1938

Sheldon Spear

Description

This work examines aspects of U.S. history centering on the year 1938. Aviation, entertainment, and notable persons constitute much of the coverage, while a crisp style will attract readers.

Erika Funke, WVIA Senior Producer/Program Host, recommends this book:



"The word "panorama" was introduced in the 1780s by Irish Artist Robert Barker,

derived from Greek roots suggesting "a complete view." Barker hoped the viewer

would "feel as if really on the spot."



In titling his study 1938: American Historical Panorama, Dr. Spear

signals his aim in examining this pivotal year, giving us the "big picture"

but also human stories that allow us to "feel as if really on the spot."



And clarity is a hallmark of his writing. The complex, multilayered

Spanish Civil War is narrated with all its contradictions.

The factions, alliances and consequences are explained with

straightforward comprehensibility, and we feel the suffering of the civilians.



Dr. Spear gives us a strong grounding in a critical year while evoking echoes in our own times. He addresses matters of race, gender, justice and the media

in the big picture and through people's stories, so we feel the impact."



Summary:

Isolationism kept the U. S. out of war, but several thousand left-leaning Americans volunteered to fight in the Spanish Civil. There was also the diversion of a radio “war” as actor-director Orson Welles orchestrated an on-air version of the H. G. Wells 1890s science fiction classic about a Martian invasion of Earth.

Advances in aviation were indeed real, however. The most successful effort belonged to Howard Hughes. Nineteen thirty-eight also marked the advent of the first “superhero,” Superman. But the Great Depression was still on-going.

Yet misery in America was not universal. The advent of Swing, pioneered by bandleaders such as Benny Goodman, made the latter thirties a new Jazz Age. And baseball, seemed more exciting than ever. It included the efforts of Detroit’s Hank Greenberg to break Babe Ruth’s record of sixty homeruns set in 1927.

Sujets

• Histoire
• Béisbol
• Television
• Antisemitism
• History
• War
• Baseball
• Aviation
• 1938

Informations

• Publié par: Archway Publishing
• Date de parution: 09 mai 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781665740289
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

1938 American Historical Panorama
Sheldon Spear


Copyright © 2023 Sheldon Spear.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
 
Archway Publishing
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.archwaypublishing.com
844-669-3957
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6657-4027-2 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6657-4028-9 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2023904661
 
 
 
Archway Publishing rev. date: 05/03/2023
CONTENTS
Dedication
Introduction
 
Chapter 1 The Great Long Island/New England Hurricane of September 21, 1938
Chapter 2 Drifting Toward War
Chapter 3 Americans and the Spanish Civil War
Chapter 4 Another “War”: Radio’s War of the Worlds
Chapter 5 Aviation Heroes
Chapter 6 Advent of the Superhero
Chapter 7 Political Extremism, American Style
Chapter 8 Dealing with Nazi Anti-Semitism
Chapter 9 Our Own Racism: Black Life in America
Chapter 10 The Kings of Swing
Chapter 11 LIFE (September 19, 1938)
Chapter 12 Major League Baseball Highlights
Chapter 13 The Written Word: Books, Plays, Newspapers, and Magazines
Chapter 14 Mass Entertainment: The Movies and Radio
Chapter 15 A Depression Within a Depression: The Recession of 1937-38
Chapter 16 A Few Notables of the 1930s
Chapter 17 More Notables
Chapter 18 Still More Notables: Female Flyers in the “Golden Age of Aviation”
Chapter 19 Philo T. Farnsworth: Founding Father of Television
Chapter 20 Brooklyn, New York: Glimpses of a Hometown
 
