1920 - Political Events

Political Events

U.S. government agents make raids in 33 cities beginning January 2, rounding up thousands of persons suspected of "subversive" activities (see 1919). They have acted on orders from Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, who claims that there is a Bolshevik "conspiracy" to overthrow the government, and many are detained for long periods of time without being charged, provoking widespread criticism from civil libertarians who include New Jersey-born assistant secretary of labor Louis F. (Freeland) Post, now 69, who will face impeachment proceedings next year for stopping Palmer from deporting thousands of "radical" aliens and will shame his inquisitors. Palmer will succeed in deporting only about 550 people; opposition from labor union unions and liberals has probably cost him the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

Russia's civil war continues as the Bolsheviks struggle to consolidate control of the country in the face of opposition from the Poles and Letts, who capture Dvinsk January 5. The White Russian admiral Aleksandr Kolchak is defeated at Krasnoyarsk, relinquishes his command to Gen. Anton I. Denikin, seeks Allied protection, but is is turned over by the Czechs to Bolshevik authorities at Irkutsk, subjected to intensive interrogation, and then executed by a Red Army firing squad February 2 at age 45. His body is thrown into the Angara River. the Bolsheviks take Odessa February 8, but the counter-revolutionary Whites carry on under the leadership of Lithuanian-born general Baron Petr Nikolaievich Wrangel, 41.

Hungarians reject the communist rule of Béla Kun (see 1919). Admiral Horthy (Miklós de Nagybánya Horthy), 52, forms a new royalist government March 1, Rosika Schwimmer finds her life endangered under Hungary's new dictatorship, and she has herself smuggled onto a boat that carries her down the Danube (see 1919). She emigrates to America, where she is regarded as a Bolshevik spy (see 1926).

Adolf Hitler persuades the German Workers' Party (GWP) to change its name in February to National Socialist German Workers' Party (Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiter-Partei) and it will become known as the Nazi Party (see 1919). Using money obtained by Ernst Roehm to promote itself, the party holds a rally February 24, attracts more than 2,000 people, and announces a 25-point program calling for the rejection of the Versailles Treaty, the reunification of all German people, and denial of rights to "aliens" and "foreigners"; the party is not socialist and does not represent the workers but it uses anti-Semitic appeals to capitalize on social unrest, promising full employment, an end to labor problems, and recovery of lost territory (see Hitler, 1923).

Berlin is seized March 13 in a right-wing Putsch aimed at restoring the monarchy. New York-born journalist Wolfgang Kapp, 51, receives support in his attempted coup d'état from irregular troops under Gen. von Luttwitz, 60 (see 1919). Back from fighting in the Baltic provinces to destroy "Bolshevik republicanism," the disbanded troops are led by the Erhardt Brigade wearing helmets painted with swastikas. The legitimate government escapes to the provinces, Kapp is made chancellor and orders a general strike. He receives support from Gen. Ludendorff (who encourages the myth that Germany was undefeated in the field [unbesiegt im Felde] and would have prevailed in 1918 had she not been "stabbed in the back" by civilian defeatists), but although politician Gustav Stresemann does not oppose Kapp's Putsch the new regime fails to gain foreign recognition, the army remains generally uncommitted, a general strike hampers Kapp, the security police of Defense Minister Gustav Noske employ brutal tactics to oppose him, he soon finds that he has no authority, and he flees the city March 17. Noske resigns his position and will serve as governor of Hanover until 1933. The Reichstag moves from Weimar back to Berlin but the government will continue to be called the "Weimar Republic" (see 1921; Hitler, 1923).

Novorossiisk on the Black Sea falls to the Red Army March 28 and the White Russian Army of Gen. Denikin collapses (Denikin escapes to Constantinople). Polish troops under Marshal Jozef Pilsudski overrun the Ukraine in late April, take Kiev May 7, but are driven out June 11 despite support from the Ukrainians.

Five men kill a factory guard and paymaster April 15 at South Braintree, Massachusetts, and escape in a stolen motorcar with a steel box containing a payroll of $15,776.51. Factory worker Nicola Sacco, 20, and fish peddler Bartolomeo Vanzetti, 32, are picked up May 5 in a car containing propaganda leaflets that attack the U.S. government and all other governments, both are arrested for the April 15 murder and robbery, and Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer prosecutes the Italian-born anarchists as "Reds" (see 1927).

President Wilson rules May 5 that the Communist Labor Party of America is outside the scope of U.S. deportation laws.

