The Forgotten African-American Regiments of World War 1

Over 380,000 African-American troops served in World War One according to the US National Archives. Here, Chris Fray looks at the role the Black Americans played in the war in the context of the time.

The ‘Hellfighters’ - Soldiers of the 369th (15th N.Y.), 1919. They were awarded the Croix de Guerre for gallantry in action.

Most African-American troops were deployed to labor divisions within the US providing manual labor for the war effort.[1] Even the Black soldiers who were deployed to France were first put to work unloading supplies from ships, joining the supply troops known as ‘Stevedores.’ These battalions did not fight but aided by building bridges, repairing roads and ensuring the fighting troops were constantly supplied.

The uncomfortable truth of the matter is that the US high command were unsure whether White US troops would mix with Black troops and fight alongside them. Although slavery had been abolished in 1865 with the 13th Amendment to the Constitution, over half a decade later the rights of Black Americans had progressed very little. Attacks and racial violence were common, especially in the Southern states. At this time, US society was fully segregated and would remain so until 1948. The concept of ‘separate but equal’ had been adopted across the country, prohibiting Blacks to use White facilities such as bathrooms, schools and railcars by Law.

At the time when war broke out, thousands of Black-Americans were moving from the country to industrial centers in what is known as the Great Migration.[2] As the US economy grew, many more opportunities became available in cities, especially with labor shortages due to the War. Organizations such as the NAACP were formed, campaigning for the advancement of Black people, consolidating more confidence and power than before. One of the first mass protests in US history took place on the eve of the First World War in 1917, New York, known as The Silent Parade. Led by NAACP, 10,000 African Americans marched down 5th Avenue, New York in protest to a recent racist attack in East St. Louis where perhaps up to 200 African Americans were killed and 6,000 were made homeless due to racially motivated arson.[3] With this new Black organization came increased resentment and anxiety from Whites and especially the Police, leading to more and more violence.

Action in the war

Although very few in comparison to White soldiers, there were a number of African-Americans who did see action in the First World War. The most celebrated were the 15th New York “colored” Infantry Regiment, renamed US 369thInfantry Regiment but also, and much more dramatically known as the ‘Harlem Hellfighters.’ Harlem was home to 50,000 of the 60,000 African-Americans living in New York’s Manhatten in the 1910s.[4] After deciding that Regiments were better led and filled by soldiers of the same race, the 369th Infantry were assigned by the US army to the French army who, as a body were much more open to integration in their forces. French colonial troops had been integrated into the French army for decades.

The ‘Hellfighters’ quickly became renowned for their bravery and ferocity on the battlefield, in particular by the German troops they were fighting- who originally coined the term ‘Hellfighters.’ Their motto, “Don't Tread On Me, God Damn, Let's Go," sums up their determination and resilience very well. It was their resilience which they became famous for- The 369th Regiment spent more time in continual combat than any other US division of its size, with a staggering 191 days in the front line trenches.[5] One particular episode on 15th May 1918 shows the fortitude and strength of the soldiers of the Regiment. When on watch duty, Private Henry Johnson and Private Needham Robert’s position was attacked by German troops. The two soldiers fought off 12 Germans in brutal hand to hand combat, saving the position but Johnson receiving 21 wounds in the fight.[6] After the war, the Regiment as a whole were awarded the Croix de Guerre by the French Army and returned to America as heroes.

Legacy

The irony of fighting for freedom abroad when you don’t have the benefit of it at home, can’t have been lost on these soldiers. However the success and bravery of the ‘Harlem Hellfighters’ saw the first serious calls for desegregation of the US army. Although desegregation was not signed until 1948 by President Harry Truman, the ‘Hellfighters’ paved an important way for recognition and opportunity for Black soldiers to come.

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[1] US Department of Defense - https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/1429624/african-american-troops-fought-to-fight-in-world-war-i/#:~:text=More%20than%20380%2C000%20African%2DAmericans,to%20labor%20and%20stevedore%20battalions.

[2] US Library of Congress - https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/civil-rights-act/segregation-era.html

[3] https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/1917NAACPSilentProtestParade

[4] Smithsonian Magazine - https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/one-hundred-years-ago-harlem-hellfighters-bravely-led-us-wwi-180968977/

[5] National Museum of African American History & Culture - https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/remembering-harlem-hellfighters#:~:text=Some%20members%20of%20the%20Harlem,to%20the%20369th%20Infantry%20Regiment.

[6] https://www.britannica.com/topic/Harlem-Hellfighters

Poker and the US Presidency

Surprisingly, card playing and other games had a great impact on the U.S. presidents, from George Washington to Joe Biden. Card games, played by a majority of the presidents, especially were a respite from the overwhelming pressures of the presidency. These games, mainly poker, honed the presidents’ ability to take calculated risks and enhanced the Chief Executives’ ability to bluff and read their opponents.

Several presidents used poker, specifically, to start their political careers. Here, Ralph Crosby, author of Poker, Politics and Presidents (Amazon US | Amazon UK), tells how poker playing helped put three presidents in office.

Theodore Roosevelt in 1898.

TR at the Poker Table

In the fall of 1880, when Theodore Roosevelt first sat down to play poker in Morton Hall, wearing his black dress coat, a top hat and pince nez glasses on a cord, the rough-hewn players at the table didn’t know what to make of this “dandy,” especially a Harvard-educated scion of the Roosevelt Clan, part of the 400 “best” New York families.

Theodore was there on a mission. He wanted to get involved in Republican politics and Morton Hall, a large room over top of an East 59th Street New York City saloon, was the headquarters and club room of the Twenty-first District Republican Association and just a few short blocks from his home.

At first, he was not very welcome at Morton Hall, as he had been warned by his rich, privileged friends, who viewed with disdain politics as the province of a rough and tumble crowd of saloon keepers, horse car conductors and low-level storekeepers and pols.

Theodore was not too pleased with the place itself, with its residue of cigar smoke and ashes, half full spittoons and a few dingy tables and chairs. The only appointments to break the dinginess were two framed pictures on the wall, of Ulysses Grant and Levi P. Morton, a Republican Vice President under President Benjamin Harrison and the club house’s namesake.

But Roosevelt persevered. He later commented, “I went around there often enough to have the men get accustomed to me and to have me get accustomed to them, so that we began to speak the same language….” It worked, and he was finally accepted for membership.

“They rather liked the idea of a Roosevelt joining them,” he later recalled. “I insisted in taking part in all the discussions. Some of them sneered at my black coat and tall hat. But I made them understand that I should come dressed as I chose…. Then after the discussion I used to play poker and smoke with them.”

Theodore’s courage, self-confidence and camaraderie especially impressed one man, Joe Murray, an Irishman and former street gang leader, and the second in command of the Twenty-First District Association—conniving to be number one. By lining up delegates under the nose of the Twenty-First’s leader, who expected his crooked candidate to get the nod for state assemblyman, Murray only needed a good candidate of his own. He decided Roosevelt was his man, and convinced the newcomer to run.

Politics Begins for Teddy

On October 28, 1881, the association’s convention was held at Morton Hall, and Murray surprised the top boss by nominating Roosevelt. The convention elected Theodore on the first ballot, and the 23-year-old went on to win his first elective office. As poker historian James McManus concluded in his book Cowboys Full, Roosevelt “had used poker and other manly ploys to raise himself up in the Republican party.”

Roosevelt would later introduce Joe Murray as the man who “started me in politics.” That start was the first step on the road to the White House. That road would have many twists and turns, but Theodore would navigate them with the fearlessness, fighting spirit, and risk-taking so prominent in the military man and adventurer he would become and the card player, success seeker and creative thinker he already was.

Richard Nixon’s Evolution

During WWII, the 29-year-old Richard Nixon joined the Navy as a Lieutenant (Junior Grade) and his life changed drastically. In his Quaker family tradition, Nixon did not smoke, drink liquor, use cuss words, gamble or play cards. That would change in the Navy.

Eventually sent to the South Pacific and promoted to Lieutenant Commander, he led a small detachment in the Combat Air Transport Command (SCAT). On the Island of Bougainville, during his first month there, Nixon’s unit was bombed by the Japanese for 28 nights out of 30. Many bombs just missed his bunker.

As in many wartime situations, much of the Navy’s SCAT team’s time was spent in what Nixon called in his memoirs “interminable periods” of monotonous waiting. They also sought diversions from the stress of nightly bombing. The boredom and fear often were quelled by poker games, which hooked the non-card-playing Nixon.

Nixon’s Poker Profits

Thrown in with some hard-living and hard-drinking Navy men, Richard Nixon soon was drinking and cussing with the best of them. Bored with lonesome evenings reading by himself, he began kibitzing the regular poker games in the camp. When he saw the amount of money being won and lost at poker, especially dollars thrown away by drunken players, he became intrigued. It was the money, not the cards that caught his attention. Nixon biographer Steven E. Ambrose concluded, “The games became an obsession with him.”

An earlier biographer of Nixon’s, Bela Kornitzer, in his book titled The Real Nixon, written while the subject was still vice president, said of Nixon’s South Pacific time, “Out there Nixon passed over Quaker objections to gambling. Why? He needed money. He learned poker and mastered it to such a degree that he won a sizable amount, and it became the sole financial foundation of his career.”

Nixon’s poker playing was very profitable. His South Pacific poker winnings are reported variously between six and ten thousand dollars. The most accurate figure, which he told his family, was $8,000, worth more than $110,000 in current dollars.

He used the winnings from the poker games to finance his successful campaign for Congress, his entry into politics.

Obama’s Poker Pals

With his Harvard law degree in hand, Barack Obama went to Chicago to join a law firm, where he concentrated on civil rights cases, and taught at the University of Chicago Law School. He quickly became involved in Project Vote for election year 1992, overseeing volunteers and registering voters, helping elect Carol Mosely Braun, Illinois’ first black U.S. Senator, and preparing himself for his run for the Illinois state senate in his district.

Obama won the primary unopposed. At age 35, four years out of law school, running against only token Republican opposition, Obama won his first public office.

In his pre-presidential autobiography, The Audacity of Hope, Obama wrote of succeeding in the state legislature despite the risks of a political career:

“By all appearances, my choice of careers seemed to have worked out. After two terms during which I labored in the minority, Democrats had gained control of the state senate, and I had subsequently passed a slew of bills.”

Of Poker and Politics

Obama’s entry into the state capital was not greeted warmly. The highbrow Harvard Law graduate got the cold shoulder from the old school Illinois legislators. But he found a way to earn the trust and friendship of many. Like Teddy Roosevelt—he played poker with them.

In fact, with fellow freshman Democratic senator Terry Link, Obama started a poker game, which became a favorite of an eclectic group of legislators, both Democrats and Republicans, and lobbyists.

In a 2008 The New Yorker article, poker historian James McManus concurred. “Perhaps realizing that both the Chicago machine pols and the downstate soybean farmers viewed him as an overeducated bleeding heart and a greenhorn, he decided to woo them with poker.” In his poker history, Cowboys Full, published in 2009, McManus  devoted the book’s first six pages to Obama’s poker playing, in general, and to his and Link’s games, specifically.

The poker game, at different times played in Link’s Springfield home basement, a local country club and a lobbyist’s office was called the “Committee Meeting.” It started out with only a few players but eventually developed a waiting list. They played stud and draw poker for low stakes, a dollar bet and a maximum three dollar raise. A night’s win or loss normally ran about $25, and a big loss would be $100.

In Cowboys Full, McManus quoted Link, “You hung up your guns at the door. Nobody talked about their jobs or politics, and certainly no ‘influence’ was bartered or ever discussed. It was boys night out—a release from our legislative responsibilities.”

Obama undoubtedly saw it a bit differently. As McManus wrote, Obama “seems to have understood, as a networking tool, poker is the most efficient positive of all.” “The bottom line politically,” McManus concluded, “was that poker helped Obama break the ice with people he needed to work with in the legislature.”

Later, when Obama decided to run for the U.S. Senate, he reached out to his poker friends to gauge their support. Most felt the time was right and pledged their backing.

From Poker Winner to Political Winner

As Obama wrote in his autobiographical book, A Promised Land, “I began by talking to my poker buddies… to see whether they thought I could compete in the white working-class and rural enclaves they represented… They thought I could and all agreed to support me if I ran.”

Fortuitously, at the same time, Obama gained local and national prominence with his star-turn keynote address at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, a speech called so “transformational” that politicians and the media started calling Barack a “rising star” and presidential material.

The result: Obama scored a landslide victory over Republican Alan Keyes, 3,597,456 votes to his opponent’s 1,390,690 to become, at age 43, the junior Senator from Illinois.

