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

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Alonzo Hamby compares the economic performance of America to only Germany and Britain, which is not a fair comparison. Germany and Britian had the best performances of all the world countries affected by the Great Depression. USA did better than many countries, but Hamby does not compare USA to those countries.

There are several other outstanding books that fully compare the economic performance of the United States during the Great Depression to that of many other countries, such as Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke's "Essays on the Great Depression." A comparison of USA against ALL the other countries, such as France, Sweden, Netherlands, Germany, and Britain, shows that USA did fairly well overall and much better than many countries.

GDP in America grew over 50% in FDR's first term. Industrial output in 1937 briefly passed the previous output peak in 1929. Unemployment was cut in half (and fell to around 4-5% if you count the public works jobs not counted in employment figures).

The gold standard was a leading cause of the Great Depression, along with the banking industry collapse. The countries that abandoned the gold standard soonest (like Britain) were the ones that recovered from the depression the soonest, while the counties that stayed on the gold standard the longest (like France) suffered the longest. Yet Hamby does not cover that.

Why does Hamby do that? I am not sure, but I know that the performance of USA is decent when compares to all other countries.

There are many great books on the era. Harvard historian Frank Freidel spent his life researching Roosevelt, so consider his biography "Rendezvous with Destiny." Consider Conrad Black's "Franklin Delano Roosevelt: Champion of Freedom," which the Economist Magazine called "a masterpiece." Arthur Schlesinger's award-winning "Age of Roosevelt" is classic. James MacGregor Burns's "Soldier of Freedom" won the Pulitzer Prize. Read Bernanke's "Essays on the Great Depression" for a thorough study of the economics aspects of the Depression. Etc.

It has taken years for me to fully appreciate the subtle genius of Alonzo Hamby. In _For the Survival of Democracy_, Hamby has done it again. He builds his argument slowly, but on a solid foundation. His particular talent is his ability to make sense out of messy historiography and complicated issues. Again, he strikes the perfect balance.
This original and thought-provoking work has managed to integrate the useful criticisms of Roosevelt's conservative critics without taking them too far. It is a useful corrective to the popular perceptions of world politics in the 1930s.
The epilogue alone makes the book worth the purchase price.

Over the past few decades Alonzo Hamby has gotten a reputation as one of Americas leading political historians. This book shows this reputation is quite undeserved. The books theme is simple. Hamby looks at the Depression years, mostly in the United States but with comparisons to Nazi Germany and Conservative Britain, and presents what might be described as the Goldilocks thesis. The United States had bold, vigorous and democratic leadership under FDR, but failed to end the depression. Germany ended the depression under leadership that was bold, vigorous and dictatorial, but was, of course, also evil and nihilistic. Great Britain, under the stolid leadership of Baldwin and Chamberlain, gets economic recovery just rightuntil Munich.

Since most histories of the New Deal are far more sympathetic to Roosevelt and since popular opinion of Baldwin and Chamberlain is generally much less sympathetic, this book may appear to be bold and original. Nothing could be further from the truth. It would be more accurately described as Bill Clinton history, since it consists of splitting the difference between Roosevelt and his Republican critics. But it is not based on any substantially new research. This book could have been written three or four decades ago without changing its basic argument. His account of Britain depends on the apologetic approach towards Baldwin and Chamberlain in British historiography that developed through the seventies and eighties. Although Hamby quotes a few more recent works on the Third Reich, he is still inspired most by William Shirers four decade old book, notwithstanding the strong dislike of it by most historians of modern Germany. His discussion of the New Deal period is based on readily available sources like Roosevelts published papers, classics by Leuchtenberg and Dallek, and a number of centrist journals like The New York Times, The Times, The Economist, Walter Lippmann and likeminded people. The result is a book that is derivative at best, and with a shallow, undistinguished style. It is absurd to say that Hindenburg was the George Washington of his country and unthinkingly deferential to say George V had shown himself to be a quintessential Englishman. It is also morally shallow to say Goering was one of the most loathsome Nazis and start off with the fact that he was fat. At times it is unforgivably sloppy: a competent historian should know that Hitler was not born out of wedlock and that Goebbels was not born to humble working-class origins.

