In the fall of 1937, a new economic crisis broke out in the United
States throwing into doubt the economic policies of President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt. The crisis sent unemployment rising and seriously exacerbated
differences within the Administration with some ministers warning against
more reforms and others blaming the problems on the government's failure
to see them through.
In Spain, the civil war raged on forcing General Francisco Franco
to look for slogans that would appeal to the people, and form an organization
to rally the country's right-wingers behind his government. The dictator
eventually managed to cobble together a party representing the country's
fascists, monarchists and the advocates of more power to the Catholic Church.
The Spanish fascists' penchant for traditional conservatism set them notably
apart from their brethren in Germany and Italy.
In the Soviet Union, in May 1937, a drastic purge affecting all
those who opposed Stalin's leadership, disturbed morale and efficiency
in the Red Army. More than 40,000 army and naval officers were arrested
on charges of plotting to betray the Soviet Union to Japan and Germany.
The purge effectively denuded the army ranks all way down to the battalion
and company level. Among the Red Army brass executed in 1937 was Marshal
Mikhail Tukhachevsky, who was one of the most talented and intelligent
Soviet commanders. A man of many talents, Tukhachevsky was a fine violinist
and was even good at building his own musical instruments.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union was busily exploring its vast northern
territories. Ivan Papanin led an expedition to the North Pole which spent
almost a year drifting on a giant ice floe studying the movement of ice
fields and the weather patterns in the north. In the same year the famous
aviator Valery Chkalov with two friends made a non-stop trans-Polar flight
from Moscow to Vancouver, Canada, logging 8,504 kilometers in 63 hours
and 16 minutes.
Also in 1937, the first woman cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova
was born. In June 1963 she circled the Earth 48 times on board the Vostok
6 spaceship.
And now, let's talk a little about the famous people who died
in 1937. In the United States, John Davidson Rockefeller, the founding
father of the Rockefeller dynasty of billionaires and of the world-famous
Standard Oil company, died at the age of 98. In Italy, the year 1937 saw
the last of Guglielmo Marconi, the Nobel prizewinning inventor of a practical
system of radiotelegraphy.
Another big loss was the death at an early age of 39 of the outstanding
American composer George Gershwin. He left behind a plethora of musicals
and songs most them written in collaboration with his brother, Ira Gershwin,
who was a gifted writer of lyrics. Gershwin's last and finest work was
the opera Porgy and Bess which he wrote two years before his untimely death.
In France, the year 1937 bid good-bye to yet another great composer,
Maurice Ravel, who was one of the most original French composers, best
remembered for the Bolero he wrote in 1927.
The year 1937 saw the birth of the popular British actor Anthony
Hopkins who has featured extensively in plays by William Shakespeare. His
best role to date has been that of King Lear in Shakespeare's eponymously-titled
tragedy. Anthony Hopkins is a popular film actor too. His excellent performance
of Dr.Lecter's part in The Silence of the Lambs, won him an Academy award.
Also in 1937, the wife of the Czech diplomat Josef Korbel gave
birth to a daughter whom they called Maria. Seven years later, the girl
changed her name to Madlenka. As you might have already guessed, we are
talking about Madeleine Albright. Failing to find a common language with
the communists, her father, the Czechoslovak Ambassador to Yugoslavia,
took his family to the United States. In America, he started teaching history
at a university and his daughter entered school. She made good progress
and, graduating from Columbia University, she earned a doctorate in philosophy.
One of her treatises was about the workings of Soviet diplomacy. Shortly
afterwards, she abandoned a scientific career and moved into politics to
become America's first woman Secretary of State. Her credo is "America
Above All" which explains her penchant for heavy-handed methods of
solving international disputes.
In Germany, they built the Hindenburg - a giant airship, a veritable
Titanic of the skies, which contained accommodations for 50 passengers.
The Hindenburg's triumph proved rather short-lived, though. On May 6, while
landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, on the first of its 1937 schedule of
North Atlantic crossings, the hydrogen-inhaled Hindenburg burst into flames
and was completely destroyed with the loss of 36 lives ...
THE 20th CENTURY:YEAR AFTER YEAR series
of historical programs is prepared by Vladimir Zhamkin.
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