Today -100: June 25, 1922: Of Organization C, acquittals, and embittered factions

Another day, another assassination. This time it’s German Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau, killed in a drive-by utilizing submachine guns and hand grenades by members of the Organization Consul (or “Organization C,” to give it the Bond-villainous-organization name it likes to call itself), a far-right nationalist terrorist group banned after the Kapp Putsch, the same group that tried to kill former chancellor Philipp Scheidemann earlier this month and which has assassinated literally hundreds of people, starting with Matthias Erzberger last year.

After the Reichstag is told of the murder, left-wing deputies rage at the Nationalists, who hated Rathenau because of the Treaty of Rapallo with Russia and because he was a, you know, Jew (his assassins thought him one of the Elders of Zion, of Protocols fame). The Socialist & Communist deputies are especially pissed at Karl Helfferich of the DNVP, who made a vituperative speech about Rathenau just yesterday.

Germans worry that this is the start of a reactionary coup.

Of the 3 assassins, 2 will die in a shootout with the police (monuments will be erected to them after 1933), while the 20-year-old driver Ernst Werner Techow will be captured, tried, convicted of accessory to murder, and... released in 1928 an amnesty. He’ll join the Nazi Party but quarrel with them. He’ll be killed after being taken prisoner by the Russians in 1945.

Illinois Gov. Len Small and Lt Gov. Fred Sterling are acquitted of conspiracy by a corrupt jury.

The AFL conference supports Gompers in refusing to call for the US to recognize Soviet Russia.

Final Irish election results: Of 128 seats, 58 go to “Treatyites,” 36 to Antis (both groups part of Sinn Féin), the rest going to Labour (17), the Farmers’ Party (7), Commercial Independents (6), and Trinity College, Dublin (4).

Headline of the Day -100, or any day, really:  

But Northern Ireland PM Sir James Craig says “Ulster people are too sensible to be provoked into retaliation by the murder of the Field Marshal.”

Japan says it will remove its troops from Siberia by October 30. And it promises a non-aggression policy in the future.

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