Ok, so some things in the golden era were not too cool...

[Zombie_61]

I don't know if they came ashore, but German U-boats certainly patrolled the Gulf during the war and sunk dozens of vessels...

There were also recorded incidents of Japanese submarines sinking merchant vessels off of the American west coast, and the bombardment of Ellwood Oil Field by Imperial Japanese Navy submarine I-17.

 

[Story]

I was born and raised in North Florida, and there is an oft-told story of a German U-boat crew coming ashore in one of the Gulf Coast towns and shopping and looking around, but not saying much because few of them spoke English. The story seemed silly to me even as a kid, but there are plenty of people who firmly believe it to this day, some folks even swear they saw said crew walking around Apalachicola, FL in the spring of 1942, when there is no evidence to support this ever happened.

We interrupt this thread for a short musical interlude.

http://youtu.be/II4BCkGNtgs

You many continue now.

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f167/Lisa_Simpson/1942/June/0628/0628-invaders.jpg

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f167/Lisa_Simpson/1942/June/0628/0628-invaders2.jpg

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f167/Lisa_Simpson/1942/June/0628/0628-invaders3.jpg

http://i47.photobucket.com/albums/f167/Lisa_Simpson/1942/June/0628/0628-invaders4.jpg

 

[Stearmen]

There were several attacks on the main land by Japanese submarines. It was pretty comical compared to the great slatter on the East coast! http://arcweb.sos.state.or.us/pages/exhibits/ww2/threat/bombs.htm

 

[Story]

In 1936, the aviator visited Germany, where Luftwaffe chief Hermann Goering showed off the latest bombers and fighters coming out of the busy aircraft plants. Lindbergh concluded, incorrectly, that the German air force was invincible and that France and Britain must appease Hitler. On Oct. 18, 1938, just weeks before Kristallnacht, Lindbergh accepted a medal from Goering -- the Service Cross of the German Eagle. As late as 1955, Lindbergh wrote that the fuss about it was a “tempest in a teapot.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-...ring-s-planes-made-lindbergh-a-nazi-tool.html

 

[LizzieMaine]

Lindy wasn't the only tool in the family. Anne was also led up the garden path, as witness her 1940 book "The Wave of the Future," which seemed to suggest that Fascism was in fact the Coming Thing, and we'd better just get used to it.

 

[Stanley Doble]

There was a general feeling in the thirties that capitalism and democracy had failed and that some sort of central planning would be key in the government of the future.

Technocracy, Fascism, Socialism, Communism were all heralded as the wave of the future. I know you don't want to hear this but the New Deal was the Democratic Party's answer to this, and incorporated many ideas that were in the air at the time.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Indeed, and I have no problem hearing that. Revolution was necessary, and had the New Deal not provided one, there would have been something far more extensive. Watch the 1933 film "Gabriel Over The White House" to see just how far some people were willing to go. And Huey Long was waiting in the wings.

But FDR's philosophy was never eugenically, racially, or nationalistically based. The Lindberghs went in for Aryan superiority -- it drips from the Colonel's speeches in 1939-41, and Anne was not innocent either. They didn't care about economics or social planning. They believed in the superiority of the Northern European white race, and believed that its domination of civilization thru totalitarianism was the Wave of the Future.

 

[Stanley Doble]

It was Lincoln Steffens who famously said on his return from the Soviet Union " I have seen the future and it works". He was not the only one who thought the Soviet model was a good one for the US to follow.

An accident of history made the Communists our allies and the Fascists our enemies. Most people in the thirties thought it would be the other way around.

If you understood this, and understood that no one knew the future it would help you see how things really developed in those days, and do away with the cartoon show understanding of history most people have these days.

If you understood how people were led into fascism, or communism, step by step, not knowing where they were going to end up, some of today's developments would scare the hell out of you.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Lindbergh came to his beliefs thru two sources -- his father, who had been a congressman in the WW1 era and was a devotee of the "international banker/money crank" conspiracy theories of that time, and Dr. Alexis Carrel, a devout eugenicist who befriended Lindbergh in the early thirties. The resulting combination primed him for Nazi sympathies.

Communism in the thirties was actually pretty close to being mainstream respectable in working-class circles until the Hitler-Stalin pact slipped the rails out from under the Popular Front. It was the Liberty Leaguers and the National Association of Manufacturers and Henry Luce who thought Hitler and Mussolini were doing a pretty good job with making the trains run on time.

