1933 - Political Events

Political Events

Adolf Hitler begins 12 years as dictator of the German Reich; Franklin D. Roosevelt begins 12 years as president of the United States (he is inaugurated March 4 but the "Lame Duck" [Twentieth] Amendment ratified January 23 ends terms of all elected federal officers at noon January 20); Cuban army colonel Fulgencio Batista begins 12 years as president of that island republic after engineering a coup; Antonio de Oliveira Salazar begins 37 years as dictator of Portugal.

Adolf Hitler comes to power as chancellor January 30 on a rising tide of German nationalism and economic unrest (see 1932). Financier and former Reichsbank president Hjalmar Schacht, 56, has persuaded President Hindenburg to give Hitler the position that he sought last year, the Nazis celebrate with a torchlight parade at Berlin, Hitler appoints his devoted aide Rudolf Hess, now 38, to his cabinet, and Hess praises der Führer in a speech: "Do not seek Adolf Hitler with your mind. You will find him through the strength of your hearts! Adolf Hitler is Germany and Germany is Adolf Hitler. He who takes an oath to Hitler takes an oath to Germany!" But former Hitler supporter Erich Ludendorff, now 57, warns Hindenburg that Hitler will take Germany to the Abyss. Britain's 110-year-old Oxford Union votes 275 to 173 February 8 "that this House will in no circumstances fight for King and Country," creating anger and indignation at the university, where irate undergraduates storm the union and tear up the minutes of the debate, and in the British press. Winston Churchill denounces the vote as "that abject, squalid, shameless avowal" and "this ever shameful motion," but the common view in Britain is that Churchill is somewhat mad. Hitler and his associates Hermann Goering and Hjalmar Schacht attend a meeting February 20 of the Association of German industrialists that raises 3 million marks for the forthcoming election.

Fire destroys the Reichstag at Berlin February 27. The Nazis immediately accuse the communists of having started it and fabricate a case against Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe, 23, who is tried and will be guillotined early next year, but Reichstag president Hermann Goering is accused at the trial of having set the fire himself (his accuser is Georgi Dimitrov, who will later be premier of Bulgaria; see 1946). Authorities arrest pacifist Carl von Ossietzky February 28 and send him to the Papenburg concentration camp (see 1927; see 1936).

The National Socialist German Workers (Nazi) Party receives 44 percent of the votes in the Reichstag elections March 5 after a reign of terror in which Adolf Hitler's storm troopers have rounded up anti-Nazi forces and seized newspapers and radio stations, thus stopping campaigns by opposition parties; the Nationalist Party wins only 8 percent despite support from industrialists who include Friedrich Flick, Fritz Thyssen, Alfried Krupp, and Albert Voegler. Now 49, Flick is a close friend of Munich-born elite corps head Heinrich Himmler, 32; he has made a fortune from a smelting process he invented, has become a director of the United Steel Works, and in the next 10 years will give the Nazi Party more than 7 million marks. Hitler proclaims the Third Reich March 15, the Nationalists throw their support to him by helping to pass an Enabling Act March 23, and the Nazi regime is given dictatorial powers; Hitler has adopted the Roman salute and the eagle-topped standard carried by Roman legions. Communist leader Clara Zetkin has denounced der Führer in the Reichstag and goes to Moscow, where she dies June 20 at age 75.

The Hitler Youth is reorganized by National Socialist Party member Baldur von Schirach, 26, who was elected to the Reichstag last year and now works to organize German children; like the Boy Scouts, the Hitler Youth puts emphasis on military drill (and soon has its members inform on parents who do not support der Führer). Schirach will head the organization until 1940, when he will be appointed gauleiter of Vienna.

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Adolf Hitler's Nazis attracted young Germans with hate-filled propaganda and promises of "strength through joy."

Austria's Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss, 40, proclaims a dictatorship March 7 and soon after dissolves the Bundesversammlung as antigovernment agitation increases following the Nazi success in Germany. Dolfuss prohibits parades and assemblies as of March 8, but Austrian Nazis stage a giant demonstration and riot March 29; when the government forbids wearing of uniforms by members of any political party, Hitler retaliates by imposing a tax of 1,000 marks on any German who visits Austria, thereby ruining Austria's tourist business (see 1934).