To celebrate his victory, his buddies held a special poker game—meant to bring Obama some humility.

In his book on Obama’s political ascent, author David Garrow reported, “We brought him down to earth real quick, explained Terry Link, describing how they worked together so that Barack lost every hand.” By night’s end, Obama had lost all his money, but maybe gained a bit of humbleness. Later, U.S. Senator Obama, visiting Springfield, again found time for a poker game with his old buddies.

The next step was the White House, where Obama continued to play cards.

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Jacob Riis: The Danish-American who Made a Big Impact in the Late 19th Century

Jacob Riis (1849-1914) was a Danish-American who had a big influence in America during his lifetime. He was a social reformer, journalist, photographer – and confidante to presidents. Richard Bluttal explains.

Jacob Riis in 1906.

The great mass. . . . of newsboys who cry their “extrees” in the street by day . . . are children with homes who contribute to their family’s earnings, and sleep out, if they do, either because they have not sold their papers or gambled away their money at “craps” and are afraid to go home . . . . In winter the boys curl themselves up on the steam-pipes in the newspaper offices that open their doors at midnight on secret purpose to let them in.

Imagine it's 1888, New York City. The Lower East Side is the most densely populated place on Earth: block after block of tenements house the working-poor immigrants of the city, including Italians, Irish, Germans, Jews, Czechs and Chinese. Imagine the darkness of an unlit corridor in one of those tenements, a corridor that opens onto windowless rooms, 10 feet square, where entire families live and might even work — sewing or rolling cigars. Out of the darkness, a door opens. A man with a Danish accent leads a team of amateur photographers, who are accompanied by a policeman. They position their camera on a tripod and ignite a mixture of magnesium and potassium chlorate powder. A flash explodes, illuminating their squalor. It would take the photographers a few minutes to reload that early ancestor of the flash bulb. And then, on to another tenement scene. And despite the blackness of a room or an unlit street, a picture is taken, a document of urban poverty.

In 1873, Riis became a police reporter and was assigned to cover New York City’s Lower East Side. This role, as described by Riis, meant he was “the one who gathers and handles all the news that means trouble to someone: the murders, fires, suicides, robberies, and all that sort”. His investigations led him to some stunning discoveries, including the horrible living conditions of New York tenements. He found that some tenement conditions were so abysmal that the infant death rate was 1 in 10. These experiences drove Riis to continue his efforts; by the late 1880’s, Riis was conducting in-depth investigations into the conditions of the slums, using flashbulb photography to capture these deplorable conditions.

Social activist

At what point did Riis become a social activist. As the story goes, “One cold night of wandering led to a chance encounter with a little dog, who loyally followed him around the city. When Riis sought refuge in a police lodging house, the dog was denied entry. Riis awoke in the middle of the night to find another lodger had robbed him. When he complained to a policeman, he was called a liar and thrown out of the lodging house.

His loyal friend, who had been patiently waiting at the door, reacted to seeing Riis treated this way by attacking the policeman and biting his leg. The policeman grabbed the dog and smashed him against the station steps, killing him. Riis was beside himself with grief and rage and pinpoints this exact moment as launching his life as a social activist. 

The kind of police lodging where Riis had attempted to spend the night had become an increasingly since the 1860s. Low Life author Luc Sante estimates that between 100,000 and 250,000 people per year took shelter there. As Eric Monkkonen documents in Police in Urban America, these cold, leaky, drafty lodging houses were a petri dish of diseases that would spread quickly through their populations and onto the police force.

One police doctor lamented, “More miserable, unhealthy, horrible dungeons could not well be conceived of,” which sounds pretty rough by 19th century standards. The most common afflictions were tuberculosis, lice, and syphilis. Reformers had long hoped to shut such institutions down. In 1894, when Riis met Teddy Roosevelt, they got their best chance.

Confidante

Jacob Riis was once one of the most famous men in America: and became a close friend and confidante of President Theodore Roosevelt and the epitome of the immigrant made good — good, in his case, being measured by political and social influence, not by wealth. One of his books, How the Other Half Lives (1890), exposed the horrors of tenement life. It caught the attention of Civil Service Commissioner Theodore Roosevelt, who viewed it as a call to action. Immediately after finishing this book, Roosevelt marched into Riis’s office to tender his assistance. In 1895, when Roosevelt was New York Police Commissioner and Riis was employed as a police reporter at the Mulberry Street station, the two often worked together. They ventured out on urban expeditions together to witness first-hand the calamitous conditions affecting the poor. Through their investigations, they hoped to bring about better living situations as well as to eliminate corruption within the police department that added to the burden of destitute New Yorkers. . On February 8, 1896, Riis took Roosevelt on a tour of police lodging houses, including the specific one that had mistreated him nearly 20 years earlier. A disgusted Roosevelt promised Riis, “I will smash them tomorrow.” A week later, Commissioner Roosevelt shut down all of the police lodging houses in the city. Afterwards, Riis wrote, “The battle is won. The murder of my dog is avenged.” For the for the rest of his career, Riis would end lectures thundering, “My dog did not die unavenged!”Through their investigations, they hoped to bring about better living situations as well as to eliminate corruption within the police department that added to the burden of destitute New Yorkers. Riis was active in bringing about anti-child labor and tenement reform laws.

After Roosevelt resigned as Police Commissioner, he and Riis remained close. United by their passion for reform, the pair’s unlikely friendship surpassed purely political matters Riis was active in bringing about anti-child labor and tenement reform laws.

Photos

One of Riis' most famous photos was taken on Bayard Street. It's called "5 Cents a Spot," which shows a room full of people bedding down for the night. (A "spot" meant a place on the floor.) They must have been shocked. Magnesium flash powder was something new. It was developed in Germany in 1887. Riis' burst of light must have been a stunning surprise, but it made the dim, airless lives of the poor visible to the middle class.

Bonnie Yochelson and Daniel Czitrom, co-authors of Rediscovering Jacob Riis,  took a walk through the neighborhood.  The neighborhood is recently gentrified, but this was where Riis campaigned against the housing conditions of the day. "You can still see the really small size of the building lots," says Czitrom, who is a historian. "The typical building lot in New York for a tenement was 25 feet wide and 100 feet deep going back," and the buildings often took up the entire lot, he says. So-called rear tenements, built behind other tenements, would have no access to light or air, and all the rooms were interior rooms, Czitrom says.

A court decision from that era essentially said there is no right to light or air for a renter or an owner, he says. "So, the idea that you have a right to a window or the right to some breathing space was not a legal right that anyone recognized until much later," Czitrom says.

Riis thought of himself as a writer, and he was evidently a gripping storyteller in the lectures he gave to accompany his lantern slideshows.

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Before There Was a State of Israel, There Was Birobidzhan

When the State of Israel was declared in the Middle East in 1948, it was dubbed the first independent Jewish state since the reigns of kings like Saul, David and Solomon in the 10th century. That’s because very few people, then or now, are aware of an area that, in August of 1936, was declared as the site where “For the first time in the history of the Jewish people, its burning desire for a homeland, for the achievement of its own national statehood has been fulfilled.”

Alina Adams explains.

A 1933 Soviet stamp depicting the Jewish people of Birobidzhan, available here.

How It Started

That site was and still is known as Birobidzhan, a strip of land between the Biro and the Bidzhan rivers, located on the border of Russia and China.

How did that happen? Well, it began as many Jewish stories begin….

In 1926, the still-fledgling government of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was advised that “Jewish agricultural settlements (have) called forth a sharply heightened anti-Jewish mood.”

Translation: Communism took away land from Russian/Ukrainian/Slavic peasants and redistributed it among all Soviet citizens, which included Jews. Also, Jews who did not want to farm, came pouring into the cities, competing with other unskilled laborers for the already limited pool of menial work. 

This annoyed both the farmers and the non-farmers. Since antisemitism had been officially outlawed by the newly formed workers paradise of the USSR, it annoyed those in charge that it still existed. It was an embarrassment to them. Something needed to be done!

The solution? Well, if you got rid of Jews, then you also got rid of Jew-hatred. Sure. Let’s pretend it works that way.

But where to get rid of them to?

The Committee for the Settlement of Toiling Jews on Land filed an 80 page report saying they would accept any piece of land the Soviet Union decided to put them on… except for Birobidzhan.

Why not Birobidzhan? Well, first, the territory was mostly swamp, covered in gadflies and mosquitos. Locals burned fires to keep insects away from the cattle, and covered themselves in repelling ointment and netting. Second, the area was populated by native Koreans who likely wouldn’t appreciate the newcomers, as well as Chinese warlords who periodically crossed the border to check on their poppy (opium) fields. Oh, and Cossacks. Did we mention Cossacks? After the revolution, many fled East. They likely wouldn’t appreciate the Jewish interlopers either.

Naturally, after reading the report, the Soviet government decided their newly created Jewish Autonomous Region would be… in Birobidzhan.

How It’s Going

In April 1928, 540 families and 150 single people made the trek to the Far East. There was no infrastructure for them. They literally lived in holes in the ground, dealing with the tail end of the rainy season. By May 1928, two-thirds of the settlers had turned back home.

Nonetheless, that same summer, Birofeld, the first Jewish collective farm in the East was established. It subsumed the Cossack village of Alexandrovka; the first recorded incident of a Jewish community overtaking a Russian one. 

In May 1934, the Communist Party granted Birobidzahn its official status as the Jewish Autonomous Region.

And they all lived happily ever after.

Except they did not.

The 1930s were a most precarious time in the USSR. That was when Stalin unleashed his Great Terror Purges, arresting, exiling, and executing all those who he believed were against him. And he believed almost everyone was against him. Alliances could change on a whim, with no warning. 

For instance, Lazar Kaganovitch, secretary of the Central Committee, Commissar of Communications, and colloquially known as the most powerful Jew in the USSR, visited Birobidzhan in February of 1936. He had dinner with the local party head, and praised his wife’s delicious Jewish cooking.

Where It Went Wrong

By August of 1936, that same party head was removed on charges that he’d been “unmasked as untrustworthy, counterrevolutionary, and a bourgeois-nationalist conspiring to create a murderous, Bundist, Nazi-Facist organization.”

Oh, and his wife had tried to poison Kaganovitch. With gefilte fish. Possibly the most Jewish criminal charge ever filed.

In 1940, after The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact that partitioned Central and Eastern Europe between the Soviet Union and Germany, the USSR found itself overseeing a portion of the over three million Jews living in Poland. Officials visited Birobidzhan to investigate whether it might be a good option for deporting them to, before opting to go with their tried and true destination of Siberia. 

In the run-up to World War II, Birobidzhan’s Korean population was also exiled to Siberia, for fear they might prove a fifth column more loyal to Japan than to the Allies powers. After the war, Birobidzhan saw a slight uptick in population, as Jewish survivors, unable to face returning to the villages and cities where their own neighbors turned them over to the Nazis and Rumanians, trickled into what they hoped might prove a safe haven.

However, those truly dedicated to the cause of an independent Jewish state made their way to Israel by the end of the decade, and the Jewish population of Birobidzhan continued shrinking. Currently, they number around 4,000 people, roughly 5% of Birobidzhan’s 75,000 citizen population. 

However, the buildings and street signs still bear the traces of Hebrew letters spelling out Yiddish place names. Officially, Birobidzhan is still The Jewish Autonomous Region, whether the Jews of the world know it or not.

Alina Adams is the NYT best-selling author of soap opera tie-ins, figure skating mysteries, and romance novels. Her latest historical fiction, “My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region” chronicles a little known aspect of Soviet and Jewish history. Alina was born in Odessa, USSR and immigrated to the United States with her family in 1977. Visit her website at: www.AlinaAdams.com.

How One Unknown Man Changed History and Turned the Tides of World War Two Against Hitler

Heinrich Pfeifer is not a name which springs to mind when we consider the major events of the twentieth century, but new evidence shows he might just be one of the key figures to decide the outcome of the Second World War, and hence one of the reasons why we are not all speaking German today instead of English.

Robert Temple explains.

Reinhard Heydrich, who was Heinrich Pfeifer’s boss. Source: Bundesarchiv, Bild 146-1969-054-16 / Hoffmann, Heinrich / CC-BY-SA, available here.

Pfeifer’s name only became known for certain recently, when it was revealed by some Swiss intelligence files. Before that, only the top people of the world’s security agencies of the 1940s knew who he really was, as he had about twenty different names and identities. Indeed, the voluminous American security files on Pfeifer are still classified, and until now no one could have asked to see them anyway because no one knew which name to ask for.

