The Year That Was

Americans felt under attack in 1919 as a series of riots, strikes, disasters, and bombings hit the country. After radicals attempted to blow up the house of Attorney General Mitchell Palmer, he decided enough was enough. It was time to stop the Red Menace using any means possible. But would Americans tolerate the loss of their civil liberties in the pursuit of Bolsheviks?

A. Mitchell Palmer's home was devastated when a bomb exploded at his front door on the night of June 2, 1919. If Palmer had been at his usual spot in the library, he likely would have been killed.

This is another view of the blast damage. Notice that all of the windows and the door were blown out.

Eugene V. Debs serves as a case study of pre-war opinions about socialism. As leader of the Socialist Party in America, he was considered leftist, but not radical--until the Russian Revolution changed attitudes about anyone or anything related to communism. For saying basically the same things he had been saying for years, Debs was tried under the Sedition Act in 1919 and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Many Americans believed in the progression laid out literally step by step in this political cartoon. Disturbances such as strikes would lead inevitably to Bolshevism and chaos.

The majority of people believed that immigrants were mostly or wholly responsible for radicalism in the United States. It seemed the easiest solution was that proposed by the 1918 Immigration Act: deport them all.

To be fair, not everyone believed the Reds were an imminent threat. While many political cartoons fed the fear, others mocked it, like this example, which pointed to the hysterical tone of the Overman Report.

When A. Mitchell Palmer took the job of Attorney General in March, he was among the moderates. Everything changed when his house was blown up--and really, you can hardly blame him.

Palmer placed the young but well-liked and hard-working J. Edgar Hoover in charge of intelligence for his Red hunt. Hoover quickly gained the trust of his boss and ultimately managed all of the planning and operations details of the November and January raids.

After the November 7th raids, 249 people were deported to Russia. The sailed on the Buford, a ship that Hoover arranged to borrow from the war department. It became known as the Soviet Ark.

Up to ten thousand people were rounded up in the January 2nd, 1920 raids. Individuals were arrested, searched, and held without warrants, often in deplorable conditions.

Deportation hearings began almost immediately. This is a photo of men waiting to be called for hearings at Ellis Island. It was an incredibly fraught situation. Many of the suspected radicals had lived in the United States for decades. They had families and children--and their children had often been born in the U.S. and were therefore citizens.

Assistant Secretary of Labor Louis F. Post insisted on full constitutional protection for those rounded up in the Palmer Raids and ended up dismissing the majority of cases. He infuriated Palmer, who arranged for him to be impeached by the House of Representatives. Post's testimony was a major factor in Palmer's downfall.

After all was said and done and the panic subsided, the anarchists struck again. The 1920 Wall Street Bombing left 38 dead and hundreds wounded. It was likely the work of the anarchists, who still had not been captured.

If you are not familiar with the fantastic resource that is the Library of Congress Chronicling America site, let me introduce it to you. It contains scanned newspapers from across the country and the decades.

Click here to find the results of a search of headlines nationwide on June 3rd, 1919, the morning after the bomb attacks. It's fascinating to compare the headlines and see what else was considered important that day.

Then have fun looking up more dates and more newspapers. You'll probably be there some time.

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• YOUNG J. EDGAR: Hoover and the Red Scare, 1919-1920 by Kenneth D. Ackerman

The I.W.W. was a tough, militant, radical union, and its very existence terrified business owners, factory bosses, and the entire U.S. government. Since its founding, the law had been out to get the Wobblies. In 1919, as a record number of Americans went on strike for better wages and working conditions, would the union be able to help them? Would the union even survive?

The Wobblies were so famous for singing that they repeatedly published their lyrics in "The Little Red Songbook," which contained Wobbly sayings and organizing advice as well as songs.

"Big Bill" Haywood was tough and physically imposing, but he had a big heart and a gift for communicating with workers.

Samuel Gompers was leader of the IWW-rival the American Federation of Labor. He cultivated a reputation for the organization as reasonable and cooperative--and achieved many results for his members.

Pinkerton agent James McParland took over the investigation of the murder of former Idaho governor Frank Steunenberg, and his handling of the main suspect was, shall we say, questionable. McParland was one of the country's most famous Pinkerton agents, known for his infiltration of the Molly Maguires--so famous, in fact, that Arthur Conan Doyle modeled a character in his novel The Valley of Fear on McParland and imagined a conversation between Sherlock Holmes and the real detective.

The trial of multiple Wobbly leaders for the murder of Frank Steunenberg garnered nationwide--even international--press attention.

