haunting and evocative photos of the First World War. Many photos show the horror of war in the trenches, soldiers staring up at the camera amongst the mud and barbed wire. Some pictures on the other hand depict daily life- soldiers making tea and playing cards showing that life went on as well, even under the rattle of machine gun and crack of artillery shells.

Spanish Civil War

It was only in the 1920s following the invention of small portable 35mm cameras such as the Leica and Ermanox that war photography fully developed (no pun intended). These cameras were faster and more compact, permitting exposure without a flash which allowed for night time and indoor photos to be taken.(5) With the technological developments of photographic equipment, quick, fast-paced snapshots of battle became possible, revolutionising photography. As a result, audiences were able to experience the heat of battle in their own living rooms.(6) Wireless transmissions of photos and the introduction of affordable, high quality printing paper also allowed photojournalists to have their work published in a matter of days. This quick turnaround was essential to the public relations effort for both sides.(7)

The Spanish Civil war, therefore took place at a turning point for modern photography. The impact of ‘in conflict’ photos on the audiences in Britain, France and the United States should not be understated. Action shots of war had rarely been seen and certainly not on a scale such as this. ‘Photographs of Spain became images not just of conflict but in conflict.’ This was a shocking statement and certainly caught the attention of the world.(8) The war also came at the height of the picture magazines of the 1930s, such as Vu, Life, Picture Post, Regards and Match. These magazines focused mainly on images and adverts. These magazines had an exceptionally far-reaching readership and all of them featured the civil war to some extent, making the Spanish Civil War the first war to be covered and photographed for a mass audience.(9)

Left leaning photojournalists such as Robert Capa, David Seymour and Augusti Centelles began to use their platforms as photographers in the picture magazines to influence readers in the UK, France and the USA to contribute to the Republican war effort. Photographs were becoming weapons of influence. A number of photographs taken during the Civil War have taken on iconic roles in representations of the fight against fascism. Possibly the most famous is Robert Capa’s ‘Fallen Soldier.’ It depicts a Republican soldier at the instant of death, as a bullet hits him in the head, knocking him backwards. It is a tragic depiction of the brutality of war, so close you can almost hear the fatal shot. By the end of the Civil War, war photography was firmly established and exceptionally popular. Due to the way in which Nationalism was progressing in Europe, however, many Europeans were to themselves face conflict, not only through the pages of a magazine but at their own front doors.

Second World War

Many of the Civil War photographers who had cut their teeth in the 1930s were seasoned photojournalists by the start of the Second World War in 1939, with strong links to well-read magazines. However now the scene of conflict was not just a single country, but now spanned across the whole world as photographers from Europe to Africa, Russia to Asia were capturing unbelievable pictures of worldwide conflict. With more people shifting between countries than ever before, war was now a global affair, and therefore so to was photography.

The Spanish Civil War photographers were taking photos and sharing with audiences as a call to action. Now war was first and foremost in the public mind. Western photographers were using their skills in support of the Allied mission against the evil Nazi threat. This was a war in which both sides would employ photography effectively as a propaganda tool; as General Dwight Eisenhower wrote, ‘Correspondents have a job in war as essential as the military personnel.’ Media and reporting had an enormous effect of public opinion, and ‘public opinion win wars.’

Censorship of photography was considered highly important and only certain photos were published in the press. Photos such as dead or dying Allied soldiers were considered bad for moral and suppressed for the majority of the war. It was only towards the end of the conflict that President Roosevelt, faced with strikes and opposition to Americans fighting and dying in Europe, decided to allow a clearer and more violent image of the war to be published. Real images of dead and wounded soldiers were shown to the public which roused US citizens to overwhelming support of the war.

In the 1940s, along with the advancement of weapon technology came the improvement of photographic technology. Long-range cargo planes could transport thousands of rolls of films and negatives between Europe and America, allowing the pictures to be shown in papers and magazines within days. Cameras in the 1930s which took 4 X 5 inch negatives were superseded by smaller and faster 35mm, 2 ¼ X 2 ¼ Rolleiflex, Contax rangefinder and Leica cameras. Not only this, but they could be fitted with telescopic lenses, allowing for close-up and zoom shots. More photographers than ever before were braving the battlefield to capture battlefield heroics. As Robert Capa famously remarked, “if your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”

Perhaps some of the most moving photos from the Second World war are those of Robert Capa’s landing on Omaha Beach in the first wave of troops. As the only photographer to land on the beach, we have direct and close-up documentation of the landings. The pictures are blurry, as Capa himself admits, because his hands were trembling so much with fear on the mortared beach.

Vietnam

At the end of the Second World War in 1946, around 8,000 American households owned a television set. By 1960, just under 45 million households had a television.(10) The war which raged in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos captured the public and was beamed to millions of households all over the world, giving the Vietnam war the epithet, ‘the living room war.’ The prominence of television had started to push the press photographers from their prime reporting position. Viewers were now able to see much more than a snapshot of conflict. They were able to see the true horror of the uncompromising cruelty of war, frame by frame in video.

