Reviewed by: Winter War: Hoover, Roosevelt, and the First Clash over the New Deal by Eric Rauchway Elizabeth Fones-Wolf Winter War: Hoover, Roosevelt, and the First Clash over the New Deal. By Eric Rauchway. (New York: Basic Books, 2018. Pp. viii, 294. $30.00, ISBN 978-0-465-09458-5.) Over the past thirty years, there has emerged a large and increasingly sophisticated historiography that seeks to explain the origins of modern conservatism. Explanations initially homed in on the 1960s and 1970s, focusing on [End Page 949] the popular reaction to the social and cultural conflicts of that era or emphasizing the role of middle-class Sun Belt suburbanites, who used rights-based language to fight higher taxes and integration. Recently, historians have emphasized the role played by businesses and evangelicals in creating the values associated with modern conservatism, especially individualism and a deep suspicion of the state. Eric Rauchway’s book Winter War: Hoover, Roosevelt, and the First Clash over the New Deal pushes the origins of modern conservatism back to a time that he sees as a critical moment in American history: the months between Herbert Hoover’s defeat in the 1932 presidential election and Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inauguration in March 1933. In making his argument, Rauchway challenges historians who claim Roosevelt had no specific economic plan for recovery, just a commitment to action. In sharp contrast, Rauchway contends that Roosevelt, during the 1932 campaign, clearly articulated the basic tenets of New Deal liberalism, including an active government that sought to provide security for workers and the aged, and economic stability for farms and businesses. Moreover, as the economic crisis rapidly worsened during the interregnum, he portrays Roosevelt as moving forward in a quiet effort to begin implementing elements of the New Deal. Meanwhile, Hoover, whom Rauchway depicts as a strict laissez-faire conservative, made an almost pathetic and futile attempt to persuade President-elect Roosevelt to publicly endorse his orthodox economic policies, including retaining the gold standard, collecting foreign debts, balancing the budget, and opposing public works and aid to the unemployed. At the same time, Hoover continued to condemn Roosevelt’s proposed New Deal as “a dangerously alien program” that posed “a fundamental ‘challenge to liberty,’” which charted the future ideological struggle between conservatives and liberals (p. 13). Hoover thus planted the seeds for the “unremitting opposition to the New Deal” that became the Republican Party’s “‘Arc of the Covenant’” to this day (p. 13). Rauchway writes with clarity and energy, revealing deep research into an impressive array of private and presidential papers, diaries, and oral histories and making his narrative of the interregnum struggle between Roosevelt and Hoover come alive. After a beginning chapter sets the scene on Election Day of 1932, subsequent chapters move roughly chronologically, each focusing on the conflict between Hoover and Roosevelt over a series of crises and issues, including European debt payments, farm relief, the virtual collapse of the banking system, the trade war, and rising fascism. Upon his election, Roosevelt demanded immediate action on farm relief, and he and his team actively lobbied for a domestic allotment bill, which Hoover declared a threat to liberty and helped defeat. Similarly, as the bank crisis intensified in February and March 1933, Hoover squirreled away cash to protect his family but kept the banks open to purge the system, privately hoping that, if the system crashed, it would be under the new president’s watch. In contrast, Roosevelt, seeking to save the remaining banks, was exploring the president’s legal authority to declare a bank holiday. Finally, Rauchway argues that Roosevelt also actively began charting a foreign policy that featured international cooperation to address the growing threat of fascism and the world’s economic crisis. [End Page 950] Winter War is a truly engaging read that provides new perspective on a significant moment, but it harks back to a great-man interpretation of history in which Roosevelt alone can be credited for the New Deal and Hoover for the rise of modern conservatism. Both played significant roles, but history is never that simple. Elizabeth Fones-Wolf West Virginia University Copyright © 2019 The Southern Historical Association
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Mar 30, 2019
Romualdo Abulad 
Open Access