The most successful IWW-led strike was the "Bread and Roses" strike in 1912 in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Many of the strikers were women, seen here on the picket line.

IWW organizers urged the strikers to remain peaceful no matter how much the police and state militia threatened them. The strikers generally remained non-violent, although in one confrontation between the two groups a young woman was shot and killed. It remains uncertain who was responsible, but IWW organizer Joseph Ettor was placed on trial. No evidence connected him to the murder, and he was aquitted.

Joe Hill was an uneducated, unskilled Swedish immigrant with a remarkable gift for songwriting--in an adopted language, no less. He was convicted of murder and executed by firing squad in 1915. His death can be seen as matter of perverse stubbornness in the face of officialdom--he refused to explain how he had received a gunshot wound on the night a former policeman was killed. Or it was a blatant miscarriage of justice in which a man with no connection to the the murder victim became a convenient scapegoat. Or perhaps it was both. In any case, Hill became a martyr to the Wobbly cause.

This remarkable image shows striking miners and those considered their allies being loaded up into cattle cars on the morning of July 12, 1917 by the sheriff of Bisbee, Arizona and the self-appointed Citizens' Protective League. The men were told if they attempted to return to town, they would be killed. The cattle cars were abandoned across the New Mexico border, leaving the men without food or water.

Sheriff Harry Wheeler was unconcerned that his actions might have been illegal. "It became a question of 'Are you American, or are you not?'" he said.

In September 1918, 48 IWW offices across the country were raided. This image shows one office after the raid.

More than one hundred IWW members and leaders were tried under the Espionage Act. Most were convicted and received sentences of up to twenty years.

The union spent most of 1918 and 1919 raising money for defense and appeals. This was a Wobbly fundraising picnic. The banner reads, at the top, "We're in For You" and asks for money for the "Class War Prisoners."

When the unions of Seattle called a general strike in January 1919, the mayor was so terrified he requested U.S. Army troops, including machine gun companies, be sent to his town.

Actors walked out of Broadway shows in August 1919 in the first Actors Equity union strike. Here actors walk the picket line.

When the Boston Police went on strike in September 1919, the public was terrified they would be helpless at the hands of criminals. The recently elected governor Calvin Coolidge sent the state militia to town and earned nationwide praise for ensuring law and order. Coolidge is seen here inspecting militia members.

The steelworkers strike was pushed from the bottom up and never had the full support of the unions who were supposed to organize and lead it.

The factory owners convinced workers that the cause was hopeless and they should go back to work. Notice that this advertisement, which ran in a Pittsburgh newspaper, is in mutiple languages to reach immigrant workers.

When the town of Centralia, Washington planned a parade for the first anniversary of Armistice Day, rumors swirled that the IWW hall would be attacked. The rumors were so prevalent that the Wobblies issued a statement requesting that the townspeople avoid violence and turn to law enforcement if they believe the IWW is guilty of any crimes.

This photo shows the parade stepping off, before violence erupted at the IWW hall.

Warren Grimes had served with the U.S. Army in Vladivostok and had a well-earned fear of Bolshevism. He was a local hero, and when he warned about the IWW, people listened. Grimes was one of the first shot in the conflict between the IWW and the American Legion. Exactly what happened that day remains under dispute.

It is not disputed that a mob of Centralia townsfolk dragged Wobbly member Wesley Everest out of jail and hanged him on a nearby railway bridge.

"Solidarity Forever" by John H. Chaplin, recorded by Pete Seeger on the album "If I Had a Hammer: Songs of Hope and Struggle," Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1998.

"The Popular Wobbly" by T-Bone Slim, recorded by Eric Glatz on the album "IWW Rebel Voices: Songs of the Industrial Workers of the World," Universal Music Group, 1984.

"Bread and Roses" from a poem by James Oppenheim, sung by Bronwen Lewis, from the movie "Pride," 2014.

"There Is Power in a Union" by Joe Hill, recorded by Joe Glazer on the album "Songs of the Wobblies, Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1977.

"The Preacher and the Slave" by Joe Hill, recorded by Utah Phillips on the album "Classic Labor Songs from Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 2006.

"Joe Hill's Last Will" by Joe Hill, recorded by John McCutcheon, 2015.

"Union Burying Ground" written and performed by Woody Guthrie, recorded in the 1940s and released on the album "Struggle," Smithsonian Folkways Recordings, 1976.

"Bread and Roses" from a poem by James Oppenheim, sung and recorded by Bronwen Lewis, 2014.

