April 12, 1920 Sonora rebels, the Ruhr Rebellion ends.

The revolution in Mexico, and that's what it now was, was back on the front page of American newspapers.

As part of this process, Sonoran Governor Adolfo de la Huerta resigned his office in preparation for taking up the part of a revolutionary soldier once again.  In his place, Plutarco Elías Calles became Governor.  Calles was already a figure in Sonoran politics and had been a general in the Mexican revolution and a supporter of Carranza. At this time, he was supporting Obregon and De La Huerta.

Plutarco Elías Calles, who later took Mexico to the edge of fascism and across the line of sectarian brutality.

Calles was a true radical and his policies were brutal, particularly against the Catholic Church.  He'd later become the President of Mexico from 1924 to 1928 when his policies resulted in the Cristero War, which might be regarded as the final stage of the Mexican Revolution as well as the point at which Mexican democracy basically essentially a joke in some ways, so much so that when his policies resulted in the assassination by a Cristero supporter of Obregon, who was set to resume office, he became a type of dictator and founded the National Revolution Party, which governed Mexico from its founding until 2000.  Calles himself at this point flirted with fascism, which had an influence upon him.

Calles would ironically fall at the hands of an associate, Lázaro Cárdenas del Río, who became President of Mexico in 1934.  Cárdenas proved to be independent of his patron and acted against Calles' supporters.  Ultimately Calles was charged with being a member of revolutionary conspiracy and deported, ironically, to the United States in 1936.  Supposedly Calles was reading Mein Kampf at the time of his arrest.  As an exile, he made contact fascists in the United States although he rejected their anti Semitism and of course their hostility to Mexicans.  He was allowed to return to Mexico, in retirement, in 1941, and began to modify his views, supporting Mexico's entry into World War Two.

Cárdenas, for his part, remained a revolutionary, but not a fascist, and continued the suppression of the Catholic Church throughout his Presidency.  That feature of Mexican politics would not abate until 1940 when Manuel Ávila Camacho became President.

While this site is not, obviously, the history of Mexico website, all of this ties into the purpose of this blog which was to look at events in the 1890 to 1920 time frame with a particular focus (among other focuses) on the Border War with Mexico.  While this phase of this time frame and the attendant history are clearly winding down, the events described here are critical elements of it.  Over time, we've seen a democratic revolution that took the eclectic Francisco I. Modero into office as a true democrat devolve into continual revolutionary cycles which at one time promised to put a collection of democrats in power, only to have that fall apart and leave the radical Venustiano Carranza in charge.  In 1920, that was flying apart as Carranza schemed to control who would replace him as President of Mexico. That would ultimately see the more radical Obregon come to power followed by Calles, who was an extremist who flirted with fascism during his lifetime.  Only beginning in 1940 did Mexico begin to turn away from that direction, although it would take sixty years for real democracy to return to the country after that date.  In 1920, it was dying.

Oskar von Watter.  He commanded German government forces that entered the Ruhr to put down the Communist rebellion there.  In 1934 he'd cause a monument to be put up in Essen in honor of Freikorps soldiers who had died in the 1920 rebellion.  He died in 1934 and was buried in Berlin's Invalid Cemetery, a cemetary associated with Prussian military figures.

On the same day the Ruhr Rebellion in Germany came to an end with the German government firmly in control  General von Watter ordered his soldiers to abstain from "unlawful behavior", but it was too late.  Reds caught with firearms were simply killed in many instances.

April 9, 1920. Spring in Washington D.C.

In  Washington D.C., equestrians participated in a paper chase on this day in 1920.

Elsewhere, Germany informed France that it would be responsible for property loss and the loss of life in the regions France had moved in to occupy, an ironic statement in light of the fact that the Germany government wasn't shy about the use of force on its own soil.

April 8, 1920 More Strife

On this day in 1920, the British were confronting riots in Jerusalem.

British troops at the Jaffa Gate, April 8, 1920.

Things had been building up for awhile as competing interests struggled concerning the future of the city and who would be allowed to live there and who control things there, while the British struggled to keep a lid on it all.  The British ended up declaring martial law to calm the violence.

