“The Grand Organizations”
“
Now I am frank to say that I am not a liberal. I enjoy working on a common basis with liberals for their platforms, but I am not a liberal. I am what I want to be—I am a radical. I am a radical in the sense that I want a definite change in the system. I am not satisfied with tinkering, I am not satisfied with patching, I am not satisfied with hanging a laurel wreath upon the burglars and thieves and pirates that now occupy Washington D.C. We will be satisfied by nothing less than their destruction, and the destruction of what created them.” - Floyd B. Olson, March 27th 1934
Portrait of Governor Floyd B. Olson
One of the great ironies of the Second American Civil War was that the Natcorp regime’s numerous crimes against humanity emboldened the radical left that they were designed to destroy. The history of America’s radical tradition is far-reaching, from the Populist Party at the turn of the century to the Socialist Party under Eugene Debs, to Robert La Follette’s Progressive Party. The Communist Party, thanks to the dismal state of the American economy, boasted of tens of thousands of members by the outbreak of the War. However, the left was always viewed with intense suspicion by America’s public and government, made worse by the emergence of the Soviet Union in Russia. It was only during the War that it became a serious force large enough to openly beat its enemies in the world of politics— which likely wouldn’t have been possible if it wasn’t for the March on Washington. We can only speculate as to how successful radical leftist movements would be in America if not for MacArthur himself. The American far-left as we understand it today can generally trace its lineage back to the constituencies MacArthur was determined to destroy: unions, farmers, and communists. And they returned the favor, becoming the heart of anti-fascist resistance in the American Republic.
While many on the left tentatively supported Huey Long for the 1936 DNC, during the war he was regarded with contempt for enabling MacArthur. Long attempted to make overtures from his perch in Louisiana, perhaps in preparation for working against whichever capitalist won the war, but he was almost universally rejected. Support for the Republic soon became a litmus test among socialist and other radical organizations. In part thanks to MacArthur’s vicious persecution of them, American leftists were broadly in agreement that the Natcorps had to be defeated militarily, while the moderate Smith Administration had to be cooperated with in the field. And almost as important, beaten politically. When the Natcorps marched across the American Midwest and Northeast, the Republic was forced into alliance with the Communist Party. The Communist Party under Earl Browder already had an army of devoted, disciplined recruits that quickly turned into Republican operatives throughout the borderlands. Its connections with Moscow were also far more valuable than anyone in the government wanted to admit, securing a semi-steady trickle of Russian engineers, equipment, and leftist recruits from abroad. Joseph Stalin, the Soviet dictator, was greatly excited by developments in America. He viewed the war as the beginning of the endgame, chaos that would shatter his geopolitical enemies in the west. Stalin and the CPUSA’s goal was to lay the groundwork for the Revolution, not just against the National-Corporate state, but also against the Republic. The Communists took particular glee in forcing the Republic into partnership with them. Browder, quoting Lenin, said “the last oligarch we hang will be the one who sold us the rope.” The CPUSA’s, and therefore the USSR’s, partnership with the Secret Service brought all parties concerned lots of grief, whether from left-wing purists or the supermajority of Americans that loathed communism. It was a favorite propaganda piece of MacArthur’s, and the role that the Secret Service’s partnership with the CPUSA played in helping the regime keep power is still debated. But there is one thing that nobody disputes— the CPUSA’s manpower and material made the difference more than once. As all affiliates were targeted by the DOJ, its membership rolls were strictly secret. Even so, Browder’s boasts of close to a million recruits at the apex of the war are generally accepted. The CPUSA was not alone. Leftists from across the world streamed into America to fight for the Republic, including Trotskyists and anarchists. They brought with them their political ideas, which they widely disseminated.
