r/AllThatsHistory

H.G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds, published in 1898, imagined an invasion of Earth by a technologically superior civilization from Mars.

Forty years later, in one of the most famous bits of radio broadcasting in American history, The Mercury Theatre on the Air adapted the novel for radio, directed and narrated by a 23 year old Orson Welles.

The broadcast began with an introduction closely following Wells’s novel, but then shifted into an evening of ordinary radio programming repeatedly interrupted by increasingly urgent news bulletins.

At first, the interruptions seemed relatively mundane: strange explosions had reportedly been observed on Mars, followed by a seemingly unrelated report of an unidentified object crashing onto a farm near Grovers Mill, New Jersey.

Then an on-scene reporter described strange creatures emerging from what was apparently an alien spacecraft. The Martians attacked police and spectators with a heat ray, and the reporter's increasingly panicked broadcast abruptly went dead.

More bulletins followed, reporting a full-scale Martian invasion and the increasingly futile efforts of the U.S. military to stop it. The first half of the broadcast climaxed with a correspondent reporting live from a Manhattan rooftop as citizens fled from poisonous smoke released by towering Martian “war machines.”

He began coughing, then fell silent. Only after roughly thirty minutes did the program take its first break. The second half shifted into a more conventional radio-drama format.

The broadcast became legendary for supposedly causing mass panic across the country. Some listeners did mistake it for an actual news broadcast, particularly those who tuned in after the opening disclaimer.Thousands of people called CBS, newspapers, and police departments asking whether the invasion was real.

But the popular story of “millions of Americans panicking and fleeing the Martians” is likely heavily exaggerated.Newspapers at the time had an obvious incentive to portray the broadcast as a national hysteria, and subsequent research has found little evidence for the enormous mass panic later claimed.

There was genuine panic, however. Actor Stefan Schnabel, who was involved with the broadcast, later recalled that police began arriving at the studio:

“A few policemen trickled in, then a few more. Soon, the room was full of policemen and a massive struggle was going on between the police, page boys, and CBS executives, who were trying to prevent the cops from busting in and stopping the show.”

But the broadcast demonstrated something important: people could be convinced that something extraordinary was happening simply by presenting it in the language and format of credible news.

And that would become increasingly important as the 20th century went on, because when people began seeing strange things in the sky, they increasingly interpreted them through the cultural framework that The War of the Worlds had helped popularize.

If interested, I explore a history of UFO sightings here: https://aid2000.substack.com/p/hare-brained-history-vol-137-the?r=4mmzre&utm\_medium=ios

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grande\_Noirceur

Duplessis favoured rural areas over city development and introduced various agricultural credits during his first term. He also was noted for meagre investment in social services. Duplessis also opposed military conscription and Canadian involvement in World War II.

In 1936, Duplessis hung a crucifix in the Quebec legislature. It was replaced by a second crucifix in 1982, which was only removed on 10 July 2019.[6]

His party, the Union Nationale, often had the active support of the Catholic Church during political campaigns, using the slogan Le ciel est bleu; l'enfer est rouge ("Heaven is blue; hell is red"; red is the colour of the Liberal Party, and blue was the colour of the Union Nationale).

However, in the 1950s, labour strikes made many in the Church break with the Union Nationale and support the unions.

Duplessis championed anti-communism and opposed trade unions such as the Trades and Labour Congress of Canada (TLC). He introduced several laws opposed by the unions, most notably the Padlock Law, which prohibited the dissemination of communist propaganda "by any means whatsoever."

In 1949, Duplessis also attempted to introduce a law modeled on the 1947 American Taft-Hartley Act to eliminate certain[clarification needed] labour union rights established by the Labour Relations Law of 1944, which was Quebec's equivalent of the American Wagner Act of 1935. Duplessis's bill was withdrawn after fierce union opposition.

Duplessis later introduced a similar law in 1954, known as Bill 19, to force union groups to expel any communist supporter. Any group would lose its trade union accreditation if there was a single member with ties to communist organizations or who supported the ideology. The bill was so unpopular that it lost even the support of the conservative Catholic union group. That controversy forced the union to review its structure, which eventually led to the creation of the Confédération des syndicats nationaux (CSN).

His time in office was marked by significant labour strikes, such as the Dominion Textile in Valleyfield in 1946, the Asbestos Strike in Estrie, and the Murdochville copper mine strike in 1957. In those conflicts, Duplessis responded rapidly with force by using the provincial police to disperse picket lines and restore order, with several arrests. However, the Murdochville strike led to a major victory for union rights and provided the impetus and inspiration for other labour leaders to emerge and energized calls for labour rights.

Duplessis actively opposed the Jehovah's Witnesses and once used his influence to revoke a liquor license owned by one of the religion's members. In Roncarelli v. Duplessis, that decision was overturned by the Supreme Court of Canada, and Duplessis was ordered to pay $33,123.53 in damages shortly before he died.

Duplessis' government was characterized by patronage and corruption, wielded against the Liberal opposition. He once proclaimed that a much-needed bridge at Trois-Rivières would not be built if a Liberal member was elected, and he kept his word while the opposition held the seat. In a rural district that had always elected a Liberal, the roads were kept unpaved, which obstructed commerce and so its residents decided in 1956 to vote for the Union Nationale as that was the only way to get their district noticed.

Duplessis was also accused of voter fraud. Contemporary rumours say that Union Nationale groups would arrive in rural towns armed with whiskey, food, and appliances in exchange for votes.

Another reason Duplessis won the 1944 Quebec general election was by appealing to antisemitic prejudices in Quebec by making the false claim in a violently antisemitic speech that the Dominion government together with the Godbout government had made a secret deal with the "International Zionist Brotherhood" to settle 100,000 Jewish refugees left homeless by the Holocaust in Quebec after the war in exchange for Jewish campaign contributions to both the federal and provincial Liberal parties.

By contrast, Duplessis claimed that he was not taking any money from the Jews, and if he were elected Premier, he would stop this plan to bring Jewish refugees to Quebec. To further push on the message, the Union Nationale handed out campaign pamphlets warning about the alleged plan to bring 100,000 Jewish refugees to Quebec, which featured a cartoon of the standard stereotype of an evil-looking, hook-nosed Jew handing bags of money to Godbout while in the background a vast horde of dirty, disreputable-looking, hook-nosed Jewish refugees were ready to descend on la belle province.

Though Duplessis's story about the plan to settle 100,000 Jewish refugees in Quebec was entirely false, his story was widely believed in Quebec, and ensured he won the election.