1932 | Political Events
Political Events
"The United States cannot admit the legality nor does it intend to recognize" the legitimacy of any arrangement with Japan which impairs Chinese sovereignty and threatens the Open Door Policy, Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson announces January 7, but the Stimson Doctrine has no practical effect (see 1931). China's boycott of Japanese goods continues, and Japan retaliates January 28. Troops landed from warships attack Zabei (Chapei), the Chinese district of Shanghai, and planes bomb the district, killing thousands in the first terror bombing of civilians. Japanese publicists suggest that any U.S. attempt to interfere with Japan's "destiny" in Asia would be cause for war.
Manchuria proclaims independence March 9 (see 1931), but a Japanese-controlled puppet government controls the country, which calls itself Manzhouguo (Manchukuo). China's final emperor Pu Yi is called out of private life and appointed provincial dictator (see 1912); now 25, he will be Manzhouguo's first emperor and serve from 1934 to 1945 as the emperor Kang Te.
The assassination of Japan's prime minister Tsuyoshi Inukai at Tokyo May 15 effectively ends party government. Dead at age 77, Inukai has been killed during an attempted coup d'état by reactionary naval officers. The former governor general of Chōsen (Korea), Viscount Makoto Saito, now 73, succeeds Inukai (see Okada, 1934).
Siam's absolute government ends June 24 as European-educated radicals capture the king Phra Pokklao (Prajadhipok, or Rama VII) in a bloodless coup (the Promoters Revolution) and hold him captive briefly until he agrees to a constitution and the establishment of a senate. Instigators of the coup include Major Luang Phibunsongkhram (originally Plaek Khittasangkha), 34, and Pridi Phanomyong, 32 (see 1935).
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is founded September 23 with Abdul-Aziz ibn-Saud ruling from his capital at Riyadh (see 1927). The kingdom's chief source of income is the head tax levied on visitors to Mecca, but pilgrimages to the holy city have been declining since the 1920s (see energy, 1933).
Britain's Prime Minister MacDonald convenes a third Round Table Conference on Indian affairs at Westminster in November (see 1931). He has announced a unilateral British effort to resolve various conflicts among different Indian factions in August. The Congress has taken exception to many of the proposals, notably an offer of separate-electorate seats for the "depressed classes," meaning the lowest caste, or "untouchables." Mohandas K. Gandhi consults with Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, 41, a leader of the caste, and begins a "fast unto death" to protest what he calls a plot to wean more than 50 million "children of God," or Harijans, away from higher-caste Hindus; he urges a new boycott of British goods, and after 6 days of fasting obtains a pact that improves the status of the "untouchables." The British withdraw their offer, and the third Round Table Conference ends with wide-ranging agreements (see Government of India Act, 1935).
The British Union of Fascists is founded by former Labour Party M.P. Sir Oswald Mosley, 36, who last year quit the Party in protest against its defeatist attitude toward unemployment and started a new party based on principles more socialistic than fascistic. Mosley will become a supporter of Italy's Benito Mussolini and Germany's Adolf Hitler and will demand expulsion of Britain's Jews (see 1940; religion, 1936).
Eamon de Valera wins election as president of Ireland in March and suspends Irish land annuity payments.
France's president Paul Doumer is assassinated by a mad Russian émigré May 6 and is succeeded by Sen. Albert Lebrun, 61. Former minister of war André Maginot has died at Paris January 7 at age 54, former premier Aristide Briand at Paris March 7 at age 69. May elections give leftist parties a majority, and Edouard Heriot begins a second ministry, but he resigns in December over refusal by the Chamber of Deputies to support his government's proposal to pay installments on France's war debt to the United States.
Adolf Hitler becomes a German citizen and his National Socialist (Nazi) Party wins 36.8 percent of the vote in what will prove to be Germany's last truly democratic national election for more than 13 years (see 1931). Berlin piano maker's wife Helena Bechstein encouraged the rabble rouser in the 1920s, taught him manners, and introduced him to people who could help him socially, politically, and financially. Manufacturer Gertrud von Seidlitz gave him money and got more for him from her friends in Finland. President Hindenburg asks Franz von Papen, 52, to form a government May 31; von Papen does so but excludes Nazis. Voters in the general election July 31 make the National Socialist (Nazi) Party the biggest in the Reichstag but with no overall majority. Adolf Hitler visits President Hindenburg August 13 and demands that he be made chancellor, Hindenburg refuses (the Nazis, he says, are intolerant, lack discipline, and are prone to violence). Hitler announces August 13 that he will not serve as vice-chancellor under von Papen, wartime flying ace and Nazi leader Hermann (Wilhelm) Goering, 39, is elected president of the Reichstag August 30, and von Papen resigns as chancellor November 17. The Nationalist Socialist Party is bankrupt by December, but von Papen sees that the Nazis are gaining popularity with their vague promises to restore order, eliminate Germany's "internal enemies," and bring economic recovery; he proposes that Hitler be made chancellor and that he himself be vice-chancellor (see 1933).
A statute of Catalonian autonomy is promulgated at Barcelona September 9 with Francesc Macià as head of state (see 1931; 1933).
