Friday, July 13, 1923. Doubling down.

 

France, undeterred by criticism and results, determined to into German deeper.

And there was an attempted jail break at the Natrona County jail.

What became the famous Hollywood sign, which originally said Hollywoodland, was dedicated.  It promoted a housing development.   The sign would read in that fashion until 1949 when it was shortened.

Paleontologist lead by U.S. expeditionist Roy Chapman found fossilized dinosaur eggs in Mongolia, the first people to do so and realize what they were.

Hermann Ehrhardt, being held by Germany on high treason for his role in the Kapp Putsch, escaped.

Ehrhardt, back left of car, during putsch.

Ehrhardt, an Imperial German naval officer, lead the Marine Brigade Ehrhardt during the attempt to overthrow the government.  Ehrhardt fled to Switzerland, but returned in September.  This would establish a pattern for the rest of his active life, as the German government later sought to arrest him again, and then finally he feld to escape the Night of the Long Knives. As that would indicate, while he was in the far right, and anti Semitic, he was also opposed to the Nazis.

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 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 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 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 18, 1920. Kapp Putsch Kaputt.

But the Ruhr Red Army soldiered on.

March 17, 1920. Ireland and Germany in the news.

Grocery delivery truck, Coeur d/Alenes Idaho.  March 17, 1920.  (University of Idaho public domain photograph).

Ireland and Germany took the front page on this St. Patrick's Day of 1920.

The Kapp Putsch was collapsing.  At the same time, however, the Red Ruhr Army wasn't, and was also in the headlines.

Eamon DeValera was making the headlines in his role as "President" of the putative Irish Republic, to which he had addressed by way of a statement.

And the tragedy that befell Hazel Miner made the headlines in at least one Wyoming newspaper.

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.

March 13, 1920. The Kapp Putsch

On this day in 1920, in a move that would seem impossibly odd to us a century later, German right wing monarchists staged a coup that drove the democraticly elected government out of the capitol of Berlin.

The origin of the coup would amount to a book length treatise, but basically it had its origin in the fact that aristocratic elements of German society had never accepted the democratic government and yearned for a return to a monarchical autocratic form of government.  These elements were strongly represented in the German military.

The immediate cause of the coup was a late February attempt by the German military to have two Freikorps units disbanded that were made up of officers and men that were drawn from the Imperial German Navy.  The units were elite ones, which was ironic in that the rank and file of Imperial German Navy was basically Communist by the fall of 1918 and its rebellion had lead to the downfall of the German crown.  The leaders of one of the units refused to disband it which lead to a crisis and ultimately it marched on the government in Berlin, where it was located in any event.

Wolfgang Kapp

At that time, American born Wolfgang Kapp, who had spent his childhood in the United States, but who had returned to Germany with his family thereafter, and who had been involved in right wing German conspiratorial circles, declared himself to be the Chancellor.  Ironically, not only was Kapp a right wing German nationalist and civil servant, he was the son of a former Reichstag member from a liberal party that had immigrated to the United States following the defeat of liberalism in the Revolution of 1848.

The coup was initially successful as the military either sided with it or refused to oppose it.  Given this, on March 13 the Socialist government called for a general strike which was enormously adhered to.  This pit the military against nearly the whole of the urban populace.  The strike spread to the German civil service and Kapp's infant government could no longer function.  As this occured the more junior members of the officer corps began to abandon the coup.  It collapsed and negotiations began with the German political parties.  By the 18th the coup was effectively over and the government returned to office by the 20th, but it had agreed to hold new elections in June.  It did so and saw support for the SDP plummet and the beginning of the rise of German right wing parties in the Reichstag.

Kapp fled to Sweden in a departure that was basically arranged but returned to face the civil authorities two years later, at which time he ultimately died from cancer.  Hermann Ehrhardt, fled as well but was soon in charge of a Freikorps like police unit in Bavaria.  Ironically, he was an opponent of Hitler's even though he flirted with Nazism and opposed Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch in 1923.  Rumored to be targeted for assassination in the Night of the Long Knives, he fled to Austria.  He later returned to Germany but was imprisoned by the Nazi government.  He died in 1971.

The entire affair was demonstrative of the precarious condition of the German civil government.  Ebert's government had only managed to stay in power against a left wing rebellion by making concessions to the military and, when the time came, it was finding it difficult to regain control of that military.  The military itself was lead by right wing aristocrats who were hostile to mass democratic government and who favored a return to a more autocratic one.  The German civil service to some degree was right wing and supported the military in that goal.

The coup attempt also demonstrated, however, that at that time the German populace remained fairly left wing and supportive of their government.  Without some form of representative government in power it was clear that at the street level the German population would fight the military and bring about its downfall.

March 2, 1919. Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck in Berlin and Lila Lee in Puppy Love.

On this day in 1919, the German survivors of Germany's commitment to East Africa marched under the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin under their commander, General Paul von Lettow-Vorbeck.  Berlineres put aside their internecine strife to turn out in huge numbers to welcome them as returning heroes.

War time poster featuring Von Lettow-Vorbeck.

Von Lettow-Vorbeck, who had entered the German army in 1890, had commended German forces, which contained 3,000 German troops and 11,000 African troops, highly successfully against British and Portuguese forces in Africa.  He is regarded as largely undefeated in a wide ranging war that had guerrilla aspects.  His success caused him to be widely admired by the Germans and the Allies at the time, ignoring the fact that his troops lived off the land and were responsible for stripping the countryside where they were to the detriment of Africans, who had little real stake in the outcome of the war.  This resulted in famine in some instances which produced predictable results when the Spanish flu struck Africa.  In his defense, his forces were grossly outnumbered the entire time, facing 300,000 combined Allied troops (including colonial troops) which left his options somewhat impaired.  365,000 civilians are estimated to have died by famine and disease in areas in which his troops operated due to the stripping operations of his troops.  He surrendered under orders following the war.  His surviving German troops were ultimately repatriated by the British shortly before this date.

Von Lettow-Vorbeck thereafter took command of a unit in the Reichswehr and subsequently put down a Sparticist uprising in Hamburg without bloodshed, an impressive feat.  He also married for the first time at age 49, and started a family.

He was associated, at least by his right wing sympathies, with the Kapp Putsch, however, and thereafter lost his commission in the German republican army.  He thereafter took up a civilian occupation as an import export businessman.  He served in the Reichtag as a conservative politician in 1928 through 1930 and was offered the ambassadorship to the UK by the Hitler in in 1935 but he rudely declined as he was adamantly anti Nazi.  He was rendered destitute by World War Two but his finances recovered after the war.  His two sons were killed in the war, but his two daughters survived.  He died in 1964, having out lived his wife who was ten years his junior, by a decade, the same year the Bundestag authorized the back back of his former African troops to be paid, by which time there were less than 400 living.

The romance that's been attached to the war in Africa, which was no doubt not very romantic for those who endured it, and his subsequent rejection of the Nazis at a great personal cost to himself, has lead Von Lettow-Vorbeck to have a lingering positive reputation both in Germany and outside of it. 

Paramount released the film Puppy Love on this day in 1919, featuring Lila Lee in one of her first roles.  Lee would go on to be a major film star.  She was just 14 at the time that this movie premiered.  Lee made the transition to sound pictures, but her star did fade a bit during that time, in part because of alcoholism, and in part because she had a long diagnosed condition of tuberculous.  She stopped making  movies in 1938, only to return to film for one final time in 1967.