Please note that the links below to Amazon are affiliate links. That means that, at no extra cost to you, I can earn a commission if you click through and make a purchase. (Here's what, legally, I'm supposed to tell you: I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for me to earn fees by linking to Amazon.com and affiliated sites.) However, I only recommend books that I have used and genuinely highly recommend.

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• There Is Power in a Union: The Epic Story of Labor in America by Philip Dray

The Purity Distilling Company molasses tank dominated the North End of Boston, standing 50 feet tall over the surrounding tenements. Residents of the area were accustomed to the sight of tank oozing syrup from its seams and making strange rumbling noises from its depths. And one day in January 1919, life changed forever for Bostonians when the walls of the tank suddenly, inexplicably failed. Was it negligence? Or a vicious attack by anarchists?

The molasses storage tank of the Purity Distilling Company stood 50 feet tall and 190 feet in diameter over the North End of Boston. It was constructed in a hurry to meet high demand for molasses to be distilled into ethanol and grain alcohol for rum.

Margaret Sanger led the charge for birth control in the United States, opening the first clinic to offer contraception to women in 1916. Sanger founded the organization that would become Planned Parenthood.

Sanger began publishing the Birth Control Review in 1917 to promote the cause of legalizing contraception. Since sending information about birth control through the mail was illegal, the magazine was sold by hand.

Kitty Marion hawked the Birth Control Review every day in New York City for thirteen years, enduring every kind of harassment from passersby and the police.

Even before the United States entered World War I, anti-German swept the country. Numerous states passed laws outlawing the speaking of German in public. These laws were passed in Iowa under then-governor Warren G. Harding.

Hysteria about immigrants in general and German-Americans in particular created enormous pressure for people to prove they were 100 percent American.

The American Protective League was a private organization that was authorized by the Justice Department to investigate the loyalty of Americans.

I didn't go into this in the episode, but the American Protective League spawned a number of both sister and rival organizations, among them the American Defense Society. All of them recruited Americans to spy on their neighbors.

This photo shows the extent of damage from the Molasses Flood.

Here you can see the elevated railway that ran alongside the tank. If you look closely, you can see steel panels from the sides of the tank twisted under the rail line.

This photo shows the damage to the train structure. Only the quick actions of the train brakeman saved the passengers on the following train.

The Engine 31 Firehouse was knocked off its foundation, and the first floor collapsed. Several firefighters were trapped in a gap under the second floor ceiling, pinned by rubble, and threatened by a slowly rising tide of molasses.

The Boston press was consumed with the story of the Molasses Flood for weeks.

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• Dark Tide: The Great Boston Molasses Flood of 1919 by Stephen Puleo

Woodrow Wilson's Fourteen Points promised self-determination to colonies around the globe, raising hopes of independence and freedom for millions. But Wilson and the Allies had no intention of letting occupied peoples throw off imperialism. What would be the long-term consequences of raising the hopes and then dashing the dreams of so many people?

Nguyễn Ái Quốc, aka Nguyễn Tất Thành, was born in French Indochina and fled to find better opportunities. He was living in Paris in 1919 and working as a busboy at the Ritz. His declaration on the rights of the people of Annam, a land better known today as Vietnam, was ignored by the Western delegates.

Rudyard Kipling wrote his poem "The White Man's Burden." His purpose was to exhort the United States to join the colonial system by taking over and "civilizing" the Philipplines, which had recently come under American control. It is a deeply racist text, as is the cartoon above from Judge magazine, which shows John Bull (aka England) and Uncle Sam carrying "barbarians" over the rocks of oppression, ignorance and superstition toward the gleaming beacon of civilization.

Mandates in the Pacific were all former German colonies. They included:

Mandates in Western Asia and Africa included:

The Japanese delegates to the Paris Peace Conference wanted two things from the Allies: a racial equality clause in the League of Nations covenant and Shandong in China.

Australia was one of the most vocal opponents to the racial equality clause. The country was dominated by the White Australia movement, which called to limit immigration to the continent to whites only. This is the cover of a popular song about this topic.

When news reached China that the Allies had granted Shandong to Japan, protests erupted across the country. This photo shows a demonstration in Beijing. The May the Fourth movement led directly to the creation of the Chinese Communist Party.

Protests also broke out across Korea, then under Japanese rule, in what became known as the March First Movement. The date is still celebrated in Korea as National Liberation Day.

