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Timeline: 1931 to 1935

1931 Economic depression is deepened by the fall of international trade. Europe's credit structure collapses. Bank failures increase. Unemployment in the U.S. rises to 15.9 percent. Japan and Britain go off the gold standard. President Hoover and the U.S. Congress are opposed to an unbalanced budget.

1931 In Latin America, conservatives in power are blamed for the economic decline and liberals in power are blamed for the economic decline. An anti-Communist dictatorial regime takes power in Argentina. In Peru a leftist coalition out-polls General Sanchez Cerro, but the counting is done under Cerro's bayonets, and Cerro becomes president.

1931 Speaking in private to Nazi party members, Hitler says " We can achieve something only by fanaticism." It was May 4. (Human Smoke, p.4)

1931 It is September. Japan's army goes on the offensive in Manchuria, forcing Chinese troops to withdraw from Shenyang (Mukden), Changchun (Ch'ang-ch'un), and Jilin (Kirin). An unofficial war between Japan and China has begun. A Chinese boycott of Japanese goods intensifies. Chinese students want all-out war against Japan. Chiang Kai-shek bans student demonstrations and continues his offensives against Communist strongholds.

1931 The League of Nations rebukes Poland for mistreating Germans in Upper Silesia.

1931 Famine spreads across the Soviet Union. Stalin speaks of the need to protect the revolution against its enemies. "We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries," he says. "We must catch up in ten years, or they will crush us." Supervision of literature has begun, with Stalin intervening in the studies of philosophy and history.

1932 The Soviet government is rationing food in cities and launches a police operation to collectivize agriculture. Peasants resist. They burn their crops, destroy their tools and their livestock. Resistance is crushed. It is believed that during this year a million peasants die.

1932 Japan sends troops to Shanghai. Its warships and aircraft bombard China's capital, Nanjing. Japan's move disrupts Chiang Kai-shek's offensives against Communists. In Japan, a group of super-patriots try to murder Hirohito's cabinet and to move Hirohito to accept a military government. The plot fails.

1932 Cardinal Pacelli writes a letter intended for Germany's Center Party. It states that Pope Pius XI is worried about the rise of Communism in Germany and advises the Center Party to help make Hitler chancellor. (Human Smoke, p.32)

1932 By the end of the year, economic depression hits bottom. For the world in general, the vicious circle of withdrawal from economic activity creating more withdrawal is over.

1933 In January, Hitler becomes chancellor. Mussolini is disturbed by a rival fascism - fascists believing in dominance. Germany's parliament building is set afire. Communists are blamed and put in prison and the Nazis win more seats in parliamentary elections. Chancellor Hitler is voted emergency powers. He crushes the Social Democrats, whom he has vilified as Marxists, and he crushes labor Unions. About fifty concentration camps are created to enclose detainees. A bonfire of books occurs outside the University of Berlin.

1933 The Vatican signs a concordant with the new German government. Pope Pius XI sees Germany as a bulwark against Communism which he believes is the greatest danger to civilization.

1933 In Egypt, the "Young Egypt" (Misr al-Fatah) para-military movement begins, modeled after Hitler's National Socialists, with Green (for Islam) shirts, the Roman (Nazi) salute and translations of Nazi slogans. Two fifteen-year-old members: Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Anwar Sadat.

1933 At Oxford University, students debate the question that "this House will in no circumstance fight for king and country." Undergraduates vote 275 to 153 against fighting for king and country. A second, more raucous debate results in 750 against fighting and 138 for. A similar debate at the London School of Economics results in a pacifist resolution that is supported unanimously. In the U.S. a poll of 21,725 students from sixty-five U.S. colleges finds 38.7 percent who declare themselves pacifists, another 33 percent who believe the only justification for bearing arms would the county being invaded, and 28 percent declare they would fight another war if their government ordered them to.

1933 Franklin Roosevelt takes office and a Democrat majority takes its seats in Congress. Congress passes an emergency banking bill, creates the Civilian Conservation Crops, gives mortgage relief to millions, creates the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, the Tennessee Valley Authority and gives the Federal Trade Commission new regulatory powers. Roosevelt rejects deficit spending. Industrialists support higher wages for employees as a way of increasing consumption. Prohibition is repealed.

1933 Uruguay's president since 1931, Gabriel Terra, dissolves parliament and begins ruling by decree.

1933 President Vargas of Brazil disbands Congress, declares martial law and warns of the threat from Communists. He jails editors and political opponents.

1933 In Peru, an uprising against General Sánchez Cerro has been crushed with the help of aerial bombardment. Political debate and most newspapers have been silenced. Thousands have been jailed and some are chained to walls in the fortress near downtown Lima. Then Sánchez Cerro is assassinated. General Manuel Oscar Benavides becomes president. He promotes public works and labor legislation, encourages education and sanitation and releases political prisoners.

1933 Japan has declared its holdings in Manchuria an independent country, which it calls Manchukuo. The League of Nations Assembly votes against recognizing Manchukuo.

