Tag: Germany

Beyond the Box Score

Beyond the Box Score

Chris Carman

October 15th, 1923. John McGraw’s New York Giants versus Miller Huggins New York Yankees in game six of the World Series. At the beginning of the Yankees season, The House That Ruth Built was opened to the public in April of that year. Babe Ruth opened the stadium and set the tone for that season by hitting three home runs along with eight walks. That tone stayed up until the day at the Polo Grounds stadium in Upper Manhattan where McGraw’s dream of three straight championships in a row was crushed. Allowing the New York Yankees to win their very first World Series championship.

The Yankees winning the World Series was the very first article on the front page of this New York Times article which claims that this game six was very intense and had many back-and-forth moments between the Giants and the Yankees throughout. Both teams also have at least one key player that had a large impact on the game, for the Yankees, Babe Ruth of course, and for the Giants, it was their pitcher Art Nehf. As the author of this article calls him, “the last hope of the old guard,”[1] had only allowed two hits in the first seven frames and allowed one home run from Ruth. Nehf had been too powerful against the Yankee hitters with his great speed and side-breaking curve made it from the third inning to the eighth the Yankees went hitless. While also being three runs behind and the Yanks getting no love from the crowd in the Giant’s home stadium, the situation was looking grim for Huggins and his team.

When the eighth inning hit, things still seemed to be looking good for Nehf, but during the second pitch of the inning is when the tide started to turn. The ball flew close to Walter Schang’s ear, he tried to move and ended up hitting the ball to third base for a single. After this hit, two more Yankee players hit and were able to get Schang home to only put them two behind the Giants. According to the article, “Nehf’s face turned as white as a sheet,”2 something happened to him after the few hits he gave away and he couldn’t continue. Bill Ryan, the backup pitcher, came in to try and salvage what we could from the wreckage that Nehf left. Ryan started pretty well and almost made it out of the inning until Bob Meusel hit the ball slightly to the right of Ryan into center field. Three runs were scored on that hit, five for the inning making the World Series almost over at that point.

With that eighth-inning rally, the Yankees were able to put the game away and win their very first World Series Championship. 

The next big article that is on the front page of this New York Times article is that hungry mobs raid Berlin bakeries. At this time in 1923, five years ago, Germany had just lost World War One and was facing some pretty terrible consequences from the Allied powers. One of these consequences was that Germany was not doing a good job paying their war reparations to the French and therefore decided to occupy the Ruhr district. This area was known for having many raw materials that the French would take for themselves as payment for German war debts. In these articles in the New York Times, it is fascinating to see the differences in rioting in German cities like Berlin and Frankfurt versus French-occupied ones such as Neustadt and Düsseldorf.  The first half of this article talks about Berlin and Frankfurt which were two cities that were still controlled by the German government but were wrecked by inflation of bread prices. This was because the government decided to print more money to have enough for their war debts. The problem with printing more money is that it creates more physical currency, but decreases its value. After the government did this, the value of the German mark went to almost no value, and prices of bread skyrocketed. This article says that “5000 demonstrators, mostly unemployed men, reinforced by women with market baskets… marching to the Rathaus and making demands upon the authorities… The police reserves were called and drove demonstrators away.”[2] Inflation wrecked the economy so badly that the German people were unable to afford for their families and protested in the capital city to show the disarray of the German state. 

The second half of the article talks about the cities of Neustadt and Düsseldorf, two cities that were occupying the territory as stipulation states in the Treaty of Versailles. In Neustadt, crowds of unemployed people were attempting to raid a post office that was reported to be holding currency inside of it. French authorities were sent out to break up the crowd. In Düsseldorf, communists and nationalists were working together to foment trouble in the Ruhr district. In the article, the author states one key difference between the riots in this city compared to Berlin. “According to a statement made this morning the movement is political rather than economic. It was aimed against Chancellor Stresemann (German foreign minister) on the one hand and against the French on the other.”4 These people were not rioting because they didn’t have enough food, these people hated the fact that they were being ruled by a foreign power. I found this section of the newspaper very interesting because knowing what happened later on with Hitler coming to power, the German people despised the Treaty of Versailles and were willing to shift political extremes to get rid of it.

There are sections in this article commenting on the rising poor conditions of the German government during the 1920s. This article is from the perspective of Reed Smoot, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee. Called at the White House to tell the president about the conclusions reached after his recent trip to Europe. 

            After his trip, the senator had some definite opinions on the Americans revisiting the appointment of the Hughes proposal to determine the ability of Germany to pay their reparations from the war. This plan was an idea that the International Commission should fix the amount of money that the Germans would have to pay back. Smoot wanted all countries in the commission to agree on this plan and was expecting the French to back down on their reparation demands. To be fair, most of World War I was fought on French territory in the northern regions of the country needing these reparations fo rebuilding. 