Pfeifer was the highest German espionage official ever to defect from the Nazi regime. His immediate superior was Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the SD, which was the intelligence service of Himmler’s SS. His special activities were counterintelligence and foreign operations. At one time he infiltrated the French spy service (the Deuxième Bureau) and acted as a double agent for Germany. He was a master of disguise and sometimes went around dressed as a tramp. Despite being anti-Communist, he was elected head of a Trotskyite society which he gracefully declined. Later he infiltrated the Polish intelligence service and tricked the General Staff of Poland with a false invasion plan. In all, he worked for the intelligence services of at least seven different countries.

Ultimately, Pfeifer turned against the Nazi regime because of its anti-Semitism, the concentration camps, and violent murders, all of which he despised. He defected to Switzerland in September of 1938, and worked for Swiss Army intelligence for three years, helping to prevent Hitler’s plan to annex the German portion of Switzerland. In 1938 and 1939, Pfeifer flew to London and met with Robert Vansittart, the head of British intelligence. Pfeifer was able to identify the two leading German spies in the UK, who had never previously been named, and they were both expelled in 1939.

Spies

The spies Pfeifer named were Baron Dr. Kurt von Stutterheim, who had been posing as an anti-Nazi activist, and Hans E. Friedrich, who had been posing as an arts journalist. Pfeifer gave huge amounts of detailed information to Vansittart which Vansittart then passed over to sympathetic American sources for circulation and partial publication, to help influence the American public about the need to join the War. Vansittart’s intense efforts to out-maneuver Neville Chamberlain and get Winston Churchill into power were greatly aided by Pfeifer’s defection and the enormous amount of material that Pfeifer supplied. The contact was made all the easier because Pfeifer was multi-lingual and spoke English as well as various other languages (being fluent in Italian, one of his duties had been to liaise with General Roatta, the head of Mussolini’s security services, on behalf of Himmler and Heydrich.)

Heinrich Pfeifer worked and was registered under a false name during his entire time in the security service. Starting in 1929 his first boss, Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s close friend and chief ideologue of the Nazi Party, insisted he be called Heinz Stein. Pfeifer was only 24 at the time.

Pfeifer was a devout Catholic all his life and he only became involved with the Nazis because he wanted to fight Communism. He then found himself immersed in an evil empire which he had not anticipated, and from which it was difficult to escape. He had, after all, joined the Nazis four years before Hitler actually came to power, and when their true nature was not entirely clear.

After the war

In 1949, at the age of 44, Pfeifer was assassinated by a Nazi vengeance squad for having betrayed Nazi secrets. His memoir published in 1945 in Switzerland was bought up and destroyed by Nazi sympathisers, and few copies survived. But Pfeifer’s meticulous description of the precise structures and methods of Nazi espionage ironically recorded the replicated version of the same thing which commenced about that time by the Russians. In that, they were guided by Heinrich Mueller, the head of the Gestapo who fled to the Russians at the end of the War. So, Pfeifer’s guide to Nazi infiltration techniques is equally a guide to the Russians’ techniques after 1945.

Pfeifer knew that he was risking his life by escaping from his boss Reinhard Heydrich, whom he described as ‘satanic’ and more dangerous than Hitler. He had risked his life many times before in the interests of Nazi Germany, but he was to pay the final price for his efforts to try to save the Allies, and especially Britain. However, if not for his bravery in coming forward and supplying crucial intelligence to Robert Vansittart, and ultimately to the American press, the tides of war may never have meaningfully turned against Hitler. History would likely have turned out much different if not for the courageous acts of this one man, who most have never even heard of.

Robert Temple is a London-based historian, archaeologist, publisher, and former journalist who has previously written for publications such as The Guardian, New Scientist, and Harpers. Temple is editor of the forthcoming book, Drunk On Power: A Senior Defector’s Inside Account of the Nazi Secret Police State, the long suppressed memoir of Nazi defector Heinrich Pfeifer. Temple was the first person to reveal the ‘forcible repatriation scandal’ during and after World War II and persuaded Lord Carrington, then U.K. Defence Minister, to release the sealed War Office files which blew away the secrecy of that forbidden subject, which had resulted in the deaths and incarceration of two million people by Stalin, with the shameful secret complicity of the Allied Powers. Temple has been a member of the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies (RUSI) since 1972. Robert Temple is the author of numerous books on history and science. He has twice been appointed Visiting Professor of the History and Philosophy of Science and he has done archaeological work in Egypt, Greece, and Italy.

Republicans in the Presidency: Criminal Dealings?

Donald J. Trump is in court for a number of reasons currently, although he still remains favorite for the Republican nomination for the presidency. With that in mind, here Larry Deblinger looks at some of the criminal (or possibly criminal) dealings of some former Republican presidents.

Harding’s Gang? President Warren G. Harding’s first cabinet in 1921.

The Republican party of the United States is in flux as it seeks to forge its future with or without the leadership of former president Donald J. Trump. While Trump holds a commanding lead in the polls in the race for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, he is also facing trial on four criminal indictments encompassing 91 separate charges. Republican politicians and rank-and file-voters must decide whether they will support Trump should he be both their party’s nominee and a convicted felon. Depending on the trial outcomes, it may be a stark choice of Trump or the law.

But the stakes of the present moment for the future of the Republican party, and, potentially, of American democracy, can only be fully appreciated in light of the GOP’s past. The history of the presidencies of the Republican party, which often brands itself “the party of law and order,” includes a long criminal record, spanning almost the entire existence of the party, of which the Trump administration, despite some unprecedented aspects of its law-breaking, is only the latest chapter. What Republicans decide today will help determine whether that heritage of lawlessness at the highest levels of national government, where a political party is expected to assemble its best and brightest and promote its core tenets, will continue to stain the character of the GOP.

Grant’s Invasion

The criminal record of Republican presidencies substantially begins a mere 15 years after the 1854 birth of the GOP, with the administration of Ulysses S. Grant (1869-1877). At this time, corruption in government was common since the so-called “spoils system,” as in “to the victor go the spoils,” held sway in American politics, determining government jobs, favors and funding through political patronage.1 But federal executive branch corruption erupted to unprecedented and shocking levels under Grant. The scandals, too numerous to detail in total, ran from bribery, fraud, and extortion to embezzlement and financial market manipulation and permeated the departments of the Treasury, Interior, Justice, War (now called Defense), the Navy, and the Postal Service, reaching to top cabinet officers and the vice-president.2

The malfeasance by the end of Grant’s first term was such that it helped trigger a breakaway faction of his party who called themselves the Liberal Republicans and opposed Grant’s 1872 re-election. Among other points of opposition to Grant, the Liberals charged that “The Civil Service of the Government has become a mere instrument of partisan tyranny and personal ambition, and an object of selfish greed. It is a scandal and reproach upon free institutions, and breeds a demoralization dangerous to the perpetuity of republican government.”3

The Whiskey Ring

The most extensive of the Grant administration scandals was the Whiskey Ring. Grant had sent an old friend whom he had appointed to the Treasury, General John McDonald, to head up federal tax revenue collection in Missouri, a hotbed of support for the Liberal Republicans. Once there, McDonald observed that whiskey distillers had been bribing federal revenue agents for years to allow them to underpay what they owed in taxes. Rather than curtail the illegality, McDonald and other Republican operatives got in on the action, forming the Whiskey Ring in conjunction with distillers, ostensibly to divert the unpaid tax money to a slush fund for Grant’s re-election in 1872 and other Republican campaigns.4 Storekeepers, treasury clerks, revenue agents and others in the whiskey chain were forced to cooperate, sometimes through impressment and blackmail.4 After the 1872 elections, the Whiskey Ring outgrew its original, perhaps specious political purposes to become a nationwide crime syndicate operated entirely for the enrichment of the conspirators. After it was uncovered and investigated by Grant’s Justice Department starting in 1875, 110 conspirators, including MacDonald, were convicted of crimes (e.g., defrauding the US Treasury) and over $3 million in stolen revenues were recovered.5  

Despite the scandals of his administration and opposition of the Liberals, Grant, the former top general of the Union army and Civil war hero, won re-election handily. Grant appeared to be unaware of the various corrupt activities in his administration, and urged prosecution of the malefactors when informed of them.6 But he was drawn into the Whiskey Ring scandal when his private secretary, Orville Babcock, was indicted and tried in criminal court for involvement in the scheme. Grant testified on behalf of Babcock, denying his guilt and defending his character, in a deposition taken at the White House. Owing largely to Grant’s testimony, Babcock was eventually acquitted, but was later accused of complicity in another corrupt scheme.4,5 For years afterwards, fairly or not, the term “Grantism” was synonymous with government corruption.7

Harding’s Gang

Following Grant, the Progressive era of the late nineteenth and early 20th century in the US promoted “good government” policies which helped to curb government corruption. Progressive Republicans such as Theodore Roosevelt played prominent roles in this movement.8 But Americans came to tire of Progressivism under the strident leadership and activism of the Democratic president Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921), and in 1920, they voted a conservative Republican, Warren G. Harding, into the White House. Harding had run on the campaign theme of a “return to normalcy.”9 If by normalcy Harding meant a return to Republican officials criminally abusing the powers of the Federal government, he delivered in spades.

A handsome, statuesque, and genial man with a turbo-charged sex-drive, Harding had risen through the shady world of Ohio politics and brought his cronies from that milieu to the executive branch. Known as the Ohio gang, Harding’s associates generated a font of corruption.

The disclosures began in early 1923 at the Veteran’s Bureau  (now the Department of Veterans’ Affairs), leading to the resignation of the Director, Charles R. Forbes and the suicide of the General Counsel, Charles T. Cramer. Forbes was convicted in 1924 of conspiracy to defraud the government, involving the theft of more than $200 million in bureau funds, and sentenced to two years in prison.10,11

The odor of corruption led next to the office of the Alien Property Custodian, which adjudicated claims for properties confiscated from Germans during World War I. Congressional investigators the bureau to be a sump of bribery and graft. The Custodian, Thomas W. Miller, was convicted of conspiracy to defraud the government and imprisoned.12  Harding’s Attorney General, Harry Daugherty, a key member of the Ohio gang, was brought to trial on charges of involvement in the Alien Bureau schemes and was acquitted, although it was brought out that he had burned bank ledger sheets of his and other accounts to destroy evidence.13 Daugherty was also accused of running a bribery/protection racket for alcohol dealers trying to evade the Prohibition law then in effect but was never prosecuted.14 However, Daugherty’s secretary and close friend, Jess Smith, committed suicide under mysterious circumstances.15

Oil Money Bribes

The infamous Teapot Dome scandal, also occurring under the Harding administration, was named for a federal government reserve of oil-bearing land at Teapot Dome, Wyoming, intended for use by the US Navy and managed by the Interior Department. After a series of investigations and criminal trials revealing an intricate and scandalous web of corporate-government corruption, Interior Secretary Albert B. Fall was convicted and imprisoned for receiving bribes in return for leasing Teapot Dome and other federal oil reserves to private companies.16

The full extent of Harding’s knowledge of the corruption in his administration remains unknown, largely because he died suddenly while in office in 1923. In his classic 1931 history of the 1920s, “Only Yesterday,” Frederick Lewis Allen, author and Editor of Harper’s magazine, opined that “the Harding administration was responsible in its short two years and five months for more concentrated robbery and rascality than any other in the whole history of the Federal government.”17 

Nixon’s Criminal Cohort

It is sometimes forgotten that Richard M. Nixon set the tone for his administration (1969-74) well before the Watergate scandal with his choice for vice-president, Spiro T. Agnew, Governor of Maryland. Little-known outside of Maryland, Agnew was a tough, plain-spoken politician whom the Nixonites thought would be perfect for their campaign. It turned out that Agnew was a creature straight from the Grant-Harding school of politics as criminal enterprise. Agnew had not only run a bribery racket as County Executive and then Governor of Maryland, extorting public works contractors for kickbacks of government-appropriated funds, he continued receiving the payments—in envelopes stuffed with cash—as Vice-President of the US.18 Faced with criminal charges of extortion, bribery, graft, conflict of interest, and tax evasion, Agnew pleaded to the least embarrassing charge, tax evasion, in return for resigning his office and a $10,000 fine.19

The Watergate Scandal

Then there was Watergate. The infamous burglary of Democratic National Committee headquarters and cover-up, the latter personally engineered by Nixon and his White House staff, encompassed a vast scale of illegal activities and abuses of power. As in the Harding administration, the nation’s top legal official, Attorney General John Mitchell, was a key facilitator of illegality under Nixon. A century after Republican operatives under Grant used the Whiskey Ring to raise re-election campaign funds through intimidation and blackmail, Nixon re-election campaign officials also used an illegally derived slush fund, including campaign contributions from corporations, which were outlawed at the time, to finance the Watergate break in and other crimes and “dirty tricks,” laundering the money through banks in Mexico.20,21

Overall, 69 Nixon administration officials were indicted for crimes related to Watergate or other illegal activities and 48 were convicted, including Attorney General Mitchell.22 A grand jury was set to charge Nixon with bribery, conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and obstruction of a criminal investigation but prosecution was deterred by questions over whether a sitting president could be indicted.23 In any event, like his vice-president before him, Nixon resigned in disgrace.

