Prelude to War

AH.Com Thread: “WI: John Birch kills William Foster in Chicago.”

NestorMakhno said:

Exactly on the tin.

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TheThirdMan said:

Don’t see how it would change things. By most accounts, he was already considering retiring anyway, so a potential Gitlow/whoever government would last a month before Reed was going to take over when the Nazis invaded. It certainly wouldn’t have affected the entry into the war.

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Krishna said:

What is the succession process over there, anyway? Who takes over if someone in that position dies? Or is it taken over by the Central Committee? Forgive a Brit for being a little unclear on that.

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EtriganTDemon said:

Basically, the Deputy takes over for the time being, before the committee votes for someone to take over. So, Ben Gitlow takes over for a bit, and as ThirdMan says, Reed probably gets elected to replace Foster. So, small change, but doesn’t really affect the course of events

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MetalApocalypseTapDance said:

Well, yeah, there wouldn’t really be a political ramification, but surely the assassination of a major leader would have other ramifications.

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TheThirdMan said:

Oh, yeah, we might see tighter domestic security policies during the war, and a wider net against right wingers to prevent another assassination. Maybe more security at the jail Birch was held at, so that he isn’t just broken out.

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Krishna said:

Whatever happened to Birch, anyway? Don’t really see anything on any sites that’s definitive.

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NestorMakhno said:

Oh, that’s one of the big mysteries of modern history. Literally, no one knows. He just disappeared across the Canadian border.

Most agree he likely became an insurance salesman and led a mediocre life. There are wilder theories, though, with less and less credibility.

The biggest, thanks to Newt Gingrich, is that he eventually fled to the Free American State during the war, and became a vicious, religious guard known as John the Baptist.

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Krishna said:

Oh, I heard about that (mostly from the Eichmann Papers adaptation by John Frankenheimer). I know that particular guard wasn’t real. He was mostly an amalgamation of a guard named John Henry George (who went by his middle name and wasn’t really religious) and late period William Dudley Pelley as he descended into insanity and did do some of the things attributed to John the Baptist.

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1940
For William Z. Foster, things seemed to spiral out of control very slowly.

First came the news that the USSR and Nazi Germany had signed a secret pact. He had been briefed and ultimately decided to side with the Soviets, feeling that a war would take time to prepare for, and the pact bought time for the Soviets to rearm.

Then came the exposure of the secret pact in the Daily Worker. Foster ultimately couldn’t stop the backlash, especially the no confidence vote. However, using his political savvy, he made his case to the American people and the Soviet leadership, and the Comintern was able to hold for the time being. He also managed to get Harry Truman, the head of the DFLP, to support him in the event of a no-confidence vote, in exchange for a new alliance and the appointment of DFLP members to a wartime cabinet (with Truman as VP).

When the vote inevitably came, Foster, Browder, and Truman worked to keep the votes in the CEC in their favor, arguing behind closed doors that the deal would help ensure Comintern was prepared for the inevitable war with Nazi Germany. The vote was defeated, 263-181.

Then came “Ramsay”. A GRU agent deep undercover in Japan, he had heard from Eugen Ott, a military attache in the German embassy in Tokyo, that Germany had planned Fall Teutonische, an invasion of the Soviet Union. Ramsay relayed this information to the MID and when cross-referenced with other agents in the German government, the plans were confirmed.

The Central Committee was informed of this, as were Soviet ambassador Andrei Gromskyo and opposition leaders Truman and Robert Taft. It was agreed that the DFLP and the DRP would not contest the 1940 Election, and would instead form an alliance with the WCPA, a new united front.

While he no longer had an election to worry about, Foster felt increasing despair over these plans and his inability to act on them. He was noticeably withdrawn during the first half of 1940.

Then came the attempt on his life.

John Morrison Birch was an aspiring Baptist missionary in Georgia when the Revolution happened. His faith caused him to fall in with the Sons of Liberty, operating with the Sons of the Confederacy for a time. His chapter had plans to bomb the local Atlanta headquarters of the WCPA when a tip arrested the entire chapter.

The 17 (soon to be 18)-year old became a minor cause celebre in the non-Communist world for his young age. While unmoved, the judge decided to sentence Birch to military training instead of prison because of his age. He stayed only a few weeks before escaping.

Little is known about Birch’s whereabouts between July 24th, 1935 and the assassination attempt on April 28th, 1940. A network of people smugglers and Sons chapters kept him away from searching authorities under different aliases, only some of which authorities had been able to connect Birch.

It is known that on the advice of Sons propagandist Rose Wilder Lane, he resided for a time in the Missouri Rocky Ridge Farm home of Rose’s mother, children’s author and Sons sympathizer Laura Ingalls Wilder, under the alias “Sam Higginbottom”. When Rocky Ridge was raided in 1937, however, Birch was long gone. He purportedly visited his parents discreetly in 1938. He was listed as a potential co-conspirator in the murder of influential Party member William L. Patterson in 1939, though then Public Safety Secretary Henry Winston dismissed the possibility due to his low visibility at the time (a decision he would later regret, with one of the assassins, John Mathers*, confirming decades later that Birch was indeed involved ).