As images of US soldiers fighting for freedom in the previous war had mustered public support, their portrayal in Vietnam had an entirely opposing effect. An American public, expecting images of democratic US Marines fighting Communists were faced with a continuous tirade of film and images showing the mud, squalor and death their sons and fathers encountered, every day on the news. Photographers and journalists were given such freedom in Vietnam never seen before, or since. There was little to no censorship. Instead, the US army command intended to recruit the press into sharing their own perspective of the war. However, as the war developed into the 1960s, more US servicemen were losing their lives in a decade long conflict which many at home found hard to relate to. A cultural and moral revolution in the USA swung much of the public towards peace and as the US high command rapidly lost control of the situation in Vietnam, conditions in the army worsened, professionalism laxed and this was all captured on camera.

Many have claimed that the media were responsible in some part for the defeat of the Vietnam war. One of the key photos in this debate is the Saigon street execution, taken by Eddie Adams in 1968. It shows a prisoner seconds away from a shot to the head, at point blank range. It sums up the lawless and brutal nature of the conflict, even away from the battlefield.

It was in the Vietnam conflict that the idea that war photography could have a harmful impact on the perceptions of war at home. The more advanced technology became and the more skilled the photographers became in depicting horror- the more the public came to view war as a sickness. In essence, war reporting moved too far for the public. It presented the tragic truth of conflict.

Falklands & The Gulf War

If Vietnam was over-reported, sickening the public with gore and grit and eventually ending in defeat, conflicts in the subsequent decades were decidedly, and intentionally, under-reported. As a leading member of Britain’s Ministry of Defence asked rhetorically on the announcement of the Falklands War, “are we going to let the television cameras loose on the battlefield?”(11) The Falklands war took place in the 10 weeks between April and June, 1982 in response to the invasion and occupation of the British islands in the South Atlantic by Argentinian forces.

The British Ministry of Defence exercised extreme control over coverage from the conflict. In polar opposition to Vietnam, the images and footage of the conflict hardly featured in British newspapers and only two of the 29 accredited media professionals were photographers. Governments were clearly learning lessons from Vietnam. By the time the conflict was over, only three batches of film had been returned to London.(12) Although by the 1980s, technology had dramatically improved, the press were unable to use it. In a 10-week conflict in which 255 Britons were killed, 777 wounded and an estimated 2,000 Argentine casualties, no images were released. This only fuelled the public’s suspicion of the Ministry of Defence.(13)

In a very similar vein and probably still scarred by the public reaction to the media surrounding Vietnam, when the Gulf War began in 1990, the utmost care was taken in photographic and film representations of the conflict. Subsequently to the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein, the US led a 42 Nation coalition intervention against Iraq. In the 1990s, photographic technology was incredibly advanced. The coverage of the war however was heavily sedated. Press focus was made on the mechanised technology of war, the enormous guns and steel cannisters, firing bullets and shells from slick fighter jets. Yet there was no indication of what damage these bullets and shells were doing upon impact. It was presented to the public as a ‘painless war of precision.’(14) For the first time a conflict was being told from the perspective not of soldiers, but of weapons.(15)

Reports and briefings from the war council were kept secret from reporters and although there were around 1,600 Western photographers and reporters in the area, they were all isolated from the conflict and supervised by public-affairs managers who made sure they saw only a sanitised view of the conflict. The pictures presented a white-washed version of war which distracted from the real brutalism involved in conflict. Removing the people from the pictures also removed the empathy for the casualties.

There is a belief that over saturating the public with images of death and destruction will ultimately dull society into accepting these images as the norm, gradually shocking less and less until they are ignored altogether. However as Torie Rose DeGhett says, never showing these images at all absolutely guarantees that understanding of the images will never develop. (16)

Syria & Ukraine

So where does this leave us now? Are we able to trust the photographs we see of conflict? With the invention in the past 20 years of social media and camera phones in every pocket, it could easily be argued that each person recording and sharing material could be considered a photojournalist. The process of free un-filtered, un-sanitised and un-censored material being captured by millions per day in various perspectives, angles and mediums provides an overwhelming change to what was previously considered photojournalism. Of course, photojournalists still exist and provide the world with moving images of conflict and pain all around the world. However, the range of material is so large now, that photojournalists are a tiny proportion of those on the ground, experiencing war.

When the Syrian conflict began in March 2011 and turned into a full blown Civil War in 2012 to 2013, foreign photographers and journalists were banned from entering the country. The danger was exceedingly high following the deaths of several foreign reporters including Marie Colvin of The Sunday Times and so the images and footage which was released was shot by local people. Amateur photographers and the average person- anyone with a camera-phone, expressing themselves through photography and film and appealing to the wider world for help. This produced a revolution in photojournalism, with minute by minute live-reporting of conflict via Facebook and Twitter. This is something which was never before possible.

Is this a positive outcome for war journalism? We might be tempted to say, yes. The wider the audience, the more likely the world is to see and connect with the pain of those living through war. However as Swiss photographer, Mattias Bruggmann has said, lack of journalists and increased use of public media opened the floodgates to propagandism from every side in Syria. “Every opposition group and every rebel battalion set up its own unit to produce photographs and videos.”(17)

The most recent and equally harrowing world conflict, the invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces in February 2022 has also produced a tidal wave of images and videos. Again, as technology improves, so does the capacity for ordinary people and individual soldiers on the ground to document their own personal perspective of the conflict. Courageous acts of covert filming of Russian soldiers and troop movements by occupied Ukrainians are being used by the Ukrainian military in some cases and shared on social media, giving the conflict the epitaph, ‘the first tik-tok war.’