International Brigades in rural Michigan
Communists were disciplined and well-equipped, brawling with Natcorp partisans and waging elaborate sabotage campaigns behind enemy lines. Communists operated outside the bounds of the law, which made them particularly useful patsies when the Republic had dirty work that needed to be done. Many of Secretary Stimson’s directives regarding the CPUSA were destroyed, but one famous line has survived. “Delay the Jackboot, defy the Jackboot, destroy the Jackboot. Whatever toll there is to be paid in these operations, pay it and pin it on the Enemy. Kill him while he is sleeping and walking. Trade two lives for a life.” The CPUSA helped wage a terror campaign against fascism, organizing labor revolts, and continued to build an apparatus for taking control of the U.S., before or after MacArthur’s defeat. The CPUSA and a coalition of other left-wing parties and organizations had ambitions that went far further than Stalin’s. Stalin’s “Socialism in One Country” meant he had a limited amount of resources he was willing to commit to the Republican cause, and saw a Natcorp victory that incapacitated the United States and shattered the British Empire’s alliance as desirable. The CPUSA, however, adopted the doctrine of “Parallel Institutions”. This governed their long-term strategy for the war and its aftermath: defeat the Natcorps, and use the war effort as a pretext to build hard and electoral power. In the same way that the War forced the CPUSA to align with the Republic militarily, it encouraged its leadership to, if only for pragmatic purposes, embrace some form of serious electoralism. With the federal government almost exclusively split between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats, the CPUSA’s plan was to build leftist power from the ground up, and then elect a radical as President in 1936.
The left saw the Republican Party as dominated by Natcorp oligarchs and the Democratic Party under the control of the Smith machine. This led to the Farmer-Labor Party going national in the middle of 1935. Its presumptive nominee was Floyd Olson of Minnesota, whose total prosecution of the war paired with his staunch leftism and open contempt for the Smith Administration made him a popular figure with the American radical. The Smith Administration’s grand strategy to win the war, developed by Stimson and Hull, involved keeping the Natcorps bogged down in the Midwest. This was to keep the Natcorps fighting a war on two fronts, stopping them from focusing all of their firepower on the Northeast. And within time, a counter-offensive from the Northeast would shatter the regime’s heart. But Hugh Johnson and his troops rampaging through the Midwest meant that the region was facing complete destruction. It needed support from Albany and London and Moscow, and while there was always supplies coming in it was never enough. With fascist troops streaming through the gates and turning whole swathes of Illinois and Wisconsin into open-air prison camps, Midwesterners developed a peculiar sense of solidarity that has separated them from the rest of America to this day. “It all comes back to the war,” one political scientist at Floyd Olson University said. “Staunch anti-capitalism, deep suspicion of business, the eastern yankees, and the establishments of the Democratic and Republican Party. Farmer-Labor politics seek to protect the American yeoman from their machinations. Fascism is seen as the brutal endgame of capitalism.” Hubert Humphrey, who was a pharmacist before joining the Army to fight Johnson, put it this way: “Government serves Americans. And when it’s not, that only means nobody’s stopping the bourgeoisie’s flaming arrows. You know, us in Minnesota, especially those that lived through that time, understand this better than most. A lot of our bodies can bear witness to that.”
Carnage on the Midwestern Front
If the war allowed MacArthur to tighten his grip on the border states, it also allowed Olson and his leftist allies to consolidate power on a level previously thought impossible. Indeed, by 1935, Olson had nationalized all of his state’s major resources. Where Wisconsin, Michigan, and Iowa’s civilian governments still had control, they had done the same thing. These actions were broadly popular, and the legislatures made this the law of the land over the spring of 1935. It was this that provoked conservative Michigan Senator Arthur Vandenberg to introduce and pass the War Production Act, which put the “niggling question” of nationalization to bed. Vandenberg’s bill gave the President a variety of emergency powers. It gave the War Department broad authority to purchase items necessary for military victory, such as steel, with nothing but promissory notes. It established a framework for distribution of said resources that was at least intended to benefit the Midwestern Front. And it also put a moratorium on further nationalizations. To the Act’s proponents, nationalization not only fed into accusations of communism, but also undermined the market and therefore the war effort. “This is what we need to do to win the war,” Smith warned a progressive opponent in the House. “The American government needs to work with American ingenuity, and not in its place. Let me tell you what, if we did what they’re saying, and made all the metal the property of the U.S. Army, we’d have less of it, too.” The Black Court, handpicked by Smith, approved of his actions 9-0. The bill had easily passed over the objections of progressive Democrats on May 18th. This was, for the left, the last straw. “The astounding hypocrisy of this Act,” fumed La Follette, “is that it overrides nationalization by our state by outrageously claiming all resources exist under the supervision of Alfred Emmanuel Smith.” The progressives bolted to the Farmer-Labor Party, causing a disaster that almost overshadowed the previous month’s impeachment trial. “He couldn’t do anything to stop them from taking D.C.,” seethed Olson while visiting some privates, “he couldn’t stop them from raising a million men and burning Wisconsin. He couldn’t even help us fight back. But wouldn’t you know it, the second our fairly elected democracy fighting on his orders tried to do what he couldn’t, Al Smith and the Republican elites in Congress scrambled to take action.” Smith was fully aware of the political and military danger posed by the Farmer-Labor Party, but viewed them as far less dangerous than his conservative opposition— which will be covered in the next chapter.
