Roosevelt Administration Research Articles

Comparative and Historical Analysis of the Principles of Stimulating the Economy during the Crisis Period (Middle Bronze and Modern Times)

Introduction. The comparative analysis contained in the work is devoted to the limitations of the dependence of socio-political processes and economic conditions on historical and anthropogenic factors. Now we witness the instability of the global system, overheated by specific contradictions, phobias and crises. Falling stock indices, the threat of default, growing international problems, climate oscillations – all this forces society to look for a way out of the crisis. Purpose. Only at the level of transdisciplinary approaches can one calculate accurate and consistent data that allows one to develop fundamental knowledge of the subject in order to implement a predictive function for choosing a development concept and determining a management strategy. Materials and Methods. This study, carried out with the requirements of a retrospective analysis, draws attention to the most striking aspects of the economic policies of the Roosevelt administration in the 1930s, past experience and similar principles created from the sources of the era of the III Dynasty of Ur. Results. A real historical comparative analysis of various socio-economic models depending on natural and climatic changes. Methods for overcoming the crisis in the most difficult period of the Bronze Age (III Dynasty of Ur), caused by fluctuations in the Bond cycle, have been identified. Comparisons of the administrative forms regulating the national economy of the Third Dynasty of Ur and the state-monopoly capitalism of F. Roosevelt’s New Deal. Discussion and Conclusion. The author knows the meaning of the saying “Omne simile claudicat”. Despite the same nature of the crisis trends that led to an unexpected turn, in which the role of the government in the economic activity of society is manifested, the concept of stimulating the national economy in these two cases is equally similar. And if they are truly intended and repeated, then there are opportunities to consider them in the present or future as a leading concept for economic development.

Recovering the neglected importance of Harry Hopkins’ role in the New Deal: insights for management and organization studies

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to revisit the potential of the New Deal as a research context in management and organization studies and, in doing so, forward the role one of its chief architects, Harry Hopkins, played in managing the economic crisis. The exploration takes us to multiple layers that work together to form context around Hopkins including the Great Depression, the Roosevelt Administration, and ultimately, the New Deal. By raising Harry Hopkins as an exemplar of historical-narrative exclusion, the authors can advance the understanding of his role in the New Deal and how his actions produced early insights about management (e.g. modern crisis management).Design/methodology/approachThe paper experiments with the methodological assemblage of ANTi-History and microhistorical analysis that the authors call “ANTi-Microhistory” to examine the life narrative of Harry Hopkins, his early association with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and later, the New Deal. To accomplish this, the authors undertake a programme of archival research (e.g. the digital repository of The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum) and assess various materials (e.g. speeches, biographies and memoirs) from across multiple spaces.FindingsThe findings suggest Harry Hopkins to be a much more powerful actor in mobilizing New Deal policies and their effect on early management thought than what was previously accepted. In the process, the authors found that because of durable associations with Roosevelt, key policy architects of the same ilk as Harry Hopkins (e.g. Frances Perkins, Henry Wallace, Lewis Douglas, and others) and their contributions have been marginalized. This finding illustrates the significant potential of little-known historical figures and how they might shed new insight on the development of the field and management practice.Originality/valueThe aim is to demonstrate the potential of engaging historical research in management with the individual – Harry Hopkins – as a unit of analysis. By engaging historical research on the individual – be it well-known or obscure figures of the past – the authors are considering how they contribute to the understanding of phenomena (e.g. New Deal, Progressivism or Keynesian economics). The authors build on research that brings to focus forgotten people, communities and ideas in management studies but go further in advocating for space in the research to consider the scholarly potential of the individual.

