The Falcon Cannot Hear: The Second American Civil War 1937-1944
- Thread starter Ephraim Ben Raphael
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And/or electing someone who isn't FDR in 1932 would work too. Al Smith or John Nance Garner (FDR's main convention rivals) were both critical of FDR's policies IOTL; without significant change (Keynesian deficit spending and/or looser monetary policy on the part of the Fed), the country would stay mired in depression (with a very slow recovery at best) and extremists would rapidly gain popularity.
Ephraim Ben Raphael
Banned
Ah, I misread the question. No, I have no plans to continue on to present day. I will however continue all the way through the war and a short time afterwards to provide a glimpse of the aftermath.
Thank you.
Is it a mirage?
NO?
Halaulah!!!!
I assume this is a compliment?
Yep, so far everything is as it was in OTL. It was reading about this time period as it actually was, that inspired me to write this TL. We came very close to civil war OTL.
Two very perspicacious guesses.
I think the UK and france might not what to go to war with Germany, if the US is in it's civil war.
Also, if the US is in civil war, it could well be that the loans which financed the Nazi rearmament do not occur, so Hitler does not feel as confident in his ability to bluff the Entente, or if he goes for full rearmment, that the German people are not behind him as the economic recovery does not occur (it was financed by the US loans also).
Ephraim Ben Raphael
Banned
Washington Under Siege- 1932
In January of 1932 a former army chaplain named James Renshaw Cox led a march of 25,000 unemployed Pennsylvanians to Washington, D.C. Supported by numerous notables including Pennsylvania governor Gifford Pinchot (a Republican), “Cox’s Army” was quickly broken up and dispersed. An embarrassed Hoover ordered a criminal investigation into how Cox was able to purchase enough petrol to bring his “army” to the capital, suggesting that either the Vatican or Catholic Democrats had funded him in order to weaken his administration. When it was found that Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon had actually been the one to provide the gasoline he was sacked. Despite its failure Cox’s Army did result in Cox’s founding of the Jobless Party and it was still the largest demonstration ever to come to Washington.
Cox's Army, January 1932.
It held that record exactly four months.
In May of that year over 26,000 penniless World War veterans descended on the capital, occupying parks, dumps, abandoned warehouses, and empty stores. The men drilled, sang marching songs, and once, led by a Medal of Honor winner and watched by a hundred thousand silent Washingtonians, they marched up Pennsylvania Avenue bearing faded American flags. They had come to ask for immediate payment of the $500 soldier’s bonuses authorized in 1924 (over President Coolidge’s veto) that were not due until 1945. Reporters named them the “Bonus Army” (later they would become known as the First Bonus Army) but they called themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force. They appealed to President Hoover, begging him to receive a delegation of their leaders. Instead he sent word that he was too busy and proceeded to isolate himself from the rest of Washington. The White House (still standing in 1932, and still the residence of the President) was padlocked shut, policeman patrolled the grounds day and night, barricades were erected, and traffic shut down for one block on all sides of the Executive Mansion. A one-armed veteran, bent on picketing, tried to penetrate the screen of guards. He was soundly beaten and carried off to jail.
Bonus Marchers.
It was a massive overreaction. The BEF was unarmed, it had expelled radicals from its ranks, and was slowly starving to death. A reporter for the Baltimore Sun described them as “ragged, weary, and apathetic” with “no hope on their faces.” When Washington police tried to feed the veterans bread, coffee, and stew at six cents a day they aroused the President’s wrath who threatened to have police superintendent Pelham Glassford (who was himself a vet and a former Brigadier General) fired. But in the days before television it was possible to deny the obvious. Attorney General William D. Mitchell declared the Bonus Army “guilty of begging and other acts”. Vice President Charles Curtis called out two companies of marines to remove the marchers, at which point General Glassford noted that the Vice-President has no military authority and sent them back to their barracks. The Washington Evening Star wondered why no District police officer had “put a healthy sock on the nose of a bonus marcher” and the New York Times reported that the marchers were veterans who were “not content with their pensions, although seven or eight times those of other countries.” (Pensions did not exist for the average veteran at this point in time) Ominously foreshadowing what was to come, Brigadier General George Mosley proposed that they arrest the bonus marchers and others “of inferior blood” and then put them in concentration camps on “one of the sparsely inhabited islands of the Hawaiian group not suited for growing sugar.” There, he suggested, “they could stew in their own filth.” He added darkly, “We would not worry about the delays in the process of law in the settlement of their individual cases.”