All of these photos of protests begin to look alike, but this one stands out because it shows women. It depicts a demonstration in Cairo in 1919 against British. What really alarmed the British about these demonstrations was that so many people, both Christian and Muslim, male and female, participated.

Gabriele D'Annunzio was short and balding but incredibly charismatic. After years of fame as a poet, novelist, and playwright, he became a geuine war hero. In 1919, he adopted the cause of the Italian claim on Fiume.

D'Annunzio's invasion of Fiume more closely resembled a picnic outing, except for all of the weapons. The new leader of city became known as "Il Duce" and surrounded himself with Italian special forces troops.

Benito Mussolini closely followed D'Annunzio's conquest of Fiume and adoped many of his strategies in his March on Rome in 1922, right down to the black shirts and palm-down salute.

D'Annunzio was dismissive of Fascism--he had done it all himself first--but Mussolini made a point of paying D'Annunzio's bills, giving him gifts, and appearing in photographs with the poet. Here they are in 1925, with Mussolini on the left and D'Annunzio, showing his age, on the right.

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• Paris 1919: Six Months That Changed the World by Margaret Macmillan

The collapse of the Ottoman Empire set off a mad scramble for territory. No one paid any attention to what the people who actually lived in the former empire actually wanted. But in the heart of Anatolia, one Turkish general was determined to preserve his homeland.

In 1914, the Ottoman Empire stretched from the border of Europe all the way to the Arabian Peninsula, although the amount of control actually exerted by Istanbul diminished with distance from the capital.

The Gallipoli Campaign was a British strategy to attack the Central Powers from the southeast. The first step was to conquer the Dardanelles, the waterway that connects the Mediterranean with the Black Sea. The British assumed the weakened Ottoman army would provide little resistance. But under the leadership of Mustafa Kemal, the Ottomans mounted a spirited defense and drove off the Allied troops.

This is an image of ANZAC Cove, where Australian and New Zealand troops, who bore the brunt of the invasion attempt, were headquartered.

Lieutenant Colonel Mustafa Kemal became a national hero and the savior of Gallipoli.

The Arab Revolt was a British-backed campaign of Bedouin troops to overthrow the Ottomans. Through daring raids, railroad attacks, and desert marches, the Arabs forced the Ottomans out of territory from the Arabian Peninsula all the way to Syria.

In the Mesopotamian Campaign, British troops conquered modern-day Iraq, marching into Baghdad in 1917. This photo depicts British units parading through the city. Note that many of them were Indian soldiers, likely Sikhs from Punjab.

When Russia moved south through the Caucasus into Turkey, the Turks believed that Armenians were aiding them. In retribution, the Turks carried out a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing that killed, according to Armenian accounts, 1.5 million people. Photographed here are Armenian refugees at a Red Cross camp outside of Jerusalem.

The Kurds live in a mountainous territory that overlaps the boundaries of today's Turkey, Iraq, and Syria. The Kurdish nationalist movement was in its infancy in 1919 and found it difficult to achieve international support for its aims.

The British promised a lot of people a lot of things during the war, and most of those promises were incompatible. This map shows one proposed post-war configuration, with an independent Armenia and France in control of southern Turkey, northern Syria, and Lebanon.

British Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour issued a declaration in support of the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine in 1917. This was a monumental step toward the eventual creation of the state of Israel--and prompted protests and riots among Palestinians.

Prince Faisal, who expected to become King of Syria, invited himself to the Paris Peace Conference to plead his cause. Lawrence of Arabia, third from right, accompanied him as a translator and guide. They were very definitely not wanted.

Faisal was later crowned King of the new Iraq. This is a rare photo of the ceremony. Notice that Faisal is surrounded by British military officers, a sight that would not have reassured Iraqis worried about the independence of their new country.

Greek troops invaded Turkey in 1919, prompting a furious reaction. This is a photo of protests in Istanbul--notice Haghia Sophia in the background.

Mustafa Kemal did more than protest. He headed to the Anatolian heartland with a core group of army officers and began organizing the Turkish War of Independence. His arrival in the city of Samsun on May 19, 1919 is a day of celebration in Turkey. This is an artist's depiction of Kemal's arrival.

The Treaty of Sevres captured on paper the reality that Britain was attempting to establish on the ground. Notice the independent Armenia in the east and the French Mandate in Syria. Italians were granted a zone in southern Turkey and Greeks in the south and west. On paper, the Zone of the Straits was to be an international territory supervised by the League of Nations; on the ground, the Greeks were in charge.

