Corporate Influence and World War II: Resolving the New Deal Political Stalemate

1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian Waddell

Since many scholars focus on the New Deal as the foundation for modern U.S. governance, it is widely assumed that the United States is characterized by a weak state as compared to the welfare states of Western Europe. Yet, in the wake of World War II, the United States established a national security “warfare state” that rivaled the welfare states of Western Europe in scope of authority and operations and in its isolation from popular forces. The wartime redirection of U.S. state power also resolved the political stalemate stemming from the executive-congressional and business-government tensions roused during the New Deal. In fact, the course of wartime statebuilding was in many ways a response to the political tensions of the New Deal and to the expectation that the organization of wartime mobilization would indelibly define the postwar organization of U.S. state power. As this article argues, wartime mobilization resolved the New Deal political stalemate in large part by granting various segments of the corporate community the opportunity to influence the shape of U.S. national state power.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika E. Berenyi

Since the conclusion of World War II, the ethos of the Roosevelt administration (1933-1945) and the achievements of the New Deal era have been celebrated by official rhetoric.


1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 201-209
Author(s):  
Theodore Caplow

In the course of World War II, the seven great powers of 1939 – Germany, the Soviet Union. Britain. France, Italy, Japan and the United States – were temporarily reduced to two. each commanding awesome strength, and each posing a realistic threat of world domination. The huge forces of the Soviet Union at the edge of western Europe were positioned to move all the way to the Atlantic, thus achieving the control of the Eurasian heartland that, according to geopolitical doctrine, would confer world domination. There were fifth columns prepared to assist them within most European and Asiatic nations.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika E. Berenyi

Since the conclusion of World War II, the ethos of the Roosevelt administration (1933-1945) and the achievements of the New Deal era have been celebrated by official rhetoric.


2019 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-254
Author(s):  
Andreu Espasa

De forma un tanto paradójica, a finales de los años treinta, las relaciones entre México y Estados Unidos sufrieron uno de los momentos de máxima tensión, para pasar, a continuación, a experimentar una notable mejoría, alcanzando el cénit en la alianza política y militar sellada durante la Segunda Guerra Mundial. El episodio catalizador de la tensión y posterior reconciliación fue, sin duda, el conflicto diplomático planteado tras la nacionalización petrolera de 1938. De entre los factores que propiciaron la solución pacífica y negociada al conflicto petrolero, el presente artículo se centra en analizar dos fenómenos del momento. En primer lugar, siguiendo un orden de relevancia, se examina el papel que tuvo la Guerra Civil Española. Aunque las posturas de ambos gobiernos ante el conflicto español fueron sustancialmente distintas, las interpretaciones y las lecciones sobre sus posibles consecuencias permitieron un mayor entendimiento entre los dos países vecinos. En segundo lugar, también se analizarán las afinidades ideológicas entre el New Deal y el cardenismo en el contexto de la crisis mundial económica y política de los años treinta, con el fin de entender su papel lubricante en las relaciones bilaterales de la época. Somewhat paradoxically, at the end of the 1930s, the relationship between Mexico and the United States experienced one of its tensest moments, after which it dramatically improved, reaching its zenith in the political and military alliance cemented during World War II. The catalyst for this tension and subsequent reconciliation was, without doubt, the diplomatic conflict that arose after the oil nationalization of 1938. Of the various factors that led to a peaceful negotiated solution to the oil conflict, this article focuses on analyzing two phenomena. Firstly—in order of importance—this article examines the role that the Spanish Civil War played. Although the positions of both governments in relation to the Spanish war were significantly different, the interpretations and lessons concerning potential consequences enabled a greater understanding between the two neighboring countries. Secondly, this article also analyzes the ideological affinities between the New Deal and Cardenismo in the context of the global economic and political crisis of the thirties, seeking to understand their role in facilitating bilateral relations during that period.


1953 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 133-167
Author(s):  
S. Bernard

The advent of a new administration in the United States and the passage of seven years since the end of World War II make it appropriate to review the political situation which has developed in Europe during that period and to ask what choices now are open to the West in its relations with the Soviet Union.The end of World War II found Europe torn between conflicting conceptions of international politics and of the goals that its members should seek. The democratic powers, led by the United States, viewed the world in traditional, Western, terms. The major problem, as they saw it, was one of working out a moral and legal order to which all powers could subscribe, and in which they would live. Quite independently of the environment, they assumed that one political order was both more practicable and more desirable than some other, and that their policies should be directed toward its attainment.


Author(s):  
David A. Hollinger

This chapter analyzes the consolidation in 1942 of the two major, religiously defined institutional forces of the entire period from World War II to the present. The Delaware Conference of March 3–5, 1942, was the first moment at which rival groups within the leadership of ecumenical Protestantism came together and agreed upon an agenda for the postwar world. The chapter addresses the following questions: Just what did the Delaware Conference agree upon and proclaim to the world? Which Protestant leaders were present at the conference and/or helped to bring it about and to endow it with the character of a summit meeting? In what respects did the new political orientation established at the conference affect the destiny of ecumenical Protestantism?


Author(s):  
Martin Crotty ◽  
Neil J. Diamant ◽  
Mark Edele

This chapter investigates the cases of victory and defeat and explains what politically influential veterans were able to produce to secure benefits and rights. It focuses on China after its long period of war and civil war that ended in 1949, the United Kingdom after both world wars, the United States after World War I, and the USSR after World War II. It analyses the cases wherein veterans had little or limited success in securing meaningful social and political status. The chapter identifies factors that determine the veterans' status, where it is victory or defeat, or authoritarian versus democratic systems of government. It discusses the political process and the attempts to convert claims into entitlements in order to explain the negative outcomes for the veterans of victorious armies.


1986 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Nash

From its beginnings in the private library of Pierre S. du Pont, the Hagley Museum and Library has grown into a leading resource for business historians, particularly for those interested in the development of the mid-Atlantic region of the United States. In this thorough description of the Hagley's collections, Dr. Nash demonstrates the breadth and depth of its holdings, from the papers of the eighteenth-century Physiocrats to those of New Deal and post-World War II companies and business leaders.


2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 401-421 ◽  
Author(s):  
JONATHAN BELL

ABSTRACTThis article argues that those termed ‘liberals’ in the United States had the opportunity in the late 1940s to use overseas case studies to reshape the ramshackle political agenda of the New Deal along more specifically social democratic lines, but that they found it impossible to match interest in the wider world with a concrete programme to overcome tension between left-wing politics and the emerging anti-totalitarianism of the Cold War. The American right, by contrast, conducted a highly organized publicity drive to provide new meaning for their anti-statist ideology in a post-New Deal, post-isolationist United States by using perceived failures of welfare states overseas as domestic propaganda. The examples of Labour Britain after 1945 and Labour New Zealand both provided important case studies for American liberals and conservatives, but in the Cold War it was the American right who would benefit most from an ideologically driven repackaging of overseas social policy for an American audience.


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