Bonus Army camp.
On July 28 Glassford, who had been ordered to act by Congress, finally arrived with Washington police to begin clearing the BEF camp at Third and Pennsylvania. The clearing first went fairly peacefully, but then reinforcements arrived from the main veteran camp on Anacostia Flats who began throwing bricks. Glassford himself was struck and as he staggered backwards he watched a police officer “gone wild-eyed” shoot at a veteran. The vet- William Hruska of Chicago- fell down dead and the rest of the officers then opened fire killing another vet- Eric Carlson of Oakland. Glassford shouted “Stop the shooting!” but it was too late. Word of the incident reached the President over lunch, Hoover told Patrick Hurley (Secretary of War) to use troops, and Hurley unleashed General Douglas MacArthur.
Police clash with the BEF at 3rd and Pennsylvania.
Now came a delay- the man himself wasn’t in uniform and he wanted to change. His aide, Major Dwight Eisenhower, didn’t think he should do so. “This is political, political,” Eisenhower said again and again, arguing that it was highly inappropriate for a general to become involved in a street corner brawl. The general disagreed. “MacArthur has decided to go into active command in the field,” MacArthur declared in his trademark third-person. “There is incipient revolution in the air.” An orderly was dispatched to fetch the chief’s tunic, service stripes, sharpshooter medal, and English whipcord breeches. After proceeding to Sixth and Pennsylvania another wait began, and someone asked “What’s the hold up?” “The tanks.” MacArthur replied. Meanwhile President Hoover was issuing an announcement that troops “would put an end to rioting and civil disorder” and that the men the police had clashed with “were entirely of the communist element.”
The tanks preparing to go into action.
Washingtonians watched as the 3rd Cavalry led by Major George S. Patton marched down Pennsylvania Avenue brandishing naked sabers. Behind them came a machine gun detachment, the 12th and 34th Infantry, the 13th Engineers, and six tanks, their caterpillar treads methodically destroying the soft asphalt. Abruptly Major Patton- not known for his solicitude towards civilians- charged his troops right into the growing crowd of twenty-thousand civil service workers who had just come off work. J.F. Essary of the Baltimore Sun wrote that “thousands of unoffending people” were “ridden down indiscriminately”. Among those trampled were Senator Hiram Bingham of Connecticut. “Shame!” Shouted the spectators as they fled, at which point the cavalry finally turned on the hastily assembling veterans and charged again. The vets were stunned then furious. “Jesus!” cried one graying man- “If only we had guns!” The infantry came on the heels of the horsemen, pulling on gasmasks and throwing blue tear gas bombs. BEF women fled the camp, choking and clutching their children as they and their men retreated toward the Anacosta river. By 9 pm the refugees had withdrawn to the main Bonus Army camp and MacArthur was preparing to go in after them. General Glassford begged the general not to do it, calling a night attack the “height of stupidity. MacArthur was adamant and the police superintendent turned away.
Infantry in gas masks confronting BEF members.
At this point the impossible happened- orders arrived from Hoover that “forbade any troops to cross the bridge [over the Anacostia] into the largest encampment of veterans.” The President had received reports about the debacle at Third and Pennsylvania and he was worried about the publicity in an election year. The orders were in sent in duplicate, but MacArthur merely declared to his aide that he was “too busy and did not want either himself or his staff bothered by people coming down and pretending to bring orders.” And so the attack went forward anyway- against the explicit instruction of the Commander in Chief. Again the veterans were gassed and a force of infantry advanced to attack the encampment. Vegetable gardens planted by BEF families were trampled and their makeshift homes were burned. The attack resulted in over a hundred casualties including two babies gassed to death- twelve-week old Bernard Meyers and an unnamed infant who had been born only a few hours earlier. The yachts of well-to-do Washingtonians cruised close to look at the show and watched as Major Patton led the final charge to rout the BEF. Among the men struck down by cavalry sabers was Joseph T. Angelino, who, on September 26, 1918, had won the Distinguished Service Cross in the Argonne Forest for saving the life of a young officer named George S. Patton Jr.
MacArthur giving orders.
Eisenhower later wrote of his grave misgivings with the whole event. “The veterans, loyal Americans who had marched on Washington with perfectly legitimate grievances, were ragged, ill-fed, and felt themselves badly abused. To suddenly see the whole encampment going up in flames just added to the pity one had to feel for them. For the first time in my career I felt ashamed to be a member of the United States Army.”