Kemal's troops steadily advanced on the Greeks, pushing hundreds of thousands of Greek refugees before them. Something like a million Greeks and Armenians were crowded into the Greek headquarter city of Smyrna when Kemal's forces arrived in September 1922. Fire broke out in the city and left it a devastated ruin; the number of casualties is unknown.

The Treaty of Lausanne, signed in 1923, replaced the Treaty of Sevres. The borders defined in this treaty have generally held, although conflict in the region has never ceased.

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• A Peace to End All Peace: The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Creation of the Modern Middle East by David Fromkin

At the end of World War I, Great Britain promised India increased autonomy with one hand and took civil rights away with another. The furious population welcomed the leadership of a nationalist with a compelling message of non-violence and self-reliance, one Mohandas K. Gandhi. But when Gandhi organized nationwide protests, the British reacted with fear and force, especially in Amritsar, where a mob lashed out against English residents. The confrontation would end in one of the most shocking events in colonial history.

After Indians revolted against British rule in 1857, the British believed that only overwhelming force could keep the subcontinent under British control. This newspaper cartoon illustrates what the colonial authorities feared the most: that Indians would assault English women and children.

Indian servants raised British children, cooked British food, washed British clothes, and tended to every British need. But the British never trusted the people among who they lived.

Nearly 2 million Indian soldiers and support staff served in World War I. Nationalists expected that their loyal service would be rewarded by increased autonomy within the British empire.

Mohandas K. Gandhi returned to India eager to employ his principles of non-violent resistance in the struggle for Indian independence.

For Gandhi, spinning was both a practical way for India to become economically independent and a strategy for promoting traditional crafts. It was also a symbol of Indian self-reliance. Gandhi pushed spinning on everyone he met.

Amritsar, in Punjab, is home to the Darbar Sahib, a holy site in the Sikh faith.

This diagram of Jallianwala Bagh shows the size of the space, the location of the soldiers, and the limited number of exits.

Brigadier-General R.E.H. Dyer was born in India and served around the empire as well as on the Western Front. He estimated his troops had killed between 200 and 300 people and asserted, "There was no question of undue severity."

Among the reprisals Dyer imposed on Amritsar, the most notorious was the "crawling order"--the demand that Indians crawl on their stomachs down the street where the schoolteacher Miss Sherwood was attacked.

Gandhi accelerated his non-cooperation protests after the Amritsar Massacre, eventually calling on peasants to stop paying their taxes. In March 1922, he was arrested and convicted of sedition. He was sentenced to six years but only served two.

On August 1, 1919, Gopal Singh of the Ghadar Party presented Eamon de Valera with a sword. The sword was sheathed, a symbol of India's non-violence resistance to the British. But de Valera unsheathed it, marking Ireland's use of force. Both nations would achieve independence accompanied by bloodshed, but Gandhi's refusal to confront the British on their own terms infuriated the British in a way the Irish never did.

Today, Jallianwala Bagh is a beautifully landscaped memorial shrine that includes this painting of the massacre, observed here by an Indian girl on the 100th anniversary of the event.

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• Amritsar 1919: An Empire of Fear and the Making of a Massacre by Kim Wagner

The Irish had tried to free themselves from British control for centuries, always to fail. But in 1922, the Irish Free State took its place among the world's independent nations. Learn how an election, a shadow government, and a key literally baked into a cake brought independence to Ireland--along with a bloody civil war.

Thomas Ash died in a British prison in 1917 after a botched forced feeding when he refused to lift his hunger strike.

His funeral had every appearance of a state funeral, even though when Ash died he was considered a traitor by the British. Here a squad from the Irish Volunteer Army fire a volley at his graveside.

The day after Easter 1916, Irish nationalist rebels seized key locations in Dublin in an attempt to spark a national uprising. Few photos were taken by the rebels. This rather poor quality image is one of the only in existence; it was taken from within the General Post Office and shows several soldiers. Notice how young many of them are.

James Connally led forces in the General Post Office. He was praised for his courage and determination; Michael Collins later said he would have followed him through hell.

Michael Collins was young, dashing, and handsome--and relatively unknown before the Rising.

The American-born Eamon de Valera led troops in the southeastern part of Dublin.

Within a day of the rising, British troops began pouring into the city and quickly overwhelmed the rebels.

The situation rapidly deteriorated for the rebels. This drawing is an artist's depiction of the last day with the General Post Office. Notice the smoke from fires and the wounded Thomas Connally lying on a stretcher. On Saturday, they had no choice but to surrender.

Dublin was left in ruins and 260 civilians were left dead.