The nature of this is certainly not as fun as it sounds. Given the brutalness of this current invasion and the overwhelming number of alleged war crimes committed, organisations such as the United Nations are already compiling photographs by renowned photographers, military footage, local amateur photographers and footage from social media to be used as evidence for prosecuting these crimes in the future.

Throughout its history, war photography has contributed to a truly humanitarian mission. Photographs stand as a testament to conflict. A snapshot of History which says, “this happened,” and “this cannot be forgotten.” It holds those in the wrong, accountable and has always provided a voice to those who are unable to provide their testament. It is the hope of many organisations that these photos will result one day in the prosecution of the perpetrators of war crimes, providing justice for those who were at the receiving end and for the families of those who died. Photos are therefore an essential element, not just to war reporting but to justice and humanity.

What do you think of war photography in different periods? Let us know below.

References

1 Payne, Carol and Brandon, Laura. Guest Editors’ Introduction: Photography at War. P.1.

2 Griffin, Michael. ‘The Great War Photographers: Constructing Myths of History and Photojournalism.’ P.135.

3 https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/the-vest-pocket-kodak-was-the-soldiers-camera/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20first%20and,years%20ago%2C%20in%20April%201912.&text=The%20Vest%20Pocket%20Kodak%20camera,model%20was%20discontinued%20in%201926.

4 https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/photography

5 Brothers, Caroline. War Photography: A Cultural History. P.6

6 Payne, Carol and Brandon, Laura. P.3.

7 Faber, Sebastiaan. Memory Battles of the Spanish Civil War: History, Fiction, and Photography. (2018). p.16-17.

8 Brothers. p.2.

9 Brothers, Caroline. p.2.

10 https://www.elon.edu/u/imagining/time-capsule/150-years/back-1920-1960/#:~:text=Approximately%208%2C000%20U.S.%20households%20had,million%20had%20them%20by%201960.

11 Brothers, p.205

12 Brothers, p.206

13 Brothers, p.209

14 Brothers. p.211

15 Bruce. H. Franklin, ‘From Realism to Virtual Reality.’ P.110

16 https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/the-war-photo-no-one-would-publish/375762/

17 https://newlinesmag.com/photo-essays/shooting-the-war-in-syria/

The Modern Greek State: 1941–1949 – War & A New Divide

On March 25, 2021, the Modern Greek State celebrated the 200th anniversary of the War of Independence, which ultimately led to its establishment. It is thus an excellent opportunity to reconsider some of the main events of Greek history over these 200 years and how they shaped the character of modern Greece.

This series of articles on the history of modern Greece started when the country was celebrating the 200th anniversary of the War of Independence. Now, when fascist Italy invaded Greece in October 1940, the Greeks put aside the issues of clientelism and united delivered a formidable fight and resistance against the Axis. This did not last long though. The rise of the Communist party as a significant political factor supported by a strong military branch reshuffled the balance of power and led to yet another civil war and yet another socio-political schism. Thomas Papageorgiou explains

You can read part 1 on ‘a bad start’ 1827-1862 here, part 2 on ‘bankruptcy and defeat’ 1863-1897 here, part 3 on ‘glory days’ 1898-1913 here, and part 4 on ‘Greeks divided’ 1914-22 here, and part 5 on the issues of clientelism here.

Greek troops during the Italian Spring Offensive, March 1941.

I United against the Axis

The Italian Invasion of Greece was proven another significant failure for Mussolini. It was repulsed by the Greeks who immediately counterattacked. The Greek army demonstrated extraordinary skills in mountainous warfare and by the end of 1940 thanks to its heroic efforts the Italians were forced to retreat 50 km behind the Albanian borders along the entire length of the front. For several months 16 Greek divisions managed to nail in Albania 27 Italian ones. (Churchill, The Second World War (Vol. I), 2010, pp. 510, 513)

When the Germans came to the rescue at the beginning of April 1941, they offered overwhelming support to the Italians, whereas the British, estimating that the loss of Greece and the Balkans would not constitute a big loss, if Turkey remained neutral, were more reserved. (Churchill, The Second World War (Vol. I), 2010, pp. 544 - 545) Thus, on the 27th of April the axis forces were in Athens. The last stand took place on Crete which was invaded on the 20th of May 1941 by German paratroopers, who, after paying a very heavy death toll, took it by the end of the month. The king and the Greek government together with the British Expeditionary Force and the remnants of the Greek Army fled to Egypt.

II Occupation, resistance and first signs of division

Although their performance at the battlefield was questionable, the Italians were left with the control of most of the Greek territory. A chunk was also reserved for Bulgaria, that finally found exit to the Aegean through Eastern Macedonia and Thrace. The Germans retained Thessaloniki under their control though, together with the most strategically important areas in Central Macedonia, the Greco – Turkish border, several Aegean islands including most of Crete, the port of Piraeus and the capital Athens.

