1934 | Political Events
Political Events
France verges on civil war following the suicide at Chamonix January 3 of Russian-born promoter Serge Alexandre Stavisky, 47, who has been accused of issuing fraudulent bonds against the security of the municipal pawnshop at Bayonne, evidently engaged in other dubious speculations, and been protected from legal action by corrupt ministers and deputies. A high official in the public prosecutor's office at Paris is found murdered; allegations are made that he was killed to protect some well-known government leaders; Premier Camille Chautemps, 50, is accused of complicity and resigns after just 2 months in office; and communists join with fascist and royalist groups in saying that the scandal demonstrates the corruption and inefficiency of the democratic government. Gen. Jean-Baptiste Marchand dies at Paris January 12 at age 70. The city has serious riots February 6, 7, and 9, and a general strike ensues. The republic is saved only by the establishment of a coalition government headed by officials untouched by the Stavisky affair. Minister of war Marshal Henri Pétain frees 1.2 billion francs to complete the first part of the Maginot Line begun in 1929 with reinforced concrete pillboxes, anti-tank emplacements, barbed wire, and miles of subterranean connecting roads and rail lines that will enable troops to be moved quickly from their barracks in one fortification to another. Each of the 50-odd large blockhouses is to be well stocked with everything needed to support life underground (but see 1940).
The king of the Belgians Albert I dies February 17 in a mountain-climbing accident at age 58 after a 25-year reign; he is succeeded by his 32-year-old son, who will reign until 1950 as Leopold III.
Austria's chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss issues a decree in February dissolving all political parties except for his own Fatherland Front (see 1933). He antagonizes Vienna's working class by ordering police raids on socialist headquarters and a bombardment of the 2,000-unit socialist apartment complex, the Karl Marx Hof, which cost $4 million to build and is destroyed by Heimwehr artillery February 13 while its occupants return fire with machine guns. Austrian Nazis seize the Vienna radio station July 25, force the staff to broadcast a report that Chancellor Dollfuss has resigned, enter the chancellory, and shoot Dollfuss dead. Italy and Yugoslavia concentrate troops on the frontier; Berlin disavows any connection with the coup attempt. The Austrian government orders a roundup of all Nazis (see 1938).
Bulgarian fascists stage a coup May 19, seizing power with help from Boris I, who has reigned since 1918 (see 1923; 1943).
A Nazi blood purge June 30 kills at least 77 Party members alleged to have plotted against Adolf Hitler (by some accounts the dead number hundreds, even thousands). Many of the brown-shirted radicals gathered at the Hanselbauer Hotel outside Munich are homosexual thugs whose leaders harbor socialistic views that have alarmed the industrialists who provide Hitler with his financial support; Nazi storm troopers raid the lakeside resort at Wiesse and eliminate men accused of disloyalty by Halle-born Gestapo deputy chief Reinhard Heydrich, 30, and Heinrich Himmler. Victims include primarily the Sturm Abteilungen (SA) leader Ernst Röhm, now 46, who has reorganized the SA and antagonized regular army generals by training it into a professional army of more than 3 million men that far outnumbers the regular army. His critics have denounced Röhm with charges that he had left-wing leanings and wanted to replace Hitler, Röhm refuses Hitler's offer to let him commit suicide, whereupon Hitler supervises the mass liquidation of men who include also the 42-year-old Gregor Strasser and his supporters, who have been killed along with those of Röhm (news of the purge is suppressed until July 13, when Hitler gives a speech in which he refers to the "Night of the Long Knives," a phrase taken from a popular Nazi song). Hitler replaces Strasser as head of the Reich Organization with Robert Ley. Getting rid of his rivals establishes the supremacy of Hitler's elite corps, soon to be called the Schutzstaffel (SS) (see Himmler, 1935).