The BEF camp burning.
For the first time, but not the last.
In January of 1932 a former army chaplain named James Renshaw Cox led a march of 25,000 unemployed Pennsylvanians to Washington, D.C. Supported by numerous notables including Pennsylvania governor Gifford Pinchot (a Republican), “Cox’s Army” was quickly broken up and dispersed. An embarrassed Hoover ordered a criminal investigation into how Cox was able to purchase enough petrol to bring his “army” to the capital, suggesting that either the Vatican or Catholic Democrats had funded him in order to weaken his administration. When it was found that Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon had actually been the one to provide the gasoline he was sacked. Despite its failure Cox’s Army did result in Cox’s founding of the Jobless Party and it was still the largest demonstration ever to come to Washington.
Cox's Army, January 1932.
It held that record exactly four months.
In May of that year over 26,000 penniless World War veterans descended on the capital, occupying parks, dumps, abandoned warehouses, and empty stores. The men drilled, sang marching songs, and once, led by a Medal of Honor winner and watched by a hundred thousand silent Washingtonians, they marched up Pennsylvania Avenue bearing faded American flags. They had come to ask for immediate payment of the $500 soldier’s bonuses authorized in 1924 (over President Coolidge’s veto) that were not due until 1945. Reporters named them the “Bonus Army” (later they would become known as the First Bonus Army) but they called themselves the Bonus Expeditionary Force. They appealed to President Hoover, begging him to receive a delegation of their leaders. Instead he sent word that he was too busy and proceeded to isolate himself from the rest of Washington. The White House (still standing in 1932, and still the residence of the President) was padlocked shut, policeman patrolled the grounds day and night, barricades were erected, and traffic shut down for one block on all sides of the Executive Mansion. A one-armed veteran, bent on picketing, tried to penetrate the screen of guards. He was soundly beaten and carried off to jail.
Bonus Marchers.
It was a massive overreaction. The BEF was unarmed, it had expelled radicals from its ranks, and was slowly starving to death. A reporter for the Baltimore Sun described them as “ragged, weary, and apathetic” with “no hope on their faces.” When Washington police tried to feed the veterans bread, coffee, and stew at six cents a day they aroused the President’s wrath who threatened to have police superintendent Pelham Glassford (who was himself a vet and a former Brigadier General) fired. But in the days before television it was possible to deny the obvious. Attorney General William D. Mitchell declared the Bonus Army “guilty of begging and other acts”. Vice President Charles Curtis called out two companies of marines to remove the marchers, at which point General Glassford noted that the Vice-President has no military authority and sent them back to their barracks. The Washington Evening Star wondered why no District police officer had “put a healthy sock on the nose of a bonus marcher” and the New York Times reported that the marchers were veterans who were “not content with their pensions, although seven or eight times those of other countries.” (Pensions did not exist for the average veteran at this point in time) Ominously foreshadowing what was to come, Brigadier General George Mosley proposed that they arrest the bonus marchers and others “of inferior blood” and then put them in concentration camps on “one of the sparsely inhabited islands of the Hawaiian group not suited for growing sugar.” There, he suggested, “they could stew in their own filth.” He added darkly, “We would not worry about the delays in the process of law in the settlement of their individual cases.”
Bonus Army camp.
On July 28 Glassford, who had been ordered to act by Congress, finally arrived with Washington police to begin clearing the BEF camp at Third and Pennsylvania. The clearing first went fairly peacefully, but then reinforcements arrived from the main veteran camp on Anacostia Flats who began throwing bricks. Glassford himself was struck and as he staggered backwards he watched a police officer “gone wild-eyed” shoot at a veteran. The vet- William Hruska of Chicago- fell down dead and the rest of the officers then opened fire killing another vet- Eric Carlson of Oakland. Glassford shouted “Stop the shooting!” but it was too late. Word of the incident reached the President over lunch, Hoover told Patrick Hurley (Secretary of War) to use troops, and Hurley unleashed General Douglas MacArthur.
Police clash with the BEF at 3rd and Pennsylvania.
