Nineteen-Nineteen: The Crucible

Nineteen-Nineteen: The Crucible
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Excerpts from David McCullough,Soldier, Statesmen & Progressive: A Biography of Leonard Wood, (Topeka: Common Ground, 1985).

Leonard Wood, worn out from four years of public service as Secretary of War, delivered his resignation to the Cabinet and President Marshall on 30 March. Though he delivered a written statement of his intentions, he also delivered them orally at the Cabinet meeting that morning. He thanked his colleagues for the opportunity to serve his country, but felt that he had no more to give, now that the War in Europe had come to a close.

In hindsight, this could be easily seen as a somewhat opportunistic move. Demobilisation would be coming soon, and being in government at the time would prove to be quite harmful to a man’s political prospects. However, in light of Wood’s political activities in the following year, and examinations of his personal correspondence, instead we find a sort of bourgeois social patriotism guiding him. Upon returning to his Massachusetts estate early in June, Wood dispatched a number of telegrams and letters to important political figures in the state, including prominent leaders of the Boston Republican machine.

While the Battle of Boston during the Civil War and the subsequent looting has destroyed a large amount of his personal papers, there remains enough to provide a picture of his activities during the Biennio Rosso. In one letter he dispatched to the recently ousted former Governor of the state, Samuel W. McCall, Wood described his fears for the state of politics in the republic:

The Socialists have on their banners the loathsome phrase ‘No war but the class war,’ and it seems like the current administration has been more than content to give that to them. With the War in Europe now concluded, there is nothing to distract citizens from the violence at home. Every act taken by the police or the National Guard at the behest of capital has only further deepened the dislocation in our union. Bringing the Bolsheviks to heel cannot be done by treating every American worker like a potential saboteur […] I know that you are a Christian man of great Progressive sympathies. This was made clear when you opposed the Party’s call for savage reprisals against bread rioters. You understand, as do I, that men who cannot give their children bread cannot be expected to remain civil. Socialism can only breed in circumstances where there is injustice and suffering. It is a mark of a Great Nation to make this possible for its citizens. Nations that fail succumb to revolution, as the Bourbon dynasty of France did. As the Romanov dynasty of Russia has more recently.​

…Ultimately, Wood sought to strike a blow at the powerful establishment of the Republican Party. Either they would heed reason, and allow a new path to be taken in realigning the party, or they would be dragged kicking and screaming to their own salvation. Ultimately, it mattered little to Wood and his allies.

Excerpts from Eric Hobsbawm, ed.,Harvest of Sorrow: The Social Dynamic of Demobilisation , (London: Routledge, 1970)

In the summer of 1919, amidst the chaos of the Biennio Rosso, a perfect storm of different factors hit the economy of the United States. War orders had abruptly dried up, and the stream of demobilised soldiers and government laborers soon entered the job market without any steady income. The economy, which had been running at full wartime mobilization for almost five years at this point, could not rapidly shift production towards consumer products. Consequently, many firms slipped into the red. Creditors found themselves in a crunch, while the sharp increase in interest rates by the Bank of the Republic drove a deflationary recession that sapped the vitality left in the economy.

The attempts to balance the books led only to further deflationary reactions such as mass firings. Labor, already in confrontation with capital, faced a sharp counterattack made possible by demobilised loyalist soldiers. The use of extralegal violence to solve labor disputes, and enforce the companies’ dictates proved counterproductive. Radicalised American soldiers took their rifles and their military training to the picket lines in solidarity with their fellow workers. These armed bands of workers organized their own adjunct organization to the Solidarity trade union, dubbing themselves the Spartacus League. The Spartacists eventually became a paramilitary wing of the Socialist Labor Party, and they found themselves in numerous engagements, often bloody, with the police, Pinkerton thugs, or right-wing vigilante groups. They kept the peace in rough working class neighborhoods as well as during factory occupations and other industrial actions.

During that summer, a total of five million American workers were involved in factory occupations of various lengths, the average lasting approximately a month. The longest factory occupations turned into worker takeovers of abandoned factories, with the owners ultimately cutting their losses after finding that the mainly rural courts where they had sought legal injunctions against the unions, so they could place their assets in receivership, would all too often steadfastly refuse to turn on their neighbors.

While there were notable victories in lumber milling and other small scale industries, on the whole most labor actions only ended up returning to a status quo ante bellum. Rather than acquiesce to the slashing of payrolls, most union locals with depleted strike funds would simply enforce what they euphemistically referred to as “alternate compliance.” In this form of mutual aid, the union would require all of its members to work fewer shifts, dividing the balance among workers who had been terminated. Union members or sympathizers in payroll would ensure that all accounts were settled. If that proved impossible, the union would re-balance the payroll itself.

