Fight the Devil With Fire
“Over thy wounds now do I prophesy—
Which, like dumb mouths, do ope their ruby lips,
To beg the voice and utterance of my tongue—
A curse shall light upon the limbs of men;
Domestic fury and fierce civil strife
Shall cumber all the parts of Italy;
Blood and destruction shall be so in use
And dreadful objects so familiar
That mothers shall but smile when they behold
Their infants quarter’d with the hands of war;“
Julius Caesar , Act III, Scene 1
Excerpts from Steven C. Rockefeller,Generalissimo: The Life and Times of Douglas MacArthur (Oxford University Press, 1977)
On 17 May 1933, MacArthur assumed direct command of the Army of the Potomac, replacing Major General William Chamberlain. The City of Washington was still burning in places from the riots of the previous week, the embers kept at bay but still smoldering by a skeleton crew.
The directives from the president’s office, bearing the conspicuous counter-signature of MacArthur, had ordered the mobilisation of every able-bodied man for military service. In areas under the direct occupation of the National Salvation Army, this was brutally enforced.
The Army of the Potomac would muster two regular infantry divisions (the 2nd and 8th), the skeleton of the 2nd Cavalry Division, the 29th and 30th National Guard divisions, and four hastily mobilised reserve divisions (the 55th, 79th, 81st, and 105th). Divided into two corps, these nine divisions would have been a formidable fighting force given another four months preparation time.
But this was not the National Army that had vanquished Imperial Germany. With the exception of the 2nd and 29th, these divisions were are half-strength or below. In total, the Army of the Potomac had just over 170,000 men, including the logistical tail. Additionally, most of the stores of equipment for the reserve divisions had already been depleted for the spring offensives. With barely enough rifles, let alone artillery, the force defending the capital was in a perilous position.
MacArthur did not betray the precarity of his position except to the closest military confidants. The civilian arms of the National Salvation Government, a collection of Democratic and Republican opportunists, jumped up fascist streetfighters, and business magnates, continued to operate oblivious to the danger. First Secretary Longworth spent the morning of the 19th at MacArthur’s headquarters in Frederick, Maryland. Upon his return, he expressed his full confidence in a total military victory to a joint-session of Congress. Talk of reconstruction and post-war constitutional changes continued to dominate discourse in Washington.
The British Army’s military delegation were not as easily duped. While MacArthur had contemptuously taken delivery of 70 Vickers Medium Mark IIIs and 52 Vickers Light Mark Es, along with a number of Bristol Bulldog biplanes, the British military attache Major Richard Baxter* reported to London that MacArthur’s staff had seemed very relieved at the conclusion of delivery.
MacArthur, as the surviving fragments of his papers from this era attest, had made the conscious decision to radically control the dissemination of negative information. In spite of a slieu of defeats and growing unrest spreading through White territory, MacArthur repeatedly misled allies about the dire nature of military situation. Newspapers in White territory continued to beat the drums of war. The increasingly strained civilian administration projected confidence in victory.
But in May alone, the Army of the Potomac shot 27 soldiers for desertion, and another 18 for “defeatism”. The use of harsh punishments, especially corporal punishment, intensified. Death was meted out summarily, or following drumhead courts-martial. On 24 May, MacArthur issued an executive order through Acting President Moley’s office extending the reach of military justice to civilians. With a stroke, what little remained of the civilian administration in the states under White control was subordinated to military authority. With habeas corpus suspended indefinitely, the state of exception would now subject civilians to summary execution.
[…]
There can be little doubt that MacArthur’s direct military leadership played a decisive role in the frontier battles of late May. The image of the man still endures, repeated and remixed in newsreels, billboards and magazine covers, of the Generalissimo still in his prime: a tall middle-aged man with the vigor of a man half his age, strutting in his olive-brown Pershing jacket, a corncob pipe clenched in his teeth, utterly fearless as the guns sounded in the distance.
It is no small credit to his organization skills, and his ability to inspire his subordinates that MacArthur was able to stabilize the frontlines against the Rose Offensive. But old-fashioned American swagger could not carry the day.