Olson continued with his nationalization programs anyway, and when the Court ruled his actions illegal he ignored it. Thus began the schism between American liberalism and American leftism. We are still grappling with the political, economic, and cultural consequences today. It must be pointed out, however, that the Midwestern left under Olson and Northeastern liberals under Smith saw each other as more than just strange bedfellows. Stimson and Smedly Butler were in near constant contact to maintain the Olson Line. Whenever the subject of aid for the Midwestern front came up, whether it was from the War Department or Congress, Smith always demanded more. “These people are dyin’ for us,” he told Kennedy when the latter said Canada’s patience with the smuggling lines was waning. “Get Bennett on the wire.” Olson, meanwhile, utterly refused to tolerate secession talk and made it known to the CPUSA that his revolution would be a democratic one. He also appeared to implicitly accept the War Department’s plans, noting that every single Natcorp bogged down near the Midwest meant less to resist George Patton’s thunderous attack on Washington. Olson even cooperated with the Department of Agriculture to transport food from the agrarian Dakotas to the northeast, bypassing his own people when it was necessary. But as the Midwest approached summer, Hugh Johnson’s troops caught Butler in a bind by crossing the Mississippi near the state’s south with alarming speed. Combined with a massive bombing campaign, and a dual offensive in western Wisconsin, the Republican armies were pinned and their numerical superiority diluted. Meanwhile, nearly every type of supply was in critical need. Johnson’s looting had crippled Wisconsin for a generation, and it also put the Natcorps in an excellent (short-term) position logistically. “These fucking bastards are sleep ing [sic] in wool blankets with fresh hash on the kettle,” wrote one corporal. “The men are pissed. We don’t know when the last time we ate a proper meal was.” Meanwhile, Johnson continued to march on Minneapolis, while Butler and the War Department scrambled for a showdown that could take the wind out of his sails.
An early Farmer-Labor Convention in 1935
But nowhere in the Midwest was the Republic’s situation more dire than in Chicago.
The Natcorps completely encircled the city, the one portion of Illinois they did not control. By taking Michigan and Wisconsin they made reinforcement by sea very difficult. If Albany’s grand strategy was to use the Midwest to keep the Natcorps from getting comfortable enough to attack New York in full force, Chicago was this for the Midwest. So long as the Republican force there kept fighting, Johnson always needed to hold one hand behind his back. The Natcorps committed around 67,000 men to Chicago in Illinois alone, troops that otherwise might’ve been in Minneapolis. Meanwhile, the city’s defenders were left to grapple with constant Natcorp harassment and the fact that one of America’s largest cities no longer had any reliable contact with the outside— meaning, food ran out very quickly. The city’s capitulation was stopped only by the heroism of its defenders, bolstered by the extensive preparations its government took to fortify it. Here, historians almost unanimously give credit to Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak. Cermak quickly seized control of the city, taking charge of its Republican defenders and mobilizing the entire population to dig trenches and erecting other barriers. The measures Cermak took were initially decried as cruel and tyrannical, such as turning refugees away (leaving them to the Natcorps’ mercy) and harsh, early rationing. Chicago’s government also seized excess food stores wherever they could be found, and distributed them equally among the city’s rich and poor denizens. Martial law was declared and all the powers therein were given to Cermak, with any potential agitators shot on the spot. Whatever the cost of Cermak’s actions, it is widely accepted that he saved Chicago from collapse. This, of course, meant that its inhabitants would starve and weather bombardment until one side or the other gave up. And then Cermak was killed by a shell on April 2nd, only three days before the next Chicago election in which Cermak was running unopposed. The city may have imploded, if it weren’t for the man Cermak defeated in the 1931 election. The boisterous William “Big Bill” Thompson unanimously won and assumed immediate control, vowing never to open the gates to the Jackboots.