[…]

The war effort had lit a bomb under Jim Crow, the system of legally enforced racial apartheid practiced in the Second Republic, particularly in the states that had risen in rebellion during the Slavers’ War. The demand for war work and soldiers had resulted in the mobilisation of four hundred thousand Negroes into the National Army, and the de facto end of segregation in the military.

Negro soldiers had earned citizenship through blood, and only to come back to a home that steadfastly refused to change. These veterans faced unemployment lines, strikebreaking goons, and the grinding poverty of sharecropping once again. Nothing had changed, save that they no longer accepted that nothing could be done about Jim Crow.

Negro veterans joined the burgeoning communist movement en mass. They would continue fighting for racial advancement and the rights of toilers, mainly with words. But if necessary, with armed force.

And they would gain new allies in an unexpected place. For better or worse, the brutality of the Great War had brought Americans of all races together through shared struggle. When the Army was on the verge of turning its guns on its own officers, especially the pigheaded scions of West Point hazing culture, they’d relied on one another. Even veterans from the Deep South often became allies in the increasingly militant Socialist Labor Party.

This baptism by fire would be put to the test during the Omaha Race Riot of 1919. Spurred on by the false claims that a white woman, Alice Stokes*, had been raped by George Archer*, a Negro veteran of the 371st Infantry Regiment, a mob of whites led by local prominents came to the boarding house Archer was residing in late in the evening of 25 September 1919. They overwhelmed Archer’s comrades, savagely beating his white friend Lewis Jackson*, whom Archer had followed to Omaha seeking work.

While Archer was being dragged to a local park to be lynched, Jackson and other veterans made the call to arms. The unionised meatpackers turned out in force to defend a brother-toiler. The veterans, now armed and supported by scores of mixed race unionists, descended on the lynch mob.

Though they arrived too late to save Archer’s life, in the ensuing battle Jackson led his cohorts to victory against the lynch mob, sparing his body from defilement. Several of the lynch mob were killed in the short gun battle, scores more injured.

Three days of rioting ensued before the order was restored. National attention was on Omaha. A decorated war hero murdered, with militants of the second founding KKK involved. The local government powerless. The girl at the center of the maelstrom recanting her testimony. The Battle of Omaha would be a grim portent of future clashes between white reactionaries and the labor movement, and a further signal to the establishment that the old strategy of turning white workers against black workers could not work effectively after the experience of the Great War, whether at the front or at home.

Excerpts from Albert E. Kahn,Storming the Gates of Heaven: A History of the Comintern,(Cambridge, MA: Progress, 1962).

Amidst the din of the Soviet Revolutionary War, delegates from across the industrialized world meet in Moscow at the Kremlin’s Court of Justice. Though Allied blockade and intervention made travel difficult for the delegates to the Founding Congress of the Communist International, close to one hundred-twenty delegates arrived by mid-March. Lenin had hoped to begin the congress over a month earlier in Berlin, but with Friedrich Ebert’s SPD in the midst of a Thermidorian Reaction, this proved to be impossible. The hostility of the “moderate socialist” government in Germany was considered proof-positive of the necessity of a third revolutionary international.

The warning time proved to be almost too little. In particular, the official delegates from the American Socialist Labor Party arrived several days late, and only a few unofficial delegates from British socialist and labour organizations were able to attend. With the congress’s limitations, it was initially decided to hold only a preparatory conference, to give invited organizations several more months to prepare for an official founding conference, but this decision was quickly reversed on Leon Trotsky’s insistence. Instead, important functions such as drafting rules and setting up permanent institutions within the international would be held off until the 2nd World Congress.

Due to the limited number of delegates and the largely ad hoc nature of the congress, the Founding Congress was largely limited to discussion and deliberation. The key topic of discussion was the necessity for revolutionary parties to reject bourgeois “democracy” for the dictatorship of the proletariat and soviet government.

Bolshevik Leader Vladimir Lenin (Left) and Swiss Communist Fritz Platten (Right), the Presidium of the First Comintern World Congress ​

…The Comintern’s executive committee, led by Grigory Zinoviev, used the period following the first congress to aggressively promote a common strategy among communists across Europe and North America, albeit with very limited resources. Lenin’s estimation that the developed world was in the midst of a revolutionary upsurge essentially guided First Period Comintern policy. In particular, the de facto head of the Bolsheviks considered the events of the American Biennio Rosso to hold particularly great promise.

He sent an open letter to the Socialist Labor Party in June of 1919, praising the diligent internationalism of the party and its members. The trials faced in confrontation with the bourgeois state “are a refining fire, purifying your steel and tempering your party into a great revolutionary instrument.” Throughout the letter, he urged the American socialists to stay the course, with the hour of the revolution so near. While his highest hopes were dashed, the Americans’ resolute internationalism, and enduring strength of the revolutionary party earned them a position as the favored son among the communist parties.

