Saturday, June 28, 1930

Rome:  Citing French fortifications in the Alps along the Italian border, Italy announces it will increase its military budget by US$26 million.

Berlin:  Chancellor Heinrich Bruening, in a speech before the Reichstrat, announces that he significantly underestimated the severity of Germany’s financial situation, and says drastic changes, including all of the new taxes he’s been proposing, must be implemented immediately if the country is get back on sound financial footing. 

New York:  A mob of 1,000 communists attempts to storm the British Consulate to protest British rule in India.  Five police are injured.

Friday, June 27, 1930

Berlin:  Minister of Labor Adam Stegerwald, in a speech to the Reichstag, says a general price decrease must be implemented if Germany is to dig out of its financial crisis.  He also suggests the government is considering a “national sacrifice” tax to raise US$200 million.  

Thursday, June 26, 1930: French Troops Evacuate The Palatinate

Speyer, Germany:  French troops depart The Palatinate, a region of about 2,100 square miles in southwestern Germany that has been occupied since the World War.  Residents celebrate by removing French-language street signs.  By prior agreement, all French troops will be out of the Rhineland by June 30.

Moscow:  The communist party’s annual convention opens at the Moscow Grand Opera House with speeches urging communists in the United States to agitate for revolution.

Washington:  Secretary of Commerce Robert P. Lamont releases census figures which indicate unemployment is just under 2.3 million, better than widely thought.  William Green, President of the American Federation of Labor, says unemployment is 3.6 million.

Berlin:  Herman Dietrich is appointed Finance Minister to replace Paul Moldenhauer, who resigned June 18.  Moldenhauer’s financial reform proposals proved unpopular.  Dietrich was Minister of Economics in Chancellor Heinrich Bruening’s cabinet.  Political observers say Dietrich’s appointment is Bruening’s last chance to save his government.

Budapest:  A group of 30 communists attacks the Polish Embassy with stones, smashing windows and shouting, “Down with Polish dictatorship!”  This after Poland executed a group of communists at Lwow (Lviv).  Police disperse the mob and arrest some.

Saturday, June 21, 1930

Berlin:  In the crisis following the resignation of Finance Minister Paul Moldenhauer, reports say that some of the political parties represented in Chancellor Heinrich Bruening’s cabinet want to wait for the results from the landtag (parliament) elections in the German state of Saxony before deciding on a new finance minister.  They want to see which direction the winds of public opinion are blowing.  Those elections are set for tomorrow.

New York:  More signs of the economic depression -- unemployment in the city is estimated at 300,000.

Friday, June 20, 1930

Berlin:  The resignation of Finance Minister Paul Moldenhauer is causing the first crisis for Chancellor Heinrich Bruening’s cabinet, which can’t agree on who should replace him.  Bruening still maintains that an emergency tax is the only solution to Germany’s financial situation, but the unpopularity of this idea is partly what caused Moldenhauer to resign.

Paris:  More bad economic news -- French foreign trade shows a deficit of 3.3 billion francs for the first five months of the fiscal year.  Yet on the same day, sources say Prime Minister Andre Tardieu will propose a 1 billion franc increase in defense spending, saying the country’s defense funds have become depleted.

Wednesday, June 18, 1930: European Backlash to Smoot-Hawley

London:  Protest and complaint come fast and fierce to the U.S. Smoot-Hawley tariff act.  Critics say it will jeopardize Britain’s war debt repayments to the U.S., and demand that Great Britain raise tariffs to protect her industries in turn.

Paris:  Newspapers and politicians of all stripes denounce the U.S. tariff act.  The Minister of Commerce calls it a “false remedy” for the worldwide economic depression.  French economists are calling for a European “tariff union” to offset the U.S. measure. 

Madrid:  The government orders a committee to study the effects of the U.S. tariff.  Critics are calling for Spain to break its current trade agreement with the U.S. in retaliation.

Berlin:  Finance Minister Paul Moldenhauer is reportedly resigning in the face of widespread disfavor for his financial reform measures, such as new taxes on employees and bachelors.  The cabinet of Chancellor Heinrich Bruening meets in special session tonight to discuss the matter.