Reagan Restores a Republican Tradition

After the brief period of atonement known as the Ford administration (1974-77), which was most notable for President Gerald Ford’s pardoning of Nixon, the Republicans were back at it with the presidency of Ronald W. Reagan (1981-89). Reagan bore curious echoes of Harding as a genial, handsome, somewhat inattentive man promising to restore a nostalgic era of simpler times in America. And like Harding, Reagan presided over a viral outbreak of corruption in the federal government of a magnitude unseen since the days of the Ohio gang.24 Abuses of office occurred at no less than 20 different federal departments and agencies, according to Pulitzer prize-winning Washington Post journalist and author Haynes Johnson.25

“By the end of his (Reagan’s) term 138 administration officials had been convicted, had been indicted, or had been the subject of official investigations for official misconduct and/or criminal violations. In terms of numbers of officials involved, the record of his administration was the worst ever,” wrote Johnson, in his 1991 history of the Reagan administration, “Sleepwalking Through History.”26  

Cascading Corruption

The Iran-Contra affair is the most famous of the Reagan-era scandals, but that episode could at least be portrayed as a principled, if illegal, attempt to fight the spread of socialism in Central America. Less noted is that the Reagan administration was rife with raw, greed-driven corruption, which by one estimate amounted to a total theft of $130billion in public funds.27 A prime example was the Wedtech case, involving a Defense Department contractor, which Johnson described as “the kind of political corruption that extended back to the Washington (DC) of Grant and Harding: influence peddling, government contracts, cash, bribes, kickbacks, fraud and conspiracy.”28 The subsequent “Operation Ill Wind” probe by the FBI, investigating further corruption in Defense Department procurement, resulted in 50 convictions, including those of high-ranking military officers and administration officials.29

And on it went, across the federal government in a veritable feeding frenzy from the department of Housing and Urban Development, where an estimated $8 billion in public funds were stolen,30 to the Environmental Protection Agency where the director resigned rather than cooperate with a Congressional investigation of political manipulation of department funds.31 As in the Harding and Nixon administrations, the nation’s top law enforcement officer came under scrutiny for alleged lawbreaking. Edwin Meese III, Reagan’s Attorney General starting in 1984, was the object of a 14-month special prosecutor and federal grand jury investigation of alleged criminal financial improprieties. Although Meese was acquitted, he became an object of ridicule at the Department of Justice where morale plummeted.32     

Government-Sponsored Organized Crime

The Iran-Contra scandal involved a secret scheme concocted by high-ranking officials at the CIA and the National Security Agency to sell arms to Iran and use the proceeds to fund the Contras of Nicaragua, who were fighting the socialist regime of their country. The arms sales to Iran violated US policy of not negotiating with terrorists, and the Arms Export Control Act of 1976. The support for the Contras violated the 1984 Boland Amendment, which specifically prohibited all military aid to the Contras or other groups in Nicaragua.33 Moreover, the murky scheme involved an unholy host of money changers, drug dealers, arms dealers, and terrorists, amounting to what one writer has described as “American-sponsored organized crime.”34

The Independent Prosecutor on the case, Lawrence E. Walsh, ultimately indicted 14 individuals with criminal charges of whom 11 were convicted, including National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter, Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Oliver L. North, National Security Adviser Robert C. McFarlane, and Assistant Secretary of State Elliott Abrams.35 Four counts of perjury and false statements were pending against Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger when he was pardoned in 1992 by President George H. W. Bush, who also pardoned Abrams and MacFarlane, among others. Walsh, a lifelong Republican, reportedly called Bush’s pardon of Weinberger, “one of the great cover-ups of American history at the highest levels of the executive branch.”36

Reagan pleaded ignorance of the Iran Contra scheme, while accepting responsibility for it. Although Reagan made multiple false statements regarding the activities in a televised speech to the nation,37 there was no evidence he knew they were false, and Walsh declined to indict him.38

And then there was Trump, who is now charged under one of his four indictments (from the state of Georgia) of running a “criminal enterprise” along with 17 co-defendants.

A Partisan Pattern?

Of the 19 total Republican presidencies, four, not including that of Trump, have each compiled a criminal record unparalleled by any other administration of any other party in US history. The outbreaks have been sporadic but persistent to this day. Yet, the question could be raised as to whether this record truly reveals a penchant for lawlessness specific to the GOP or simply a tendency endemic to all political parties. As the famous saying goes, “power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Over their history, the Democrats have surely demonstrated no blanket immunity to corruption. During the 1860s and 1870s, the era of the spoilsmen, the Tweed Ring of New York City, run by the notorious “Boss” Tweed of the Democratic party, was a nexus of corrupt rackets that dominated city politics and set a standard for “boss”-run “party machines” nationwide. The Democratic-run states of New York, Illinois, and New Jersey have long been known for systemic corruption. Former New York State Democratic Assembly Leader Sheldon Silver died a convict in 2022 after being found guilty of corruption in 2015, and Democratic Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey is currently facing bribery charges. Numerous other Democratic federal legislators have also been convicted of crimes in office.39 And the vast majority of Republican federal, executive branch office holders have been law abiding. The many Republicans who declared themselves ready to convict Nixon in his impeachment trial and forced his resignation demonstrated a courageous commitment to the law, as did those who testified for the January 6th Committee, and the two who served as committee members.

The Parties Compared

There is no comparison, however, between the criminal records of Democrats and Republicans in the presidency, the pinnacle of the US government, a fact supported by several media outlets using online data. Politifact, a nonpartisan website, found that there were 142 indictments against members of the past three Republican administrations (including Trump’s) versus just two under the past three Democratic presidents.40 The Huffington Post, a left-leaning news site, reported 91 criminal convictions connected to Republican presidencies versus only one under a Democrat since 1970.41 And the Daily Kos, another left-wing media site, tallied 120 indictments, 82 convictions, and 34 imprisonments for Republicans from the Nixon through the Obama administrations versus 4, 2, and 2, respectively, for the Democrats.42

What is next for the Republicans? If Trump is convicted, Republicans may or may not choose to move beyond him. The greater question for their party, and for US democracy, is whether the Republicans will leave behind or continue their heritage of criminal abuse of power at the highest levels of the US government, of which the Trump administration is but the latest chapter.

What do you think of the author’s argument? Let us know below.

References

1.     Calhoun CW (2017). The Presidency of Ulysses S. Grant. Lawrence, Kansas; University Press of Kansas. Page 12.

2.     Scandals of the Ulysses S. Grant Administration. Wikipedia. https://wiki2.org/en/Grant_administration_scandals.

3.     The American Presidency Project. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/liberal-republican-platform-1872.

4.     Rives T. Grant, Babcock, and the Whiskey Ring. Prologue Magazine. Fall 2000; 32(3): https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2000/fall/whiskey-ring-1.

5.     Longley R. The Whiskey Ring: bribery scandal of the 1870s. Thought Co. March 29, 2022. https://www.thoughtco.com/the-whiskey-ring-5220735.

6.     Chernow R (2017). Grant. New York; Penguin Press. p.837.

7.     Sumner C. Republicanism vs. Grantism. Speech in the Senate of the United States. May 31, 1872.

8.     Swinth K. The Square Deal. Theodore Roosevelt and the themes of progressive reform. The Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History. https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/essays/square-deal-theodore-roosevelt-and-themes-progressive-reform.

9.     Wallenfeldt J. Return to normalcy. American campaign slogan. History and Society: Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/return-to-normalcy.

10.  Allen, FL (1931). Only yesterday. An informal history of the 1920s. New York; Harper Perennial, Modern Classics. p.129-30.

11.  Charles R. Forbes. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R._Forbes.

12.  Allen, FL (1931). Only yesterday. An informal history of the 1920s. New York; Harper Perennial, Modern Classics. pp.130-1.

13.  Allen, FL (1931). Only yesterday. An informal history of the 1920s. New York; Harper Perennial, Modern Classics. pp.131-2.

14.  Allen, FL (1931). Only yesterday. An informal history of the 1920s. New York; Harper Perennial, Modern Classics. p.132.

15.  Allen, FL (1931). Only yesterday. An informal history of the 1920s. New York; Harper Perennial, Modern Classics. pp.132-3.

16.  Allen, FL (1931). Only yesterday. An informal history of the 1920s. New York; Harper Perennial, Modern Classics. pp.118-29.

17.  Allen, FL (1931). Only yesterday. An informal history of the 1920s. New York; Harper Perennial, Modern Classics. p.133.

18.  Yarvitz M, Maddow R (2020). Bag man. The wild crimes, audacious cover up and spectacular downfall of a brazen crook in the White House. New York; Crown. pp. 50-75.

19.  Yarvitz M, Maddow R (2020). Bag Man. The Wild Crimes, Audacious Cover Up and Spectacular Downfall of a Brazen Crook in the White House. New York; Crown. pp. 138-9.

20.  Genovese MA (1999). The Watergate Crisis. Westport, CT; Greenwood Press. pp.22-23.

21.  Emery F (1994). Watergate. New York; Random House, Inc. pp. 110-11, 124-5.

22.  Watergate Scandal. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_scandal.

23.   Watkins E, Kaufman E. National archives release draft indictment of Richard Nixon amid Mueller probe. CNN.com. October 31, 2018. https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/31/politics/richard-nixon-watergate-national-archives-mueller/index.html.

24.  Scandals of the Ronald Reagan Administration. Wikipedia.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scandals_of_the_Ronald_Reagan_administration.

25.  Johnson H (1991). Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years. New York, London; W.W Norton and Company. p. 169.

26.  Johnson H (1991). Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years. New York, London; W.W Norton and Company. p. 184.

27.  Suri J. Reagan and the Iran-Contra affair. American Heritage. 2021. 66(2). https://www.americanheritage.com/reagan-and-iran-contra-affair.

28.  Johnson H (1991). Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years. New York, London; W.W Norton and Company. pp. 172-3.

29.  Operation Ill Wind. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ill_Wind.

30.  Johnson H (1991). Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years. New York, London; W.W Norton and Company. p. 183.

31.  Johnson H (1991). Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years. New York, London; W.W Norton and Company. pp. 170-1.

32.  Johnson H (1991). Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years. New York, London; W.W Norton and Company. pp. 184-5.

33.  Suri J. Reagan and the Iran-Contra affair. American Heritage. 2021. 66(2). https://www.americanheritage.com/reagan-and-iran-contra-affair.

34.  Suri J. Reagan and the Iran-Contra affair. American Heritage. 2021. 66(2). https://www.americanheritage.com/reagan-and-iran-contra-affair.

35.  Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran/Contra Matters. Volume 1: Lawrence E. Walsh, Independent Counsel. August 4, 1993, Washington, D.C. United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit. https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/walsh/summpros.htm.

36.  Rosenberg P. Republicans, a history: how did the party of “law and order” become the party of crooks and crime. Salon. November 24, 2019.

37.  Johnson H (1991). Sleepwalking Through History: America in the Reagan Years. New York, London; W.W Norton and Company. pp. 296-7.

38.   Understanding the Iran-Contra Affairs. Good Government Project, Brown University. https://www.brown.edu/Research/Understanding_the_Iran_Contra_Affair/profile-reagan.php.

39.  List of American federal politicians convicted of crimes. Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_American_federal_politicians_convicted_of_crimes.

40.  Kertscher T. Many more criminal indictments under Trump, Reagan, and Nixon than under Obama Clinton and Carter. Politifact; The Poynter Institute. January 9, 2020. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2020/jan/09/facebook-posts/many-more-criminal-indictments-under-trump-reagan-/.

41.  Grossinger P. Republican presidencies have 91x the conviction rate of Democratic presidencies. HuffPost. December 22, 2017. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/republican-presidencies-have-91x-the-convictions-rate_b_5a3d5406e4b0df0de8b064e5.

42.  RoyalScribe. Updated: Comparing presidential administrations by felony arrests and convictions (as of 9/17/2018). Daily Kos. September 18, 2018. https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/9/18/1796668/-UPDATED-Comparing-Presidential-Administrations-by-felony-arrests-and-convictions-as-of-9-17-2018.

