Chapter 54 : Immigration and Eugenics - America Until 1945 Having established itself as the second White heartland, a second Europe, North America immediately became the focus for massive development, advances - and a magnet for further immigration from all parts of the world. America's rise to greatness depended to a great degree upon its large racial homogeneity. Following the banning of further Black immigration in 1808 (when the further importation of slaves was outlawed) American immigration policy was specifically geared to ensuring that as few non-Whites as possible entered that country. As a result of this policy, the White population did indeed increase: great industries sprang up and America soon almost equaled Europe in terms of population numbers. In the period immediately following the end of the American Civil War, the Republican Party dominated American politics, partly through the disenfranchisement of the Whites in the South and their replacement with Republican supporting Black voters. The Republicans remained in control of both houses of Congress until 1875, and of the presidency from 1869 until 1885, in the latter year losing it to the Democrats. Labor Movement After 1885, the first strong socialist labor movements emerged in America. Demands were made for higher wages, better working conditions and shorter hours, as part of a general reform of society. The emergence of militant and socialist trade unions resulted in unprecedented conflict between capital and labor; in 1886 and 1887 an estimated 3000 strikes took place in the United States.
A strike at the McCormick reaper works in Chicago spilled over into a serious riot known as the Haymarket Square Riot, putting the issue firmly on the national agenda. The most important strike was however that in 1894, of the employees of the Pullman Company, who were led by the American Railway Union. The strike was called to protest unfair working conditions at the Chicago-based Pullman Company, a manufacturer of railroad sleeping cars. It resulted in violence, the deaths of workers, and the destruction of property. Federal troops had to be deployed in Chicago to restore order. Infrastructure Expands Starting as early as 1862, the US Congress had chartered the building of five major railway lines and services to the far west: these charters often included vast areas of land which were then developed by the railway companies into towns all by themselves. In 1862, the US Congress also passed the Homestead Act, intended to encourage Western migration. In terms of this law the government gave 65 hectares (160 acres) of land free to any head of a family who contracted to cultivate the tract for five years. This process was interrupted by the Civil War, but resumed shortly thereafter. Apart from the strikes of the last decade of the 19th century, America continued to expand exponentially, with huge stretches of the country being subjected to mass industrialization on an unprecedented scale. The result was that America became the premier industrialized nation of the world, soon surpassing virtually all of Europe in terms of manufacturing output. Territorial Expansion The second half of the nineteenth century also saw the United States acquire in quick succession a whole host of new territories: while they themselves were physically small in size, they each contained a majority and significant-in-size non-White population. Every territorial acquisition had the effect of increasing the total number of non-Whites under the America flag: precisely the opposite of what the American government's immigration policies intended. Alaska Russia maintained friendly relations with the federal American government during the Civil War (unlike Britain, which allowed Confederate warships, such as the famous Alabama, to be built in British shipyards during the war). This friendship with the Russians led in 1867 to the U.S. purchasing the territory of Alaska from Russia (then known as Russian America). The United States paid $7.2 million in gold for the territory and got along with the deal, several hundred thousand Inuit natives. Pacific Islands In 1899, the United States acquired the island of Tutuila (or American Samoa) and in 1893 a revolution in the Hawaiian Islands, led by American sugar planters resulted in the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and the annexation of the islands by the United States in 1898. In addition to these lands, the United States also acquired several additional islands in the Pacific, including Wake Island and Midway. Spanish-American War A war between Spain and its colony in Cuba, which ran from 1868 to 1878, eventually involved the United States when a Spanish warship captured the U.S. steamer Virginius, which was bringing supplies to the Cuban insurgents. The Spanish executed some of the crew, including eight U.S. citizens. Called the Virginius Affair, this incident aroused considerable ill-feeling in the United States against Spain. Matters came to a climax when the American battleship Maine, lying in the harbor of Havana to protect U.S. citizens in Cuba, was blown up on 15 February 1898, killing 260 people.