As we have seen, the Italian attack in October 1940 found Greece’s economy in a fragile state with the country relying heavily on imports to cover the needs of its people. (Papageorgiou, History is Now Magazine, 2023) Now the invasion destroyed a significant amount of Greece’s infrastructure and the triple occupation put the external trade to a stop. Soon, especially the urban population, faced food shortages and by the end of 1941 starvation. During the tragic winter of 1941-42 approximately 300,000 people lost their lives. (Tsoucalas, 2020, pp. 89 - 90) Overall, Greece paid one of the heaviest tolls among the allied forces losing 7 – 11 % of its 1939 population during the Second World War. (Wikipedia, 2023)

This situation pushed the Greeks towards struggle rather than passivity. They needed to resist in order to survive. The first resistance group under the name National Liberation Front (in Greek Ethniko Apeleftherotiko Metopo - EAM) was created by the Communist Party in September 1941. Its military branch was the Greek People’s Liberation Army (in Greek Ellinikos Laikos Apeleftherotikos Stratos - ELAS). This was not only the first, but also the biggest resistance group. Indeed, by 1944 ELAS numbered 50,000 fighters in the Athens – Piraeus area only, whereas estimations for EAM members reach up to 2,000,000 (total population 7,000,000). (Tsoucalas, 2020, pp. 91, 99) (Heneage, 2021, p. 188) The most important resistance groups with non-communist leadership were the National Republican Greek League (in Greek Ethnikos Dimokratikos Ellinikos Sindesmos – EDES) and the National and Social Liberation (in Greek Ethniki Ke Kinoniki Apeleftherosi – EKKA). These did not have the size of EAM-ELAS though as the latter dominated most of the country whereas EDES’ bastion was restricted to Epirus and EKKA’s in the mountainous area of Parnassus in Boeotia. (Tsoucalas, 2020, pp. 92 - 93)

For some time , the different resistance groups worked together and with the help of the Allies they managed to carry out formidable operations, like Operation Harling, which destroyed the heavily guarded Gorgopotamos viaduct in Central Greece in November 1942, stemming the flow of supplies through the Balkans to the German Afrika Korps. (Wikipedia, 2023) As a result, 9 divisions of the Axis powers were stuck in Greece to maintain some order, with questionable results, especially away from the main cities and transportation arteries, and that only after intense fighting. As a German report with the title ‘The political situation in Greece. July 1943’ put it:

‘90% of the Greeks today are unanimously aligned against the Axis powers and ready to go into open rebellion’. (Tsoucalas, 2020, pp. 95 - 96)

The pressure the resistance groups exercised on the Axis forces and before that the army’s performance during the Italian invasion in October 1940 showed once again what the Greeks could do when standing united. In the following though, we will describe several open issues tackled by the Greek political establishment of the time in such a way that once again tore the Greeks apart.

As we have seen, before the war Greece was ruled by Metaxas’ dictatorship. (Papageorgiou, History is Now Magazine, 2023) Metaxas died in January 1941, but the government that fled to Egypt together with the king, after Greece’s occupation by the Axis forces, appeared officially as a continuation of this dictatorship. (Tsoucalas, 2020, p. 97) Back home in Greece though, contrary to the anti-Communism sentiments of the government, EAM seemed to have the upper hand and ELAS could field thousands of guerrilla fighters. As the German report of 1943 mentioned above continues:

EAM and its militant organizations have borne the brunt of the resistance against the Axis. Most resistance groups belong to EAM. Politically, it is the leading force and because it is highly active and has a coordinated leadership, it represents the greatest danger to the occupation forces. (Tsoucalas, 2020, p. 96)

But how did the communists gain such an advantage in building the resistance? First, they were already experienced in building illegal networks of operation as they were outlawed by Metaxas’ dictatorship already before the war. (Tsoucalas, 2020, p. 91) Second, the remnants of the Greek Army, whose officers could have been the core of the resistance movement, escaped to Egypt with the king and the government. And it is further suggested that the latter (king and government) did not want to encourage resistance in occupied Greece! (Gerasis, 2013, pp. 90 - 91) We should not forget that Venizelos’ failed coup of 1935 gave the royalists the opportunity to purge the army from elements supporting unreigned democracy and restored the dynasty that was exited in 1924. (Papageorgiou, History is Now Magazine, 2023) Now, the king and the government did not want to risk the return of the democrats under arms within the ranks of a resistance movement that could eventually hinter their return to Greece at the end of the war.

Although the King succumbed to the British pressure and abolished the dictatorship in February 1942 (Tsoucalas, 2020, p. 97), the perceived threat for him and his entourage became more imminent when, in March 1944, EAM formed the Temporary Committee of National Liberation. The latter called for the formation of a government of national unity challenging the legitimacy of the exiled government in Egypt. The call was positively received by a significant amount of the Greek army serving under allied command in Africa. Their demand that the request be accepted by the government in Cairo was vigorously met with the help of the British and 20,000 service men were sent to concentration camps in Libya and Eritrea. (Tsoucalas, 2020, pp. 105 - 110) It is difficult to assume that 50% of the Greek army in the Middle East had suddenly turned communist. It is more likely that these were the democratic elements of the army.        