While the Army of the Potomac was able to barely contain the Red schwerpunkt into West Virginia coal country at a staggering cost of men and materiel, everywhere MacArthur was not, disaster struck.
In Washington, the more moderate collaborators in the National Salvation regime began deserting the sinking ship. MacArthur’s “victory” in the Battle of West Virginia had resulted in the frontlines shifting perilously close to the capital. When news of the Norfolk Rising and the defection of its powerful battleship division reached the city on 27 May, the planned strikes and factory occupations of the day turned into riots and insurrection.
By nightfall, the barricades had gone up in the city’s poor neighborhoods and surrounding industrial zones. While government business continued mostly unaffected, junta forces were stretched to the breaking point.
While MacArthur mulled detaching forces to liquidate opposition in his rear, disaster struck further west. General Haywood’s Midwest Army Group (commonly referred to by its informal name, the Nat Turner Column), shattered the frontlines of the remnants of the Army of the Mississippi. By 1 June, they were across the Ohio River and pushing into Kentucky.
While it is impossible to know if the cadres of regulars and reserve officers MacArthur had ordered eastward to shore up the capital would have made a difference, it is very likely that they would have been deployed with greater effect in the Midwest to slow Haywood’s rapid deep operations.
MacArthur’s strategic command decisions in the crucial days in May reflected an emerging trend of megalomania. A string of poor trades were made, sapping the strength of forces along the front to protect the capital and the ideological legitimacy it provided. Meanwhile, the Red Army was advancing quickly, cutting a swath of revolutionary terror in the regions where the National Salvation Regime held the strongest support among the white population.
Excerpts from the AH.com thread “WI/Challenge: A more successful Rose Offensive?”
LeninsBeard: I admit that military affairs really aren’t my strong suit, so I thought I’d field this question to the board’s gun porn enthusiasts. OTL’s Rose Offensive was a considerable success for the nascent UASR, and probably the first indication that the revolutionary regime wasn’t just playing house but actually the beginnings of a stable government. But can it be made more successful? As I understand, it accomplished pretty much all of its operational aims but at a somewhat higher cost than anticipated. And if so, what effect would that have on the Civil War? Might we see a quicker end of unofficial support to the White regime? Could it even mean preventing the White exodus to Cuba?
Ubermunch : Maybe I’m just dumb, but why is it called the Rose Offensive? It seems a bit, well, frou frou for a military operation.
DeOppressoLiber : Because roses start blooming in mid to late May. Besides being red, roses have also been part of the traditional symbolism of the socialist movement, particularly the women’s sections.
To answer my hippie peacenik comrade, it would be extremely tough to push any further, logistically. Along much of the front, it was basically a mad dash by cobbled together Red Army groups on the heels of retreating White units. They encountered only sporadic resistance. They crossed the Ohio River into Kentucky virtually unopposed, and the Kentucky NG units refused orders to leave the state with the Whites, electing instead to surrender to the Reds.
Most of the fighting was of the partisan variety, with the White Army wisely choosing to avoid battle and reorganize from a position of strength further South. In the western theater, the only major fighting occurred in the retaking of St. Louis from a White counteroffensive.
In the East, there was more resistance, because MacArthur’s own reserve was fresh and unmolested, and he took personal command of the military situation while the White government began evacuating.
It’s Round 1 of the grudge match between Patton and MacArthur. Patton’s forces were chaotically organized, and he had fewer artillery guns and aircraft at his disposal. MacArthur’s troops had poor morale, and their operational security leaked like a sieve, but they were still well disciplined and fought tenaciously. They made the Reds pay to take Baltimore, and stymied the advance into West Virginia.
By then, they were pretty much spent. They had to consolidate before they could begin the next operation, aiming to trap MacArthur and his troops in the salient around the capital. That meant bringing the state and local administration into compliance, and the establishment of soviet government, repairing roads and bridges, and fixing the supply bottlenecks that had hampered offensive action. In particular, both sides’ reliance on a large fleet of commandeered civilian cars and trucks created its own set of problems. Cross-country operation is hard on equipment, and the motor pool never had enough spare parts of the right kind.
