The Nazi Surrender Ended Fighting in Europe but Not the World War

A French post card depicting the German surrender at Reims from a painting by Lucien Jonas for the Musee de l' Armee in Paris.

On May 7, 1945 representatives of the German High Command signed articles of unconditional surrender to the Allies at a French school house in Reims used as the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Forces (SHAEF). 

It was apparent for weeks that the German position was hopeless.  Pressed on all sides, the Soviets were about to take Berlin when Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker leaving Grand Admiral Karl Donitz as his successor as President of the Reich.  Dönitz realized his only duty was ending the war as quickly as possible on the best possible terms for Germany.  He immediately began back-channel negotiations. 

Meanwhile, German armies began surrendering regionally.  German forces in Italy lay down arms on May 1.  Berlin surrendered on May 2 and two separate armies north of Berlin capitulated. 

On May 4 Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery accepted the unconditional surrender of all German forces in Holland, Northern Germany, Denmark and all naval forces in the area.  General Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedberg, acting on orders from Dönitz initially offered surrender to Western allies alone leaving the option for his troops to turn around to face the Russians.  Montgomery coldly refused leaving the Germans no other choice by surrender. 

The same day troops in Bavaria, the state whose mountains were once considered as a fallback position for a drawn-out campaign of guerilla resistance, surrendered.  From the Channel Islands—held by Germany even after the Normandy Invasion—to Prague one after another German forces capitulated. 

Dönitz was informed that any surrender had to be conducted by a representative of the German High Command.  This was because the Allies did not want a repeat of the Armistice of the First World War which was signed by the government, not the military leading to the charge that the Army had been “stabbed in the back,” a key propaganda point when Germany re-armed. 

On May 6 Dönitz dispatched Colonel General Alfred Jodl, Chief of the German General Staff to Reims with orders to offer surrender to Western forces only—exactly the same terms turned down my Montgomery two days earlier.  Allied Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower harshly excoriated Jodl and bluntly demanded unconditional surrender to all allies or face continued prosecution of the war.  Informed of the terms, Dönitz wired his consent.  

Celebrating after the German surrender at Reims were General Ivan Susloparov, General Walter Bedell Smith, Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, and Royal Air Force Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur Tedder.

At 2:41 local time Jodl signed the Instrument of Surrender.  Eisenhower pointedly and as an intended snub did not personally accept or sign for the Allies assigning his Chief of Staff, the brusque General Walter Bedell Smith, to be principal signer for the Allies.  Also signing was General Ivan Susloparov, Soviet liaison to SHAEF.  Susloparov signed before he could get full authorization from his government so it was understood that a second surrender would be signed with the Soviets on the Eastern front.  French Major General François Sevez signed as the official witness. 

The surrender of all hostile forces was set for May 8, 11:01 pm Central European Time.  Shortly after midnight on May 8 the second surrender signing was conducted at the seat of the Soviet Military Administration in Berlin.  Marshal Georgy Zhukov, of the Soviet High Command was the principal Allied signatory and was joined by British Air Chief Marshal Arthur William Tedder, as Deputy Supreme Commander SHAEF. American Lt. General Carl Spaz, Commander of United States Strategic Air Forces in Europe; and General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny of the First French Army were witnesses.  Signing for the Germans were Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg, Commander-in-Chief of the Navy; Colonel-General Hans-Jürgen Stumpff of the Luftwaffe; and Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of Staff of the German Armed Forces also signing on behalf of the Army.  The signing was completed fifteen minutes after midnight. 

By the terms signed in Rheims, fighting had already ceased just over an hour earlier.

When the news of the surrender broke there were joyous street celebrations like this one in London.

News of the end of the war in Europe broke on May 8, with spontaneous celebrations erupting across Europe and North America.  Street celebrations in Britain and France were especially jubilant.

President Harry Truman announced the end of the war in a somber broadcast with the words that “Flags of Freedom fly all over Europe today,” while reminding listeners that the war against Japan continued.  The knowledge that a long bloody war against Japan might still stretch ahead with American troops taking most of the casualties in a final assault against the home islands somewhat restrained celebrations in this country.

This knowledge also haunted many allied troops in Europe, who knew that they might be shipped to the Pacific.  Indeed, some Air Force and Naval units were almost immediately re-directed and some of the crack U.S. Airborne, Infantry, and Armored divisions which had been in the thick of fighting for months were slated for re-assignment, as were many individual G.I.s whose units would be dissolved.  

Isolated German units continued to surrender for about a week.

Not all fighting ended on May 8. Field Marshal Ferdinand Schörner of the Army Group Centre fought on in Austria and Czechoslovakia, but the Soviets turned all of their considerable might against him and by May 15 ceased all offensive operations with mop up in Czechoslovakia completed. 

The last battle in the war took place on May 15 in Slovenia and the last shots were fired on the Dutch island of Texel where Ukrainian prisoners of war had rebelled against the German occupiers on April 5 and kept up a guerilla campaign against them.  The German garrison had simply been forgotten in the shuffle and was afraid if they surrendered to the Ukrainians they would be executed en masse.

