American History Tellers - The Great Depression - Justice and Infamy | 6

Episode Date: March 27, 2019

As legal challenges to his New Deal programs mounted, President Roosevelt and his attorney general devised dramatic reforms to the Supreme Court’s structure. The proposed changes would open new rifts between the president and conservative members of his own party.Other greater challenges loomed. A recession was threatening to unwind four years of economic recovery. The Senate launched a politicized investigation into purported un-American activities in federal work programs.And on the other side of the world, a global crisis was building as war erupted in Asia and Europe. As the country re-armed and factories retooled to supply soon-to-be allies, the nationally finally pulled itself from the depths of Depression.Support us by supporting our sponsors!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge new seasons of American History Tellers early and ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Imagine it's the end of March 1937. You work as a maid at a hotel in Walla Walla, Washington. You make only 25 cents an hour, even though your boss is supposed to be paying you 30, but at least it's something. As you're changing the bedding in one of your rooms, you hear a shriek of delight down the hall. It's a strange thing to hear this early in the afternoon, especially because there are so few guests checked in today. You walk down the hall and see your

fellow chambermaid, Lucy, sitting on a bed and grinning. What's going on in here, Luce? Find another dollar in the bathroom? I might as well have. They did it, Sue. Robert's switch. I just heard it on the radio. You look at Lucy confused. Robert's who? Owen Roberts, the Supreme Court Justice. You don't read the newspaper, do you? I'm too busy to read the paper. You should be too. Mr. Putnam's going to be over here soon, and he's going to be anything but pleased if he sees you goofing off. Lucy rolls her eyes. Don't you get it? Putnam can't be such a jerk to us anymore. At least, now he's actually going to have to pay us 30 cents an hour if he's going to yell at us. Roberts voted for Parrish. Wait, Parrish won? You've heard a little bit about Elsie Parrish. She works over

in Wenatchee at another hotel. She and her husband sued the company that owned their hotel for back pay. And the talk among hotel workers was always about how if she won, your own hotel would really have to pay women a minimum wage too. But no one thought she'd win. So FDR doesn't need all those new judges? You knew cases like parishes were why Roosevelt wanted to pack the Supreme Court with new justices. All the old ones were taking the new deal apart, piece by piece. Lucy turns to you. You know the look in her eye. She's making a plan. Guess not. Guess we just needed Roberts. We can finally get Putnam to pay us what he owes, too. Can you believe it? Well, I could sure use the money.

But what I really believe is that I need to get back to work, and so do you. Putnam might owe us a nickel more an hour, but he won't pay me anything if I get fired. You turn and walk quickly down the hallway. Your mind is on the tasks ahead. Getting the bedding in order. Hauling away the laundry. But now there's something else, too. The things might, just might, be changing for the better.

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Our history, your story. President Franklin Roosevelt started his second presidential term in 1937 on energetic footing. Many viewed his re-election in November 1936 as a rubber stamp for his New Deal reforms, as Roosevelt won with the widest electoral college margin since James Monroe in 1820 and the largest popular vote in history up to that point. And Roosevelt's second New Deal, especially its Works Progress Administration jobs program, was wildly popular. The country was getting back to work,

and the New Deal was paying off politically for the president. Things were looking up, or so it seemed. In 1937, the new year brought new obstacles. Legal challenges to New Deal policies had been winding their way through court since the programs were launched. Now, the Supreme Court was starting to decide on these cases, and it was led by a conservative majority that was critical of Roosevelt's politics. The economy was also starting to sputter. Roosevelt had to guide it through the turmoil without incurring irreparable political wounds, even as the country was drawn closer to violent confrontation on the world stage.