Empire of Endless Monologues : I’ll defer to DOL’s assessment as she’s much more versed in American military history. There are a lot of barriers to making things go well, beyond simply handing MacArthur the idiot ball, as the somewhat wish-fulfillment driven “Cuba Libre” TL did.
There’s not a lot the Reds can do to avert MacArthur establishing the National Socialist People’s Vacation Utopia. And this is one of those few cases where I actually root for the Reds. Seriously, that guy is a bastard coated bastard with bastard nougat filling, and it creeps me out how he has been lionized by some people on this side of the Atlantic.
flibbertygibbet : Empire: I’m sure this gets asked a lot, but were you in the military?
Empire of Endless Monologues : Yeah, Air Force actually. Maintenance, mostly on the Avro Vindicator bombers. Still a bit of a military nerd even though I left the service years ago.
Suede Denim Secret Police : Realistically, I don’t think any more resources could be brought to bear within the time constraints. The Reds had more than one battle to fight. For one, the move to revolution was not uncontroversial. It came at the cost of increased civil unrest in the North, because not everyone who was on board for the proletarian-led restoration of the Constitution and institution of a new governing philosophy within that framework was in support of open revolution (though this was able to be mitigated with the Popular Front strategy and somewhat muted support from bourgeois liberals like Roosevelt and Rob Taft).
They also were fighting to link up the West coast insurrection, and that meant taking control of a very vast and sparsely populated territory in the plains and mountain west. This was not a quick and easy process, even with the support of local reds, and at many times large portions of the states of Colorado, Utah, Nevada, Dakota and Nebraska were under White control, usually in the form of private armies hired by the local captains of industry and landlords. But Pinkertons and the like could not effectively take control of the mining or logging industries, to say nothing of any town linked to a railroad.
Still, their pacification took up men and resources, and securing the vast hinterland was considered a higher priority than direct confrontation with the White armies in the East.
Wikibox by@Asami
The Norfolk Rising began, not as Marine legend tells it, with the arrival of Old Gimlet Eye himself. Members of the rank and file in the 1st Marine Division had been organizing in secret since news about the Battle of Chicago had arrived. But when a veteran sentry concealed Major General Butler’s arrival at Naval Station Norfolk with a small core of old comrades from the Levantine Campaign, those conspiracies gained a vital boost.
Butler was a living legend among Marines, whose exploits had been retold in the legends of the close-knit military brotherhood. The 1st Marine Division was his old command, and many of the officers and NCOs had served under him in that crucible. The majority of the rank and file, who had neither joined the conspiracy nor ratted it to the committed reactionaries placed in command by MacArthur were quickly swayed to action in secret meetings in the Marine barracks.
The Old Wolf was with them. The revolutionaries turned their sights towards the crews of the two battleship divisions anchored at Norfolk. Effectively under arrest after the San Francisco Mutiny, the the crews of the Navy ships languished confined to their ships, subject to brutal discipline enforced by the Marines and the motley collection of cadets, State Guard weekend warriors, and paramilitaries garrisoning the prized Atlantic Fleet.
The mutiny began just after lights out on the 25th of May. Marine raider teams neutralized key sentries guarding the battleship U.S.S. Washington (BB-47). Butler then made contact with the ship’s executive officer, Commander Jean-Paul Sanders*. Butler had known him from the waning days of the Great War, when he’d been a rapidly rising Lieutenant attached with the Mediterranean Fleet, and had expressed increasingly red sympathies during this period. Such sympathies had endured; he’d been in contact with the head of the mutineers, Major Lars Anderson* for the past week.
The Marines quickly took the captain and other suspect officers into custody, while the crews prepared the mutiny. At dawn, the Washington raised the red flag, and fired one of her five-inch guns into Maj. Gen. Seth Williams headquarters. With that signal, combat groups of Marines and sailors began storming the barracks housing the VMI Cadets pressed into service, killing or subduing them quickly.
