Lost History

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana, The Life of Reason, Volume 1, 1905
US (Spanish-born) philosopher (1863 - 1952)

In light of recent events and actions of the current administration and Congress, I would like to share with you a chapter from my book, The Road To Air America. This is a chapter about what was going on before and during World War II in this country. Much of this is not known nor taught in history classes,

Chapter Eight

New Lost History Chapter

Even as Anita and I moved forward towards our vision, my thoughts returned to the past; back to the lessons of my father, Charles Drobny.

As we thought about forming a new media company, it was impossible to forget what had happened to liberals in the past. Over the years—again through reading, research, and the experiences passed on to me by my father—I had formed an opinion of the collaboration between industry and the press, and what happens to the people who try to resist it. I thought back to the story of Henry Wallace, Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Vice President.

I’ve already said that the American firms who profited by arms sales to Germany were worried that their activities would be exposed after the war. This Wall Street crowd hated FDR from the start. Their hatred was so vicious that they actually accused FDR of being a Bolshevik. Roosevelt did not like them any better than they liked him.
Roosevelt was very much concerned about the appeasement of Hitler during the 1930s; he was one of the few world leaders who wanted to stop Hitler before he became too powerful. But FDR had many domestic problems caused by the Depression, and furthermore, the American public was isolationist in its attitude towards the rest of the world. He was unable to act on his concern.

Many U.S. newspapers, early on, had praised Hitler for his success in rebuilding Germany in the 1930s and kept a comfortable distance from activities in Hitler’s Nazi Germany. But that obviously changed as the war unfolded and Hitler’s atrocities were revealed. By the time American’s entered the war, the American supporters of the Nazi war machine knew there would be postwar consequences of the public knowing of their activities, once Hitler was defeated. The November 1944 election was instrumental in preventing that scandal from ever seeing the light of day.

The 1944 Democratic convention was held in Chicago in July, 1944. There was no doubt that FDR would be re-nominated. Vice President Wallace was expected to also be re-nominated as his running mate. Wallace was a progressive, and a supporter of labor and civil rights. In addition, like Roosevelt, he was a strong supporter of a postwar friendship with the USSR. Wallace believed that the only reasonable strategy at that point in time was to come to a peaceful postwar agreement with the USSR. Russia had lost nearly 25 million people including 10 million civilians and their country needed to be rebuilt. A friendship with such a devastated nation seemed like the best possible scenario for all parties.

Henry Wallace was firmly in the liberal tradition. Although a single word cannot define or characterize a political philosophy, the word liberal in America today generally refers to one who is receptive to change and new ideas in social terms, and approves of the positive role of government in our lives. Liberalism has its roots in nineteenth century Europe, when freedom from the dominance of church, aristocracy, and absolute state authority became an ascending value. Liberals tend to be concerned with social justice, individual civil liberties, freedom of the press, and the common good, and they expect government to uphold these values.
Wallace was a liberal in the tradition of FDR because he supported an unproven yet reasonable idea that good relations with the post war Soviet Union was a good idea, something that conservatives abhorred. The Soviet system was perceived as a threat to capitalism in the minds of the conservatives. However, the reality was that the Russians had sacrificed dearly during the war and were entitled to a chance for a cooperative relationship.
America was at a critical juncture at the end of the war, in terms of its relation to the Soviet Union. According to Alderman Edwin M. Burke, co-author of a 1996 book with R. Craig Sautter and Richard M. Daley called, Inside the Wigwam, the 1944 Chicago Democratic Convention was the stage on which the very political future of America itself was played.

Burke’s book is a history of Chicago Presidential Conventions from 1860-1996. At the Democratic convention of 1944, the party bosses around the country knew FDR was seriously ill and was likely not finish his fourth term. The idea of Wallace being the next President was a terrifying thought to those in the conservative and Southern wing of the Democratic Party. They were strongly anti-Soviet and new Wallace was disposed towards normalizing relations with the USSR.

Unlike Roosevelt, who was a shrewd politician, Wallace was a true idealist. Although Roosevelt was very progressive in his policies, he knew that the coalition of Southern and conservative Democrats was necessary for the Democrats to win a national election. The party bosses in Chicago, including Chicago Mayor Ed Kelly, intervened just as Wallace was about to be re-nominated. Kelly instructed the Chicago Fire Commissioner at the time to close down the convention hall. The party bosses wanted Harry Truman to be nominated because Truman was part of Missouri machine politics and could easily be manipulated in the postwar policy toward the Soviet Union.