The British rapidly executed 16 men, inadvertently turning public opinion against them and creating a whole host of martyrs to the Irish cause. Commemorative posters like this were popular across Ireland.

Irish republican leaders poured their efforts into winning the vote in the 1918 general election. They framed the election as a mandate on Ireland's future--and won.

The Irish were well aware of the fight for self-determination among other European nations such as Czechoslovakia. When the Peace Conference opened in 1919, the Irish argued they deserved independence as much as the Czech or the Poles, sometimes using blatantly racist arguments.

The first Dail Eireann, or Irish national assembly, moved rapidly to create a shadow government in early 1919. Michael Collins, the minister of finance, is second from the left; Eamon de Valera, president, is fifth from the left.

Irish-American activists urged Woodrow Wilson to take up the cause of Ireland at the Paris Peace Conference. This postcard is a political cartoon that shows Uncle Sam escorting Ireland into the conference. Wilson refused to address the issue of Ireland, following the insistence of British Prime Minister David Lloyd-George that Ireland was not the business of the conference.

Wilson would pay for this decision when Irish-Americans organized against the League of Nations and helped ensure its defeat in the the U.S. Senate.

Eamon de Valera spent most of his first two years in office touring the United States to raise money and support for Ireland. He toured the entire country and made a remarkable visit to the Chippewa reservation in Wisconsin. He greeted the Chippewa as a representative from one oppressed nation to another. The Chippewa adoped de Valera as a member of their tribe and gave him this magnificent headdress.

Meanwhile, back in Ireland, IRA units systematically targeted members of the Royal Irish Constabulary, killing and wounding hundreds. The Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Sir John French, denounced Sinn Fein as a "club for killing policemen."

The British responded to the RIC attacks by sending in veterans of the Great War, nicknamed the Black and Tans for the dark coats they wore over khaki uniforms. The Black and Tans had little training and policemen and imposed a harsh regime of searches (as pictured here), checkpoints, reprisals, and extra-judicial killings (which is a nice way to say they murdered people outright.)

In reaction, the IRA's special assassination unit "The Squad" targeted British spies, killing 11 on Sunday, November 21, 1920. The furious British surrounded a football match between Dublin and Tipperary and fired into the crowd.

Shortly before Bloody Sunday, Terence MacSwiney died after a 74-day hunger strike. His slow martyrdom was followed by the entire world, and other countries started asking the British pointed questions about their policy toward Ireland.

Finally, the Irish and British began negotiating a peace that would remove the British from Ireland--but keep the country tied to Great Britain and divided along religious lines.

The Irish, led by Michael Collins, signed the treaty, kicking off a bloody civil war. Pro-Treaty forces, led by Collins, argued that the treaty was the right solution for Ireland that guaranteed peace.

Anti-Treaty forces, led by de Valera, argued that the treaty was being forced on Ireland and was a betrayal of all they had fought for.

Collins was winning the fight when he was shot by an Anti-Treaty ambush on August 22, 1922. Collins became the ultimate Irish martyr, always young, always dashing, always a hero.

Within nine months of Collins' death, the Anti-Treaty troops agreed to a ceasefire and peace came to Ireland.

Or, at least, until the Troubles began in the north--but that's another podcast.

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• Amazon.com: Bitter Freedom: Ireland in a Revolutionary World by Maurice Walsh

The emergence of the flu virus that swept the globe between 1918 and 1920 was entirely unexpected, but the resulting pandemic can't be called an entirely natural disaster. Governments made decisions that made the flu much, much worse, and those decisions would have long-lasting consequences--and leave between 50 and 100 million dead.

Colonel Charles Hagadorn was a respected officer who had served in the Philippines, Northern Mexico, and Panama as well as at West Point as a drawing instructor. His suicide was reported across the United States.

Camp Grant in Rockford, Illinois was like many of the army camps thrown together after the United States declared war on Germany. The camp's experience with the Spanish Flu was not unusual; many camps were devasted by the pandemic. In this photo, soldiers at the camp play baseball, probably during the months either before or after the flu, since during the crisis all hands were needed to care for the sick and tend to the dead.

This photo depicts typical hospital conditions in army camps. It was taken at Camp Funston in Kansas, which some researchers believe was where the flu virus originated. Unusually virulent cases of flu had been reported in Kansas, and the camp saw some of the first cases in the United States. That did not stop the camp from sending soldiers to other camps across the country and to Europe.

