1932

The Rise of Hitler and FDR--Two Tales of Politics, Betrayal, and Unlikely Destiny

David Pietrusza

• Publisher: Lyons Press
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781493018055
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

Two Depression-battered nations confronted destiny in 1932, going to the polls in their own way to anoint new leaders, to rescue their people from starvation and hopelessness. America would elect a Congress and a president—ebullient aristocrat Franklin Roosevelt or tarnished “Wonder Boy” Herbert Hoover. Decadent, divided Weimar Germany faced two rounds of bloody Reichstag elections and two presidential contests—doddering reactionary Paul von Hindenburg against rising radical hate-monger Adolf Hitler.
The outcome seemed foreordained—unstoppable forces advancing upon crumbled, disoriented societies. A merciless Great Depression brought greater—perhaps hopeful, perhaps deadly—transformation: FDR’s New Deal and Hitler’s Third Reich.

But neither outcome was inevitable.

Readers enter the fray through David Pietrusza’s page-turning account: Roosevelt’s fellow Democrats may yet halt him at a deadlocked convention. 1928’s Democratic nominee, Al Smith, harbors a grudge against his one-time protege. Press baron William Randolph Hearst lays his own plans to block Roosevelt’s ascent to the White House. FDR’s politically-inspired juggling of a New York City scandal threatens his juggernaut. In Germany, the Nazis surge at the polls but twice fall short of Reichstag majorities. Hitler, tasting power after a lifetime of failure and obscurity, falls to Hindenburg for the presidency—also twice within the year. Cabals and counter-cabals plot. Secrets of love and suicide haunt Hitler.
Yet guile and ambition may yet still prevail.

1932’s breathtaking narrative covers two epic stories that possess haunting parallels to today’s crisis-filled vortex. It is an all-too-human tale of scapegoats and panaceas, class warfare and racial politics, of a seemingly bottomless depression, of massive unemployment and hardship, of unprecedented public works/infrastructure programs, of business stimulus programs and damaging allegations of political cronyism, of waves of bank failures and of mortgages foreclosed, of Washington bonus marches and Berlin street fights, of once-solid financial empires collapsing seemingly overnight, of rapidly shifting social mores, and of mountains of irresponsible international debt threatening to crash not just mere nations but the entire global economy.

It is the tale of spell-binding leaders versus bland businessmen and out-of-touch upper-class elites and of two nations inching to safety but lurching toward disaster. It is 1932’s nightmare—with lessons for today.

Table of contents

• Cast of Characters
• Major German Political Parties
• Chapter One: “A gentleman cast himself down fifteen stories”
• Chapter Two: “I won’t be ready until 1932”
• Chapter Three: “Everything should be blown up”
• Chapter Four: “Miracle Man, Washington, D. C.”
• Chapter Five: “They will remain hanging until they stink”
• Chapter Six: “He has never consulted me about a damn thing”
• Chapter Seven: “Are you frightened of me?”
• Chapter Eight: “I will take off my coat and vest”
• Chapter Nine: “A poison-painted monkey on a stick”
• Chapter Ten: “The half-witted yokels of the cow and cotton States”
• Chapter Eleven: “Dear old man . . . you must step aside”
• Chapter Twelve: “The nomination of this man Hoover is invalid”
• Chapter Thirteen: “There was little opportunity for air-sickness”
• Chapter Fourteen: “Dammit, Louis, I’m the nominee!”
• Chapter Fifteen: “Anti-Semitism may be a good starter . . .”
• Chapter Sixteen: “Soup is cheaper than tear bombs”
• Chapter Seventeen: “He doesn’t need a head, his job is to be a hat”
• Chapter Eighteen: “The sinister faculty of making men like bad government”
• Chapter Nineteen: “The swine within themselves”
• Chapter Twenty: “Climb on the mule”
• Chapter Twenty-one: “Herr Hitler, I will shoot”
• Chapter Twenty-two: “We always call her ‘Granny’”
• Chapter Twenty-three: “I saw Hitler cigarettes”
• Chapter Twenty-four: “Vote for Roosevelt and make it unanimous”
• Chapter Twenty-five: “A primitive and stupid woman”
• Chapter Twenty-six: “You felt that they would do anything”
• Chapter Twenty-seven: “Somebody hurled a spittoon”
• An Epilogue of Blood
• Acknowledgments
• Notes and Sources
• Bibliography
• About the Author