·         an effort on the part of Hoover’s administration to pump money into big business.  They poured 1½ billion dollars into railroads and other big enterprises to try to jumpstart the economy.  The problem is that the people at the bottom need the money, not the big ones on the top.  Trickle-down economics: it takes time for the money on top to trickle down to the bottom.  This did not give help to those who needed it most in a timely manner.

But once the delegates arrived in Chicago, there were questions.  Garner was perceived as having too many enemies.  Smith wasn’t favored either.  The delegates from California were the first to suggest looking from someone else.  They suggested Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the governor of New York State.  He had shown some real ability to get things done in helping the people of his state.  His cousin had also been successful.  He won the nomination.  Immediately, it was clear that he was wholly new kind of politician.  It was tradition that nominees never attended conventions.  But Roosevelt personally flew to Chicago to accept the nomination because he wanted to speak to his party and the American people.  He talked about giving the American people a New Deal.  This term becomes attached to his presidency.

·         a series of radio programs broadcast by Roosevelt.  The real brilliance was not his speaking to the nation but the name itself and the images it conjures up: evening, winter, snowing, living room, overstuffed chair, comfy clothes, slippers, pipe, brandy, etc.  Gives hope, confidence, humanness, personal connection.  Chat is laid back.  Talk is serious.  It gives the picture that we are going to fix this thing together: don’t worry.  On top of this he acts.

·         He was a questionable man: a womanizer, gambler, and chain smoker.  Hopkins wants to know if the money is available now and where his office is going to be.  Hopkins accepts.  He leaves his meeting and walks the two blocks to the federal building to the second floor where his office will be.  He begins to grab objects from different rooms, pulls them into the hallway, sits down, lights an unfiltered cigarette, and gives away 5 million dollars in the next two hours.  He did more in two hours than Hoover did in his entire presidency.  This didn’t end the depression although it helped.  Roosevelt has a back up plan.

The Fallback Plan: Alphabet Agencies. 

All of these were established in the first one hundred days of Roosevelt’s presidency, although they were not all functional immediately at the time.  Keep in mind that these were created to work hand in hand with each other, not alone.

·         CWA)– proposed by Harry Hopkins.  Put four million unemployed Americans in emergency jobs between Nov. 1933 and April 1934.  In Arkansas, the government paid unemployed people to rake leaves into a pile, some others to put them in a boxcar, others to take it to the next city, and others to take it to the next city and put it back on the ground so others can rake them up again.  This is the most brilliant plan because:

·         It puts money back in the hands of people.

·         It gives back a sense of self-respect and renewed pride to the people.

·         It provided an immediate job market instead of waiting to create productive jobs.

·         NRA)– they create the idea of minimum wage (although not a law yet).  It was an agency that created codes that will be described as fair wages: 35-40 cents per hour.  They also created a maximum workweek: 35-40 hours a week depending on the industry.  There was pressure for businesses to conform to these codes.  The NRA held a campaign.  Businesses that conformed to these codes displayed a blue eagle in their window and the media promoted their businesses.  Those who didn’t were considered traitors to the cause.

·         TVA)– the Tennessee valley was historically the most impoverished area of the US.  It suffered from serious flooding problems.  Farmers were unproductive.  It didn’t have access to electricity.  (In the 1920s there are revolutions that occur concerning the quality of life that revolved around electricity: first electric refrigerator, iron, washing machine, etc.)  The river valley could not be a part of the modern age.  The TVA created a public corporation that was authorized to buy the dams that were already in existence and to build new ones.  These dams had two purposes: (intended to be permanent)

·         Provided hydro-powered electricity

·         Controlled flooding

·         (PWA)– another idea of Harry Hopkins.  Puts an average of 2.1 million people to work between 1935 and 1941.  The government planned projects and gave those projects to various companies (contractors).  They built or rebuilt six hundred airports in this country, one hundred and ten thousand public buildings, bridges, and the sewer system of Chicago.   They also built two aircraft carriers: the Enterprise and Yorktown.  At this time Harold Ickescontrols the PWA.  This was because Roosevelt was concerned about the prospect of war, but Roosevelt masked that by the need for jobs.

·         WPA) – Directed by Hopkins.  Put the same numbers of people to work as the PWA.  The difference was that the government became the planner and the contractor.  They built public buildings, hospitals, libraries, sewer lines, etc.  The lasting greatness of a civilization is its culture (art, literature, etc.).  But the first thing that gets cut in America when things get hard is art and education. 

