1936 | Political Events
Political Events
Britain's George V dies at Sandringham January 20 at age 70 after a reign of nearly 26 years and is succeeded by his 41-year-old son David, who assumes the throne as Edward VIII. The new king has given up his longtime affair with Freda Dudley Ward and wants to marry the Baltimore-born socialite Bessie Warfield Simpson (née Wallis), 39, who has just divorced her second husband. Having created a constitutional crisis, Edward abdicates December 10 (the BBC broadcasts his speech) so that he may marry "the woman I love"; his diffident younger brother Albert succeeds to the throne at age 41 and will reign until 1952 as George VI.
Admiral David Beatty, 1st Earl Beatty, Royal Navy (ret.), of 1916 Battle of Jutland fame dies at London March 11 at age 65.
France's short-lived Laval government falls January 22 amidst suspicions that it supported reactionaries (see 1935). A stopgap cabinet headed by Albert Sarraut takes over, the May 3 parliamentary elections give the Popular Front a majority, and the first Popular Front ministry takes office June 5 with Socialist Party leader Léon Blum, now 64, as the nation's first socialist (and first Jewish) premier. Blum was badly beaten in mid-February by right-wing thugs who recognized him while he was riding with friends in a car on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, his injuries were severe enough to require hospitalization, and the outrage attracted many voters to his side. He promptly ends the strikes that have crippled the nation.
Adolf Hitler takes advantage of the Ethiopian crisis to denounce the 1925 Locarno Pacts and reoccupy the Rhineland March 7. He is prepared to withdraw in the event of opposition from Britain or France, but nothing is done to stop him and the inertia on the part of London and Paris encourages him to escalate his demands. German authorities transfer pacifist Carl von Ossietzky to a prison hospital at Berlin in May after 3 years of incarceration and torture (see 1933). His case has drawn international attention, he is awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace November 24, Hitler forbids any German to accept a Nobel Prize, and Ossietzky is allowed to move to a private sanatorium.
Former Greek premier Eleuthérios Venizélos dies at Paris March 18 at age 71, having helped double the size and population of his country. Greece's George II appoints Ithaca-born ultraroyalist Gen. Ioannis Metaxas premier April 13 and gives him dictatorial powers August 4. Now 65, Metaxas has warned that communists were about to take over the country, and the king allows him to begin a Fourth of August regime that will stifle political dissent, suspend constitutional rights, and even censor the funeral oration delivered (according to Thucydides) by Pericles to the Athenians. Metaxas will remain in power until his death early in 1941.
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Kazakhstan become Soviet Socialist republics (see Georgia, 1921; Azerbaijan, 1922). Josef Salin has imposed collective agriculture in the republics, antagonizing landowners and peasants alike. Kyrgyzstan becomes a constituent republic of the USSR after 10 years as an autonomous republic. Occupying about 76,600 square miles (198,500 square kilometers) and bounded by China, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan, the republic has a population that is mainly Sunni Muslim (see 1991).
The Great Purge trials that began in the Soviet Union 2 years ago continue under the direction of Andrei Vishinsky, who last year was promoted to chief prosecutor. Bolshevik Lev B. Kamenev is convicted of conspiracy in a show trial and executed by a firing squad at his native Moscow August 24 at age 53 (his wife, Tatyana, will be shot next year); Grigori E. Zinoviev is executed August 25 at age 52. The Yezhovschina will take an estimated 8 to 10 million lives in the next 2 years as Josef Stalin liquidates his political enemies (see 1937).
Hungary's pro-fascist premier Gyula Gömbös dies at Munich October 6 at age 49. Britain's Edward VIII sends an elaborate bouquet, as does Spanish general Francisco Franco. Finance minister Béla Imrédy, 44, resigns and becomes president of the National Bank of Hungary. Gömbös is succeeded by his minister of agriculture Kálmán Darányi, 50, who will hold office until he resigns in May 1938, continuing the Gömbös foreign policy as he aligns Hungary with German and Italian interests, extends the powers of the central government internally, curbs the press, and adopts the nation's first anti-Semitic measures.
Spanish voters elect a new Popular Front government in February and former prime minister Manuel Azaña y Díaz heads a new ministry. President Alcalá Zamora has failed in his efforts to curb left-wing extremists, and the Cortes (parliament) removes him from office (the vote on a technicality to unseat him is 238 to 5), Azaña is elected in May to succeed him, and he goes into exile in France (he will later move to Argentina).
