Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning

The Fuhrer Principle was a key mechanism of the Gleichschaltung. Under the Fuhrerprinzip, all of civil society was supposed to operate like a military unit with each cell reporting loyally to its leader, and those leaders to their leaders, all the way up to Hitler himself. For German businesses this was an easy transition because they already implemented something like a Fuhrerprinzip in their organizations. In this sense German business culture contributed to the rise of Nazism, partly by laying the groundwork for a German Swopism, but indirectly as well, by readying the German mind for the sort of social control the Nazis wished to impose.

The Krupp Konzern — the reviled armory for the Third Reich — blazed the trail for the fascist bargain in the nineteenth century with Alfred Krupp's General Regulations. In the 1870s Krupp instituted a health service, schools, life insurance, workmen's compensation, a pension scheme, hospitals, even an old-age home for his employees. His General Regulations served as a mini social contract between him and his workers. In return for their loyalty — that is, eschewing labor unions and socialist agitation — Krupp provided all the perks the socialists were fighting for. 'What may strike the Auslander as odd,' writes William Manchester, 'is that Alfred's General Regulations were regarded — and in Essen are still regarded — as liberal. For the first time a German firm was spelling out its duties to its men.'²⁴ Krupp's General Regulations became one of the central progressive documents for reform in Bismarck's Prussia and, by extension, much of the West. Today companies with similar policies get fawning profiles on 60 Minutes.

Under the Gleichschaltung, the Nazis merely extended and broadened these arrangements. The state demanded loyalty from Krupp and his ilk in return for the protection of the state. This was merely another way of saying that all of society was to be Nazified — that is, politicized — so that every unit of society did its part for the larger cause. As a result, businesses became transmission belts for Nazi propaganda and values. The Nazi 'war on cancer' was taken up by firms that banned smoking. The Nazi war on alcoholism and the Hitlerite emphasis on organic foods slowly pushed the beverage industry away from beer and booze and toward natural fruit juices. Children were a special priority. In 1933 the Nazis banned alcohol advertising aimed at children. In 1936 a new certification system was implemented that labeled some beverages and foodstuffs 'fit' or 'unfit' for children. (Coca-Cola was ruled unfit for kids.) That same year a full quarter of all the mineral water produced in Germany came from breweries. In 1938 the head of the Reich Health Office, Hans Reiter, declared that henceforth sweet cider was the official 'people's drink' (Volksgetrank) of Germany.

The Nazis — always disproportionately supported by bureaucrats in the 'helping professions' — benefited from particularly eager accomplices in the health-care industry. In a nation where democracy and civil liberties were swept aside and experts — doctors, regulators, and 'industrial hygienists' — were promoted to positions of unparalleled authority, the Nazis offered a much-yearned-for opportunity to 'get beyond politics.' For example, the Reich Anticancer Committee proclaimed in its first annual report: 'The year 1933 was a decisive one for the war against cancer: the national socialist revolution (Umwalzung) has created entirely new opportunities for sweeping measures in an area that until now has been rather limited...The energetic and unanimous engagement (Einsatz) of the medical profession has shown that new avenues have opened for the struggle against cancer in the new Germany.'²⁵

Vast public and moral health campaigns were put in place to promote safe working environments, along with the production of wholesome organic foods, anti-animal-cruelty measures, and other progressive advances. While many of these reforms were imposed from above by social engineers with the willing compliance of businessmen now freed from the usual concerns about such costly modifications, the Nazis also worked tirelessly to cultivate and encourage demand from below for these reforms. Everyone from the lowliest worker to the wealthiest baron was encouraged to believe and enforce the idea that if you weren't part of the solution, you were part of the problem. German consumers, too, were hectored relentlessly to buy products that promoted the 'common good.'