Although it could not be determined at the time whether the Maine was blown up by Spanish or by Cuban action, popular opinion put the blame on the Spanish in the light of the Virginius affair. On 19 April 1898, the U.S. Congress adopted a resolution that recognized Cuba's independence, demanded that Spain withdraw from Cuba, and authorized the president to use force to carry out the resolution; this was practically a declaration of war against Spain. In the brief war that ensued, the United States quickly won a decisive victory. The resulting Treaty of Paris, signed in December 1898, ensured the independence of Cuba. Spain was forced to cede to the United States the territories of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands (for the latter territory the American government paid $20 million to the Spanish government). In addition, the U.S. held a protectorate over Cuba until 1902. The Jones Act of 1917, granted U.S. citizenship to Puerto Ricans, while at the same time preparing the way for gradual Philippine independence which became a reality in 1946. Panama During the Spanish-American War, the American Navy found itself hampered by having to sail round South America to get to the Caribbean from the Pacific: it was then decided to build a canal through the thinnest part of the North American continent, in Central America. American president Theodore Roosevelt, entered into a treaty with Colombia in 1903 agreeing to the long term lease of a ten mile wide (16 kilometers) zone in Panama, which was then a province of Columbia, for the building of such a canal. The Colombian Senate rejected the treaty, whereupon a rebellion broke out in Panama. With the active support of the United States, Panama became an independent republic, and then signed a new treaty with America. In return for permission to build the Panama Canal, America paid the country an initial payment of $10 million, followed by a further quarter million dollars every year thereafter. The Panama Canal was completed in 1914 and the US retained control over it until the year 2000. Mexico - FESTERING SORE Internal dissension in Mexico caused American troops to briefly occupy the Mexican city of Vera Cruz in 1914 , but an international conference organized by several Latin American states prevented a replay of the Mexican American war of 1846. This was not for the lack of trying on the part of the Mexicans, who still harbored a grudge against the White gringos to the north. In 1916, a faction of militant Mexicans began a miniature race war against White America, invading the town of Columbus in New Mexico. The invaders killed 16 people and partly razed the town to the ground. An American army unit was sent into Mexico as a reprisal, but the guilty parties were never captured, and the expedition ended by returning to America empty handed. World War One - USA NEUTRALITY BROKEN The outbreak of World War One in 1914, saw the United States attempt to maintain a policy of neutrality: it was however difficult as both England and France, in the course of maintaining a blockade against Germany, interfered with American shipments to neutral nations. The Germans for their part waged a submarine war against all ships in the sea around Britain and Ireland. Germany requested neutral nations to avoid the possibility of losing ships or lives by not sending their ships to Britain or Ireland. The Germans also urged nationals of foreign nations not to travel on British ships: a warning ignored by 128 American citizens who were traveling on the British passenger liner, the Lusitania, in May 1915, which was torpedoed after the Germans had established that it was carrying munitions for the British war effort. The American public was outraged by the sinking, which helped to whip up anti-German feeling - difficult in a nation where nearly 60 percent of the White population had German roots. Germany then announced that it would henceforth give warnings to all passenger ships before sinking them, giving the passengers time to save themselves. This mollified American public opinion. President Woodrow Wilson was given the credit for this pledge, and he went on to win the presidential election that year on the basis of him having kept America out of the war. Hostilities Erupt At the end of January 1917, Germany however revoked its pledge by declaring unrestricted submarine warfare in a zone even larger than the one it had proclaimed in 1915. The war in Europe was reaching a critical point, and all sides were putting the maximum pressure they could on each other. President Wilson replied to this news by breaking off diplomatic relations with Germany and getting the U.S. Congress to agree to arm American merchant vessels. Then a telegram from the German war office to the Mexican government was intercepted: in it proposals were made for an alliance of Germany, Mexico and Japan to take on America if that country should enter the European war. This served to heighten war fever in the United States, particularly as it was now associated with the one of the traditional enemies to the south, Mexico. Balfour Declaration In the interim, the leader of the world Zionist movement (a movement of nationalist Jews set up in Switzerland in the latter part of the 19th Century to promote the creation of a national homeland for the Jews in Palestine) one Chaim Weizmann, had persuaded the British government to issue the famous Balfour Declaration in December 1917. This declaration stated the intent to make Palestine into a Jewish homeland once the war was over - it was then under Turkish rule, an ally of Germany during the war. The quid quo pro for the declaration of support was Weizmann's assurance that the world Zionist movement would throw its full weight behind the Allied war effort. As part of this effort, it was admitted in an official 1936 publication by the New Zionist Press in London, was that Zionism would use its influence in America to try and bring that country into the war on the Allied side, specifically against Turkey (with the intention of capturing Palestine) but also against Germany and Austria if need be. While the full extent of the behind the scenes political machinations were never disclosed, it is so that the American president Wilson used the fairly flimsy excuse that the German preparations for an alliance against America if she entered the war, constituted an act of aggression, and persuaded the