European dictators were seizing new territory, a civil war in Spain foreshadowed a coming cataclysm, and a long-simmering conflict in East Asia was about to boil over. This is episode six of our six-part series on the Great Depression, Justice and Infamy. Almost immediately after Roosevelt became president, his New Deal policies came under severe attack by big business and other interests. Eventually, these attacks turned into lawsuits, and when the legal challenges bubbled up through the judicial system, they frequently landed in the Supreme Court,

that was largely unsympathetic to the New Deal. For the entirety of his first term, Roosevelt didn't have the opportunity to appoint justices to the Supreme Court. Instead, he dealt with a court that consisted of four justices who were outright conservatives and three who shared his liberal outlook. The remaining two, Associate Justice Owen Roberts and Chief Justice Charles Evan Hughes, were considered the court's swing votes. In 1935, the Supreme Court began ruling against various New Deal programs. It invalidated the National Industrial Recovery Act, an initiative

that regulated wages and ensured industrial competition that was passed during Roosevelt's hectic first 100 days. The court also rejected the Agricultural Adjustment Act, which allowed the government to subsidize farmers not to grow certain crops. And in June 1936, the court found a New York state minimum wage law that safeguarded basic pay for women and children unconstitutional. The pushback against the New Deal appeared to be building. Overall, the court cited against New Deal programs in 11 of the 16 cases it heard during Roosevelt's first term.

Often Roberts and Hughes sided with the more conservative justices. And then, shortly after Roosevelt's November 1936 re-election, the court heard another minimum wage case, this time from Washington State. It was called West Coast Hotel Company v. Parrish. Other cases around the same time also took aim at New Deal programs. One threatened to strip the National Labor Relations Act, otherwise known as the Wagner Act, and another focused on dismantling Social Security. Roosevelt grew alarmed that two of his signature programs were in jeopardy. If he didn't do something soon to change the court's makeup, he thought, his work would be undermined. And so, as early as 1935, the president had asked his attorney general, Homer Cummings,

to study potential reforms that might limit the Supreme Court's power. For more than a year, Cummings worked in near-total secrecy. Finally, by the second week of Roosevelt's second term, Cummings told Roosevelt he had a plan he was satisfied with. The president and a small number of inner-circle advisors were convinced of Cummings' new plan, but the group decided to wait a few more days before they revealed the details to other cabinet members or allies in Congress. The reason for the delay was the White House's annual state dinner for Supreme Court justices was coming up, and their secret plan was sure to be controversial. It was best to keep it under wraps. At 8 p.m. on February 2, 1937, seven of nine

justices arrived as the guests of honor for the dinner. Only 80-year-old Justice Brandeis, who always went to bed at 9 p.m., and Justice Harlan Stone, who was sick, did not attend. It was an elaborate formal affair attended by the justices' families, as well as a number of VIPs and government officials. Neither Roosevelt nor Cummings nor anyone in on the Attorney General's plan gave any hint they were about to put the court at the center of an intense public debate. At the dinner, everyone seemed to have fun, though Cummings wrote in his diary that night that he was uncomfortable, telling Roosevelt speechwriter Sam Rosenman that he felt like a conspirator, because that night, at 11.20 p.m., the president retired to his residence,

and there he, Cummings, and the small-circle advisors put the finishing touches on their secret plan. Barely two days later, at 10 a.m. on the morning of February 5th, Roosevelt shocked his cabinet when he disclosed the proposal. An hour later, he told Congress and the public, setting off a debate that generated fierce arguments in the coming days. Cummings' aim was to give the president more influence over the court, but he cloaked it as a reform about the age of its justices. If enacted by Congress, the reform would allow the president to expand the nine-member court to as many as 15 justices. Publicly, the president

had said he wanted to spread out the court's workload, but in actuality, he was proposing a mechanism to shape a court that would protect his New Deal policies. The details of the plan relied on recent changes to an aging high court. Six of the justices serving on the Supreme Court when Roosevelt introduced his proposal were already older than 70. But five years earlier, prior to Roosevelt's presidency, Congress had slashed justices' pensions to half of their salary. Roosevelt's new plan asked Congress to give justices the option to resign with a full pension once they turned 70, making it more attractive for the older justices to retire.

The proposed rules also authorized the president to add one additional justice to the bench, termed an assistant justice, whenever an existing justice turned 70 years old but chose not to resign. Such a change, the president argued, would spread out caseloads among as many as 15 total justices. Roosevelt also argued that it was within the Congress's authority to change the court's size. The current nine-justice structure had been established by an 1869 law passed by Congress, not the Constitution. He further believed that he'd win Congress's support given the Democrats' significant majorities in both the House and the Senate. The president, however, was not prepared for the swift opposition that followed.