America and the Holocaust: A Documentary History Rafael Medoff

This work is much more than a documentary history. Rafael Medoff, one of the foremost authorities on American responses to the Holocaust, presents an excellent overview of the subject, drawing oncutting-edge scholarship in the field and providing an in-depth analysis of primary sources. Medoff addresses a wide array of convergent issues. Readers at all levels—scholars of the Holocaust, as well as university and high school students encountering this material for the first time—will find much of value on the Holocaust, the Roosevelt administration, World War II, and antisemitism. Few college or high school history textbooks have devoted serious attention to American responses to the Holocaust. This volume’s publication is particularly important because of recent efforts by the American educational system to universalize the Holocaust. The arrangement of America and the Holocaust is roughly chronological, beginning with contrasting views of Hitler advanced by two prominent American journalists during the first months of Hitler’s administration in 1933. Veteran foreign correspondent Dorothy Thompson warned presciently in May 1933 that the Nazi government’s objective was “utterly to destroy German Jewry” (p. 5) within a generation by systematic economic strangulation and deprivation of educational opportunities. By contrast, Anne O’Hare McCormick of the New York Times in July 1933 provided Hitler a platform to justify his antisemitic policies.

Review: In Pursuit of Utopia: Los Angeles in the Great Depression, by Errol Wayne Stevens

Book Review| May 01 2023 Review: In Pursuit of Utopia: Los Angeles in the Great Depression, by Errol Wayne Stevens Errol Wayne Stevens. In Pursuit of Utopia: Los Angeles in the Great Depression. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2021. 236 pp. Illustrations. Hardcover $39.95. Nicolas G. Rosenthal Nicolas G. Rosenthal NICOLAS G. ROSENTHAL is a professor of history at Loyola Marymount University, where his teaching and research focus on Indigenous, California, and U.S. history. He is the author of Reimagining Indian Country: Native American Migration and Identity in Twentieth-Century Los Angeles (2012) and is at work on a history of Indigenous artists in the twentieth century. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar California History (2023) 100 (2): 120–122. https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.120 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Nicolas G. Rosenthal; Review: In Pursuit of Utopia: Los Angeles in the Great Depression, by Errol Wayne Stevens. California History 1 May 2023; 100 (2): 120–122. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/ch.2023.100.2.120 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentCalifornia History Search Many of us who teach college courses on California history focus a portion of the class on the Great Depression. Often framed as both preludes to and influences on the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration’s New Deal, popular movements such as guaranteed income to the state’s senior citizens through the Townsend Plan and Upton Sinclair’s ill-fated run for governor on the End Poverty in California (EPIC) platform make the case for studying California to understand the state’s influence on national trends and broader patterns. Yet there is surprisingly little scholarship contextualizing these and other “utopian schemes” for which Los Angeles, especially, became an ideal environment in the 1930s. Thus, explanations for why Southern California was at the center of such movements often revert to those used by cultural commentators of the period. Author Nathanael West, for instance, in his classic 1939 novel Day of the Locust, depicted the thousands of... You do not currently have access to this content.

Searching for Woody Guthrie: A Personal Exploration of the Folk Singer, His Music, and His Politics

Searching for Woody Guthrie: A Personal Exploration of the Folk Singer, His Music, and His Politics

Review: Enemies among Us: The Relocation, Internment, and Repatriation of German, Italian, and Japanese Americans during the Second World War, by John E. Schmitz