At the same time, back home, in occupied Greece, the situation was also becoming more and more difficult and complicated. Italy had surrendered to the Allies already in September 1943. As the Italians were occupying most of Greece, this created a control gap. To fill this gap, Hitler replaced the Italians with troops transferred from the collapsing eastern front. These men, brutalized by their experiences fighting the Russians, brought with them a different kind of warfare. Fifty Greeks were to die for every German soldier killed, ten for every wounded German, with no distinction made between guilty and innocent. The massacres at Kommeno (Wikipedia, 2022), Kalavryta (Wikipedia, 2023) and Distomo (Wikipedia, 2023) are characteristic of this self-defeating approach, as the Greeks left their burning villages and joined the resistance in the mountains. This together with the weaponry of the 90,000 Italian soldiers that surrendered in Greece in 1943 made ELAS even stronger. (Heneage, 2021, pp. 190 - 191)

To make up for this loss Hitler’s reinforcements from the eastern front were not enough. Thus, the Germans turned for help to the … Greeks! The Security Battalions were set up to act against the resistance and maintain order in 1943 by the quisling government in Athens. Denounced at the time as ‘fascists’ and ‘collaborators’ these people, nevertheless, also included moderates who feared the communists’ post-war intentions and can surely have been no more ideologically attracted to the doctrines of Hitler than most of the ELAS fighters to the doctrines of communism. (Heneage, 2021, p. 194) (Beaton, 2021, p. 437) Indeed, considering that the Communist Party was getting no more than 5-6% of the votes in the national elections before the war (Papageorgiou, History is Now Magazine, 2023), it is natural to assume that most of the rank-and-file EAM-ELAS little knew or care about communism. After all, as we have seen, Greece was a country of smallholders who believed fervently in property ownership (Papageorgiou, History is Now Magazine, 2023) and most of the people who joined EAM-ELAS did it following a message not about class struggle but national liberation. (Heneage, 2021, p. 188)  This way the Communists were able to impose their leadership but not their ideology on a significant part of the Greek people. (Tsoucalas, 2020, p. 95)

Thus, all sides were simply fighting to survive in a failed state and to preserve what they could of what they valued, when even the forces of occupation could barely keep order outside the major cities, and only by terrorizing the citizens with arbitrary arrests and mass executions. (Beaton, 2021, p. 437) Towards the end of the occupation then the Greeks had once more started to fight against each other with the resistance groups exchanging accusations for collaboration with the Security Battalions and the Germans. (Tsoucalas, 2020, p. 98) The assassination of EKKA’s leader Psaros by the communists in April 1944 was one of the most striking events of this time and indicative of what was about to follow. (Tsoucalas, 2020, p. 101)

Another part of the puzzle, and a very significant one, was the intentions of the Allies. After all, Greece was a defeated country and its future depended on the overall outcome of the war and the negotiations between the Great Powers of the time. And the decision was that Greece will remain under the sphere of influence of the Western Powers. It was taken during a meeting between Churchill and Stalin in Moscow in October 1944. The exchange of views was done using a rough sheet of paper [there is even talk about a napkin (Heneage, 2021, p. 193)] on which Churchill wrote who would get what. The British prime minister found the whole process, affecting the lives of millions of people, so cynical that he suggested to burn the sheet of paper at the end of the negotiation. But Stalin continued cynically and said: ‘No, you keep it’. (Churchill, The Second Worls War (Vol II), 2010, pp. 1154-1155) It has been suggested that the Soviets informed EAM about their intentions to give up Greece already before Churchill’s visit to Moscow. (Tsoucalas, 2020, pp. 112 - 115)

III Liberation and … another civil war!

Now, with all these in mind, what could have, ideally, be done? The Communists should realize that their military superiority was becoming doubtful, in the long term, without Soviet support and with Greece left under the influence of the Western Allies. After all, most of the ELAS fighters were not actually communists. They should try, nevertheless, to capitalize on the fight they put up against the Axis as leaders of the most massive resistance movement and ‘cash out’, so to say, any positive appeal this might have to the people by getting more votes and seats in the parliament compared to the pre-war period. The king and the government, on the other hand, should play down the communist threat, especially after the decision of the Allies, and work for a smooth transition to the post-war period and for the recovery of Greece that suffered heavy human and material losses during the war. To this end, both parties should lay their guns down, when the Germans fled from Greece in October 1944, and stand united at the peace negotiations claiming effective support for their country.

Ideally yes. But what did really happen? The truth is that at the beginning the Communist Party made some concessions. Instead of using its military superiority to take Athens and the power, after the withdrawal of the Germans, it accepted to participate in a government of national unity under Georgios Papandreou, head of the exiled government in Cairo, and set ELAS under British command. The king’s fate and consequently the form of the state system (reigned or unreigned democracy) would once again be decided by referendum. (Kalyvas, 2020 (3rd Edition), p. 158)

Nevertheless, violent events between the opposing factions did not stop and the mutual suspicion remained obvious. Thus, when the government ordered the dissolution of the guerrilla groups, including ELAS, that were to be replaced by a national army, a crisis erupted. The problem was that the national army was to have the heavily armed Greek brigade, that fought under allied command and the exiled government brought with it, at its core. After the purge of its democratic elements in the Middle East we saw earlier though, this was fanatically pro-royal and the Communists demanded its dissolution as well. Papandreou denied. (Tsoucalas, 2020, p. 117) The Communists then left the government of national unity, withdrew ELAS from British command and organized a general strike and a large rally in Athens. (Kalyvas, 2020 (3rd Edition), p. 159)