Anarchist Alexander Berkman puts a rifle bullet through his chest and dies at Nice June 28 at age 65, having had two unsuccessful operations for prostate cancer, suffered constant pain, and been dependent on financial aid from friends. News of his death devastates his friend Emma Goldman, who went to Russia early in 1920, soon found herself at odds with the policies of the Lenin government, left late in 1921 with Berkman, and explained why in her 1923 book My Disillusionment in Russia. Now 67, she has been living at St. Tropez in a house purchased for her by copper heiress Peggy Guggenheim.
A Spanish civil war begins July 18 as army chiefs at Mililla in Spanish Morocco start a revolt against the weak government at Madrid; most of the army and air force supports insurgent generals Francisco Franco, 44, and Emilio Mola, 49, and the revolt spreads rapidly to the Spanish garrison towns of Cádiz, Seville, Saragossa, and Burgos. Commanding large Moorish contingents, Franco and Mola form a junta of National Defense July 30 at Burgos. German and Italian "volunteers" organized by German admiral and military intelligence (Abwehr) head Wilhelm (Franz) Canaris, 49, soon join them, and while Moscow supplies the government loyalists with advisers, military commanders, and equipment, the nonintervention policies of Britain, France, and the United States serve the interests of Franco and Mola. A Rome-Berlin Axis is formed October 25. Equipped with arms from Germany and Italy, the insurgents lay siege to Madrid November 6, and the republican government immediately begins executing rightist political prisoners and military officers lest they be freed by the fascists. The Soviet secret service (NKVD) goes after anarchists and Trotskyites who are fighting alongside the loyalists.
"The fifth column" will take Madrid, says Gen. Mola when asked which of his four columns will capture the city. He refers to sympathizers within Madrid, but resistance stiffens when communist orator (Isadora) Dolores Ibárruri (Gómez), 40 ("The Passsionflower" ["La Pasionaria"]), exhorts housewives to take lunch to their husbands in the trenches and pour boiling oil on any fascists who enter the city. "They shall not pass" ("No pasaran"), she has said July 18, and she rallies support with the cry, "It is better to die on your feet than live on your knees," but while the communists favor the Popular Front it is rejected by anarchists and the revolutionary party POUM (see Ibárruri, 1977).
Spanish Republican authorities give fascist leader José Antonio Primo de Rivera, marqués de Estella, a summary trial and execute him at Alicante November 20 at age 33 (see 1933). Gen. Franco's followers hail him as a martyr; they merge his Falange party with other groups to form the Nationalist movement.
An International Brigade of anti-fascists rallies to the Spanish Loyalist cause. The Soviet Comintern established in 1919 forms seven brigades late in the year, each composed of three or more battalions; 82 Americans embark for France as "tourists" on the S.S. Normandie Christmas Day to join the fight. By February of next year several thousand Americans will be in the Lincoln Brigade and a second force called the George Washington Brigade. Casualties will be so heavy that the two will be merged by mid-1937. Other nationalities will join the Lincoln Brigade, and by the time all the brigades are disbanded in late 1938 Spaniards will outnumber Americans three to one; by April 1939 some 3,100 Americans (2,800 by some accounts) will have fought and about 900 (1,500 by some accounts) will have been killed in action.
International arms dealer Sir Basil Zaharoff dies at Monte Carlo November 27 at age 87, having been described as a "merchant of death" and made himself one of the richest men in Europe.
Egypt's Ahmed Fuad dies April 28 at age 68 after a reign of more than 18 years, first as sultan, then as king; his dissolute 16-year-old son Farouk will reign until 1952. Former British field marshal Edmund H. H. Allenby dies of a heart attack at his London home in Kensington May 14 at age 75. Viscount Allenby served as high commissioner in Egypt from 1919 to 1925 and granted independence to Ethiopia in 1922. Britain agrees August 27 to withdraw from all of Egypt except for the Suez Canal zone.
The Arab world has its first successful coup d'état in modern times October 29 as Iraqi general Bakr Sidqi overthrows the government (see 1933). As chief of the National Reform Force, Bakr Sidqi crushes an uprising with machine guns and aerial bombs, kills women, children, and old men indiscriminately, and makes himself dictator (see 1937).