Now came a delay- the man himself wasn’t in uniform and he wanted to change. His aide, Major Dwight Eisenhower, didn’t think he should do so. “This is political, political,” Eisenhower said again and again, arguing that it was highly inappropriate for a general to become involved in a street corner brawl. The general disagreed. “MacArthur has decided to go into active command in the field,” MacArthur declared in his trademark third-person. “There is incipient revolution in the air.” An orderly was dispatched to fetch the chief’s tunic, service stripes, sharpshooter medal, and English whipcord breeches. After proceeding to Sixth and Pennsylvania another wait began, and someone asked “What’s the hold up?” “The tanks.” MacArthur replied. Meanwhile President Hoover was issuing an announcement that troops “would put an end to rioting and civil disorder” and that the men the police had clashed with “were entirely of the communist element.”
The tanks preparing to go into action.
Washingtonians watched as the 3rd Cavalry led by Major George S. Patton marched down Pennsylvania Avenue brandishing naked sabers. Behind them came a machine gun detachment, the 12th and 34th Infantry, the 13th Engineers, and six tanks, their caterpillar treads methodically destroying the soft asphalt. Abruptly Major Patton- not known for his solicitude towards civilians- charged his troops right into the growing crowd of twenty-thousand civil service workers who had just come off work. J.F. Essary of the Baltimore Sun wrote that “thousands of unoffending people” were “ridden down indiscriminately”. Among those trampled were Senator Hiram Bingham of Connecticut. “Shame!” Shouted the spectators as they fled, at which point the cavalry finally turned on the hastily assembling veterans and charged again. The vets were stunned then furious. “Jesus!” cried one graying man- “If only we had guns!” The infantry came on the heels of the horsemen, pulling on gasmasks and throwing blue tear gas bombs. BEF women fled the camp, choking and clutching their children as they and their men retreated toward the Anacosta river. By 9 pm the refugees had withdrawn to the main Bonus Army camp and MacArthur was preparing to go in after them. General Glassford begged the general not to do it, calling a night attack the “height of stupidity. MacArthur was adamant and the police superintendent turned away.
Infantry in gas masks confronting BEF members.
At this point the impossible happened- orders arrived from Hoover that “forbade any troops to cross the bridge [over the Anacostia] into the largest encampment of veterans.” The President had received reports about the debacle at Third and Pennsylvania and he was worried about the publicity in an election year. The orders were in sent in duplicate, but MacArthur merely declared to his aide that he was “too busy and did not want either himself or his staff bothered by people coming down and pretending to bring orders.” And so the attack went forward anyway- against the explicit instruction of the Commander in Chief. Again the veterans were gassed and a force of infantry advanced to attack the encampment. Vegetable gardens planted by BEF families were trampled and their makeshift homes were burned. The attack resulted in over a hundred casualties including two babies gassed to death- twelve-week old Bernard Meyers and an unnamed infant who had been born only a few hours earlier. The yachts of well-to-do Washingtonians cruised close to look at the show and watched as Major Patton led the final charge to rout the BEF. Among the men struck down by cavalry sabers was Joseph T. Angelino, who, on September 26, 1918, had won the Distinguished Service Cross in the Argonne Forest for saving the life of a young officer named George S. Patton Jr.
MacArthur giving orders.
Eisenhower later wrote of his grave misgivings with the whole event. “The veterans, loyal Americans who had marched on Washington with perfectly legitimate grievances, were ragged, ill-fed, and felt themselves badly abused. To suddenly see the whole encampment going up in flames just added to the pity one had to feel for them. For the first time in my career I felt ashamed to be a member of the United States Army.”
The BEF camp burning.
For the first time, but not the last.
I'm not quite sure what the specific POD was. As far as I'm aware, MacArthur did order the attack in spite of Hoover's halt order. The results are just significantly worse than OTL (e.g. Senator Bingham lived to the 50s or so IOTL. Same with Joe Angelo, who IOTL tried to meet with Patton the next day to sway him. Patton responded with a harsh "I do not know this man. Take him away and under no circumstances permit him to return.")
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I don't think so. As far as I know, this is all right out of Manchester's The Glory and the Dream. It all happened.
I think the POD is anybody other than FDR being elected, who would then be the last President of the United States. By the time of the '32 election the economy had been in a ever-descending spiral since The Crash in '29. People were starving in New York City, not just being hungry but starving to death. 18% of the men called up for WWII were unfit because of early malnutrition. FDR's second inaugural address mentioned "...one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished," and that was after four years of the New Deal.
In such circumstances, without hope of relief then a violent revolution could be expected.
With regard to the Bonus Marchers, MacArthur should have been cashiered.
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