The later took place on the 3rd of December 1944 and was drowned in blood when the security forces started firing against the crowd. It is not clear if the order came from the government, the British or if the Security Battalions, whose members at that time were laying low following the developments, were involved in the incident, but hundreds of the demonstrators lost their lives or were wounded. (Tsoucalas, 2020, pp. 120 - 122) In response, the communists chose to resort also to violence and the crisis culminated to the Battle of Athens, that started after the rally and lasted for 33 days. The visit, in the midst of the fighting, of the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, in Athens was indicative of the latter’s determination to keep Greece under the sphere of influence of the western allies. (Churchill, The Second Worls War (Vol II), 2010, pp. 1172 - 1184) His interventions have actually been heavily criticised as triggering the devastating all out civil war that would shatter all hope for post war unity in Greece (Heneage, 2021, p. 197), and it is a fact, that with the help of the British forces that landed in Greece after the withdrawal of the Germans, the government was able to draw the Communists to sign in February 1945 the Agreement of Varkiza. The latter provided for the demobilisation and disarmament of ELAS, general amnesty for ‘political’, but not criminal, offenses, the holding of general elections and the referendum for the fate of the king. (Kalyvas, 2020 (3rd Edition), p. 161)

Nevertheless, as atrocities were carried out by both factions, during all this time, many issues remained open. (Tsoucalas, 2020, p. 133) Things were made worst by the participation in the Battle of Athens of many members of the quisling militias who collaborated with the Germans on the side of the government against the communists. This way, the battle acted as a legitimizer for these organizations, as it seemed to confirm the view that the quisling militias were nothing more than a means of dealing with the communist threat. (Kalyvas, 2020 (3rd Edition), p. 162) With the tolerance of the government these people infiltrated into the ranks of the security forces and continued to terrorize anyone who was or was perceived to be communist. After all, the fact that criminal offences could still be prosecuted even after the compromise reached at Varkiza offered a good pretence. This was also admitted by Nikolaos Plastiras that returned to Greece after 10 years in exile to replace Papandreou in the premiership, before the Varkiza truce. (Tsoucalas, 2020, p. 136) His Venizelist past (Papageorgiou, History is Now Magazine, 2023) was hoped to work conciliatory for the warring factions. (Tsoucalas, 2020, p. 133) To no avail. According to EAM in the year between the Varkiza agreement and the elections set for March 1946 1,289 people were murdered, 6,671 were seriously wounded, 31,632 tortured and 84,931 arrested. (Tsoucalas, 2020, p. 137)

This political climate led the communists and a significant part of other left and centrist parties to abstain from the elections set for the 31st of March 1946. When they realized that this way they would lose any chance they had to co-shape the political establishment after the end of the war, they revised their position, but this was two days after the deadline for submitting nominations. Thus, they asked for the postponement of the elections, but prime minister Sofoulis, leading the fourth government formed after the replacement of Plastiras in April 1945 (Kostis, 2018, p. 296), declined. Ernest Bevin, the British foreign secretary in the Labour government of Clement Attlee, that replaced Churchill in the premiership in July 1945, is supposed to have exercised the influence ensured by the presence of the British army in Greece towards this direction. As a result, voters abstention reached 50%, but the elections gave legitimacy to the right-wing government and cemented the re-emergence of the royalists. Indeed, in the September 1946 referendum on the fate of king George, the system of government was confirmed as a reigned democracy with 68,9% of the votes. (Tsoucalas, 2020, pp. 140-141)

The decision for abstention from the elections of the left and centrist parties and its exploitation from the parties of the right would prove to be a fatal error. The only option left was the extra-parliamentary opposition. Encouraged by the hardening of the Soviets’ attitude already during the Potsdam Conference in the summer of 1945, where they stated their disagreement and protest against the ways of the British in Greece based on Stalin’s ‘old and vague authorization’ to Churchill (see above), and later, in January 1946, during the first session of the UN Security Council, where they demanded the withdrawal of the British forces from Greece, the Communist Party commissioned General Markos Vafiadis to set up the Democratic Army in the mountains in August 1946. (Tsoucalas, 2020, pp. 143-145) Nevertheless, support was to come mainly from the neighbouring Communist countries, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Albania, that pledged to fully support the operations of the Democratic Army, during a conference in the Slovenian city of Bled in August 1947. (Kalyvas, 2020 (3rd Edition), p. 163) Thus, in the summer of 1947, Greece was, yet again, engaged in an all-out civil war with incalculable consequences.

IV Fighting among themselves … almost

At the end of the First World War, Greece continued the fighting for another 4 years in an attempt to increase its territorial gains in Asia Minor. The undertaking resulted in the catastrophe of 1922. (Papageorgiou, History is Now Magazine, 2022) At the end of World War Two the modern Greek state had once more territorial gains (its last): the Dodecanese. On the 31st of March 1947, the British surrendered the islands to a Greek military commander although the law on the annexation of the Dodecanese to Greece was published in the Government Gazette on 9.1.1948 with retroactive effect from 28.10.1948. (Divani, 2010, pp. 683-685) Nevertheless, instead of focusing on the rebuilding of the country like most of the winners, and losers, of WWII, the Greeks, once more, continued the fighting. This time it was not about further territorial expansion. It was a fight for power among themselves.

