White Monday

Newspaper Article, dated 1 day after the attack.

## Casualites

### Deaths

6 (including: Franklin D. Roosevelt, Nance Gardner, John Gardner and Key Pittman

### Injuries

1

**White Monday**was a series of two terrorist attacks conducted on the 14th February, 1933 by Giuseppe Zangara (supported by pro-Californian insurgents) intended and succeeding in crippling the incoming Franklin D. Roosevelt's government.

The first attack resulted in the death of FDR and his Vice-President-Elect John Nance Gardner, and the second attack resulted in the death of Speaker of the House Henry Rainey, Key Pittman.

The attacks left Secretary-Of-State-Elect Cordell Hull to be inaugurated, and highly crippled FDR's plan for a New Deal as Cordell Hull continued focusing on global outreach; his concepts were frowned upon and the entire event itself is considered by many contempary historians to be a key event leading up to the American Collapse War and subsequent destruction of the United States of America.

## Background

An italian immigrant, Giuseppe Zangara had been a self-proclaimed outcast for a majority of his life. He suffered from massive abdominal pain, preventing him from working from 1929 onwards. This, coupled with the Great Depression , lead him and his group of out-of-work friends to the radical Californian movement "Great Bear".

He quickly fell in-line with the others, believing the United States to be corrupt and doomed to fail; his group often led classes rallying more to their cause, teaching them about the Great Civil War and the heroes of the Territory of California. However, they saw a much further right-wing idealistic future as the only way to get out of the Great Depression, similar to Mussolini's work in his home country of Italy. He and his group first began with protests agains the "liberal and republican failings", hoping to achieve a pure far alt-right government which would crack down on undesirables and encourage people to work.

Following FDR's sweeping victory in 1935, he and the Great Bear planned to ramp up escalations - hoping a large scale event would shift the tides and encourage many others to rise up and take back "what was there's". The original plan was to hijack a biplane from the nearby military airbase in D.C, however due to the impossibility of the task at hand due to their indeptability in flying, they settled on planting two bombs and destroying the presidents new cabinet.

## The Attacks

At 7:00am, a Great Bear member (disguised as a mechanic) gained access to the President-Elect's motorcade South of Arlington,Virginia. The terrorist, under the motive of "cleaning the leather", took off the rear car seat where the President and Vice President-Elect would sit. He planted a small, 0.5lb bomb in the very center and set it to go off roughly as they drove by the Capitol at roughly 9:54am.

The group, lead by Giuseppe Zangara, observed from the end of the national mall, using binoculars to observe as the motorcade made a pass through the city were apprehended for "suspicious activity" at 9:32am. They were in the middle of being questioned when the bomb rang out across the city, having detonated 4 minutes earlier just as the motorcade entered the National Mall. The police officer quickly let the group go to assist in the cleanup efforts, allowing them to quickly escape.

The group ran in the direction of Virginia, crossing the border at 10:43am. FDR had died instantly, whilst John Nance Gardner had managed to get out of the vehicle and walk 4 feet before collapsing to the ground; two secret service agents were also killed in the blast, and 1 bystander was hit by a piece of shrapnel and badly wounded.

In the meantime, near Hampton's Roads, an unaware Speaker of the House Henry Rainey had met with President-Pro-Temporei of the Senate, Key Pittman for an inspection of the naval base there. Having stopped at a small roadside gas station at 9:58am, their small, lightly defended motorcade was attacked by two awaiting gunmen hiding in a nearby shrub-field. A first shot, fired using a pre-WW1 rifle, struck Key Pittman who had been smoking on the side. A second shot, by the same gunman, hit and injured a secret service agent. A third, and final shot, hit Henry Rainey in the chest - mortally wounding him.

The duo was overwelhmed quickly by secret service agents, and the pair were illegally executed infront the gas station by Agent McJames of the Secret Service. This ordeal was captured on a newsreel, who stood approximately 20 feet away from where the impromptu exection occured. The resulting tape spread quickly, and was well published alongside recordings of the first attack.