Dictators, Democracy, and American Public Culture: Envisioning the Totalitarian Enemy, 1920s-1950s

by Benjamin L. Alpers

Book Overview

Focusing on portrayals of Mussolini's Italy, Hitler's Germany, and Stalin's Russia in U.S. films, magazine and newspaper articles, books, plays, speeches, and other texts, Benjamin Alpers traces changing American understandings of dictatorship from the late 1920s through the early years of the Cold War.

During the early 1930s, most Americans' conception of dictatorship focused on the dictator. Whether viewed as heroic or horrific, the dictator...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0807854166
• ISBN13: 9780807854167
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.2" x 9.4"

Customer Reviews

Essential for Understanding Today's America

I don't know author, Benjamin Alpers, but I can only presume that the reason this book is back in print is because it is more relevant today than when it first came out in 1965. Americans today have no idea of all the dictatorship talk and publications, not to mention dictatorship signs, going on here in America during the period between 1920 and the 1950's. Today, this has all escalated and if we want to learn about what is going on today politically, we must learn from what took place earlier in the last century. On that note, shall we begin with a quote from the book that is all but unfathomable: "For a brief period between the end of 1932 and the beginning of 1933 a small but varied group of influential citizens began to call for some variation of dictatorship in the United States". Yes, you read that right. At a very minimum, it should get you to thinking about how fragile democracy is and when the cultural producers of this country decide to transform into dictatorship, it will happen. Alpers defines cultural producers in this book to include professors, policymakers, speechwriters, presidents, filmmakers, novelists, and business leaders. It is this group that have "defined what views were "mainstream" and what views were "extreme"." Here's a thought to chew on: Alpers writes, "Indeed, mere participation in a war could threaten to turn a democracy into a totalitarian state". The book explains how friendly US business was to fascist Italy and how they admired Mussolini. "So relieved was the U.S. press at Mussolini's seizure of power in 1922 that few journalists bothered to report his hostility to democracy". Alpers writes that Paul Y. Anderson, a writer for the Nation wrote an article "entitled "Wanted: A Mussolini," ...certain powerful interests wanted to establish a dictatorship, this time mentioning two meetings-the first, called by Young, of bankers and industrialists in New York, the second in Chicago-to explore the possibilities". In the February 13, 1933 issue of Barron's, the hope that FDR might be an "American Mussolini" was extolled. The examples continue, but I'll move on. Some very interesting definitions of both Nazism and Fascism are given in this book. It will be difficult for many of us to discern their differences from today's government in the US. For example, in his very famous book, "As We Go Marching" published in 1944, author John T. Flynn enumerates eight attributes of fascism as follows: 1. a government with unrestrained powers 2. a dictator with unlimited powers 3. an economic system with private owners carrying out production and distribution under the auspices of a government plan 4. economic planning controlled by "great government bureaus" whose pronouncements had the force of law 5. a socialization of investment that "regiments" the uses of private captial and integrates government and private finance. 6. govenment maintenance of an adequate purchasing power by a permanent system of borrowing and s