As we watch in horror the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we are again faced with the question of how much responsibility individual citizens should bear for the atrocities their political leaders inflict upon other nations. We also are forced to think what should be done with the expatriates supportive of their aggressive homeland, and how the people connected to the adversarial nations through ethnic ties should be treated when they may or may not be sympathetic to their ancestral nations.John E. Schmitz’s Enemies among Us illuminates the complications posed by these questions by presenting how the U.S. government treated enemy aliens and U.S. citizens with ethnic ties with the enemies during World War II. Schmitz uses historical sources as well as personal episodes, including those of his grandparents who were incarcerated in POW camps as naturalized German Americans, to show that warring nations tend to prioritize national security concerns at the expense of individual human rights.The forced removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans (which Schmitz calls “relocation and evacuation”) is a prime example of the governmental abuse of its war powers. To this tragic episode of human rights violation, Schmitz adds the “internment” of German, Italian, and Japanese aliens and a smaller number of German and Italian Americans, and he tells a larger story of involuntary—and mostly wrongful—confinement of individuals whose loyalty was rendered suspicious. Schmitz’s research on the executive records, the FBI records, and the War, State, and Justice Departments’ archives reveals the comprehensive scheme of the Roosevelt Administration aiming at protecting the nation from fifth-column activities not only within the United States but in the Western Hemisphere. The earlier chapters elucidate how J. Edgar Hoover took advantage of FDR’s fear of the fifth column to transform the FBI into a formidable secret police agency. The book also offers much information on the U.S. government’s intervention into Latin American policies regarding the arrests and deportation of alleged Axis sympathizers and alien enemies.By connecting the “internment” schemes on the East and the West Coasts, this book illuminates the “internment” of Japanese nationals (Issei) in detention centers—an understudied aspect of the wartime Japanese American experiences—as a part of the larger anti-espionage federal policy. The hostage exchange scheme explains the abduction and shipment of Japanese Latin Americans along with German Axis sympathizers to the United States. Schmitz describes how the federal enemy alien policies were confusing and often shifted clumsily. In the case of the hostage exchange policy, the government had to abandon the scheme because it turned out to be more dangerous to deport subversive internees to the enemy nations than to keep them in the United States. The book illustrates the overall injustice that befell those who were labeled potentially adversarial, and the primary sources show how the U.S. enemy alien policies were poorly managed.The major problem of this book lies in its handling of the story of 110,000 Japanese Americans incarcerated in the War Relocations Centers. The book would have worked better if it had focused on the treatment of Japanese, German, and Italian enemy aliens. Schmitz carefully distinguishes the terms “internment” (detention of enemy aliens) and “relocation/evacuation” (involuntary removal of American citizens), but often his arguments become muddled throughout the book. On the latter issue, scholars in Asian American studies—such as Eiichiro Azuma (2005, 2019), Brian Masaru Hayashi (2004), Masumi Izumi (2019), and Erik K. Yamamoto, Lorraine J. Bannai, and Margaret Chon (2020)—have produced many works that explain the complex and significant roles Japanese Americans played in West Coast agriculture and in the debates related to national security and civil liberties. The book’s bibliography and many of the simplistic and faulty descriptions of the state of Japanese America before and during World War II reveal that the author was ill-prepared to explain how issues of national security, loyalty, and race intersected with one another when Japanese Americans were locked up in the inland concentration camps.

Senator Elbert Thomas and the Hope for Industrial Equity

Senator Elbert Thomas and the Hope for Industrial Equity

Discovering the prize: information, lobbying, and the origins of US–Saudi security relations

How do policymakers discover their energy security interests abroad? Conventional wisdom assumes states have an inherent interest in securing an affordable and steady supply of oil. In this paper, I show that policymakers often fail to realize such vital interests on their own. Instead, multinational actors like international oil corporations (IOCs) educate policymakers on their state’s security interests abroad. By integrating prior scholarship on corporate power with insights on lobbying in American politics, I theorize that multinational corporations like IOCs can influence security policy when two conditions are met: first, policymakers demand information on security policy because of issue complexities, bureaucratic inefficiencies, and structural holes in the international system; and second, these corporations possess social ties that grant them the access, trust, and legitimacy to supply those policymakers with information. In the context of energy security, IOCs provide information on foreign sources of oil, threats posed to access, and anticipatory strategies for protecting access. I apply the theory to the origins of U.S. lend-lease aid to Saudi Arabia in 1943. Through sequential analysis, process-tracing, and comparative counterfactual reasoning, I argue an American IOC hastened U.S. interests in securing Saudi oil by using its ties to lobby the Roosevelt Administration at a time when the Administration lacked information on the country. The theory and findings broaden the state-centric view of energy security, contribute new evidence to historiography on US–Saudi relations, and fill an important gap in our understanding of corporate lobbying in security policy.