A final bit of business was dissolving the German Government under Dönitz.  The Allies had concentrated so hard on getting the armed forces to lay down their arms that they had neglected to demand that civil authority be transferred to them.  Worse, they had neglected to outline how a military occupation would work.  On May 28 a rather junior British officer was dispatched to the town of Flensburg to read to Dönitz Eisenhower’s edict dissolving the government and arresting all of its members.

In the meantime, local commanders took charge where they were.  On June 9 the Allies officially signed a Declaration Regarding the Defeat of Germany and the Assumption of Supreme Authority by Allied Powers taking over civil authority at all levels in occupied Germany. 

Details of the shape of the occupation—and of the post war world—were agreed to at the Potsdam Conference by Truman, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill (replaced after this agreement was reached at the Conference by Clement Attlee when Churchill stunningly suffered an election loss) and Soviet leader Josef Stalin. The agreement divided Germany, and its capital of Berlin in zones of Allied control. 

On December 13, 1946 President Truman finally declared that hostilities between the United States and Germany had ceased. 

Yet the war was not technically over.  Even after the establishment of the German Federal Republic (West Germany) as a U.S. ally and the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) in 1949, the U.S. felt it needed the fiction of an official state of war to maintain authority for stationing troops in Germany. 

Congress adopted a resolution declaring a formal end to hostilities in 1951.  Official occupation continued until 1955 when the West German government was given full sovereignty.  

The less dramatic and nearly forgotten final official end to World War II with the signing of Treaty on the Final Settlement with respect to Germany in 1990.  Seen Left to right:  Roland Dumas (France), Eduard Shevardnadze (USSR), James Baker (USA), Mikhail Gorbachev (USSR), Hans-Dietrich Genscher (FRG), Lothar de Maizière (GDR) and Douglas Hurd (United Kingdom). 

In September 1990, more than 45 years after the surrender the Four Powers—the U.S., Britain, France, and the U.S.S.R—finally signed a Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany with both German Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic which allowed the two German states to unite, which they did on October 3, 1990.  The war was finally, officially over. 

O! the Humanity When a Dream Ended in a Ball of Fire

Thanks to newsreels, dozens of photographers, and the chilling live radio coverage, for the first time Americans and people from around the world were witnesses to a great disaster.  The impact was profound. 

On May 6, 1937 a dream died with a bang, along with 37 souls.  Up until then, the future of trans-oceanic and other mega-long distant air service looked like it belonged to lighter than aircraft.  Airplanes, it was thought, were too limited by fuel needs and lift capacity to economically serve this need.  They were alright for military use, which was proved in the Great War, and had a place supplementing good rail service in shorter distance travel, but the great dirigibles held the promise of connecting the world with fast, reliable passenger service and a lift capacity that could also eventually become a major freight hauler.

All of that changed when the German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg ignited and crashed in a fiery inferno as it attempted to dock with its mooring mast at the Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey. The event was captured in all of its dramatic horror by newsreel cameras and described in a live remote broadcast on WLS Radio of Chicago.

Dirigibles were a refinement on the concept of a powered balloon developed by Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin beginning in 1899.  Unlike their predecessors, Zeppelin’s creations featured a light but rigid cigar shaped envelope inside of which lighter than air gas was contained in a series of bladders.  The envelope provided additional space inside which could be used for freight or passengers.  The ships were powered by two or more gasoline or diesel engines and a cab extending below the envelope served as a pilot station.  

German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin invented and developed the dirigible--a semi-rigid lighter than aircraft capable of long-distance flight and significant lift for military, passenger, or freight service.

Zeppelin built several models of increasing size and lift potential over the years.  In World War I they were pressed into military service and famously bombed London. 

The British, French, Italians, and the U.S. all scrambled to enter the field with lighter than aircraft themselves.  But crashes and failures dogged all attempts. The British R34 became the first dirigible to cross the Atlantic in 1919, but it crashed in a storm two years later.  A larger sister ship R38 exploded in 1921 when its frame snapped, causing a spark which ignited explosive hydrogen gas used for lift. 

The U.S. hardly fared better.  It’s ship, the U.S. Navy’s ZR1 Shenandoah, was built in 1923 and used non-combustible helium for safety.  Despite this advantage Shenandoah broke up in a thunderstorm over Ohio in 1925 killing 19 of 43 crewmen. 

The Navy, which remained committed to lighter than air ships, commissioned the Zeppelin company to build it a ship as part of war reparations from defeated Germany.  The commission kept the company alive while Germany was forbidden by treaty from building airships for its own military use.  Delivered to the Navy in 1924, it was also designed for use with helium.  Designated ZR3 Los Angeles it became the most successful large dirigible yet with a capacity for 30 passengers in addition to crew.  It made more than 250 flights including trips to Puerto Rico and Panama. 

The Navy's  Macon  was an aircraft carrier which could launch and retrieve Sparrow Hawk scout biplanes from the exterior platforms on either side of the ship.  The idea was to be able to cover wide areas giving the Navy long distance eyes in search of any enemy fleet, in anti-submarine operations, or for search and rescue.  She and her sister the Akron represented the pinnacle of military development of the dirigibles.

