May 14, 1525 – Peasants Win the Battle of Frankenhausen

The end of the Feudal period brought widespread change through Europe, particularly Germany, which was ruled by hundreds of landholders of varying stature. The labor shortage through the Black Plague had ensured basic rights for peasants, but now princes were more interested in consolidating power through new civil law. Public lands became property of the prince, who outlawed poaching and charged fines for use. Taxes were increased for princely projects, such as wars on neighboring nobles. The growing middle class resisted such increases on themselves, hoisting the major burden onto the poor.

The lower class of peasants became increasingly resentful as they struggled through bad harvests with little to show for their work after taxes. Meanwhile, the princes seemed to live more and more luxurious lives. Although respite from religious coercion through indulgence payments had come in the Reformation guided by men like Martin Luther, the peasants were eager for economic change, especially the return of communal lands for the good of all.

The Peasants’ War began in the German south during the 1524 harvest season. Workers needing to focus on their fields were stopped and ordered to gather snail shells for the Countess of Lupfen, who wanted them to use as spools for her thread. The peasants refused, and soon more than one thousand angry serfs marched to show their complaints. Likeminded peasants joined the fight, and soon the entire region was in an uproar.

At Memmingen, elected leaders called for a Christian Association and published the Twelve Articles that outlined peasants’ demand for a new social order based in scripture. Communities would elect their own spiritual leaders, and tithes of harvests would be granted to the Church for its support, support of the poor, and for defense. Serfdom was to be eliminated, forests were to be open for all for game and wood, and commons would be returned to free use supported by the town. Inheritance taxes, enforced labor, and fines and fees had to be agreed upon by peasants as well as their lords.

The nobles of the League of Swabia saw that they did not hold much power in this new order and raised armies of mercenaries to put down the insurrection. Such rebellions had happened before, like the Poor Conrad revolt of 1514 when peasants seized the weights of the Duke of Wurttemberg and proved that he had been cheating them. The resulting revolution against the duke was broken up by soldiers, especially after only a fraction of the peasants stood to fight rather than slipping away as the battle approached.

Much the same was expected from this war. Peasants were able to make gains such as seizing Kempten, but the princely army overwhelmed the well-armed peasants at Leipheim. Another peasant army stormed Frankenhausen, attracting more from around the countryside to build a force some ten thousand strong. They nominated Thomas Muntzer as their leader.

Muntzer was a preacher and theologian whose radical ideals prompted him to flee one town to the next before the war. He bickered with Luther, whom he admired after the posting of the Ninety-five Theses but determined that he had not gone far enough. Luther, meanwhile, refused to make the Reformation a worldly revolution, keeping it strictly a spiritual matter. In 1524, Muntzer gave his Sermon to the Princes to the Duke of Saxony in Allstedt, citing the foretelling of the Old Testament prophet Daniel that the Kingdom of God would crush all human kingdoms. He led a revolt in Muhlhausen that eliminated the town council and established communal rule.

Philip of Hesse led an army of thousands of mercenaries against the peasants at Frankenhausen, who formed a wagon-fort, a mobile stronghold made of wagons chained together. Many in the crowd began calling for a ceasefire and negotiations, yet Muntzer recalled the words he wrote earlier to the citizens of Allstedt, “Let not kind words of these Esaus arouse you to mercy. Look not upon the sufferings of the godless! They will entreat you touchingly, begging you like children. Let not mercy seize your soul, as God commanded to Moses.... Forward, forward, while the iron is hot. Let your swords be ever warm with blood!”

Upon the first skirmishers to assault the wagon-fort, Muntzer led a huge charge, crying out a referencing the Magnificat of Mary, mother of Jesus, “Scatter the proud!” The numbers of the peasants overwhelmed the assaulting force. Other mercenaries began to desert Philip’s force when he ordered a full assault. Muntzer organized a continual charge, using the vast numbers of his haphazard soldiers against the remaining mercenaries like a torrent.

The action ignited the Peasants’ War’s appeal. It was shown that the Duke of Saxony was approaching with reinforcements the next day and negotiations were only a stalling tactic. Now the duke, too, retreated. Muntzer determined that massacres like that at Boblingen two days before, where three thousand peasants were cut down, happened primarily in retreat, and so he kept up the momentum of rebellion. Muntzer relieved encircled peasants at Konigshofen and joined with Hans Muller at Freiburg to defeat the imperial army under Gotz of the Iron Hand at Wurzburg.

Muntzer consolidated his power and encouraged dedication of his followers through spiritual rhetoric and enforcing new sets of order, saying, “Omnia Sunt Communia” (“all things in common”). His agents spread through Europe, encouraging rebellions against all nobles and the debased Church. Holy Roman Emperor Charles V of Spain launched a campaign and Clement VII attempted to root out Muntzer’s agents with the Inquisition, but the heavy-handedness and taxation to support the expense of the army only caused more rebellion. Muntzer’s communist empire rolled over Europe, which he ruled through strict social control. Within two generations, however, corruption and apathy brought it into collapse and began a new era of feudalism between pseudo-socialist warlord nations, such as English True Leveller State under Digger Gerrard Winstanley.

