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February 23, 2008

A Tribute to Herbert Hoover, the Anti-Fascist

By Ben-Peter Terpstra
Herbert Hoover, who had the misfortune to be in office when the stock market crashed in 1929, has taken far too much blame for the Depression, which Franklin Delano Roosevelt managed to prolong over a decade, until entry into World War II ended unemployment.

Question: Was President Herbert Hoover an insensitive isolationist? I'd say it's a question of perspective, really, of open-minded researchers looking at the whole man. But, who am I to think?

As an Australian, I admire Hoover, the young geologist/engineer. The brave Republican was also a pioneer. He worked Down Under for some time. And, thanks to men like Hoover, Australia is a relatively rich mining nation.

Indeed, if my nation's wild deserts don't break you, they will shape you. It takes character to work in extreme conditions, but Iowa's famous orphan was up to the task.

Hoover's humanitarian works in Tianjin, China, during the Boxer Rebellion, were also notable, and because the Republican's independent streak never left him, Washington's elites were evidently gob smacked, as seen below.

Herbert Hoover, the Republican
Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democrat


Race: In 1924, Hoover maintains that America's anti-Japanese immigration quotas are wrong, full stop.



Race: During WWII, FDR sends Japanese families to "internment camps" while many white Germans are free to play, and travel.


Integrity: Hoover disdains anti-Semitic jokes, and stands against tricks "to smuggle fascism into America through a back door."



Integrity: Like so many Democrats, President Roosevelt adopts a fondness for anti-Semitic jokes.



War II: Hoover is not against all wars, but against Roosevelt's handling of the war, and shares John F. Kennedy's concerns.



War II: FDR often falls out with Churchill, makes a series of costly blunders, and falls in love with Stalin.


Furthermore, the International News Service reported in Berlin (March 8, 1938) that:

For the first time in his career, Reichsfuehrer Adolph Hitler today heard from an American statesman a forthright denunciation of Nazism as a practical and enduring force in world affairs.

The detractor, speaking straight from the shoulder, was Herbert Clark Hoover, thirty-first president of the United States, who spent 40 minutes in private with the Fuehrer...    

The piece also noted that:

Without mincing words, Hoover bluntly informed Hitler that the United States will never become reconciled to understanding or even having the slightest tolerance for Nazism as a political and national creed.

He states further that American ideals reject the fundamental principles on which the Nazi regime is based and upon which it flourishes...
Be aware, however, that Democrats are good at hiding reports about brave Republicans. So, if you don't know about Hoover, the anti-fascist, then start looking under your floorboards.

Indeed, the Republican president's upbringing (below) is just as far off the elite's radar screen. 


Herbert Hoover, the Republican

Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Democrat


Childhood: "Hoover was born in pinch poverty in the little town of West Branch, Iowa, where every home is humble." [1]



Childhood: Roosevelt was America's little Lord Fauntleroy, the child of a Hudson River squire. He grew up in Hyde Park, NY.



Hobbies: "Hoover [the poor country pupil] entertained himself with sticks and tacks, strings, wires and nails and the assortment of things the village smithy leaves scattered in the shade of the chestnut tree." [2]



Hobbies: "Franklin played with imported toys under the tutelage and protection of a governess [to the age of fourteen!], which ever is the nicest term." [3]Then, he was off to Groton, the elite preparatory school. 


Education: Hoover, the orphan, worked his way though Stanford, because he was not too proud to do laundry work.



Education: Franklin Roosevelt's daddy dear, paid his son's way into Harvard, living "on the Gold Coast" and then Columbia.  


Even so, Democrats attacked Hoover's wealth. Sure FDR was richer, yet, to be sure, the chattering classes didn't want Iowa's orphan to climb. They even blamed the job-producing pioneer for inheriting the Great Depression.

Nonetheless, some newspaper owners couldn't stomach FDR but in Modern Times (The World from the Twenties to the Nineties) Paul Johnson (page 257) explains that:

"...their journalists loved him, forgiving him his frequent lies, concealing the fact that he took money off them from poker (which had damned Harding), obeying his malicious injunctions to give his Administration colleagues ‘a hard time.'

There were dark corners in the Roosevelt White House: his own infidelities, his wife's passionate attachments to another woman, the unscrupulous, sometimes vicious manner in which he used executive power. None was exposed in his lifetime or for long after."

Of course, society's snobs were clearly jealous of Hoover's relationship too. But why? Because he was happily married whereas FDR was living in some freaky arrangement; because Mrs. Hoover opened the doors of hospitality to the wives of black congressmen in the pre-Civil Rights era; because Hoover married in a Catholic ceremony (well before JFK became a "groundbreaker"). Oh, and because good Protestant men trouble godless Democrats. And that's the raw truth. Iowa's favourite orphan was too Christian for them all.

[1] The Boy With Golden Spoon Is Franklin D. Roosevelt, The Evening Tribune (Minn), October 4, 1932, page 9.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.
on "A Tribute to Herbert Hoover, the Anti-Fascist"