Power and Earth (Macht und Erde) by Karl Haushofer implies that a dynamic Germany has the natural right to grasp all of Eurasia and dominate the oceanic countries. Now 67, Haushofer has known Adolf Hitler and Rudolf Hess since their imprisonment in 1923. Based in part on a misinterpretation of the late Friedrich Ratzel's 1901 essay "Liebensraum" and in part on British political geographer Halfor John Mackinder's 1904 paper "The Geographical Pivot of History," Haushofer's theories of geopolitics will help shape Hitler's demands for lebensraum (living space). Rudolf Hess meets with Haushofer and a Japanese official at Haushofer's house in Munich (see Saar Basin, 1935).
Germany's president von Hindenburg dies August 2 at age 87. Adolf Hitler that afternoon has the army pledge personal allegiance to him rather than to the country, and a plebiscite August 19 gives Hitler 88 percent of the votes needed to assume the presidency. Hitler retains the title der führer. Former German general Alexander von Kluck dies at Berlin October 19 at age 88. Wounded in March 1915, he retired in 1916.
German housewife Gertrude Schlotz-Klinke, 32, is appointed Reichsfrauenführer (National Women's Leader) and made head of the Nazi Women's Group. The mother of six, she will eventually have two more husbands and bear five more children (see 1945).
The Soviet Union joins the League of Nations September 18.
Yugoslavia's Aleksandr I arrives at Marseilles October 9 and is assassinated at age 45 along with French Foreign Minister Louis Barthou, 72. The assassin is a Macedonian terrorist working with right-wing Croatians (the Ustase) headed by Bosnian-born fascist Ante Pavelic, 45, who are headquartered in Hungary (see 1941); the League of Nations averts war between Yugoslavia and Hungary, and Aleksandr is succeeded after a 13-year reign by his 11-year-old son, who will reign until 1945 as Peter II, initially with Aleksandr's cousin Prince Paul as regent.
French colonial administrator Marshal Louis-H.-G. Lyautey dies at Thorey April 21 at age 79, having established the protectorate over Morocco; former French president Raymond Poincaré dies at Paris October 15 at age 74.
Turkey's Mustafa Kemal issues orders November 25 that all Turks must assume surnames by January 1. His own, he says, will be Atatürk, meaning "Father of the Turks."
Josef Stalin's close collaborator Sergeo Mironovich Kirov is assassinated at Leningrad December 1 at age 46. His murder reveals the strength and desperation of the opposition to Stalin within the Communist Party, and Stalin orders a Great Purge of suspected Trotskyites (see 1929); trials begin under the direction of deputy prosecutor Andrei Yanuaryevich Vishinsky, 50, who gained a reputation for aggressive tactics last year when he charged some British engineers with trying to wreck Soviet hydroelectric construction (the Metro-Vickers trial). Many of the Party's most prominent older leaders will be convicted of treason in the spectacular trials that follow the incident at Leningrad (see 1936).
India's All-India Congress Socialist Party is founded.
The Tydings-McDuffie Act signed into law by President Roosevelt March 24 provides for Philippine independence to take effect July 4, 1946, after a 10-year transitional period of Commonwealth government (see Wood-Forbes Mission, 1921). The Philippine Senate has previously rejected a similar act but gives its approval in May to the new one, which puts most internal matters in the hands of Filipinos while reserving monetary matters, foreign affairs, and defense to U.S. jurisdiction while the Philippines remain U.S. territory; Filipinos elect delegates to a constitutional government July 10 (see 1935).
Japanese admiral Koshaku Togo Heihachiro of 1905 Tsushima Strait fame dies at Tokyo May 30 at age 86. Admiral Keisuke Okada, 66, becomes prime minister and tries to moderate extremist right-wing military influences in the government (but see 1936).
Chinese communist forces under Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) leave Jiangxi (Kiangsi) in October with Nationalist Guomindang (Kuomintang, or KMT) armies in pursuit. In the Long March that will last until October of next year, Mao's forces will be on the move for 268 days out of 368; they will travel 6,000 miles to Yan-an (Yunnan), crossing 18 mountain ranges and six major rivers; but 68,000 of Mao's 90,000 men will be lost in continual rear-guard actions against Guomindang troops (see 1931; 1937).