            The Senator knows that France will most likely not agree with this arrangement but is scared about the future of Europe. He said to the president, “Unless something was done quickly, there was danger of an outbreak which might involve all of Europe.”[3] Too bad that Smoot was right about this and nothing was done with this issue. It is the very reason that the Allies did not relax reparations and kept demanding from a destroyed Germany that Hitler was able to become Chancellor a decade later.

The next big headline of this New York Times newspaper article comes to the news in the United States. This headline was about a conference of drys calling for President Calvin Coolidge to take action against the people who were breaking rules on the prohibition. The counsel of the drys or people who were against liquor consumption saw the amount of people who were smuggling illegal booze by sea and wanted them to stop doing this. They wanted the president and the American people to uphold the Eighteenth Amendment.              Smuggling liquor by sea was one of many alternatives that citizens were finding to get around Prohibition in the 1920s. Rum Row was the name of a naval liquor market along the East Coast that was just beyond the American maritime limit where transactions of alcohol were made. Bootleggers, or people who engaged in the illegal sale of alcohol, would just have to sail out to this region in a small boat to pick up shipments of liquor to resell back in the States.  The last small section of this article is direct quotes from the president calling for legislators to abide by the laws and punish people who are breaking the laws of the Constitution.

He says, “The State or Federal Constitution should resign his office and give place to one who will neither violate his oath nor betray the confidence of the people.”[4] Some corrupt politicians were becoming bootleggers themselves or were not punishing people who were breaking the law, which is why the president had to make this statement to these legislators. Coolidge ends his statement by saying, “Lawmakers should not be lawbreakers.”7

There is another section farther in the New York Times article that is from the perspective of another Representative traveling to another country to report on the country they are traveling to. In this case, it is Fred A. Britten of Illinois returning from his visit to Russia having changed his mind on the recognition of the Soviet government. Much like Reed Smoots, Britten called upon the president to give his reports and experience after being in the new Soviet Union for some time.

            Unsurprisingly, the representative started his report to the president by saying, “The Soviet regime was a visionary Government whose very foundation is baked on murder, anarchy, Bolshevism and theft.”[5] Knowing when this article was written and being three years past the first Red Scare in the United States, one could only imagine his thoughts on the regime in Russia. Many states in the US around the early 1920s were outlawing advocacy of violence in attempting to secure social changes and most people suspected of being communist or left-wing were jailed. Another thing to mention is that this first Red Scare did not distinguish between Communism, Socialism, Social Democracy, or anarchism and all were deemed as a threat against the nation. 

            Britten mentions that he “traveled unofficially, sought no favors, and tried to see the good side of that tremendous political theory which is now holding 150,000,000 people in subjection.”[6] It is debatable whether he was trying to see the good side of Russia or not. He also talks about the major difference in how religion is treated in Russia. Atheism is what was primarily taught in the Soviet Union because religion was seen as a bourgeois institution whose only goal was to make money off of followers. Britten mentions some signs that he saw, one by the entrance to the Kremlin Palace that read, “Religion is the opium of the State,”[7] and another one that said, “Religion is the  tool of the rich to oppress the poor.”11 Communism is very different from capitalism which is why two different Red Scares happened in the United States to protect itself from an ideology that was very different from its own. 

How can this topic benefit teachers?

            The prompt for this paper was to find a significant baseball box score from the 1900s of our choosing. I selected the Yankees’ first-ever World Series win against the New York Giants, using the Historic New York Times Database. We were then instructed to examine the other articles published in that same newspaper issue. For example, I focused on reports of hunger strikes in Berlin, which were driven by the collapse of the German mark and soaring bread prices after World War I. This was the first major assignment of the class, designed to help us begin developing primary source research and analysis skills, an essential foundation for any history course.

Teachers don’t have to limit this to a baseball history lesson; it can easily be adapted to focus on any major topic in U.S. history from the 1900s and beyond. Students can begin with a key event as the entry point for their primary source research. Then, they can expand their analysis by identifying and writing about other events covered in the same newspaper issue, painting a fuller picture of what was happening in the U.S. during the chosen time period. This strategy not only sharpens students’ analytical skills but also broadens their understanding of how historical events overlap and influence one another, helping them grasp the interconnectedness of social, political, and cultural developments within a given era.

