That time a foreign intelligence service colluded with a presidential candidate and interfered with the U.S. election.
>No, not *that* time - The time it *actually* happened: How the UK colluded with FDR to pick the 1940 GOP nominee and undermine the America First movement.
🧵/16
Accusations that the British were secretly manipulating the U.S. press and politicians in order to undermine the America First movement and drag America into war were dismissed as a conspiracy theory. But the conspiracy theorists were right, and it was worse than they knew.
2/16
British agents were conducting a “classic influence operation," including wire taps, fake news, and dirty tricks aimed at discrediting America First. It was extremely effective, and the biggest coup was helping to pick a pro-war GOP presidential candidate in 1940.
3/16
In 1940 Americans were still overwhelmingly in favor of staying out of the war. Yet somehow for the presidential election that year the voters were presented with a choice of two candidates, both of whom were hell-bent on dragging the U.S. into the conflict.
4/16
New to the Republican party, and never having held elective office, Willkie had no base of support among GOP voters. But no matter, Willkie had the support of powerful elites, who happened to be working closely with FDR, British intelligence, and pro-war front groups.
5/16
The married Willkie - “a notorious and practicing womanizer” - was having an affair with the New York Herald Tribune editor Irita Van Doren. This brought Willkie deep into the circles of the press, who were working closely with to British intelligence.
6/16
In the months before the convention Willkie was near the bottom of the polls, trailing the well-known isolationist Senator Robert Taft, and far behind the up-and-coming New York District Attorney Thomas Dewy. But Willkie suddenly seemed to surge in popularity.
7/16
With the help of allies in the press, Willkie seemed to move into a last-minute lead. But were the polls reliable? Gallup and other pollsters had been penetrated by British intelligence and FDR’s agents. And even the best polls at that time were biased, “advocacy polls."
8/16
When presented with a straightforward, unbiased poll question, Americans continued to be overwhelmingly opposed to entering the war – Even if this meant that Britian would be defeated.
9/16
At the convention, Willkie gained a critical advantage due to the sudden, somewhat suspicious death of a Taft-allied convention manager. Sam Pryor - a Willkie ally - took over management of the convention, and the galleries were soon packed with cheering Willkie supporters.
10/16
Willkie’s team was not above dirty tricks at the convention. Former President Hoover gave a powerful anti-intervention speech - But no one could hear it, because Pryor had sabotaged Hoover’s microphone. Later at a press conference, a drum corps arrived and drowned him out.
11/16
By hook or crook, Willkie had won the GOP nomination. He now faced a seemingly vulnerable Roosevelt: After two full terms, FDR had failed to end the depression - unemployment was still sky-high. And the public was uncomfortable with an unprecedented third term.
12/16
But now that the anti-interventionist Republicans were disposed of, Willkie’s friends in the press were free to abandon him. And Willkie's pro-intervention, me-too liberalism gave the voters no reason to support him over FDR. Willkie trailed throughout the Fall campaign.
13/16
With the help of British Intelligence, the America First movement and the anti-interventionists were sidelined. FDR was free to continue his march to war. The first peacetime conscription was enacted, and U.S. neutrality was abandoned with more military aid to Britain.
14/16
Late in the campaign, Willkie pivoted, criticizing the conscription law and accusing FDR of secretly planning to take the U.S. into the war. Willkie could not have known how accurate this accusation was. Willkie’s last-minute peace-pivot seemed to give his campaign a boost.
15/16
Willkie’s pivot seems to have spooked FDR into making what must have been the most cynical lie of his career – promising that America boys would not be sent into any foreign war. Very soon FDR would be doing everything in his power to bring America into the conflict.
/fin
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The Battle for South Boston:
Busing in Boston resembled a military occupation, where the invading forces had identified three “centers of gravity” that needed to be controlled – the high schools in South Boston, Hyde Park, and Charlestown. "Southie" was the most important.
🧵/31
“The struggle over Boston school desegregation is the perfect fight for the Irish. They were doomed before they started. Therefore, they can be expected to fight on.”
Jimmy Breslin, 1975
/2
Why Southie? It was partly symbolic – The resistance to forced integration in Boston was led by the Irish, and Southie was the neighborhood with the strongest Irish identity. It was home to the Saint Patrick’s Day parade, and well-known Irish politicians.
/3
Bombing Germany – From Douhet to Dresden: How British and American air forces came to employ a strategy of massacring civilians.
> Instead of engaging enemy forces, peak American technology and some of its best, bravest men were put to work killing women and children.
🧵/23
"Jus in Bello" traditions had endured for nearly two hundred years in the West. But after WW I, the new theories of air warfare and the new technology of the heavy four-engine bomber set the stage for the indiscriminate destruction of cities and the mass-killing of civilians.
/2
Pre-WW II air-power theorists like Douhet had argued that terror-bombing of civilians would actually *shorten* a war and save lives. Although bombing of military targets continued throughout the war, proponents of terror bombing were allowed to put their theory into practice.
/3
In 1974, in the second month of the disastrous court-ordered integration in Boston, violence spread and the crisis escalated, with national implications. President Ford weighed-in, and the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Brag was put on standby alert.
🧵
In September of 1974, the often violent resistance in South Boston had grabbed national attention. Hopes that the turmoil could be contained to one neighborhood were soon shattered. In early October, Blacks rioted in neighborhoods across the city. 2/
On October 8, following news of a beating of a Haitian immigrant in South Boston, turmoil broke out at English High school. Blacks rioted and battled police around Mission Hill. "Some 1,500 black students began walking up Tremont Street "smashing windows and hurling rocks." 3/
> 1960: America seems to be entering an era of hope and prosperity.
> End of the 1960s: Complete break-down of law and order. Half the country afraid to go out at night. A crime wave of "epic proportions."
From 1960 to 1970, rates of violent crime (essentially, murder, rape, robbery, and serious assaults) in the U.S. more than doubled, from 161 per 100,000 to 364. Murder rates rose 55 percent, while robbery rates climbed over 91 percent. And it continued to rise into the 1990s.
There was some evidence of rising crime in other western countries. But crime was *falling* in Japan. And Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore did not see a significant crime increase.
Catholic Irish v. Italian culture clash in 1890s Boston:
"In the old country, regular church attendance was expected only of females; Italian men in Boston
discovered that no Catholic was exempt from this obligation."
"The Irish priest, whose devotions centered around the all-male Holy Trinity, encountered the matriarchal Italian family, which focused on the Madonna and Child."
"No Irishman, for instance, would enter a church wearing a hat and puffing on a cigar; nor would he profess his human frailties prostrating himself before a crucifix or Station of the Cross."
FDR and the "Back Road" to War with Japan:
After WW I, with the Lansing–Ishii Agreement, the U.S. had acknowledged that Japan has legitimate security interests in Manchuria – the Bolsheviks were on the march, the spread of communism threatened China and Korea.
🧵/18
Lennin had shrewdly granted concessions to U.S. businesses in Manchuria, sowing the seeds for conflict – “In this way we incite American Imperialism against the Japanese bourgeoisie.”
2/18
By the 1930s, Japan had seized control of Manchuria. But it was clear that that the Soviets were hard at work laying the foundation for Communist revolution in the Far East.
3/18