Norman Thomas

Norman Mattoon Thomas (b 1884) was a leading American Socialist as well as an ordained Presbyterian minister. Despite his strong pacifistic views--he had fiercely opposed US involvement in the Great War from the first day of that war to the last--he accepted the position of Assistant Secretary of War in President Upton Sinclair's administration when Sinclair led the Socialists into Powell House for the first time.

In 1923, Thomas travelled to Canada to coerce George Custer into submitting his resignation in person. Thomas informed Custer that if he gave it willingly, Sinclair would highly praise him, but if he refused, he would be cashiered.

The Following Is Speculative
Thomas had once supported the Red Revolution in the Confederate States and the Russian Revolution in Russia, but later condemned these movements as being too violently radical after they had failed.

Thomas served in Hosea Blackford's administration as Secretary of War but resigned rather than lead the War Department during the Pacific War. This seeming dereliction of duty strengthened the impression that the Socialists in general and Blackford in particular were weak on issues of national defense. After Operation Blackbeard began the Second Great War, Thomas was one of very few public figures to oppose the war, even after onetime friend and ally Flora Hamburger showed him evidence of Jake Featherston's Black Holocaust. He was largely anathematized by his former political allies, both because they saw him as a political liability and because they found his views on the Second Great War unconscionable.