Investigators eventually found that Birch was in New Orleans in February of 1940. There, working as a street preacher and secret partisan, he made contact with a local Sons gun runner and former policeman named W. Guy Banister. According to Banister himself, Birch decided to assassinate a “public figure” in mid-March of 1940. Banister obliged (believing that it would be a local or minor nomenklatura), and furnished a pistol for him to use. He trained at the local Sons chapter, and considered plans to enact this assassination.

Birch considered going to DeLeon-Debs to shoot the Premier there, but in late-April, learned that Foster was to speak at the funeral of prominent anarchist and former Secretary of Labor Emma Goldman in Chicago. Seizing the opportunity, he traveled by train to Chicago, and planned from there, carefully following the funeral plans as they came out in the English language Chicago papers .

While Foster’s relationship with Goldman had deteriorated because of the Revolt of the Cadres, Foster still felt that she had to be honored for her contributions to the Revolution and to the building of the workers’ state, and wanted to set aside any animus he may have had to honor such a legendary figure. He also hoped (perhaps more cynically) to pave over any potential lingering feelings that some anarchists might’ve had following their feud.

Goldman had been inspired by the Haymarket Affair, so it was appropriate that she be buried in the Waldheim Cemetery in Chicago, near the graves of those executed in that event and of her friend, lover, and colleague, Alexander Berkman. In anarchist Chicago, the funeral would be a major event, with thousand of mourners coming to honor her as the leading light of American anarchism.

Privately, several of her associates felt that Goldman herself might object to Foster’s presence, both because of lingering resentment and Goldman late opposition to military build-up, but ultimately, they felt that he could be a unifying figure to bury the hatchet between mainline communists and anarchists if need be.

Foster was the first one to speak (partially to avoid any embarrassment if it had occurred at the end of the funeral), and spoke of Goldman’s dedication and intellect, discussing her many years of activism in many fields, and how she helped shape the ideals of the Revolution. He spoke candidly about their work, their disagreement and the fallout of her resignation, but said he never wavered in his support for her work nor disrespected her legacy as an activist in the movement.

Meanwhile, John Birch, disguised as one of the mourners in plainclothes, slowly made his way to the front. Clutching his pistol underneath his dress shirt, he moved right into Foster’s line of sight. As he got closer, he slowly pulled his pistol out.

Midge Cowen*, one of the Red Guards on duty, noticed a strange person right in the line of sight, with his hand in his shirt. She saw a glint of light, and realized what was happening. She leaped and tackled Birch as he pulled his gun out and attempted to aim at Foster. Cowen’s efforts resulted in Birch’s bullet hitting fellow speaker HL Mencken (non-fatally) in the arm instead. Cowen fought Birch before other Red Guards helped subdue him.

Birch was held in one of the few remaining Chicago jails, where he was identified as the John Birch that disappeared four years prior. He was briefly interrogated before being held in a communal cell. The next day, when he was to be retrieved, he was nowhere to be found, despite the best efforts of authorities. He left a note, reiterating his reasons for attacking the “satanic Bolshevik” Foster and gave short details as to his plans (including naming Banister as an accomplice), before stating his intention to reach Canada.

While a manhunt was underway for Birch, Foster was left shaken by the affair. He immediately returned to DeLeon-Debs, and was left to ponder if he still had the capacity to lead. Seeing his disposition, the Central Committee, along with presumptive Deputy Harry Truman, made plans to elect someone new if Foster decided to resign. Foreign Secretary John Reed quickly became a favorite.

On May 1st, the election saw the new United Democratic Front win by an overwhelming majority in the Congress of Soviets. However, on May 15th, as the votes for the Central Executive Committee were being counted, Nazi forces entered the Soviet Union, commencing Operation Teutonic.

Foster, feeling responsible for failing to restrain Germany and still disturbed by the events in Chicago, gathered with the Central Committee, the Workers’ Communist Politburo, and the Presidium to announce his plans to resign, but not before declaring war on Germany. He asked the Central Executive Council and the Presidium to put their weight behind John Reed.

On May 16th, at 10:00 AM EST, he delivered a final speech to the Congress of Soviets and to the American public:
“Esteemed people’s deputies, and fellow workers of all nations and creeds: I am speaking to you today, before the plenary session of the Central Executive Council of the Congress of Soviets, on a matter of utmost severity. I come to you not as the head of government for our socialist federation, but as a proletarian comrade and a citizen of the world.

Yesterday, in the early morning hours, soldiers and airmen of the Nazi-Fascist regime in Germany crossed the border of occupied Poland, and invaded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. This attack upon our comrades and allies began unprovoked, and proceeded with calculated, deliberate malice. This invasion, undoubtedly the product of months of cold-blooded premeditation, is the opening act of a great Fascist plot, led by Hitler and aided by his goons in the Nazi vassal states of Central and Eastern Europe.