Impressed, the Navy arranged for the Zeppelin company to license the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company to build ships of German design.  The results were the Akron and the Macon both of which could serve as aircraft carriers capable of launching and retrieving 5 light scout planes.  Delivered in 1931, both ships went into service.  But the Akron but was lost in a storm over the Atlantic in 1933 and the Macon crashed into the Pacific Ocean in 1935. The Navy then abandoned building new rigid airships, although it continued to fly the Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, the British re-entered the race with two new mammoth airships, the largest ever built.  The R-101, with a passenger capacity of over 100, crashed and burned near Beauvais, France, on October 4, 1930 killing 48 of 54 aboard.  The slightly smaller R-100 made a successful round trip to Montreal, Canada, but was withdrawn from service and ultimately scrapped after the R-101 disaster.

Despite the dismal safety record, the fact remained that no dirigible ever manufactured by the Zeppelin company in Germany had ever crashed.  They seemed immune from the stresses of extreme weather that had doomed most other ships.

Following the success of its Los Angeles for the U.S. Navy, the Zeppelin company began construction of a new airship for German civilian use.  The Graf Zeppelin completed in 1928 was meant to be a prototype and a demonstration for a new generation of air ships meant for passenger packet and airmail service.  It was a huge success.  It made a trans-Atlantic flight to Lakehurst in October and was welcomed with great ballyhoo including a New York ticker-tape parade for the crew and a reception at the White House.  The next year she completed an around the world trip that officially began and ended in Lakehurst after she had crossed the Atlantic again.  After that there were triumphant tours of Europe and trips to South America.  Crossing from Germany to Lakehurst became almost routine, if not yet regularly scheduled.

The company planned for a larger airship to inaugurate regular scheduled service.  Plans for that ship, designated LZ-129 had to be reconsidered after the R-101 disaster.  The ship was made heavier and stronger, but also intended for the safer helium being successfully used by the U.S. Navy.  As the ship was being re-designed the Nazis came to power in Germany.  Despite the resistance of old Count Zeppelin, company's operating chief Dr. Hugo Eckener impressed the Graf Zeppelin and future air ships into a new state-owned airline.  From then on German airships would be ablaze with the Nazi swastika on their tail fins and the air ships would become propaganda tools for the Third Reich. 

Last triumphant moments for the sleek symbol of Nazi pride--the Hindenburg soars over New York City on May 6, 1937.

The new ship was dubbed the Hindenburg by Eckener in honor of the former German President Paul von Hindenburg, much to the annoyance of Nazi authorities who had hoped the ship would be named for Hitler.  She was tested in March of 1937.  But due to the rise of German militarism, the Zeppelin company was unable to obtain helium from the United States, the only nation with a capacity to produce it in large quantities.  Helium was restricted as a strategic material.  Eckener was forced to fly the new ship with dangerous hydrogen under pressure from the government.

After a series of trial flights and an extensive propaganda tour of Germany the Hindenburg made its first trans-Atlantic flight to Rio de Janerio, Brazil.  The ship was then put into the long dreamed of regularly scheduled service.  In 1936 she made ten trips to Lakehurst and seven to Rio. 

The Hindenburg left Frankfurt for Lakehurst on May 3, 1937 on its first scheduled round trip between Europe and the United States that season.  She arrived over New Jersey three days later but attempts to land were delayed until a line of thunderstorms passed Lakehurst.  The press was out in force to cover the still unique event.

When the weather cleared, Hindenburg made a routine descent. Just after she had dropped bow lines to be taken up by Navy personnel on the ground, the ship was rocked by an explosion.  Fire erupted about a third of the way from the ship’s stern.  She dropped to the ground in 37 seconds and was completely engulfed in flames in moments.  WLS announcer Herbert Morrison famously sobbed “Oh the Humanity!” as he attempted to describe the horrible scene.  

His clothing burned off Walter Banholzer is led away for medical assistance by a Navy ground crewman and a Zepplin company steward, both as shocked, stunned, and traumatized as the survivors of the crash.

Amazingly, of the 36 passengers and 61 crew on board, only 13 passengers and 22 crew and one ground crew member died.  Others were severely injured including those with horrible burns.  Whatever the toll, it was enough to end commercial lighter than air travel.  German invincibility in the air was disproven and the image of the burning ship was seared into the public imagination.  The Graf Zeppelin was withdrawn from service and work on its replacement, Graf Zeppelin II was scrapped.

Although many theories abound as to the cause of the explosion ranging from spontaneous combustion to sabotage, no cause has ever been proven.  Ultimately, any airship using explosive hydrogen and at the mercy of any stray spark was probably doomed.  We will never know if the safe operation of the ship with helium might have led to continued development of lighter than air fleets.

The compressed laboratory of wartime soon produced technological innovations that made trans-oceanic service by fixed wing aircraft not only possible, but routine.

Today, despite some efforts to revive them as freight handlers, lighter than air ships are mostly blimps, much smaller gas filled bags used for advertising and as camera platforms for sporting events.  But the rapid development of drone technology is rendering them obsolete. 

