Marguerite and the English Gertrude Bell were 2 daughters of the Gilded Age both were highly intelligent and fluent in at least 5 languages and hid their intellect and turned on their charm. Feminists not in words but deeds.
Born Marguerite Elton Backer daughter of a shipping magnate and of one of Baltimore richest families. She worked as a labourer in her fathers shipyard constructing of ships to prove that if men were drafted to fight abroad women could take their place. She was the widowed wife of a prominent stockbroker. In 1915 when her husband died. In 1917 the US joined the European War and she worked to protect Americans from German propaganda movies. She became a reporter for the Baltimore Sun but women were officially barred from a war zone. During WW1 the world lost 20 million people and another tens of millions died from the outbreak of influenza. .
1902 Her son Tommy was born. Her husband Tom was a stockbroker and the NY stock exchange closed down when WW1 began and stayed that way for 4 months. Her husband died of a tumor of the brain leaving her their 14 year old son.
1918 The Battle of Argonne was an allied victory but it cost 26000 American lives. The war had cost Germany over 2 million dead and twice that in wounded and they were ready for an Armistice.
1918 She applied to the navy to become a spy but was turned down. She was hired by General Marlborough Churchill as a spy for the army. She was .in Italy she met Victorio Emmanuel grandson of the king. In Rome she met Reshid Sadi bey of the Turkish consul and became aware of Turkish politics.
She was sent to Paris to report on the Peace talks. In Germany she had to access the social and psychological conditions in Germany. The war had left Berlin unscathed. The social democrats pledged universal health care and free election with both men and women taking part. American women only got the vote in August 1920. She got a Press Card which gave her access to government buildings.
In Germany he met up at dinner at Filed marshal Karl von Bellow's home. many Europeans and Americans were convinced that Communism was a plot to invade the west. Jews were blamed for the war in those circles and she had to listen to the unfounded anti-Semitic remarks. Right wingers formed the Deuche Bund
She was invited to the solon of countess Hetta Trauber a friend of the art dealer Paul Cassirer where she met newspaper editors and leaders of political parties and sent back information to the MI. A valued contact was Walter Rathenau, the Jewish industrialist whose father had obtained the patent rights to the Thomas Edison bulb. Rathenau supported Wilsons 14 points as without proper remedies by the Allies, Germany would collapse and be followed by anarchy. Germans looked to America for help. However Isolationism had replace Globalism and American shrunk back and Wilson 14 point plan was rejected by the Republicans.
1916 Winter in Germany had been called Turnip Winter as the failed potato harvest and the Allied blockade. The poor struggled with paper shirts and shoes. Since the armistice of 1918 she wrote 20% of the population is living in luxury, 30% were spending all their income on food and 50% were close to starvation. France had lost from the war one and a half million dead and 4 million wounded. Throughout the war the German people had been deceived into believing they were winning. The allies warned that if the terms were not accepted they would resume fighting. The war had overthrown 5 kingdoms.
Walter Gropius introduced the Bauhous architecture school and Berthold Brecht and Kurt Weil replaced romantic art with realistic portrayals of the mayhem. Elections culminated in the birth of the German Republic and the conference was set in Weimar for the new provisional government, because that was the home of Frederich Schiller. Marguerite Harrison was the only female foreign correspondent with permission to attend the National assembly meetings, in the Goethe Memorial Theater. This included 40 newly elected women. Ben Hecht from Chicago Daily News and Sidney Greenwald of the London Express were present. They talked of the German Reich (Empire) not Republic and Frederich Ebert was chosen as first leader. They cheered for a union with Austria.
1919 March the Arbeider Rath (union) voted for a general strike and Berlin became a combat zone. Germany was in debt of $35 million for war loans. With the Freikorps ordered to guard Berlin by the end of the revolt 1200 people were dead.
Poland led by Paderewski declared Polish independence with Warsaw the capital but Prussia stretched from Danzig to the Saar valley. Poland needed the coal mines of Upper Silesia with the Vistula going to the sea as the only sea outlet. The German Poland question was the biggest problem of the Versailles Conference. in neighbouring Latvia and Lithuania 2 German Generals maintained their forces of half a million men "Self preservation was creating a new nationalism" At the Berlin University were placards "Germany for the Germans" With gradual disillusionment to neurotic excitable creatures the seed of Nazism had been sown. Danzig was recognized as an International City.
In America at this time you had a war against alcohol tobacco gambling prizefighting and desecration of the sabbath and WEB DuBois spoke against the vile treatment of 2 million Black soldiers, most of whom still could not vote. Robert Minor was one of the most famous American political cartoonists and was encouraging US anti war activities. He was on Lenin's editorial staff circulating an English language newspaper to American troops based in the Russian seaport of Archangel. She now went with the American Red Cross to Lithuania. Kovno was its capitol.
She wanted to visit Russia but the Soviet were suspicious of western reporter and would not give a visa. America knew very little of the size of the Russian army who was running the country, and that the Bolshis were exporting revolution. She became Agent B as well as a reporter for the Boston Sun. In Switzerland she met Mr Julius Hacker and showed support for the Red cause and that the US would soon have a revolution.. He told her that the US consul in Stockholm was one of us, thus a mole in the State Dept. Going through Austria she saw that people in the cities were starving as very little food was getting through from the rural areas and no coal was available.
In Warsaw she interviewed General Pilsudski as Eastern Poland was still at war with Russia, she got information on Soviet military troops and supplies and reported it to the American attaché in Warsaw. In Warsaw the Jewish population was 40% of the total population and they were doing well but not in other cities like Bialystok and Vilna. In Poland she took lessons in Russian.
