Posted on 09/04/2017 6:20:20 AM PDT by Kaslin
Hoover’s political demise has a great deal to do with the handling of the Bonus-Army, and the attack by the US Army in DC upon the protesters in the summer of 1932. Newspapers gave a lot of negative coverage over the event, and it’s safe to say that a lot of what was done....was orchestrated.
Hoover was bashed in history as he was blamed for the Great Depression. Other achievements of his were simply cast aside as political opponents blamed him for that.
Many will debate what should or shouldn’t have been done about the Depression. The causes and persistence of the Depression go far beyond the policies of President Hoover. But the way history is taught, he’s blamed for it and that’s his historic legacy.
He was still president when I was born———seems like yesterday. (sigh)
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I was surprised to learn, when doing my own meager study of WWII history, that Truman called Hoover to the White House for advice on how to deal with the coming famine in Europe, and other situations, including Hoover's advice on how to end the war with Japan (in short, let Japan keep Korea and Taiwan in return for peace, which without the A-bomb would have been a realpolitik solution). Anyone who really wants to delve into this, take a few minutes to read https://www.trumanlibrary.org/hoover/intro.htm.
He is still being bashed today. Read the replies of the readers
Interestingly, ADR also opposed the Bonus Army's cause, so it would be several years before they got what they wanted.
Don’t you mean Hoobert Heever?
The whole Bonus-Army story would take an hour to really lay out in detail.
What can be said is that Congress envisioned this ‘gift’ five years after WW I ended. Everyone GI who was entitled to $50 or less...got the money immediately (you can sense how this thrilled folks right before the 1924 election). If you were owed the big money (ranging from $51 to roughly $750)....you had to wait until 1944. Basically, Congress didn’t have the money and this was invented to be a waiting process.
Things were fine until 1929 with the crash. Somehow, in 1931...this got brought up, and turned into a critical mess. By the end of 1931...thousands were showing up in DC....long term ‘campers’ (former WW I GI’s) were showing up in the spring of 1932.
The GOP...firmly in charge, simply weren’t going to go into debt by authorizing early payment. Protest mess went turbo by mid-summer, and Hoover decided enough....ordering the Army to chase the protest crowd out. There are a hundred different mistakes with the handling of this...worth another hour of discussion.
Picture appeared around the country...hyped negativity. Massive vote for FDR.
Now, here is the odd thing....Three years go by and around 1936...deep into the depression, the Democrats authorize the payment of the bonus. Lot of debt incurred. FDR vetoes the deal....they vote again and over-rule FDR.
It’s a story worthy of an epic movie...Hoover just never realized the mess that lay there, and the ordering of troops into this...was totally wrong.
Ravenous libs hate Hoover.therefore, he must have been a great man.
A group of national engineering societies in the U.S. jointly confers an award known as the Hoover Medal to engineers who demonstrate civic and humanitarian affairs outside their professional work. Past recipients of this award include notable Americans including former president Jimmy Carter, Alfred Sloan and Charles Kettering (of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center fame), David Packard (co-founder of Hewlett-Packard), and Gary Wozniak (co-founder of Apple).
It's no surprise that President Truman would call on Hoover for advice, and it's also no surprise that Hoover's legacy among people today is not a good one. Hoover was probably one of very few U.S. presidents who could legitimately say that the office of the U.S. President was beneath him.
Hoover became the public scapegoat for the attack, while then-Army Chief of Staff MacArthur skated, in large part because FDR needed him to organize the CCC and hold the Army together under massive budget cuts. MacArthur was smart enough to jump at the chance to head the Philippine Army in 1935, and the American people by 1941 seem to have forgotten his role in the Bonus Army takedown.
The Bonus-Army was a creation similar in nature to BLM today. As soon as their purpose was served....they were dumped to the side.
Huh?
Exactly
No mention of his time trapped in China during the Boxer Rebellion.
My Forgotten Man--The Warner-Vitaphone Orchestra (1933)
And they still hate him. Bill Bryson's book One Summer: America 1927 (New York: Doubleday, 2013 is a smear job on Hoover, Charles Lindbergh and others, filled with innuendo and outright lies. Yet it was a bestseller and a popular book club choice.
In 1931 radio announcer Harry Von Zell introduced the President of the United States as “Hoobert Heever.”
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