Transforming Brazilian agriculture: the experience of the Brazilian-American Commission for the Production of Foodstuffs, 1942-1945

Reponses by the Brazilian and U.S. governments to the pressures of World War II fundamentally altered the course of Brazil’s agricultural development. As fears of a European war arose in the late 1930s, Brazil’s political leadership became convinced that collaboration with the United States was essential to boosting the output of Brazilian agricultural and extractive products. The mutual search for ways to increase the output of agricultural and extractive products created an important incentive for wartime cooperation. Importing technical expertise and equipment from the United States became the primary option for Brazilian economic planners while securing Brazil’s support emerged as a political priority for the Roosevelt administration. While the commission was conceived as an instrument for aiding rubber production in the Amazon, Getúlio Vargas’s government transformed it into a massive binational subsidy for the chronically suffering Brazilian Northeast. The joint food production commission also exposed multitudes of farmers to the benefits of increased federal governmental support. Efforts by the Ministry of Agriculture and the commission to introduce even rudimentary agricultural implements led to accelerating the replacement of the digging stick with the hoe and marked the beginnings of more capital-intensive cultivation methods. The linkages between Brazil’s agriculture and the United States also grew, as more Brazilians became aware of the potential benefits to Brazil of the agricultural revolution underway in the United States and U.S. capital related to agriculture would diversify its search for profits offered by Brazil.

“If That Be Treason, Let Them Make the Most of It!”: Olin Downes, the Spanish Civil War, and Civil Liberties in the United States

“If That Be Treason, Let Them Make the Most of It!”: Olin Downes, the Spanish Civil War, and Civil Liberties in the United States

Delivering on Ideas: British Plans for Post-war Regional and International Order, January – August 1944

This article examines British planning for a post-war international order which took place throughout the spring and summer of 1944. The history of this planning process has been largely overlooked in the historiography examining both the creation of the United Nations organisation as well as British diplomacy in the period. When historians have addressed the creation of the organisation, focus has been on the efforts of the Roosevelt administration, usually at the expense of the other great and small powers who contributed in important ways. The work here describes how British officials ordered their thinking on the post-war world and assembled detailed plans for what would become the United Nations organisation. Importantly, the planning in these months involved a concurrent effort to develop an alternative ordering mechanism for the European continent – known as the ‘Western Security Group’ – which, in theory, might balance against a revanchist Germany and hostile Russia. There was thus, by the summer of 1944, a new grand strategy for the post-war period, one which rested on the seemingly paradoxical positions of a world organisation and a balance of power on the European continent. Understanding how British officials arrived at this policy – and specifically how they aligned these disparate strategic strands of regional and international planning – shines light on an important element in the intellectual thought and diplomatic practice of British statesmen in this most consequential of periods.

Birds of a feather?: Lessons on U.S. cultural diplomacy from Walt Disney during the Good Neighbor Policy

ABSTRACT The Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration sought to improve relations between with Latin America and strengthen the Inter-American system through the Good Neighbor Policy. In 1940, to combat the spread of Axis influence, the Roosevelt administration formed the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA). Tasked with improving perceptions of the United States in Latin America and of Latin America in the United States, the CIAA worked closely with U.S. organizations and businesses to achieve these ends. One frequently cited success story of this period was sending Walt Disney to South America and its resulting films. This paper places the role of the CIAA and Walt Disney Studios within the broader strategic context of the Good Neighbor Policy. In addition, this paper attempts to glean lessons from the CIAA-Disney partnership that epitomize best practices and potential pitfalls in U.S.-Latin American Cultural Diplomacy.

The Optics of MAGIC: FDR’s 1941 SIGINT Stumbles and Japan’s Hidden Plans for America (1940–1941)

Abstract Since the 1941 Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor, numerous politicians, government analysts, and scholars have questioned how the Roosevelt administration could have been caught so unawares and incurred such heavy casualties at the onset of the Second World War. The postwar disclosure that President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his senior advisers had access to Japan’s diplomatic message system through a small joint Army–Navy cryptologic program, called MAGIC, further complicated the search for answers. Although many historians have cited the value of MAGIC linked to Pearl Harbor, few have looked at the overall intelligence value of Japan’s American targets for data collection beyond the first strike situation. Marshall’s ordered comprehensive review of the MAGIC cables in the days following the December 7 attack failed to explain the reason for a Japanese data dump of several hundred messages in length. What did military intelligence miss? What does Signals Intelligence show us about Japan’s post-Pearl Harbor plans for the United States? A deep read of the material contextualized by other intelligence reports reveals administrative optics likely blinded the American nation to Japan’s intended wartime game plan, setting up the potential for a disaster as great as the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.