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In reality, Frankenhausen was a violent defeat for the peasants, who wished to negotiate but were crushed by the combined Hessian and Saxon forces on May 15. Muntzer was captured and soon beheaded; the rest of the Peasants’ War ended within weeks. His collectivist ideals were praised 450 years later in communist East Germany.

November 24, 1947 – Hollywood Ten Exonerated thanks to Charlie Chaplin

In the days of the post-war conservatism, the House Un-American Activities Committee stepped up its investigations of the suspected Communist threat to the United States. Created in 1938, the committee served the same purpose as several before it, such as under Overman in 1918 and Fish in 1930. Special committees had worked to investigate fascist or socialist plots in the 1930s and early ‘40s, and Congress finally voted to create a standing committee for the HUAC at the close of WWII. They had considered investigating the actions of the Ku Klux Klan, but instead focused on communism as a more direct threat to the US Constitution.

After two years, hearings began to investigate communism in Hollywood. The West Coast city was a powerful player in American society, feeding media to the populace that may subvert the Constitutional government. Certain films such as Song of Russia and Mission to Moscow were obviously pro-Soviet, but they had been created in the time Russians were needed to combat Hitler. Now Congress readied to clean out the communists as the Cold War would turn former allies into potentially dangerous enemies.

Accusations of Hollywood had not been uncommon already. For years, J. Edgar Hoover and his FBI had kept files on actors, directors, and writers. Charles Chaplin, a native of London, was a particular target, especially in 1942 after Chaplin had pressed publically for opening a second front in Europe. While the front did open with the invasions of Italy and France in 1944, Chaplin was considered something of a warmonger despite his 1940 film The Great Dictator lampooning Hitler and his regime.

Hollywood weights such as Walt Disney and president of the Screen Actors Guild Ronald Reagan testified that there was in fact a communist threat in Hollywood. Other Hollywood leaders such as Humphrey Bogart and John Huston organized the Committee for the First Amendment to resist government crackdown. From a list of alleged members of the Communist Party was created, and ten screenwriters and directors refused to answer questions as to their membership in the Party (an illegal activity at the time), citing their rights under the First Amendment for assembly and free speech.

While the Screen Actors Guild voted to allow officers only if they took pledges against communism, the House of Representatives prepared to vote on a citation of the “Hollywood Ten” under contempt for Congress. In the speeches leading to the vote, Charlie Chaplin, who had flown to Washington specially, was asked to speak. Several congressmen groaned and the word “clown” was heard, but Chaplin firmly took his place and began his speech with, “I am not an American. But, I am not Un-American. I know what Americans stand for, and I have seen it make great victory in Europe against a terrible enemy. To let the outstretched hand of America tighten back into a fist at this time would create a land of fear and anger when what Americans truly want is peace and prosperity.” Quoting the United States Constitution and Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, Chaplin railed the notion that judging a person by thought and not action went against Jeffersonian principles that had founded the nation. He concluded by reiterating, “I am not an American, but I support Americans. It is up to the vote of this House to decide whether their America is true to its name.”

The vote for citation would fail only slightly, 180 to 183. December 3, MPAA president Eric Johnson and a collection of film makers would issue a press release from the Waldorf Hotel stating that Hollywood would not take collective business actions against the ten suspected men. While some might be fired or hired on the principles of free market employment, a “blacklist” would be unthinkable. The Red Scare of the ‘40s would die back, though the Communist Party would not make any great gains in the conservative Greatest Generation.

Some, such as J. Edgar Hoover, would continue to investigate anti-American activity, discovering the espionage of Alger Hiss. While Hoover would have great success, he would go too far in his bitterness against Chaplin. In 1952, while Chaplin was in London to attend the premiere of his film Limelight, Hoover would attempt to revoke Chaplin’s re-entry permit. The Immigration and Naturalization Service would erupt in scandal that would end with Hoover’s forced resignation in 1953. Chaplin would return to America and gain citizenship in 1961 at age 72.


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In reality, Charlie Chaplin did not speak before Congress. The House voted to cite the Hollywood 10, and the MPAA followed with its Blacklist. Over 300 people would suffer the crackdown on left-leaning actors, writers, and directors with only a few able to recreate their careers. Chaplin would be exiled from the United States, not returning until 1972 for business reasons. In his exile, Chaplin wrote, “. . . Since the end of the last world war, I have been the object of lies and propaganda by powerful reactionary groups who, by their influence and by the aid of America's yellow press, have created an unhealthy atmosphere in which liberal-minded individuals can be singled out and persecuted. Under these conditions I find it virtually impossible to continue my motion-picture work, and I have therefore given up my residence in the United States.”