It’s 1939 Again

Guest Post by Howard Wetsman

And we’re not noticing it this time either

Like most Americans of my generation, I grew up hearing an idealized version of WWII. America, having just saved the democracies in WWI, gallantly and humbly turned its back on post-war plunder and returned to honorable farming. It was the ideal democracy, stoically making its way through the Great Depression, when “suddenly and deliberately,” it was attacked by anti-democratic forces and forced to fight. Led by the saintly FDR, the sleeping giant awoke and saved the world again. “The Boys” who won the war returned and built this wonderful land for me to grow up in. That was American history in the early 60s.

Absent was any talk of having interned over a hundred thousand loyal Americans of Japanese dissent because of ignorance and prejudice. Absent was any discussion of race riots near bases in the American South where Americans of African descent were seen as not deserving of the uniform or the sacrifice they’d volunteered for. Absent also, was any talk of how split the country was before the war. In the telling I grew up with, Americans were united in their love of Roosevelt, and everyone agreed on most everything. That point was repeated over and over by my parents’ generation to explain why they were so upset by the uproar of the late 60s and 70s.

Political Acrimony

In 1939 we had a President who had many detractors even within his own party. America was divided ten years after the beginning of an economic calamity from which our lives had not fully recovered. Some financial signs were positive, but the lives of many Americans seemed harder than they should be. FDR’s policies were seen as socialistic and abhorrent by the right and as not enough by the left wing of his own party. The country was pretty much split down the middle. Far from the near unanimity that appears on the electoral map, Roosevelt won with only 54% of the popular vote in 1940.

Immigration

Two weeks after Kristallnacht in 1938, a Gallop poll of Americans found that over 90% disapproved of the Nazis’ treatment of their Jewish population. That is laudable. What was less so was that only 21% of Americans felt that there should be any increase in immigration for refugees fleeing such persecution. There were many reasons.

Americans didn’t feel they had enough to share with anyone in 1938. They also couldn’t believe Hitler was as bad as he turned out. It wasn’t that they didn’t believe he’d do what he said. They didn’t even know he said it, because few Americans understood German. There was, of course, also American antisemitism. In general, Americans felt the European Jews had a local problem that didn’t warrant a mass migration, or at least not one to the US.

American Nazis

The American German Bund was quite an active organization in the 1930s. Germany was seen by many as a stalwart defender of Western values against the degeneracy of the Soviet Union and Communism. In the midst of the Great Depression, Hitler’s economic turn around of Germany seemed miraculous. Many Americans felt they had something to emulate when looking at what the National Socialists had achieved in Germany. Google the pictures, and you’ll get an idea of where the producers of Man in the High Castle got their set designs from.

Trade War

Before Pearl Harbor, we were in a trade war with the dominant Asian power of the time. We are currently in a trade war with the dominant Asian power, and it’s either going well, going poorly, or going to be postponed depending on the headline of the day. No one taught me when I was young that we had cut off Japan‘s supply of steel and oil creating an existential crisis for them before the “surprise” attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Fourth Turning

I’m listening to Audible’s The Homefront narrated by Martin Sheen. I was again struck by how alike we are today with that pre-war time. Listening, I could find many parallels, and on the surface it seems odd. But there is a model for this similarity.

The Fourth Turning is a book by Neil Howe and the late William Strauss. Neil is very active on Twitter. I suggest you click the link and follow him.

Their premise is that the generations follow a pattern of being raised, and, in turn, raising, with a set of ideas that evoke certain others in those being raised. This sets up a generational cycle that repeats. They also view it as a change in the demand and supply of societal order. There are, as you’d imagine from the title, four parts to the cycle.

Coming out of the crisis of WWII, we were in the American High which lasted around 20 years. A time of high order and high demand for order. Then came the 60s. The demand for order went down, while the supply stayed high. A generational battle ensued. Twenty years later the next turning came with less demand and less supply of order. We had the 80s and the “I want more stuff” ethos of the “me decade.” The next phase is one of increasing demand for order. We’ve had enough birthday cake and Wall Street enthusiasm, but there’s no order to be had. We find order where we can in single issue groups, people that look like us or pray like us, bringing divisions to American life. This brings us to the crisis. I’m not doing this justice. You really should read the book.

In any case, The Fourth Turning explains to me why we are so much like we were in 1939. The crisis we are facing is immense, as were the past Fourth Turning Crises that ended with the American Revolution, Civil War, and WW II. They don’t all end in war, but many do. Seriously, read the book.

Hope

This may all sound doom and gloom, but it gives me hope. When I look at today through the eyes of my childhood recollections, we seem hopelessly torn apart. We are divided and filled with self-hate. I don’t see any way to pull ourselves out of what Ben Hunt has referred to as the widening gyre (another phrase from the past).

But what if we weren’t as wholesome as I was told? What if we had been this divided before? What if we had progressed, though not completely, from our misguided ways before? Perhaps then we can do it again. Perhaps we have at least one more American High left in us.

But hope is not a plan. And history can repeat any way it wants. We have choices to make. And every choice determines the choices we get next. We’ve been faced with many of the same questions we face today. But we have an advantage. You don’t have to trudge to the library to read history like I did in high school. You can just google it. But you do have to read. Now stop reading this and go read some history. It’s the most important thing you can do for the future.

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Howard Wetsman is an addiction psychiatrist living in New Orleans. He maintains a channel on YouTube where he has released his serial Ending Addiction. He is pursuing his goal of ending addiction by educating everyone about the genetics of addiction with this new venture GenEd Systems.

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