This invasion is not just an act of war against the people of the Soviet Union; it is a naked attack upon the workers of the world as a whole, against the proletarians who have at last found the strength and will to begin freeing themselves from bondage, with the open ambition of driving us all back into slavery. So I say, as the Party declared in the heady days of the Biennio Rosso, No War But Class War.

As a nation constituted by the vanguard, the most advanced sections of the international proletariat, the Union of American Socialist Republics is and must be the implacable foe of all the enemies of the workers, be it imperialism, racialism, despotism or capitalism. Fascism is but the sum of all those reactionary elements, the product of the bourgeoisie as a class entering a degenerate state of terminal decline, destroying all that had once made it progressive and realigning with its old foes to combat the democratic power of the working masses. The European bourgeoisie has sold its soul to oppose the dialectic of history. As the old aphorism goes, “fight the devil with fire.”

I ask that the Congress declare that a state of war has existed between the Union of American Socialist Republics and the Nazi Reich since hostilities began.

The Revolutionary Military Council has, at my insistence, already begun preparations for hostilities with the so-called “Anti-Comintern Axis”; that gang of degenerate thugs that has been menacing Europe at the behest of the Austrian corporal who styles himself as the Fuhrer of the Volksdeutche. However, it is not my place to lead this struggle.

The rumors you have been hearing are true; I have been planning my exit from public office for some time. The legacy of the grueling work I did as a young man has not been kind to my old body. My health was poor when I assumed office in the Putsch, and the strain of public office has wearied me beyond my years. The war has accelerated what I have already put into motion, but nonetheless I must make it known today.

I have already spoken on this matter with both the Central Committee as well as with the Presidium, and the Politburo, and arrangements have been made to ensure an orderly transition. In the coming month, I will continue to execute the duties of my office faithfully and diligently, and will assist in any transition. But I must add that my esteemed colleague John Reed has my full faith and confidence, and even after he assumes the office of Premier I intend to help our Party’s great work in whatever small way I can.”

As promised, when the Central Committee was elected, they in turn elected John Reed as their “first among equals”, formally put in the position by Secretary-General Kantorovich. Harry Truman was given the Deputy Premier position, with the promise that the DFLP would fully support the war effort. Reed would start his term immediately mobilizing the war effort against Germany.

In his last days in office, Foster would make some last arrangements and set precedents for an outgoing Premier, including a final radio address with thanks to each of the secretariats, a formal meeting with Kantorovich to relieve him of his duty, and a meeting with John Reed and the new Central Committee formalizing the transition. Foster and his wife Ester Abramowitz would leave DeLeon-Debs amidst the press, and would travel by train to Metropolis, where they would retire from public life.

As he rode the train, Foster thought back some 40 years earlier, when he, as William Edward Foster, a young worker from the Philadelphia slums, first moved to New York City to take on part-time jobs. It was there he would join the Socialist Labor Party and the Socialist Trade and Labor Alliance, and would begin his rise as a political leader.

As for John Birch, despite Hoover’s best efforts, with authorities searching even in the midst of the war effort, he failed to turn up anywhere. Informants within the Sons of Liberty were able to fill in some of the gaps, revealing he had been spirited through the same network he had before through Wisconsin and eventually to the UP, where he was able to cross into Canada, though the details were foggy. His last known location was a hotel in the Upper Peninsula, a guest listed under one of his aliases, as confirmed by informants.

In 1957, Paul Ricca, a former Chicago Outfit mobster and Sons of Illinois partisan serving a life sentence, revealed that several Outfit and Sons members in his jail helped smuggle Birch out of prison, taking advantage of a corrupt guard and relatively lax standards. Several former prisoners came forward afterwards to confirm Ricca’s account, with some noting that bootleggers and remaining Mafia families helped Birch evade authorities.

Regardless, after his entry into Canada, there was no trace of him or his aliases. Sightings of him became common across the world, and theories as to his fate abounded through the decades. In 1982, a relatively obscure Baptist preacher and insurance salesman named John Morrison died in Calgary at age 64. A physical resemblance, the similarity in name and some corresponding details (both were born in Landour in India) led some to conclude that it was Birch, though official investigation was indecisive.

Furthermore, conspiracy theories soon surrounded the assassination attempt, mere weeks after it happened. Some said Birch was a patsy for Nazi Germany, Japan, the Soviet Union, Britain, or any number of foreign powers. Some said he was actually a brainwashed agent of rightists in the WCPA seeking to remove Foster, or even a SecPubSafe agent, sent by J. Edgar Hoover in some mad bid for power. Most of these were quickly discounted by the actual evidence surrounding the case.

Ultimately, Birch was unable to grasp one key truth that ensured his failure, regardless of whether the assassination was successful. In his letter left at the jail, he wrote, “cut off its head and the socialist serpent will wither and die.” Birch failed to understand that Foster was never the head of the serpent of socialism, but merely one man, part of a much larger movement that would live on even after his demise. *[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation