1948 - Political Events

Political Events

Communists take over Czechoslovakia February 25 in a coup d'état engineered in large part by party leaders Antonín Zápotocky, 63, and Rudolf Slánsky, 46 (see 1946). Statesman Jan Masaryk commits suicide at his native Prague March 10 at age 62 (his body is discovered three floors below an open bathroom window); a new Soviet-model constitution is promulgated May 7, President Benes refuses to sanction it, a general election is held May 30, President Benes resigns June 7, and the National Assembly elects Klement Gottwald president. He is inaugurated June 14 and will hold office until his death in 1953, and he is succeeded as prime minister by his friend Zápotocky; Benes dies at Sezimovo Ustí, Czechoslovakia, September 3 at age 64 (see 1952).

The Italian Senate elects Bank of Italy governor Luigi Einaudi, 74, as the republic's first president May 11 (see 1946). A trained economist who fled to Switzerland 5 years ago, Einaudi returned in 1945, has curbed inflation and stabilized the currency as the nation's first minister of the budget, and will hold office until 1955.

Yugoslavia is expelled June 28 from the 9-month-old Communist Information Bureau (Cominform) for alleged doctrinal errors and hostility to Moscow. The Yugoslav Communist Party supports Marshal Tito, now 56, and purges itself of all Cominform supporters in a clear break with Stalin. The bureau moves its headquarters to Bucharest and will continue until 1956 to publish propaganda encouraging international communist solidarity while obstructing implementation of the Marshall Plan and Truman Doctrine. Former Ustase leader Ante Pavelic, now 59, arrives in Argentina, having hidden out in Austria and Italy.

Soviet occupation forces in Germany set up a blockade July 24 to cut off rail, canal, and highway traffic between West Germany and Berlin. Many Americans favor pulling out of Europe altogether, some favor sending an armored division to force passage, but Georgia-born Gen. Lucius (du Bignon) Clay, 51, is denied permission to run a convoy through the blockade and orders an airlift that begins July 25 with U.S. and British aircraft flying in flour, meat, fish, potatoes, vegetables, coal, electrical generators, automobiles, blankets, clothing, and other supplies for the more than 2 million people of West Berlin. Strategic Air Command chief Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, now 41, uses three air corridors in a logistical tour de force, with U.S. C-54 cargo planes landing at Templehof Airport, British planes at another airport; by September the airlift is carrying 4,500 tons per day, with a plane arriving every 3 minutes around the clock (see 1949).

The Nuremberg Tribunal sentences former German field marshal Erich R. von Leeb to 3 years' imprisonment for war crimes against Russian civilians; former field marshal Heinrich A. W. von Brauchitsch dies at Nuremberg October 18 at age 67 while awaiting trial as a war criminal.

Alger Hiss supplied Soviet agents with classified U.S. documents while working in the State Department in the 1930s, says Time magazine senior editor Whittaker Chambers in testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee August 3. President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Hiss is a former State Department official; Chambers denounced him as a fellow Communist Party member to State Department officer Adolph A. Berle in 1939; now 43, he sues Chambers for slander, but Chambers, now 47, will produce as evidence a microfilm that he has kept hidden in a pumpkin at his Westminster, Md., farm. A federal jury at New York indicts Hiss for perjury December 15. Rep. Richard Milhous Nixon, 35, (R. Calif.) pushes a congressional investigation of the Hiss affair, having won election in 1946 by suggesting that his Democratic opponent H. Jerry Voorhis had communist support; he has asked Norfolk, N.Y.-born Senate War Investigating Committee lawyer William P. (Pierce) Rogers, 35, to help him investigate Hiss, Rogers has found evidence to support charges, and he has urged Nixon to pursue the case that will bring the congressman to prominence, but Hiss's first trial will end in a hung jury (see 1950).

Wilhelmina of the Netherlands abdicates September 4 at age 68 after a 58-year reign. Her 39-year-old daughter will reign until 1980 as Juliana.

The Treaty of Portsmouth signed January 15 provides for a continuing role of British military forces in defending Iraq (see 1947), Iraqis react with violence, the treaty is not ratified, but the 1930 treaty remains in force (see 1950).

Yemen's Zaydi imam Yahya (Manmud al-Mutawakkil) is machine-gunned to death at Sana January 17 at age 80 after an autocratic rule of nearly 44 years. He remained neutral during the war, and dissidents have gained power with support from Yemenis in other countries.