From Reconstruction to the Present: A Small Place in Downtown Atlanta

Much of historic research relies upon an analysis of broad events through a general historical context. We as historians tend to put emphasis upon significant events and people and explore as far as we can to try to contribute to larger scholarly debate. However, sometimes its best to start small in a place that does not necessarily look like it has much to offer as to uncover histories that largely remain forgotten or undervalued. Here, Roy Williams considers a place in downturn Atlanta from Reconstruction to the present.

An 1887 depiction of Atlanta from Harper’s Weekly.

In exploring the Forsyth, Marietta, Farlie block going back to the train tracks, the current buildings do not necessarily show easily distinguishable historic buildings. Currently the Marietta Carrier hotel building stands at 56 Marietta Street with the company Digital Realty operating a telecommunications business. Behind the Carrier Hotel at the 10 Forsyth address, a parking lot stands next to the train tracks. The only other building which has a connection to the block is the abandoned Atlanta Constitution building on 143 Alabama street. While this building is not on the block it serves as a connection to the block in exploring the history of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution as both companies occupied the block at one point. The current Marietta Carrier Hotel building has a plaque commemorating the first Georgia State Capitol which stood on the block from 1869 to 1889 and was razed in 1900. Out of relative significance, the story of the block begins with the first Georgia State Capitol.

To describe the block effectively, a chronological order is established throughout this paper spanning from the 1860s to the present. A general history of the area also stands as accompaniment in understanding how the block changed throughout the trajectory of history and how certain events affected changes at the Forsyth, Marietta, Farlie block. Certain aspects of the block’s history are emphasized over others to contribute original primary source research as well as out of pragmatism due to the relative lack of sources on some businesses that occupied the block that were not necessarily as historically significant. References and pictures are detailed in footnotes as well as the end of the paper in the bibliography and index.

After the destruction of Atlanta at the hands of Union forces during the Civil War the state capitol was moved to Atlanta from Milledgeville as the center of Georgia government. Multiple primary source documentation exists detailing this move as well as the process by which the building was updated to house the Georgia State Capitol. Prior to serving as the first Atlanta based Georgia state capitol the building was the Kimball Opera House which was constructed by the brothers Edwin Kimball and Hannibal Kimball and would be purchased by the State in 1870. From 1869 to 1889 the Kimball Opera House served as the state capitol and post office. An advertisement from 1870 details this showing the new state capitol with its characteristic clock tower announcing the building as Kimball’s Opera House serving as the Georgia State Capitol and Post Office.[1] Hannibal Kimball was an entrepreneur and had a significant impact as a wealthy businessman in moving the state capitol from Milledgeville to Atlanta. The 1889 History of Atlanta, Georgia, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers describes Kimball’s significant role stating that, “The first work of a public character in which he took a prominent part was in relation to the location of the state capitol at Atlanta. He saw the advantage to accrue to the city by its selection as the legislative center of the state, and he lent all his influence and power to further this end.”[2] The city purchased the building for 100,000 dollars after originally leasing it.[3]

To Atlanta

In 1877 the Georgia Constitutional Convention voted to permanently move the capital to Atlanta, and in 1879 acquired the City Hall tract, which in 1880 was finally transferred to the state of Georgia. The legislature in 1883 agreed upon a budget of one million dollars for the new state capitol. This budget required that all materials for the new capital be sourced from Georgia rather than out of state.[4] Details of the construction of the new capital as well as the Austell building are present in the account book of William B Miles. Listing the costs, profits, and materials for the construction of such buildings as the Georgia State Capitol Building; Inman Building; Austell Building; Fulton County Court House Annex; and the police station and stables. William B Miles pocketbook July 1888 entry lists the costs of constructing the new building at 539,810.33 dollars not including labor with a net gain of 188,510.43 dollars.[5] The one-million-dollar budget established in producing the new capital as it moved from the Kimball Opera House to its permanent location stands as beneficial when considering the construction of the Austell building and the Forsyth viaduct.

The Austell Building was designed by the architectural firm, Bruce and Morgan and completed in 1897. The building was Financed by William W. Austell, and the twelve-story office building cost $300,000 to build. It was located on Forsyth Street adjacent to the Western and Atlanta Railroad in downtown Atlanta, Georgia where the current 10 Forsyth parking lot stands.[6] William B Miles account book also lists details regarding the Austell building in 1888. Since the building was completed in 1897, this entry appears to be something of a punch list of detailing finishing costs regarding the building such as an entry detailing the cost of paying for an architect report at 771.00 dollars.[7]Intriguingly there is another entry regarding the cost of bridgeworks materials and labors which could potentially point to the Forsyth Street viaduct beside the Austell Building and Kimball Opera House. The 1888 February entry right after the Austell building entry regarding bridgeworks details the cost of stock materials for the bridge at 4715.80 and the supplies at 1522.62 dollars, certainly a far cry from the massive budget of the Georgia State Capitol.[8] Whether this bridge entry refers to the Forsyth Street Viaduct is difficult to say but its proximity to the Austell building entry gives reason to consider its possibility. A photo from 1907 displays this viaduct with the Austell building in the background after the Kimball Opera House/Georgia State capital were razed in 1900.[9]

The 1907 Sanborn Fire Maps show the Austell building once again describing it as a fireproof building with another building occupying the grounds where the Kimball Opera House once stood. The Sanborn Fire maps list a lodge hall and general hardware and machinery regarding this other location.[10] The 1919 Foote and Davies Company Atlanta birds eye view atlas shows the block as having the Austell building facing towards the Forsyth Viaduct but also shows the site where the Kimball Opera House/Georgia State capitol used to stand as being listed as a multi-story building titled transport.[11] The 1910 building lists the Forsyth Marietta intersection as containing the Austell Building and Georgia News Co at 10 Forsyth with 8 and 9 Forsyth remaining vacant. It also lists the Brown-Randolph building at 56 Marietta Street with rooms being occupied by businesses such as Dunbar and Sewell Brokers, Ajax Lumber, Southern Flour and Grain Company, General Adjusting Company, Georgia Farm Mortgage Co, and the Brown and Randolph law practice.[12]

In addition to the city directory, there is a court case detailing the construction of the building in 1917 by the Brown-Randolph Company who paid an architect, A. V. Gude, Jr. The supreme court case lists that, “On July 30, 1917, petitioner determined to erect an eight-story building on its property at the southwest corner of Marietta and Forsyth streets in the city of Atlanta, Ga., employing Brown as architect and the Gudes (then partners under the name of Gude & Co.) as contractor. The contractor, in a letter to the architect on June 28, 1917, stated that the building would cost $375,000, including the commissions of Gude & Co. Following said estimate, on July 30, 1917, petitioner entered into a written contract with the contractor relative to the construction of said building. Under the terms of the contract the building was to be erected complete in every detail and delivered to petitioner, free of all liens, at and for the sum of not to exceed $375,000.”[13] The building was completed in 1919 but not within the 10-month contract and the price of construction ran over the agreed upon $375,000 cost of construction. The judgement was ultimately found for the defendant. The 1920s Atlanta city directory[14] lists the Austell building as well with dozens of businesses at the 10 Forsyth address, however the Brown-Randolph building was now listed as the Transport building just as it had been listed in the 1919 Foot and Davies Atlanta birds eye view atlas.[15] Finally the 1940 directory shows the Atlanta Union station behind the Austell building as well as the Western Union Building where the current Marietta Carrier hotel stands at present.[16]

Atlanta Union Station

The Atlanta Union Station was built in 1930 in Atlanta between Spring Street and Forsyth Street. It succeeded the two previous Union Stations. The previous 1853 Union Station ran from 1853 to 1864 and was ultimately burned by General William Tecumseh Sherman’s forces in the Battle of Atlanta. The second Union Station was built on the same site as the first in 1871 and would operate from 1871 until 1930 when it was torn down for the 3rd Union Station to be built.

The Atlanta Union Station served the Georgia Railroad, Atlantic Coastline, and Louisville and Nashville line. The structure was designed and built by McDonald & Company of Atlanta, Georgia. The station would eventually be razed in the early 1970s. The Union Station can be seen circa 1935 with the Austell building in the background across the Forsyth Street Viaduct.[17] The Atlanta Union Station would stand in operation until 1971 when it was closed and demolished in 1972. The destruction of the 1930 station is shown in multiple archival photos from the Atlanta History Center, displaying the utter loss of architectural history and cultural continuity that are significant to the buildings constructed in the late 19th century and early 20th century.[18]  A 1949 map of downtown Atlanta by the publication Gay Atlanta recirculated by the Atlanta Time Machine shows the block including the Union Station, the Western Union building, the Lucy Wood Cafeteria, and the Atlanta Journal as residing on the block.[19] While there are less sources pertaining to the Lucy Wood Cafeteria, there remains a litany of resources documenting the Atlanta Journal’s tenure at 10 Forsyth Street. A 1950 picture of the block confirms this map’s details, displaying the Western Union building, Lucy Wood Cafeteria, and the Atlanta Journal.[20]

Western Union building

The history of the Western Union building has a brief intersection with Atlanta labor history as, in 1971 the United Telegraph Workers went out on strike against the Western Union Telegraph Company. A 1971 New York Times article details the demands of the workers, saying, “The telegraph workers have asked for a two‐year pact with 16 per cent wage increases each year, Mr. Hageman said. Workers now average $3.37 an hour. The company said its offer included 10 percent increases in each of the two years.”[21] E. L. Hageman, the union president authorized the strike once negotiations with the Western Union Telegraph Company collapsed. A June 1971 photograph shows two AFL-CIO workers participating in the Strike.[22] The AFL-CIO was formed in 1955 when the American Federation of Labor and the Congress of Industrial Organizations merged. A 1972 Atlanta Constitution article details how the strike left 450 Atlanta workers idle interviewing a soon to be retiring striking employee, James Maxwell who said, “You gotta do it, Itl be better in the end.”[23] The article also describes how the workers were not only picketing for better pay but also for a continued nationwide Western Union office presence of 1300 rather than the proposed cutback to 300 offices that was originally planned before the strike. While the strike was well intentioned in maintaining the livelihoods and economic liberty of Western Union employees in Atlanta and throughout the nation, the writing was on the wall for the telegraph industry. The expansion of the telephone at the expense of the telegraph in addition to the Western Union Telegraph Company’s aggressive diversification ultimately pointed towards the decline of the telegraph industry.[24]

The Atlanta Journal was founded on February 24, 1883, and the Atlanta Constitution was first published on June 16, 1868. Both newspapers bounced around multiple locations around the area ranging from Alabama street, Marietta, and different sides of Forsyth. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution were in direct competition with one another but ultimately in March 1950 became under common ownership. While under common ownership they would still work in competition until they were merged in 2001. The Atlanta Journal and Constitution worked with such journalists as Henry Grady who lobbied for the industrialization of the south during Reconstruction and coined the term “New South” in relation to this industrialization. As well as such figures as Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind, and Ralph McGill an early voice for racial tolerance in the south.[25]

10 Forsyth Street

The Atlanta Journal would occupy 10 Forsyth Street from 1949 to 1972. The Atlanta Journal building sat in between the Austell building which was then called the Thrower building at that point, and the Western Union Building. The Atlanta Constitution would soon move into the same building as the Atlanta Journal. While both media companies were under the same ownership, they worked in direct competition. This combination of both companies under the same roof would inevitably lead to the combination of both the Atlanta Journal and Constitution into the AJC of present. When both companies moved to their next location at 72 Marietta Street, the building which had once stood beside the Austell building and housed the historic Atlanta Journal and Constitution would be demolished in 1973 leaving the Western Union or Marietta Carrier Hotel as the only building left standing. [26] The Atlanta Journal demolition can be seen in the archival photo provided in the Central Atlanta Progress, Inc Photographs collection which displays the building being gutted beneath the iconic “Covering Dixie Like the Dew” motto.[27] The only remnant of the days of the Atlanta Journal and Constitution on the block stands in the dilapidated building across the train tracks at 143 Alabama Street which house the Constitution from 1947 to 1953.

