A Renegade History of the United States Read online

  Poster promoting Works Progress Administration.

  “You are the front.”

  WPA poster.

  “Workers of the mind and hand: Vote for the front soldier Hitler!”

  There was a widespread belief in both nations that the dissolution of the family in the sexually liberated 1920s was both a cause and result of social disorder. Consequently, New Dealers and Nazis undertook propaganda campaigns to promote motherhood and merge it with the national interest. According to the manifesto of the Nazi women’s organization, “To be a woman means to be a mother, means affirming with the whole conscious force of one’s soul the value of being a mother and making it a law of life.” The German Law to Reduce Unemployment of 1933 replaced women workers by funding work projects and occupational training programs that excluded women. Likewise, under the New Deal, federal and state governments were given the power to enforce motherhood. The Social Security Act of 1935, a major piece of legislation in the so-called Second New Deal and one of the few to survive into the twenty-first century, included an oldage pension system and an unemployment insurance program. Because the unemployment and pension programs excluded domestic workers, most women who worked were excluded from work-related government aid. The Social Security Act was designed to give aid to only a certain kind of woman: a woman who contributed to the nation as the producer of workers, soldiers, and citizens. The law established Aid to Dependent Children (ADC), a welfare program intended to keep mothers in the home. According to the committee that drafted the ADC provision in the law, it was “designed to release from the wage-earning role the person whose natural function is to give her children the physical and affectionate guardianship necessary not alone to keep them from falling into social misfortune, but more affirmatively to rear them into citizens capable of contributing to society.”

  THE DISCIPLINE OF A DEMOCRACY

  In both the U.S. and Germany, censorship of the press increased dramatically during the era of the New Deal and Nazism, but more often the press censored itself to support the state, avoid punishment, or simply to abide by the norms of cultures that were increasingly hostile to free expression. In Germany, hundreds of journalists enthusiastically joined the Ministry of Propaganda. For others, according to Schivelbusch, “Mere knowledge of the consequences of noncompliance with the often unwritten rules sufficed to encourage most of them to toe the line, and enforce the most effective and invisible form of control—self-censorship.” In the U.S., there was some heavy-handed censorship but far more willing submission by the press itself.

  Roosevelt appointed loyalists to the Federal Communications Commission who made it clear that licenses would be revoked for broadcasters who aired programs critical of the government. In 1934 the Yankee Radio Network of New England promised to give the president “a lot of support” after it received warnings from an FCC commissioner. An executive for another network said that the fear of government intervention would “blue pencil a dozen programs for every one that an official censor might object to.” In the first weeks of the Roosevelt administration, NBC instituted a policy barring the president’s critics from its broadcasts. Henry Bellows of CBS told Roosevelt’s press secretary immediately after the inauguration that “the close contact between you and the broadcasters has tremendous possibilities of value to the administration, and as a lifelong Democrat, I want to pledge my best efforts in making this cooperation successful.” In 1935 CBS celebrated the second anniversary of the New Deal with Of the People, by the People, for the People, a program in which professional actors re-created great moments in the administration’s first two years. The U.S. Office of Education mandated that civics classes in public schools play the two-hour program for students. Boake Carter of CBS was a popular political commentator until 1938, when he was fired for his increasingly critical remarks about the president. Both CBS and NBC continued to ban critics of the New Deal through the 1930s and into the war.

  Hollywood, the chief transmitter of national social norms, underwent a profound transformation during the New Deal. As we have seen, in the 1920s and especially in the early 1930s, rogues were the heroes of the silver screen, as Hollywood movies reflected and promoted the sexual liberation and disregard for authority that were evident in American culture at the time.

