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The so-called '''New Deal''' was the name coined by [[President of the United States of America|President]] [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]], a [[Democratic Party|Democrat]], for the [[Socialism|socialist]]ic program he conducted throughout the Great Depression. This program had three aspects: relief, recovery and reform. It sought to provide immediate relief for the millions of unemployed. Roosevelt believed the New Deal would aid in recovery and reform in hopes of ending the Great Depression. 1933 to 1937 were recovery years stimulated by the New Deal government spending. However by 1937 the nation had nowhere near recovered to where it was in 1929. The 1937 - 1943 Depression was longer in duration than the 1929 - 1932 crash, the result of massive government intrusion into the private economy which stunted growth. Manufacturing demand stimulated by WWII led to the 1943-1949 recovery, where finally, in 1949, the New York Stock Exchange recovered to the level it had been at 1929.
The so-called '''New Deal''' was the name coined by [[President of the United States of America|President]] [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]], a [[Democratic Party|Democrat]], for the [[Socialism|socialist]]ic program he conducted throughout the Great Depression. This program had three aspects: relief, recovery and reform. It sought to provide immediate relief for the millions of unemployed. Roosevelt believed the New Deal would aid in recovery and reform in hopes of ending the Great Depression.
==Economoc planning==
As the Depression set in, terms like “[[planned economy]]” and “national planning” became the watchwords of the day. <ref>[http://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1468 FDR: The Man, the Leader, the Legacy], Ralph Raico, Future of Freedom Foundation, April 1, 2001. Retreived from The Independent Institute.org 06/17/07.</ref> They had been used by theoriticians for years and popularized by best-selling writers like George Soule and Stuart Chase, who lauded the Soviet Gosplan (central planning), asking plaintively, “Why should the Russians have all the fun of remaking a world?” The most prominent of the [[Brain Trust]]ers and the man often considered the chief ideologist of the “first New Deal” (roughly, 1933–34), was [[Rexford Guy Tugwell]]. Tugwell was a follower of the school of thought known as Institutional Economics, founded by the eccentric writer on economics, [[Thorstein Veblen]]. His official position was assistant secretary of agriculture, that is, second in command to [[Henry A. Wallace]], but his influence extended far beyond that. In 1927, Tugwell traveled to the Soviet Union and observed through scientific economic planning the Soviets were able to “carry out their industrial operations with a completely thought-out program.” “The future,” he announced, “is becoming visible in Russia.” Tugwell scorned the [[free market]] as anarchical, an uncoordinated muddle of hopelessly conflicting aims and purposes. It would have to be replaced by national planning, or technocracy, another shibboleth of the day, implying rule by the technical experts and managers, like himself.
==Collectivism==
There was a peculiar affinity between the New Deal and the European dictatorships that on occasion extended even to [[fascism]] and [[national socialism]] Early on, FDR referred to [[Benito Mussolini]] as “the admirable Italian gentlemen,” stating to his ambassador in Rome, “I am much interested and deeply impressed by what he has accomplished." Mussolini, in turn, was flattered by what he saw as the New Deal’s copying of his own corporate state, in the [[National Recovery Act]] (NRA) and other early measures. Even [[Hitler]] had kind words at first for Roosevelt’s “dynamic” leadership, stating that “I have sympathy with President Roosevelt because he marches straight to his objective over Congress, over lobbies, over stubborn bureaucracies.”
What linked the New Deal to the regimes in Italy and Germany, as well as in Soviet Russia, was their fellowship in the wave of [[collectivism]] that was sweeping the world. In an essay published in 1933, [[John Maynard Keynes]] observed this trend, and expressed his sympathy with the “variety of politico-economic experiments” under way in the continental dictatorships as well as in the United States. All of them, he gloated, were turning their backs on the old, discredited [[laissez-faire]] and embracing national planning in one form or another.
It goes without saying that the New Deal was a much milder form of the collectivism. In all of the national planning schemes, government gained power at the expense of the people, with the leaders seeking to impose a philosophy of life that subordinated the individual to the needs of the community—as defined by the state.
==Civilian Conservation Corps==
The inner affinities of the New Deal with the continental dictatorships is well illustrated by one of the first measures passed during FDR’s first Hundred Days and was a program that was one of FDR’s favorites, the [[Civilian Conservation Corps]] (CCC).
Young men were enrolled as amateur forest rangers, marsh-drainers, and the like, on projects designed to improve the countryside. The recruits were given room and board, clothing, and a dollar a day. More than two and half million of them passed through the camps of the Civilian Conservation Corps, until the program was abolished in 1942, when the men were needed for the draft.
In 1973, John A. Garraty published an important article on the CCC in the American Historical Review<ref>“The New Deal, National Socialism, and the Great Depression,” Vol. 78 (October 1973).</ref> Garraty was Gouverneur Morris Professor of American history at Columbia and later general editor of the ''American National Biography''. Yet, while a warm admirer of FDR, Garraty was compelled to note the striking similarities between the CCC and parallel programs set up by the Nazis for German youth. 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 semi-military lines with the subsidiary purposes of improving the physical fitness of potential soldiers and stimulating public commitment to national service in an emergency.
Garraty listed many other similarities between the New Deal and National Socialism. Like Roosevelt, Hitler prided himself on being a “pragmatist” in economic affairs, trying out one panacea after another. Through a multitude of new agencies and mountains of new regulations, both in Germany and America, owners and managers of enterprises found their freedom to make decisions sharply curtailed.
The Nazis encouraged working-class mobility, through vocational training, the democratizing youth camps, and a myriad of youth organizations. They usually favored workers as against employers in industrial disputes and, in another parallel to the New Deal, supported higher agricultural prices. Both FDR and Hitler “tended to romanticize rural life and the virtues of an agricultural existence“ and harbored dreams of the rural resettlement of urban populations, which proved disappointing. Characteristically for the collectivist movements of the time, “enormous propaganda campaigns” were mounted in the United States, Germany, and Italy (as well, of course, as in Russia) to fire up enthusiasm for the government’s programs.
It is no wonder, then, as Professor Garraty writes, that “during the first years of the New Deal the German press praised him [Roosevelt] and the New Deal to the skies. . . . Early New Deal policies seemed to the Nazis essentially like their own and the role of Roosevelt not very different from the Führer’s.”
==Timeline==
1933 to 1937 were recovery years stimulated by the New Deal government spending. However by 1937 the nation had nowhere near recovered to where it was in 1929.
The 1937 - 1943 Depression was longer in duration than the 1929 - 1932 crash, the result of massive government intrusion into the private economy which stunted growth. Manufacturing demand stimulated by WWII led to the 1943-1949 recovery, where finally, in 1949, the New York Stock Exchange recovered to the level it had been at 1929.
Many New Deal reforms were unpopular and criticized. In 1948 President [[Harry Truman]] ran on a reformed New Deal platform called the [[Fair Deal]], which was regarded largely as an admission the New Deal had not been fair.
Many New Deal reforms were unpopular and criticized. In 1948 President [[Harry Truman]] ran on a reformed New Deal platform called the [[Fair Deal]], which was regarded largely as an admission the New Deal had not been fair.
==See also==
==See also==
*[[New Ordeal]]
*[[New Ordeal]]
==References==
<references/>
[[category:United States History]]
[[category:United States History]]