The development of the block from reconstruction to the present and the change in buildings serves as a cautionary tale when considering its trajectory from a historical preservation perspective. The only remnants of the history of the block stand in the current Marietta carrier hotel building with a plaque commemorating the Kimball Opera House and a statue of Henry Grady in the middle of Marietta Street. The reality that the Austell building, Atlanta Journal, and Union Station were all demolished in the 1970s follows a broader trend in urban planning which saw the destruction of many historic buildings throughout the nation. While the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966 provided the framework to preserve certain buildings, the 1970s saw the destruction of many buildings for new development. The most frustrating aspect of this development on the Forsyth, Marietta, Farlie block stands in the reality that no new buildings were built after the destruction of the previous historic properties. The area around the railroad tracks is near the Atlanta downtown area known as the Gulch, in which development projects have been planned but have never come to fruition. Jeremiah McWilliams detailed in a 2012 article how revitalizing the area into a transit hub would ultimately be a net positive economically, stating, “The city and state have struggled for years to gain traction on a transit hub envisioned for the area residents known as the “Gulch.” The sunken tract of downtown, spread for acres around CNN Center, is crisscrossed with railroad tracks and parking lots. Late last year, the Georgia Department of Transportation signed a $12.2 million contract for a new master plan with a team of contractors experienced in large-scale developments.”[28] This funding has not made any discernible change on the Forsyth, Marietta, Farlie block bordering the Gulch.

The economic growth and development that ultimately led to the demolition of many historic Atlanta buildings led to conflict in managing the city’s urban planning. As stated by Michael Elliot, the population of Atlanta grew by over 25% over the 1980s and the office inventory of the central city increased by 50% in the central city. By this point the Forsyth, Marietta, Farlie block had lost all its historic buildings but the Maritta Carrier Hotel, however this growing opposition to development in the interest of historic preservation follows the larger trend in historical preservation in Atlanta in attempting to conserve what was left from the demolitions of the 1970s.[29]

Rather, Elliot describes how a new mediation process was initiated in attempting to soothe tensions between the forces of economic development and historic preservation. This mediation process required a 9-month negotiation in finding consensus regarding development and preservation of properties but most importantly established a new system for categorizing, designating, and protecting historic properties. Mayor Andrew Young while originally in opposition to historic preservation eventually relented and supported the concept arguing that it was in the public’s interest to preserve certain aspects of the city’s history.[30]

Changes

It is important to consider that while the properties that once stood at the Marietta, Forsyth, Farlie block can be argued to have historic merit especially the first Atlanta based Georgia State Capitol, the trajectory of history and historic identity is infinitely malleable and changing rapidly with each passing generation. The history of the Western Union building, and the Western Union telegraph Company may intersect with both economic and labor history but the nature of its waning importance economically and practically indicates why its story is not preserved or considered significant. Much like the rapid change from horse drawn carriages to automobiles over the course of the early 20thcentury, the decline of the telegraph and the rapid advancement of the telephone warrants that the story of the Western Union Building only exist as a relatively forgotten footnote in Atlanta history. Timothy J Crimmins utilizes the Walter Havinghurst quote, arguing, “The past is not the property of historians, it is a public possession. It belongs to anyone who is aware of it grows by being shared.”[31] This quote allows Crimmins to segway into the realm of public history describing the expansion of the field stemming for the NHPA of 1966 and the growing cooperation between historic preservation and urban planning. This quote also helps to understand that the fields of historic preservation and public history have an inherently more democratic role in establishing what is significant than individual historians. The reality that the story of the Western Union Building is not as prevalent as others shows directly that there is a popular consensus in determining what stands as significant to historic identity and therefore what should be preserved and studied.

Crimmins describes how Atlanta serves as a unique example in attempting to piece together the connection to the past through the present. Specifically, Crimmins says that the changes wrought by economic and technological advancements regarding Atlanta have left much of the heart of Atlanta with little remains in linking the present to the past. Crimmins states that, “The public history issue is one of devising a course of action which would permit citizens to identify the present configuration with that of the nineteenth century.”[32] This problem of reorienting and reconnecting the present area of downtown Atlanta with its historic identity remains a challenge.

In considering the challenges in piecing together historic identity from the remaining built environment of Atlanta, Elizabeth A. Lyon argues that the fields of history and historic preservation must work together in a more efficient manner. Lyons states that, “The problem, however, is not so much the removal of history from historic preservation, as others have observed. The problem is that we often lack the historical information needed to measure and evaluate the historical significance of archeological and structural properties.”[33] This argument points to the heart of the problem, that sometimes changes in the built environment necessitated by technological and economic changes move faster than historic research and preservation. With the example of the Marietta, Forsyth, Farlie block, the most historic property, the Kimball Opera house, and Georgia State Capitol had been razed in 1900, 66 years before the National Historic Preservation Act was passed and 6 years before the Antiquities Act was passed. The Atlanta Union Station, Austell building, and Atlanta Journal were all demolished in the 1970s as well. While it can be difficult to piece together the identity of the past through the present when considering the built environment and the buildings which were demolished along the way, the most important remaining action stands in preserving what is left.

Conclusion

The only remaining building, the Marietta Carrier Hotel currently occupied by Digital Realty may not be on the National Register of Historic Places, but its significance as a grounding point for all the buildings that have been on the same block makes it worthy of local historic preservation. Though the first Atlanta based Georgia State Capitol may have been razed 123 years ago, and all other buildings on the block have been demolished, the history of all the structures of the block can be reoriented through the preservation of the current building. Once again, this topic returns to the introspective nature of historic identity and preservation of this identity through the built environment. While the current state of the block may not seem to have historical significance on a surface level observation, the simple reality that the seat of Georgia’s government was moved to this location from Milledgeville set in motion significant changes that ultimately defined the history of Atlanta. While the structures that made this history cannot be replaced, the importance of reconnecting the present to the past in the Atlanta downtown area is still a worthy aspect of preservation.

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Bibliography

  "Telegraphers Call a Strike at Western Union Tonight." New York Times. May 31, 1971. https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/telegraphers-call-strike-at-western-union-tonight/docview/119326236/se-2.

  1972 September. Central Atlanta Progress. Inc. Photographs. VIS 139.21.01. Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

  Account Book 1885-1889. William B Miles Account Book. MSS236f. Folder 1. Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

AJCN005-041b. Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photographic Archives. Special Collections and Archives. Georgia State University Library, 1950. https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/ajc/id/14049/ .

 Atlanta Georgia Government. "Georgia State Capitol.” Accessed October 1, 2023. https://www.atlantaga.gov/government/departments/city-planning/office-of-design/urban-design-commission/georgia-state-capitol.

    Atlanta. Map. Atlanta Georgia. Foote and Davies Company. 1919. From Library of Congress. Map Collections. https://www.loc.gov/item/75693190/. (Accessed September 28, 2023).

  Brown-Randolph Co. V Guide Et Al., No.2032. 106 S.E. 161,151 GA 281, Supreme Court of Georgia, 1921.

  City Directory. Atlanta Georgia. 1910.  https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/imageviewer/collections/2469/images/12245934?ssrc=&backlabel=Return.

Atlanta, Georgia, City Directory, 1920, 583-584, https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/imageviewer/collections/2469/images/12230775?ssrc=&backlabel=Return

Atlanta, Georgia, City Directory, 1940, 837, https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/imageviewer/collections/2469/images/12164878?ssrc=&backlabel=Return

  Cleaton, J. D.. "Forsyth Street Viaduct, 1907." 1907. September 28, 2023. http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/guidebook/id/141.

Corson, Pete. “Photos: Former Atlanta Constitution and Journal buildings.” The Atlanta Journal Constitution, June 14, 2018. https://www.ajc.com/news/local/photos-former-atlanta-constitution-and-journal-buildings/ndwtDtspsH27pLQvT3H98L/.

Crimmins, Timothy J. “The Past in the Present: An Agenda for Public History and Historic Preservation.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 63, no. 1 (1979): 53–59. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40580077.

  Downs, Billy, Photographer. AFL-CIO United Telegraph Workers on Strike Against Western Union. 1971, Atlanta Journal Constitution. https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/ajc/id/1270/rec/3.

  Elliott, Michael. “Reconceiving Historic Preservation in the Modern City: Conflict and Consensus Building in Atlanta.” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 16, no. 2 (1999): 149–63. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43030496.

“Gay Atlanta Map of Downtown Atlanta.” Atlanta Time Machine. Accessed September 30, 2023. http://atlantatimemachine.com/.

Kimball Opera House. Atlanta History Photograph Collection. VIS 170.2583.001. Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

  Lyon, Elizabeth A. “Cultural and Environmental Resource Management: The Role of History in Historic Preservation.” The Public Historian 4, no. 4 (1982): 69–86. https://doi.org/10.2307/3377048.

  McWilliams, Jeremiah. “Study: ‘Gulch’ impact hefty.” The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Jan 29, 2012. https://www.ajc.com/news/study-gulch-impact-hefty/YNv4JB0YYk77PDSBbvg34L/.

  Miles, Richard. Western Union Strike Idles 450 in Georgia. The Atlanta Constitution. 1972. https://www.newspapers.com/article/118359555/the-atlanta-constitution/.

  Nonnenmacher, Tomas. “History of the U.S. Telegraph Industry”. EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples. August 14, 2001. URL http://eh.net/encyclopedia/history-of-the-u-s-telegraph-industry/

  Perry, Chuck. "Atlanta Journal-Constitution." New Georgia Encyclopedia, last modified Sep 11, 2019. https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/atlanta-journal-constitution/

Reed, Wallace Putnam. History of Atlanta, Georgia, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers. Syracuse, NY: D. Mason & Co. 1889.

  Sanborn Map Company. "Insurance maps, Atlanta, Georgia, 1911 / published by the Sanborn Map Company." 1911. Accessed September 28, 2023. https://dlg.usg.edu/record/dlg_sanb_atlanta-1911#item.

  Union Station. Floyd Jillson Photographs. VIS 71.72.25, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

  Union Station. Kenneth Rogers Photographs. VIS 88.625.05, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

  Unknown. "Austell Building." 1906. September 28, 2023. http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/athpc/id/1242.

References

[1] Kimball Opera House, Atlanta History Photograph Collection, VIS 170.2583.001, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

[2] Wallace Putnam Reed, History of Atlanta, Georgia, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers, (Syracuse, NY: D. Mason & Co., 1889), 163.

[3] Wallace Putnam Reed, History of Atlanta, Georgia, with Illustrations and Biographical Sketches of Some of Its Prominent Men and Pioneers, (Syracuse, NY: D. Mason & Co., 1889), 165.

[4] "Georgia State Capitol”, Atlanta Georgia Government, Accessed October 1, 2023, https://www.atlantaga.gov/government/departments/city-planning/office-of-design/urban-design-commission/georgia-state-capitol.

[5] Account Book 1885-1889, William B Miles Account Book, MSS236f, Folder 1, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

[6] Unknown. "Austell Building." 1906. September 28, 2023. http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/athpc/id/1242.

[7] Account Book 1885-1889, William B Miles Account Book, MSS236f, Folder 1, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

[8] Account Book 1885-1889, William B Miles Account Book, MSS236f, Folder 1, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

[9] Cleaton, J. D.. "Forsyth Street Viaduct, 1907." 1907. September 28, 2023. http://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/cdm/ref/collection/guidebook/id/141 .

[10] Sanborn Map Company, "Insurance maps, Atlanta, Georgia, 1911 / published by the Sanborn Map Company", 1911, (Accessed September 28, 2023), https://dlg.usg.edu/record/dlg_sanb_atlanta-1911#item .

[11] Atlanta, Map, Atlanta Georgia, Foote and Davies Company, 1919, From Library of Congress, Map Collections, https://www.loc.gov/item/75693190/. (Accessed September 28, 2023).

[12] Atlanta, Georgia, City Directory, 1910, 64, 116, https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/imageviewer/collections/2469/images/12245934?ssrc=&backlabel=Return.

[13] Brown-Randolph Co. V Guide Et Al., No.2032. 106 S.E. 161,151 GA 281, Supreme Court of Georgia, 1921.

[14] Atlanta, Georgia, City Directory, 1920, 583-584, https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/imageviewer/collections/2469/images/12230775?ssrc=&backlabel=Return

[15]Atlanta, Map, Atlanta Georgia, Foote and Davies Company, 1919, From Library of Congress, Map Collections, https://www.loc.gov/item/75693190/. (Accessed September 28, 2023).

[16] Atlanta, Georgia, City Directory, 1940, 837, https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/imageviewer/collections/2469/images/12164878?ssrc=&backlabel=Return

[17] Union Station, Kenneth Rogers Photographs, VIS 88.625.05, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

[18] Union Station, Floyd Jillson Photographs, VIS 71.72.25, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

[19] “Gay Atlanta Map of Downtown Atlanta”, Atlanta Time Machine, Accessed September 30, 2023, http://atlantatimemachine.com/ .

[20] AJCN005-041b, Atlanta Journal-Constitution Photographic Archives. Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library, 1950, https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/ajc/id/14049/ .

[21] "Telegraphers Call a Strike at Western Union Tonight." New York Times, May 31, 1971. https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers/telegraphers-call-strike-at-western-union-tonight/docview/119326236/se-2.

