Doenecke Justus, Izolacjonizm w USA
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//-->The Isolationist as Collectivist: LawrenceDennis and the Coming of World War 11*byJustusD.DoeneckeDepartmenr of History, New College of the University ofSouthFloridaTo most historians, and to much of the general public as well, the name ofthe late Lawrence Dennis has long been associated with American "fascism."Arthur S. Link calls him "the intellectual leader and principal adviser of thefascist groups." CharlesC.Alexander sees him as "the leading intellectualfascist in America." When Dennis's thought is treated in depth, it is usuallyin the context of anti-democratic political philosophy and elitist theory.'Beginning in the sixties, some commentators have started to refer toDennis in slightly more appreciative terms. In 1960 ArthurM.Schlesinger,Jr., while arguing that Dennis's formulas were both authoritarian andromantic, claimed that "his analysis cut through sentimental idealism withhealthy effect." In 1969 Frederick L. Schuman, a "popular front" advocatewho had debated Dennis in the 1930's, went much further, declaring that hispleas for isolation "would probably have contributed more to the welfare,health and survival of the human race than the course which Washingtonpolicy makers did in fact pursue. . .since 1917." Then, beginning in 1972,historians started to find Dennis a forerunner of Cold War revisionism, withRonald Radosh calling him America's "earliest and most consistent critic ofthe Cold War." To Radosh, Dennis's stress on market factors alone showsthe man's perception.'Despite such fresh examination, scholars have not yet described, muchless explained, Dennis's reaction to the rise of the Axis powers, and to theoutbreak of World War 11. Yet it was his posture toward the totalitariannations, Germany in particular, that led to much notoriety and in 1944 toindictment for sedition. The unique nature of Dennis's arguments, so unlikethose of many isolationists, enabled Secretary of the Interior Harold L.lckes to find him one of the "Quislings who, in pretended patriotism, wouldcravenly spike our guns and ground our airplanes in order that Hitlerismmight more easily overcome us." Dennis's rationale also allowed columnist*The authorisgrateful toLeaRibuiToforgenerousadviceand aid192THE JOURNAL O F LIBERTARIAN STUDIESDorothy Thompson to call him the "braintruster extraordinary to the forcesof democratic defeat," and expos6 writer Avedis Derounian. whose penname was "John Roy Carlson," to refer to him as "Liberty's chief hang-man."' Yet, if such stereotypes still remain with us, they are more indicativeof the political culture of the 1930's than of Dennis's own position, onewhich was in many wayssui generis.Dennis began his career on the lower rungs of the American establish-ment. Born in Atlanta in 1893, he received his formal education at PhillipsExeter and Harvard, and during World WarIserved overseas as an infantryofficer. Then came several years in the foreign service, followed by employ-ment abroad withJ.&W.Seligman and the National City Bank of NewYork. In 1930, Dennis began to attack the overseas activities of Americaninvestment banking, publishing his broadsides in such liberal journals asTheNationandThe New Republic.4Soon Dennis began to offer sweeping solutions for the Great Depression,solutions that increasingly centered on a corporate state. Like F.A. Hayekand Joseph Schumpeter, he saw the coming world as a collectivist one, but,unlike them, he welcomed this world vigorously. His world was always muchcloser to George Soule or Stuart Chase than to Ludwig von Mises. In 1934,as associate editor of a right-wing tabloid calledThe Awakener,he attackedthe "half-way" measures of the New Deal and called for more centralizedeconomic controls. His "fascist" reputation, however, was rooted in his bookThe Coming American Fascism(l936), as well as in a series of articleswritten in the mid and late thirties for such journals asThe AmericanMercur.~,Social Frontier,andThe Annalsufthe American AcademyofPolitical and Social Science.The industrial countries, he said, faced inevitable collectivization. Fas-cism, communism, even the American New Deal were all parts of a historicalprocess so mechanistic that individual rulers counted for little. Capit aI'~sm-once nourished by extensive geographical frontiers and rich worldmarkets-wasno longer workable; the New Deal, a mere step on thecollectivist road, had little to offer but deficit spending and make-workprojects. Given the need for a thoroughly collectivized society, Dennis foundAmerica facing the choice of fascism or communism. Of the two, he claimedthat fascism was preferable, for-unlike the Soviet system-it