 

Cinco de Mayo is America's Mexican Holiday

 

Note:  This is at least the 14th year I have run essentially the same post with a little tinkering on the margins. I keep running it because the same shit happens again every year and my Mexican and Chicano friends keep asking me to bring it back.

Today is, as every hearty partyer will tell you, is Cinco de Mayo.  In the U.S. it has become kind of second St. Patrick’s Day decked out in sombreros and serapes instead of emerald green, toasted with Coronas with lime and shots of tequila instead of Guinness and Jamison’s, and laid out with two-for-one taco deals instead of corn beef and cabbage.  It is celebrated without apparent irony even by those who adore Trump’s ardor for rounding up, abusing, jailing, and deporting brown skin immigrants even if some of them turn out to be citizens. 

 

Cinco de Mayo has become as much as an American celebration as Mexican holiday and has become the occasion for public displays of Mexican cultural pride.  This year the signature Chicago Cinco de Mayo Parade was canceled for the second year in a row amid wide-spread concern that the event and the movement of people around it could become targets of opportunity for none-to-careful immigration enforcement sweeps.  Other communities have done the same.  Stark fear stalks even long-time and well established Mexican-American communities.

 

 Part of the problem--commercialized party-til-you puke.

Still, in many places Mexican-American restaurant owners and importers of spirits and trinkets appreciate the business.  Grade schools kids make paper hats and sing Spanish songs for a one day lesson in Mexican culture.  And immigrant communities try to hold the fiestas and parades, glad for one day of the year when the rest of the country is paying attention to them in sort of a good way.  If you ask most of the revelers what they are celebrating, they will mumble something vague about Mexican Independence Day. 

Of course, they are wrong.  Independence Day is Diez y Seis de Septiembre (September 16th) celebrating the day in 1810 when Father Miguel Hidalgo read the Gritto de Hidalgo  beginning Mexico’s War of Independence from Spain.  

 

At its best in Mexican-American communities across the US popular Cinco de Mayo celebrations are a rare opportunity to share Mexican culture and traditions with parades and festivals.  Promotion by those communities have elevated the celebration in the US much higher than its modest and regional observations south of the border. 

In Mexico Cinco de Mayo is a minor patriotic holiday observed mostly in the State of Puebla.  It celebrates the victory Mexican patriots over a large, modern and well-equipped French army in the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862.  It was not even the final victory of the war against the French, who did not evacuate the country until 1866.  

 

 This mural in Mexico City by Antonio González Oroaco depicts Juarez as the “Symbol of the Republic” during the Battle of Puebla.

In 1861 the Mexican President Benito Juarez had been forced to default on Mexico’s heavy debt to European powers.  Britain, France and other powers all made threats to redeem their debts by force if necessary.  They were warned by the United States, which invoked the Monroe Doctrine, not to intervene in Mexico.  French Emperor Napoleon III recognized the U.S. would be too preoccupied with its own Civil War to take action and dispatched a large French Army to take control of the country.  

 

A panoramic painting of the Battle of Puebla, a moral boosting but not final victory of the Mexican Republic under Benito Juarez against the invading French. 

After initial success the occupying French Army with its Mexican allies, numbering 8,000 men was met by 4,000 Mexican troops loyal to Juarez under the command of General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín and soundly defeated.  It was an enormous moral boost for the Mexicans but only delayed the French march on the capital of Mexico City. 

In 1864 a plebiscite conducted under French guns invited the Austrian Hapsburg Prince Ferdinand Maximilian to sit as Emperor of Mexico with his wife Carlota as Empress.  Maximilian did have support of some Mexican conservatives, large landowners, and the Catholic Church, but despite his liberal bent—he continued many of Juarez’s land reforms and even offered the former President the post of Prime Minister—Mexican patriots refused to recognize his rule or the French occupation that made it possible. 

Juarez and his supporters engaged in a grizzly war of attrition against French forces.  With his army slowly bleeding away and the costs of occupation far outstripping any profits to the empire, Napoleon III began to withdraw his support.  When the American Civil War ended and American intervention with a new, modern, and battle-hardened army became a distinct possibility, the French Emperor finally withdrew his troops.  

 

Emperor Maximilian badly miscalculated his popularity and paid for it with his life.

Maximilian, deluding himself that he was truly the popular Emperor of Mexico stayed behind with his loyal generals to fight it out with the Juaristas.  Carlota made a desperate trip to Europe in which she traveled from capitol to capitol begging for aid for her husband.  When she failed, she suffered an emotional and mental breakdown.  One by one Maximilian’s loyal armies were defeated.  He was captured by republican troops after trying to make a break-out from the besieged city of Santiago de Querétaro on May 15, 1867.  The would-be Emperor was tried by court martial and executed by firing squad on June 19.  

But if you ask any reveler at the bar tonight about any of this, all you will probably get is a blank stare and, if you’re lucky, a Margarita.

 

Kent State Shocked a Generation—A Perception in a Murfin Memoir

 

John Filo's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of 14 year-old Florida runaway Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller.

