Why he was in some way both. The movie Public Enemies about Dillinger starring Johnny Depp is in theaters.

Questions:

1. What was the reason many of the criminals of 1931-1934 grew to a popularity of a kind and become idolized? Does it have something in common with the economic hardship of the time?

2. Did the crime spree during the Great Depression have some direct influence on the evolution of FBI as we know it today?

Answers:

Richard Hamm, Professor of History and Public Policy, Chair, History Department, University at Albany

In the Woody Guthrie version of the Ballard of Pretty Boy Floyd, you see that there is a real element of seeing the bankrobber/outlaw as both a victim and as public benefactor. I include them all here:
Lyrics as recorded by Woody Guthrie, RCA Studios, Camden, NJ, 26 Apr 1940
Transcribed by Manfred Helfert
(c) 1958 Sanga Music Inc., New York, NY

If you'll gather 'round me, children,
A story I will tell
'Bout Pretty Boy Floyd, an outlaw,
Oklahoma knew him well.
It was in the town of Shawnee,
A Saturday afternoon,
His wife beside him in his wagon
As into town they rode.
There a deputy sheriff approached him
In a manner rather rude,
Vulgar words of anger,
An' his wife she overheard.
Pretty Boy grabbed a log chain,
And the deputy grabbed his gun;
In the fight that followed
He laid that deputy down.
Then he took to the trees and timber
To live a life of shame;
Every crime in Oklahoma
Was added to his name.
But a many a starving farmer
The same old story told
How the outlaw paid their mortgage
And saved their little homes.
Others tell you 'bout a stranger
That come to beg a meal,
Underneath his napkin
Left a thousand dollar bill.
It was in Oklahoma City,
It was on a Christmas Day,
There was a whole car load of groceries
Come with a note to say:
Well, you say that I'm an outlaw,
You say that I'm a thief.
Here's a Christmas dinner
For the families on relief.
Yes, as through this world I've wandered
I've seen lots of funny men;
Some will rob you with a six-gun,
And some with a fountain pen.
And as through your life you travel,
Yes, as through your life you roam,
You won't never see an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.

In case you just don't want to use the song, let me add: That the road bandits of the 1930s, the famous bank robbers and kidnappers, like Bonny and Clyde, John Dillinger, Pretty Boy Floyd, Machine Gun Kelly, and Ma Parker and her 4 sons, were a short lived phenomena – but for a short period they captured the attention of the nation, of law enforcement, and became part of the American myths of crime. Unlike the gangsters or urban organized crime figures, the road bandits were not immigrants, but from established American families. Nor were they from the cities (though many of them spent time in cities) but from Rural America. Indeed, these bandits were for the most part a regional occurrence, happening in the middle section of the country, in Kansas, Oklahoma, North East Texas, and spreading out from there. And they were not a community or a sub culture, for in fact they usually were people who were not connected to any one spot, who had for support, not neighbors, but family.

These bandits were characterized by the following traits. They operated in small groups, sometimes even alone. They robbed mostly banks in small towns. They relied on force and violence to do their crimes. They were more than willing to kill anyone who got in their way. Their careers were relatively short. While a gangster could be in business for decades, most of these bandits did not last two years. The law enforcement and social response, was to hunt them down. In the words of an FBI agent, shoot first and then count to ten. Before they were killed or captured, mostly they were active in a nation's mid section.

Four things contributed to these modern bandits. The prevalence of guns in American life was first. Each of these bandits was for the most part a walking arsenal of weapons. They had them all, many of which they stole by robbing hardware stores or buying them through illegal channels. But the bandits the fairly modern portable machine gun, and weapon of choice of criminals, the sawed off shot gun. These were weapons of terrifying power, and they used them to overpower their targets, and also to shoot their way out of trouble. They fetishized their guns, as seen by the photos Bonnie and Clyde took of each other posing with their guns. Their gun slinging was seen something special, so much so, that Dillinger boasted to the press of breaking out of jail by brandishing a wooden gun (or one carved out of soap), claim that guards scared of him with a gun, that even the crude appearance of one was enough to get him out of jail.

And then there was, second, the car. These were auto bandits. They used cars to be mobile. They used cars to get places to rob them and to elude police. The bandits stole or bought with stolen cash, powerful cars, with big engines. Cars that the average person could not afford. And they used their knowledge of the roads to their advantage. Traveling as much as they did, they knew the roads better than the lawmen who chased them, as the law men were limited to knowledge of their jurisdictions.

Then, third, there were modern prisons. Penitenaries. Most of these bandits were graduates of the state penal systems. Many had criminal records stretching back to their youths that culminated in their spending time in prisons. 1920s and 1930s state prison, which were brutal places and places where many of the bandit gangs came together. They learned from each other the tricks of their trade. Moreover, many of the most notable bandits made two claims about the prisons, first that they would never go back. That they would resist to the death. Second, that they turned to this type of crime because they had been in prison, sentenced unfairly (claims not real, but revealing that they saw themselves as victims).

Finally, and most importantly, the great depression, the wave of bank auto bandits corresponded with the early years of the depression. In the severe economic and social dislocation, which was particularly bad in the farming regions, the bandits evoked a tremendous response from the people. Into their actions were poured resentments against the failing economic system, against evil bankers, and other forces that people blamed for their plight. The crash of the banking system had hit the farmers hard, and in some ways they compared the crimes of the bandits to the crimes of the bankers and found that the bandits were more acceptable. In an area where people were picking up and moving because they lost all, some saw the bandit as an acceptable response to life's misfortunes. But not all. A number of bandits were killed in committing their bank robberies, by average passing citizens, who saw them and shot them down.

