Ralph Maxwell Immell (September 11, 1894August 29, 1969) was an American lawyer, military officer, and progressive politician from Trempealeau County, Wisconsin. He served as adjutant general of Wisconsin for 23 years, from 1923 to 1946, and served as a United States Army general in , managing American and Allied logistics in the North African and European theaters.
Throughout his career, he was actively involved in supporting the progressive movement in Wisconsin and was a close ally of Philip La Follette during the era of the Wisconsin Progressive Party. He worked as an assistant district attorney under Theodore G. Lewis, and served as executive secretary to Wisconsin governor John J. Blaine before Blaine appointed him adjutant general. While serving as adjutant general, Immell also served seven years on the Wisconsin Conservation Commission (1931–1938), including three years as chairman, creating a conservation jobs program which became a forerunner for Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps.
In 1938, he was executive director of the National Progressives of America, a short-lived attempt to nationalize the progressive movement as a third party. After the progressive party collapsed, he ran as a progressive candidate for the Republican Party gubernatorial nomination in 1946 and 1948, but lost both primaries to conservative Republican candidates. Later in life, he was president of and was instrumental in securing their television broadcast license and establishing WISC-TV.
Early life and education Ralph Immell was born in Blair, Wisconsin, in Trempealeau County, September 1894. He was raised and educated in that area, graduating from Blair high school in 1911. He went on to attend La Crosse State Teachers College (now University of Wisconsin–La Crosse) and earned his teaching certificate in 1915. He taught school for a year, then enrolled in the University of Wyoming in 1916. In Wyoming, he worked as a cattle puncher during the summers and attended the university in the winters; he earned his bachelor's degree there in 1918.
World War I service While attending the University of Wyoming, Immell enlisted in the Reserve Officers' Training Corps after the United States entered , and was commissioned a second lieutenant. After his graduation, he deployed to France with the . Immell ultimately served 20 months in France, participating in the Battle of Seicheprey, the Second Battle of the Marne, and the Meuse–Argonne offensive.
His service continued after the armistice, as he became a machine gun instructor; he was then promoted to first lieutenant and worked briefly as an instructor on field tactics.
Early political career After returning from the war, Immell attended the University of Wisconsin Law School, graduating in 1921. He became increasingly active in politics, supporting the progressive Republican faction of Robert M. "Fighting Bob" La Follette. While in law school, he had been hired as an assistant to the district attorney of Dane County, Wisconsin, Theodore G. Lewis.
He was appointed executive clerk to governor John J. Blaine in January 1922, and was quickly promoted to executive secretary, which was at the time the top appointed job in the governor's personal office. During 1922, Immell also volunteered throughout the state working for La Follette's U.S. Senate re-election campaign.
Adjutant general Initial service under Blaine Following the February 1923 death of adjutant general Orlando Holway, Blaine shocked the state political apparatus by appointing the 28-year-old Immell as Holway's successor. In some newspapers, the appointment was mocked and derided; opponents referred to Immell as the "Boy General", and pointed out he had little experience with the Wisconsin National Guard and almost no experience with command.
Immell took office at a time when the Wisconsin Legislature was keen to slash the National Guard budget; under those cuts, Immell oversaw a reorganization of the Wisconsin Guard. To supplement state funding, Immell aggressively sought reimbursement from the federal government for state guard materiel that had been nationalized for the war effort during In his second year as adjutant general, he began a bi-monthly magazine for all guard members, called the Wisconsin National Guard Review. That same year, he was officially conferred the rank of brigadier general by the United States Department of War. In December 1924, Immell provoked statewide controversy by predicting another world war within five years.
Retaining office under Zimmerman After the 1926 elections, it was rumored that Immell would resign as adjutant general to serve as private secretary to John J. Blaine, who had just been elected Other rumors suggested he would be appointed deputy attorney general under John W. Reynolds Sr. Immell denied the rumors, however, and attempted to continue as adjutant general under the new governor Fred R. Zimmerman. Zimmerman was also a Republican, but had won the Republican nomination as a compromise candidate between progressives and stalwarts; he sought to remove Immell from office early in 1927, inquiring into whether his initial appointment had been legally valid. During the controversy, Immell received a strong vote of support from the regimental commanders in the Guard, who described him as one of the best leaders the Wisconsin Guard had had up to that point. Ultimately Zimmerman dropped his attempts to remove Immell, after the state attorney general gave an opinion unfavorable to his removal rationale.
