Critics of Roosevelt’s New Deal often liken it to fascism. Roosevelt’s
numerous defenders dismiss this charge as reactionary propaganda; but as
Wolfgang Schivelbusch makes clear, it is perfectly true. Moreover, it was
recognized to be true during the 1930s, by the New Deal’s supporters as well as
its opponents.
When Roosevelt took office in March 1933, he received from Congress an
extraordinary delegation of powers to cope with the Depression.
The broad-ranging powers granted to Roosevelt by Congress, before that
body went into recess, were unprecedented in times of peace. Through this
“delegation of powers,” Congress had, in effect, temporarily done away with
itself as the legislative branch of government. The only remaining check on the
executive was the Supreme Court. In Germany, a similar process allowed Hitler
to assume legislative power after the Reichstag burned down in a suspected case
of arson on February 28, 1933. (p. 18).
The Nazi press enthusiastically hailed the early New Deal measures:
America, like the Reich, had decisively broken with the “uninhibited frenzy of
market speculation.” The Nazi Party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter,
“stressed ‘Roosevelt’s adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his
economic and social policies,’ praising the president’s style of leadership as
being compatible with Hitler’s own dictatorial Führerprinzip” (p.
190).
Nor was Hitler himself lacking in praise for his American counterpart.
He “told American ambassador William Dodd that he was ‘in accord with the
President in the view that the virtue of duty, readiness for sacrifice, and
discipline should dominate the entire people. These moral demands which the
President places before every individual citizen of the United States are also
the quintessence of the German state philosophy, which finds its expression in
the slogan “The Public Weal Transcends the Interest of the Individual”‘” (pp.
19-20). A New Order in both countries had replaced an antiquated emphasis on
rights.
Mussolini, who did not allow his work as dictator to interrupt his
prolific journalism, wrote a glowing review of Roosevelt’s Looking Forward. He
found “reminiscent of fascism … the principle that the state no longer leaves
the economy to its own devices”; and, in another review, this time of Henry
Wallace’s New Frontiers, Il Duce found the Secretary of Agriculture’s
program similar to his own corporativism (pp. 23-24).
Roosevelt never had much use for Hitler, but Mussolini was another
matter. “‘I don’t mind telling you in confidence,’ FDR remarked to a White
House correspondent, ‘that I am keeping in fairly close touch with that
admirable Italian gentleman’” (p. 31). Rexford Tugwell, a leading adviser to
the president, had difficulty containing his enthusiasm for Mussolini’s program
to modernize Italy: “It’s the cleanest … most efficiently operating piece of
social machinery I’ve ever seen. It makes me envious” (p. 32, quoting Tugwell).
Why did these contemporaries sees an affinity between Roosevelt and the
two leading European dictators, while most people today view them as polar
opposites? People read history backwards: they project the fierce antagonisms
of World War II, when America battled the Axis, to an earlier period. At the
time, what impressed many observers, including as we have seen the principal
actors themselves, was a new style of leadership common to America, Germany,
and Italy.
Once more we must avoid a common misconception. Because of the ruthless
crimes of Hitler and his Italian ally, it is mistakenly assumed that the
dictators were for the most part hated and feared by the people they ruled.
Quite the contrary, they were in those pre-war years the objects of
considerable adulation. A leader who embodied the spirit of the people had
superseded the old bureaucratic apparatus of government.
While Hitler’s and Roosevelt’s nearly simultaneous ascension to power
highlighted fundamental differences … contemporary observers noted that they
shared an extraordinary ability to touch the soul of the people. Their speeches
were personal, almost intimate. Both in their own way gave their audiences the
impression that they were addressing not the crowd, but each listener as an
individual. (p. 54)
But does not Schivelbusch’s thesis fall before an obvious objection? No
doubt Roosevelt, Hitler, and Mussolini were charismatic leaders; and all of
them rejected laissez-faire in favor of the new gospel of a state-managed
economy. But Roosevelt preserved civil liberties, while the dictators did not.
Schivelbusch does not deny the manifest differences between Roosevelt
and the other leaders; but even if the New Deal was a “soft fascism”, the
elements of compulsion were not lacking. The “Blue Eagle” campaign of the
National Recovery Administration serves as his principal example. Businessmen
who complied with the standards of the NRA received a poster that they could
display prominently in their businesses. Though compliance was supposed to be
voluntary, the head of the program, General Hugh Johnson, did not shrink from
appealing to illegal mass boycotts to ensure the desired results.
“The public,” he [Johnson] added, “simply cannot tolerate non-compliance
with their plan.” In a fine example of doublespeak, the argument maintained that
cooperation with the president was completely voluntary but that exceptions
would not be tolerated because the will of the people was behind FDR. As one
historian [Andrew Wolvin] put it, the Blue Eagle campaign was “based on
voluntary cooperation, but those who did not comply were to be forced into
participation.” (p. 92)
Schivelbusch compares this use of mass psychology to the heavy
psychological pressure used in Germany to force contributions to the Winter
Relief Fund.
Both the New Deal and European fascism were marked by what Wilhelm Röpke
aptly termed the “cult of the colossal.” The Tennessee Valley Authority was far
more than a measure to bring electrical power to rural areas. It symbolized the
power of government planning and the war on private business: The TVA was the
concrete-and-steel realization of the regulatory authority at the heart of the
New Deal. In this sense, the massive dams in the Tennessee Valley were
monuments to the New Deal, just as the New Cities in the Pontine Marshes were
monuments to Fascism … But beyond that, TVA propaganda was also directed
against an internal enemy: the capitalist excesses that had led to the
Depression… (pp. 160, 162)
The TVA was the concrete-and-steel realization of the regulatory
authority at the heart of the New Deal. In this sense, the massive dams in the
Tennessee Valley were monuments to the New Deal, just as the New Cities in the
Pontine Marshes were monuments to Fascism … But beyond that, TVA propaganda was
also directed against an internal enemy: the capitalist excesses that had led
to the Depression… (pp. 160, 162)
This outstanding study is all the more remarkable in that Schivelbusch
displays little acquaintance with economics. Mises and Hayek are absent from
his pages, and he grasps the significance of architecture much more than the
errors of Keynes. Nevertheless, he has an instinct for the essential. He
concludes the book by recalling John T. Flynn’s great book of 1944, As We Go
Marching.
Flynn, comparing the New Deal with fascism, foresaw a problem that still
faces us today.
But willingly or unwillingly, Flynn argued, the New Deal had put itself
into the position of needing a state of permanent crisis or, indeed, permanent
war to justify its social interventions. “It is born in crisis, lives on crises,
and cannot survive the era of crisis…. Hitler’s story is the same.” … Flynn’s
prognosis for the regime of his enemy Roosevelt sounds more apt today than when
he made it in 1944 … “We must have enemies,” he wrote in As We Go Marching. “They will become an
economic necessity for us.” (pp. 186, 191)
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