Entfernte Verwandtschaft: Faschismus, Nationalsozialismus, New Deal, 1933–1939

The economic crisis of the 1930s shook the USA just as much as Europe. But Roosevelt's New Deal economic program saved the U.S. into the war economy, and after the end of the war, America appeared as the shining antithesis of collapsed Europe. But it is precisely in the New Deal that Wolfgang Schivelbusch now discovers surprising similarities with the right-wing ideologies of Hitler and Mussolini: Roosevelt's invocation of the national community, for example, or the consistent use of propaganda techniques. Schivelbusch's comparison shows the seductive powers that reactionary ideas develop when modern societies are in crisis.