Romania's Queen Marie sees her diplomatic efforts of last year rewarded in the Treaty of Trianon signed June 4 and other peace treaties by whose terms Greater Romania (Romania Mare) becomes a vast country of 122,282 square miles (see 1919). Hungary loses nearly three-fourths of her territory and two-thirds of her population in the Treaty of Trianon, signed by Admiral Nikolaus Horthy, who will serve as regent until 1944. Western Hungary is ceded to Austria, Slovakia to Czechoslovakia, Croatia-Slavonia to Yugoslavia, the Bánat of Temesvár in part to Yugoslavia and in part to Romania, which also receives Transylvania and part of the Hungarian plain.

A new federal republic of Austria succeeds the Austro-Hungarian Empire (see 1919); the constitution adopted by the constituent assembly October 1 abolishes the State Council and establishes a bicameral assembly (Bundesversammlung) whose upper house (Bundesrat) is to be elected in at least rough proportion to the population of each state and is to exercise only a suspensive veto, not an absolute veto; the lower house (Nationalrat) is to be elected by universal suffrage on a basis of proportional representation; the Bundesrat is to elect the president for a 4-year term, the Nationalrat) to elect the chancellor who heads the government. A plebiscite held October 10 along the Yugoslavian border shows that 59 percent of the population prefers Austrian citizenship to Yugoslav. Liberal economist Michael (Arthur Josef Jakob) Hainisch, 62, is elected president in December and will serve until 1928.

Former British sea lord John A. "Jacky" Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher of Kilverstone, dies at London July 10 at age 79, having gained a popular reputation second only to that of Lord Nelson more than a century ago. Scorned by those who knew him as an abusive philanderer who appropriated other men's ideas as his own, he was more foresighted than his contemporaries in the Royal Navy, embracing new technology (oil-fueled engines, submarines, torpedoes, radio, naval aviation) at a time when the others yearned for the old days of sail; the former French empress Eugénie dies at Madrid's Palacio Liria July 11 at age 94.

The Red Army takes Pinsk July 27 and crosses into Poland, but Polish forces supported by Brussels-born French general Maxime Weygand, 53, defeat the Bolsheviks August 14 to 16 and force them to give up their Polish conquests.

Finnish diplomat Juho Kusti Paasikivi, 49, warns his countrymen against trying to take advantage of Russia's present weakness and heads a delegation that signs a peace treaty with Russia October 14 at Tartu, Estonia.

Russia's Polish War ends October 12 in a peace treaty signed at Tartu, freeing the Red Army to push back the White Russian forces of Baron Petr N. Wrangel, who has taken over much of southern Russia. Gen. Mikhail Vasilyevich Frunze, 35, forces Wrangel back to the Crimea November 1; having taken command of the eastern front last year to oppose Admiral Kolchak, Frunze routs the army of Wrangel, who loses Sevastopol November 14 and has to evacuate his troops to Constantinople, ending the Russian counterrevolution.

The new Bolshevik government recognizes the Baltic states Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania created during the 1917 revolution as independent nations after unsuccessful efforts to make them part of the new union of socialist republics (see 1940; USSR, 1923).

France's president Paul Deschanel resigns for reasons of health September 15, and Prime Minister Alexandre Millerand assumes the presidency. Voters have chosen Deschanel in the January 17 presidential election, rejecting Georges Clemenceau because they felt the Treaty of Versailles to be too lenient, but Deschanel is a manic-depressive who has wandered about the countryside in his pajamas after falling out of a railroad sleeping car, left an outdoor political gathering to embrace a tree, and walked fully clothed into a lake; former prime minister Joseph Caillaux has drawn a 3-year prison sentence April 23 for dealing with the enemy (see 1924).

British reinforcements arrive in Ireland May 15 to support His Majesty's forces against attacks by Sinn Fein political militants who continue resistance to British regulars and to the new "Black and Tans"—Royal Irish Constabulary recruits whose khaki tunics and trousers and dark green caps are almost black (see 1919). Nicknamed after a familiar breed of Irish hound, the Black and Tans have been helping the British suppress Irish nationalists since March and take reprisals for nationalist acts of terrorism (see 1919). They arrest Countess Markievicz September 26 and hold her in Mountjoy Jail. Two agitators for Irish independence die in an English prison after fasting for 75 days in a protest demonstration (see Gandhi, 1914): Cork Lord Mayor Terence James MacSwiney, 41, collapses on the 15th day, physicians are unable to save him, and his death in October produces widespread rioting. The rebels shoot 14 British spies November 21, the Black and Tans retaliate that afternoon by firing at random during a football match at Croke Park, killing 12 women and men (including one of the players) and wounding 60. The countess is court-martialed December 2 and 3 on charges that she organized the Fianna in 1909. The Government of Ireland Act passed by Parliament December 23 gives Northern Ireland and Southern Ireland the right to elect separate parliaments of their own with each to retain representatives in the British Parliament at London, and Countess Markievicz awaits her sentence at year's end (see 1921).