Tuesday, June 17, 1930: U.S. Enacts the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act

Washington:  President Herbert Hoover signs the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, putting in force immediately a wide range of tariff increases on thousands of imported products.  The law changes the tariff rates on 1,122 products entering the United States, raising them in 887 cases.  Economic experts have warned that the act will only exacerbate the depression, and several U.S. trading partners have said they will retaliate.

Helsinki:  Communist agitation has reached such heights that citizens are taking matters into their own hands.  In northern Finland, mobs have begun driving communists toward the Russian border to rid their communities of their troublemaking.  In the capital, civic organizations have petitioned the government to suppress the communist party and its newspapers.  Communist organizations in Helsinki, Ulenborg and Vaza have ceased activities in the face of the opposition.

Sunday, June 15, 1930

Berlin:  Having been banned from wearing their uniforms (see June 12), nazis hold a march shirtless. 

Meanwhile, S. Parker Gilbert, Agent General for Reparations under the now-expiring Dawes Plan (predecessor of the Young Plan), makes his final report on Germany’s financial condition.  He sounds repeated warnings that Germany needs “immediate and radical” budgetary reform if the nation is to meet its obligations and gets its financial house in order.  Tax revenues have improved “to an extent far exceeding expectations of experts,” Gilbert says.  The main problem: the government spends too much.  “There is evidence of unwillingness on the part of both government and parliament squarely and promptly to face the situation by taking the necessary steps either to control expenditures or to provide adequate resources to cover them.”

Gilbert’s report further complains that the German government’s budget presentations are “ideally calculated to obscure the real position.”  Yet Gilbert says social expenditures have risen 458% over the past five years, from 259 million marks to 1.345 billion, as the nation has become more deeply involved in subsidizing social insurance funds.  Germany’s public debt increased 11% in the last year alone, to 10.353 billion marks.  Germany’s gross deficit for the 1929-30 budget of about 1.075 billion marks is the worst in years.

“When the experts of the Dawes Committee were called together at the beginning of 1924, Germany was on the point of collapse after an unprecedented period of inflation,” Gilbert’s report says.  “Germany’s credit has been re-established both at home and abroad, her industries have been reorganized and her productive capacity has been restored, and the general standard of living has greatly improved.  The Dawes Plan, as was its object, also cleared the way for complete and final settlement of the reparations problem, which is embodied in the Young Plan and the Hague agreements of Jan. 20, 1930.  The new plan is an act of confidence in the good faith and financial integrity of Germany, and Germany now has a definite task to perform on her own responsibility, without foreign supervision and without the transfer protection provided by the Dawes Plan.”

S. Parker Gilbert

Leipzig:  Armed nazis and communists clash in Eythra, a suburb, killing 1 and injuring 12. 

Vienna:  Waldemar Pabst, the German leader of Austria’s fascist Heimwehr paramilitary who faces deportation for revolutionary activities, loses his appeal to stay in the country and leaves on a plane for Venice. 

Meanwhile, in economic news, reports have unemployment in Austria 20% higher than a year ago.  Export trade has declined significantly. 

Washington:  President Herbert Hoover announces, as expected, that he will sign the tariff bill known as the Smoot-Hawley Act that has been making its way through Congress.  Representatives of Spain, France and Great Britain have all warned that if Hoover signs the bill into law, it will unleash retaliatory tariffs from their countries. 

China:  Manchurian warlord Zhang Xueliang has reportedly told northern rebel forces he will join the fighting against them unless they accept his offer to mediate between them and nationalist government head Chiang Kai-shek (see March 21).

Wednesday, June 11, 1930

Berlin:  As Chancellor Heinrich Bruening’s cabinet continues to debate solutions to Germany’s financial condition, the number of unemployed needing public relief grows.  New government reports put the total unemployed at 2.6 million, of which nearly 1.9 million need government assistance.