About the Author
DEDICATION
To the future generation, my granddaughters Erin and Paige Greenfield, Zoe and Cora Spear, and Miriam and Ruth Lemberg-Spear. And in memory of Marilyn Spear, my sister, Robert “Sandy” Sanjour, my brother-in-law, Matt Kruger, my friend, and Bob Mittrick, my colleague.
INTRODUCTION
Books on history take a variety of forms. They can be biographical or autobiographical, short or lengthy monographs, or highly analytical studies sometimes influenced by other social sciences, especially economics.
Included too are books that focus on short, or relatively short time periods. The late Barbara Tuchman wrote a number of these, the best known of which are The Guns of August (on the weeks leading to the outbreak of the First World War), The Proud Tower (on Europe at the turn of the twentieth century), and A Distant Mirror (on the curious resemblance of the fourteenth century to the twentieth). American journalist Otto Friedrich authored Before the Deluge , a portrait of Berlin in the decade before the ascent of Nazism. Another genre consists of books that concentrate on a single year or less. One excellent example is British scholar Giles MacDonogh’s 1938. Hitler’s Gamble , which details the Nazi leader’s overcoming the still formidable opposition to him within the army’s leadership ranks and his cowing of Britain and France in the months before the Munich Agreement.
Public historian Jay Winik has produced two fine books of this type on American history: April 1865: The Month that Saved America and 1944: FDR and the Year that Changed History . Nineteen twenty and nineteen twenty-seven have drawn the talents of three writers: Eric Burns’ 1920: The Year that Made the Decade Roar; Gerald Leinwand’s 1927: High Tide of the Twenties ; and Bill Bryson’s One Summer: America, 1927 .
With a bit of trepidation, I followed the coverage pattern of the last three studies, which eventually resulted in 1938: American Historical Panorama . As an historically knowledgeable cousin of mine reminded me, other years in our country’s past were equally characterized by innovation and/or chaos. I agreed. But perhaps 1938, a year of general peace – with the exception of major wars in Spain and China – is at least near the top of the innovation-chaos continuum.
Autumn of 1938 brought one of the worst hurricanes to ravage American soil since the beginning of European colonization. The storm of September 21 st killed approximately 680 people, and that was more than the 1871 Chicago Fire and the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake combined. Eastern Long Island and most of New England were devastated. The storm’s destructiveness can perhaps best be grasped by its felling of 275,000,000 trees!
Although the world was still generally at peace in 1938, the prospects of the U. S. being drawn into a future war were increasing. Germany seemed to be pushing Europe into another general conflict, and its espionage agents were already active here. Just as ominous was Japan’s vicious aggression against China, some of which touched Americans. For example, in December 1937 Japanese aircraft sank the U. S. Navy gunboat Panay . It had been cruising the Yangtze River in case it was needed to safeguard the lives of Americans during the assault on Nanking. Later, in the summer of 1938, while flying over Chinese soil, an American civilian plane suffered a similar fate. Meanwhile, across the world in Spain, approximately two thousand volunteers from the U. S. eventually joined the conflict against General Franco’s rebels who were heavily supported by Germany and Italy. More than eight hundred Americans died in the Spanish Civil War.
Members of the Abraham Lincoln Battalion and their compatriots fighting in Spain were genuine heroes, though not always recognized as such at home. There was little if any discord, however, about the heroic qualities of pioneer aviators. Charles A. Lindbergh had long led the field due to his 1927 solo transatlantic flight. But by the late thirties, his status had declined because of his obvious admiration for Hitler’s Germany. Howard Hughes, a one-time and future movie producer, had broken several speed records in flights over U. S. territory. In 1938, with a small crew and an ultra-modern plane he himself had partly designed, Hughes became the nation’s new top aviator by breaking the record for circumnavigating the globe.
Nineteen thirty-eight also saw the advent of the superhero. Two young men from a Jewish immigrant neighborhood of Cleveland, writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, sold Superman to a comic book company. He became popular immediately and, in time, there was a Superman comic strip, a radio show, a movie serial, and several TV shows and feature films. This superhero also inspired others, such as Batman, Captain Marvel, and Wonder Woman. Unfortunately for Jerry and Joe, corporate interests kept them from making the huge profits they thought they deserved for their creative efforts.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was a bit of a superhero himself – certainly among the most popular of U. S presidents. His New Deal clearly dominated the country’s politics. Yet the miseries associated with the Great Depression, before and during 1938, stimulated the growth of radical groups of both the left and the right.
Membership in the Communist Party of the United States rose from 7,000 in 1930 to 75,000 in 1938, not counting “fellow travelers.” Massive unemployment certainly aided recruitment, but so did the party’s embrace of idealistic causes. That strategy drew many intellectuals and young people. At least half the Americans fighting fascism in Spain, for instance, were party members.
Extremism of the right was also part of the country’s political life by 1938. There were numerous right-wing organizations, though many of them were small. They differed from conservatives by their focus on white supremacy, anti-Semitism, and fulsome praise for European fascism. The two largest groups were probably the German-American Bund and the followers of Father Charles E. Coughlin.
The Bund was outwardly more akin to Germany’s Nazis than any other neo-fascist group in the U. S. Most of its members were German-born aliens whose uniforms included Swastika arm bands and military-style gray shirts similar to those worn by Hitler’s Brown Shirts. Father Coughlin evolved from an ordinary Catholic priest in a Detroit-area parish to an enthusiastic supporter of the New Deal and, by 1938, to a fervent acolyte of Hitler and Mussolini. His success largely stemmed from skillful radio broadcasts that attracted millions.
Nineteen thirty-eight was not a good year economically for America. A modest recovery had been visible from 1933 to the spring of 1937, but by the fall of the latter year there was “a recession within a recession,” (also called “the Roosevelt recession” by his political foes). The situation improved somewhat by the summer of 1938, although a really strong economy did not become apparent before the rearmament drive of 1940-41.
Still, for many people, life had its positive side. The “Kings of Swing” – bandleaders Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw, and many others – brought the variety of Jazz known as Swing to the height of its popularity. The wild dancing, or jitterbugging, of teenagers often accompanied the frenetic rhythms. And even at home residents could engage in listening or even dancing to the lively songs emanating from thei