The party bosses succeeded in getting Truman to be FDR’s running mate in a dramatic and brilliant series of political maneuvers. As Wallace was being nominated, Mayor Kelly had the fire commissioner evacuate the Chicago Stadium. He did it by engineering and artificially created fire hazard. The Chicago Stadium doors were opened to the skid row bums in the neighborhood. People poured into the convention in droves causing the overcrowding of the building, which then had to be evacuated because of fire hazard limits. That nomination was postponed for a day. Party bosses quickly took over the process by “influencing” the delegates to switch their allegiance to Truman. [what does “influencing” mean – pressure or bribery?

The nomination of Harry Truman as Vice President and the death of FDR in April, 1945 made it much less likely that Wall Street would be exposed to a the scandal that would have exposed their support of Hitler. It’s not that the machine politicians at the Democratic Convention had any have any particular sympathy for the Wall Street collaborators with Nazi Germany, or lacked ideals. But many of these Democrats were pragmatists. From their business dealings, they knew that Wallace was perceived by the business establishment as even worse than Roosevelt. The Wall Street industrialists also wanted him out as well—which is not to say conservative Democrats conspired with the Wall Street Nazi collaborators. Their interests, however, happened to align, and created a common intention to undermine Wallace’s re-nomination. Machine politicians do not want honest idealists as party heads, and their corrupt practices would not be tolerated by a man like Wallace.

It also set in motion events that would dramatically change the postwar relations with the Soviet Union and the Military Industrial Complex. Unlike Roosevelt, Truman was not able to control the conservative Democrats who were composed mainly of Southern segregationists and right wing militarists. FDR had known the danger of this group, but as a master politician, he also knew he needed them to get elected. Roosevelt recognized Stalin was a ruthless dictator domestically, but again, he had needed his cooperation during the war, and so treated “Uncle Joe” like any other corrupt-but-necessary political boss. In other words, Roosevelt was a pragmatist; he knew that without the cooperation of Stalin, there could not be a lasting peace in the postwar.

But Roosevelt’s peace with the USSR was never to be. He died in April, 1945. The postwar Truman doctrine of confrontation with the Soviet Union became the linchpin of American postwar policy. This eventually led to the ascendance of the Military Industrial Complex that Eisenhower would warn us about so articulately.
Truman’s policy of containment satisfied the Wall Street industrialists for three reasons. First, by making Russia the enemy, these industrialists were able to demonize the socialist worker’s movement which at one time had been a powerful force for change in the United States. Second, it allowed the arms industry to continue the business they had so effectively begun with Nazi Germany. Finally, they were able to distract attention from their activities, in that they were beneficiaries of the American Government’s covert use of former Nazi in the Cold War fight. If the American government was making secret use of once-powerful Nazi officers, these individuals’ deeds would never be exposed to the public—nor would the deeds of their collaborators.

One can never know what would have happened had FDR lived, or if Henry Wallace eventually gone on to replace him. One only knows that today the symbiotic relationship between the military and the armament industrialist has grown out of control. The growth of the defense industry has sapped U.S. resources, increased the “demand” for war, and put an increasingly larger concentration of wealth and power in the hands of a few.
Back at the 1944 Democratic Convention in Chicago the coup by the “Right wing of the Democratic Party” that put Truman in charge was never reported in the popular media. It is not part of American history. Ostensibly, according to the press, Wallace was simply not nominated because he was considered too controversial. The newspapers only reported that the Chicago Stadium was closed because of a mysterious fire hazard. But in fact, Wallace had actually been popular with the delegates, and only “controversial” after the fact. When the convention reconvened, it took not one but two ballots to get Truman nominated. Anything else to say about the scandal?

This suppression of liberal values and ideas is nothing short of a danger to democracy. That’s what true believers in democracy are fighting against—the forces that are will go to any lengths to stop the will of the people from being enacted. With our vision of a progressive radio network we wanted to make it more difficult for deceit, manipulation and back room pressure to win the day. Anita and I believe that in politics, like in nature, there is a necessary balance of discourse between forces. Dialogue between conservatives and liberals is what informs the process democratic, and produces the enactment of reasonable legislation and governance. The domination of either side is not in the best interests of the United States, let alone the world.
Our vision for Air America Radio was not liberal domination. It was a place where liberals could contribute to the debate and discourse between opposing and sincere points of view, in a time when that debate is almost entirely dominated by the conservative media. We believe balance must be restored . Otherwise government cannot serve the best interests of the people. In politics, as well as in science it, is the stability caused be opposite and equal forces that make for sustainable and enduring systems.