For the Survival of Democracy: Franklin Roosevelt and the World Crisis of the 1930s

by Alonzo Hamby

Overview

Franklin D. Roosevelt is remembered as one of America's greatest presidents, a leader who guided us through depression and war. Yet for the period prior to World War II, we rarely think of him in a global context, active as an extraordinary international figure during the crisis years that destroyed the old order and catalyzed the changes that created the world we still inhabit. Truly, it was a time of struggle for the survival of democracy.

In For the Survival of Democracy, master historian Alonzo Hamby offers a gripping and revisionist comparative history of this turbulent era, allowing Roosevelt to be viewed in comparison with Stanley Baldwin in Britain, Adolf Hitler in Germany, and a host of supporting yet crucial players. Combining deft character sketches with surprising interpretations of world leaders, Hamby takes us back to a time when nationalism seized the West, when Hitler cloaked his evil in tactical brilliance, and when passive leaders were destined to be swept aside. Franklin Roosevelt emerges as the Depression's most imposing leader. A charismatic personality committed to radical change, a masterful popular communicator, Roosevelt saw no inconsistency between democracy and personal power. Like many great men, he achieved great things but also made great mistakes. Hamby describes in detail his inspiring leadership and the social transformations he wrought, and also examines his failure to achieve economic recovery in the United States long after Germany and Britain accomplished it.

The economic catastrophe of the decade before World War II, coupled with the rise of fascism, contains all the drama and high stakes of a fight for survival, during which FDR proved himself to be an essential warrior. In America, in no small part thanks to Franklin Roosevelt, democracy survived to fight another day, and to prevail. Never before has the decade prior to the war been brought to life so vividly, and never have Franklin Roosevelt's achievements been made so clear.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781416568216
Publisher:	Free Press
Publication date:	06/27/2007
Pages:	512
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.40(d)

About the Author

Alonzo L. Hamby is the author of the critically acclaimed books Beyond the New Deal and Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman. He is currently a Distinguished Professor of History at Ohio University in Athens, Ohio, where he also lives.

Table of Contents

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgments

Prologue: March 1933

1. World Crisis

2. Plumbing the Depths

Britain and Germany, Fall 1931-Winter 1933

3. Power Shift

The United States, Fall 1931-March 1933

4. The New Deal

The First 125 Days

5. Recovery in One Country?

The New Deal, July 1933-May 1935

6. Triumph

Nazi Germany, 1933-1936

7. Muddling Toward Recovery

Britain, June 1933-June 1937

8. Challenges

The Origins of the Second New Deal, January-May 1935

9. High Tide

Second Hundred Days, Second New Deal, Second Term, June 1935-November 1936

10. Stalling Out

The United States, 1937-1939

11. Irrepressible Conflict, 1937-1939

Epilogue: Where Does the Future Lie: Flushing Meadows or Warsaw?

Historiographical Note

Notes

Index

Editorial Reviews

Fred I. Greenstein author of The Presidential Difference and The Hidden-Hand Presidency Hamby provides a vividly kaleidoscopic view of the global crisis of the 1930s — a real page-turner.

Steve Gillon resident historian, The History Channel A rich and compelling account of how the leaders of three nations — Britain, the United States, and Germany — responded to the economic crisis of the 1930s. No one who reads this book will ever again doubt that individuals, both great and infamous, can shape the course of history.

William E. Leuchtenburg author of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932-1940 In this vigorously argued, well-written book, Alonzo Hamby breaks new ground by placing Franklin Roosevelt's first two terms in the context of what was happening in Hitler's Germany and Stanley Baldwin's Britain. He is also considerably more critical of the New Deal than are traditional accounts. In both regards, he challenges the conclusions of other historians and the imaginations of his readers.