offered classunity, utilized the market mechanism, and retained skilled managerialelites.5Dennis, in fact, claimed to be describing "a desirable fascism." He used theexample of Huey Long as "our nearest approach to a national fascist leader"and spoke of gaining initial power through control of varied state govern-ments. A militarized party organization would then compete in nationalelections. Assuming power legally, the new ruling elite would call privateenterprise to "the colors as conscripts in war," reorganize the Congress onLAWRENCE DENNIS193vocational lines, and replace the two-party system with a single party"holding a mandate from the people." (If the scenario reads a bit likeSinclair Lewis'sItCan't Happen Here(1935), one wonders who BuzzWindrop would be.) Specific economic measures included nationalization ofbanks and major monopolies, redistribution of wealth and income throughprogressive taxation, and subsidization of small enterprises and farming. Inthe new society, all institutions-press,radio, cinema, schools, andchurches-would have to foster a "national plan" designed to coordinate theentire economy.6The question of Dennis as a "fascist" proponent depends upon how theterm is defined. Dennis would use the noun interchangeably. At times hemeant any kind of centralized economy that was not communist. At othertimes he was referring to the political and economic systems of Germany andItaly and to them alone. At still other times he was outlining his utopianvision for America. Dennis long denied that he was ever a fascist, declaringthat he had never joined a fascist movement or backed a fascist cause.Rather he was a neutral observer, trying to analyze events without ideologi-cal bias.'If fascism combines a one-party state with strident nationalism, continen-tal autarchy, and centralized economic controls that mould private owner-ship to public will,-in short, a truly corporatist and organic societytranscending localized interests-then Dennis's system might be fascistic. If,however, one defines fascism as involving a clear-cutFiihrerprinzip,a terrorsystem, and permanent purge so often associated with Nazi Germany, thenDennis was not a fascist. He adhered neither to the racism of an AlfredRosenberg or a Vidknn Quisling; rather his politics centered on the twinpoles of economic corporatism and rigid isolationism."Isolationism in fact developed naturally from Dennis's corporatism. Den-nis argued that a self-sufficient and disciplined United States would not haveto venture outside the Hemisphere. In contrast to the fascist powers ofEurope, the United States could sustain full employment without the needfor additional markets and territory overseas. Dennis was far from being apacifist, and in 1936 his foreign policy included control of the PanamaCanal, "naval parity with the greatest power, a professional army of at leastfour hundred thousand men fully equipped, and universal compulsorymilitary service." The United States, by maintaining a strong war potential,could "rope off a large section of the globe within this hemisphere asterritory in which outsiders may not come and fight." Far better, Dennisbelieved, to construct a Fortress America than to fight "another holy war"that could only result in "world revolution and chaos."YDespite the unconventional nature of some tenets, Dennis did not alwayshave a bad press. Several reviews ofThe Coming American Fascismwerequite respectful, withThe Times Literary Supplementof London claiming194THE JOURNAL O F LIBERTARIAN STUDIESthat the hook had "substantial value as a fresh and penetrating analysis ofthe present situation." Such critics as Ernest Sutherland Bates and DwightMacdonald denied that Dennis was advocating a European form of fascism.What Dennis meant by fascism, said Macdonald, appeared to he "a kind ofTechnocracy and not at all what Hitler and Mussolini meant." As late asJune 1940,The New York Timescovered his addresses before foreign policygroups, always referring to him as a "banker," "econon~ist," or "formermember of the diplomatic servicem-never as a fascist.lOEven in 1940 and 1941 Dennis was not entirely excluded from mainstreampolitical forums. True, Harper and Brothers. finding Dennis 'too hot' aproperty, dropped sponsorship of a Dennis volume that they had intendedto publish, and Dennis had to publish it himself. However, Dennis addressedthe prestigious Institute of Public Affairs of the University of Virginia in1940. The next yearThe Nationfeatured a debate between Dennis, Freder-ickL.Schuman, and journalist Max Lerner on the forces acting in thewartime order, andFortunemagazine welcomed his participation in aroundtable forum on the world economy.]'It was only, however, after the fall of France