Despite the fact that cases of flu had been reported among navy personnel in Philadelphia, the city went ahead with its massive Liberty Loan parade in September 1918. The streets were packed with several hundred thousand people. Within days, tens of thousands fell ill.

As the crisis continued, the Archbishop threw open churches for use as hospitals, ordered seminary students to help bury the dead, and allowed cloistered nuns to serve as nurses.

Toward the end of the pandemic, the city had to recruit workers to dig mass graves for the dead.

Cities tried to implement measures to limit the spread of the disease. Spitting on the street was a frequent target.

Islands and remote communities tried to impose quarantines to keep out the sickness. Many of these, as in Prince Edward Island, Canada and Australia, proved ineffective. However, Gunnison, Colorado's strict restrictions kept the flu out of the community.

Despite the dire situation, many governments tried to downplay the seriousness of the flu. They considered it important to maintain morale and avoid panic. The Albuquerque Morning Journal argued that fear took more lives than the disease.

The flu was a global disaster, although I have found it difficult to find photos that give a real sense of its scope. This image is from Tokyo and shows schoolgirls wearing gauze masks in an attempt to prevent spreading or catching the disease. Masks were worn around the world during the flu outbreak.

I mentioned in the episode the terrible losses in Bristol Bay, Alaska. Native villages across Alaska were hit particularly hard by the flu, and thousands of orphans were left in the aftermath of the pandemic. This photo shows a group of these orphans at the Kanakanak government orphanage.

Mohandas K. Gandhi, seen here in a photo from 1915, was one of many political and social leaders who became seriously ill with the flu.

Katherine Anne Porter, pictured here about 1912, nearly died in the influenza epidemic and was one of few writers of the era to chronicle her experience.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that no matter how terrible the crisis, someone will try to make money off of it. The Victor Victrola dealer of Billings, Montana, for example, informed the public they could still enjoy music even while concert halls and movie theaters were closed if they bought their own record player.

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• Pale Rider: The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World by Laura Spinney

In 1919, thousands of American soldiers fought Russian troops on Russian soil--despite the fact President Woodrow Wilson had promised to allow Russia to determine its own political future. Why did the Allies rush to land troops in eastern Siberia and along the Arctic Ocean? And why have we forgotten all about it?

General William S. Graves wanted to lead troops in France, but instead he was given confusing and contradictory orders and sent to Vladivostok in far eastern Siberia.

The Americans joined representatives of multiple other nations in Vladivostok, including French, British, Romanian, Serbian, Polish and Japanese troops. Many of the British units were from Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. Representatives of the Czechoslovak Legion and the White Army were also on hand. In this photo, American soldiers parade through Vladivostok shortly after their arrival in 1918.

I continue to struggle to find maps that show what I want. This one shows a few key points. First, the location of the territory firmly in Bolshevik hands, land generally surrounding Moscow, is in dark gray. The route of the Trans-Siberian Railway, along which the Czechoslovak Legion seized territory, crosses Siberia. Dark arrows indicate where various Allied troops landed and tried to advance into Russia.

You'll notice arrows moving up from the South, from the Crimea and around the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. These were primarily French and British troops, and Americans weren't involved. I haven't discussed these attempted invasions just to simplify matters.

Conditions in Siberia and northern Russia were predictably harsh. This photo shows American soldiers eating while sitting on a snow bank. This looks like a relatively happy gathering; it was not usually this pleasant.

This photo gives at least an inkling how cold it was, especially in northern Russia.

Most Americans had no idea their soldiers were in Russia until the issue was picked up by Senator Hiram Johnson of California. Johnson, a Republican who despised President Wilson, made the return of the troops his number one priority in late 1918/early 1919. He hoped the issue would carry him all the way to the White House.

Johnson's pressure combined with the new-found strength of the Red Army and the general American desire to bring all of the boys home ended American intervention in Russia. Most troops in northern Russia were home by the summer of 1919. The Polar Bear Division, the 339th Infantry Regiment from Michigan, were welcomed with an enormous party in Detroit, seen here.

Japan sent more than 70,000 troops to Vladivostok. The campaign became deeply unpopular at home, in part because its purpose was unclear, in part because it was a resounding failure. In order to rally public support, Japan produced numerous propaganda images. This one shows Japanese troops landing at Vladivostok to the great joy of the Russian people. The defeat of the Japanese army in Siberia contributed to the collapse of democratic rule in Japan.

Americans might have forgotten about the Allied intervention in Russia, but the Russians certainly didn't. When Nikita Krushchev visited New York in September 1959, he pointedly brought up "the time you sent the troops to quell the revolution."