The United States Position on the Military Assistance to Great Britain at the Beginning of the World War II (1939 – 1941)

The article examines the problem of relations between the two leading countries of the world – Great Britain and the United States, which had a significant impact on the international political situation in the world in 1939–1941, and still have nowadays. As a vector of research, the author used the factor of American military aid to the British governments of N. Chamberlain and W. Churchill to fight against Nazi Germany. According to this, the author aimed to conduct a comprehensive analysis and his own assessment of the United States’ position on providing Britain with the necessary weapons and ammunition at the beginning of World War II.
 During the research the author used a comparative-historical method to analyze various factors influencing the US position on military assistance to London, a problem-chronological method to present the material in chronological order, and a statistical – to analyze the attitude of ordinary Americans on important decisions of the Roosevelt administration. That allowed the author to analyze and rethink the evolution of the United States’ position on Britain in the problem of providing military aid regarding the current geopolitical situation.
 The author works out that under the necessity of supporting London with various types of weapons, armament and ammunition to fight against Hitler’s regime the United States significantly changed the principles of its foreign policy – from “isolationism” in 1939 to its cancellation in the late 1941. At the same time, according to the author, this process was caused by a number of factors, including both the “isolationist” opposition in Congress and the Roosevelt administration’s gradual understanding of the Nazi regime threat to the security of the United States.

Research on the Influence of Roosevelt's New Deal on American Social Security System

The social security system that ensures the most basic living needs of residents is very important for a country. The Roosevelt administration advocated the establishment of a government led social security system, taking different key and forms of unemployment relief, employment expansion, social security legislation and other measures to solve the problems of employment and poverty in American society, and achieve the goal of national intervention in the economy, regulating social production and easing political contradictions, which had a huge and far-reaching impact on the whole American society. On the basis of summarizing the relationship between Roosevelt's new deal and social security system, according to the applicable background and specific content of Roosevelt's new deal, this paper focuses on the impact of social security policy in the "New Deal" on American economy, society and politics, in order to provide useful reference for establishing and perfecting China's social security system.

Pushing Aluminum: The Boys Scouts of America, the World War II Home Front, and the Scrap Metal Collection Drive of 1941

Abstract: Existing scholarship often assumes that during WWII the Roosevelt administration expertly managed the US economy and controlled the private sector. This study of the national aluminum drive of 1941, drawing on primary sources from all fifty states and the District of Columbia, tells another side of the story. By investigating a prominent instance when private entities had to do what the US government was not doing, this case study of the drive represents a contribution to the historiography of the nation's entry into the conflict, the US home front in WWII, the role of Scouting in the history of childhood and youth, the business history of the aluminum industry, and political philosophy about the proper role of the state.

Bootlegged Aliens: Immigration Politics on America's Northern Border

Bootlegged Aliens: Immigration Politics on America's Northern Border

Transatlantic relations and public diplomacy: the Council on Foreign Relations, Jean Monnet, and post-WWII France and Europe

ABSTRACT The Second World War offered an excellent opportunity for some U.S. think tanks to influence foreign-policy-making processes and get involved in transatlantic diplomacy. This study seeks to demonstrate that the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) challenged the stalemate between the U.S. and French authorities by gathering together U.S. experts and non-collaborationist French leaders. A first-hand reconstruction of this informal network is based on the unreleased Peace Aims Group’s records. This was a unique CFR exchange programme for European governments-in-exile’s representatives. In the first part, a general reconstruction of Council on Foreign Relations’ planning introduces an original assessment of the meetings with some prominent French intellectuals and politicians. It is argued that these conferences can be interpreted as rare examples of wartime public diplomacy. The second part discloses new historical evidence demonstrating the participation of Jean Monnet in a Peace Aims session. This discovery proves the existence of a long-term partnership between one of the key protagonists of the European integration process and the most authoritative foreign-policy think tank working for the Roosevelt administration. Overall, the analysis of Peace Aims Group’s off-the-record discussions sheds new light on the WWII transatlantic debate on postwar Europe and France.

In the Struggle: Scholars and the Fight Against Industrial Agribusiness in California

In the Struggle: Scholars and the Fight Against Industrial Agribusiness in California

Author's Response

Author's Response