[22] Billy Downs, AFL-CIO United Telegraph Workers on Strike Against Western Union, 1971, Atlanta Journal Constitution, https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/ajc/id/1270/rec/3 .

[23] Richard Miles, Western Union Strike Idles 450 in Georgia, The Atlanta Constitution, 1972, https://www.newspapers.com/article/118359555/the-atlanta-constitution/

[24] Tomas Nonnenmacher, “History of the U.S. Telegraph Industry”. EH.Net Encyclopedia, edited by Robert Whaples. August 14, 2001, http://eh.net/encyclopedia/history-of-the-u-s-telegraph-industry/.

[25] Chuck Perry, "Atlanta Journal-Constitution." New Georgia Encyclopedia, last modified Sep 11, 2019. https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/atlanta-journal-constitution/.

[26] Pete Corson, “Photos: Former Atlanta Constitution and Journal buildings”, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, June 14, 2018, https://www.ajc.com/news/local/photos-former-atlanta-constitution-and-journal-buildings/ndwtDtspsH27pLQvT3H98L/.

[27] 1972 September, Central Atlanta Progress, Inc. Photographs, VIS 139.21.01, Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center.

[28] Jeremiah McWilliams, “Study: ‘Gulch’ impact hefty”, The Atlanta Journal Constitution, Jan 29, 2012, https://www.ajc.com/news/study-gulch-impact-hefty/YNv4JB0YYk77PDSBbvg34L/.

[29]Michael Elliot, “Reconceiving Historic Preservation in the Modern City: Conflict and Consensus Building in Atlanta.” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 16, no. 2 (1999): 149–63. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43030496.

[30]  Michael Elliot, “Reconceiving Historic Preservation in the Modern City: Conflict and Consensus Building in Atlanta.” Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 16, no. 2 (1999): 149–63. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43030496.

[31]Timothy J Crimmins, “The Past in the Present: An Agenda for Public History and Historic Preservation.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 63, no. 1 (1979): 53–59. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40580077.

[32] Timothy J Crimmins, “The Past in the Present: An Agenda for Public History and Historic Preservation.” The Georgia Historical Quarterly 63, no. 1 (1979): 53–59. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40580077.

[33]Elizabeth A Lyon, “Cultural and Environmental Resource Management: The Role of History in Historic Preservation.” The Public Historian 4, no. 4 (1982): 69–86. https://doi.org/10.2307/3377048.

The Similarities Between the World War One and the U.S. Civil War

Picture trenches. Miles of trenches with knee-deep mud. Pulverized trees and rusty barbed wire. These are just a few images that bring World War One or the Great War to mind. Others show endlessly firing machine guns, mowing down soldiers as they charge toward their opponents.

However, the Great War was foreshadowed by the U.S. Civil War. Matt Whittaker explains.

A German trench occupied by British soldiers in World War One at Ovillers-la-Boisselle, July 1916 during the Battle of the Somme. The men came from A Company, 11th Battalion, in the Cheshire Regiment.

Sadly, many of these battles started this way. Troops went “over the top,” using mass infantry tactics, and suffered. An often-cited example is the Battle of the Somme in 1916. Between all the machine gun fire and more, some 19,000 British soldiers died on the first day. Technology simply moved faster than tactics had evolved.

Yet, some fifty years before the American Civil War provided a glimpse of what would come. In that war, new thinking was required, too.

But in this solely American war, what prompted such a change? There wasn’t just one reason but a combination of technology, tactics, a shift to total war, and perhaps the biggest foretelling – trench warfare.

The American Civil War began after much complex political, economic, and social issues boiled over in April 1861. With the bombing of Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor, the war started.

Trench warfare

Though a significant point, trench warfare occurred later in the Civil War. The first similarity was industrialized warfare. America’s industrial industry capacity built up faster than most countries, Britain aside.

How is this important? Such capability allowed rapid technological advancements like railroads, ironclads, and repeating weapons.

Both sides in the war would depend on railroads for supplies and movement. With good rail lines, troops could be moved quicker and in more significant numbers with their stores. The North used its great network to move troops swiftly for battles or offensive build-ups.

In 1914, the French used trains to rush troops to stop the German Army at the Battle of the Marne. Like this, the 1862 First Battle of Bull Run demonstrated what rail lines and a clever commander could do.

Confederate General Beauregard's 20,000 troops faced a Union army of 35,000. Beauregard utilized cavalry to screen a second Union force to his west, allowing trains to hurry 11,000 soldiers east and attack almost immediately. The Union troops, surprised, fled after a sharp battle with these unexpected reinforcements.

Gatling gun

A more ominous omen came with the Gatling gun, a six-barreled hand-cranked precursor to the machine gun like the Maxim or Hotchkiss. Patented in 1862, the Gatling was not a common sight. In 1865, Union commander General Butler purchased twelve to defend positions during the siege of Petersburg.

Any movie aficionado knows that movies about the Great War show troops getting mowed down by machine guns. Like the new Gatling, using the rifled musket and repeating rifles ended the smooth-bore, single-shot musket era. Their greater range or sustained fire proved to be game changers.

The dated tactic of double infantry rows formed up to blast away at their opponents ended. Soldiers got wounded or killed by their foes before being in effective range. Beyond sixty yards, musket balls simply were not accurate. The new Minie ball used with a rifled musket could be effective out to 500 yards, though either side rarely took advantage of this.

Besides rifled muskets, the Civil War pioneered repeating arms like the seven-shot Spencer or fifteen-shot Henry rifle. Soldiers no longer had to halt, pull out powder to pour down the barrel, followed by a slug. The next step meant ramming all down the barrel. The soldier put a percussion cap to ignite the black powder.

At best, a soldier could fire three or four times during the Civil War. During the Great War, the Royal Army trained their regulars to fire a brisk fifteen rounds per minute. Now, that means quite a lot of lead going out. Ouch.

Charges

In another ill-omened battle for the future, repeating arms demonstrated what Great War soldiers would face. At the 1863 Battle of Hoover's Gap in Tennessee, the famed Lightning Brigade squared off against five Confederate brigades.

The Southerners charged against the Brigade’s defenses, only to be cut down by the constant stream of gunfire. They bravely charged into a hail of lead using the same bad tactics. The Confederate colonel leading this attack thought he was outnumbered 5 to 1. A flanking attack on both sides met the same, losing 250 men in the first five minutes. The retreat became a rout, and Chattanooga rejoined the Union.

Beyond all these battles, the nature of this war changed and continued with the Great War. The philosophy of "hard war” was termed. Similar to total war, the concept is the same. In April 1863, President Lincoln decided on total war to shorten the conflict.

Like Imperial Germany decades later, the Confederates reeled under its impact. Lincoln instructed his commanders like Grant and Sherman to “do what was necessary.” Like the Royal Navy’s four-year blockade crippling the German economy, the South’s economy withered.

In a tough march, Sherman’s 1864 March to the Sea campaign cut a sixty-mile-wide path from Atlanta to the sea. He directed his men to burn, loot, destroy whatever they could, and live off the land. Germany, too, by 1918, became an economic mess, suffering from food shortages, astronomical inflation, and political turmoil.

Sadly, total war worked, wreaking havoc on the defeated that would take years to recover.

Trenches

The last Civil War peak into the World War One future was the most terrible – the trenches. The Civil War trench war began at Petersburgh, Virginia, in 1864. Generals Grant and Lee battled constantly around Richmond, the Confederate’s capital.

Despite Grant’s great numbers and big guns, each fight ended in a deadlock. In a switch, Grant made a go for Petersburg – a critical regional supply hub. However, Lee fought the North to a standstill. Let the siege begin!

Most of the fighting around Petersburg ended in stalemates, with no room to maneuver. More than forty miles of trenches appeared, the most of any Civil War campaign. Grant’s best option was to batter his way in to capture this vital hub. Terrible fighting, like the Battle of the Crater, resulted in much death.

Attempting to end the stalemate, the Union detonated explosives under a big trench redoubt, leaving a massive crater and stunning the defenders. Northerners rushed into cavity, attempting to climb into the trenches, followed by the city. The Confederates rallied and bloodily pushed back the invaders, leaving the status quo of back and forth intact.

Like all trenches in World War One, the Petersburg ones became filthy pits filled with muddy water, empty ammunition boxes, and trash. Diseases followed next, making both sides miserable. Eventually, the Union Army forced Lee to give up the city, ending the siege and losing the war. All told, the trench warfare around Petersburg killed or wounded 70,000 men.

The American Civil eerily predicted much of the despair that ensued during the Great War. Whether death tolls from obsolete infantry tactics to the wholesale change to “total war,” few predicted this in their rush to win.

What do you think of the similarities between World War One and the U.S. Civil War? Let us know below.

A Great Boat Tragedy in New York: General Slocum Disaster

As soon as the fire became visible beyond the ship, bystanders from nearby boats and on shore rushed to aid the stricken steamer. One rescuer story that got extensive newspaper coverage was that of teenager Mary McCann, a recent immigrant from Ireland who was recuperating from an illness at the isolation hospital on North Brother Island. Mary ran to the shore and swam out time after time to pull as many children as she could to safety. Reports of the number she saved range from six to twenty depending on the newspaper account.

Here, Richard Bluttal looks at the June 1904 General Slocum disaster in New York City in which over 1,000 people died.

A picture of the General Slocum.

The New York Times wrote about the staff at the North Brother Island hospital, who immediately rushed to aid the beached ship. They not only pulled people from the water using ladders and human chains, but also resuscitated victims and provided medical care. The New-York Tribune described a story similar to Mary’s, in which a hospital employee named Pauline Puetz swam out multiple times to pull victims ashore, even rescuing a child who had been caught in the ship’s paddlewheel.

The New York Evening World wrote about 12-year-old Louise Galing, who jumped into the water with the toddler she was babysitting and managed to keep ahold of the child until they were pulled from the water. The World also recounted that when young Ida Wousky would have fainted, 13-year-old John Tishner kicked his friend in the shins to wake her up. John then managed to find a life preserver and put it on Ida, pushing her into the water when she wouldn’t jump. He held onto her by her n hair until they were rescued by a boat. 

It was, by all accounts, a glorious Wednesday morning on June 15, 1904, and the men of Kleindeutschland—Little Germany, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side–were on their way to work. Just after 9 o’clock, a group from St. Mark’s Evangelical Lutheran Church on 6th Street, mostly women and children, boarded the General Slocum for their annual end-of-school outing. Bounding aboard what was billed as the “largest and most splendid excursion steamer in New York,” the children, dressed in their Sunday school outfits, shouted and waved flags as the adults followed, carrying picnic baskets for what was to be a long day away.

A German band played on deck while the children romped and the adults sang along, waiting to depart. Just before 10 o’clock, the lines were cast off, a bell rang in the engine room, and a deck hand reported to Captain William Van Schaick that nearly a thousand tickets had been collected at the plank. That number didn’t include the 300 children under the age of 10, who didn’t require tickets. Including crew and catering staff, there were about 1,350 aboard the General Slocum as it steamed up the East River at 15 knots toward Long Island Sound, headed for Locust Grove, a picnic ground on Long Island’s North Shore, about two hours away. The Slocum headed out from its berth at 3rd Street on the East River at about 9:30 am with a band playing and the passengers joyously celebrating the smooth ride and beautiful weather. The excursion vessel had been chartered to take the group—almost all of them women and children—from Manhattan to picnic grounds on Long Island.

The Fire

As the ship reached 97th Street, some of the crew on the lower deck saw puffs of smoke rising through the wooden floorboards and ran below to the second cabin. But the men had never conducted any fire drills, and when they turned the ship’s fire hoses onto the flames, the rotten hoses burst. Rushing back above deck, they told Captain Van Schaick that they had encountered a “blaze that could not be conquered.” It was “like trying to put out hell itself.”  A fire began in the forward cabin, the steamboat General Slocum caught fire in the East River of New York City, including many children. In the course of 20 minutes an estimated 1,021 people died, mostly women and children.

In the neighborhood of Little Germany families were decimated, many losing a mother and two or more children. In some cases entire families were killed. At the Lutheran Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens, over 900 victims were buried, including 61 in a mass grave for the unidentified.

Addressing the disaster

Onlookers in Manhattan, seeing the flames, shouted for the captain to dock immediately. Instead, Van Schaick, fearing the steering gear would break down in the strong currents and leave the Slocum helpless in midriver, plowed full speed ahead. He aimed for a pier at 134th Street, but a tugboat captain warned him off, fearing the burning ship would ignite lumber stored there. Van Shaick made a run for North Brother Island, a mile away, hoping to beach the Slocum sideways so everyone would have a chance to get off. The ship’s speed, coupled with a fresh north wind, fanned the flames. Mothers began screaming for their children as passengers panicked on deck. As fire enveloped the Slocum, hundreds of passengers hurled themselves overboard, even though many could not swim.

