It is not an uncommon story among the general populace that the New Deal and the Second World War helped the United States to recover from the devastating Great Depression. Even though this is the dominant narrative, there are many economists that challenge this theory that the New Deal saved capitalism and helped to bolster the United States economy (many books have been written on this subject alone). They would conclude that government intervention was not only a drawback to the New Deal policies, but American citizens lost free market liberties associated to capitalism in the process. There are also some individuals that have drawn parallels between FDR’s New Deal policies and European governmental programs promoted by fascists and national socialists, such as Nazi Germany.
The
Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a program that has been associated with
similar youth organizations of Nazi Germany. The CCC program enrolled young men
“as amateur forest rangers, marsh drainers, and the like, on projects designed
to improve the countryside.”[1]
They were provided with the basic essentials of shelter, clothing, and earned
one dollar a day.[2] Until the military draft
of 1942, two and half million young men went through this program.[3]
The well-respected historian, John A. Garraty, was one who saw a similarity
between the two nation’s programs for youth and said:
Both were essentially designed
to keep young men out of the labor market. Roosevelt described work camps as a
means for getting youth "off the city street corners," Hitler as a
way of keeping them from "rotting helplessly in the streets." In both
countries much was made of the beneficial social results of mixing thousands of
young people from different walks of life in the camps. … Furthermore, both
were organized on semimilitary lines with the subsidiary purposes of improving
the physical fitness of potential soldiers and stimulating public commitment to
national service in an emergency.[4]
However,
not only historians and economists of today have noticed these similarities
through the lens of the past, but so did individuals living at the time during
the implementation of the New Deal. The New York Herald Tribune published Mark Sullivan’s opinions on the New Deal
on June 26, 1936; and he said, “The New Deal is the American variation of the
new order that has been set up in three great European countries and some
smaller ones. The term ‘New Deal’ is the American equivalent of the term
‘Fascism’ in Italy, the term ‘Nazi’ in Germany, and the term ‘Soviet’ in
Russia.”[5]
Even the press in Germany enthusiastically praised FDR’s New Deal policies. The
Nazi Party newspaper, the Völkischer
Beobachter, had commented that FDR’s New Deal exhibited “National Socialist
strains of thought in his economic and social policies.”[6]
Even Professor Garraty writes, that "Early New Deal policies seemed to the
Nazis essentially like their own and the role of Roosevelt not very different
from the Führer's."[7]
Despite
the similarities and federal policies that increased the size and scope of
federal power in the United States, Americans did not follow the path of the
Nazis or other European socialists. Americans have always had a deep-seated
individualistic spirit and love for liberty that hails all the way back to the
Revolutionary era. This spirit might be assaulted and even bent from time to
time, but the antistatist tradition will continue to prevail, as long as
Americans remember their heritage.
[1]
Ralph Raico, ”FDR and the Collectivist Wave,” Mises Institute, June 2, 2011, https://mises.org/library/fdr-and-collectivist-wave.
[2]
Ibid.
[3]
Ibid.
[4]
Ibid.
[5]
Hubert H. Humphrey, The Political
Philosophy of the New Deal, (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press,
2015), 3.
[6]
David Gordon, "Three New Deals: Why the Nazis and Fascists Loved
FDR," Mises Institute, September
22, 2006,
https://mises.org/library/three-new-deals-why-nazis-and-fascists-loved-fdr.
[7]
Raico, ”FDR and the Collectivist Wave.”
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