The State of Israel is proclaimed May 14 as the British mandate over Palestine expires (see 1947). Britain has withdrawn her forces under pressure from the terrorist Irgun, "Stern Gang," and Haganah, most Arabs have fled the country, and Zionist leader Chaim Weizmann, now 73, takes office as provisional president (see 1949; Balfour Declaration, 1917; Weizmann-Faisal Agreement, 1919). Polish-born settler David Ben-Gurion (originally David Green), now 61, has been chairman of the Jewish Agency for Palestine since 1935 and serves as prime minister and minister of defense. The new state occupies four-fifths of Palestine and has an Arab Palestinian population of about 200,000 after more than 700,000 have fled or been expelled. Israel opens her doors to the world's Jews, and President Truman promptly recognizes the new Jewish homeland against the advice of Secretary of State Marshall (who says the president is acting for reasons of domestic politics). Truman's former Kansas City haberdashery partner Eddie Jacobson, 58, has served as unofficial liaison with President Weizmann, who initially receives more support from Moscow than from Washington. Some countries withhold recognition (Madrid will not establish diplomatic ties until 1986).

Transjordan's Arab Legion enters Jerusalem, Egypt joins the attack on Israel May 15 and bombs the temporary capital at Tel Aviv, South African-born Israeli diplomat Abba Eban, 33, helps secure a cease-fire that allows Israeli forces to regroup and rearm, Israeli defenders using Czech-built weapons throw back the invaders, but Jewish terrorists assassinate Swedish diplomat and UN mediator Count Folke Bernadotte, 53, September 21 in the Israeli-held quarter of Jerusalem.

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Israel gained independence, offered refuge to the world's oppressed Jews, and fought off her Arab invaders.

A new Selective Service Act passed by Congress June 24 provides for the registration of all U.S. men between 18 and 25 with men between 19 and 25 to be inducted for 21 months' service. Registration begins August 30 to initiate a program that will continue for 25 years.

The Uzi submachine gun developed after the Arab-Israeli War by German-born Israeli Army officer Uziel Gal, 23, is a compact automatic weapon based in part on earlier Czech designs. Weighing only nine pounds when loaded with a 25- to 32-round magazine of 9-millimeter pistol ammunition, it is 25.6 inches long (it will also be made in versions as short as 18 inches), is easy to load, accurate even when fired automatically, and will find wide use by police and special forces.

"Axis Sally" is indicted for treason at Washington September 10. Maine-born émigrée Mildred Elizabeth Gillars (née Sisk), now 48, took a job as a German radio announcer in 1940 at the urging of her German lover, and broadcast to U.S. troops from December 11, 1941, through May 8, 1945, becoming the highest-salaried broadcaster in the Reich. Persuading captured U.S. soldiers to record messages to their families and families, she doctored them to insert Nazi propaganda. She started her propaganda talks to Allied troops with appeals such as, "Hello, gang. Throw down those little old guns and toddle off home. There's no getting the Germans down." Found cowering in the cellar of a bombed-out building in Frankfurt-am-Main, she was returned by the army to stand trial (see 1949).

Gen. John J. Pershing, U.S. Army (ret.), dies at Walter Reed Hospital July 15 at age 87; former Supreme Court chief justice and 1916 presidential candidate Charles Evans Hughes at Osterville, Mass., on Cape Cod August 27 at age 86.

Congressman Lyndon Baines Johnson (D. Tex.) celebrates his 40th birthday August 27 and wins the Democratic primary for U.S. senator the next day in a runoff contest against Gov. Coke R. Stevenson. Beaten when he ran for the Senate 7 years ago by what he considered fraudulent late votes cast for Gov. W. "Pappy" Lee O'Daniel, Johnson has used a helicopter to barnstorm the state. Stevenson led by 71,000 votes after the July 4 primary but fell short of a majority, he leads by 854 votes August 29, county bosses turn up votes that cut the lead to fewer than 155 votes, and party boss George Parry then produces Box 13 from the town of Alice in South Texas, it contains 202 previously uncounted votes, they are listed in alphabetical order in identical handwriting, almost all are for Johnson, he wins the nomination by 87 votes, and nomination as a Democrat in Texas is tantamount to election. Johnson will become Senate minority whip in 1951, minority leader in 1953, and majority leader after 1955 as he masters the legislative process and enforces party discipline (see 1960).

