Early in 1932 over ten thousand veterans of the Great War had camped out in Washington, DC, living in shanties that they had assembled from random junk. Destitute, they demanded that the bonuses due to them in 1945 be made redeemable now. That July they were ordered to clear out by the police. They rioted instead, and two vets ending up getting killed. President Hoover now had ten thousand ex-military men on his front stoop. Things were escalating into a crisis, completely out of the president’s control—seemingly par for the course for his administration. Hoover sent in troops to clear out the
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