The Soviet Revolutionary War: An Overview

At the beginning of 1919, the tempo of the war was shifting towards the Bolsheviks’ favor. While the Right-SRs and the Mensheviks still remained defiant to the Soviet government from their bases of power in Central Asia and the Caucasus respectively, Lenin’s regime had successfully ensured that the Left faction of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party would fold into the Bolsheviks. With decisive control of the All-Russian Constituent Assembly, the party promulgated a new constitution with popular legitimacy.

In the field, the reactionary Whites still controlled nearly all of Siberia, but all of their attempts to take Vladivostok failed. Since the Bolsheviks still controlled Archangelsk, and there was no line of communication from British-controlled Murmansk to any of the White strongholds, the reactionaries could not count on much in the way of foreign support.

In spite of support from the German, Polish and Lithuanian governments, the bourgeois-nationalist forces in Western Byelorussia ultimately capitulated on 12 January 1919. In spite of the great successes in Byelorussia though, the Bolshevik situation in Ukraine was much more tenuous. The Red-Black alliance had been unable to significantly advance against the Ukrainian Hetmanate.

On 21 February, Soviet General Mikhail Tukhachevsky led the Soviet 4th Army in an attack on the counter-revolutionary Don Cossacks. Better trained and supplied than in the previous year’s campaigns, the Red Army was able to inflict several demoralizing defeats on Pyotr Krasnov’s forces. Using cavalry forces to disrupt the enemy’s rear areas, Tukhachevsky was able to outmatch the Don Cossacks and force engagements on his terms.

Krasnov himself was captured by Red Army cavalry forces during the encirclement of the Don Cossack capital of Novocherkassk as he attempted to escape on 14 March. With news of his capture, the city soon surrendered, and was mercifully spared liquidation. Continued resistance in the collapsing Don Host was met with Red Terror and Chekists, and by late April the region was considered more or less pacified.

Krasnov himself was executed on the order of a Bolshevik people’s tribunal soon after the close of active combat operations. The decisive Bolshevik victory over the Don Cossack Host proved to be a demoralizing blow to the White forces, and to the “Supreme Ruler” Aleksandr Kolchak personally, one that many historians consider crucial in his flight from Russia later that year.

With the conclusion of the Don campaign, the Bolsheviks began their campaign to liberate Ukraine from the Whites. The alliance with the Black Army was strengthened, though not without Makhno grumbling about the creeping Bolshevization of his strongholds. Nevertheless, a joint military expedition under the overall command of Bolshevik General Mikhail Frunze began moving against the alliance between the Ukrainian Hetmanate and the Tsarist General Anton Denikin. In spite of heavy casualties, and miscommunication between Red and Black forces, the Bolshevik alliance succeeded in taking Kherson, dividing their foes in two. Frunze then pressed his advantage against Denikin in the Crimea while Makhno’s own forces crossed the Dnieper at Zaporizhia.

The initial phase of the Dnieper campaign concluded in late June, with the fall of Yelisavetgrad, and the beginning of the Siege of Sevastopol. Frunze’s forces would be locked down out of exhaustion for the remainder of the year, but the damage they had inflicted on the Ukrainian Whites had proven fatal. The second phase began on 4 July, when Bolshevik forces from Byelorussia marched south. Outnumbered and outgunned, Hetman Skoropadsky was forced to evacuate his government from Kiev to Odessa, allowing the Bolsheviks to recover the city almost unopposed.

Admiral Aleksandr Kolchak, soon after joining his former sovereign Nikolay II in exile in Sweden. ​

While their drive did not make it much further South, the tide of battle had finally swung in Ukraine, yielding another significant propaganda victory for the Bolshevik government. While Siberia proved resilient in the first half of the year, by July it had become clear that a Bolshevik victory was almost inevitable. With Kolchak’s retreat into exile in August, leaving the “Supreme Governorate” of the White movement to his subordinate Yudenich, the White movement’s fate was sealed. Troop mutinies soon handed several important cities along the Transiberian Railway to the Bolsheviks, along with General Yudenich. By November, it became clear that victory would only be a matter of time.

The Treaty of Versailles: A Summary

On 30 May 1919, peace talks between the Entente and the German Reich concluded, with all delegates signing the resulting treaty. The resulting treaty, however, was not satisfactory to any of the victors, let alone the defeated party.

Negotiations

British Aims: The government of Prime Minister David Lloyd George considered a demilitarized German republic to be an important trading partner, and thus considered reparations a potential threat to the British economy. The British government was similarly concerned with the American proposal – originally by Woodrow Wilson but subsequently supported by the Marshall-Mann duumvirate – for “self-determination” among the peoples of the Central Powers, which could pose a threat to Britain’s own colonial empire.