In a major blow to Roosevelt's push, Chief Justice Charles Evan Hughes, himself a member of the court's liberal minority, wrote to the Senate and insisted that the court was by no means overburdened. He strongly defended the current nine-justice structure, and Roosevelt's own vice president, John Nance Garner, also broke with the president and opposed the court packing plan. Another of the judicial reform plan's most vociferous opponents was Montana Senator Burton K. Wheeler, one of Franklin Roosevelt's first and most enthusiastic supporters. During Roosevelt's campaign for the presidency in 1932, Wheeler claimed Roosevelt was a champion of the little

fellow. But Wheeler was even more champion of the court and was shocked by Roosevelt's audacious proposal. He said he was flabbergasted by the move. Wheeler cared about justice, and he cared about political integrity. As a lawyer, he revered the power of the court. He once stressed to oral historian Stuz Terkel that during World War I, the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court, had been the only body upholding people's rights, even if it had been imperfect in doing so.

And so when the president began taking on the court, Wheeler's support for Roosevelt turned. Here was an unsubtle and anti-constitution grab for power which would destroy the court as an institution, the senator said. The public, too, weighed in across the nation. They sent strongly worded letters to newspapers and to their local lawmakers. Professors and lawyers wrote columns decrying the changes. Stocks even dropped as investors got the jitters. Cartoonists satirized the idea and broad and biting parodies splashed across the broadsheets. And as the debate raged, the Supreme Court began to issue rulings on the New Deal programs, with some surprising outcomes. On March 29, 1937, the court announced its decision in West Coast Hotels v. Parrish, the case on minimum wage.

Since the case was so similar to the earlier one in New York in which justices struck down minimum wage protections, few expected the Washington case to produce a different result. But this time, Owen Roberts joined Justices Louis Brandeis, Benjamin Cardozo, Harlan Fiske Stone, and Charles Evans Hughes to uphold Washington's minimum wage law. It was a victory for Roosevelt. Instantly, Justice Roberts' shift became known as the stitch in time that saved nine. The trend towards saving New Deal policies continued. After the Parrish case, Roberts and Hughes ruled with the court's liberal minority in cases dealing with Social Security and the Wagner Act. Both New Deal programs were saved. Then, in May, one of the conservative

justices, William Van De Vanter, retired. President Roosevelt nominated Alabama Senator Hugo Black to replace VanDeVanter. The Senate confirmed Black that August. But despite the changed makeup of the court, Roosevelt didn't back down from his reform bill. He still sought to appoint additional justices that were more sympathetic to his policies. And in July 1937, the reform bill went to a vote. But the outcome wasn't even close. The Senate voted 70 to 22 to reject the proposal. The defeat humiliated the president. In retaliation, he openly campaigned in midterms against nine Midwestern and Southern senators

who had opposed his reform bill. But he couldn't overcome their popularity in their home states, and all nine were re-elected. How did Birkenstocks go from a German cobbler's passion project 250 years ago to the Barbie movie today? Who created that bottle of red Sriracha with a green top that's permanently living in your fridge? Did you know that the Air Jordans were initially banned by the NBA? We'll explore all that and more in The Best Idea Yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy. This is Nick.

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Stay for the business insights that are going to blow up your group chat. Jack, Nintendo, Super Mario Brothers, best-selling video game of all time. How'd they do it? Nintendo never fires anyone. Ever. Follow The Best Idea Yet on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to The Best Idea Yet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. For more than two centuries, the White House has been the stage for some of the most dramatic scenes in American history.

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wherever you get your books. Imagine it's April 12, 1938. You get off the subway at Grand Central Terminal in New York City, climb to the lobby, and step into the bright beam of spring sunlight. As your eyes adjust, you see a crowd gathered at the front door. You brush down your vest, straighten your jacket, and head over. There must be hundreds of people crowded outside, maybe thousands. The crowd parts around two police motorcycles and a van which comes to a stop by the baggage room. Two groups of three men, each shackled to one another, step out as police officers hold back the surging crowd. Most of the prisoners look haggard in their street clothes, but one of them

stands out. He wears a dapper blue serge suit, a polo coat, and a gray felt hat. The crowd boos and hisses when they see him. The man in front of you spits on the ground. What a scumbag. What dapper as ever. The man in front of you turns around and sneers at your own tailored suit. Well, if it ain't J.P. Morgan himself. Who asked you, Mr. Rockefeller? Mr. Madison Avenue? You adjust your time. Hey, I have as much reason to be mad about Whitney as anybody. He stole from us, too. But you cut yourself off.