One place the British had determined not to struggle was in the Ruhr. They informed the French that they would not be entering into Germany. Only Belgium agreed to assist the French.  Germany appealed to the League of Nations but, as it was not yet a member, its appeal was rejected.  The German government in turn voted to withdraw from the region in accordance with the Treaty of Versailles, which it shortly accomplished, but its entry had already accomplished it goal of suppressing the Communist rebellion there.

In Central America, Tragic Week commenced which saw the country in revolutionary turmoil as rebels seized the capitol and the government in turn shelled it.  Ultimately, rebel forces would overturn the government, which was militarist in nature.

April 6, 1920. Contests.

"At Walter Reed Hospital today the American Forestry Assn planted a memorial tree for the American Legion Post 21. Photo shows Mrs Walter Reed widow of the famous Physician for whom the hospital is named planting the tree which is the first of its kind to be enrolled on the honor roll".  April 6, 1920.

An event that started off as a deluded monarchist plot against the Germans Socialist democracy ended up brining, on this day, a French occupation of portions of the Ruhr while, as the same time, the Reichswehr was fighting in some Ruhr cities.

Anyone should have been able to see that a monarchist coup would bring a Communist revolution, but the plotters hadn't.  Now, not only had they brought regions of Germany back into civil war, they'd brought on a treaty entitled invasion of Germany's most industrial region.

On the same day, the Soviets agreed to the creation of a Far Eastern Republic, a rump state on the Russian Pacific Coast that was seen as a buffer state, with no real independence, between the Soviet Union and Japan, and hence a means of bringing to an end the ongoing strife with the Japanese who remained in the region as part of what had been the Allied mission to Russia.

The republic would last about two years before being absorbed into the Soviet Union.

In the American primary elections, Herbert Hoover, who had announced as a Republican candidate for the Presidency, took fourth place in the GOP contest in Michigan but first place in the Democratic contest there.  Hiram Johnson of California took the state for the GOP.  Johnson had been Theodore Roosevelt's Progressive Party Vice Presidential running mate.

April 4, 1920. Treasure Island released, France announces advance, Soviet Union requires workers to have identification.

On this day in 1920, the film Treasure Island, or rather one of its earlier (not its earliest) versions, was released.  The popular novel has lead to frequent cinematic adaptations.

On the same day France announced it was going to occupy German cities in the Ruhr due to the failure of the besieged Ebert government in Berlin to withdraw the Reichswehr from that region.  On the same day the benighted government of the workers in the Soviet Union announced that all the benighted had to carry identification as to their place of employment so as to be able to make sure that they were remaining benighted.

April 2, 1920. The end of the Ruhr Uprising, Irish Republican protests in Washington, Processions in Jerusalem.

The Reichswehr and the Freikorps entered the Ruhr in earnest, and in violation of the Versailles Treaty, on this day in April, 1920.

The German government could not secure permission for their entry but it had little choice but to send them.  The Ruhr Uprising by this point was only successful as it had no armed opposition inside most of the Ruhr.  The entry of the German Army ended that.

Ebert promised no retaliation, but in fact the German government and government aligned forces executed a large number of German Reds who fell into their hands. The revolution was crushed, but the French would occupy some German cities in retaliation for their refusal to allow German forces in the Ruhr being ignored.

On the same day, for the second day in a row, there were female protests in Washington D.C. in support of an independent Irish republic.

And also on that day, the country that was not yet providing for that Irish independence leant a military bad to a procession in Jerusalem that was otherwise made up of locals of that city, including a boy scout troop.

March 27, 1920. Germany's Treaty Violations noted, Borah says something about Wood, maybe.

On this day in 1920 the German civil war in regions left inside the Versailles Treaties prohibition on German military power continued on in rebellion. Both the Ruhr and Westphalia had seen armed worker revolts as a result of the Kapp Putsch and now neither region's labor fighters were willing to stand down and instead were trying to take German in a more leftward direction.  The Allies, however, wouldn't agree to let the German Army in.