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• The Polar Bear Expedition: The Heroes of America's Forgotten Invasion of Russia, 1918-1919 byJames Carl Nelson

The world has been obsessed with the tragedy of the Romanov family for more than a century. It's easy to forget that the Tsar's family were among hundreds of thousands of people killed in the Revolution as well as in conflicts that swept across Eastern Europe. These conflicts would have lasting implications for the entire world.

I have really struggled to find a map that shows what I want a map to show. None of them really focus on exactly what I'm focusing on, alas. But, this is one of the best I've found.

This map is dated to the end of 1918. Notice the purple stripe that goes all the way across central Siberia--that's the Trans-Siberian Railway and the territory controlled by the Czechoslovak Legion. Eventually, the White Army would travel along the railway with the Czechoslovaks and fight the Red Army.

The dark blue areas labeled "1" are areas where Allies invaded and seized territory. The reddish-brown area in the west is the territory controlled by the Bolsheviks.

OK, here's another map--and you're going to say, "That's not even in English!" No, it's not, but work with me here. Just refer to the previous image. This map is a year or so later than the previous one. The Trans-Siberian Railway is the black and white line crossing the entire map. Those red arrows along the line show the path of the Bolsheviks moving against the Legion and the White Army as they retreat back to Vladivostok.

Notice the dark red striped area in the upper west. That's the Bolshevik-controlled territory, and you can see from the red arrows how the Red Army moved out of this stronghold and across the entire country. Ukraine is the lime green area on the far left of the map. It was handed over to Germany in the treaty of Brest-Litovsk, but Russia reclaimed it. The borders on this map reflect the final size of the new USSR by 1922.

It's not hard to see the Romanov daughters as individuals. You can find biographies of each young woman online and learn all sorts of details of their lives. Here you see Tatiana seated, with Maria, Anastasia, and Olga from left to right.

Similarly, Alexei is recognizable across history as a little boy whose life was shadowed by an incurable and painful illness but who liked to play tricks on his sisters and always wanted a bicycle.

In contrast, the many victims of the Red Terror, and the simultaneous White Terror, are difficult to discern as individuals.

I found photos from the Terror, but I'm not going to post them here. They are horrifying.

Allied troops, including British, French, Japanese, and American soldiers, were sent to Vladivostok in the far east and Archangel north of St. Petersburg. French and British troops also fought in southern Russia. This photo depicts American units marching through Vladivostok.

The Allies never sent enough men to make a real difference in the conflict, and they were withdrawn after having done little more than offend the Russians.

The Allies took their own sweet time returning the Czechoslovak Legion to their newly formed homeland; the last troops weren't evacuated from Vladivostok until early 1921. The Legion was incredibly frustrated by the delay. This is a cartoon from a newspaper operated by Legion troops . It shows one last soldier standing along the Sea of Japan waiting for a ship home; it's dated, facetiously, 1980.

This map shows the new nations created after the war in eastern Europe. Finland, Estonia and Latvia achieve independence from Russia. Poland was combined from portions of Russia, Germany, and the Austria-Hungarian empire. Notice the pale green strip extending to the Baltic Sea; that's the Polish corridor, that left East Prussia separate from the rest of Germany.

Czechoslovakia, Austria and Hungary arose out of the former Austria-Hungarian Empire. The Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes was soon renamed Yugoslavia; it combined territory from Austria-Hungary with the former Serbia. Romania seized territory from its neighbors, gaining a sizeable increase in land.

Dividing up territory in Eastern Europe was difficult and contentious. Self-determination had made it seem easy, but who "owned" a city like Cieszyn in Upper Silesia? The region had been controlled by multiple states over its history and was claimed by the Poles, the Czechs, and the Germans. Cieszyn (its Polish spelling), also known as Těšín in Czech and Teschen in German, was divided down the middle by the Paris Peace Conference, a solution that satisfied no one. Here you can see a guard station hastily erected on the international border in the middle of town.

Another contested territory in eastern Europe was the Sudetenland; those are the dark brown portions on the map. While traditionally part of Czech territory, they were largely inhabited by ethnic Germans. The Paris Peace Conference sided with the Czechs and gave the land to the new Czechoslovakia, to the fury of the Germans. The Nazis would never let the perceived injustice of the Sudetenland die.

Many of the sources for this week are the same as last week, and I won't repeat them here. The following are a few sources that are particularly relevant to this episode.

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• The Russian Civil War in Early 1919 I THE GREAT WAR - YouTube