This man doesn't need to know that you're a member of the New York Yacht Club. Whereas Treasurer Richard Whitney, the man now shackled before you in his sharp suit, embezzled thousands of dollars. He stole from Harvard, his father's estate, even a New York Stock Exchange fund for widows and children. I'm just trying to say, I think many of us are glad he's going to jail. Well, who ain't? That's a real bum they got there. Said he was saving Wall Street back on Black Thursday. Well, I don't know about you, fancy pants, but I haven't felt very saved these last few years.

Well, I know how you feel. No, sir, you really don't. You really do not know how good it feels to see someone like you in handcuffs. When the Depression began, Richard Whitney seemed like a hero. On Black Thursday, October 24, 1929, Whitney was the president of the New York Stock Exchange, and he tried to stop the panic selling. At least, he made a show of trying to do so

when he walked onto the exchange floor and announced he was buying $5 million worth of blue-chip stocks. It was a successful ploy that temporarily eased Wall Street's panic. And in the ensuing years, Whitney continued to perform as the stock exchange's champion. A Harvard graduate with a brother who was also an executive at J.P. Morgan, Whitney traveled in New York's most elite circles. He was also going broke. Richard Whitney & Company, the stock brokerage Whitney founded, was hemorrhaging money. He'd lost more than $2 million in the 1929 crash alone. But nobody knew how bad things were for Whitney until March 1938. That's when the newly launched Security and Exchange Commission

started investigating Whitney's brokerage. The SEC discovered that Whitney's company had been bankrupt for three years. A series of bad investments in the early 30s had left Whitney unable to pay for the lavish lifestyle he'd created for himself. So to cover his losses, Whitney started borrowing against securities owned by his father-in-law's estate, without authorization. He also dipped into funds at the New York Yacht Club, where he was treasurer, and embezzled from a widows' and children's fund for which he was a trustee. To keep up appearances, Whitney falsified records and lied about the health of his company.

All the while, Whitney vociferously fought any proposed reforms to trading and investing. While he secretly defrauded family, friends, and colleagues, Whitney publicly defended the status quo and advocated repeatedly against government intervention in the market. In 1934, as the Senate debated the formation of the FCC, the organization that would ultimately uncover his criminality, and after Whitney had already begun his thievery, Whitney championed the market's ability to regulate itself. He had even earned a spot on the cover of Time magazine in February of that year and insisted that the New York Stock Exchange was a perfect institution. All of that came crashing down after the SEC's probe.

Whitney was charged with grand larceny in a New York court, quickly convicted, and sentenced to five to ten years in prison. He served three. Other figures from the Wall Street boom of the 1920s also came under government scrutiny, but few experienced as dramatic a downfall as Whitney. When President Roosevelt started his second term in 1937, he began his inaugural address by appearing to target figures like Whitney. The president never directly named Whitney, nor any other person. But like the rest of the country, he didn't yet know about Whitney's crimes. Instead, Roosevelt highlighted how the New Deal's reforms had brought

private autocratic powers into their proper subordination to the public's government. He also said the federal government had helped shatter the myth that the corporate titans who helped bring on the 1929 crash and the ensuing depression were invincible. If pressioned about Whitney's fate, the address had not been a victory speech. Aside from trumpeting the New Deal's accomplishments, the president acknowledged the distance the country still had to travel to recover from the Depression. His terms were blunt. Roosevelt said that the tens of millions of the country's citizens were denied the necessities of life, even judging by the very lowest standards of today. The president called conditions for many so bad that they would have been labeled indecent by a so-called polite society half a century ago.