On the same day, Germany was found to have violated the Treaty, which in fact was pretty obvious.  Germany had been limited to 204 artillery pieces and was prohibited to have aircraft, but in fact, through the help of the quasi official but technically civilian Freikorps, it had 12,000 artillery pieces and 6,000 aircraft.

The size limitations placed on the German military were never realistic, no matter what a person otherwise thinks of the Versailles Treaty. Indeed, the Weimar Republic had no choice but to violate them.  Realistically, the only alternative the Allies had to allowing Germany to have a fairly sizable military would have been to actually occupy the country, as it did following World War Two.  As it was, Germany was left a functioning, albeit barely, republican state that had to contend with internal revolution as well as a very unstable situation in the immediate post war world to its east.  Those concerns practically necessitated the retention of artillery and aircraft.

Their prohibition and the very early incentive to avoid that prohibition, which in part was done through the reliance on right wing monarchical militias help fuel a sense of resentment in the military which would later help bring about the Second World War.  It was certainly not solely responsible for it by any means, but it was an element of that.

On the same day the Cheyenne State Leader opted for a nearly nonsensical primary election headline.

Apparently that meant that highly respected Senator Borah of Idaho was taking some swipes at leading GOP Presidential contender, General Leonard Wood.

Elsewhere, on this Saturday, people went shopping.

March 26, 1920. Reichwehr and the Ruhr. F. Scott Fitzgerald and This Side Of Paradise.

In Germany, the rebellion in the Ruhr raged on, and the German government asked for permission to cross into the Ruhr to fight the Reds there. They wouldn't receive permission, but it didn't stop them from advancing into the Ruhr anyhow.

In the U.S., Fitzgerald's This Side Of Paradise went into publication.

A critical success, the novel put Fitzgerald on the map and it achieved his personal goal of convincing Zelda Sayre to marry him. Fitzgerald, a Princeton student only shortly before, had begun work in earnest on the project when she left him. 

The novel is set in Princeton, which didn't impress the President of Princeton at all, as he found its depiction of student lives to be dispiriting and non academic.

Washington D.C. National Guard, March 26, 1920.

March 19, 1920. Kapp gone, but Germany in turmoil, Storms in southern Wyoming, Storms in Chaplin marriage, Senate fails to ratify Versailles Treaty.

Ebert's government was restored, but still challenged.  In the Ruhr a Communist rebellion was still very active.

On the same day, news of a huge storm in southern Wyoming was making headlines, . . . and a century later another blizzard is expected in the state.

In Cheyenne the new of the marital troubles of the Chaplins, which involved the former Mildred Harris of Cheyenne, Chaplin's first wife, were front page news.  The couple would in fact divorce that year.

A majority of the Senate voted to ratify the Versailles Treaty, but it was still seven votes short of the number needed to ratify the treaty.

The Senate did vote support for Ireland's independence.

Yaqui Indians surrendered to Mexican troops causing a headline that proclaimed that the Mexican Revolution was now over.  On the same day Soviet newspapers were reporting that Alaska wished to succeed from the United States and join the Soviet Union, an early example of "fake news" involving Russia.

March 15, 1920. The Ides of March sees Germany in near revolt, the Allies in Constantinople, Congress Acting on the Versailles Treaty, and a Blizzard in North Dakota.

The headline was quite correct, a new civil war loomed in Germany, but at the same time the Reichswehr was pulling back from the putschists, proving once again that the army's instinct for self preservation remained paramount.

And perhaps it also reflected the fact that the rank and file of the Germany army differed little from the average man in the street to some degree.  This was no doubt not the case for the Freikorps, but German soldiers had played a role in the revolution of 1918, something that their leaders couldn't afford to forget.

Not forgotten in the U.S. was the Treaty of Versailles. The Senate ratified it, but not as written, substituting a compromise alternative Article X.

On the same day, but only hinted at here, British forces, acting under the Treaty of Sevres, occupied Constantinople.  The Allies in Turkey were acting as if the surrender of the Ottoman regime meant that the end of Turkey as a state capable of waging war against those on their own soil was over, which was far from true, and which would ultimately lead to disaster.

Allied troops marching in Constantinople, Greek flag flying from a building.

