Category Archives: Historical Figures

Homage to Catalonia

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This is the third review about the Spanish Civil war. The first was written by an author sympathetic to the mostly Communist Republicans. The second was a book critical for how the Soviets used the conflict to rob the Spanish treasury while they spent as much time fighting allies as they did fighting Franco’s Fascists. This book was one of many written by Eric Arthur Blair under the name George Orwell, and I recommend it. Amazon has 123 reviews with an average rating of four and a half stars out of five. The book is based on Orwell’s personal experiences after he went to Spain as a journalist. He volunteered to join the Trotsky Communist army forces called the POUM as a foot soldier. The descriptions of his experiences paint indelible images of the harsh life of the soldiers. They maintained loyalty to one another while living in cold mud mixed with human waste in the trenches while dealing with continual infections of lice and shortages of food and fuel. Orwell’s battles ended after being shot through the neck by a sniper.

Orwell writes that the only real difference between the ragged, miserable men and boys in the trenches on the hills opposite his trench was the color of the flags and uniforms. The soldiers in both sets of trenches were there for no other purpose than to kill the people like themselves in the other trenches. People were enlisting their 15 year-old sons for the small enlistment payment and food they could return to their parents. Some were as young as eleven. Orwell says he was never certain he actually killed anyone. He describes how a “dot” that was a man’s (or boy’s) head above the lip of a distant trench disappeared after he fired a shot, and how he heard lengthy screaming after he tossed a hand grenade into a parapet. He observes he only wished to kill one Nationalist, because if every Republican killed one Nationalist, the war would be won. He maintained his loyalty to the Republicans despite admitting to atrocities being committed by them. He wrote “…the foreign anti-Fascist papers even descended to the pitiful lie of pretending that churches were only attacked when they were used as Fascist fortresses. Actually churches were pillaged everywhere….because….the Spanish Church was part of the capitalist racket.” 



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What Happens When a Dictatorship Ends?

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The events in the Mideast and the television images of thousands of people demonstrating and demanding changes are bringing back memories of my teenage years and watching the evening news as Castro overthrew Batista in Cuba. Batista was a corrupt and oppressive dictator, and Castro was considered to be a liberator. There were celebrations in the streets of Havana when Batista fled, and I recall that the American news media declared it to be a victory for freedom. It wasn’t long before “Che” Guevara (the darling of young people who wear T shirts proclaiming their admiration) was holding televised show trials in an outdoor sports stadium and ordering the execution of hundreds of former government officials and sympathizers.

Another example was when the Shah of Iran was forced from power by the Ayatollah Khomeini after President Carter appealed to the Shah not to destroy the plane carrying the Ayatollah and his supporters. Carter assured the Shah that the United States would not stand by and let him fall, but the opposite happened. The new leadership began arresting, imprisoning, torturing, and executing people who had supported the Shah, repeating the actions by the Shah’s secret police. Carter gave the Shah asylum in the United States to seek medical treatment, the Iranians took over the U.S. embassy, held the people from the embassy hostage, watched Carter lose reelection, and have become a threat to the region and the world.

I should also mention an example where the end of a dictatorship resulted in a more democratic government, and the remarkable example of what happened in Spain when Francisco Franco died is the first (and maybe only example) to come to mind. Franco’s Fascists won the Spanish Civil War against the Stalinist Communists and an agglomeration of allies, perhaps because the Stalinists spent as much time fighting their allies as Franco’s forces. The war and the aftermath was brutal and bloody, and Franco was an oppressive ruler.  He designated Prince Juan Carlos to become monarch after his death, and Carlos began a transition to a parliamentary monarchy within a couple of days of Franco’s death. King Juan Carlos and Queen Sophia preside over a democratic government that has the support of most Spaniards. Of course the country is currently in financial crises, but that seems to be a common problem.

That brings us back to the Mideast. The Egyptian dictator Hosoni Mubarak has been forced out and President Obama has hailed that outcome, which brings to mind a similar reaction from John F. Kennedy when Castro expelled Batista.  The unrest in Egypt had begun when the price of food and fuel inflated, and poor Egyptians could barely afford to survive before that inflation.  The protests ended the needed income from tourism (perhaps temporarily).  Prices of food and fuel haven’t been reduced, and the economy was disrupted by the protests. The military is now in control, as it has always been. I wish the best for the Egyptian people and others who are risking their lives to protest in favor of freedom. However, if the brief history of other examples of the end of dictatorships here is an indication, there is a one chance in three that the outcome will be favorable. The lesson most obvious from history is that those who support a dictator will suffer if the dictator loses.

The Loyalists in the American Revolution

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A member of our book club selected “Dreams of Glory” by Thomas Fleming as the book to be read for the April/May meeting. That fiction book is about espionage during the Revolutionary War, including a plan to kidnap George Washington. Reading that book convinced me I should learn more about the Loyalists. I selected the book by Claude Halstead Van Tyne copywrited in 1902. The book was written in formal language, and I wouldn’t characterize it as easy to read. The author makes it clear he was sympathetic to the Loyalists. He writes in the preface that the young American republic made many “…youthful errors…” that could have been avoided if the Loyalists had been part of the new country instead of being vilified and driven into exile. One of his primary references was “…files of Rivington’s Gazette, the greatest Loyal newspaper from 1774 until the close of the war.” The author asserts that most people in America were indifferent to the Revolution, although they would be “…ready to stampede along with the successful party.” He also quotes John Adams as saying that Great Britain “…seduced and deluded nearly one third of the people in the colonies.” The author adds that “influential Americans” and “worthy gentlemen” (the upper class) mostly remained loyal to the king. The book refers to the revolutionaries as Whigs. The Whigs and Tories were opposing political parties in the English parliament beginning in the mid 1600s.

The discussion and analysis of the tax placed on tea is fascinating and different than what I recall from high school history. The tax was three pence a pound, and the three pence sterling has a current value of five cents. A Wikipedia article says the tax was equated to about 10% of the cost of the tea. The king attempted to mollify the colonists and their resistance to the tax by compensating the East India Company to make English tea cheaper than other sources even with the tax. People such as John Adams weren’t impressed, continued to protest that there should be no taxation without representation, and the Boston Tea Party was the result. The author referred to those who participated in that event as “…the immortal band of Boston Indians…” Parliament reacted by passing five acts to further regulate American affairs. The one that attracted the most attention was an act to shut down Boston harbor until the town repaid the East India Company for the destroyed tea, which would be required to convince the king that Boston would submit to his authority. The colonists did not react submissively. One group issued a statement ridiculing the idea of paying for the tea. “If a man draws his sword on me…and I break his sword ought I pay for the sword?” The rest, as the saying goes, is history. The serving of tea was interpreted to be an insult to the revolution, and people began to refer to serving tea as “white coffee” to avoid visits from angry neighbors. Continue reading →

Prophet in Politics: Henry A Wallace and the War Years, 1940-1965

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(This 1970 book by Edward L. and Frederick H. Schapmeier is out of print though available from libraries and used book sellers.)

I originally became interested in why FDR had three Vice Presidents, and Henry Agard Wallace was the second. The first was John Nance Garner, and FDR hadn’t won the Democratic nomination for the presidency until he persuaded Garner to drop out of the race and accept the vice presidency. Garner and Roosevelt disagreed widely on many issues, and their relationship soured irretrievably during their second term. Garner was quoted a characterizing the vice presidency as being “not worth a bucket of warm piss.” Wallace was different than Garner in many ways. He was a studious, deeply religious Progressive. He had been well suited to the position of Secretary of Agriculture that he held before FDR selected him to replace Garner. He had taught himself Spanish and made a very successful tour of Latin America as Germany was declaring war on the United States.

Reading about Wallace was often baffling. As Vice President he supported the Manhattan Project because he feared the Germans would develop the bomb first. He understood the Soviet Union possessed the capability to produce the weapon, but his actions indicated that he believed Stalin was a dependable ally who did not have subversive purposes.  Wallace said, “The future of the well-being of the world depends on the extent to which Marxism, as it is being progressively modified in Russia, and democracy, as we are adapting it…can live in peace.” Wallace went so far in his idealism to envision the United Nations would have sovereign powers over the United States through “…an international peace law, an international peace court and an international peace force…”   Continue reading →

FDR’s Personality

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This is the fourth and perhaps final posting of the review of Joseph E. Persico’s excellent book, “Roosevelt’s Secret War, FDR and World War II Espionage.” The author gives significant insights into FDR’s personality, especially his fascination with learning the secrets of others. One person observed, “Few leaders were better adapted temperamentally to espionage than Franklin Roosevelt.” In keeping with that observation, FDR authorized wire taps of people judged to be suspicious despite a Supreme Court ruling that banned wire taps and the advice of his Attorney General. He justified that authorization on the grounds of national security, but he took the liberty to go further.  He had J. Edgar Hoover investigate former President Herbert Hoover and opponent Wendell Wilkie. He also had Vice President Henry Wallace under surveillance. I’ve read in other accounts that he expanded far beyond political opponents and associates. It was said that he reveled in learning about skeletons in people’s closets gathered by Hoover. Perhaps he did some of this as a reflective action to an event early in his adulthood when he and a friend began consorting with two beautiful women. He was warned by a friend of his family that the two women were the “best known pair of international blackmailers in Europe,” and he and his friend were able to escape. The lesson in the value of suspicion may have stayed with him.

Roosevelt had a recording system installed inside a drawer of his desk in August 1940.  One recorded conversation was about Wendell Wilkie. FDR was recorded talking about Wilkie’s mistress, and how Wilkie’s wife had in effect, “…been hired to return to Wendell to smile and make his campaign with him.”  The recorder was removed almost immediately after FDR won reelection. 

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Roosevelt’s Secret War–FDR, Stalin, and Churchill

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The interactions of the “Big Three” have inspired several books, but once again the book by Joseph E. Persico ties what I see as the complete story together nicely. FDR had a much stronger affinity for Stalin than to Churchill.  He confided to Joseph Kennedy, his ambassador to Great Britain, that he had never liked Churchill from the beginning.  Churchill was open in his desire to maintain the British Empire, and Roosevelt was strongly opposed to imperialism. I was startled to read a quote from him in the book that he told Admiral Godfrey, the U.S. is going “…to show the Brits, Portuguese, and Dutch how to take care of those West Indies Islands. Every n—-r will have his two acres and a sugar patch.” On the other hand Roosevelt was strangely able to overlook the atrocities committed under Stalin. He knew that large numbers of people Stalin decided he couldn’t trust were summarily executed and millions of Ukrainians were intentionally starved.  Both Roosevelt and Churchill knew that Stalin had ordered the execution of thousands of Polish officers, but covered it up. FDR was somehow persuaded that he could work with Stalin and trust him.

Roosevelt early and often acted according to Stalin’s wishes. He had established diplomatic relations with the Soviets, and apparently was willing to accept the large numbers of spies that action brought into the country and his administration. He released Earl Browder, the head of the U.S. Communist party who had been convicted of passport violations. He took that action to placate Stalin, and it restored a key link in Russia’s spy chain in America. One of the strangest actions he took involved 1500 pages of Soviet cryptographic material and a codebook that had been sold to the Office of Strategic Service by Finland. FDR ordered the information to be returned to the Soviets without copying it, and there is a dispute whether it was copied or not. There is no dispute the Soviets were absolutely baffled about why the Americans had returned the information.  Secretary of State Edward Stettinius was said to have explained that FDR ordered to action because he wanted to do nothing to arouse Stalin’s suspicions.  

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