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Vets Movement

By Pete Zastrow

With World War I, the modern veterans movement got going in earnest. Much like the experience in Indochina some 50 years later, the seeds of the new militancy and commitment to struggle that characterized the returning veterans were well-rooted in the trenched of European battlefields. The suffering and disillusionment the US troops experienced in Europe, well before they were demobilized, was immense. And mindful of the lessons of previous wars, with the recurring struggles of new vets for a better deal from government, the business interests that ran the US were scared stiff. There were well aware of the need for trying to de-fuse this situation before it exploded.

All over the world people were thinking of revolution. In 1917, the successful Bolshevik Revolution in Russia had scared hell out of the ruling class of Europe and the USA. President Wilson actually sent US troops, the 27th and 31st Infantry, to Siberia and Archangel in hopes of defeating the Bolsheviks. While they were supposedly there to protect "supply lines," these troops directly supported the counter-revolutionary efforts of the White Russians to regain control of the country. Suffering heavy casualties and the effects of the cold and snow, discontent among the troops was everywhere. Protest demonstrations and open displays of support for the working people of Russia finally convinced Wilson that he'd better get the troops out before they all turned into Bolsheviks themselves.

And at home in the US, there was a widespread mass movement against US participation in the war, the likes of which has not been seen until the war in Vietnam. Groups like the Anti-Imperialist League protested US involvement in the war until new sedition laws made it a crime to advocate peace. Some 500,000 men claimed CO status, draft dodging was rampant and troops went "over the hill" by the thousands. The war was simply not popular with the American people. It was being fought for the big business interests in the US and the people knew it.

All in all, nearly 4 million men were mobilized for the war; 116,516 were killed and over 300,000 wounded. But when most of them returned, looking for jobs and their rights as US citizens, they found instead deathtrap factories, low wages, unemployment, and repression: it was anything but a good deal that America's "doughboys" encountered once back home. And with the approaching economic crash things were getting worse all the time. But the bosses, long aware of the economic problems that follow a war -- and the accompanying raise in the militance of veterans -- were determined to keep things as they were.

For the more than 367,000 Black troops returning from WWI, things were even worse. In addition to the mounting economic problems, they came back to a revived Ku Klux Klan and what was to be the worst series of race riots in US history. In the so-called "Red Summer of 1919," riots provoked by groups like the KKK, and actively encouraged by reactionary politicians everywhere, left hundreds of Blacks murdered, lynched and burned alive. In the first months following the war at least 24 Black GI's were murdered: 14 lynched or burned alive while still in uniform. Riots in Chicago left 38 people dead with similar incidents occurring in Charleston, Knoxville, and Washington DC. Spokesmen for the Klan and local governments said that the "trouble" had been caused by the French, who had "spoiled" the Black troops, and by the Russian Bolsheviks, who had given them "communist ideas." but everywhere, Black veterans were fighting back. Joel E. Spingarn, an army major and former NAACP chairman, described black anger: "Every colored soldier that I have talked with in France, Germany or American had a grievance. If there should be a development of Bolshevism in this country it is plainly evident where these soldiers would take their stand."

In response to these conditions, the veteran's movement grew by leaps and bounds. The response to the movement was to try to destroy it. The official History of the American Legion noted the situation: "morale was shot to pieces. You heard that every day...something had to be done...measures are devised to give outlet...when the men should reach home and be demobilized. If not, almost anything might happen...every 'Bolshevik' movement to date had had its inception among disaffected troops or soldiers newels discharged." Carefully planning for the future, one such method "divided the give outlet" to vets rising frustrations and anger was the creation of the American Legion itself.

The American Legion was founded on orders from the headquarters of US forces in Europe at a secret meeting of 20 high-ranking officers (including the son of Teddy Roosevelt) on February 15th, 1919, in Paris. Like many other veterans groups begun in this period (the VFW and the DAV), the American Legion has, since its creation, been dedicated, not to the service of vets, but to the service of the corporate business interests that really run this country. The last thing the founders of the Legion had in mind was to fight for the postwar needs of WWI vets. It was a setup job from the start; designed to act as a buffer between the demands of angry rank and file vets on the government for pensions, disability compensation, etc.

In addition to wanting to kill the development of a real fighting veteran's movement, the Legion was also trying to utilize vets at home after the war as an ultra-reactionary force. It wasn't by chance that the Legion mobilized its forces as strike breakers on many occasions during the 20's and 30's. Whipped up hysteria demanding the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, or the Legionairres castrated and lynched a WWI organizer in Washington state in 1919. From the beginning, the Legion and groups like it have consistently opposed any form of a mass veteran's movement that actually tried to fight for vet's demands. Rather their goals were to try to prevent vet organizations into advocates of blind militarism, vicious red-baiting, and the most reactionary form of "red-white-and-blue Americanism." But despite all their foresight and planning, their attempts failed. The havoc caused by WWI and the unprecedented economic crisis that grew out of its ashes gave rise to the strongest and most militant vets movement ever seen in US history. With the crash of 1929, there was no stopping it.

(Next: The Bonus March of 1932)