Indonesian nationalist leader Omar Said Tjokroaminoto dies at Jogjakarta December 17 at age 52, having tutored the now more radical leader Achmad Sukarno, 33 (see 1945).
Paraguayan forces under the command of Gen. José Estigarribia renew their drive against the Bolivian post of Ballivián January 9, ending a 3-week truce in the continuing Chaco War (see 1933). The heaviest fighting of the war goes on from March to July, and Ballivián falls November 17 (see 1935).
Nicaraguan National Guard Gen. Antonio Somoza, 38, invites guerrilla leader Gen. Augusto Cesar Sandino to a meeting in February. Having fought the U.S. occupation force from 1927 until its withdrawal in 1933, Sandino is killed in cold blood (see 1936).
Mexico amends her constitution to extend the term of the presidency to 6 years, the minister of war and marine Gen. Lázaro Cardenas, 39, is elected president July 2; he promises to "revive the revolutionary activity of the masses" (see PRI, 1929). Although he has been chosen by strongman Plutarco Calles, he regards Calles as too conservative and will force him into exile next year.
President Roosevelt removes U.S. Marines from Haiti in August after 19 years of occupation in which they have undertaken public works programs (health clinics, roads, sewage systems) but have excluded all but mulattoes from public office and antagonized most of the population by subjecting them to racist treatment. The United States will retain direct fiscal control until 1941 and indirect control until 1947.
A congressional committee investigates reports that former U.S. Marine Corps commandant Gen. Smedley Darlington Butler has been involved in efforts to organize an American fascist organization (see bonus marchers, 1932).
Gerard Vultee designs a V-1 attack bomber that will be purchased by Brazil, China, Turkey, and the USSR, but Vultee and his young wife, Sylvia, will be killed in late January 1938 when their Stinson crashes into an Arizona peak during a snow squall (see transportation, 1930).
North American Aviation begins production of a military training plane designed by Wheeling, W. Va.-born pilot-turned-engineer James H. (Howard) "Dutch" Kindelberger, 39, who was chief draftsman for Glenn L. Martin and as chief engineer for Douglas Aircraft led the team that designed the DC-1 and DC-2 (see politics [Mustang], 1940).
The U.S. Army orders six instrument trainers from the 5-year-old Binghamton, N.Y., firm Link Aeronautical Corp. following a series of highly publicized accidents by pilots flying mail planes. Inventor Edwin A. Link has modified his device to make it an instructional tool for instrument flying. Foreign orders come in from Japan, the Soviet Union, and other countries (permission from the State Department is required for such sales), and Link next year will establish Link Aviation Devices Inc. at Binghamton to manufacture his instrument trainers (see 1941; Air Force, 1935).
A semiautomatic rifle patented by Canadian-born inventor John C. (Cantius) Garand, 46, at the Springfield Armory in Massachusetts fires a clip of eight .276-caliber rounds, weighs just over nine pounds, is simply constructed and easy to maintain, and will be adopted by the U.S. Army in 1936, when it will be modified to take .30-caliber ammunition, named the M1, and put into mass production to replace the bolt-action Springfield repeater used since 1903. The world's first standard-issue autoloading infantry rifle, the M1 uses propellant gases to operate its autoloading mechanism; it will remain the standard until 1957, and more than 5 million will be manufactured (see 1941).
Italian and Ethiopian troops clash at Ualual December 5 on the frontier between Italian Somaliland and Ethiopia (see 1896; Tripartite Pact, 1906). Gen. Rodolfo Graziani, 52, has been appointed governor of Somaliland, Benito Mussolini will use the incident at Ualual as an excuse to invade Ethiopia next year, and Gen. Graziani will spearhead the attack from the south (see 1935).