5 - Hitler at the Ballot Box?

Summary

This chapter examines the American elected officials who publicly supported fascism in the 1920s and 1930s and the impact of their actions on public discourse and policy alike. American politics in this era provided fertile terrain for fascist ideas, ranging from the country’s aggressive immigration restriction laws to eugenic sterilization laws, racial segregation in the South, and hysteria over the threats posed by Communism. It was not hard for Hitler’s elected allies in Washington, DC, to find Nazi policies to admire. The Nazis weaponized these sentiments in the late 1930s through an “active measures” operation based on Capitol Hill that eventually ensnared two dozen Members of Congress. Unsurprisingly, many of these figures later became deeply involved in the America First movement. American sympathy for fascism extended far into the halls of Congress, creating circumstances under which a fascist-friendly regime might well have come to power under counterfactual conditions. In so doing, the chapter shows that fascism was not only a phenomenon of street rallies and populist rabble-rousers, but of the American ballot box.