In fall 1927, more than 20,000 American World War I veterans sailed to France commemorating the tenth anniversary of the United States’ entry into the Great War. Calling themselves the “Second American Expeditionary Force,” most of these men were members of the American Legion, the largest veterans’ organization in the United States. Since its 1919 founding, the Legion had advocated for veterans and their families, achieving considerable legislative success by 1927. But the Legion also had been an active, and sometimes violent, participant in the hysteria that targeted left-leaning political radicals, immigrants, and labor unions in the immediate aftermath of World War I. In many ways, the Legionnaires (as members were called) had returned from World War I only to enlist in the cultural wars of the First Red Scare (roughly between 1917-1923).
When the Legionnaires landed in France in September 1927, they did so under the shadow of a nativist reputation and violent past. Making matters worse, in August 1927, just weeks before the Legion’s expedition departed for Europe, Massachusetts had executed two Italian-born immigrants, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, for murder, which sparked international outrage over what many saw as an act of injustice against two immigrants. The 1927 expedition to Paris exposed the central contradiction of the early American Legion – an organization that sought to present itself as a benign custodian of memory and shared sacrifice in combat, yet one haunted by its history of vigilantism and exclusionary nationalism.
The American Legion developed a reputation as a staunch nativist organization almost as soon as the Great War ended. Some Legionnaires argued that foreign-born Americans had been unfairly excused from military obligations during World War I. “Deportation is the only solution” regarding “the alien slacker,” one American veteran wrote in the American Legion’s national publication, The Legion Weekly. During the Great War, the writer continued, immigrants “whiningly stated they were not Americans and America’s troubles did not interest them.” The unnamed correspondent only signed his letter with the familiar dictum: “AMERICA FIRST.” When the war ended and labor unrest stoked fears of a Bolshevik-style revolution sparked by foreigners, American Legion branches enlisted their formations in support of defending “Americanism” on the home front.