Tokyo:  Kato Hiroharu, Chief of Naval Staff and recently appointed member of the Supreme War Council, makes good on his threat from May, and resigns in protest over the London Naval Treaty.  

Friday, June 6, 1930

Berlin: Chancellor Heinrich Bruening’s plan for saving Germany’s finances by taxing workers’ salaries, corporate directors’ fees and bachelors, runs into immediate trouble.  Several political parties publicly oppose it.  They and their allied press outlets predict not only that the measure will fail to pass the Reichstag, but that Bruening’s cabinet will fall over it.  Meanwhile, the Prussian Trade Minister’s monthly report on economic conditions in that state (which makes up nearly 60% of Germany) describes “almost universal depression.”

 

Tokyo:  Government officials are said to be apprehensive about developments in Tsinan in the Chinese civil war: 2,000 Japanese students are trapped there as fighting approaches.  Tsinan was the scene of a brutal attack in 1928, when southern rebels overrunning the city killed 30 Japanese nationals. 

Gomel, Ukraine:  Kulaks (rich peasants) outraged at continued soviet collectivization of their farms, set fire to the two largest collective farms in the district.  Sheds containing agricultural equipment and machinery are destroyed, leaving the collectives without the means to produce food.  

Thursday, June 5, 1930

Germany:

Berlin:  Chancellor Heinrich Bruening’s cabinet proposes a plan to rescue Germany’s ailing finances by an emergency 10% tax increase on workers’ salaries, on fees earned by corporate directors, and on . . . unmarried men.  The latter is being called the “bachelor tax.”  How popular this idea will prove remains to be seen.

Nienburgh:  More evidence of the depression’s toll.  Farmers in this northern community tear up paving and barricade two streets into their village, wielding clubs and pitchforks, to prevent tax bailiffs from serving notice of non-payment on drainage assessments.  No violence breaks out; the bailiffs leave without delivering their notices.

Nice:  French authorities expel an ethnic Italian fascist for his role in sending a group from Nice’s Italian community to Rome as representatives of “Italian provinces and dominions” at a ceremony there.  That Nice is not an Italian province seems clear to the French.  But many in Italy still consider Nice and Savoy lost territories from the last century, before Italy’s unification.

Bucharest:  Romanian police uncover a widespread soviet propaganda organization in Bessarabia, the northeastern region which Romania has governed since 1918, but which Russia still considers her territory.  Police say the network had 16 centers, intended to agitate for the region’s communization and unification with the Soviet Union.

Wednesday, June 4, 1930

Berlin:  Chancellor Heinrich Bruening’s cabinet adjourns without agreeing on any new actions to solve Germany’s financial crisis.  Meanwhile representatives of the industrial community and labor unions, perhaps fed up with the government’s inactivity, reportedly hold their own bilateral discussions about cutting prices and pay wages in tandem, in an attempt to spur the economy.

 

Washington:  More evidence of the economic depression -- President Herbert Hoover considers a $3 billion federal bond issue to speed public works and get the unemployed working again.  The U.S. economic decline is said to total more than $63 billion to date.

Rome:  Foreign Minister Dino Grandi, in a speech to the Senate that appears intended to moderate (and “clarify”) Dictator Benito Mussolini’s bellicose comments from a few days before, says Italy is willing to postpone the aggressive naval building program it had announced earlier, if France does the same.  “The Italian government is disposed to postpone laying down its program for naval construction in 1930 provided the French government does the same for the program for 1930.  Considering the relative strength of the two fleets such a concession would have a greater effect on the Italian navy than on the French.”  

Monday, June 2, 1930

Eisleben, Germany: More bad economic news -- the Mansfeld copper mines close as management moves to cut wages.  

Sunday, June 1, 1930

Halle, Germany:  In a speech here, nationalist politician Alfred Hugenberg proposes a “reparations duty” – a tariff on all goods and raw products imported into Germany – to extract from the rest of the world funds for Germany to pay its war debts under the Young Plan.  “Whoever utilizes central Europe, its market, traffic system and culture, must help us bear the burden which the rest of the world imposed.”  Hugenberg further suggests that this duty would be the first step in an economic fusion of central Europe centered around Germany, as opposed to France’s plan for a “United States of Europe.”