U.S. Congress to declare war on Germany on 6 April 1917. This was in direct contradiction of his election manifesto of the previous year, but a special Sedition Act passed by the U.S. Congress in May 1918, made it illegal to criticize the intervention in the war - an amazing law in America, blatantly ignoring the First Amendment which guarantees freedom of speech. American Intervention Decisive In any event, the American contribution of fresh troops and material at a crucial juncture in that war ensured a Allied victory and a German/Austrian and Turkish defeat. Although Britain then backtracked on its undertakings to the world Zionist movement, the state of Israel was finally established in 1948 after the Second World War. The machinations behind the Balfour Declaration and Zionism's siding with the British and its influence in bringing America into the war - despite the fact that many thousands of German Jews fought loyally on the German side - also had the effect of encouraging German anti-Semitism, something that was to assume awesome proportions in the years between the wars. Wilson's Fourteen Points Following the defeat of Germany, President Wilson played an important part in the peace conference in 1919 at Paris. Wilson intended to bring about a peace based on his program known as the Fourteen Points, an idealistic plan for a lasting peace. However, he was frustrated by the other Allies, who were intent on inflicting penalties upon Germany. The Treaty of Versailles declared Germany guilty of all the economic losses sustained by the peoples of the Allied nations and established a Reparations Commission that subsequently imposed impossible reparations upon Germany, directly in contrast to that which Wilson wanted. History was to prove Wilson correct. The Flu and Prohibition In the aftermath of the war, two issues dominated American internal affairs: the outbreak of the Great Flu Epidemic of 1918-1919, which killed millions of people worldwide and which started in an American army base in the Midwest, and Prohibition. The latter was a ban on the manufacture and sale of liquor which was implemented by an amendment to the American Constitution in 1919. This ban created a huge black market for alcohol and a criminal element became involved. Finally the ban on alcohol was lifted in December 1933, with a further amendment to the Constitution. The Crash of 1929 The stock market crash of August 1929, created the Great Depression which followed, which played havoc with the social balance in America and in the rest of the world. By 1932, hundreds of banks had failed, hundreds of mills and factories had closed, mortgages on farms and houses were being foreclosed in large numbers, and more than 10 million workers were unemployed. The election of president Franklin D. Roosevelt, in 1932, on a platform of addressing the economic crisis with a "new deal" marked a turning point: using some soundly socialist principles mixed in with traditional American free enterprise, Roosevelt created a series of aid agencies which helped the needy, and managed to restore the American economy with the financing of huge building programs. Ironically, certain aspects of the policies that Roosevelt introduced were then copied by Adolf Hitler in Germany at the same time, and called National Socialism. In Germany too, these policies worked wonders and brought that economy back in line after the devastating effects of the Great Depression. The New Deal The Roosevelt administration set up several agencies to bring relief to the unemployed and needy. Relief funds for the unemployed were distributed through state and local agencies and through several federal agencies that created temporary jobs. The National Labor Relations Act, passed in 1935, governed labor-management relations and safeguarded the rights of employees. Through the Rural Electrification Administration, established in 1936, power lines were brought to many sparsely populated areas of the United States. The Social Security Act, passed in 1935 and amended in 1939, provided for old-age benefits, unemployment compensation, and welfare services for mothers, children, elders, and people with disabilities. The New Deal also aided large-scale business. The Roosevelt administration extended large credit to railway companies, building-loan companies, banks and agricultural-credit corporations, all with the intention of giving the economy a kick start once again. The down side of this was that the public debt increased dramatically. Blacks Switch to the Democratic Party In his reelection bid, Roosevelt won one of the greatest political victories in U.S. history, carrying every state except Maine and Vermont. In addition, Black voters, following their major switch to the Democratic Party in the 1934 elections, voted overwhelmingly for Roosevelt. World War Two The outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, saw a majority of Americans still favoring neutrality: Roosevelt himself publicly declared that his policy of opposition to totalitarian dictatorship should be implemented by all means "short of war." Anti-war agitation was also spearheaded by a number of groups, ranging from the pro-Nazi to the pacifist. Amongst the leading anti-intervention agitators were contemporary American folk heroes such as Charles Lindbergh (the first man to fly the Atlantic Ocean solo in 1927) and Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford motor company (who had personally been given a Nazi medal by the German Air Force minister, Herman Goering). However, the American government's intentions and aid to the nations opposing Nazi Germany was blatant from the very beginning. Support for Britain Late in 1939, the U.S. Congress partly repealed the arms embargo imposed by a number of neutrality acts; France and Great Britain could thereafter buy war supplies in the United States. In September 1940, the U.S. government transferred 50 old destroyers to the British, receiving in return long leases for U.S. naval and air bases on British possessions in the Western Hemisphere. In September 1940, the U.S. Congress also passed the first U.S. peacetime conscription act. In March 1941, the U.S. Congress then passed the Lend-Lease Act. This act empowered the president to transfer, sell, lend, or lease war supplies to any nation who it was deemed to be in the interests of American security. In July 1940, the export of war materials to