Constantinople-born field marshal Fevzi Cakmak, 44, wins appointment as minister of war in the sultan's government but resigns to join Mustafa Kamal and help him resist Allied occupation of Anatolia. Appointed chief of the Turkish general staff in 1918 after commanding Ottoman troops in the Dardanelles, the Caucasus, and Syria, Cakmak becomes prime minister of the Grand National Assembly at Ankara and will be promoted to full general in April of next year. Greek forces advance against Turkish nationalist forces June 22 with British encouragement, defeat the Turks June 24 at Alashehr, take Bursa July 9, and accept the surrender of Adrianople July 25. Greece's king Alexander dies of blood poisoning at the Tatoi Palace outside Athens October 25 at age 27 after a 3-year reign (he has been bitten by a pet monkey). His father, Constantine, resumes after a 3-year hiatus the reign that he began in 1913 and continues hostilities against Turkey (see 1922).

The Treaty of Sèvres signed August 10 by the feeble Ottoman sultan Mehmet VI obliges Constantinople to renounce all claims to non-Turkish territory. The sultan agreed last year to elections, nationalists won a majority in the voting held late in the year, but the sultan has dissolved the parliament again April 11, and the nationalists have set up a provisional government at Angora (Ankara). The treaty recognizes the independent kingdom of Hejaz, provides for a Kurdish homeland, makes Syria a French mandate and Mesopotamia and Palestine British mandates, gives Rhodes and the Dodecanese islands to Italy, eastern Thrace, Smyrna, the other Aegean islands, Imbros, and Tendedos to Greece, but Turkish nationalists find the terms unacceptable (see Treaty of Ankara, 1921; Treaty of Lausanne, 1923).

The Red Army attacks Azerbaijan the night of April 26. The 60,000-man Azerbaijani Army is preoccupied with fighting Armenian forces and cannot defend the country's northern border; the Bolsheviks march into Baku April 28 and order the government to give up power (see 1919). The Azerbaijani Parliament complies to avoid bloodshed, and the short-lived republic's leader Mammad Emin Rasulzade emigrates to Finland. A Dashnak terrorist assassinates the minister of internal affairs Beybut khan Javanszhirov July 19 at Istanbul, another Dashnak terrorist assaassinates the minister of foreign affairs Fatali-khan Khoyski at Tbilisi in September; other leaders will soon either emigrate or be killed (see 1922).

Armenia's government suppresses Bolshevik uprisings in May, but Turkish forces attack Armenia September 23 without a declaration of war (see 1918); a Bolshevik diplomat arrives at Erivan October 13 and proposes that the Armenians consider the Treaty of Sèvres non-binding, allow the Red Army free passage through their country, and permit Moscow to negotiate Armenia's borders. Erivan rejects all three proposals, Armenian troops destroy a Turkish army in late October, but Armenian communists take over the government in late November and Armenia is declared a Soviet republic December 2 (see 1921). A treaty signed at Alexandrapole December 2 ends hostilities between Erivan and Constantinople.

The League of Nations establishes a British mandate over Iraq April 24 and Britain accepts May 5, taking over a country with a population of about 3 million. British and French representatives have met at San Remo April 24, they have implemented the Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 by letting Britain have Iraq and Palestine, with France taking Syria and Lebanon; news of the arrangement is made public April 24 and the Arabs view Britain's takeover as a duplicitous betrayal (see 1919; Arab annals will refer to 1920)as "Am al-Nakha," "Year of Catastrophe". Muslim clerics at Baghdad mosques begin denouncing British rule. Gertrude Lothian Bell writes to her father from Baghdad in early June about "violent agitation" against British rule, saying that the extremists "have adopted a line difficult in itself to combat, the union of the Shi'ah and Sunni, the unity of Islam. And they are running it for all it's worth . . . There's a lot of semi-religious semi-political preaching . . . and the underlying thought is out with the infidel. My belief is that the weightier people are against it—I know some of them are bitterly disgusted—but it's very difficult to stand out against the Islamic cry and the longer it goes on the more difficult it gets." Demonstrations spread to Karbala, where the Shiite ayatollah Muhammad Taqi al-Shirazi denounces the British, and a great insurrection begins in July as more than 100,000 armed tribesmen attack occupation forces. They besiege some garrisons for weeks, and the fledgling Royal Air Force (RAF) counters the uprising with ruthless bombing and strafing. Secretary for War and Air Winston Churchill has written February 19 to Sir Hugh Trenchard to ask if the pioneer of air warfare would take control of Iraq, suggesting that this would entail "the provision of some kind of asphyxiating bombs calculated to cause disablement of some kind but not death . . . for use in preliminary operations against turbulent tribes." As colonial secretary Churchill writes August 31, "It is an extraordinary thing that the British civil administration should have succeeded in such a short time in alienating the whole country to such an extent that the Arabs have laid aside the blood feuds they have nursed for centuries and that the Sunni and Shi tribes are working together." Sir Percy (Zachariah) Cox, 57, is named high commissioner October 1. He takes office at Baghdad, and British troops restore order later in October, having burned villages and killed about 4,000 Arabs (British casualties number 450 dead, more than 1,450 wounded). They leave Iraq's Sunni religious minority with power over the Shiite majority (see 1921).