The occupation of the Ottoman capital city did not go well.  It commenced the night prior and was expansive on this day.  British Indian troops engaged in gunfire at a Turkish military school, killing ten students and British authorities arrested Turkish nationalist, including some members of the Ottoman parliament.  The overall human toll on the occupation isn't known.

The occupation of the parliament effectively eliminated the Turkish government which in turn put only the Sultan in a position of supporting the peace treaty with the Allies.  This would discredit the peace and a putative government anticipated by the treaty, which in fact had not yet been signed by the Turks.  The entire affair would strengthen Turkish nationalist who were already fighting the Allies in Anatolia.  

Constantinople would be occupied until 1923 when it was evacuated under the terms of a treat with the new Turkish government, the result of which would in part be the expulsion of most of Turkey's Greek minority population.

Closer to home, the deadly Spring Blizzard of 1920 hit North Dakota.

And U.S. passports suddenly became invalid due to Robert Lansing departing the office of Secretary of State with no replacement in place.  The crisis would continue for a week until Bainbridge Colby was confirmed for the office.

March 14, 1920. Day two of the Kapp Putsch, day one of the Ruhr Uprising

On this day the Kapp Putsch was back in the news, which for an attempted coup is bad news.  By now, the new government should have been absolute, and it wasn't.

Indeed, in the Ruhr, a full scale left wing uprising was in progress.  The Red Rurh Army, 50,000 men strong, was contesting the results of Kapp Putsch in Berlin.

May 2, 1919. At Ease, In Distress, Distressing news in Central America, and in the United States

The day after the Red May Day, things were more normal, and not.

American officers posed for a portrait in Germany:

Commanding officer staff, 42nd Division.  Maj. Gen. C. A. F. Flagler, Lt. Col. Stanley M. Rambaugh. Col William N. Hughes, Jr., Cpt. James M. Boyd, Maj. E. H. Bertram, Maj. Robert J. Gill and Lt. H. W. Fletcher.  New York Tribune, May 2, 1919. Taken at headquarters at Ahrweiler.

Elsewhere in Germany, or more particularly in Munich, the Freikorps advanced riding with Death's Head, a symbol that dated back to German military antiquity, but which became increasingly associated with Germany's right wing.

The Freikorps had, of course, crushed the nascent Bavarian Soviet, a Communist state that exhibited typical Communist brutality in going down in defeat.  In Russia, however, the Whites were exhibiting some problematic behavior of their own.

The families of Bolshevik prisoners outside of the prison at Ekaterinburg with food for their relatives. North Platte Semi Weekly Tribune, May 2, 1919.

While that was going on, the United States was supporting the Whites against the Reds, or not, or was, or was not.  We really couldn't make up our minds.

J. K. Caldwell looking studious and calm as Russia disintegrated.  He was the American counsel in Vladivostok.  May 2, 1919.

Meanwhile, in Costa Rica, today a vacation haven, Gen. Manuel Choa, late of Pancho Villas' forces, and former Catholic Priest, the Belgian educated Jorge Volio Jimenez, stumbled into rebellion against the country's leadership.

The Cheyenne State Leader couldn't help but note the events of May 1.

The reference to Lenin in Denver was surprising, but then Denver has always had some oddities. At the start of the Civil War a party tried to declare Denver for the Confederacy.

The Laramie Boomerang had given up on peace, it seemed.  It would prove correct in that view.

The Wyoming State Tribune was more optimistic.

May 1, 1919. A Red May Day

May 1, May Day, has long been associated with the far left as its the International Workers Holiday.  In 1919, with Communism on the rise everywhere, May 1 was notably Red everywhere.

The evening Casper newspaper  noting the riots in Cleveland as well as the anarchist bombing campaign.  This paper also discussed the acquisition of property with a future eye towards social services.  Costa Rica and Mexico were trying to get into the League of Nations, the paper also noted, but weren't admitted due to political instability.

In the United States, the Communist Party USA was founded, rapidly gaining membership (while always remaining a minor political party) in the wake of the decline of the Socialist Party in the United States, which had come under the eyes of the law for its opposition to World War One. 