The Republican National Convention at Philadelphia nominates Gov. Thomas E. Dewey of New York as its candidate, full of confidence and exuberance for Dewey's second bid for the presidency (see 1944); Democrats nominate President Truman in the same Philadelphia auditorium a month later amidst gloom, confusion, and sweltering heat (some "doves of peace" hidden inside a flowered Liberty Bell are found to have died, others menace the delegates, and Chairman Sam Rayburn bellows over the radio, "Get those [expletive] pigeons out of here!)." But Truman accepts the nomination at 2 o'clock in the morning, calls the 80th Congress back into session to address issues such as housing (in a speech at Spokane, Wash., June 9 he has called the 80th Congress "the worst we've ever had"), boards a train September 17 to begin what will be a 22,000 mile whistle-stop tour, hears his 70-year-old running mate Alben W. Barkley tell him, "Give 'em hell, Harry," campaigns with pugnacious vigor, refuses to believe the polls, and wins election in his own right with 303 electoral votes to 189 for Dewey, who has campaigned with platitudes and refused to say anything that might cost him a vote. Racist Southerners have bolted the Democratic Party to form the States' Rights Democratic (Dixiecrat) Party, Dewey receives 45 percent of the popular vote to Truman's 49.5 percent. States' Rights Democratic (Dixiecrat) candidate Sen. (James) Strom Thurmond, 45, of South Carolina has run on a segregationist platform and receives 39 electoral votes (but less than 3 percent of the popular vote), carrying Alabama, Lousiana, and Mississippi as well as his home state and gets 56 percent of the white vote in Georgia; other minority party candidates, including Henry Wallace (Progressive Party) and Norman Thomas (Socialist Party), splinter the Democratic vote. Stunned by the defeat of their candidate, Republicans will make an issue of alleged "communist subversion" in an effort to smear Democrats (see McCarthy, 1950).

Burma gains independence January 4 after more than 60 years of British colonial rule. The colonial government appointed U Nu, 40, last year to succeed Bogyoke Aung San after the latter's assassination, he asserts democratic principles, and he will hold office through repeated military upheavals until ousted by a military coup in 1962.

Siam's (Thailand's) military restores former premier Luang Phibunsongkhram to his former position (see 1947). He takes prompt measures to contain the spread of communism and begins an authoritarian rule that will continue until 1957, cooperating with British and Malayan forces in fighting communist guerrillas on the Malayan border and suppressing the economic development of Chinese immigrants (see Thailand, 1949).

The Renville Agreement signed January 17 by Dutch and Indonesian representatives aboard the U.S.S. Renville tries to settle disputes left in the wake of last year's Cheribon (Linggadjati) Agreement. It orders a cease-fire, confirms Dutch territorial gains, and grants the Dutch de jure sovereignty until the Indonesian republic can be fully established. The Indonesians obtain the promise of a plebiscite in Dutch-occupied parts of Java, Madura, and Sumatra, but the Dutch launch a new military offensive in December and capture the republican capital of Jakarta while Indonesian guerrillas do their best to counter the Dutch (see 1949).

A Hindu extremist assassinates Mahatma Gandhi at Delhi January 30 at age 78. Many Hindus resent Gandhi's agreement to last year's partition of India and Pakistan. Former Madras prime minister Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, 68, takes over as governor general in June, becoming the first native-born governor general of an independent India (he will serve until January 1950; see constitution, 1950).

Ceylon gains independence from Britain February 4 (see 1956).

Pakistan's governor general Mohammed Ali Jinnah dies of tuberculosis at his native Karachi September 11 at age 73 (see 1956).

Hostilities between India and Pakistan continue over the issue of Kashmir (see 1947; 1949).  

Indian troops sent into Hyderabad by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru September 13 enter the city of Hyderabad 4 days later. The Nizam Sir Osman Ali Khan Bahadur, 62, has ruled the 82,000-square-mile state since 1907 and refused to join India or grant parliamentary government; he has appealed to the United Nations but bows to force and is permitted to retain his title, palaces, and private property (including a harem of 42 concubines). His annual income of $50 million is reduced to an allowance of $900,000.

The first president of the Philippines Manuel Roxas dies at Clark Field, Pampanga, April 15 at age 56 after less than 2 years in office and is succeeded by his vice president Elpidio Quirino. A general amnesty is declared in April for all Filipinos who have been accused of collaborating with Japanese occupation authorities, and the action stirs anger among Huk rebels, who have gathered an estimated 500,000 rifles and resist turning over their Luzon government to what they consider an oligarchic regime that includes people who collaborated with the Japanese (see 1950).