Other historians have tried looking at the New Deal in more complex ways, looking at who supported the New Deal and why, the basis of political support and opposition, the relationships between the state and the larger society. One thinks of recent research by authors such as Anthony Badger, Theda Skocpol, Steve Fraser and Colin Gordon. There is nothing like that in this book. Nor is there any sustained economic analysis. Hamby mostly ignores three and a half decades of labour history and simply recapitulates the fear and condescension of moderate journalists at the time. Instead, Fraser focuses on individuals. Every chapter starts off with a little profile of an important player, whether it is Eleanor Roosevelt, Herman Goering, David Lilienthal or Henry Wallace. None of these profiles, it should be said, includes anything that is particularly original or informative or lively. We hear unoriginal accounts of such well-known events as the presidential elections, the bank crisis, the rise of Huey Long and so on, but the result is basically conformist. Whether it is the possibility that FDR was too harsh on businessmen, or societys outrage over Edward VIIIs marriage to a divorced woman, Hamby does little but agree with moderate and respectable opinion.

This reaches its nadir with Hambys amazingly indulgent portrait of pre-1938 appeasement. He portrays opposition to Mussolini as foolish moralism, which helped push him into Hitlers arms. (He also omits Mussolinis use of chemical weapons, rather ironic given the outrage Hambys fellow moderate conservatives have made over Saddam Hussein.) There is similar obtuseness over the Spanish Civil War, where Hamby is inclined to think that Britains malevolent neutrality was a good move. It clearly wasnt: it undercut France, it worsened relations with the Soviet Union, it emboldened Germany and Italy to continue their aggression, it condemned Spain to four decades of cruel dictatorship, it disheartened anti-fascists world-wide and encouraged complacency among appeasers. His indulgent picture of Baldwin and Chamberlain ignore Anthony Adamthwaites views on Ethiopia, and the research of Douglas Little and Enrique Moradiellos on Britains bad faith towards Spain. Overall, much of the discussion of Germany and Britain does not get beyond broad generalizations and stereotypes. The Germans have been dominated for centuries by authoritarian politics. Much of the discussion of Britain consists of journalistic anecdotes of charming plucky little upper-class Brits. What Hamby has done is basically middlebrow journalism, a masters thesis played out to gargantuan length.

This is a very critical biography of FDR, all the more so because Dr. Hamby, one of America's best political historians, appears to be a man of the moderate left. He appreciates what FDR set out to do, but is too honest, intelligent and open minded not to show just how badly FDR fell short. Unlike conservative criticism of Roosevelt, he accepts the goals but not the process. This makes for a valuable study.

One of the points the author makes is how FDR allowed politics to trump conviction, a flaw which has damaged the Democratic Party ever since. For instance, we all know how the Neutrality Acts were supposed to have hamstrung Roosevelt's ability to stand up to Hitler. What few other historians tell you is that FDR himself was responsible for those acts, because, fearful of splitting his coalition of conservative Catholics and the far left, he did not want to take a stand on the Spanish Civil War.

Hamby does not take his criticisms as far as they could go: according to Richard Gid Powers, it was FDR who politicized the FBI by getting J. Edgar Hoover to spy on his political enemies. Couch and Shugart show that the majority of WPA funds were distributed in regions, not where people needed food, but where the Democrats needed votes. Hamby shows how FDR used specious, politically motivated lawsuits to discredit Andrew Mellon and Samual Insull, but neglects to mention that he did the same thing to other people he targeted, including the President of First National City Bank and the Chairman of General Motors. No matter; Hamby focuses on the failure of the policies and that is a more important lesson for today.

Unlike Alonzo Hamby, the Democratic Party tends to make heroes of its charismatic leaders and goats of its other leaders. So Truman, Johnson and Carter left office under a cloud (and Truman and LBJ, at least, did great things in office), while the Party idolizes its charismatic do-nothings: FDR, JFK and Clinton. The result is a peculiar divorce of substance from style which has ruined the party as an instrument of progress. FDR initiated this divorce and if the Democratic Party ever wants to become an instument of progress again, it would be well advised to read the collected works of Professor Hamby.

A useful and unusual feature of this book is to compare the progress of the United Kingdom, Nazi Germany and New Deal America in overcoming the Great Depression. This is an excellent primer in comparative economics, reminiscent of Richard Overy's How the Allies Won.