Through the actions of the press, through the attempts of law enforcement to demonize them, capturing one was good press or a local sheriff, and Hoover's FBI made the bandits a centerpiece in the campaign to gain more funding and expanded powers, and through the actions of other cultural producers not near the bandits made stories about them. Many of the stories and songs written that don't come from law enforcement about the bandits emphasized their supposed Robin Hood qualities, relating tales of them paying off mortgages of farmers and such. These were more wishful thinking rather than realities. Mostly when the bandits hid out among regular people, they bought their silence through threatened violence or through money. The law enforcement stories about them made the bandits almost always into psychopathic criminals, into lone wolfs, wild dogs, mad dogs and the like. The competing images, the violence, the drama of chases, escapes, and shootouts made the bandits celebrities.

Their romantic struggles against the state were dramatic. They sold newspapers, provided the subject for newsreels, and through these means they provided spectacles for the modern age. When they were killed, thousands often would go to the site to see their bodies. Some, replaying the rituals of lynching and of pre modern scapegoat theater would attempt to collect mementos; others would try to dip cloths in their blood.

They came to be seen as historic. As bandits became famous they gained a public. People would come to see places where they had robbed to see them; sometimes their robberies were attended by curious crowds, who wanted to see the famous bandit. From the very beginning the bandits were compared to the earlier bandits of the American countryside. They even did it themselves they envisioned themselves as something special. For instance Bonne Parker of Bonnie and Clyde fame sent a poem to a newspaper in 1934, that began,


"You've heard the story of Jesse James-
of how he lived and died;
If you're still in need
Of something to read
Here's the story of Bonnie and Clyde”

Oddly the bandits and organized crime (which were city based, rooted in immigrant groups, closed tied with politics, and made richer and more powerful by liquor prohibition) were linked. First, the bandits often were hired out by crime syndicates to do certain jobs, like kill competitors or handle a difficult kidnapping. But for the most part, the relationship went the other way, the bandits bought silence and supplies and services from organized crime. And for many of them, this proved their down fall, because organized crime's close connections to the police, gave them a good sense when someone was too hot to handle. The details are hazy and unclear, but in many cases it is believed the actions of the organized crime, led to the police or FBI finding the bandits.

2. Yes. Interestingly, the bandits emerged in time to allow the FBI, as both Claire Bond Potter and Richard Gid Powers show, to seize the national law enforcement agenda. The FBI found chasing and fighting bandits far better a task than that which had been proposed for them, combating urban syndicates. Indeed, gang busting was always a task that carried a heavy political obstacles, as the Congress that funded the FBI and the President's party that allowed the FBI to expand, had many srong links to various crime confederations. Hence, discretion was the better part of valor, for the FBI in avoiding tackling the syndicates. But as the careers of other gangbusters show, it could be done, and this only underscores that the zero sum game of the FBI chief bureaucrat was always to take the safest course, to continue influence and funding. After the bank robbers have their run, the FBI focused on fighting the spies of the WWII period and then turns to Red hunting in the post war period. Not until forced by Press and congressional action would they focus on organized crime based in the cities.

Melanie-Angela Neuilly, Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Justice Studies, University of Idaho

1. With regard to your questions, I think three elements are important to remember, and they come in conjunction in explaining the popularity of criminal figures during the Depression era in the United States:
-First is the economic crisis which began with the stock exchange crash of
1929,

-Second is the Prohibition of alcohol from 1920-1933,

-And third is the development of a national identity thanks to the
development of mass media, more specifically newspapers and the radio.

These three elements have to be understood together in order to shed light to the phenomenon portrayed in the Public Enemy movie. As a matter of fact, the Prohibition allowed for the development of a black market, a parallel economy controlled by powerful organized crime families, which in turn led to an increase in crime rates. Additionally, the figure of the mythic rogue anti-hero criminal was one with much tradition in the United States, where stories of Billy the Kid and other frontier outlaws already fascinated the Eastern urban populations, as they read them in the newspapers. Finally, with the losses suffered as a result of the Great Depression, the need for scapism and heroic figures similar to Robin Hood in ways was met with such characters as John Dillinger, but let's not forget their counterparts such as Elliot Ness.

2. As per your second question, it is doubtless that changes in the FBI were influenced by the circumstances of the times. Most of the FBI's 20^th century history was shaped by Hoover's directorate. Even though he brought the administration to the center stage of federal law enforcement, and considerably modernized it, his rule was also marked by secrecy and the attached opaqueness led to what some posit to be questionable behind-the-scenes political practices. Some of those practices had to do with the expansion of the FBI's powers over state and local law enforcement agencies through the use of the interstate commerce clause, leading the FBI to claim jurisdiction in cases crossing state lines, such as that of John Dillinger.

William Moore, Professor Emeritus of History, University of Wyoming

1. Yes, I do think there is some correlation between the economic hard times of the 1930s and how Americans viewed people like John Dillinger. But bear in mind that lots of people did not celebrate kidnappers and bank robbers. There was no one "public opinion" of these criminals. Especially during the Great Depression, some Americans resented bankers and the rich and took a degree of satisfaction with their being robbed and humiliated. And some people like Dillinger (and Jesse James from an earlier time) courted a "robin hood" image of "taking from the rich to give to the poor." On balance, however, I suspect most Americans feared desperadoes like Dillinger. The movie does tend to romanticize them.

2. Absolutely. J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI used the occasion of the bank robbers, car thieves, and kidnappers of the 1930s to build the reputation and funding of his agency. The FBI had been widely discredited in the 1920s, and Hoover had any number of critics during that time. In the 1930s, Hoover picked the crimes over which he sought jurisdiction. He preferred those involving relatively little corruption, where he could assemble impressive crime statistics and where he and his agents could "get their man."