President Roosevelt appoints St. Louis-born diplomat Breckinridge Long, 52, ambassador to Italy. Long finds the embassy quarters "dingy," and he leases the splendid Villa Taverna; writing to the president June 27, he says, "Mussolini is an astounding character and the effects of his organized activities are apparent throughout Italy . . . Italy today is the most interesting experiment in government to come above the horizon since the formation of our Constitution 150 years ago . . . The Fascisti in their black shirts are apparent in every community. They are dapper and well dressed and stand up straight and lend an atmosphere of individuality and importance to their surroundings . . . The trains are punctual, well-equipped, and fast" (but see 1935).

Portugal's prime minister and finance minister Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, 44, drafts a new constitution that will make Europe's most backward country a "unitary and corporative republic"—a fascist dictatorship based on political repression that dictator Salazar will head for more than 37 years, keeping his country backward.

A Spanish Fascist Party (the Falange Española) is founded in October by José Antonio Primo de Rivera, 30, marqués de Estrela, son of the late dictator Gen. Miguel Primo de Rivera (see 1931). A coalition of right-wing and centrist parties drives out Prime Minister Manuel Azaña y Díaz, but although he will be arrested next year on charges of having supported an uprising in Catalonia, he will win acquittal and in 1935 will form a left-wing coalition under the name Popular Front (see 1936). Right-wing forces defeat Catalonia's head of state Francesc Macià in a November 19 election and he dies at Barcelona December 25 at age 74.

Former French premier Paul Painlevé dies at his native Paris October 29 at age 69, having gained renown more for his talents as a mathematician and encouragement of aviation than for his political skills.

Iraq's Faisal I dies of a heart attack in a clinic at Berne September 8 at age 50 after a 12-year reign (see 1932). He has made Kirkuk-born nationalist Bakr Sidqi, 43, a general, Bakr massacres Assyrian tribesmen in the north to suppress a rebellion, the League of Nations reacts by trying to rescind full Iraqi independence, but Iraq's British protectors bar any such move. Faisal is succeeded by his 21-year-old Mecca-born son, who will reign until his death in 1939 as Ghazi I (see 1936).

Afghanistan's king Nadir Shah is assassinated at Kabul November 8 after a 4-year reign. His 19-year-old son succeeds to the throne and will reign until 1973 as Mohammed Zahir Shah (see 1964).

An international Disarmament Conference fails to produce any agreement, and Japan announces that she will withdraw from the League of Nations in 1935, having rejected the findings of the Lytton Commission with regard to Japan's invasion of Manchuria (see 1931). Yosuke Matsuoka, 53, went to live with relatives in America at age 13, graduated from the University of Oregon in 1900, and met with Karl Haushofer when Haushofer visited Japan in 1908. He has led the Japanese delegation that walks out in protest after hearing the Lytton Commission report. Japan has created the puppet state of Manchukuo and removes herself from the possibility of any sanctions from the League, which suffers its first serious setback. Berlin announces October 14 that Germany, too, will withdraw, but Welsh-born former House of Commons member and Great War veteran David Davies, 53, founds the New Commonwealth Society with the aim of creating a more effective League of Nations with a police force and an impartial tribunal to resolve international disputes. Former Japanese prime minister Gonnohyoe Yamamoto dies at Tokyo December 8 at age 81 as friction continues between China and Japan (see 1937).

Washington and Moscow establish relations November 16 for the first time since the 1917 revolution. President Roosevelt appoints former Brain Trust member John C. Bullitt as the first U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union.

President Roosevelt commits himself in his inaugural address March 4 "to the policy of the good neighbor" toward Latin American countries. Tennessee-born Secretary of State Cordell Hull, 61, will implement the new policy, departing from traditional U.S. interventionism (which he renounces in December at the Montivideo Conference) and repudiating privileges that have offended countries to the south (see commerce, 1934).

Peru's president Sánchez Cerro is assassinated by an Aprista April 30 and succeeded by Oscar Benevides, who will declare the APRA illegal and thereby reduce its strength, settle a border dispute with Colombia, restore confidence in the nation's economy, and serve until 1939.

Paraguay issues a formal declaration of war against Bolivia May 10 (see 1932). Gen. José Estigarribia mounts a series of attacks along an extended frontier late in October and achieves such success that Bolivia's president Daniel Salamanca dismisses the German general Hans von Kundt, who has trained the army for this Chaco War, and replaces him with Gen. Enrique Peñaranda. U.S. bank loans have enabled the Bolivians to equip their army with modern weaponry, but morale among Bolivia's Indian conscripts has been low (see 1934).