Japan was forbidden by the U.S. State Department. Pearl Harbor On 7 December 1941, while a special Japanese envoy was in Washington, DC, ostensibly on a mission to negotiate an understanding over affairs in the Pacific, the Japanese government launched a surprise bombing attack by air on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands. On the following day, at the request of the president, Congress declared a state of war between the United States and Japan. On 11 December, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. It has long been an acknowledged fact that the American intelligence services knew of the attack before it was to happen, and it has been alleged that the attack was deliberately allowed to happen to push America into the war. While this may be a trifle far fetched, certainly the preparations the American government had made to enter the war bears out a belief that they were committed to entering it against Nazi Germany at the first available opportunity. Segregated Army Despite the proclaimed opposition to Nazi racial policies, the American army still segregated its Black soldiers from its White soldiers, and took every effort to keep them separate even when they were deployed in Europe. On several occasions while stationed in England during the war, White and Black American troops were actually involved in gun fights with each other in villages in Oxfordshire and Wales, usually over the Black soldiers attempts' to date White English women. Finally an American army order was given that White and Black soldiers be given evening passes on different evenings to try and stop such racial incidents. Japanese Internment Another blatantly racially motivated act was the decision by the American government, signed by special order of Roosevelt himself, to arrest every single Japanese person in America (numbering some 112,000 individuals) and to place them into concentration camps in the American interior. At the time this was a perfectly justifiable action, given that Japanese had already proven their duplicity in attacking Pearl Harbor whilst simultaneously sending a delegation to Washington DC to discuss matters; the American government was quite correct to detain the Japanese within its borders in order to prevent any possible outbreaks of sabotage on the American mainland itself. (This policy was also followed by all the major powers in the Second World War, with the British detaining every single Italian person in Britain in 1940). "Yellow Japs" American war propaganda also played the racial card, with Japanese racial features being portrayed in exaggerated ways which would have made put any Nazi propagandist to shame. The savage maltreatment of White prisoners of war by the Japanese (which routinely included all manner of torture, beheading and forced labor and starvation) all served to justify the whipping up of racially derisive propaganda for consumption by the White masses in America and Britain.
Above: "Yellow Japs"- Despite officially condemning Nazi racism, the American government was quick to play the race card to motivate its people against Japan. On the left, a popular musical of the time; and on the right, a poster from Texaco showing a Japanese soldier with grossly exaggerated racial features. The duplicity of modern politics was also dramatically revealed by the American government during the war: while deploring Nazi dictatorship, Roosevelt was quite happy to ally himself with the Communist dictator, Joseph Stalin. The mighty American industrial machine became called the "arsenal of democracy" - certainly it is doubtful if the Soviet army would have been able to recover from the initial German invasion of that country if American materials had not flooded in to bolster the Communist war effort (the most outstanding example of this was captured inadvertently in a posed photograph of the first Soviet army tank officer to enter Vienna early in 1945: the officer was photographed next to his vehicle: an American Sherman tank.) Roosevelt's Fourth Election and Death In the presidential campaign of 1944, Roosevelt ran for a record fourth term, once again easily winning despite concern that the principle of only two terms per president was being violated. After Roosevelt's fourth term was ended by his death from a brain hemorrhage in April 1945, the Constitution was changed to legally limit the maximum terms of office of an American president to two. Another important legacy of Roosevelt was the preparatory work done by his administration for the founding of the United Nations organization, which occurred after his death. War Against Japan AND THE ATOM BOMB While Germany surrendered in May 1945, in the Pacific, the American army had been fighting a difficult and protracted war against the Japanese, being forced to island hop at great cost in human lives. The Japanese generally fought to the death, and very few prisoners were taken until right at the end of the war. The bravery of the American soldiers in the Pacific conflict became legendary: the most enduring image of that theater of conflict came with the photograph of American troops raising the American flag over the island of Iwo Jima, captured after weeks of desperate hand to hand fighting with the Japanese. By August 1945 American scientists had perfected a new and powerful weapon: the atom bomb. Faced with the choice of either committing thousands, or perhaps hundreds of thousands of American lives to a successful invasion of the Japanese homeland in order to bring about a conclusion to the war; or dropping several atom bombs on Japan with the resulting heavy civilian casualties, the American president Harold Truman, who had replaced Roosevelt, decided to drop the atom bomb, first on Hiroshima and then on Nagasaki. The Japanese surrendered five days after the second bomb was dropped. American Industrial Power Decisive American power had played the leading, and most likely conclusive, role in defeating the German/Italian/Japanese alliance in World War Two. After this, American would increasingly assume the role of world policeman, first as defender of the West during the Cold War and then afterwards as the only single remaining super power after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Chapter 54: Part Two: Blacks in America 1870-1945 All material (c) copyright Ostara Publications, 1999. Re-use for commercial purposes strictly forbidden. |