With Gen. Williams greivously wounded, and many of the command staff killed, the Naval Station was pandemonium. The Marines rapidly seized strong points, and beat back disorderly counterattacks by Virginia State Guardsmen. Struggles began on the other ships, pitting Red sailors against their reactionary brothers. Three destroyers would be successfully scuttled by White forces. On the battleship Iowa , the pride of the Atlantic Fleet, the fighting was most fierce. Red sailors were able to sieze the bridge and engineering quickly, but much of the rest of the ship had yet to be secured. In a final bid to deny the prize, White officers opened her seacocks and used a scuttling charge to tear a hole below the waterline. But her engines had already built up enough steam to drive her turbines, and through decisive action of the leading Red sailors, she was able to be run aground to prevent further damage and loss of life.
By the afternoon, the rising had spread to the city of Norfolk. Armed citizens joined with the Marines and sailors in scourging putschist forces from the city. Salvoes from the main guns of the battleships broke the morale of the remaining White forces, demolishing several police stations and city hall.
Excerpts from Albert E. Kahn,Storming the Gates of Heaven: A History of the Comintern,(Cambridge, MA: Progress, 1962).
After reconvening hastily in April, the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) was immediately beset with difficult questions. The American Workers’ Party had long been the favored son of the Comintern due to its commanding organizational presence, and thus had been offered a degree of autonomy and influence within the ECCI that no other party save the CPSU itself had. But by April, it was clear that they had gone off the reservation in a serious way.
The ECCI would not give a public rebuke for fear of making a bad situation worse, but in private, the American member of the ECCI’s presidium, Solon DeLeon, was chastised by Stalin directly. The secret internal minutes of the ECCI from 19 March to 2 May detail a body that was both dismissive of the chance of revolutionary success as well as unwilling to leverage resources to support it.
With considerable difficulty, and several end-runs around Comintern bureaucracy, DeLeon was able to push the Comintern into the organization of International Brigades to bring volunteer fighters as well as material aid to the American revolution. But this was regarded only as a token propaganda gesture. One that, according to the arch-Stalinist ECCI chairman Palmiro Togliatti, had gone horrifically right.
The call to arms was taken up enthusiastically even in the face of secret directives to the various Communist parties and front organizations of Europe to quash excessive adventurism. Arms, hard currency and volunteers began collecting in port cities waiting for opportunities to ship out to the revolution. No national section turned out more enthusiastically than the mass of German communist exiles, still smarting from the loss of their own country to fascism.
On 1 April, Stalin reversed himself. The growing mutinies on the American west coast, as well as new intelligence from sources within the British and French governments, convinced the highly cautious Soviet leader to venture blood and treasure in the growing American revolution. British or French intervention, the GRU concluded, would be nearly impossible. The diplomatic rebuke from open intervention would not matter to a pariah state like the Soviet Union.
When the American provisional government called for world revolution on 1 May, both Stalin’s government and ECCI were shocked. But Stalin did not waver in his commitment to supporting the American revolution, even if his government’s official position was still one of the restoration of the Constitution. The Reds’ position continued to strengthen as May wore on, and the arrival of International Brigade volunteers as well as Soviet war materiel continued to bolster their military situation.
In a major break from the past five years, the ECCI issued a call for an Emergency World Congress of the Comintern without even consulting Stalin. The Comintern would no longer be an apparatus of Soviet foreign policy. It finally began taking its first steps as an authentic arbiter of the international communist struggle.
The Communist parties of Europe were slower to react to the changing dynamic. The German sections of the Comintern, once the most thoroughly dominated by Stalinist orthodoxy, rapidly shifted into the American camp. The French section remained even more orthodox than Stalin, and continued to characterize the events in North America as “adventurism”. The Anglophone sections were reserved, fearing opening themselves up to another round of state repression. The Italians were the wild card; having long since been forced underground or into exile by the Fascists, their reactions were mixed. Much of the PCI had been thoroughly integrated into the Stalinist power structure. But others had not, and many exiles who had gone apolitical rejoined the movement, enthusiastically supporting the American revolution.