 

[Story]

For those following along in the Peanut Gallery, read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
(see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can't_Happen_Here )

Had Smedley Butler thrown in with them, or simply remained silent instead of looking like a fool in front of Congress, one wonders how history would have been re-written.

 

[LizzieMaine]

For those following along in the Peanut Gallery, read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot
(see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can't_Happen_Here )

Had Smedley Butler thrown in with them, or simply remained silent instead of looking like a fool in front of Congress, one wonders how history would have been re-written.

It would have been interesting to see MacArthur mixed up in something like that -- he was *loathed* by most veterans at the time due to his role in attacking the Bonus Army. MacArthur had openly defied an order from Hoover *not* to cross the Anacostia River into the Bonus Army's compound, and instead sent mounted cavalry troopers in to rout them all out and burn their camp to the ground. While one can imagine His Dougness relishing the chance to knock the pins out from under another President -- two in one year! -- it's hard to imagine any army of veterans in 1933 who wouldn't have shot him in the back at the first opportunity.

 

[jamespowers]

While one can imagine His Dougness relishing the chance to knock the pins out from under another President -- two in one year! -- it's hard to imagine any army of veterans in 1933 who wouldn't have shot him in the back at the first opportunity.

But those notions changed an awful lot when they needed him again in WWII. lol lol lol

 

[LizzieMaine]

A classic case of "he may be an SOB, but he's *our* SOB!"

 

[V.C. Brunswick]

A classic case of "he may be an SOB, but he's *our* SOB!"

For extra credit: Who was that quote originally referring to?

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's been attributed to everyone from FDR (supposedly referring to Somoza) to Truman to John Foster Dulles, but the root of it goes back to Thaddeus Stevens, who at some point in the 1870s said of some unpleasant ally "he may be a damned rascal but he's *our* damned rascal."

 

[Story]

It would have been interesting to see MacArthur mixed up in something like that -- he was *loathed* by most veterans at the time due to his role in attacking the Bonus Army. MacArthur had openly defied an order from Hoover *not* to cross the Anacostia River into the Bonus Army's compound, and instead sent mounted cavalry troopers in to rout them all out and burn their camp to the ground. While one can imagine His Dougness relishing the chance to knock the pins out from under another President -- two in one year! -- it's hard to imagine any army of veterans in 1933 who wouldn't have shot him in the back at the first opportunity.

Good plot twist, things would have probably devolved into an American version of the Red-White Civil War multi-factionalism. The bankers who approached Butler certainly weren't commies, and neither would any American Legion Army following Butler.

And since Twitch has long since left this coil, I'll add the X-Files material.
http://rense.com/general77/ddes.htm

 

[LizzieMaine]

.
http://rense.com/general77/ddes.htm

Somebody's been listening to Father Coughlin.

 

[Stearmen]

There was a general feeling in the thirties that capitalism and democracy had failed and that some sort of central planning would be key in the government of the future.

Technocracy, Fascism, Socialism, Communism were all heralded as the wave of the future. I know you don't want to hear this but the New Deal was the Democratic Party's answer to this, and incorporated many ideas that were in the air at the time.

You are part right! FDR had on the far left the Communist, and on the far right the Fascists, he needed away to keep the middle from embracing either extreme. So hand outs and expecially work programs, ideal hands and all, kept the middle busy. He did save our democracy, it could have gone either way at the time!

 

[jamespowers]

He did save our democracy, it could have gone either way at the time!

Uh, he went one way there.

 

[Story]

On 16 September 1920, throngs of brokers, clerks, and office workers poured from the buildings lining New York City's Wall Street as a nearby church bell struck twelve o'clock. The narrow cobblestone street became a river of sputtering automobiles and scurrying pedestrians as the financial district employees set out to make the most of their mid-day break.

At approximately one minute after twelve o'clock, the abandoned wagon's timer reached zero in the pleasant afternoon sun. A bomb consisting of one hundred pounds of dynamite packed with five hundred pounds of cast-iron slugs violently vomited red-hot shrapnel and destruction in every direction. A number of passers-by were instantly vaporized by the extreme heat and pressure. The blast sent a nearby automobile careening through the air as countless jagged iron fragments ripped through the crowd. The nearby structures trembled as the shock wave slammed into their outer walls with tremendous force, shattering windows and turning lobbies into lacerating hailstorms of glass. Many of the cloth awnings which overlooked the street burst into flames. Within a half-mile radius thousands of plate-glass windows burst in the city's tall buildings, peppering the streets of Lower Manhattan with razor-sharp glass shards.

http://www.damninteresting.com/terror-on-wall-street/