Among themselves? Almost. As I commented before (Papageorgiou, History is Now Magazine, 2023), division invites foreign intervention. Indeed, after the Battle of Athens, Churchill’s remark was that at the time when 3,000,000 men on both sides fight in the western front and massive American forces line up in the Pacific against the Japanese, the Greek crisis might seem of minor importance. But the country is at the nerve center of power, law, and freedom of the Western world. Consequently, he wouldn’t back off easily from the deal he made with Stalin (see above). The problem was that the British Empire was on the retreat after WWII. It was not the British who were to conclude the mission in Greece. It would take the persistent efforts of the one who would soon constitute the united power of the English-speaking world: Uncle Sam. (Churchill, The Second Worls War (Vol II), 2010, p. 1184)

In March 1947 the USA adopted a diplomatic policy, under the ‘Truman Doctrine’, which stipulated that any threat from the Left to a non-communist country would be deterred even by force. The size of military and economic support to Greece thanks to the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan (Wikipedia, 2023) was tremendous. Three hundred million dollars were granted by the US Congress in 1947 only and much more later. The effect of the American support on the army was huge. It reached 200,000 men including well trained mountain troops. It was equipped with modern weapons, artillery and fighting aircraft. A modern communications network was built. The airfields, roads, bridges, and ports that had fallen into disuse during the occupation were repaired. American military advisors were working together with the Greek General Staff for the planning of the operations against the Communists. (Tsoucalas, 2020, pp. 151-152, 157)

The latter on the other hand were in a tough spot. As we have seen they were getting some support from the neighboring communist countries, but only against concessions in Macedonia, which made their cause very unpopular in the rural areas in the north, in view also of recent atrocities of the Bulgarians there during the occupation. (Tsoucalas, 2020, pp. 159-160) Their networks in the cities were also gradually being neutralized by the police as the Communist Party was outlawed and thousands of its members were sent to exile. (Tsoucalas, 2020, p. 158) Additionally, for most of the Greeks 6 years of fighting was already enough. Recovery and financial stability were now the imperative. Any attempt for further unrest met their disapproval and dismay. (Tsoucalas, 2020, p. 148) Thus, the Democratic Army had soon problems in finding new conscripts. Eventually, 25% of the fighters in its ranks were women and the voluntary conscription was replaced by a forced one. (Tsoucalas, 2020, p. 155) This was followed by terror tactics like hostage taking. A striking case was that of young children at the age of 3 to 14 years and their expatriation to Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. (Tsoucalas, 2020, p. 159) All these were exploited of course by the government propaganda.

Things got worse for the Communists because of internal disputes. In view of the problems in conscription, training, and equipment, Vafiadis resorted more to guerilla tactics, but the General Secretary of the Communist Party, Nikos Zachariadis, wanted to turn to more conventional ways of war. (Tsoucalas, 2020, p. 160) Vafiadis was finally replaced by the General Secretary in the leadership of the Democratic Army, but the decisive turn came in June 1948, when Yugoslavia’s leader Tito disagreed with Stalin and his country was expelled from the Cominform. (Wikipedia, 2023) Despite the fact that the Soviet Union offered little practical support during the war, it was the ‘mother’ to which communist hard-liners, and especially Zachariadis, had to obey. (Tsoucalas, 2020, pp. 158-159) Thus, a year later, in July 1949, Tito closed the border and the Democratic Army lost access to the rear of Yugoslavia where it used to withdraw in times of danger in order to regroup and resupply. At the same time, the imminent threat of an invasion of the Greek army in Albania forced the Communist Party to declare a cease fire on the 16th of October 1949. (Kalyvas, 2020 (3rd Edition), p. 166) (Tsoucalas, 2020, p. 162) This is 5 years after the Germans left Athens in 1944.

V The aftermath: A new schism

At the end of the Second World War the magnitude of the disasters that Greece had suffered could only be compared with those of Yugoslavia, Poland, or the Soviet Union. From 1940 till 1944 550,000 people were killed (corresponds to 8% of the total population) and 34 % of the national wealth was lost. 401,500 houses were destroyed and the number of the homeless reached 1,200,000. 1,770 villages were set on fire, whereas the big ports, the railway lines, the locomotives, the telephone network, the civil airports, and the bridges were in ruins. 73% of the capacity of the merchant fleet and 94% of the capacity of the passenger fleet was sunk. 56% of the road network, 65% of privately owned vehicles, 66% of trucks and 80% of the buses was also lost. The number of horses was reduced by 60%, of small animals by 80% and 25% of forests was burned. By 1944 the production of cereals was down by 40%, of tobacco by 89%, and that of currant by 66%. (Tsoucalas, 2020, p. 134)