[…]
While volunteer units of the International Brigades had made their contributions since the start of major fighting, the true commitment to proletarian internationalism was first felt during the Battle of Baltimore, at the culmination of the Rose Offensive. The Soviet 3rd Naval Infantry Brigade, supported by an independent tank battalion, launched a night attack across the Susquehanna River just after midnight on 6 June. The surprise attack secured several key river crossings, including U.S. Route 1 over the Conowingo Dam. The elan of the Soviet troops was demonstrated by skillful, courageous infiltration and assault of the entrenched defenders of the 29th National Guard Division.
The “Black Devils” took heavy casualties securing the bridgeheads. But by dawn, the tanks of the 3rd Cavalry Regiment were had crossed the river. T-21 and T-26 tanks raced along Route 1, riflemen clinging to the sides in tank desant , followed by hundreds of trucks carrying troops, supplies and artillery. By the time reinforcements could be wheeled to contain the breach, the Red Army had routed the regiment of National Guardsmen securing Route 1, and reached the outskirts of Baltimore.
Patton’s tanks clashed with MacArthur’s British loaned tanks west of Baltimore on 10 June. With the bulk of the forces engaged in urban fighting in the city, MacArthur attempted a flank attack to relieve pressure on the decimated 29th NG Division, which was rapidly losing ground in the increasingly hostile city. This flanking attack was spotted by aerial reconnaissance.
Just after noon, the White tank regiment collided with a line of concealed anti-tank guns south of the town of Cooksville. The Soviet 45mm M1931 guns, manned by German International Brigade volunteers, pinned down the advancing tanks. The initial engagement lasted eight minutes, with Colonel Jedediah Jackson* withdrawing behind a ridge after losing six tanks. Unable to effectively engage the concealed guns, Col. Jackson was forced to wait for the infantry to catch up and organize for an assault.
Utilizing indirect fire from the tank’s main guns and a quartet of M1915 machine guns to cover the assault, Col. Jackson sent his available infantry, two companies of green South Carolina volunteers to assault the position. In the time spent organizing this assault, the defenders had moved up an additional company of German volunteers.
The largely Great War veteran German cohort chewed up the the attacking infantry, and the tanks moved in too late to effectively support the infantry. By the time the tankers could close in to engage the positions, the assault had lost its momentum. Additional reinforcements crossed the field under machine gun fire. By 3 p.m., most of the anti-tank guns had been disabled. But the valuable time lost proved fatal.
A company of Red Army T-3 fast tanks2 arrived and immediately engaged the White tanks in the first major tank battle in history. The QF 3-pounders of the Medium Mk III and the Light Mark E had poor muzzle velocity, hampering engagement against moving targets, and had marginal penetration abilities against the T-3’s sloped armor at the five-hundred meter engagement ranges typical in the Cooksville Engagement. By contrast, the AT-45-K19 could reliably stave the flat 14mm armor of the Medium Mk III at that range.
By day’s end, Col. Jackson would lose half his tanks to enemy action and malfunction. But the implications of the Baltimore campaign went beyond the crude advancement of military science. The soldiers of the International Brigades and the nascent Workers’ and Farmers’ Revolutionary Army3 established the proof of concept of militarised internationalism, and bonded that pact in blood.
The British observers inserted among the White forces not only would lead to the major overhaul of British and ultimately European military doctrine, they also grimly learned that in any future conflict, the forces of reaction would be at war with the workers of all nations, including their own. This lesson has informed the last three decades of carnage.
- Red Army redesignation of the M1927 Christie tank.
- An evolutionary improvement of the M1927, hastily pressed into production. Wider hull and turret to accommodate a four-man crew and radio equipment, and armed with a license-built Soviet 45mm M1931 gun.
- An Americanized calque of the official name of the Soviet Red Army, Raboče-krestjjanskaja Krasnaja armija(Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army). Because of the multiplicity of Red Armies, the term “Red Army” is a generic for any Comintern aligned army, and one would likely call the Soviet army either the Krasnaja Armija or the RKKA.
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