  The Catholic Church and other moral reformers pressured Hollywood to clean up its movies. In 1930 the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America, better known as the Hays Office after its chairman, Will Hays, issued a code of self-censorship for the industry. But it was not enforced for several years. According to Hays, Hollywood and America were not yet ready to limit their freedom of expression. “Trying to preach morality in a cataclysm of that sort was like a voice sounding off in the desert,” he said. The so-called Hays Code was not implemented until March 6, 1933, two days after Roosevelt took office. This indicated, according to film historian Giuliana Muscio (author of the only scholarly study of the New Deal and Hollywood), “that the industry was afraid that an administration that championed federal intervention like the New Deal would interfere with film affairs.” That is, the studio chiefs understood that if they didn’t censor themselves, Washington would do it for them.

  The Hays Code was as thoroughgoing a restriction of expression as any system of censorship imposed in Germany and Italy. It also far outlived the Nazi and Fascist regimes. For more than thirty-two years, until it was replaced in 1967 by the film rating system, virtually all motion pictures produced in the United States adhered to the code. To begin, the code stated broadly, “No picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it.” Only “Correct standards of life, subject only to the requirements of drama and entertainment, shall be presented.” The third section of the code, which mandated that “Law, natural or human, shall not be ridiculed,” was undoubtedly well received by a federal government that was then producing a massive and unprecedented system of regulatory laws.

  The depiction of sexuality was severely restricted. “The sanctity of the institution of marriage and the home shall be upheld,” the code stated. “Pictures shall not infer that low forms of sex relationship are the accepted or common thing.” More to the point, “Scenes of passion … should not be introduced when not essential to the plot.” What were the forbidden “low forms” of sexuality? “Excessive and lustful kissing, lustful embraces, suggestive postures and gestures, are not to be shown … In general, passion should so be treated that these scenes do not stimulate the lower and baser element.” Of course, “Sex perversion,” referring to homosexuality, “or any inference to it is forbidden,” but so was “white slavery,” “miscegenation” (sex relationships between the white and black races), mention of “sex hygiene and venereal diseases,” and even “indecent movements” in dancing. To keep audiences from drawing illicit connections, “The treatment of bedrooms must be governed by good taste and delicacy” and “scenes of actual child birth, in fact or in silhouette, are never to be presented.”

  In language virtually identical to the Third Reich’s laws against “degenerate art,” the code proclaimed that it was intended to produce “correct entertainment” and prevent the creation of “wrong entertainment” that “lowers the whole living conditions and moral ideals of a race.” While the Nazis were purging German museums of thousands of works of “immoral” art, the most popular art form in the United States was being produced according to a set of rules organized around the belief that “Art can be morally evil in its effects. This is the case clearly enough with unclean art, indecent books, suggestive drama.”

  It is well known that the state and the media were merged in Italy and Germany. In the United States, the merger of the New Deal and Hollywood was less formal but no less complete. It began even before Roosevelt was elected. In September 1932, Jack Warner of Warner Bros. staged the Motion Picture Electrical Parade and Sports Pageant at Los Angeles Olympic Stadium, which according to Muscio was “a spectacle in the style of a gigantic Busby
Berkeley film” and “an unequivocal political promotion of Roosevelt as a presidential candidate.” It featured giant electrical floats and “human geometrics of bodies reminiscent of the mass choreography typical of Nazism.” Warner Bros. continued to be an unofficial propagandist for the New Deal after the election. In 1933 the studio released The Road Is Open Again, which served precisely the function performed by the Nazi propaganda offices. In this film, the spirits of presidents Washington, Lincoln, and Wilson praise the current president:

  WASHINGTON: Well, Abe, it looks as though we can stop worrying about our country. Roosevelt has it headed right again.

  LINCOLN: All it needed was a plan of action … and a man with the courage to carry it through.

  WILSON: There isn’t a person in America who won’t benefit by the NRA, if every man, woman and child does his part.

  WASHINGTON: You can always depend on Americans.

  Another Warner Bros. film released in 1933, a box-office smash called Footlight Parade, features a grand finale, choreographed by Busby Berkeley, in which marching soldiers form themselves into images of an American flag, a portrait of FDR, and the NRA eagle.