Roosevelt saw one-third of a nation ill-housed, ill-clad, ill-nourished. The term one-third of a nation would gain new life in the coming months and prove to be an inspiration for progressive activists and a lightning rod for conservative opponents. Imagine it's May 23rd, 1938. You're an actor and director from Seattle. But tonight, though, you're not acting or directing. You're narrating a play called One Third a Nation. This is the first time you're performing this show before a live audience, and it's pretty darn political. You don't know if they'll boo or cheer.

But right now, you don't care. You're thrilled and petrified all at the same time as you wait for the curtain to rise. Edwin, the show's lead and co-director, walks in. Hey, everyone. Curtain's in ten minutes. Be sharp. We have some bigwigs in the audience. What kind of bigwigs? No less than the entire Seattle Housing Commission. Remember, these are the kinds of people we really want to inform here. Ready, David? Absolutely.

Is Esther in place with the flames? Almost. You see Esther making last-minute adjustments to the elaborate pulley system she rigged up for the opening scene when a tenement house catches on fire. All right, places, everybody, let's make a good impression. The actors hustle out of the dressing room and get into position. Edwin pulls you aside. I think it worked. What do you mean? The flyers and the taxis, the radio ads, everything. Oh yeah, big crowd out there? Big as you can get. I mean, for a rundown old movie house like this. I know you thought we were too far from Seattle, but like I said, these free tickets for the housing commission worked, and they're going to hear us. It's starting to get quieter outside of the dressing room. Curtains are about to rise.

Well, let's give them all we've got. Arthur Aaron's One Third of a Nation was long anticipated in Seattle. Produced for just $242.75, it was staged far south of Seattle in a converted, rundown movie theater in the Rainier Valley and ran for two months. That made it the longest-running performance of the Seattle Federal Theater Program. In 1935, when the Roosevelt administration launched the Works Progress Administration, it included a plan for government-sponsored art, theater, writing, and music, known as Federal Project No. 1, or Federal One. Among these was the performance arts-focused Federal Theater Project.

Harry Hopkins, the Roosevelt advisor who administered the WPA, tapped a Vassar professor named Hallie Flanagan to develop and run the federal theater program. Flanagan had three primary responsibilities, provide jobs in theater, educate the public, and provide low-cost entertainment to communities still recovering from the Depression. In addition to staging classic plays, the Federal Theater Program also staged original productions. Flanagan devised an innovative and intensely controversial form for some of these productions, the living newspaper.

Living newspapers were an opportunity for Federal Theater casts and crews to bring headlines to life. Critics already opposed to the New Deal were incensed by the concept. They felt American taxpayers were being asked to pay for propaganda promoting the New Deal or other progressive causes. One third of a nation, for example, suggested that publicly subsidized housing offered the solution to the country's wretched inner-city living conditions.

Even children's productions produced by federal theater stirred the pot. One 1937 play, The Revolt of the Beavers, depicted a rebellious beaver colony that banded together and seized power from a wealthy chief beaver who was oppressing the colony. The perceived Marxist undertones of that play and others put a target squarely on Flanagan's back. In late May 1938, just as the revolt of the Beavers began in New York and one-third of a nation began its Seattle run, a politician named Martin Dyes launched a counter-revolt. Dyes was a second-generation Texas congressman. An original

supporter of the New Deal, Dyes followed the example of fellow Texan and Vice President John Nance Garner and turned against the president's reforms after the battle over the Supreme Court. In May 1938, Dyes drew up a resolution to create the House Un-American Activities Committee to investigate suspected subversive efforts in government and society. The resolution passed, and Dyes was named as the committee's chair. The committee sprung into action quickly, investigating alleged fascist and communist plots against the country. This put Dyes on a collision course with Flanagan, whom he subpoenaed to the committee later that year. Members of Dyes' committee claimed that thousands of actors and writers

in the Federal Theater Project and the Federal Writers Project were communists and should be fired. When asked to investigate these claims, Department of Justice officials could identify only 36 communists among the 12,000 people who worked for the Federal Theater Project. But Dye's didn't quit, and in December of 1938, he finally put Flanagan on the witness stand. Flanagan's testimony became legendary when Congressman Joe Starnes, a Democrat from Alabama, cited a seven-year-old article Flanagan had written, in which he referred to English playwright Christopher Marlowe. Starnes, thinking he caught Flanagan, proceeded to grill her on whether Marlowe and Greek dramatist Euripides were communists. The room burst into laughter. The two playwrights had each lived generations or even centuries before communism was introduced to the world. But Flanagan remained serious,