Dunkelstein, Austria:  Socialists and Heimwehr fascists clash in a street battle, throwing stones and firing shots.  Injuries are described as “numerous,” including gunshot wounds.

Manchuria:  Japanese consular police and Chinese troops mobilize in the Kurin province in anticipation of further outbreaks of violence by Korean communists.

Philadelphia:  More bad economic news -- new data indicate unemployment here is 40 percent higher than same time last year.  

Saturday, May 31, 1930

Lung Ching-Tsun (Jilin City), Manchuria:  Bands of Korean communists launch coordinated attacks on Japanese facilities here, in Yenki, and at other towns in this district on the border with Korea.  The communists burn and bomb Japanese consulates, utilities and schools, but the only casualty is an injured police officer.  Japanese consular police and Chinese troops band together to drive the attackers away.

 

Berlin:  Joseph Goebbels, nazi member of the Reichstag, is fined the equivalent of US$200 instead of getting the nine-month prison term requested by state prosecuting attorneys, for insulting President Paul von Hindenburg in an article he published in December in a nazi newspaper.  The article, titled “Is President von Hindenburg Still Alive?” excoriated Hindenburg for his “friendship with Jewish and Marxist advisors.” 

Meanwhile, more bad economic news: Paul Moldenhauer, Minister of Finance, reports to the Reichstag that government revenues are still falling, but spending is not, resulting in a projected annual deficit of US$180 million.  

Friday, May 30, 1930

Berlin:  The economic depression worsens: the government reports that production has fallen 15% below 1929, and unemployment is still on the rise.  

Monday, May 26, 1930: German Skirmish at the Polish Border, and Lawsuit to Stop Frick's 'Prayers of Hate'

Neuhoefen, Germany / Opalenie, Poland:  German and Polish border guards exchange gunfire in a brief skirmish that reportedly leaves one Polish soldier dead and a German officer wounded.  Each side claims the other started it: Germany says Polish shell casings were found on its side of the border; Poland says German blood was found on its side of the border.  Both sides promise an investigation.

Berlin:  The German government files a lawsuit against Wilhelm Frick, the nazi Minister of Education in the state of Thuringia, to stop the “prayers of hate” he has introduced into schools there.  From a legal standpoint, the question is whether the federal government can interfere in the state’s authority over its schools.  The hate prayers are one of several anti-semitic activities nazi leaders in Thuringia have introduced.

Tokyo:  Kato Hiroharu, Chief of Naval Staff, threatens to resign in protest over Japan’s approval of the London Naval Treaty. 

London:  More bad economic news: the opposition party predicts unemployment will reach 2 million by winter.

Sunday, May 25, 1930

Berlin:  More bad economic news: the government reports that tax revenues to date are projected only to make the government’s budget deficit worse.

Friday, May 23, 1930

London:  More bad economic news: unemployment has reached nearly 15%.  

Monday, May 19, 1930

Tokyo:  Admiral Takarabe Takeshi, Minister of the Navy, is given a dagger with the recommendation that he use it to commit suicide to expiate the “crime” of his agreeing to the London Naval Treaty.  He doesn’t.  In fact, he publicly refuses today an earlier demand that he resign over the treaty.  Meanwhile, a naval officer does commit suicide to express his bitterness and despondency over the treaty.  Lt. Commander Eiji Jusakari, attached to the naval general staff, slashes his abdomen with a sword while on a train from Kobe to Tokyo.  He dies in a hospital where he is taken en route.

Paris:  An all-but-forgotten German-French committee discussing the return of the Rhineland to German control announces success: they have reached full agreement on withdrawing the last occupying French troops by June 30.  Separately, French officials burn US$37 billion worth of German bonds in a symbolic gesture illustrating the liquidation of all past reparation efforts, in view of the superseding Young Plan.

London:  The worldwide economic depression worsens: officials announce British unemployment has reached 2.5 million.  Just last week it was being announced at 1.7 million.