References

“Britten Opposes Soviet Recognition.” New York Times (1923-), Oct 16, 1923: Page 5  https://login.tcnj.idm.oclc.org/login?url=https://www.proquest.com/historical-newspapers /yanks-win-title-6-4-victory-ends-1-063-815-series/docview/103153313/se-2.  

“Conference of Drys Calls on Coolidge For Drastic Action.” New York Times (1923-), Oct 16, 1923: Page 1.

“Hungry Mobs Raid Berlin Bakeries.” New York Times (1923-), Oct 16, 1923: Page 1.

Oversimplified. “Prohibition – OverSimplified.” YouTube video, December 15th, 2020. 

“Smoot and Burton See Peril In Europe.” New York Times (1923-), Oct 16, 1923: Page 3.

“Yanks Win Title; 6-4 Victory Ends $1,063,815 Series.” New York Times (1923-), Oct 16, 1923:  Page 1.

[1] “Yanks Win Title; 6-4 Victory Ends $1,063,815 Series,” New York Times (1923): 1. 2 “Yanks Win Title,” 1.

[2] “Hungry Mobs Raid Berlin Bakeries,” New York Times (1923): 1. 4 “Hungry Mobs Raid,” 1.

[3] “Smoot and Burton See Peril In Europe.” New York Times (1923): 3.

[4] “Conference of Drys Calls on Coolidge For Drastic Action,” New York Times (1923): 1. 7 “Conference of Drys,” 1.

[5] “Britten Opposes Soviet Recognition,” New York Times (1923): 5.

[6] “Britten Opposes Soviet,” 5.

The First World War and New York City

The First World War and New York City


Jaap Harskamp

Reposted with permission from New York Almanack

On April 6, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson declared America’s entrance into the First World War and initiated a nation wide drive to strengthen the armed forces. It was decided that the commemorations of Patriots’ Day on April 19 should coincide with a “Wake up America Day” of
recruitment. Every city hosted its own parties and spectacles.

In New York City, festivities were organized with decorated floats, patriotic banners and a grand vaudeville at Carnegie Hall starring Will Rogers, Ethel Barrymore, and others. James Montgomery Flagg designed the posters announcing the event. Fifth Avenue hosted a parade, whilst Army and Navy planes dropped pamphlets encouraging the crowd to summon the “Spirit of 1776.”

The manifestation started with a parade that re-enacted Paul Revere’s legendary “Midnight Ride” in April 1775 to warn the colonial militia of approaching British forces. At midnight the bells at
Trinity Church rang whilst, dressed as a Continental soldier, a young feminist named Jean Earle Moehle rode on horseback through Manhattan beckoning both men and women to “wake up” to the fight.

Despite America’s initial neutrality, the conflict was a headache for New York’s authorities. After recent mass arrivals, the city was largely populated by first- or second-generation European immigrants.

With their former homelands at war, residents responded by either declaring allegiance to the “motherland” or by identifying with their adopted nation and engaging in debates regarding the morality of global war.

The arguments were taken outdoors. The fighting front may have been far away, but the battle raged on the streets of the city. The war sharpened the focus on issues of American and civic identity.

A City of foreign villages? New York had grown rapidly with different immigrant nationalities living in a network of small communities. By 1900, the metropolis consisted of multiple foreign “villages” with a population that included 300,000 Germans; 275,000 Irish; 155,000 Russians; 145,000 Italians; 117,000 Austro Hungarians; 90,000 British; 30,000 Polish people and many other smaller groupings.

One of the most extensive communities was Little Germany (Klein Deutschland) in the Lower East Side where German banks, businesses, breweries and newspapers flourished. Little Italy (Piccola Italia) on Mulberry Street was likened to an insular Neapolitan village with its own language, customs, and institutions.

By 1900 there were many other ethnic enclaves dotted around the city. Little Syria was centered on Washington and Rector streets. Its name derived from some 95,000 Arabs who had arrived from Ottoman controlled Greater Syria (covering what is now Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan) in the Great Migration between 1880 and the early 1920s. In 1892, the first American-Arabic language newspaper Kawkab America (Planet of America) was printed there.

Throughout the nineteenth century New York served as a financial hub for industrial growth and became the nation’s de facto cultural capital. It created a divided city. While Fifth Avenue and the Central Park district were monopolized by the elite, part of Manhattan’s Lower East Side was stricken by poverty. New York’s political landscape became shaped by migration issues in which the Democratic Party and Tammany Hall dominated municipal government.

The loyalty of immigrants to the Democratic Party was born out of the perception that the city’s wealth was not shared, causing stark levels of inequality. The rule of oligarchs also caused the emergence of anarchist groups. It was against this background of social unrest and militancy that New York City was drawn into the war in Europe.