French Aims: By contrast, the French were out for blood, and to restore their hegemony on the continent. Clemenceau considered anything less to be impossible. Beyond restoring Alsace-Lorraine, the French sought to gain access to the industry of the Rhineland, and significant indemnity payments.

American Aims: The American government considered Wilson’s Thirteen Points to be in the interest of the American national economy, and her status as a world power. After sinking so much blood and treasure into the war, a return to isolationism was simply off the table. Instead, through an international forum of nations, the Americans sought to pry open the devastated European economy to American exports and free trade.

Territorial Changes

Alsace and Lorraine: Returned to France without plebiscite.

Northern Schleswig: Returned to Denmark via plebiscite.

Posen and West Prussia: Most of its territory ceded to Poland without plebiscite (an area of 55,800 square kilometers, and over four million inhabitants).

Hultschin in Upper Silesia, and the eastern part of Upper Silesia: Transferred to Czechoslovakia via plebiscite.

Eupen-Malmedy: Transferred to Belgium without popular recourse.

Memelland: Placed under American control, with the option to sell to Lithuania.

Saar Basin: Placed under administration by the League of Nations for a period of 20 years.

Danzig: Placed under a League of Nations protectorate as the Free City of Danzig.

Austria: The treaty forbade integration of the country with or into Germany.

Kamerun and Togoland: Divided between Britain and France.

Ruanda-Urundi: Transferred to Belgium.

German East Africa: The remainder of this territory was transferred to Great Britain, completing the Cape-to-Cairo empire.

German Southwest Africa: Mandated to the Union of South Africa.

German colonies in the Pacific: Islands north of the equator ceded to Japan. German Samoa assigned to New Zealand. German New Guinea, the Bismarcks and Nauru assigned to Australia as mandates.

Shandong: German concessions in Shandong ceded to the United States instead of China.

Reparations

The Treaty held Germany responsible for “loss and damage” suffered by the Entente during the war. Much of the treaty regulated the means of assigning the exact monetary cost to be determined by an Inter-Allied Reparations Commission. France was awarded the lion’s share of the reparations, with Belgium receiving a smaller compensation for the occupation.

Impositions on Germany

The former Kaiser Wilhelm II was assigned the “supreme offense against international morality”, and was authorized to be tried as a war criminal, along with many other German citizens. The Rhineland was to be occupied by the Allies for a period of up to 20 years.

The German military was restricted to no more than 100,000 troops, and conscription abolished. The German navy was limited to 15,000 men, six battleships (no more than 12,000 tonnes each, six cruisers (no more than 6,000 tonnes each), twelve destroyers (no more than 800 tonnes each), and 12 torpedo boats (no more than 200 tonnes each). Additionally, the import and export of weapons was prohibited, as were poison gas, armed aircraft, tanks and armored cars. Restrictions were also placed on the manufacture of machine guns and rifles.

Ratification

Overall, the Entente are divided on whether the Treaty was too vindictive or insufficiently harsh on Germany. Many officials in the American and British government considered it to be greedy, though the French military establishment and perhaps the public considered the treaty to be far too lenient. The United States ratified the treaty in spite of significant opposition by the Socialist Labor Party, and “Irreconcilables” among the Republican Party.

Germany protested the conditions of the treaty loudly and publicly, and the new President of the German Reich Ebert considered rejecting the treaty and resuming hostilities if Field Marshal von Hindenburg considered the army capable of giving any meaningful resistance. However, the government ultimately acquiesced when even von Hindenburg considered resistance hopeless.

With assurances from the American government that the Inter-Allied Commission had no wish to be chained to a dead Germany, President Ebert signed the treaty, and steered it to ratification by the National Assembly on 21 July 1919. The Great War ends in a seeming triumph of American liberal republicanism. The United States, the stumbling colossus, has emerged from the fires of war as the richest industrial economy, poised to trade on favorable terms with both the old empires of Europe as well as the new states of eastern and central Europe.

It is the seeming high tide of Americanism; the belief in republican virtue, liberal values, a land of opportunity, united by common interest rather than blood or soil. In his 1919 State of the Union Address, President Marshall declares the 20th century to be “the new American century.” The light of liberty has spread to the old world by American might. The country is now unified by an Americanness freed from parochial connection to Anglo-Saxon nativism, a land of opportunity for all races and creeds, where ingenuity and hard work have built the wonders of the modern age.

Like all dreams, it was fondly and earnestly believed. This dream was immanent within the American body politic, but just out of reach for the toiling millions. It would exist, seemingly forever in the World of Tomorrow, shared by liberal and revolutionary alike.