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"Roosevelt once spoke in the presence of journalists of Mussolini and Stalin as his 'blood brothers,'"  and "had nothing but 'sympathy and confidence' in Mussolini up until the mid-1930s".<ref>Wolfgang Schivelbusch, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=Z3GV5_n1h04C Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939]'' (Macmillan, 2006) ISBN 080507452X, pp. 30-31</ref> The President privately found Mussolini "admirable," writing to his personal friend John Lawrence, "I don't mind telling you in confidence, that I am keeping in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman."<ref>David F. Schmitz, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=Pzt2AAAAMAAJ The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940]'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1988) ISBN 080781766X, p. 139</ref> FDR also wrote to U.S. Ambassador to Italy Breckinridge Long about Mussolini, "I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished and by his evidenced honest purpose of restoring Italy and seeking to prevent general European trouble."<ref>Elliott Roosevelt, Ed., [http://books.google.com/books?id=aHEbAAAAIAAJ F.D.R., His Personal Letters, Vol. 3] (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1947), p. 352</ref>

"Roosevelt once spoke in the presence of journalists of Mussolini and Stalin as his 'blood brothers,'"  and "had nothing but 'sympathy and confidence' in Mussolini up until the mid-1930s".<ref>Wolfgang Schivelbusch, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=Z3GV5_n1h04C Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939]'' (Macmillan, 2006) ISBN 080507452X, pp. 30-31</ref> The President privately found Mussolini "admirable," writing to his personal friend John Lawrence, "I don't mind telling you in confidence, that I am keeping in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman."<ref>David F. Schmitz, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=Pzt2AAAAMAAJ The United States and Fascist Italy, 1922-1940]'' (University of North Carolina Press, 1988) ISBN 080781766X, p. 139</ref> FDR also wrote to U.S. Ambassador to Italy Breckinridge Long about Mussolini, "I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished and by his evidenced honest purpose of restoring Italy and seeking to prevent general European trouble."<ref>Elliott Roosevelt, Ed., [http://books.google.com/books?id=aHEbAAAAIAAJ F.D.R., His Personal Letters, Vol. 3] (Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1947), p. 352</ref>

Long, in turn, reported to Roosevelt’s economic adviser Rexford Tugwell about economic organization under the Fascists: “Your mind runs along these lines … It may have some bearing on the code work under N.R.A.”<ref>Long to Tugwell, May 16, 1934, [http://lccn.loc.gov/mm%2078030502 Breckinridge Long Papers], Box 111, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress)</ref> Tugwell, the “most prominent of the Brain Trusters and the man often considered the chief ideologist of the 'first New Deal' (roughly, 1933–34),”<ref>Ralph Raico, "[http://www.fff.org/freedom/0201e.asp FDR — The Man, the Leader, the Legacy, Part 11], ''Freedom Daily, February 2001</ref> said, “I find Italy doing many of the things which seem to me necessary…. Mussolini certainly has the same people opposed to him as FDR has. But he has the press controlled so that they cannot scream lies at him daily.”<ref>Jonah Goldberg, ‘’[http://books.google.com/books?id=wHihWKJE3asC Liberal Fascism: the Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning] (Random House, Inc., 2008) ISBN 0385511841, p.156</ref> Tugwell, "the most left-wing member of Roosevelt's brain trust" was "open in his respect for Mussolini's economic policies."<ref>Wolfgang Schivelbusch, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=Z3GV5_n1h04C Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939]'' (Macmillan, 2006) ISBN 080507452X, pp. 31-32</ref> Of the Fascist system he wrote, "It's the cleanest, neatnest [sic], most efficiently operating piece of social machinery I've ever seen. It makes me envious."<ref>Wolfgang Schivelbusch, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=Z3GV5_n1h04C Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939]'' (Macmillan, 2006) ISBN 080507452X, p. 32</ref> FDR's Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes conceded that “what we were doing in this country were some of the things that were being done in Russia and even some of the things that were being done under Hitler in Germany. But we were doing them in an orderly way.”<ref>Jonah Goldberg, "[http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1502/article_detail.asp The Raw Deal]," ''Claremont Review of Books'', Winter 2007</ref> Eleanor Roosevelt's close friend Lorena Hickok, a journalist who covered the New Deal, wrote, "If I were 20 years younger and weighed 75 pounds less, I think I'd start out to be the Joan of Arc of the Fascist Movement of the United States."<ref>Lorena A. Hickok, et al., ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=nstfz85S4ccC One Third of a Nation: Lorena Hickok Reports on the Great Depression]'' (University of Illinois Press, 1983) ISBN 0252010965, p. 218</ref>

