1932 Continued--More on the Beginning of the End

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Yesterday I wrote about leafing through a 1932 issue of the Illustrated London News, piecing my way around unexpected bits of historical bric-a-brac, surprising myself with the oddness of it all, until I came to the reporting of the 1932 German election and the beginning of the Nazi takeover of Germany.  The beginning of the end. So it was like a bit of enjoyable, entertaining historical surprises until bumping into the Nazi cancer.  But 1932 stuck with me a bit. Thinking about it a little more, today, I realized that there was much more that the year had to offer in the way of epochal beginnings, many of which related in some fashion to the beginning and end of WWII (and particularly to the May-August 1945 period).

1932 was a very big year in physics, especially in the sub-atomic world, most of which would result in Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as five (!) Nobel prizes.  Irene Curie and Frederick Joliot produced proton emission from alpha-ray irradiated beryllium in January; James Chadwick discovered the neutron in February (getting the Nobel physics three years later); that same month E.O. Lawrence and M.S. Livingston developed the cyclotron (getting the Nobel in 1939 for it); J.D. Cockroft and ETS Walton produced the conversion of an element (He) (winning the Nobel in 1959); C.D. Anderson discovered the positron (receiving the Nobel for it in 1936);  Werner Heisenberg introduced the proton-neutron nuclear model; and H.C. Urey last in that year discovered deuterium (winning the Nobel in 1934).  It is an astonishing and long series of significant developments for a single year.

On the seer-ing theoretical part of 1932 came Carl W. Spohr's "The Final War", with appeared as a short story in the magazine Astounding Stories. Spohr's story involved the creation of a bi-polar world shared by two superpowers both of whom were kept in check with the threat of Mutually Assured Destruction--ultimately the MAD scenario fails and the atomic bombs fly, devastating the earth.  The Spohr idea of scientifically-induced Earth-shredding was preceded by others including H.G. Wells (in 1912?) and Pierrepont Noyes (1927).  (Actually, Noye's first edition of his novel depicting nuclear holocaust was sleepily called "The Pallid Giant"; when re-issued in 1947 he renamed it with more teeth,  Gentlemen You Are Mad.  Noyes is also the son of the founder of the socialistic/semi-utopian Oneida society in upstate New York.  There was a complex of religious pullings going on up there, not the least of which was the living a new human life in the post-second-coming of Christ earth, complex marriage, and free love, a term Noyes' father coined, and which did not go over well outside the community.  For his part, the younger Noyes settled on a more practical end to the community's social and business life, and established a silver- and flat-ware company that became the world's largest of its kind.)  Spohr was six years before A.G. Street's Already Walks Tomorrow, probably the first science fiction/futuristic depiction of worldwide apocalypse via environmental disaster and dystopia.    It was also in 1932 that Aldous Huxley's Brave New World was published, which was the first depiction of a nightmarish end to failed and run-agog utopian planning. (The novel begins in the year 632 A(fter) F(ord), some years after civilization had been destroyed by war. Ford's selection here is also ironic because of his heavily-disputed but well-documented anti-semitism and admiration for Hitler*) Huxley's novel follows by two years the related work of Laurence Manning and Fetcher Pratt, whose City of the Living Dead tells another story of Utopian collapse, this time of the brain deadening possibilities of alternative and virtual realities. 

On the political end--in addition to Hitler's victory in the German elections--was the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, which may well be the true place to start the beginning of World War II. In 1933 Fritz Lang's movie Das Testament des Dr Mabuse is a thinly-veiled tale of a brutish criminal organization taking control of the state via criminal means and is almost immediately banned by the new German government.  The Lang film is basically replaced in the next year by the primum mobile of Nazi propaganda films Triumf des Willens by the filmmaker who wouldn't die, Leni Riefenstahl.  Riefenstahl lived to 101, long past the disgust that she presented so beautifully in her vile lickspittle hearts-and-minds film.  (Few artists have lived to 100; I'm not so sure that any other filmmakers have.)

And so for 1932.  This might all be too free-wheeling, but the more I thought about it, the heavier the year seemed to become.  Perhaps there is something there. 

 From Who Financed Hitler: The Secret Funding of Hitler's Rise to Power 1919-1933 by James Pool and Suzanne Pool (The Dial Press, 1978), pp 111, 129:

"That Henry Ford, the famous automobile manufacturer gave money to the National Socialists directly or indirectly has never been disputed," said Konrad Heiden, one of the first biographers of Hitler.[87] Novelist Upton Sinclair wrote in The Flivver King, a book about Ford, that the Nazis got forty-thousand dollars from Ford to reprint anti-Jewish pamphlets in German translations, and that an additional $300,00 was later sent to Hitler through a grandson of the ex-Kaiser who acted as an intermediary.[88] The US Ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd, said in an interview that "certain American industrialists had a great deal to do with bringing fascist regimes into being in both Germany and Italy."[89] At the time of Dodd's criticisms, the general public was aware that he was speaking of Ford because the press made a direct association between Dodd's statements and other reports of Ford's anti-Semitism.

....

Henry Ford's reward from Hitler finally came in July 1938, when on his seventy-fifth birthday he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle. Ford was the first American and the fourth person in the world to receive this medal, which was the highest decoration that could be given to any non-German citizen. Benito Mussolini, another of Hitler's financiers, had been decorated with the same honor earlier that year.[128]

The presentation was made in Ford's Dearborn office by the German Counsul on Cleveland, Karl Kapp, and Consul Fritz Hailer of Detroit. Kapp placed the silk red sash over Ford's right shoulder. The sash was worn in a diagonal line from the right shoulder to the left hip where it was clasped with a gold and white cross. Kapp then pinned a large, shining star-shaped medal of Ford's white suit. The decoration was given "in recognition of [Ford's] pioneering in making motor cars available for the masses." Hitler's personal congratulatory message accompanied the award.[129]

 

87. Konrad Heiden, Hitler: A Biography, p. 221.
88. Upton Sinclair, The Flivver King: The Story of Ford in America (Pasadena, Calif., 1937), p. 109.
89. Georg Seldes, Facts and Fascism (New York, 1943), p. 122.
128. See Chapter 7.
129. Detroit News, July 31, 1938.

Comments

[jasper]

There are so many events in 1932 that have enormous consequences. They may seem insignificant when viewed in isolate but our histories -- both collective and individual -- are changed because of them.

Hitler becomes a naturalized citizen of Germany.

FDR is elected president of the U.S. for the first time.

Gandhi and Patel are imprisoned by the British.

The French president Doumer is assassinated.

Responsible government is abolished in Newfoundland.

[John Ptak]

True enough, Jasper, though I don't know anything about the Newfoundland part. 1932 was a big year, and when you go, say, three years back and another three forward, the era gets bigger yet.

[jasper]

I couldn't resist including a reference to Canadian history.

Sorry about that.

[Jeff]

jasper, years from now, after Canada has taken over the U.S., that fact about Newfoundland will seem prescient somehow. Historians will ask, "Who is Jas Per?"

[Printed Balloons Northern Ireland]

It seems curious to me that the events of 77 years ago would have such an effect on our present life, I wonder if the future world citizens of 2086 will be saying the same about today??

I must say that personally the thing which has the biggest most obvious impact on me is the book 'Brave New World' which I read about 30 years ago. The images of that story still stay with me to this day.

Jim