stressing that thousands might lose their jobs simply because, as she put it, a congressional committee had so prejudged us that even the classics were communistic. While Flanagan survived the testimony, Congress cut off funding for federal theater, and the program shut down the following June. Roosevelt was already weakened by the battle over the Supreme Court in 1937, and the 1938 recession hadn't helped. Now, Dye's committee forced the administration to defend itself against charges, most of them politically motivated, that the New Deal programs like the Federal Theater were communist fronts. And then November's midterm elections brought further disappointment

for the Roosevelt administration. The previous three congressional elections had broadened legislative support for the president's agenda, but in 1938, Republican candidates and conservative Southern Democrats increased their clout. Still, a cushion of support remained for Roosevelt, thanks to his previous large victories. But he would need it. While enemies multiplied within the country, threats from outside were mounting around the globe, and the challenges would break out on a scale much larger than any before. This is the emergency broadcast system. A ballistic missile threat has been detected inbound to your area.

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The missiles are coming. What am I supposed to do? Featuring incredible performances from Tracy Letts, Mary Lou Henner, Mary Elizabeth Ellis, Paul Edelstein, and many, many more, Incoming is a hilariously thrilling podcast that will leave you wondering, how would you spend your last few minutes on Earth? You can binge Incoming exclusively in ad-free and Wondery+. Join Wondery+, in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. I'm Tristan Redman, and as a journalist, I've never believed in ghosts.

But when I discovered that my wife's great-grandmother was murdered in the house next door to where I grew up, I started wondering about the inexplicable things that happened in my childhood bedroom. When I tried to find out more, I discovered that someone who slept in my room after me, someone I'd never met, was visited by the ghost of a faceless woman. So I started digging into the murder in my wife's family, and I unearthed family secrets nobody could have imagined. Ghost Story won Best Documentary Podcast at the 2024 Ambies and is a Best True Crime nominee at the British Podcast Awards 2024. Ghost Story is now the first ever Apple Podcast series essential. Each month, Apple Podcast

editors spotlight one series that has captivated listeners with masterful storytelling, creative excellence, and a unique creative voice and vision. To recognize Ghost Story being chosen as the first series essential, Wondery has made it ad-free for a limited time, only on Apple Podcasts. If you haven't listened yet, head over to Apple Podcasts to hear for yourself. Imagine it's November 2nd, 1940. The banks of the Wangpu River in Shanghai, China are alive with activity. Little motorboats packed with people scurry across the water around the SS President Pierce, a massive ocean liner berthed in the middle of the river. You, your husband Bernard, and your five-year-old son Dennis

push through a crowd to a gangplank leading to a small ship tender tied up in the water. Well, I suppose this is it. I love you both so much. Bernard, are you sure we just can't stay? I wish you could, but it's just too dangerous. The newspapers are filled with the news of the treaty Tokyo signed with Berlin and Rome a few weeks ago. They're saying the war in Europe is likely to spread here, to Asia. I know, Bernie, but Shanghai is the only home Dennis knows.

And Shanghai is the best home you've known. Your father lost the family house in Iowa in 31. The family ended up in California hunting for jobs. You finally made your way to Shanghai as a dancer. The first ended up in California hunting for jobs. You finally made your way to Shanghai as a dancer, the first steady work you've had for years. And Shanghai is where you met and married Bernard. I know, but we've gone over this again and again. Besides, as soon as the company's done closing up shop here, I'll follow you. Suddenly, there's a roar as Japanese planes circle overhead. There's no question whose city this is now.

Bernard squeezes Dennis' shoulder. Dennis, I wish it weren't true. But it is, and there's no time to dwell on that. You're about to begin a new adventure, right? Dennis nods wordlessly. Bravely, perhaps. You look at your son. Your father's right.

Just think of how many new friends you might make back in America. We're right on this ship. I hear there's a movie theater on board. Dennis smiles. That's the spirit. Okay, well, I guess it's time now. Be safe, Bernie. I will. I love you. Phone me as soon as you get to San Francisco. You embrace Bernard one more time, then tell Dennis to do the same. As the tender pushes off toward the ocean liner, you notice the Japanese destroyers on one side of the river and the last remaining U.S. gunships on the other. Chill runs through you. Something's coming.

