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Both Hitler and Roosevelt emerged as leaders in their respective countries during their hard time. United States and Germany, which was dependent on American bank loans, were most severely struck by the Great Depression. Despite the existence of some objective economic reasons for the financial failure, new leaders of two great industrial powers mostly exaggerated other, subjective causes of the crisis.
Even though Roosevelt and Hitler were politicians of different parts of political spectrum, their first speeches were similar as both addressed the crisis and the ways to resolve the critical situation. Nevertheless, every assumption of a historical event starts from analyzing the causes. Both in Hitler’s and Roosevelt’s crisis was connected to certain groups of people. Hitler names governments of the Weimar Republic and especially the Communists as the main causers of Germany’s problems; he even associates all previous Weimar governments with Marxism: “Fourteen years of Marxism have ruined Germany; one year of bolshevism would destroy her” . It can be assumed that Hitler sees not the centrist policy of getting loans from American banks as the main cause of crisis, but the Communist influence from the Soviet Union, which was one of the main allies of Germany in 1920s thanks to the Treaty of Rapallo.
Roosevelt blames “money changers” on causing the crisis: “Primarily this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind's goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated” . It can be speculated that this statement was of quite populist nature, but it was certainly much more objective than Hitler’s blame of Communists, who were never a ruling party during the Weimar Republic period.
Both national leaders concerned the most pressing issue, unemployment, in the first place. Surprisingly or not, both Hitler and Roosevelt saw so-called back-to-the-land policy (as Hitler named it) as one of the measures to raise the employment rate; Roosevelt generalized that idea in his next words:
Hand in hand with this we must frankly recognize the overbalance of population in our industrial centers and, by engaging on a national scale in a redistribution, endeavor to provide a better use of the land for those best fitted for the land .
The main difference was in the form of labor; Hitler considered compulsory labor as the way out: “Compulsory labor-service and the back-to-the-land policy are two of the basic principles of this [four-year] program [to combat crisis]” . Roosevelt did not mention compulsory labor, but paid attention to the role of Government as a recruiter and a directing authority:
It can be accomplished in part by direct recruiting by the Government itself, treating the task as we would treat the emergency of a war, but at the same time, through this employment, accomplishing greatly needed projects to stimulate and reorganize the use of our natural resources .
Hitler barely touches the economic program in his speech, mostly in general phrases; the main point was a governmental use of individual initiative and the avoidance of currency deviations:
In economical administration, the promotion of employment, the preservation of the farmer, as well as in the exploitation of individual initiative, the Government sees the best guarantee for the avoidance of any experiments, which would endanger the currency .
Interestingly, Roosevelt’s stance was nearly the same — he promoted the supervision of all banking operations and also underlined the necessity of maintaining a stable currency:
[T]here must be a strict supervision of all banking and credits and investments; there must be an end to speculation with other people's money, and there must be provision for an adequate but sound currency .
Finally, both leaders in their inaugural speeches mentioned their foreign policy aims. Hitler’s position seems to be quite vague and non-definite; he speaks mostly about the restoration of the freedom of German nation, which he sees in equal rights with other states:
Its [National Government’s] determination to bring to an end the chaotic state of affairs in Germany will assist in restoring to the community of nations a State of equal value and, above all, a State which must have equal rights .
Despite the popular association of Hitler as a militarist leader, in his inaugural address he called upon all other nations to reduce their armaments:
Great as is our love for our Army as the bearer of our arms and the symbol of our great past, we should be happy if the world, by reducing its armaments, would see to it that we need never increase our own .
Roosevelt devoted only a brief part of his speech to foreign policy — which seems logical with pressing domestic issue high on the agenda. He outlined his foreign policy plan as making USA a “good neighbor”:
In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor—the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others—the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors .
Once again, that point coincides with Hitler’s one: the image of a self-respecting nation that respects other states as their own. However, it is not clear whether Germany would or would not be a peaceful neighbor in relation to other European powers.
References
Hitler, A. (1933). Berlin: Proclamation to the German Nation. Retrieved from Hitler.org: http://www.hitler.org/speeches/02-01-33.html
Roosevelt, F. (1933). First Inaugural Address. Retrieved from Bartleby.com: http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres49.html
