The Nagler Case: A Revealing Moment in Red Cross History

Abstract

This paper uses a legal case as a window through which to observe the important changes in the relationship between the US government and the American Red Cross in the early years of this century. In 1917, the government brought suit under the Espionage Act against Louis Nagler, Assistant Secretary of State for the State of Wisconsin and a German-American follower of progressive Senator Robert La Follette. Nagler's "crime" was that he had been heard to criticize the management of the American Red Cross. Although the government ultimately dropped the case after World War I ended, Nagler's indictment and conviction are, it is argued, evidence of the heavy-handed tactics used to raise funds in the name of patriotism and charity, tactics that were sanctioned if not encouraged by the government. Such an event could have occurred only after the American Red Cross, a late developer in the international Red Cross movement, had been deliberately and explicitly subordinated to the will of the government and the military. This transformation, a conscious imitation of the position and role of the Japanese Red Cross Society, was both sought and directed by military surgeons in the Army Medical Department. Their role in nationalizing and militarizing the Red Cross was virtually ignored by Foster Rhea Dulles, whose The American Red Cross: A History (1950) has remained the standard work on the subject.