A Swedish socialist government comes to power September 24 with Per Albin Hansson, 47, as prime minister. He will continue as prime minister until his death in 1946, and the Social Democratic Party will retain power until 1976.
Hungary's reactionary defense minister Gyula Gömbös, 45, becomes prime minister October 1 as right-wing radicals sweep away moderate opposition. The anti-Semitic Gömbös begins a 4-year dictatorship in which he will try to ally Hungary with Germany and Italy but will be blocked by the opposition from achieving his objectives.
Britain's 12-year mandate over Iraq ends in October and the Middle Eastern monarchy enters the League of Nations as an independent state, but Britain retains military bases and exerts a strong political influence (see 1933).
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. resigns from the Supreme Court January 12 at age 90 after nearly 30 years on the Court. President Hoover nominates New York jurist Benjamin N. (Nathan) Cardozo, now 61, to succeed Holmes (who was also 61 when he was appointed), and Cardozo wins unanimous confirmation from the Senate, becoming the second Jewish associate justice.
New York City's playboy mayor James John "Jimmy" Walker, now 51, resigns September 1 during an investigation of corruption by a state legislative commission headed by Judge Samuel Seabury, 59.
"I pledge you, I pledge myself, to a new deal for the American people," says New York's governor Franklin D. Roosevelt as he accepts the Democratic Party nomination for president at Chicago. The first nominee of either party to accept at a convention, he has broken all precedent by flying to Chicago with his wife, Eleanor, and in his acceptance speech he speaks out in defense of the "common man," taking a cue from 1928 presidential candidate Al Smith, who has had more support at the convention than anyone but FDR in a bitterly contested floor fight. Roosevelt has created a "Brain Trust" headed by Ohio-born Columbia University professor Raymond (Charles) Moley, 45, who has suggested the term New Deal (Moley writes many of the governor's campaign speeches, having recruited fellow Columbia professors Adolph A. Berle, 38, and Rexford Guy Tugwell, 41, to join the Brain Trust, which advises the nominee on national issues and includes also Roosevelt's close associate Louis Howe, who has come up with the term Brain Trust). Members soon include also New York labor organizer Rose Schneiderman, now 48; Philadelphia-born foreign correspondent William C. (Christian) Bullitt, 41, who had a hand in preparing the peace treaties at Versailles in 1919; and Richmond, Va.-born Federal Farm Bureau economist Mordecai (Joseph Brill) Ezekiel, 33, a vice president of the American Statistical Society.
Gov. Roosevelt wins election by a landslide, gaining 472 electoral votes and 57 percent of the popular vote versus 59 electoral votes and 40 percent of the popular vote for President Hoover, who carries only six states (Pennsylvania, Delaware, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont). More than 1 million voters cast their ballots for Socialist and even Communist Party presidential candidates as economic depression worsens.
Georgia politician Eugene Talmadge, 48, wins election as governor of his state on a populist platform of white supremacy and will join other Southerners in opposing the policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt. He has founded a weekly newspaper earlier in the year and will win a second term in 1940 (see 1946).
Sen. Hattie Ophelia Caraway (née Wyatt), 53, of Arkansas is elected in her own right with help from Sen. Huey Pierce Long, 39, who entered the Senate in January while still governor of Louisiana. The Senate seated Caraway as a female member January 12 to succeed her late husband, Thaddeus Horatius, who died in November of last year. Although Caraway was ignored by most of the Democratic Party, Sen. Long has sent in a caravan of sound trucks plus two truckloads of political fliers and joined her in barnstorming the state to defeat six male opponents in the primary. The first woman to win a full term in the Senate, Caraway will serve until 1945.
Latin America has its first communist revolt beginning January 22 as Indian peons in El Salvador's western highlands kill nearly 100 people, mostly coffee plantation overseers and soldiers (see El Salvador, 1931). The peons have worked 10-hour days at 12¢ per day; the charismatic communist leader Agustín Farabundo Martí has encouraged them to express their rage; and they have armed themselves with clubs, machetes, slingshots, and a few rifles. The nearby volcano Izalco erupts the night of January 22 as if to echo their anger, but President Maximiliano Hernández Martinez shows no mercy. A believer in theosophy and the occult, he claims to be in direct telepathic communication with President Hoover; he suppresses the rebellion and authorizes the execution of at least 10,000 suspected participants. Groups of 50 men are tied together by their thumbs and shot in front of a church wall, others are forced to dig mass graves and then machine-gunned, anyone dressed in traditional Native American garb is killed, and within a few weeks as many as 30,000 are dead in what critics will call "the matanza" ("the slaughter"), which eliminates not only any immediate threat from left-wing elements but also most of what has remained of indigenous culture (see 1944).
Former Peruvian president Augusto Leguía y Salcedo dies at Lima February 7 at age 68; former Argentine president José Félix Uriburu at Paris April 29 at age 63.
Bolivian forces take the offensive against Paraguay in June as the Chaco War escalates into full-scale hostilities (see 1928). The Bolivians seize Paraguayan positions in the northern Chaco; they go on to take Fortin Boquerón in the central Chaco; Asunción orders mobilization in August and sends Gen. José Estigarribia to retake Fortin Boquerón, which falls at the end of September (see 1933).