Egyptian nationalist Sa'd Zaghlul holds meetings at London during the summer with the British diplomat Alfred Milner, 1st Viscount Milner (see 1919). Milner agrees unofficially to the terms that Sir Reginald Wingate rejected in 1918, but Zaghlul fears that an agreement with the British will undermine his position at home so he returns to Egypt without having endorsed any agreement (see 1921).

Former British home secretary Herbert (Louis) Samuel, 49, is named first high commissioner for Palestine. One of the first Jews to serve in the cabinet, he will administer the mandated territory until 1925, working to improve its economy and maintain harmony between Jews and Arabs despite occasional turmoil.

Paris proclaims the creation of Lebanon September 1 with its capital at Beirut.

Mohandas K. Gandhi in India launches his first nationwide satyagraha ("devotion to truth") campaign August 1 as a revolutionary response to last year's Jallianwala Bagh massacre at Amritsar. Now 50, Gandhi announces a program of non-cooperation at a special session of the Indian National Congress at Calcutta and attracts supporters who took offense at Annie Wood Besant's position and encourages their hopes for an end to rule by the British raj (see 1922).

A coalition of rival Chinese warlords defeats the army of warlord Duan Qirui (Tuan Ch'i-jui) in July and forces him to retire from politics (see 1919; but see also 1924).

Mexican president Venustiano Carranza tries to engineer the election of Ignacio Bonillas as his successor, but insurgent general Alvaro Obregón, 39, leads an armed rebellion with support from Generals Adolfo de la Huerta and Plutarco Elías Calles. Carranza flees the capital and heads for Veracruz, carrying government records and treasure, his train comes under attack, and although he escapes capture and flees into the mountains with some followers he is betrayed and killed at Tlaxcalantongo May 21 at age 60 by an assassin in the employ of the insurgents. Obregón is elected president August 31 following the surrender of Pancho Villa, who receives a handsome estate where he will live until his assassination in 1923.

Canada's Prime Minister Borden resigns in July after 9 years in office and the Union Party elects former minister of the interior Arthur Meighen, 46, prime minister. The youngest man to have held that position, he will succeed in blocking a renewal of the Anglo-Japanese alliance and advocate a protective tariff system to resist U.S. economic power (see 1921).

The League of Women Voters is founded by suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt to give impartial, in-depth information on candidates, platforms, and ballot issues. An outgrowth of the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) that Catt reorganized between 1905 and 1915 as she developed the state-by-state strategy to build momentum for suffrage, the non-partisan League aims to educate newly-enfranchised women, study issues at all levels of government, and take positions on social issues.

"America's present need is not heroics but healing; not nostrums but normalcy," says presidential hopeful Warren Gamaliel Harding, 54, of Ohio in a speech at Boston May 10. Selected in a smoke-filled suite (Rooms 408-409-419) of Chicago's Blackstone Hotel, the handsome, genial, but colorless U.S. senator is nominated by the Republicans and opposed by Ohio's Democratic governor James M. Cox, 50, a newspaper publisher who purchased the Dayton Daily News in 1898 to begin a media empire. Running with former assistant secretary of the navy Franklin D. Roosevelt, Cox campaigns on a platform favoring U.S. membership in the League of Nations but wins only 34 percent of the popular vote and receives only 127 electoral votes to Harding's 404. Socialist Eugene V. Debs is in federal prison at Atlanta but runs for a fifth time and wins 1 million votes. President-elect Harding's harsh-voiced wife Florence (née Kling) (he calls her the Duchess) is 5 to 8 years his senior; she was deserted by her first husband.

The League of Nations meets for the first time November 15 in its new headquarters at Geneva, but its membership does not include Russia, the United States, or nations defeated in the Great War. The Senate has finally rejected U.S. membership March 19 in a victory for opponents led by Henry Cabot Lodge (R. Mass.) (see 1919).