  Other studios did their share for the New Deal as well. Fox’s biggest star in the early 1930s was Will Rogers, who was also the leading supporter of the New Deal in American popular culture. Rogers had been a vaudeville and silent movie star in the 1910s and 1920s, but he gained his greatest fame during the first three years of the Roosevelt administration. He starred in twelve films between 1933 and 1935, and during that time established what came to be known as the “Will Rogers formula.” Typically, Rogers played a plain, pure-of-heart character from a rural town who is victimized by big-city businessmen. The plot normally involved the collective work of ordinary Americans like himself to overcome their oppression. In nearly all of his films, work—in particular direct, physical labor carried out cooperatively and for the community rather than for individual gain—is portrayed as noble, while the desire for material comforts and luxuries is shown as the source of corruption. Rogers campaigned vigorously for Roosevelt in the 1932 election, then used his radio show to promote New Deal policies. He called himself “the Number One New Dealer.” Rogers was also a great admirer of another world leader. “Mussolini, he’s the biggest thing in the world today,” he said on a speaking tour in 1927, one year after he met Il Duce in Italy. “Anyone who can put those dagoes to work is some guy.” Later, in a speech to a crowd of his fans, the Number One New Dealer praised Mussolini’s militarism:

  He knows the Nations that are great are the ones that have something in the way of side arms. He knows that without an Army and Navy they will never be able to find room for his growing population. That fellow has kept Italy on the up-grade for all these years, and all the time everybody says, “Oh, he can’t last.” I have said ever since I met him in ’26, that he was by far the greatest Guy I had ever met, and there has never been a day since then that I have changed. He has done more for his Country than any man ever did for one in a like time. You don’t see ’em shooting at him any more do you. He is a Whiz, that baby is. I have never yet seen him propose a fool thing.

  After he died in a plane crash, Rogers was replaced at the top of the box office charts by Shirley Temple, whose breakthrough film was Stand Up and Cheer, released by Fox in 1934. In the film, the president of the United States, who looks very much like Franklin Roosevelt, appoints a secretary of amusement to cheer up the country. The secretary recruits vaudeville acts, in opposition to a gloomy group of businessmen called the “blue-noses” who have a financial interest in prolonging the Depression. His star performer is a four-year-old girl played by Temple, who wins over the nation with her singing. At the end of the film, a crowd shouts into the camera, “The Depression is over! Men are going back to work!”

  The Roosevelt administration appreciated the efforts of the Hays Office, which was busily purifying Hollywood films according to the Motion Picture Production Code. In 1938 Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in Photoplay magazine that she was happy to see that movie producers had taken on the responsibility of “creating good taste” in the American public. And without the slightest embarrassment, she declared that censorship and the narrowing of artistic expression served the national interest:

  The highly cultured people of the world are those who have good taste … some things in literature and the arts have always presaged decadence. Those things must be kept from the drama if we are to promote good taste. Here is the great challenge to the movie producer of the future—will movies be an instrument in the development of good taste and are we growing up to be a nation with artistic knowledge and appreciation?

  In 1941 Will Hays received a letter of encouragement from Franklin Roosevelt, in which the president praised him as the engineer of “the greatest propaganda machine in the country.” Urging the Hollywood censor to continue his work, Roosevelt wrote, “You are the kind of Czar that nobody could call ‘a Dictator’ because you are fair-minded and do not use a whip but still get things done for the general good.” Indeed, the leaders of the American movie industry enjoyed extraordinarily close relationships with both Roosevelt and Mussolini.