The crew distributed life jackets, but they too were rotten. Boats sped to the scene and pulled a few passengers to safety, but mostly they encountered children’s corpses bobbing in the currents along the tidal strait known as Hell Gate. One newspaper described it as “a spectacle of horror beyond words to express—a great vessel all in flames, sweeping forward in the sunlight, within sight of the crowded city, while her helpless, screaming hundreds were roasted alive or swallowed up in waves.”  Although the captain was ultimately responsible for the safety of passengers, the owners had made no effort to maintain or replace the ship's safety equipment. The main deck was equipped with a standpipe connected to a steam pump, but the fire hose attached to the forward end of the standpipe, a 100 ft (30 m) length of "cheap unlined linen", had been allowed to rot and burst in several places. When the crew tried to put out the fire; they were unable to attach a rubber hose because the coupling of the linen hose remained attached to the standpipe. The ship was also equipped with hand pumps and buckets, but they were not used during the disaster; the crew gave up firefighting efforts after failing to attach the rubber hose.   The crew had not practiced a fire drill that year, and the lifeboats were tied up and inaccessible. (Some claim they were wired and painted in place.) 

Survivors reported that the life preservers were useless and fell apart in their hands, while desperate mothers placed life jackets on their children and tossed them into the water, only to watch in horror as their children sank instead of floating. Most of those on board were women and children who, like most Americans of the time, could not swim; victims found that their heavy wool clothing absorbed water and weighed them down in the river.

Passengers trampled children in their rush to the Slocum‘s stern. One man, engulfed in flames, leaped over the port side and shrieked as the giant paddle wheel swallowed him. Others blindly followed him to a similar fate. A 12 year-old boy shimmied up the ship’s flagstaff at the bow and hung there until the heat became too great and he dropped into the flames. Hundreds massed together, only to bake to death. The middle deck soon gave way with a terrific crash, and passengers along the outside rails were jolted overboard. Women and children dropped into the choppy waters in clusters. In the mayhem, a woman gave birth—and when she hurled herself overboard, her newborn in her arms, they both perished.

The captain beached the burning vessel on North Brother Island, but the stern of the ship, where most of the passengers had been forced by the fire, was left in ten to thirty feet  of water. Though there were life preservers  and lifeboats aboard, poor maintenance and neglect had made many of them useless. 

Unlike the Titanic which sank eight years later, where the crew was organized and disciplined in evacuating the ship, most of the Slocum crew of thirty six men pushed passengers out of the way and abandoned ship. The crew had never been trained in a fire drill and the few lifeboats on board were never lowered – they were wired down.

The panicked passengers were left to fend for themselves. The life preservers were strapped to the ceiling of the ship’s deck and were out of reach of many of the women and children. Those who could grab a life preserver had a nasty surprise waiting for them.

The Slocum and its life preservers had “passed inspection” only weeks before, without ever actually being checked. In reality the life preservers were rotten – filled with dried, pulverized cork.

When some passengers tried putting them on, they disintegrated in their hands. Others  who managed to jump into the water wearing the “good” life preservers, sank like a boulder was weighted around them.

Not only was the pulverized cork filling of the life preservers waterlogged without an iota of buoyancy, it seems some of the life preservers had metal weights added to them to bring their weight specifications up to standards. Fire hoses of the cheapest kind were also rotten from age and neglect, ruptured when activated and were rendered useless.

Women who strapped life preservers onto their children and tossed their small, loved ones overboard, watched in horror as they disappeared without ever coming back to the surface.

Weighed down by their heavy clothing and struggling against a strong tide, 400-600 passengers drowned after the ship was beached. Though estimates vary, a government report commission  into the disaster reported 955 passenger deaths—or about 70 percent.

Van Shaick was believed to be the last person off the Slocum when he jumped into the water and swam for shore, blinded and crippled. He would face criminal charges for his ship’s unpreparedness and be sentenced to 10 years in prison; he served four when he was pardoned by President William Howard Taft on Christmas Day, 1912.

Aftermath

 Within an hour, 150 bodies were stretched out on blankets covering the lawn and sands of North Brother Island. Most of them were women. One was still clutching her lifeless baby, who was “tenderly taken out of her arms and laid on the grass beside her.” Rescued orphans of 3, 4 and 5 years old milled about the beach, dazed. Hours would pass before they could leave the island, many taken to Bellevue Hospital to treat wounds and await the arrival of grief-stricken relatives.

At Riverside Hospital on North Brother Island, where patients with typhoid and other contagious diseases had been quarantined, staff spotted the burning vessel approaching and quickly prepared the hospital’s engines and hoses to pump water, hoping to douse the flames. The island’s fire whistle blew and dozens of rescuers moved to the shore. Captain Van Schaick, his feet blistering from the heat below, managed to ground the Slocum sideways about 25 feet from shore. Rescuers swam to the ship and pulled survivors to safety. Nurses threw debris for passengers to cling to while others tossed ropes and life preservers. Some nurses dove into the water themselves and pulled badly burned passengers to safety. Still, the heat from the flames made it impossible to get close enough as the Slocum became engulfed from stem to stem.

Since there was no manifest of passengers the final death toll will never be exact, but it was probably more than 1021.  The official police report put the number at 1031 and The Brooklyn Eagle newspaper listed 1204 as dead or missing.

In the neighborhood of Little Germany families were decimated, many losing a mother and two or more children. In some cases entire families were killed. At the Lutheran Cemetery in Middle Village, Queens, over 900 victims were buried, including 61 in a mass grave for the unidentified.

The owners of the General Slocum, The Knickerbocker Steamboat Company escaped jail time for negligence. Knickerbocker President Frank Barnaby was indignant at people wanting to sue him or his company. Knickerbocker filed suit that a limit be fixed to their liability claimed by the plaintiffs as the number of suits grew for loss, damage and injury.The liability limit they wanted was not to exceed the value of the boat. That is the value of the boat after the fire and beaching and termination of the excursion should not exceed the sum of  for all the victims collectively — $5,000. That would amount to less than $5 paid per fatality and injured.

The owners then had the gall to claim that under maritime law that sum should be subject to the fees of the salvage and wreckage services performed. Essentially, they were claiming they should be limited to the current value of their wrecked boat which would be close to nothing. Sure enough, besides a fine they had to pay, Knickerbocker ended up paying nothing to the survivors or the victims’ families.

Ship safety inspectors Henry Lundberg and John Fleming who had passed the General Slocum despite numerous violations were indicted. Lundberg was tried three separate times for manslaughter but was never convicted.

Eight people were indicted by a federal grand jury after the disaster: the captain, two inspectors, and the president, secretary, treasurer, and commodore of the Knickerbocker Steamship Company.

Most boatmen felt that Van Schaick "was unjustly made a scapegoat for the resulting tragedy, instead of the owners of the steamer or the effectiveness of the life saving and fire fighting equipment then required — and the inspections of it by government inspectors". He was the only person convicted. He was found guilty on one of three charges: criminal negligence, for failing to maintain proper fire drills and fire extinguishers. The jury could not reach a verdict on the other two counts of manslaughter. He was sentenced to 10 years imprisonment. He spent three years and six months at Sing Sing prison before he was paroled. President Theodore Roosevelt declined to pardon Van Schaick. Van Schaick was finally released when the federal parole board under the William Howard Taft administration voted to free him on August 26, 1911. He was pardoned by President Taft on December 19, 1912; the pardon became effective on Christmas Day. After his death in 1927, Schaick was buried in Oakwood Cemetery (Troy, New York).

The neighborhood of Little Germany, which had been in decline for some time before the disaster as residents moved uptown,  almost disappeared afterward. With the trauma and arguments that followed the tragedy and the loss of many prominent settlers, most of the Lutheran Germans remaining in the Lower East Side eventually moved uptown. The church whose congregation chartered the ship for the fateful voyage was converted to a synagogue in 1940 after the area was settled by Jewish residents.

What do you think of the General Slocum Disaster? Let us know below.

Now read Richard’s article on the role of baseball in the US Civil War here.

A Brief History of Russian Museums - From Stalin to Putin

Russia has a very rich cultural history, and its museums have played an important role in the country. Here, Tim Brinkhof considers how Russia’s museums helped bring down one dictatorship only to build up another.

Soviet troops by the portico of the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg (then Leningrad) during the Siege of Leningrad in 1943.

One of the most shocking museum exhibits to ever take place in Russia was about…underwear. “Memory of the Body: Underwear of the Soviet Era” opened at the City History Museum in St. Petersburg in 2000, offering an intimate look at life under communism by way of bras and boxers. Protests from embarrassed officials reinforced the curators’ message: that socialist prudishness survived the fall of the USSR itself.

There is more to museum exhibits than meets the eye. This is true everywhere, but especially in countries obsessed with (or haunted by) their own history. They not only preserve cultural memories from the past, but also reveal how that culture wishes to be perceived in the present. A change in exhibits, writes German historian Karl Schlögel in his newly translated book The Soviet Century: Archaeology of a Lost World, means “an alteration has taken place, a revision, a revaluation or a change in perspective.” Numerous revaluations happened inside Russia’s museums over the past century, and – when viewed in succession – they mirror the transformations of Russian society at large.

Bolsheviks

When the Bolsheviks took charge in 1917, they didn’t know what do with museums. According to his wife, Vladimir Lenin “was no great lover” of them, seeing them for what they arguably were at that point: trophy rooms of the fallen elite. Instead of disbanding museums, however, the revolutionaries opted to organize exhibits of their own.

For better or worse, Russia’s museum culture was reimagined along socialist lines. For better, because the Communist Party took collections from Saint Petersburg and Moscow and redistributed them across the countryside in an effort to decentralize cultural goods. (“This,” Schlögel writes, “is how masterpieces by Boris Kustodiev or Kazimir Malevich can still be found in remote locations where no one would ever expect to find them.”) For worse, because museums became places not of learning, but indoctrination. There were exhibits about atheism, railways, the Great Patriotic War, but not the Terror or the Holodomor. These topics were removed from museums, just as they were removed from schools.

Where Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Joseph Stalin permitted criticism of Stalinism in particular, Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika policies of the mid-1980s normalized criticism of the Soviet system in general. A “Ten Years Khrushchev” exhibit in Moscow’s Komsomol'skiy Prospekt confronted visitors with their own, uncensored past, from daily life inside the kommunalka or communal apartments, to the return of inmates from Stalin’s gulags. Many exhibits from this period featured objects from mass graves which were, at long last, allowed to be opened up.

Post-Soviet era

Of all chapters in the history of Russian museums, the one situated between the USSR’s collapse and the country’s return to contentious order under the Russian Federation is the foggiest. Dwindling political and financial security led to a boom in antiques smuggling, just as it had in 1917. Many museums were closed, while others issued massive layoffs. As Christianity returned to Russia, so did calls to convert locations like Petersburg’s St. Isaac’s Cathedral (turned into a museum by Bolsheviks) back into churches. On the other side of the spectrum was the progressive “Memory of the Body” exhibit, which had visitors giggling at how uncomfortable and unsexy their state-issued undergarments used to be.

Museums in Vladimir Putin’s Russia heavily resemble their Soviet counterparts. Not just in their choice of subject – exhibits applaud military campaigns in Afghanistan and Chechnya while museums dedicated to LGBTQ history are closed – but also in their approach. Rather than letting visitors loose and allowing them to draw their own conclusions from the exhibits, as they are in western countries, Russian museums have – as Schlögel’s puts it – “an order of their own, much like that of old-time school textbooks, so that whoever follows the narrative line cannot really go astray. They follow the red threat and at the end of the trail, having successfully negotiated all the vicissitudes and dangers, arrive at an end point, which is indispensable in any historical narrative.”

Under the Communist Party, this narrative was Marxism: the preordained process of dialectic materialism that guided humanity from prehistory to feudalism to capitalism and finally, following the USSR’s example, towards communism. Under Putin, Marxism has been replaced by a new narrative of Russian exceptionalism, in which the proudly illiberal country – a civilization onto its own – is destined to become the world’s one and only superpower. It is, as historian Ian Garner shows in his new book Z Generation: Into the Heart of Russia's Fascist Youth, a narrative full of inconsistences and contradictions, but which – thanks to state-owned television, social media, and museums – is accepted by a frightening number of Russian citizens.

What do you think of Russian museum culture? Let us know below.