Therefore, Roosevelt paid journalists to interview former slaves.  We would have lost a large section of history without this. 

·         He pays musicians and composers to collect folk songs. 

·         Unemployed artists are paid to illustrate guidebooks for various states. 

·         – it is a dictatorship that embraces capitalism for the profit of the state rather than the individual.  Central government should own and operate the big industries in their country (nationalization).  Savage style of government in  which not political opposition was tolerated.

First emerged in Italy.  Led by Benito Mussolini.  His party was the Fascisti Party.

Benito Mussolini

He led  the Fascisti Party. Their slogan was “we are going to make the trains run on time.”

·         Mussolini was elected and does restore order, but it comes at a high price because he quickly moves against opposition.  He was determined to crush criticism.  He becomes a model that is followed even more dramatically in Germany.

Adolph Hitler

·         He was the son of an Austrian official.  There was an elite private school in northern Austria that Hitler’s parents sent him to.  They scraped the money for the tuition, but they couldn’t provide him the lifestyle to make him fit.  He was bullied and picked on, especially by one group of students led by a Jewish boy.  Possibly the roots of the anti-Semitic feelings.

·         Charismatic - “Triumph of the Will” a movie made by Leni Reifenstahl, Hitler’s official propagandist.  Demonstrates the charisma that Hitler possessed.  He is incredibly powerful in presenting himself.  Good at using gestures and pauses in his words.

·         Extraordinary ability – very smart

·         Not German – born in Austria-Hungry.  He comes to represent German nationalism:

·         Aryanism – the purity of the German race.  He redefines nationalism.  To him it was not borders, but what a people share, especially language.

·         He fought in the First World War under the German military.

·         Talented with military.  He never rose above the level of corporal only because he was injured in battle.  This injury was from a poison gas attach that changed his voice from high to low. 

·         He was imprisoned for a while.  He was involved in a failed conspiracy to overthrow the government of Germany in the 1920s.  He wrote a book then called:

·          Mein Kampf, my struggle.  It told what he intended to do, but no one took it seriously or bothered to read it.

·         He was Time Magazine’s man of the year – because of the Autobahn (highway) that was built by Hitler and the Nazis.  He built it with a military method, so come the war the shovel just needed replaced with the gun.  He developed the Volkswagen; he wanted everyone to have access to a car.

·         Targeted for assassination several times.  In the end he committed suicide.  When Russia invaded Germany, he an his wife, Eva Braun, and the aids and the children all drank rat poison in a bunker.

·         19 33- Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany

·         He then creates his own political party- National Socialist (NAZI)

·         Next he demands an area of Czechoslovakia called the _________, nearly a third of the country.  Hitler claimed they spoke German, but in reality this was not true. 

wrote: "Road to War: American 1914-1917" – NY Journalist – questioned the reasoning for why we went to war.  Claim: America didn’t go into the war for principle (to make the world safe for democracy), but for profit.

  Other books began to emerge:" One Hell of a Business"; "Merchants of Death."

·         Chaired by Gerald Nye- was a Senate committee was created to investigate whether these claims were right and valid.  The committee will report that Millius is right.  This makes the already hesitant people more hesitant to get involved in the world.  They don’t trust government justification and will not support Roosevelt when he needs it.

·         Ivy league English professor – he was concerned about the repression that was happening in Germany (free speech prohibited, burning of books, etc) – he believe Hitler and his ideas posed a threat to freedom of speech and basis civil liberties.  No one listened.

·         the only one who seemed to realize that war with Japan is inevitable.  He is significant because he is the leading advocate for air power.  He believed this was the weapon of the future when no one else did.  He convinced Roosevelt that we would probably go to war with Japan and that the only way we could defeat them was with a plane that flew long distances and could drop a heavy load.  The B-29is developed, the plane that drops the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. 

films the entire event  at Warsaw for use as intimidation.  Psychological intimidation.

Winston Churchill 

·         it will be a siege that nearly becomes the end of Britain.  It begins in the fall and goes through the spring of 1941.  Strategy: bomb the air bases to prevent supplies from coming in.  They are also defeating the moral and confidence of the people.  To restore this, Churchill makes an extraordinary decision that changes the course of history.  He decides to demonstrate that his country is still capable of fighting. 

·         He orders the British air force to attack Berlin.  Physically is does not do much damage, but it does psychologically.  Hitler has promised the German people that Berlin will never be attacked, and now that happens.  Hitler is furious.  He wants to make the British pay.  Now the German’s primary target becomes British cities, civilian centers.  The loss of life is extraordinary.