  In 1935, Charles Pettijohn, general counsel for the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America, met with Mussolini and suggested making a documentary about the Fascist state. He guaranteed that it would be shown in “about 14,500 American theatres” so that “about 70 million Americans would have understood better Italy’s position.” In 1936 Hays himself traveled to Italy when some Fascist officials suggested blocking the importation of American movies. Hays convinced Mussolini that the code’s “reformation” of American movies had aligned them with the moral values of the Italian state. After that meeting, Mussolini allowed more than 250 American films to be shown in Italy per year. Hays then appointed Pettijohn to serve as an unofficial liaison between the U.S. and Italian governments. In 1937 Pettijohn met with Vittorio Mussolini, Il Duce’s son, who was on his way to Hollywood to establish a production company with studio chief Hal Roach, who had made stars out of Laurel and Hardy, the “Our Gang” kids, and Will Rogers. The company was called RAM Films, for “Roach and Mussolini,” and it made documentary newsreels promoting Italy. Pettijohn wrote to the Roosevelts’ son-in-law, John Boettiger, that the young Mussolini was “a fine, quiet, modest, young man,” who “expressed a very sincere desire to meet the president before he goes back to Italy.” Pettijohn’s letter revealed friendly relations between the Roosevelt and Mussolini families. “The president’s son [John Roosevelt] met his father [Benito Mussolini] in Rome, and I just suspect that the president would permit this boy [Vittorio] to return the call.” Shortly thereafter, Vittorio Mussolini had tea with FDR in the White House.

  Regimentation, the hallmark of Nazi and Fascist culture, was a prominent theme in Hollywood musicals and federal propaganda during the New Deal. Busby Berkeley and Warner Bros. put out several enormously popular films in the early years of the New Deal that were openly partisan for the Roosevelt administration. Gold Diggers of 1933, 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, and Dames all featured tightly synchronized movements by large numbers of dancers and implicit collectivist messages. Berkeley acknowledged that designing parade drills as an army lieutenant during World War I was the “best apprenticeship” for his career as a choreographer.

  Martial imagery was a staple of New Deal culture, and it was common for public officials to speak of bringing order and discipline to daily life. In 1932 Roosevelt pledged during his election campaign to mobilize “the infantry of our economic army.” A few months into his presidency, the National Recovery Administration distributed badges to be worn by participants in what Roosevelt called the “great offensive against unemployment.”

  In war, in the gloom of night attack, soldiers wear a bright badge on their shoulders to be sure that comrades do not fire on comrades. On that principle, those who cooperate in this program must know each other at a glance. That is why we have provided
a badge of honor for this purpose, a simple design with a legend, “We do our part,” and I ask that all those who join with me shall display that badge prominently. It is essential to our purpose.

  In 1937 Roosevelt used similar language to ask Congress for new public works programs. “You and I cannot afford to equip ourselves with two rounds of ammunition where three rounds are necessary,” he said. “If we stop at relief and credit, we may find ourselves without ammunition before the enemy is routed. If we are fully equipped with the third round of ammunition, we stand to win the battle against adversity.” Roosevelt’s cabinet members often spoke of him as though he were the leader of a conquering army. Harold Ickes, the secretary of the interior, said in 1934 that FDR “grasped this acute situation with a firm hand and proceeded to restore order.”

  In my judgment here is the leader you have been looking for for more years than you would like to remember. And, miracle of miracles, this leader in a great forward movement for a new and better social order is actually occupying the seat of the mightiest ruler in the world today. Strong in the faith of the people, entrenched in their confident affections, he will not fail us unless we fail him. He is the master of a stout ship, sailing in the right direction. Granted any sort of a favoring breeze, he will bring us safely into the harbor of a fairer land.

  Washington, DC, and many German cities were remade during the period of the New Deal and Nazism. Hitler’s architects designed several buildings that became characteristic of a distinctive “Nazi architecture,” including the Olympic Stadium, the new Reich Chancellery, the Tempelhof Airport, the Ministry of Aviation, the Japanese embassy in Berlin, and the House of German Art. Hitler also worked with his favorite architect, Albert Speer, on a complete redesign of Berlin that included an immense domed “Great Hall” connected by a three-mile-long avenue to the chancellery. While planning these buildings, Nazi architects implemented the theory of “ruin value,” which was enthusiastically supported by Hitler. According to this theory, all new buildings were designed to leave imposing ruins thousands of years in the future that would stand as testaments to the greatness of the Third Reich. The theory was realized in monumental stone constructions that imitated ancient Greek and Roman styles.