Divided loyalties

The United States initially decided on neutrality for a number of reasons. It was generally expected that the “distant” war would not last long. Politicians agreed that the fragile status quo between communities with ancestral ties to either the Allied or the Central Powers should not be endangered as the war was bringing conflicting ties and allegiances to the fore.

The German-language New Yorker Staats-Zeitung extolled the virtues of the German Kaiser; the Yiddish socialist Forverts(Forward) explained the murder of Austria’s Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo as a consequence of social repression; and the Gaelic American complained that Britain’s colonial rule forced Ireland into entering the war. Large crowds with divided loyalties gathered
around newspaper offices in Times Square and Herald Square to learn the latest news from the battlefields.

Consulates encouraged patriotic support. Schemes were set up to raise money for war widows and orphans. German-American residents paraded down Fifth Avenue and queued to sign up. City authorities became increasingly concerned that New York’s diverse population could prove to be a tinderbox of a conflict that was ripping Europe apart. Demonstrations of sympathy towards any of the combatants were soon forbidden.

In spite of internal tensions, Woodrow Wilson’s decision not to get involved was shared by many. That consensus changed when both Germany and Britain started targeting enemy supply lines on the high seas. The British North Sea blockade annoyed politicians, but the German move towards “total” submarine warfare became intolerable once American ships were attacked and lives lost at sea. Outrage was expressed after a German U Boat torpedoed the British liner Lusitania off the coast of Ireland on May 7, 1915, killing 1,198 civilians, 128 Americans among them.

Closing ranks

Parades for and against military participation were held around the nation. Woodrow Wilson remained determined not to take sides. Why would a President who was of Ulster-Scottish descent and the son of a Presbyterian minister commit himself to a morally abhorrent conflict that might spill over into the streets of American cities? Why imperil an emerging economy that was heavily dependent on trade with the United Kingdom in particular, closely followed by Germany?

Former President Theodore Roosevelt by contrast advocated expanding the military in anticipation of a widening of hostilities, especially since Wilson’s appeals for peace talks and offers of mediation were ignored.

One effect of growing public anger was unease about New York City’s “American” identity. Addressing an audience at Carnegie Hall in October 1915, Roosevelt stated that “hyphenated
Americanism” was no longer tolerable. His words instigated a period of chauvinistic jingoism, accompanied by a campaign of orchestrated propaganda that permeated the city.

With the formation of the Preparedness Movement in August 1915 and the concurrent rise of the National Security League (NSL: a quasi-paramilitary organization which campaigned for the assertion of “American” values), New York’s streets were closely observed by municipal and national authorities. The call for Americanization had a belligerent undertone intended to ensure law and order amongst a split population.

Americans started to doubt Wilson’s policy of “armed neutrality” and were getting ready for intervention. On May 13, 1916, a Preparedness Parade along Fifth Avenue was attended by an estimated 130,000 marchers who joined ranks behind a banner that proclaimed, “Absolute and
Unqualified Loyalty to our Country.” The manifestation inspired Childe Hassam’s painting “Flags, Fifth Avenue.” An anti-German Francophile, the artist passionately backed the Allied cause.

Isolated incidents intensified the city’s febrile atmosphere. The Black Tom Island Explosion in New York Harbor on July 30, 1916, which destroyed a large ammunition depot, damaging the Statue of Liberty and buildings in downtown Manhattan, heightened the suspicion that German saboteurs were active in the city (although arrests were made, the culprits were never identified).

Americans & traitors

Responding to recent news of the February Revolution in Russia, New York’s 95th Mayor John Purroy Mitchel stated in an address of March 1917 to a gathering of Russian-Americans that the
city’s citizens should be divided in two classes: “Americans and traitors.”

In April 1917, Wilson went before Congress to ask for a declaration of war. He cited Germany’s resumption of submarine warfare, its sabotage, and the revelation of the “Zimmermann Telegram” (an attempt by the German Foreign Office to recruit Mexico to attack the United States) as evidence of the nation’s hostile intent. It was a pivotal moment. For the first time in the nation’s history, America joined a coalition to fight a war not on its own soil or of its own making. The decision transformed life in New York City. All foreign-language publications were monitored; socialist and anarchist newspapers were censored or restricted.

Vigilantes attacked people identified as “pro-German”; schools sacked German teachers; butchers no longer sold Frankfurters; orchestras stopped playing German masterpieces; the German American Bank was re-introduced as the Continental Bank of New York; and countless German-Americans changed their names to demonstrate their loyalty.