Many Chicagoans had no choice but to eat their pets, their walls, and even each other. Thompson needed to keep the troops fed to stop riots from consuming the city, but the prioritization of the Army only made things worse. When Natcorp bombers and artillery pulverized Chicago, they dropped leaflets promising meals for any defectors. Thompson ordered anyone caught crossing no-man’s land killed. In between the grueling attacks at the city’s fringes, the Natcorp commanders taunted Chicago by crafting ornate picnics within view of the enemy— and then leaving them out to rot. Thompson, to raise morale, ate only standard civilian rations. This likely contributed to his eventual death, as was the case with many thousands of Chicagoans. Given the heavy casualties, the value in capturing Chicago largely intact, and the intensity of the front in Wisconsin, Johnson ordered the bombings and infantry attacks paired back. Nearly every week, there was some major disturbance that was bloodily crushed by starving Republican troops. Given time, hunger would capture Chicago far less expensively than Natcorp tanks could. Johnson wasn’t wrong. The city was on the verge of capitulation, not because the defenders weren’t willing to die for their cause, but because there simply was not enough food or bullets to keep it up forever. Thompson’s message to the War Department was simple: “There are only so many lives in Chicago.” The Republican authorities were not deaf to Thompson’s pleas, nor to his suggestions. Thus began perhaps the most unusual alliance of the entire war. Under Thompson’s advice, the U.S. government secretly deputized the Chicago Outfit. This was only one of countless partnerships between the Republicans and organized crime. Where MacArthur could, he had wiped them out swiftly and brutally, shoring up Natcorp support. For instance, the Natcorps wiped out the Kansas City crime family early in 1934. But this gave the Republic an underground network that reached into awkward, otherwise inaccessible places. What remained of the Kansas City mob was quickly put to work by the Secret Service and Kansas Republicans loyal to Alf Landon.
The boisterous and controversial Chicago Mayor "Big Bill" Thompson
President Smith oversaw a variety of behind the scenes deals with the mafia. The government drafted pardons for all mafia members in exchange for their services. Since public pardons could out mafia operatives, Smith simply kept them in his desk and illegally released criminals from custody. The most infamous of the Administration’s deals with organized crime was through none other than Huey Long. In exchange for weapons and Secret Service intelligence on Tennessee, Al Capone and other criminals were set loose from southern penitentiaries. Capone himself would be pardoned by Smith and put to work in Chicago with his old affiliate Bill Thompson. In 1931, America’s five Italian mafia families gathered under the leadership of Charles “Lucky” Luciano’s “Commission”, meant to coordinate mafia activity nationally. During the Second American Civil War, the Commission practically became an arm of the Secret Service. The mafia’s main specialty was smuggling, but it dabbled in sabotage too. Trains were derailed. Natcorp partisans were murdered. Fires were started. And the mafia assisted in inciting revolts in Natcorp slave camps and breaking out captured operatives. The war, at least partially, was personal for the mafia. “It’s true,” said Luciano, whose organization had been attacked by both Mussolini and MacArthur, “that there’s no such thing as good or bad money, just money. But there’s a real joy in how we’re making this particular batch of it.” Mafia guns, food, and operatives criss-crossed America. But perhaps most importantly, the mafia joined arms with local Republicans and the Secret Service to mastermind a complex and very risky smuggling operation through Lake Michigan to relieve Chicago. During the darkest hours of the Siege, smugglers were the only lifeline the city had. And this is why, to this day, Al Capone is widely celebrated in Illinois.
These plans were fiercely opposed by many in the government. If William Borah had his way, Smith would’ve been impeached a second time, but the Shyetzkin Affair had drained whatever will Albany had for impeachment. What little papers survived indicate that the mob partnership was militarily effective, in Chicago and elsewhere, and that the operations paid for themselves. However, as with CPUSA, the alliance fed into MacArthur’s narrative. Natcorp radio and newspapers chattered endlessly about the newest mafia outrage, connecting it to the Republican cause more broadly. Smith had long been a symbol of city machine politics to his many detractors. “He is more comfortable in a dark room of Soviet diplomats and his mob friends than with actual Americans,” sneered one of Hearst’s editorials. “They have been planning insurrection and coup since the 18th Amendment passed.” “Make no mistake,” thundered MacArthur after a mafia hit in Kansas City killed the family of a DOJ Agent, “this is what the Albany mafia have planned for you— for all of you.”
