1932 (Part 3 of 3)

Excerpts from Nadezhda Meyer,The Revolution , (New York: Pathfinder, 1958)*

When the outgoing US Congress reconvened on 5 December (as was required under the 1787 Constitution), the first signs of trouble were already apparent. The first order of business after First Secretary Longworth called the House of Representatives to order was surprising; he reported that three members of the Cabinet had resigned, and his caretaker government would need to fill those vacancies immediately, entering an already-prepared motion to confirm the new Secretaries.

The swiftness was highly unusual. As were Longworth’s appointments. The appointment of Lieutenant General Douglas MacArthur, the much hated head of Army Intelligence, as Secretary of War drew particular ire from the opposition.

When pressed for some reasoning for the sudden shakeup, Longworth stonewalled, reporting that the matters were purely personal and private, and therefore neither politically relevant nor subject to the House’s review. Hoping to extend debate as long as possible within limits of the House’s rules, Opposition Leader Benjamin Gitlow demanded the release of documentation regarding the resignations, as well as the decisions on who to nominate as replacement. Before the motion could be put to a vote (it had gained the assent of a number of equally perturbed Republican backbenchers), Longworth dismissed it, citing executive privilege.

A motion to censure the government for abusing executive privilege predictably failed on a strict party-line vote. At this juncture, the Workers’ Party caucus were at a loss for what to do. On the eve of taking power, some highly suspicious activity had been noticed outside of the day’s equally suspicious Congressional activity. Most notably, closed door meetings between President Hoover and a number of Army and Marine Corps officers, including MacArthur. Gitlow’s secretaries feverishly prepared a detailed report, telegraphing it to the party headquarters in Chicago asking for further instructions.

This was not the only alarming news that the Politburo would receive this week. The party controlled a large web of informants in a large intelligence network, serving both to help keep the party and its constituent organs one step ahead of local reactionaries as well as to funnel intelligence to the Soviet GRU, who had provided a considerable amount of money and expertise to the project. The system was far from perfect, leaking constantly, and many of its informants were also on the establishment’s payroll. State police, as well as the Secret Service, the NBI, and Military Intelligence, played a cloak and dagger game with with this active fifth column. The party’s one advantage against its mostly better equipped, better trained adversaries was that practically every member of the working class was a potential informant, and one that didn’t expect to be paid to boot.

The myriad reports painted a murky picture. All that was clear was that most of the establishment was panicking. Maids in uptown Boston heard talk between wealthy financiers about moving assets out of the US. A custodian at Harvard University reported fears of rioting or mob justice against their class. A secretary working for US Steel smuggled out a memo concerning increasing donations to far-right militant groups, including the American Legion and the German-American Bund.

The Centre- and Right-controlled Politburo mulled over the continued reports into the early hours of the morning. Finally, they reached a decision, overruling Secretary-General Browder. The telegrams sent out to the party caucus, as well as all the state and local sections, directed them to avoid “the naive impulse towards immediate class confrontation,” and invoke party discipline to muzzle the party’s Left and Ultra Left. The party caucus would drop opposition to MacArthur’s appointment, and would make general assurances that the transfer of power would be peaceful, and the rule of law would be respected.

The party’s militants were not satisfied by this in the slightest. By 13 December, the Left, in cooperation with the Spartacists and the Solidarity trade union, sent out a call to mobilize the masses. New soviets would be established; state and national congresses of soviets would be remobilised with all due haste. A clandestine revolutionary military committee was organised.. Wildcat strikes and other work stoppages increased in frequency in many industrial and mining centers.

The smoke and mirrors couldn’t have split the party more thoroughly had it been planned. Both groupings, often loosely referred to as the “Legalists” and the “Maximalists”, drew vastly different conclusions from the same observations. The Legalists, who controlled much of the upper echelons of the party, as well as the Congressional caucus, saw a frightened group of bourgeois dinosaurs about to be swept away by the wheel of history. They needed to be soothed and placated before they did something stupid.

The Maximalists were convinced that the bourgeoisie was already committed to selling its soul to fascist reaction, and that a reactionary putsch was imminent. History has, of course, vindicated the Maximalists. The discovery process in Longworth’s post-revolution trial for treason uncovered a treasure trove of documents implicating him and others in vast conspiracy, one that had begun the moment the election returns were in.

Hoover’s closed-door meetings with MacArthur were in fact outright attempts at intimidating the scrupulous Hoover into siding with the extra-constitutional coup. While Longworth had set the ball rolling, and convinced his Cabinet, over the protest of three members, to bring MacArthur in as the point-man for the coup, it was MacArthur who quickly rose to a commanding position in this conspiracy. Through a mixture of bribery and threats against their family, the three cabinet members were convinced to resign quietly and be placed under house arrest by the Army.

From there, the criminal conspiracy expanded, bringing in the heads of many state police, as well as many supporters from the business world. Far-right organizations were quickly recruited into the cause, and given considerable resources to both increase their membership as well as arm themselves.