Language itself was bent to what could only be called Nazi political correctness. Victor Klemperer, a professor of Romance languages at the University of Dresden fired for his Jewish ancestry in 1935, dedicated himself to chronicling the subtle transformations of speech and daily life brought about by the Gleichschaltung. 'The mechanization of the individual,' he explained, 'first manifested itself in 'Gleichschaltung.'' He watched as phrases like 'Hitler weather' — to describe a sunny day — crept into everyday conversation. The Nazis 'changed the values, the frequency of words, [and] made into common property words that had previously been used by individuals or tiny troupes. They confiscated words for the party, saturated words and phrases and sentence forms with their poison. They made the language serve their terrible system. They conquered words and made them into their strongest advertising tools, at once the most public and the most secret.'²⁶

Popular culture, from television and film to marketing and advertising, was an essential tool for this process. Movie studios in particular were eager to work with the regime and vice versa. Goebbels put a great deal of stock in the medium, believing that 'film is one of the most modern and far-reaching means of influencing the masses.' But he assured the film industry that the government would not be taking over. Rather, this would be a public-private partnership. 'We have no intention of obstructing production,' he told studio heads in his first address to the industry, 'neither do we wish to hamper private enterprise: On the contrary, this will receive a great deal of impetus through the national movement.'²⁷ The film industry worked with the government, formally and informally, releasing mostly escapist fare for German audiences as well as a steady stream of allegorically worshipful films about Hitler. Movie audiences were subtly encouraged to change their thinking not merely about, say, Jews and foreign policy, but about what it meant to be a human being in the modern world.

Despite the Nazis' complete control of society, many still felt that big business was getting away with murder. Himmler was particularly vexed by the slow pace of his efforts to transform the way Germans ate: 'The artificial is everywhere; everywhere food is adulterated, filled with ingredients that supposedly make it last longer, or look better, or pass as 'enriched,' or whatever else the industry's admen want us to believe...[W]e are in the hands of the food companies, whose economic clout and advertising make it possible for them to prescribe what we can and cannot eat...[A]fter the war we shall take energetic steps to prevent the ruin of our people by the food industries.'²⁸ Here we can see the inexorable undertow of Third Way totalitarianism. Every problem in life must logically be the result of insufficient cooperation by institutions or individuals. If only we could turn the ratchet one more notch, then — click! — everything would fall into place and all contradictions would be eliminated.

Obviously, the Jews bore the brunt of the Gleichschaltung. They were the 'other' against whom the Nazis defined their organic society. Given Jewish economic success, the business community of necessity played a central role in the 'Aryanization' of society — a convenient excuse for businesses to seize Jewish holdings and for German professionals to take Jewish jobs in academia, the arts, and science. A great many Germans simply refused to make good on their debts to Jewish creditors. Banks foreclosed on mortgages. Vultures seized Jewish businesses or offered to pay pennies on the dollar for them, knowing full well that Jews had no recourse. Or they informed on their competitors, charging that Firm X was insufficiently committed to purging the stain of Judaism from its business.

Nothing so horrific happened in the United States, and it's unlikely that it would have, even if Hugh Johnson's darkest fantasies had been realized. But the practices of the Nazis and Johnson's NRA were more similar than different. Johnson's thugs broke down doors and threw people in jail for not participating with the Blue Eagle. Hitler's goons did likewise. 'Those who are not with us are against us,' Johnson roared, 'and the way to show that you are a part of this great army of the New Deal is to insist on this symbol of solidarity.' The New Dealers' slogan 'We do our part' echoed the Nazi refrain 'The common good before the private good.' After all, it was Stuart Chase, not Albert Speer, who argued in his Economy of Abundance that what was required was an 'industrial general staff with dictatorial powers.'²⁹

As for popular culture, there isn't enough room to discuss the subject as fully as it deserves. The New Deal invested millions of dollars funding artists and writers who repaid this kindness by generating a vast body of artistic and literary work propping up the New Deal. But one episode in particular may shed light on the true nature of the period.

Like many other leading Americans, the media tycoon William Randolph Hearst believed America needed a dictator. After first backing the America Firster Jack Garner, he switched to FDR (and claimed that he put Roosevelt over the top at the Democratic convention). Deciding that the best way to influence FDR — and the American people — was via Hollywood, he personally reworked a script based on the book Gabriel Over the White House, which became a movie of the same name starring Walter Huston as President Judd