She walked across the border to Russia. where she was told that with prohibition in the USA and no bars open people will flock to political meetings to cause a revolution. She found out that farming communes were being set up with out farm machinery or even seeds and that from brith children should be regarded as property of state. The Bolshevists were turning a blind eye to open air markets in Moscow.
1892 Sasha Berman tried to assassinate Henry Frick the US industrialist who survived . Berkman after 22 years in jail was deported to Russia in 1919 Petrograd's population had dropped from 3 million to Half a million , those left faced famine.
1920 The first meeting of the Moscow Soviet took place at Moscow opera house where Lenin spoke. The Russian railways were a shambles as the boycott stopped US and British parts entering. She got into the Kremlin and saw Trotsky and got an interview with him. He favored a small Soviet government and peace with Poland . She wondered into a room where she saw a map Communist propaganda centers around he world and sent back a message that the Bolsheviks were firmly in the saddle.
She was arrested as an American spy and Mogillevsky the Chief Commissar of the Cheka would let her out to spy on British and American's in Moscow for a salary of 42500 rubles. The British offered aid to the Russians in return fo the release of their citizens. Emma Goldman and John Reed both communist supporter were opposed to the dictatorship they saw and lack of free speech. John Reed wrote Ten days that shook the world. He died in hospital at the age of 30 of fever. Fridjof Nansen came to Moscow for the Red Cross to free thousands of POWs held in Russia and she helped him and noted the names and locations of Americans in captivity. No monarchy was more autocratic than Soviet Russia.
The British Labour delegation visited to confirm the wonders of the Revolution and she had to report back on their opinions. The visitors recognized the charade of what the Soviets were about. She used them to relay messages through their British counterparts. She had sent out more military information than any other agent. Bertrand Russell came to write a newspaper series and was shocked at the cruelty , poverty and suspicion. Because she was not giving the Cheka information she was put in jail and later diagnosed with tuberculosis. The Baltimore Sun had been pushing for her release.
Moscow and Washington had reached agreement and the US Relief Administration lead by Herbert Hoover would send food aid to Russia. 16 month after Mogillevsky had got control of her she was released and taken to Vindavsky Station and deported to Riga. She was able to recall lots of information. The Soviets had no raw materials or manufactured good and no means of production. Isolating Russia could bring the thing the wanted to prevent a prolongation of the Commonest dictatorship. Back in the US she was invited to meet Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover.
1919 she arrived in Germany 2 months after Kaiser Wilhelm had been forced to abdicate on November 1918. On November 11th the Germans had asked for an armistice and the provisional government was let by the Social Democrats. On the left of them were the Spartacust and on the right were the Monarchists. Karl Liebknecht and partner Rosa Luxemberg were the founders of the German Communist Party in 1919. They were both assassinated. Karl had been the only Reichstag member to vote against entering the war.
1921At the Washington Memorial hall and President Warren Harding in office , Author Balfor for Britain Aristide for France and Baron Kato for Japan met to stop the growing Arms Race , because Japan was building a big navy. HG Wells was a NY Times reporter. They tried limiting the number and size of each countries warships and end Japans occupation of China. Japans militarists were firmly set on conquest. The NY Times said thought that Walter Rathenau would be American savior but he was assassinated in 1922
In 1922 her book Marooned in Moscow came out. 1925 she was writing articles for magazines and give lectures for the Pond Lecture Agency. The men she had led became important members of the Explorers Club but it never accepted women members. On her travels she had met female activists in Russia Japan and Turkey who worked for women's rights. She helped set up an organization of women who had done unusual things the society of Women Geographers SWG with Harriet Adams and other like Eleonor Roosevelt, Jane Goodall ,Amelia Earhart joined and it had 500 members.
She now went off on a tour of the Far East starting with Japan. She reported back on Vickers providing armaments to Japan. She understood that Japanese are giving and acting collectively. In 1918 the Bolsheviks asked the Japanese to occupy Northern Sakhalin and the Siberian coast against the Whites. The Isle of Sakhalin had major coal and oil deposits a great windfall for Japan. The capital here Aleksandrovsk had been a penal colony of the tsar. She was the only woman ever invited to dine by the Japanese general staff. Russia had a buffer zone between her an the Japanese and this was named the Eastern Republic. Here she spoke to Russians who said that under Japan things are bad but under Russia it will be worse.
Vladivostok had been part of China and was claimed by Russia in 1860. There she was aware that anti-Semitism was rampant amongst the Monarchists. In 1922 the American's withdrew and within 3 weeks the area went Red but Sakhalin remained under Japan. In Korea she concluded that the country had advanced more under the Japanese in 20 years than centuries on its own. Japan stayed in Korea till the end of WW2.
1921 the Japanese army attempted to seize power in Peking but were repulsed by Sun Yak-sen. Chines city of Harbin was the center of the Chinese Eastern Railways. The Japanese refused to withdraw from Sakhalin till the Russians paid compensation for the massacres' at Nikoleevesh.. The modern Chinese communist part including the young Mao started at this time. She went by car to drive through Mongolia which had recently declared itself as an independant nation now freed from China.. includes the Gobi which is the largest dessert in Asia. When she entered Russia she was arrested and taken to Moscow on the Trans Siberian Railway. In Moscow and the Cheka wanted her to spy on Russians as a foreigner but she refused and was put into Labyanka prison but was released after after a few weeks and deported again.
1922The USSR was formed by Ukraine, Byelorussia ,Georgia ,Armenia and Azerbaijan.
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