Note—May 4th is one of those dates that stop us in our tracks when they roll around each year.  At least it does for an ageing generation who were young and radical fifty-six years ago.  When the Ohio National Guard opened fire on campus anti-war protestors at Kent State University killing four and injuring several it was a shock of vulnerability for privileged White kids flirting with revolution.  Black students, although outraged, were not at all shocked by killings at Jackson State University in Mississippi days later. If you are a member of subsequent generations, the date may have no meaning for you at all—just another of the Boomer things.

Memoir stories like this are intended purely as the observations and reminiscence of a single participant.  I don’t exaggerate my importance.  I was a foot soldier in the movement in those days neither a leader nor central figure.  In this instance I stumbled upon an unusual role by happenstance and then faded back into the woodwork universally unnoticed.  The story here is just a hopefully interesting angle on a moment in history.  

My Own Private Kent State 

I must have been at my brother Tim’s (later known as Peter) apartment on Sheridan Road near the Morse Ave. Beach when we got the news of the shooting.  Oddly, unlike other Great Events, I can’t fix in my mind the moment I heard the news. 

Rather than hopping on the L to get to my own school, Columbia College, then a small communications college located on a few floors of a commercial building at Grand Ave. and the Inner Drive north of the Loop, my brother convinced me to go with him and his friends to his campus, Kendall College in Evanston.  Kendall was then a small, private two-year college mostly drawing students from the northern suburbs.  Neither the school nor my brother was particularly politically active.  Tim was the center of acid dropping spirituality and the self-appointed guru to a circle of acolytes, many of them fellow students at Kendall.  He said he left the Revolution to me. When we arrived on campus, students were in full possession of the buildings and the administration was nowhere to be found, although some faculty was on hand mingling with the students.  There was no police presence; it was as though the administration had simply abandoned the school to the students. 

Students rallied on the Northwestern campus.  The night of May 4 they erupted onto Sheridan Road and erected barricades that stayed in place for days.  Some students from near-by Kendall College went over to join them.

Some folks had gone over to join Northwestern students at barricades erected on Sheridan Road.  Others milled about trying to figure out what to do.  One student was working a Ham Radio and gathering information from actions at campuses across the country.  We soon realized that this could become an asset.  

Phone connections were somehow made with students from campuses across the Chicago area and we fed them news gleaned from the Ham operator.  Not all of that information was reliable, some turned out to be wild rumor, but enough was good so that it became apparent that we were part of a spontaneous nationwide student uprising that was growing by the hour.  

Besides participating in the phone network, I started posting the news on large sheets of paper, updated regularly throughout the night to keep students informed.  I called them the Joe Hill Memorial Wall Posters and had about a dozen of them lining hallways by the time the night was over.  

There were also informal discussions all night.  I was considered a real live activist because of my connections with the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and my input was probably given more credence than I deserved.  By morning I had agreed to return to campus later and set up some educational programs, which I did do, although Kendall never became a hot bed of radicalism.

In the morning, running on adrenalin, I headed down to Columbia.  Columbia was a commuter school specializing in communications and the arts—broadcasting, photography, theater, dance, and writing.  With no one living on our non-existent campus, I was not sure what I would find.  There were no classes, but it wasn’t exactly a strike either because the administration was totally supportive of the student cause and offered the facilities of the school free to the movement.  

I headed down to the print shop in the basement, where I worked as one of two printers.  We ginned up our little A.B. Dick 360 and Multilith 1250 offset presses and were soon turning out hundreds, even thousands of flyers, posters, handbills, and other material advertising actions across the city and region.  

                                            In the basement Columbia College print shop we produced copies of posters and flyers like this.

I have no recollection of how, but I was selected as one of two representatives from Columbia to a citywide student strike committee.  I believe it was Wednesday when a couple of hundred folks met at the Riviera Theater in Uptown to plan coordinated actions.  

The meeting was a perfect example of sometimes chaotic participatory democracy, but a consensus was reached to have a unified, city wide march and demonstration downtown on Saturday.  I was named to the demonstration organizing committee with students from University of Illinois Circle Campus, University of Chicago, and Roosevelt, among other schools.  Many of the other members were in SDS.  Some were Trotskyites, who made something of a specialty of organizing big demonstrations.  There was a sprinkling of Anarchists as well.  But the ideological wars that wracked campuses were suspended—mostly—in the face of the common emergency.  Another meeting the following day was held at Circle Campus.

Again, I have no memory of how, but I was selected to try and negotiate with Chicago Police in what most felt was the vain hope of avoiding an attack by authorities the day of the March.  Given the background of the Police Riots against demonstrators during the 1968 Democratic Convention, at protest marches connected to the trial of the Chicago 7, and the virtual street warfare around the Days of Rage in October ’69 there was little reason to hope for a better outcome.

Late Thursday afternoon I was escorted through an eerily quiet Police Headquarters to the office of Deputy Superintendent James Riordan.  I believe I may have been taken through a route intended to keep rank and file police from seeing that the brass was meeting “the enemy.” 