And yet, in front of all this devastation, the Greeks continued fighting a civil war for another 5 years! This brought more dead (40,000 according to official statistics, 158,000 according to unofficial calculations), hundreds of thousands of additional homeless and material damages comparable to that estimated at the end of 1944. Moreover, 80,000 to 100,000 Greeks branded as communists back home fled or were forcibly taken across the country’s northern border and would have to make new homes in eastern Europe’s communist countries. The largest such Greek community was established in the city of Tashkent in Uzbekistan. (Tsoucalas, 2020, p. 163) (Beaton, 2021, p. 438)

This ‘exodus’ was a manifestation of a new schism in the Greek society that was realized by 1949 and replaced that between Venizelists and anti-Venizelists (and of course others before that): the schism between ‘nationalists’ (ethnikofrones) and ‘communists’. In a nutshell, the nationalists stood on the winning side of the civil war and professed the defence of the ‘Greco-Christian’ tradition against the subversive dispositions of the loosing side, that is the ‘communists’. The distinction was rather blur (e.g. we saw – see above – that many ELAS members were not actually communists) and thus served for the prosecution of many whose political convictions did not suit the state at the time. Indeed,  postwar Greece was very far from being a liberal paradise (although neither was it, as we will see, Stalinist Russia). (Heneage, 2021, pp. 205-206) In fact, this schism, in a much milder form though, is carried to this day between the ‘conservative’ or ‘right-wing’ and the ‘progressive’ parties that continue to fail to collaborate even under severe conditions, like the current economic crisis, with devastating consequences for the country.

VI Conclusion: Who’s fault was it?

Greece is probably the only country in the world that does not have a celebration for the victory in the First World War whereas victory in the Second World War is (strangely) celebrated at the date that marked the entrance of the country to the deadliest conflict the world has ever seen and not that of its liberation and exit. The reason, obviously, is the fact that in both cases the Greeks continued the fighting undertaking a disastrous campaign in Asia Minor in the first case and engaging in a protracted civil war in the second. Nothing to celebrate then.

If we were to ask the question who’s fault was it that Greece fought yet another civil war, a popular narrative is that the war was the result of the pressure that the government, supported by the British, exercised on the communists in an attempt to eliminate their influence on the social and political life which was significantly increased as a result of their leading role in the resistance against the axis forces that occupied Greece.

Some of this narrative, implying that the Communist Party was in ‘self-defense’ was carefully presented in the previous sections. And caution is indeed necessary as there is also harsh criticism of the communist leadership’s stance at that time from former party members. There were indeed incomprehensible positions and decisions of the party like (i) the adoption of the slogan for an independent Macedonia and Thrace, particularly unpopular to the Greek general public, (ii) the compromise with the exiled government in Egypt and avoidance of taking the power by force, when ELAS had overwhelming military superiority at the end of the occupation in 1944, followed by (iii) a turn to military means at an unfavorable time, when the government and its army returned and established itself in the country, with the help of the British and later the Americans. These are interpreted as the implementation, by the internationalist leadership of the party, of the decisions and commands of the Soviet Union that were based on the latter’s conflicts, agreements and overall power play with the British and the Americans in the region and elsewhere. (Lazaridis, 2022 (8th Edition), pp. 21-22, 77-82, 84-86 ) In a nutshell, it is suggested that the communist leadership was working for the Soviet interests.

I believe that the developments that culminated to the civil war can be readily understood within the concept of clientelism, which was described in detail in the previous article of this series on the interwar period. (Papageorgiou, History is Now Magazine, 2023) Once again two rival factions used their audiences (clients) to collide for power. Continuing the devastation of the Second World War they worked against the country’s recovery and had to resort to foreign support (intervention) to achieve their goals. The communists lost because they did not get the lavish support that the government enjoyed from the British and the Americans. Additionally, their real audience was much smaller whereas some of their positions made their cause even more unpopular to the public, as unpopular was already the continuation of the war by both factions, after the end of the Second World War. What needs to be stressed here is that clientelism is not something that is restricted internally in a state. When clientelism is in place the state itself becomes a client. The price of American largesse was that Greece effectively became a client state. (Heneage, 2021, p. 204) If the communists had won, Greece would correspondingly become a client state of the Soviets.

In fact, retrospectively thinking, if we were to find a positive element in the events of the period, this is undoubtedly the avoidance of the fate of Greece’s northern neighbors that ended up in the Soviet sphere of influence. On the contrary, Greece remained firmly connected to the West, it managed to benefit from the Marshall Plan and, after the civil war, it followed the amazing economic course of the Western European countries, finally achieving an unprecedented leap in economic development that put it far ahead of its Balkan neighbors. (Kalyvas, 2020 (3rd Edition), p. 170) More on this in the articles to follow.   

What do you think of the 1940s in the Modern Greek State? Let us know below.

References

Beaton, R. (2021). The Greeks, A global history. New York: Basic Books.

Churchill, W. S. (2010). The Second World War (Vol. I). Athens: Govostis (in Greek - The work is also available in English by Penguin Classics).

Churchill, W. S. (2010). The Second Worls War (Vol II). Athens: Govostis (in Greek - The work is also available in English by Penguin Classics).

Divani, L. (2010). The Territorial Completion of Greece (1830-1947), An Attempt at Local Lore. Athens: Kastaniotis (in Greek).

Gerasis, G. (2013). The Chronicle of a National Tragedy. Athens: Roes (in Greek).

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