Italian forces under the command of Gen. Rodolfo Graziani take Addis Ababa May 5, and Rome proclaims the annexation of Ethiopia May 9 (see 1935). President Roosevelt has issued a proclamation April 10 enumerating implements of war that may not be exported to the belligerents (see Neutrality Acts, 1935; 1937). Italian bombs and mustard gas have killed barefoot Ethiopian warriors by the hundreds of thousands while Benito Mussolini's son-in-law Conte Galeazzo Ciano expressed rapture at the beauty of bombs "opening like red blossoms" on Ethiopia's highlands. Mussolini joins the African nation with Eritrea and Italian Somaliland to create Italian East Africa with Gen. Graziani as viceroy, and Graziani will be ruthless in his administration (see 1941).
"I am here today to claim the justice that is due to my people," says Haile Selassie June 30 in an address at Geneva to the League of Nations. "God and history will remember your judgment," the Ethiopian emperor says, and as he steps down he murmurs, "It is us today. It will be you tomorrow." Millions of gas masks will be distributed to British, Czech, and other European civilians in the next few years in anticipation that they may be needed in any new conflict on the Continent.
Former chairman of Britain's royal commission on agriculture in India Victor Alexander John Hope, 48, 2nd marquess of Linlithgow, is appointed viceroy of India, a post he will hold until he retires in 1943.
Young Japanese army officers mutiny at Tokyo February 26 and assassinate former premier Saito, Finance Minister Korekiyo Takahashi, and others in an abortive attempt to set up a military dictatorship. They fail in an attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Keisuke Okada, 68, who has tried to moderate extremist military influence in the government and resigns after less than 2 years in office, accepting responsibility for a number of incidents that have occurred during his administration. A military court hands down 17 death sentences July 7 (see Chinese invasion, 1937).
Japan organizes a biological-warfare unit outside Harbin, Manchuria (see Geneva Protocol, 1925). Called Unit 731 and disguised as a water-purification facility, it is headed by Shiro Ishii, 54, who will erect more than 150 buildings within an area of six square kilometers and conduct tests on human subjects as war continues with China (see 1937).
Former Chinese warlord Duan Qirui (Tuan Ch'i-jui) dies at Shanghai November 2 at age 71, having devoted his final 10 years to philanthropy and the study of Buddhism.
Japan signs an Anti-Comintern Pact with Germany November 25 (but see 1939).
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek visits his general Zhang Xue Liang (Chang Hsüeh-liang) at Sian in northwest China December 12 and is arrested by Zhang's Manchurian-born troops. Zhang has opposed Chiang's policy of fighting communists rather than directing the Nationalist Army's full power against Manchuria's Japanese invaders. Communist leader Zhou En-lai (Chou En-lai) joins the negotiations, and Chiang is not released until December 25, when he agrees to form a united front against the Japanese. He makes good on his word but arrests Zhang, who will remain imprisoned for the next decade.
Nicaragua has a coup d'état June 2 as the National Guard, led by Gen. Antonio Somoza, deposes President Juan Sacasa (see 1934). Somoza will make himself president next year, he will rule for 10 years, and his family will continue his dictatorship until July 1979, looting the country of its wealth.
U.S. soldier-aviator William "Billy" Mitchell dies at New York February 19 at age 56, having agitated for the establishment of a separate air force, an air-force equivalent of West Point, and increased air defenses in Hawaii; former U.S. attorney general A. Mitchell Palmer of 1919 "Red Scare" Palmer Raids notoriety at Washington, D.C., May 11 at age 64 (see Dies Committee, 1938); Admiral William S. Sims, U.S. Navy (ret.), dies at Boston September 28 at age 77.
"This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny," President Roosevelt says June 27 in a speech written for him by White House insider Thomas G. Corcoran. FDR denounces "economic royalists" indifferent to the needs of the people in a speech to the Democratic Party's national convention at Philadelphia, pointing to the economic progress made since 1933. The Republicans nominate Gov. Alfred M. Landon, 59, of Kansas, who denounces New Deal encroachments on American business and American institutions; former "Brain Trust" head Raymond Moley has broken with the Democrats, whose programs have in his opinion gone too far to the left. The Republicans spend nearly $9 million on Landon's campaign, the Democrats just over $5 million, but FDR wins reelection to a second term with 61 percent of the popular vote, which reaches an unprecedented 45 million. He receives 523 electoral votes, capturing every state but Maine and Vermont; Landon wins just 37 percent of the popular vote, eight electoral votes.