Riordan was cordial.  We shook hands.  We both clearly understood the potential volatility of the situation.  I told him that organizers intended an entirely peaceful march and pointed to some earlier mass marches that had gone off without a hitch.  I also pointed out that there had been no significant violence on any of the Chicago area campuses even at Northwestern with its barricades or the building occupations at other schools.  I said that we would have marshals to keep our demonstrators in line and moving and to discourage break-away marches.  Although others were trying to obtain a parade permit, I said that we intended to exercise our free speech rights and march with or without one.  

Riordan said he understood and said that the police did not want to provoke a confrontation and would be as “restrained as possible.”  I told him that we expected police would line the route of march, but that putting those officers in full riot gear or having them stand with batons conspicuously exposed might be provocative under the circumstances.  Riordan made no explicit promises but indicated that if we kept our people in line there would be a kind of truce.  I got the distinct impression that higher-ups had already decided to try to avoid more bad national press.

A peaceful Kent State student strike march much like the one in Chicago.

All during this period, although I was known to be a Wobbly, I was not acting in any way as a representative of the union.  I did inform the Chicago Branch of developments and the branch decided to participate in the march.  That Saturday rather than joining other “leaders”—and I use that term in the loosest possible manner—in the front of the march or joining with Columbia or Kendall college contingents, I marched as a rank-and-file member of the IWW behind our black and red banner.  Although riot equipped police were on hand, they were kept largely out of sight.  Officers lining the route wore standard blouses and soft caps.  Their batons were kept under their coats.  The march and rally went off without a serious hitch or any violence, which is more than can be said of marches in other cities.

Later, I reported on the events in the pages of the Industrial Worker.

How Winfield Scott’s Plan to Put a Fatal Squeeze on the Rebellion

A Civil War era illustration of Winfield Scott's  Anaconda Plan to win the war against the Confederacy.

On May 3, 1861 aged Lt. General Winfield Scott, Commanding General of the United States Army, presented President Abraham Lincoln and his Cabinet, with his Anaconda Plan to conduct the war against secessionist rebel states.    The plan was widely derided by the press and public, which believed that a quick, decisive battle with the main Confederate army in Virginia would win the War of Rebellion.  Scott knew better.  He anticipated a long and bloody conflict.  

Lincoln may have wished for a short, glorious war, but the former Black Hawk War militia Captain read everything on military strategy and tactics that he could lay his hands on in the Library of Congress and sensed that his Commanding General may be right. Although he did not accept Scott’s proposal in every detail, questioned his timeline, and felt he had to order a major attack on Richmond to keep public support, from that point on despite the public ridicule and outcry the President conducted the war broadly on Scott’s plan.

The plan called for:   

1. Blockade ports in the Atlantic and Gulf to reduce foreign supplies and cotton and tobacco exports from Confederate ports.

2. Blockade the Mississippi River to reduce grain and meat shipments from the western to eastern Confederacy and foreign supplies through neutral Mexico. 

3. Control the Tennessee River Valley and a march through Georgia to prevent cooperation among the eastern Confederate states. 

4. Demonstrations against Confederate capital to keep the main Rebel Army pinned down and on the defensive with a campaign by Army troops with Navy support along the James River. 

And that is pretty much exactly how the war was won by the Union.  

Commanding General of the Army Winfield Scott presents his plan to Abraham Lincoln and his Cabinet. 

The Navy successfully blockaded most Confederate ports and captured key ports like Pensacola, Mobile, and New Orleans.  Western troops, experiencing much greater success than the ponderous Army of the Potomac in the East, secured the length of the Mississippi with the capture of Vicksburg on July 4, 1863 (coincidently the also the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg) splitting the Confederacy in two.  Another Yankee Army drove down the Tennessee River protecting the loyal border state of Kentucky, splitting divided Tennessee, and setting up Sherman’s campaign through the railroad and industrial heart of the South in northern Alabama and Georgia, including the capture of Atlanta, which cut off the lower South.  

Campaigns in Virginia and along the James, under incompetent leadership were long, bloody, and inconclusive until the end, but without the logistical support of the rest of the nation, Lee’s legendary Army of Northern Virginia was doomed.  Just about the way Scott foresaw.  

In 1861 Scott was winding down a 47-year Army career serving 14 presidents from Jefferson to Lincoln.   He served in the War of 1812, the Seminole Wars, Black Hawk War, and Mexican War.  He was the Commanding General of the Army for twenty years, longer than anyone before or since and was the first officer since George Washington to carry the rank of Lt. General.  No other officer in American history served with such distinction at every rank—militia enlisted man, artillery captain, infantry regimental commander, leader of a victorious army in the field, and Commanding General.  He has been called the greatest American soldier ever.

General Scott in full regalia at the beginning of the Civil War.

Yet he also cut something of a ridiculous figure.  His once powerful 6-foot 3-inch frame frame ballooned to over 300 pounds.  Notoriously vain, he swathed that mass in outrageously gaudy uniforms with gigantic epaulets, extravagant gold braid and decoration, every medal he was ever awarded, topped off with a great Napoleonic Era plumed hat.  Ailing from both gout and narcolepsy—uncontrollably lapsing into sleep—he knew that he would not be able to take command of his troops in the field. 