The CPUSA would have its glory years, if they could be called that, in the 1920s and the 1930s, during which it not only was a serious, if minor, political party, but during which it was also an organ for espionage for the Soviet Union.  It never had more than 80,000 members at its peak.  It's role as an arm of the efforts of the NKVD were already known, if not fully appreciated, by some who tried to bring it to the government's attention by the 1930s, and indeed a precursor to what later became known as the McCarthy Hearings actually occurred in the late 1930s and focused on some of the same people who would be examined later, but it was not until the end of World War Two when the full horrors of Communism in Russia were revealed that the CPUSA really started to decline to the trivial, where it remains today.

In Cleveland riots occurred on this day, springing from a Socialist march that was supported by Communist and Anarchist.  The imprisonment of Eugene V. Debs was the spark that ignited that flame.  There were about two deaths as the result of the riot, and about forty injuries.

In Winnepeg construction workers went on strike.  It would soon expanded to be a general strike.

In Bavaria, German forces, supported by Freikorps, breached the Communist defenses in Munich bringing the Bavarian Soviet Republic to an end.

Cheyenne was having an air show on this day in 1919.

In the U.S. the news was also still breaking about the anarchist bombing campaign that had been started but detected.  The campaign would revive later.  It wasn't connected with any other radical group, although it likely had the appearance of that to the general public at the time.

All of this would contribute to making the summer of 1919 the "Red Summer", as it was termed by James Weldon Johnson.  It would also fuel an ongoing "Red Scare" that had commenced during World War One.  With the summer beginning the way that it was, that the scare would occur was pretty predictable.  And in fact, the far left of 1919 was not only radical, but seeing a fair amount of global success.  It's chances of success in the United States were frankly slim and always would be, but the combination of the news produced a predictable reaction.

Easter Sunday, April 20, 1919

April 20, was Easter Sunday in 1919, in both the East and the West.

Things weren't going well that Easter Sunday in much of Christendom, including in the domain of the largest Orthodox Church, the Russian Orthodox.  On this day in 1919, the Red Army's First Army surrendered to the Ukrainian Blacks, a quixotic anarchist army, in the Ukraine. The blacks were an army that was fighting for a stateless state. . . which sounds like it'd be just about as successful as it turned out to be, but they were having some military success at the time.

Ukrainian black cavalry.  They did have commanders, and the like, which makes their being anarchist problematic right from the start.

In the same war, but in Moldova, the French army blew up a Bridge in order to keep advancing Reds from taking the town of Bender.

On the same day, Hungarian Communist Bela Kun asked for volunteers for the Hungarian Red Army, proclaiming the Hungarian Communist revolution in danger.  It indeed was in danger as its support was limited.

Kun, as we earlier noted, would end up in Russia after the failure of the Hungarian Communist revolution and end up as a figure in the Russian Civil War in the Crimea, where he played a part in ordering the execution of civilians, the Communist being fond of executing the people in the name of the people's state.  Large number of people would die in this instance.  Following that, the Soviets sent him to Germany where he backed a Communist revolution in 1922 which was a failure, and in turn Lenin blamed himself for sending Kun to Germany in the first instance.  Returned to the Soviet Union in 1928 he spent the next decade in internal Communist infighting, sometimes denouncing fellow Hungarians, until his opposition to the Popular Front concept lead to his arrest and execution.

Bela Kun as a prisoner in 1937, before he shared the fate he'd approved of for others.

In Germany, things remained in a state of turmoil, although newsreel footage shows that a lot of people actually turned out in Berlin this day to generally enjoy Easter.

On the same day, the newspaper The Sun ran scenes of the German government's response to the thread of further Communist uprisings in Berlin.

Crowds gathered as the zoo in Washington D. C. for an Easter Egg roll.

Things were much more normal that Easter in the United States.

And in far off Alaska St. George's Episcopal Church was dedicated near Valdez.

In Wyoming, the "ain't no Sunday's west of Omaha" type of logic was apparently at work:

1919  A pipeline was completed between Lost Soldier and the site of the former Ft. Fred Steele. Ft. Fred Steele was a railhead on the Union Pacific Railroad at this time. Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.