For a certain kind of American in the 1930s, Shanghai offered an alternative to the Great Depression. One could get lost, literally and figuratively, in this Chinese metropolis. In the 19th and early 20th century, a series of exploitative treaties made Shanghai a quasi-city state outside of China's authority and instead controlled by a mesh of diplomatic agreements between various colonial powers. By the time of the Great Depression, Shanghai's distance and status as an international city made it seem like an alluring escape from the realities of life in the United States. If you could afford to make it to Shanghai, you might be able to reinvent yourself. Or you might be a criminal. Or broke. Or all three. Or you might have a real job at an American company with an outpost in Shanghai and just enjoy the adventure of being

in another country. Though the depression certainly did impact Shanghai. Inflationary pressures led to currency speculation in the city. And while cheap labor fueled a construction boom in the city, it also meant that American expatriates were never far removed from incredible poverty. They could see the Chinese peasantry, who often froze in the streets, or the poor Jewish refugees, who fled Nazi Europe and now stood in line at soup kitchens. But Americans in Shanghai were also familiar with the city's vibrant nightlife, flamboyant gangsters, and many opportunities to get rich living on the margins. And for African Americans, Shanghai offered opportunities that didn't exist in the United States,

especially during the Depression. But whatever reason brought you to Shanghai, everything changed on July 7, 1937. That day, after years of ratcheting tension between China and Japan, a Japanese soldier went missing from an encampment on the outskirts of Peking, the city now known as Beijing. Japanese commanders used the incident as a pretext to attack Chinese positions in Peking. But in a change from similar incidents in the past, the Chinese government fought back. Soon, a full-scale war broke out, and Japan quickly captured Peking. In August, a three-month battle began outside Shanghai.

Japanese forces ousted the Chinese troops and surrounded the international areas of the city. They became what some have called an island in a city. For the next four years, Japan tightened its grip on Shanghai, even as it pursued its war in other parts of China. Throughout the fall of 1940, newspaper ran reports of ocean liners like the SS President Pierce and the SS President Coolidge picking up hundreds of evacuees from American settlements in East Asia as the possibility of war with Japan loomed. These evacuees included the wives and children of U.S. military officers and consular officials stationed in places like Hong Kong, Hanoi, and especially Shanghai. They also included businessmen and entertainers who

throughout the past decade had fled the worst of Depression America and built new lives in Shanghai, the so-called Paris of the East. On September 27, 1940, Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the Tripartite Pact, an alliance joining the three countries as the so-called Axis Powers. The U.S. government read this as worrisome escalation of international events, and the State Department urged the 16,000 or so Americans in the region to tie up their affairs, close businesses, give up jobs, and head back across the Pacific. Many Americans did not want to leave. They had no other way to support themselves

and warily eyed a still fragile economy back home. Some thought it was political posturing as the 1940 elections drew near. Others who had lived through earlier skirmishes and evacuations didn't take the warning seriously. They should have. The Japanese occupied the entirety of Shanghai throughout World War II, keeping its foreign inhabitants subdued, humiliated, and many interned in concentration camps. During the same time, in Spain, the fallout from a brutal civil war was spreading throughout Europe.

Spain's civil war had been a deeply ideological conflict that pitted left-wing Republican forces against a nationalist army led by General Francisco Franco, who was closely aligned with fascist movements in other countries. The war became a nightmarish proving ground for German and Italian weapons on one side and Soviet weapons on the other, causing high civilian casualties. From Germany, Hitler supported Franco's cause while expanding his own reach across Europe. In May 1938, the Nazis engineered Germany's Anschluss, or annexation of Austria. Six months later, at a conference in Munich, Hitler humiliated Great Britain and France, who allowed him to annex parts of Czechoslovakia.