Long, in turn, reported to Roosevelt’s economic adviser Rexford Tugwell about economic organization under the Fascists: “Your mind runs along these lines … It may have some bearing on the code work under N.R.A.”<ref>Long to Tugwell, May 16, 1934, [http://lccn.loc.gov/mm%2078030502 Breckinridge Long Papers], Box 111, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress)</ref> Tugwell, the “most prominent of the Brain Trusters and the man often considered the chief ideologist of the 'first New Deal' (roughly, 1933–34),”<ref>Ralph Raico, "[http://www.fff.org/freedom/0201e.asp FDR — The Man, the Leader, the Legacy, Part 11], ''Freedom Daily, February 2001</ref> said, “I find Italy doing many of the things which seem to me necessary…. Mussolini certainly has the same people opposed to him as FDR has. But he has the press controlled so that they cannot scream lies at him daily.”<ref>Jonah Goldberg, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=wHihWKJE3asC Liberal Fascism: the Secret History of the American Left, from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning]'' (Random House, Inc., 2008) ISBN 0385511841, p.156</ref> Tugwell, "the most left-wing member of Roosevelt's brain trust" was "open in his respect for Mussolini's economic policies." Of the Fascist system he wrote, "It's the cleanest, neatnest [sic], most efficiently operating piece of social machinery I've ever seen. It makes me envious."<ref>Wolfgang Schivelbusch, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=Z3GV5_n1h04C Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939]'' (Macmillan, 2006) ISBN 080507452X, pp. 31-32</ref> FDR's Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes conceded that “what we were doing in this country were some of the things that were being done in Russia and even some of the things that were being done under Hitler in Germany. But we were doing them in an orderly way.”<ref>Jonah Goldberg, "[http://www.claremont.org/publications/crb/id.1502/article_detail.asp The Raw Deal]," ''Claremont Review of Books'', Winter 2007</ref> Eleanor Roosevelt's close friend Lorena Hickok, a journalist who covered the New Deal, wrote, "If I were 20 years younger and weighed 75 pounds less, I think I'd start out to be the Joan of Arc of the Fascist Movement of the United States."<ref>Lorena A. Hickok, et al., ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=nstfz85S4ccC One Third of a Nation: Lorena Hickok Reports on the Great Depression]'' (University of Illinois Press, 1983) ISBN 0252010965, p. 218</ref>

The centerpiece of the New Deal was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of 1933, which was “similar to experiments being carried out by the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in Italy and by the Nazis in Adolf Hitler's Germany,” according to John A. Garraty,<ref>John Arthur Garraty, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=DGRuAAAAMAAJ The American Nation]'', 4th ed., vol. 2 (Harper & Row, 1979) ISBN 0060422696, p. 656</ref> president of the Society of American Historians.<ref>[http://sah.columbia.edu/content/history History], The Society of American Historians</ref> NIRA established the National Recovery Administration (NRA), “the New Deal’s attempt to bring to America the substance of Mussolini’s corporativism.”<ref>Leonard Peikoff, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=2_xpAAAAIAAJ The Ominous Parallels]’’ (Stein and Day, 1982) ISBN 081282850X, p. 293</ref> As one NRA study concluded, “The Fascist principles are very similar to those which have been evolving in America and so are of particular interest at this time.”<ref>Janet C. Wright, "Capital and Labor Under Fascism," National Archives, Record Group 9, Records of the National Recovery Administration, [http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/009.html#9.2.4 Special Research and Planning Reports and Memoranda, 1933-35], Entry 31, Box 3</ref>

The centerpiece of the New Deal was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of 1933, which was “similar to experiments being carried out by the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in Italy and by the Nazis in Adolf Hitler's Germany,” according to John A. Garraty,<ref>John Arthur Garraty, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=DGRuAAAAMAAJ The American Nation]'', 4th ed., vol. 2 (Harper & Row, 1979) ISBN 0060422696, p. 656</ref> president of the Society of American Historians.<ref>[http://sah.columbia.edu/content/history History], The Society of American Historians</ref> NIRA established the National Recovery Administration (NRA), “the New Deal’s attempt to bring to America the substance of Mussolini’s corporativism.”<ref>Leonard Peikoff, ''[http://books.google.com/books?id=2_xpAAAAIAAJ The Ominous Parallels]’’ (Stein and Day, 1982) ISBN 081282850X, p. 293</ref> As one NRA study concluded, “The Fascist principles are very similar to those which have been evolving in America and so are of particular interest at this time.”<ref>Janet C. Wright, "Capital and Labor Under Fascism," National Archives, Record Group 9, Records of the National Recovery Administration, [http://www.archives.gov/research/guide-fed-records/groups/009.html#9.2.4 Special Research and Planning Reports and Memoranda, 1933-35], Entry 31, Box 3</ref>