Instead, he offered field command to fellow Virginian Col. Robert E. Lee, universally regarded as the ablest officer in the service.  Unfortunately, unlike Scott, who unhesitatingly placed his loyalty to his nation over that of his native state, Lee chose Virginia and the Confederacy.  

Scott had to entrust the command of the rapidly swelling Volunteer army to the untried hands of Brigadier Gen. Irvin McDowell.  Scott despaired of both McDowell and the ill trained, short term enlisted Volunteers.  During his whole career he advocated for a highly trained professional army with militias and volunteers called to service and thoroughly trained before introduction to combat.  

Instead of ending his career abruptly, young artillery Captain Winfield Scott's clash with the Army's Commanding General James Wilkinson in 1808 enhanced his reputation when Wilkinson was exposed as a Spanish agent and treasonous plotter.

In 1808, as a young Virginia lawyer and a corporal in the militia cavalry, he secured an appointment as a Captain of Artillery in the tiny Regular Army.  He made his mark early by crossing his superior, Commanding General James Wilkinson, a corrupt scoundrel and innervate plotter.  Wilkinson had him court-martialed for insubordination and suspended for a year.  After Wilkinson was exposed as Spanish secret agent—just one of his many intrigues that included plotting with Aaron Burr to set up an independent inland republic—Scott was able to resume his duties with his reputation enhanced.  

In the War of 1812, he made his mark as a commander and a hero.  Captured in the Battle of Queenston Heights in 1812 when the New York Militia refused to cross into Canada in support of his Regulars, Scott was paroled and went to Washington to appeal to raise regiments of regular troops. 

The following year as a full colonel he planned and led the amphibious assault on Ft. George which required a coordinated crossing of the Niagara River and a landing from Lake Ontario, which was considered the most brilliant American maneuver of the war.  

In 1814 as a brevet Brigadier General Scott commanded the American First Brigade in the Niagara campaign.  He trained and drilled his Regulars to a fine edge for months.  But unable to secure regulation blue cloth for their uniforms, outfitted them sharply in gray with tall shako caps.  When the British saw them marching in disciplined ranks into battle, a horrified officer exclaimed, “That’s not the Terrytown militia.  Those are by God Regulars!”  

American Regular Army troops trained by Col. Winfield Scott proved that they were the match of British veterans at the battles of Chippewa and Lundy's Lane in the American attempt to invade Canada during the War of 1812, but Scott was grievously wounded in action.

Those regulars soundly whipped veteran British troops at in the Battle of Chippewa and then held the battlefield at fiercely fought Lundy’s Lane, where Scott and overall American commander Major General Jacob Brown were both severely injured.  

Although the invasion of Canada was stalled, Scott was hailed as a hero for showing that American troops could beat British professionals in a stand-up battle.  The battles were commemorated at the U. S. Military Academy at West Point, where the Corps of Cadets still wears grey uniforms and shakos.  And the Confederate Army, dominated by West Pointers would, ironically adopt a gray uniform.  

In the years after the war, Scott turned to the routine occupation of a Regular Army Officers—Indian wars.  Scott was assigned command of 1000 Regulars and Volunteers from the East to relieve expiring volunteers units in the Black Hawk War of 1832.  Unfortunately, the men brought the cholera with them, not only rendering them unfit for service, but unleashing a deadly epidemic in the West.  Although Scott never got to the battlefield, he arrived on the scene to play a critical role in negotiating Black Hawk’s surrender and drafting a peace treaty.  

Three years later he was commanding a large column fruitlessly chasing hostiles in the Florida swamps during the Second Seminole War.  

No sooner was that bit of business concluded than President Andrew Jackson called on Scott to be the Federal brawn behind the Force Act, meant to compel South Carolina to honor the Tariff of Abominations in the face of Nullification threats.  Sent with reinforcements to the garrison at Ft. Sumner at Charleston, South Carolina, Scott had to juggle the bellicose desire of the President to “Hang the traitors,” and Joel R. Poinsette’s delicate task of rallying South Carolina Unionists while a new tariff acceptable to the state was moved through Congress.  

He got high marks for both his strong military resolution and for local diplomacy.  When the city caught fire, he dispatched troops from the garrison to help quell the blaze—and improved relations with the locals. 

With the crisis passed Jackson’s successor President Martin Van Buren turned to Scott to enforce the Cherokee Removal from the Eastern states.  Scott disapproved of the policy but did a soldier’s duty.  He considered it the low point of his career.  He was able to negotiate the voluntary removal of a large number under the leadership of Chief John Ross and managed to round up other bands with a minimum of bloodshed.  He tried, as far as possible, to make conditions on the march tolerable, ordering rides, assistance, and extra rations for children, the elderly, and infirm.  Where his reliable Regulars were in charge, things went relatively smoothly.

But many bands were escorted by undisciplined volunteers who abused, harassed, and stole from their charges without mercy.  Scott meant to personally accompany the first body of evacuees on the march west from Athens, Georgia but was recalled to Washington for a delicate diplomatic mission upon reaching Nashville.  

