Interlude

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Riley
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Food Aid ◽  
World War ◽  
White House

Modern American food aid cannot be understood without understanding the plight of the rural farmer between the two world wars. At the end of World War I, these farmers, responding to Hoover’s call to “plow to the fences,” were suddenly producing far too much for a world rapidly returning to peacetime. Farmers had bought additional land on credit. Now they lacked sufficient income to make payment of the loans. Defaults mounted; rural banks padlocked their doors by the thousands. Presidents Coolidge and Hoover sought private rather than public remedies, but without success. Bills sent to the White House to provide relief to farmers were vetoed. When Roosevelt arrived in the White House, millions of tons of grain were rotting in storage across the country because consumers were too poor to pay enough for basic foodstuffs to enable farmers to earn enough to survive.

The Political History of American Food Aid

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Riley
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
Vietnam War ◽  
Political Support ◽  
Food Aid ◽  
The Political ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
Agriculture Sector ◽  
History Of

This book discusses the 220-year history of the political and humanitarian uses of American food as a tool of both foreign and domestic policy. During these years, food aid has been used as a weapon against the expansion of bolshevism after World War I and communism after World War II, a cudgel to force policy changes by recalcitrant recipient governments, a method for balancing disputes between Israel and Egypt, a backdoor means of increasing military aid to Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, a signal of support to friendly governments, and a resource to help achieve economic development in food-insecure countries. At home, international food aid has, at times, been used to dump troublesome food surpluses abroad and has served politicians as a tool to secure the votes of farming constituents and the political support of agriculture-sector lobbyists, commodity traders, transporters, and shippers. Most important in the minds of many, it has been the most visible—and most popular—means of providing humanitarian aid to tens of millions of hungry men, women, and children confronted, on distant shores, by war, terrorism, and natural cataclysms and the resulting threat—if not the reality—of famine and death. The book investigates the little-known, not well-understood, and often highly contentious political processes that have converted fields of grains, crops of pulses, and herds of livestock into the tools of U.S. government policy.

Eleanor Roosevelt’s Remarkable Transition From the White House Into Widowhood, 1945–1946

2017 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-70
Author(s):  
Harold Ivan Smith
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War I ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Financial Security ◽  
World War ◽  
Unexpected Death ◽  
First Lady ◽  
White House ◽  
The World

Eleanor Roosevelt experienced demanding challenges following the unexpected death of her husband, Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR), the president of the United States, on April 12, 1945. That she was no longer first lady led to a series of secondary losses: the loss of status, the loss of staff, the loss of financial security, and, within a week, the loss of her primary residence, The White House. Her transition into “Widow Roosevelt” was complicated by her discovery that FDR had died in the presence of Lucy Mercer Rutherfurd, with whom he had had an affair during World War I. As a condition for staying married and having a political career, he agreed never to see Lucy again. The circumstances of FDR’s betrayal and death were kept secret for nearly two decades. A week after FDR’s death, Eleanor answered a question about her future by a New York Times reporter, with a tense, “The story is over.” However, Harry Truman, FDR’s successor, had other ideas and appointed her as a delegate to the United Nations. Over the next 17 years, Eleanor evolved into “First Lady of the World” and had a significant role in world affairs and American politics.

The Stern, Unflinching Performance of Duty

2019 ◽  
pp. 150-179
Author(s):  
John M. Thompson
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Leadership Style ◽  
World War ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
White House ◽  
Limited Support ◽  
La Follette

Chapter 7 analyzes Roosevelt’s career after leaving the White House, with a focus on World War I. It considers his relationship with Woodrow Wilson and argues that, although TR disagreed with Wilson on key policies and regarding Wilson’s leadership style, his attacks on the president were personal and often so extreme that they were counterproductive. The chapter argues that though Roosevelt’s advocacy of two themes, preparedness and Americanism, initially attracted limited support, by 1916 he had begun to play a key role in shaping public discussions about the war. Though Roosevelt’s rhetoric was sometimes incendiary and contributed to discrimination against German-Americans and antiwar figures such as Senator Robert La Follette, by 1918 he emerged as a leading candidate for president in 1920. Only TR’s death, in early 1919, prevented his return to the pinnacle of US politics.

Between the Wars

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry Riley
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
The United States ◽  
Food Aid ◽  
World War ◽  
American Government ◽  
The World ◽  
Relief Program ◽  
Bail Out ◽  
The U.S

The years after World War I and before World War II saw famine, death, and revolution in many parts of the world. Russia suffered these calamities and worse. Hoover found himself again caught up in a struggle to feed millions of foreign citizens with American food. This time the supplicant was bolshevist Russia, a hated enemy, where famine had already caused the deaths of millions. The U.S. Congress was even more unwilling than before to aid Russia, wondering out loud why the United States should bail out a country that was so intent on falling to pieces. This chapter recounts how Hoover overcame U.S. legislative resistance and organized a major relief program in a country with an extremely anti-American government, where transport hardly worked, and where social organizations were frozen in indecision. The chapter then sums up the vastly changed character of American food aid over the period 1794–1924.

The Mexican-German Conspiracy of 1915

1966 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-89 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael C. Meyer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Mexico ◽  
World War I ◽  
Foreign Minister ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Woodrow Wilson ◽  
German Government ◽  
White House ◽  
Good Percentage

The Zimmermann telegram of 1917, the attempt of the German government to bring Mexico into World War I on the side of the Central Powers, is a well-known diplomatic episode because it is generally conceded to be one of the series of factors which convinced President Woodrow Wilson of the efficacy of abandoning his policy of neutrality. In return for her co-operation, and upon the successful conclusion of the war, Mexico was to “recover the lost territory in Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.” On March 1, 1917, when the incident was recorded in the United States press and before either the State Department or the White House issued a confirmation or a denial, many congressmen and a good percentage of the United States public considered the note to be a brazen forgery and a great hoax. Had they realized that Foreign Minister Arthur Zimmermann’s proposal to Venustiano Carranza was not a bold and newly devised scheme but rather the climax of several years of intrigue with various Mexican officials and exile groups and had they been aware that the idea of restoring the territory lost in the middle of the nineteenth century was a Mexican rather than a German idea, there would have been but little reason to dispute the validity of the document in question.

Through the prism of Spain. Socio-economic causes of different outcomes of Russian and Spanish civil wars

2017 ◽  
pp. 142-155
Author(s):  
I. Rozinskiy ◽  
N. Rozinskaya
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
World War I ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Statistical Data ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Russian Civil War ◽  
World War ◽  
Common Features ◽  
Economic Well Being

The article examines the socio-economic causes of the outcome of the Spanish Civil War (1936-1936), which, as opposed to the Russian Civil War, resulted in the victory of the “Whites”. Choice of Spain as the object of comparison with Russia is justified not only by similarity of civil wars occurred in the two countries in the XX century, but also by a large number of common features in their history. Based on statistical data on the changes in economic well-being of different strata of Spanish population during several decades before the civil war, the authors formulate the hypothesis according to which the increase of real incomes of Spaniards engaged in agriculture is “responsible” for their conservative political sympathies. As a result, contrary to the situation in Russia, where the peasantry did not support the Whites, in Spain the peasants’ position predetermined the outcome of the confrontation resulting in the victory of the Spanish analogue of the Whites. According to the authors, the possibility of stable increase of Spanish peasants’ incomes was caused by the nation’s non-involvement in World War I and also by more limited, compared to Russia and some other countries, spending on creation of heavy (primarily military-related) industry in Spain.

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