Sat, Jun 27 · 10:00 AM CDT
This era of rising authoritarianism is a good time to recall Minnesota’s detour into dictatorial rule during World War I, an episode which helps us understand how democracy can be eroded and how Minnesotans can fight back. Greg Gaut's latest book, The War at Home , tells the dramatic, sometimes violent, story of the Minnesota Commission of Public Safety, an unelected body which ruled the state with an iron hand during the war. Led by John F. McGee, a reactionary Minneapolis attorney, the commission pursued a “loyalty” campaign against trade unions, socialists (especially Thomas Van Lear, the mayor of Minneapolis), the Industrial Workers of the World, and the Nonpartisan League. Although Minnesota’s home front experience resulted from a particular confluence of events and personalities, it’s a case study of how authoritarianism can overwhelm democracy when economic inequality, anti-immigrant nationalism, white supremacy, and militarism rule the day. The War at Home: Minnesota During the Great War, 1914-1920 (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2025) was a finalist in the Minnesota Nonfiction category of the 2026 Minnesota Book Awards.
Greg Gaut is an historian whose career has included two decades of teaching at a liberal arts college and a decade of work as an historic preservation consultant primarily preparing National Register of Historic Places nominations around the state of Minnesota. With his wife and co-author, Marsha Neff, he is a frequent contributor to Minnesota History , and two of their articles won the David Gebhard Award for the best article on Minnesota’s built environment. A lover of libraries, he published Laird's Legacy: A History of the Winona Public Library and Reinventing the People's Library, a history of St. Paul's Arlington Hills Public Library, which is now the East Side Freedom Library. His article on a World War I espionage case, “Hardware Store Sedition: The Case of Charles W. Anding,” won the Solon J. Buck Award for the best article in Minnesota History for 2020. He holds a doctorate in Modern European and Russian history from the University of Minnesota.