Scott was sent to the Maine/Canada border to negotiate a peace in the bloodless Aroostook War which threatened to erupt into another shooting war with the British.  For his success and service, he was promoted to Major General, the highest rank active in the Army.  

Scott repeated as a diplomat when he negotiated a solution to another border crisis with Britain, this one over St. John Island in the Pacific Northwest in 1859. 

                                

                                            Major General Winfield Scott at Vera Cruz in the Mexican War.

But first there was the Mexican War.  President James Knox Polk forced the war on Mexico by moving troops into disputed land between the Nueces and Rio Grande Rivers. This army, made up mostly of volunteers under the command of Scott’s service rival Zachary Taylor scored victories in heavy fighting at Monterey and Buena Vista but was hundreds of miles north of the capital city, separated by daunting desert.  

Scott conceived of a second attack by a sea landing at the port of Veracruz and driving quickly to Mexico City.  He executed the first major amphibious assault in American history when he successfully landed 12,000 Regular Army, Marines, and well-trained Volunteers and all their artillery and baggage outside the fortified city.  

In coordination with the Naval Squadron under the command of Commodore Mathew Perry, he laid siege to the fortified city, which was reduced by Army artillery and naval gunfire and surrendered after 12 days.  With the port open to keep his supply line clear, Scott began his march west, roughly following the route of Cortez.  Yellow Fever struck the Americans and Scott was only able to move with 8,500 healthy troops, among them many future Civil War generals including Lee, U.S. Grant, George Meade, and Thomas (Stonewall) Jackson.  

Mexican President Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna moved from the Mexico City at the head of 12,000 well-armed and trained troops.  He entrenched across the road at Cerro Gordo, roughly halfway to the city.  Instead of a frontal assault, Scott sent artillery into the rugged mountains and enfiladed the Mexicans in deadly fire and flanked the dug-in Mexicans, who were routed with heavy casualties.  

Several other sharp engagements marked the march to the capital, culminating in the attack on the Mexican Military Academy at the Castle of Chapultepec.  When that fell, Scott negotiated a peaceful entry to the city. 

The Duke of Wellington upon studying Scott’s campaign declared him to be “the greatest living general.”  The offensive is still studied and much of later Army combat doctrine was drawn from the experience.  

The President appointed Scott the Military Governor of Mexico City, where he drew praise for enforcing bans on looting and molestation of citizens.  He threaded the thorny issue of what to do with the captured San Patricios—Irish deserters from the U.S. Army who took up the Mexican cause.  He was appalled when a court martial sentenced 72 of them to hang.  The former lawyer scoured his law books to find excuses to vacate the sentences of as many as possible.  He objected to the death penalty in 22 of the cases and later pardoned or commuted the sentences of 15 more.  

With Scott still on administrative duty in Mexico City, his rival Taylor arrived back in the States and won the Presidency on the Whig ticket.  Scott was sure he would have been a better man for the job.  Taylor died leaving Millard Fillmore to complete his term.  

Shattered over slavery, the Whigs took 54 ballots to nominate Winfield Scott as their candidate in 1852.  He was trounced by the handsome non-entity Democrat Franklin Pierce, a subordinate Volunteer general in the Mexican War.  Despite the loss, he served the new President loyally as Commanding General of the Army.

When the Democrats in 1852 nominated handsome, dashing Franklin Pierce, one of Scott’s less distinguished subordinate Volunteer generals in Mexico, the Whig convention stalemated before finally dumping Fillmore and nominating Scott on the fifty-fourth ballot.  

The party was split on slavery, particularly the issue of enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act.  The Party platform endorsed enforcement over Scott’s objection leading to loss of support of the Whig ticket in New England, and disillusion with the candidate among pro-slavery Southerners who jumped en-mass to the Democrats.  Despite his personal popularity Scott carried only four states.  It was also the last hurrah of the shattered Whigs as a national party.  

Scott, his vanity bruised, none-the-less went back to work as Commanding General.  

It is fortunate for Lincoln and the Union that he stayed as long as he did.  But after McDowell’s raw and ill trained volunteer army was routed at First Bull Run, Lincoln had to turn to the ambitious Democrat George McClellan as his field commander.  McClellan, popular with the troops and with the press, was openly insubordinate to the Commanding General and plotted to replace him.  Seeing the writing on the wall and in ill health, Scott finally retired in November.  McClellan got his job while retaining field command.  

In the classic but wildly inaccurate Warner Bros. Custer bio-pic They Died with their Boots On Sydney Greenstreet portrayed Winfield Scott still in command deep into the Civil War, seen here listening to an appeal from Olivia de Haviland as loyal Libby Custer.

McClellan would be just as insubordinate to the President as he was to Scott and despite assembling a massive, well trained, and well-appointed Army proved too timid.  Lincoln replaced him as Commanding General with General Henry “Old Brains” Halleck, a plodding administrator who did not get in the way of the field commanders like Grant and Sherman who could actually win battles.

Winfield Scott, Old Fuss and Feathers, as he was known by his men, died at West Point in 1866.