After an inspection of Wisconsin National Guard units in 1927, assistant secretary of war Hanford MacNider declared that it was the finest guard organization in the country. By his recommendation, Immell was admitted to a 40-day course at the United States Army War College on organization and logistics. Immell would later say that it was here that he first met Dwight D. Eisenhower. At the end of the year, Immell was designated as a representative of the Sixth Corps Area to a committee to streamline Guard regulations and training to more easily nationalize Guard units in times of war. The following year, he attended another course on military intelligence.
In the Summer of 1928, Immell was badly injured in an automobile hit-and-run near his home in Maple Bluff, Wisconsin. He suffered a fractured skull, a broken collar bone, two broken ribs, and severe bruising, coming close to death. He was hospitalized for nearly two weeks. He returned to his normal duties later that year.
Additional duties under Phil La Follette In October 1929, Immell was elected president of the Sixth Corps in the National Guard Association of the United States. Two years later, he was elected president of the National Adjutants General Association. Under new progressive governor Philip La Follette in 1931, Immell was again rumored to be appointed to another post (this time state insurance commissioner), but he remained adjutant general through another gubernatorial term. He was, however, also appointed to serve on the state Conservation Commission. As part of his service on the Conservation Commission, he was granted broad executive authority to reorganize the department to decentralize functions to several regional conservation officers. Immell also took charge of a new forest fire prevention and reforestation program. The forestry program was also intended to work as a jobs program to fight the unemployment crisis in the midst of the Great Depression; it served as a state-level forerunner of the federal Civilian Conservation Corps that would be implemented under the Roosevelt administration. At the time, the program was described as the most extensive reforestation program ever attempted by a state government. This program, however, also took criticism for paying significant salaries to progressive allies of Governor La Follette and bypassing civil service hiring rules. Shortly after Roosevelt's inauguration, Immell traveled to Washington with new governor Albert G. Schmedeman to make a case for a federal loan to support the state's finances; for his part, Immell gave a presentation on the work of the state reforestation program to the United States Forest Service and to Roosevelt himself.
Schmedeman and the Milk Strikes Although closely identified with the prior progressive administration, Immell ingratiated himself with the new Democratic governor, Schmedeman, in 1933. From his post as adjutant general, Immell took charge of managing the divisive and politically sensitive issue of the depression-driven milk strikes. In the lead up to the violence, Immell offered to send in 2,500 members of the National Guard, and to supply them with tear gas. The most severe hotspots were in the Fox River valley and northeast, where Immell dispatched a battalion of guardsmen to patrol strike zones with rifles and fixed bayonets. Immell had several sharp personal exchanges with Milk Pool president Walter Singler, a leader of the strike movement, over who was to blame for strike violence. For their part, milk pool organizers accused Immell of provoking the violence with the use of militia, calling him a "military dictator". Politically, Immell and the strike response became a cudgel that some progressives used to damage the Democratic governor, Schmedeman, among farm and labor ranks. Although La Follette was said to disapprove of the effort, progressives in the Legislature pushed for an investigation of Immell's conduct, and only relented after Schmedeman took personal responsibility for ordering Immell to deploy the National Guard. Schmedeman gave another vote of confidence to Immell that summer, when he reappointed him to the state Conservation Commission. Later that year, he became acting director of the Conservation Department due to the resignation of the previous director, and then became chairman of the Conservation Commission.
Gubernatorial speculation, Progressive Party, and W.P.A. Despite the milk strike controversy, Immell had earned significant public affection; he was a prolific public speaker at nonpartisan patriotic gatherings throughout the state, and had developed a reputation for diligence, competence, and economy for his efforts reorganizing the National Guard, managing state emergencies, and developing state conservation (employment) programs. Early in 1934, newspapers began to speculate about Immell making a run for governor of Wisconsin as a Republican compromise candidate between progressive and stalwart factions. Immell's gubernatorial chances in 1934 effectively evaporated when the Wisconsin Progressive Party formally voted to split from the Republicans, ending the possibility of a compromise nomination. Nevertheless, Immell's supporters represented a significant bloc of progressive Republican voters, and wooing Immell into their faction was described as an existential necessity for the new Progressive Party. Immell decided to join the progressives, and Philip La Follette ultimately went on to win the 1934 gubernatorial election, running on the Progressive ticket.