Former Argentine president Hipólito Irigoyen dies at his native Buenos Aires July 3 at age 80.

New York-born under secretary of state Sumner Welles, 40, tries to mediate between Cuba's president Gerardo Machado y Morales and opposition forces. Machado's dictatorship has become more and more authoritarian since 1927, a general strike is called, the army demands Machado's removal, and he goes into exile August 12. A provisional government takes power under the leadership of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes, but Col. Fulgencio Batista (y Zaldivar), 32, organizes the "sergeants' revolt," which topples the Céspedes regime in September. Batista will sponsor huge public works programs, encourage the growth of the economy, enrich himself in the process, expand the educational system, be elected president in 1940, and rule as dictator until 1944. Aristocratic career diplomat Welles joined the Foreign Service in 1915, was chief of the State Department's Latin American division at age 28, but will resign under pressure 10 years hence when his political foes argue that his flagrant homosexuality poses a threat to national security.

Former president Calvin Coolidge dies at Northampton, Mass., January 5 at age 60. Wit Dorothy Parker hears of his death and says, "How could they tell?" H. L. Mencken says, more charitably, that should the day ever dawn "when Jefferson's warnings are heeded at last, and we reduce government to its simplest terms, it may very well happen that Cal's bones now resting inconspicuously in the Vermont granite will come to be revered as those of a man who really did the nation a service." But the role of the federal government will soon grow to a size beyond anything Jefferson, Coolidge, or Mencken could have imagined.

The Twentieth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution ratified January 23 directs that Congress shall convene in January following its election. Previous Congresses have waited 3 months before meeting, and outrage has grown at some of the measures put through during "lame-duck" sessions by members who have been voted out of office.

Czech-born Chicago mayor Anton J. (Joseph) Cermak, 59, is mortally wounded at Miami February 15 by an assassin thought to have been aiming at President-elect Roosevelt but possibly just a hired gangland hit man. Cermak is credited with (or blamed for) having built Chicago's Democratic political machine. Roosevelt has just come ashore from Vincent Astor's yacht Nourmahal after a pleasure cruise in West Indian waters and is motoring to the railroad station when the shots ring out, but a woman in the crowd seizes the arm of Hackensack, N.J., gunman Giuseppe Zangara and a Miami policeman promptly arrests him. Labeled an anarchist, Zangara is tried, convicted, and executed within a month.

Marine architect William F. Gibbs begins designing destroyers for the U.S. Navy in partnership with Daniel Hargate Cox, with whom he has built several yachts and luxury liners. They will develop an efficient high-pressure, high-temperature steam turbine that will make U.S. destroyers fast and maneuverable.

Congressman Fiorello H. La Guardia of 1932 Norris-La Guardia Act fame unseats Tammany Hall in a special mayoralty election that produces a record turnout. Tammany goon squads receive support from toughs working for mobster Dutch Schultz, who has paid $15,000 to get William C. Dodge elected Manhattan district attorney (Dodge wins by 12,000 votes). Flying squads of college athletes and Golden Glove boxers recruited by traction heir Clendenin J. Ryan, now 28, mix it up with the Tammany thugs; police make arrests, but the violence is widespread. Running on a Republican-City Fusion ticket, "the little flower" receives 868,522 votes, as compared with 609,053 for his Recovery Party challenger Joseph McKee.

Onetime Populist Party leader Mary Elizabeth Lease dies at Callicoon, N.Y., October 29 at age 80.

The Depression forces South Africa's prime minister James Hertzog to form a coalition government with Jan Christiaan Smuts (see 1924). Former clergyman Daniel F. (François) Malan, now 59, edited Hertzog's daily Die Burger beginning in 1915, was in Hertzog's first cabinet 9 years later, but now breaks with his mentor over what he calls a betrayal of Afrikaner principles and starts a "purified" Nationalist Party (see human rights, 1942).

Former British foreign secretary Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey of Fallodon, dies of heart disease at Christon Bank, Northumberland, September 7 at age 71; Gen. Sir Arthur W. Currie of pneumonia and a cerebral aneurism at Montreal November 29 at age 57. He was commander-in-chief of Canadian forces in France in 1918.