The putschists very quickly turned their eye towards suppressing revolution. The major cities, they quickly concluded, would be lost causes in the event of any uprisings. Controlling the countryside would be key. The conspiracy expanded to include many Southern Democratic leaders, ensuring a solid South from which to draw resources and manpower. The urban-rural divide in Midwestern states was easy to exploit, and the conspirators were confident that enough force existed in private security and the National Guard to secure the West.

The use of paramilitary force and the National Guard to secure the rest of the country would allow them to concentrate the best troops, the ten divisions of the US Army and the two Marine divisions, against the communist strongholds.

This was all mostly in place before the New Year. It would only be a matter of playing for time to ensure that all the pieces were deployed for the coup. Thus when the Congress met in Joint-Session on 6 January 1933 to count the votes of Electoral College, the lame-duck Republican majority pulled out all the stops in challenging the outcome of the election, using procedural issues and any trumped up charge they could think of to decertify votes. This was clearly well outside of the intent of the constitutional framework, and the opposition thundered protests, accusing the Republicans of creating a constitutional crisis. This row in the Congress was ultimately used to indict the entire Republican and Democratic membership of the body for treason, though many were able to demonstrate that though they followed the conspirators marching orders, they themselves did not know that a conspiracy existed.

The Workers’ Party mooted a general strike in protest, but ultimately rejected any hardline extraparliamentary action. A one-day general strike was executed on 13 January as a statement of protest, but the party and union locals were directed in the strongest terms to prevent continuations. In the dead of winter, it wasn’t hard to get even the Ultra-Left to comply. Whatever their faction, most agreed that it was a mistake to spend their resources at this time, whether to further frighten the bourgeoisie or because it wasn’t the opportune moment to begin a revolutionary takeover.

The unfortunate cost of this policy was that it gave MacArthur a free hand to arrange his chess pieces. The American Railway Union and the Telegraph & Telephone Union were among the most radical and well organized in the Solidarity federation. A strike could have easily crippled MacArthur’s preparations.

Wednesday, 1 February 1933 was selected to be the D-day for the coup. Late the previous night, President Hoover signed, under duress, an executive order that declared the United States to be under threat of unlawful insurrection, and under Article IV, Section 4 of the 1787 Constitution and the Insurrection Act of 1807, a state of emergency and martial law were to be declared effective 1 February. Habeas corpus would be indefinitely suspended. Furthermore, Lieutenant General MacArthur would exercise the president’s commander-in-chief authority for the duration of this crisis.

MacArthur’s first action was to issue indictments to the entirety of the Workers’ Party leadership for “encouraging insurrection and the willful destruction of property” under the terms of the Sedition Act, and thus ineligible to hold federal office. In the same stroke, he issued an executive order, supposedly counter-signed by Hoover, banning the Workers’ Party as a treasonous organization.

His handpicked loyalists, many fresh out of West Point, marched into Washington D.C. in the early hours of the morning. Supported by American Legion paramilitaries, they quickly arrested many of the Workers’ Party’s top leadership. Some, like President-elect Norman Thomas, were summarily executed.

Lieutenant John C. Williams, a protégé of MacArthur’s in Military Intelligence, led a squad of Army regulars backed by a detachment of the American Legion to the hotel where Norman Thomas was staying. In the attempt to make the arrest, a bellhop was bayoneted, and the hotel manager shot. Both were left to die in the hotel lobby. They quickly reached Thomas’ room on the third floor. He was already dressed, sitting calmly on the edge of the hotel bed as the soldiers stormed into his room.

Before Lt. Williams could read the arrest warrant, Thomas interrupted: “I suppose you have come to kill me.” He remained composed as the Lt. read the charges, ordering Thomas to rise to be led to an undisclosed location. Thomas was undeterred. As multiple witnesses confirmed, both from the arresting party as well as frightened bystanders, Thomas continued to castigate his executioners. Calmly but firmly, he asked Lt. Williams to “Think very hard about what you are doing, son. Once you go down this road, there is no going back.” Engaging in lawlessness and destroying the constitution “sets a precedent that will cast a pall over this country for a century. You think what you are doing is going to save the country, to save liberty, but you are the ones murdering them.”

At this point, Lt. Williams pistol-whipped Thomas, telling Thomas to “Shut up, you Red bastard!”

As Thomas was led outside, Lt. Williams accused Thomas of being a traitor, and a “No-good grovelling coward, pleading to have your life spared.” He shoved Thomas up against the hotel’s brick exterior wall as his troops formed a firing line ten paces away.

“No,” he replied, “I have already made my peace with God. I am already prepared to die for the revolutionary struggle. I am begging you to save your own soul, and turn away from this madness. But if you’re determined to plunge this nation into darkness, hurry up and shoot me, and quit wasting my time.” And so they did, creating the first martyr of the Revolution.

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