The next year, Hitler seized the rest. Then, on September 1, 1939, German troops invaded Poland. France and the UK didn't stand back this time. Congress had passed a series of so-called Neutrality Acts meant to keep America out of various conflicts breaking out across the globe. U.S. citizens and companies were banned from exporting arms to any warring country or from traveling on ships owned by a country involved in a war. After Germany's invasion of Poland, however, Roosevelt found it difficult to maintain his neutrality. As the war in Europe deepened, the president began to stress how risky he believed an isolationist foreign policy was.

He insisted that while the country remained legally neutral, he could not ask that every American remain neutral in thought as well. This position only strengthened after June 1940, when German forces occupied Paris, and the acting French government capitulated to the Nazis. Roosevelt insisted that it was delusional to believe the U.S. wouldn't be drawn into the conflict. At the same time, private citizens with ties to China pressed a case for providing humanitarian aid in Asia. But those who wanted the U.S. to

intervene had to overcome the vocal opposition from people like Charles Lindbergh, the popular aviator, and Senator Burton Wheeler, the one-time Roosevelt ally who opposed intervention of any kind. With the country's future uncertain, Roosevelt made a bold decision. He would run for a third term as president. No president had ever run for a third term, much less won. This was the last straw for Vice President Garner, who mounted a challenge against Roosevelt in the Democratic nomination. But Roosevelt won, and he dropped Garner from the ticket and brought in Henry Wallace, his Secretary of Agriculture, to replace Garner.

In November, Roosevelt beat Republican Wendell Wilkie, but by a much narrower margin than he had secured in 1932 or 1936. As Roosevelt's third term as president began, the country fully abandoned its neutral stance. In March 1941, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act that essentially eliminated the Neutrality Acts of the 30s. The Lend-Lease Act fully authorized Roosevelt to provide arms or other supplies to any country whose defense the president deemed vital to the security of the United States. That meant direct aid for Great Britain and China could begin. After Hitler broke a treaty with Joseph Stalin and attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, the USSR also became a recipient of Lend-Lease assistance.

But at home, even before Lend-Lease's passage, factory production was picking up in the U.S. With war on the horizon, industrialists were retooling manufacturing lines to turn out fighters and warships. The Army needed hundreds of thousands of trucks, and Detroit answered the call, while Union members made sure their hard-earned protections were preserved. Even after Roosevelt's unprecedented third election, opponents of the New Deal continued to argue about the dangers of the state's intervention, but those arguments went largely unheard as millions of Americans mobilized either to fight the war or to supply those doing the fighting. After a decade of a devastating depression, the country's economy was beginning to finally turn

around. The war would bring untold atrocities, but it would be followed by unprecedented prosperity for Americans. Those who had lived through the depression, however, would bear its scars for the rest of their lives. The lessons of the economic crash and the fierce skirmishes over how the government should be involved in the nation's recovery would continue to color future debates and remain contested to this day. Next time on American History Tellers, mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord. That's the opening line of the battle hymn of the Republic.

We'll explore that song and its history in everything from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement. If you like American History Tellers, you can binge all episodes early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts. Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music. And before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at wondery.com slash survey. From Wondery, this is American History Tellers. I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you're listening on a smartphone, tap or swipe over the cover art of this podcast. You'll find the episode notes, including some details you may have missed.

You can also find us and me on Twitter and Facebook. Follow the show at A.H. Tellers. And I'm at Lindsey A. Graham. And thank you. American History Tellers is hosted, edited, and produced by me, Lindsey Graham for Airship. Sound design by Derek Behrens. This episode is written by Bill Lasher. Edited by Dorian Marina.

Produced by Jenny Lauer Beckman. Our executive producer is Marshall Louis. Created by Hernán López for Wondery. Richard Bandler revolutionized the world of self-help all thanks to an approach he developed called neurolinguistic programming.

Even though NLP worked for some, its methods have been criticized for being dangerous in the wrong hands. Throw in Richard's dark past as a cocaine addict and murder suspect,

and you can't help but wonder what his true intentions were. I'm Saatchi Cole. And I'm Sarah Hagee. And we're the hosts of Scamfluencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of the most infamous scams of all time,, Richard Bandler, whose methods inspired some of the most toxic and criminal self-help movements of the last two decades. Follow Scamfluencers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Scamfluencers and more Exhibit C true crime shows like Morbid and Kill List early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Check out Exhibit C in the Wondery app for all your true crime listening.