Six weeks after formally entering the war, Congress passed the Selective Service Act which authorized the government to impose conscription. Men between the ages of twenty-one and forty
five were required to register for military service. The move was widely resisted. As the spectre of the 1863 Draft Riots haunted politicians, the process in New York (and elsewhere) was enforced by a heavy police presence, backed up by NSL volunteers. Patriotism was tightly policed.

Speaking out against the war meant risking prosecution, while posters whipped up emotions and encouraged subjects to enlist, conserve food, buy liberty bonds and keep on the lookout for foreign spies. The (intimidating) calls for loyalty raised the issue of citizenship, especially amongst African-Americans.

By supporting the government’s call many black leaders hoped to gain full citizenship, but others suspected that the war would lead to more injustice. In response to racist perpetrating the East St
Louis Massacre, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and African-American Churches in Harlem conducted a Silent Parade on July 28, 1917, in which about 10,000 participants marched along Fifth Avenue.

Protesters carried banners and placards that alluded to a draft that demanded African-Americans to fight for freedom and democracy in Europe, whilst they themselves were not only deprived of representation and equal rights, but in danger of being assaulted or lynched.


“Real Americans”


Through conscription, the army grew in a relatively brief period from a constabulary force of some 300,000 troops to an American Expeditionary Force (AEF) of more than four million soldiers. These
forces reflected the population’s ethnic and racial diversity.

The slogan “Americans All!” promoted wartime service as a unifying experience that rendered differences in language, culture and religion irrelevant – but race still mattered. The army-at-war
remained rigidly segregated.

When American forces arrived in Europe, they quickly turned the tide in favor of Britain and France, leading to an Allied victory in November 1918. They had been engaged in six months of fighting at
the cost of 53,000 lives. In addition, nearly 63,000 men died of disease, primarily from influenza (misnamed “the Spanish flu”), and 200,000 veterans returned home wounded.

The number of casualties weighed on Wilson’s conscience. It motivated him to support the creation of an international body based on collective security. Even though joining the League of Nations would require the United States to sacrifice a measure of sovereignty, the President was prepared to pay the price for the sake of peace.

His opponents declared it foolish to relinquish America’s newfound stature as a military superpower. The toxic discussion on what later became known as “America First” has divided opinion ever since.

The marking of the Armistice in November 1918 was a moment that New Yorkers came together to celebrate their collective identity. Whereas in 1914, German-Americans had paraded down Fifth Avenue proclaiming their attachment both to the Fatherland and to the United States, now mobs of cheering citizens kicked effigies of the Kaiser through the city. The war had turned New Yorkers into “real” Americans.

Book Review: A Brief History of the Third Reich: The Rise and Fall of the Nazis, by Martyn Whittock

A Brief History of the Third Reich: The Rise and Fall of the Nazis, by Martyn Whittock.

Reviewed by Thomas Hansen, Ph.D

Martyn Whittock assembles here the accounts of what is what like to be a German and go through all the things that happened before, during, and after World War II. He includes stories from people coming from all walks of life, and he adds his own theories and ideas.

In 22 chapters, Whittock describes the economic, political, and spiritual life in Germany leading to the Nazis seizing power and discusses both German complacency and involvement in contributing to the party’s rise to leading the nation. Whittock talks a great deal about Hitler’s reasons and motivations leading to some of the worst decisions possible.

Hitler had a tendency to make very dramatic and quick decisions without listening to the advice of those who would try to help him, or help Germany, in times of crisis. Hitler tended to stretch resources too thin and to make decisions which caused other greater problems unforeseen.

Without giving away too much content, I will say that this book does include the strength of using so many different persons’ stories to give the reader different perspectives on how the Nazis were actually able to get as far as they did. It is important to continue to read such accounts to try to sort out what makes sense and what does not.

Whittock gives the reader a great deal of information on the concentration camps and on how they were run. He does give us a glimpse into the desperate lives of the Germans who assisted in the murders, as he does regarding all of the persons who helped Hitler come to power.

There was something in it for everyone, it appears, and Whittock attempts to explain how and why the Germans allowed the Nazis to take so much power. He also provides the death tolls and discusses the methods used for murdering the inmates. Whittock provides a full description of the murders and numbers. However, he also uses more contemporary examples of bloodshed such as the Rwanda murders.

Maybe this is done to show that murder on a huge scale is to be expected in the world? Nothing could compare to the Nazis’ slaughter of entire peoples and communities, so that idea is lost on this reader—and on most all readers, I would assume.

The reader can profit from trying to understand what happened in Germany during those say 50 years of time. Teachers can perhaps get a little better understanding of how to begin to explain what was going on in the minds of Germans who watched all of it.

This is important reading because of the different perspectives revealed here.