1933 In Germany, Ewald Banse, a school teacher, has written a book that describes the League of Nations as having forbidden biological warfare. But, Barnse asserts, with national survival at stake "every method is permissible." The German government is concerned about Germany's image abroad, bans the book and orders all copies confiscated. It is October 8. (Human Smoke, p. 44-45.)

1934 In the United States, drought and neglectful care of land has produced another year of dust storms. Farmers in Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Texas and New Mexico suffer. Growth of crops on around 300 million acres of land has been curtailed. Another 100 million acres has lost most of its topsoil.

1934 After a seven-year crime spree, Clyde Barrow, and his friend Bonnie, are ambushed and killed in Louisiana by Texas Rangers.

1934 In the Soviet Union, calm has returned in the countryside. Old Bolsheviks disturbed by the brutality of collectivization speak up for the communist ideal of liberty and happiness for everybody. The 17th Party Congress meets and gives more support to the Bolshevik leader Sergey Kirov than to Stalin. Kirov does not challenge Stalin, but Stalin has reason to believe that his power within the Party is in jeopardy. The Soviet Union joins League of Nations. H.G. Wells visits Russia and is impressed. In December, Kirov is assassinated.

1934 Pu-yi, China's former boy-emperor (of "Last Emperor" fame) is crowned monarch of Japan's Manchurian state: Manchukuo. Manchukuo is recognized by Germany, Italy, a few rightist regimes in Latin American, and by the Vatican - which wants to protect Catholics in Manchuria.

1934 Pursued by Chiang Kai-shek's forces, China's Communists flee Jiangxi Province and begin their Long March.

1934 Speaking in Honolulu, President Roosevelt describes the build up of miliary forces there as "an instrument of continuing peace." In Japan, General Kunishiga Tanaka describes it as "insolent behavior" worthy of suspicion. (Human Smoke, p. 51.)

1934 In Berlin, a more intense anti-Semitism has produced an increase in religious devotion among Jews. Crowds leaving Rabbi Leo Baeck's synagogue were sometimes pelted with stones. Baeck said it was a good time to be a rabbi. He described his theme as "Let no drop of bitterness enter your hearts, to defile them." (Human Smoke, p. 49-50.)

1934 Government spending in Germany has brought economic recovery. Germany is rearming. Hitler sides with the German Army against the homosexual leader of his brownshirts (the SA), whom the army dislikes. Hitler's SS raid and kill 116, including old Nazi leaders who believed in socialism. President Hindenburg thanks Hitler publicly for "nipping treason in the bud." A month later Hindenburg dies. Hitler is declared Germany's head of state and supreme commander of the military. His title is Leader (Führer). Some people are forgiven and released from concentration camps as a show of a new national unity.

1934 In Austria all political parties are banned, including Austria's National Socialist (Nazi) party. The Social Democrats and labor movement resist and are crushed. The religiously pious chancellor, Engelbert Dollfuss, establishes a dictatorship. Later, Austria's National Socialists attempt a coup. They wound Dollfuss and Dollfuss dies. German troops are massed on the border between Germany and Austria, but Italy's dictator, Mussolini, is opposed to Germany taking Austria. The German army is still weak, and Hitler backs down.

1935 Soviet manufacturing is more than five times what it was in Russia in 1913. Russia's world share in manufacturing is 13 percent, compared to 33 percent for the United States. Germany is third at 11 percent.

1935 Italy invades Ethiopia. The League of Nations declares Italy to be in violation of the League's sanctions against aggression.

1935 In the United States, a dust storm has turned day into night. A best-selling book by Walter Millis, Road to War, gives people a new vision about World War I. Some are saying that Americans had been "saps" or "suckers." Time magazine describes Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia as a "civilizing mission" and it ridicules the Ethiopians.

1935 Hitler reintroduces military conscription - a repudiation of the peace treaty signed at Versailles. Jews lose their citizenship and are expelled from government employment , the professions and most forms of economic activity. Some Catholics and Protestants express discomfort with paganism among the National Socialists. A few Catholics activists are attracting Nazi opposition.

1935 Late in the year, about 20,000 survivors of the Long March arrive at Yenan, in the far north of China, where they are able to recuperate. The Communist Party has been reduced to about 40,000, and Mao Zedung has emerged at the top of the Party's leadership.

1935 President Roosevelt grants Pan Am Airways permission to build runways on the islands of Wake, Midway and Guam. Japanese military analysts complain. A month later, in April, the U.S. held the largest military exercises in U.S. history, near the Aleutian and Midway islands. The Japanese complain again. "That's too damn bad," says Admiral Standley, chief of naval operation. (Human Smoke, p. 54-55.)

1935 New York's governor, Herbert Lehman, asks President Roosevelt to increase the immigration quota for Jews. Roosevelt says there is no quota specifically for Jews. Request denied. It is November 1.

1935 In Greece a military coup overthrows the republic and invites King George II to return from exile. King George supports the dictatorship Ioannis Metaxes but quietly he favors Britain over Hitler's Germany.