From the Publisher

This image of Roosevelt as an essential -- if not the essential -- figure in democracy's struggle to hold its own during the economic crash and its aftermath is classic Churchill, but it is also exactly the point that Alonzo L. Hamby makes in his new book on FDR and the 1930s. Given the scale and drama of World War II, Roosevelt's leadership in the tumultuous decade leading up to the war has received less popular attention in recent years, and Hamby's account is a useful refresher course on the global prologue to the war. — John Meacham

The Washington Post

It may be hard to believe that there's anything new to say about the place of FDR's New Deal in American and world history. But Hamby (Beyond the New Deal, etc.) does so in this sobering account of how well the U.S. managed its affairs during the Great Depression. What makes Hamby's approach fresh is his comparisons among the U.S. and the world's other great economic powers at the time, Great Britain and Germany. In the midst of an international whirlwind, each country went its own, nationalistic way. But as Hamby shows, their independent approaches to a universal crisis yielded benefits that go-it-alone policies now probably can't yield. In fact, while by 1940 both Britain and Germany had recovered from the Depression, the U.S. had not, despite FDR's huge efforts. The cost of recovery to Germany and the world of course was Nazism, war and genocide. Britain's integrity was better spared, and its social programs grew. But the U.S.? Hamby credits FDR with saving American democracy if not its economy, which was saved by the war. The president thus made possible the survival of free government elsewhere. The author's clarity and balance of judgment are marred somewhat with a cascade of facts. But his characterizations of people are always deft and occasionally surprising. He revives the reputation of Britain's Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin and even has good things to say of the often reviled Neville Chamberlain. But at the center of this somewhat old-fashioned political and economic history is FDR's leadership. And that's what will draw readers to this solid, authoritative history. (Jan. 12) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

Most American history is written as just that, American history. Here, historian Hamby (Ohio Univ.; Man of the People: A Life of Harry S. Truman) has refocused a familiar picture, Franklin Roosevelt's reckoning with both the Great Depression and the rise of totalitarianism, using a lens showing parallel events in Great Britain and Germany, where economic recovery preceded the onset of war, in contrast to the record of the New Deal. More critical than most historians of FDR, Hamby nonetheless finds Roosevelt "democracy's most dynamic force in a menacing decade." Full of insights of all sorts, Hamby's book, as in his past work, rises to sheer excellence in its sketches of the era's surpassing political figures, from those whose names are synonyms for immeasurable evil-G ring, Goebbels, and Hitler himself-to those whose records are less easily tallied, such as Churchill, Chamberlain, Stanley Baldwin, Harry Hopkins, Frances Perkins, Henry Wallace, and others in the cast led by Roosevelt. Highly recommended for all libraries. [This book works well as a complement to Conrad Black's recent Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom.-Ed.]-Robert F. Nardini, Chichester, NH Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

The evolution of the New Deal in the face of both international and domestic challenges. Truman biographer Hamby (History Emeritus/Ohio Univ., Athens; Man of the People, 1995, etc.) provides plenty of evidence to suggest things might have been very different had Franklin Roosevelt, committed to a very particular view of social justice, not been on hand to lead the nation through the Depression. The author emphasizes the international nature of that economic calamity, observing that it "grew out of a complex clash of political cultures involving irreconcilable national aspirations, deep national grievances, sharply divergent political economies, and colliding ideologies," all of which contributed to the Depression’s long duration. The crisis produced Hitler in Germany and fortified Stalin in Russia, yielding near-absolute totalitarian control in both cases. Opponents suspected the New Deal of being a socialist conspiracy, but in Hamby’s view it was conservative at many points, progressive at others, and democratic through and through, offering a social vision as much as an economic recovery program and helping to unite the disaffected and dispossessed. For all its democratic merits, the New Deal suffered as many failures as successes. Though 1936 saw the beginnings of a recovery, for instance, premature spending cuts and missteps in monetary policy yielded a period of stagnation in 1937. "Reduced to paper," Hamby writes, "the Roosevelt record was hardly impressive, even if one assumed that most New Deal beneficiaries expressed their gratitude in votes." Yet despite Roosevelt’s many errors of judgment, the author asserts, he "emanated a sense of purposeful forward direction" that wascertainly much needed at the time, helping by that example to champion the idea of democracy at a time when it was under threat everywhere. A useful contribution to New Deal studies, marked by a broad perspective on international affairs and an evenhanded assessment of Roosevelt’s leadership. Agent: Gerard McCauley

Kirkus Reviews