[Sarajevo]

>”I just cannot imagine the guys I know in the senior ranks of the military ordering tanks onto the streets of the US.”

The war veterans, many of whom had been out of work since the beginning of the Great Depression, sought immediate cash payment of Service Certificates granted to them eight years earlier via the Adjusted Service Certificate Law of 1924. Each Service Certificate, issued to a qualified veteran soldier, bore a face value equal to the soldier's promised payment, plus compound interest. The problem was that the certificates (like bonds), matured twenty years from the date of original issuance, thus, under extant law, the Service Certificates could not be redeemed until 1945.

On July 28, U.S. Attorney General Mitchell ordered the veterans removed from all government property. Washington police met with resistance, shots were fired and two veterans were killed. President Hoover then ordered the army to clear out the veterans. The infantry and cavalry were supported by six tanks, and commanded by Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur. Major, later President, Dwight D. Eisenhower was his liaison with Washington police, and Major George Patton led the cavalry. The Bonus Army, their wives and children were driven out with fixed bayonets and adamsite gas, an arsenical vomiting agent, and their shelters and belongings burned. Two more of the veterans, and an unknown number of babies and children, died (accounts range from one to "a number" of casualties).

Bonus Army

It's been done before.

[Vermont Lt]

I was going to point out that they are all West Point guys....but I am not sure if that is relevant.

[Liz]

The Reichstag fire was an arson attack on the Reichstag building (then the seat of German government) in Berlin, February 27, 1933. The event is seen as pivotal in allowing Hitler to establish Naziism as the new government in Germany.

HISTORY Hitler had been sworn in as Chancellor and head of the coalition government on 31 January 1933. As Chancellor, Hitler asked German President Paul von Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag and call for a new parliamentary election. The date set for the elections was 5 March 1933.

Hitler's aim was first to acquire a National Socialist majority to secure his position and eliminate the communist opposition. If prompted or desired, the President could remove the Chancellor. Hitler hoped to abolish democracy in a more or less legal fashion by passing the Enabling Act.

The Enabling Act was a special law which gave the Chancellor the power to pass laws by decree without the involvement of the Reichstag. These special powers would remain in effect for four years, after which time they were eligible to be renewed.

Under the existing Weimar constitution, under Article 48, the President could rule by decree in times of emergency. The unprecedented element of the Enabling Act was that the Chancellor himself possessed these powers. An Enabling Act was only supposed to be passed in times of extreme emergency, and, in fact, had only been used once before, in 1923-24, when the government used an Enabling Act to rescue Germany from hyperinflation (see inflation in the Weimar Republic).

To pass an Enabling Act, a party required a vote by a two-thirds majority in the Reichstag. In January 1933, the Nazis had only 32% of the seats and thus were in no position to pass an Enabling Act.