The Republic of Korea is proclaimed at Seoul August 15 with Synghman Rhee, 73, as president; Soviet troops leave North Korea, but communist leader Kim Il Sung (originally Kim Song Ju), 36, heads the Korean People's Democratic Republic proclaimed at Pyongyang September 9 and challenges the Rhee regime, claiming dominion over the entire country (see 1945). A prominent member of the guerrilla resistance against Japanese colonial rule, Kim has had military and political training in the Soviet Union, served as a major at the head of a Korean contingent in the Red Army during the war, returned home with other Soviet-trained Koreans after the war, and will rule his country with an iron hand until his death in 1994 (see 1949).

Some 600,000 Chinese communist troops under the command of Gen. Zhu De battle a Nationalist army of comparable size for control of Suzhou (Suchow) beginning in November (see 1946). Mme. Chiang Kai-shek arrives at Washington December 1 to request U.S. help as the communist forces of Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) engulf China, but revelations of corruption in her husband's Nationalist regime have cooled enthusiasm for Mme. Chiang's cause (see 1949).

Former Japanese general Tomoyuki Yamashita is convicted of war crimes and hanged February 23 at age 60 (see 1946). The so-called "Tiger of Malaya" surrendered his troops in the Philippines in September 1945, was tried at Manila in October before a military tribunal of five generals on charges of not having prevented troops under his command from committing atrocities—rapes, torture, and killings that were actually perpetrated for the most part by naval forces whose commander ignored Yamashita's orders (the admiral responsible went free). The former U.S. labor lawyer charged with defending Gen. Yamashita will later charge that his trial and verdict were scripted by Gen. MacArthur; Gen. Homma Masaharu is executed by a firing squad at Los Baños on Luzon in the Philippines April 3 at age 58 for having ordered the Bataan Death March in 1942. The Australian judge who has headed the International Military Tribunal for the Far East since 1946 announces November 4 that all of the defendants have been found guilty after a 2½-year trial: the IMTFE sentences seven to death, 16 to life imprisonment, two to lesser terms (two others have died during the trials and one has been found insane). Japan's wartime prime minister Hedeki Tojo and six others are hanged by U.S. occupation authorities at Tokyo's Sugamo Prison December 23.

South Africa's Nationalist Party wins the country's May 26 elections, bringing right-wing politician Daniel F. Malan, now 74, to power as prime minister. An Afrikaner clergyman who opposed his country's participation in World War II, Malan holds racist views, he has run on an apartheid platform favoring separation of the races, he is avowedly anti-British and anti-Semitic, his bloc defeats a United and Labour Party coalition headed by Jan Christiaan Smuts, now 78, and his election produces an outcry from moderates such as Zulu chief Albert J. Lutuli, now 50, but Malan will rule until his resignation late in 1954 (see human rights, 1944; 1949).

Canada's prime minister W. L. Mackenzie King steps down after a third ministry that has lasted since 1935. Now 74, he is succeeded by his Liberal Party protégé Louis (Stephen) Saint Laurent, 66, who has served as leader of the Canadian delegations to the United Nations at New York and will serve until his retirement in 1958.

Left-wing Colombian Liberal Party leader Jorge Eliécer Gaitán is assassinated in broad daylight April 9 in downtown Bogotá; the resulting riot (it will be called the bogotozo) produces an estimated $570 million in property damage throughout the country and begins a 15-year period of insurrection (La Violencia) that will see an estimated 200,000 people killed, with atrocities committed on both sides. Former foreign minister Laureano Eleuterio Gómez, 59, has expressed support for Francisco Franco and the late Adolf Hitler, he is suspected of having had a hand in Gaitán's murder, and he exiles himself to Spain (see 1950).

The Venezuelan army ousts President Gallegos after 9 months in office and institutes a military junta that will rule until 1958 under the leadership of Gen. Marcos Pérez Jiménez, who outlaws the Acción Democrática, driving Rómulo Betancourt and other anti-fascists into exile (Betancourt will spend the next 10 years in the United States, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Costa Rica trying to hold the remnant of the Acción Democrática together).

El Salvador has a successful military coup d'état (see 1944). The "Majors' Revolt" installs a junta headed by Major Oscar Osorio, who will organize the Revolutionary Army of Democratic Unification (Partido Revolucionario de Unificación Democrática), initiate a program of hydroelectric dam and urban housing projects, and be elected to a 6-year term in 1950 (see 1956).

A Peruvian military junta headed by Gen. Manuel A. (Apolinario) Odria (Amoretti) 50, seizes power in an October coup d'état, ousting President José Bustamente to begin a dictatorship that will continue until 1956. Odria has complained that Bustamente was too weak in dealing with radical Apristas and adopts repressive measures to suppress them (see 1950).