that Dennis was opposed bythe very groups that had once tolerated, and at times welcomed, his views,and it is doubtful whether any isolationist except Colonel Charles A.Lindbergh so aroused the interventionists' ire. Such opposition might havebeen inevitable, for as Germany, Italy, and Japan began to assault theVersailles system, Dennis devoted increasing attention to foreign policy. InThe DynamicsofWar and Revolution(1940), and in a privately circulatedbulletin entitledThe Week,v Foreign Letter(1938-1942), Dennis pro-pounded the doctrine that wars of conquest were inevitable. The BritishEmpire, now a status quo power, had been founded by "pirates, slave-traders and fighting men"; the United States had stolen its territory from theIndians. As aggression was rooted in human nature and in the world'sunequal distribution of goods, it was folly to think in Wilsonian terms of a"war to end wars."l2Even before the outbreak of World War 11, Dennis had placed himselfsquarely on the side of the so-called "have-not" nations. The breakdown ofworld capitalism, he said, forced the "socialist" nations-Germany, Russia,Italy, and Japan-to conquer territories and to develop economies totallyindependent of traditional trade and financial networks. The Munich pactwas therefore an act of rationality, a "realistic attempt" to secure "peacefulchange." If, in the process, it made Germany master of all Europe, it avoideda general war and the accompanying triumph of communism.lJBy the same token, Dennis found England's guarantee to Poland, made inlate March of 1939, sheer stupidity. The British, having just given Hitler thekeys to eastern Europe, were suddenly forbidding him to use them. Not onlywas it the height of folly to fight the world's greatest military power withoutLAWRENCE DENNIS195a n alliance with the Soviet Union, but Britain's action delivered the smallBaltic nations over to "the tender mercies of Moscow."'4Once hostilities started, Dennis gave several reasons why he believed thatGermany was bound t o win. First, he claimed that the Reich, unlike theAllies, possessed dynamic leadership. Dennis called Roosevelt "a semi-paralyzed country squire," one who lacked the toughness necessary t o lead amajor war effort. Such policymakers as Secretary of State Cordell Hull,Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, and Secretary of War HenryL.Stimsonwere superannuated and confused, America's military and naval heads"mostly gold-braided senior Civil Service clerks." Winston Churchill, asincompetent as Roosevelt, was "a senile alcoholic who [had] never been asuccess at anything except writing alibis for his failures." and most ofEngland's parliamentary leaders were equally inept.15Dennis found Hitler, however, a man of "genius." Rather than vying to be"the darling of American women's groups," theFuhrerhad dismemberedCzechoslovakia, isolated Russia, and secured food from eastern Europe forhis "eighty million German bellies." Later evidence of Hitler's brilliantleadership, said Dennis, could he seen in his ability to unite the "have-nots"against "the capitalistic pluto-democracies.%Second, Dennis asserted that only the totalitarian nations possessed the6lan vitalnecessary for victory. He said that the British and the French,unlike the Germans, lacked "the willingness to die by the tens of thousands."True. Germany's armed manpower, industrial mobilization, and geographi-cal location contributed to its superiority, but there was more as well. Whilethe American laborer would strike to secure benefits, the Nazi worker-knowing that the industrialists were being (according to Dennis) equallydisciplined-willingly accepted low wages and long hours.'-Third, Dennis asserted that the totalitarian states had more attainable waraims. He always denied that Hitler sought world conquest; rather Germanymerely wanted additionallebensraumin eastern Europe. By integrating theagricultural Balkan states t o an industrialized Reich, a prosperous continentcould remain independent of a n Anglo-American commercial system. SuchGerman domination of Europe, Dennis maintained, preserved-notthreatened-the world balance of power. Fragmented continents, packedwith small sovereign states, were economically unworkable; world prosper-ity of necessity depended upon continental blocs. Here Dennis envisioned anexpanded Russian zone, an Asia dominated b y Japan, a somewhat reducedBritish Empire, a Western Hemisphere controlled by the United States, anda Europe run by Germany. The Americas were in no danger, he main-tained, for German or Japanese efforts t o extend their domain overseaswould be ruinously costly.'"By contrast Dennis claimed that Allied war aims were both Carthaginianand messianic. Britain, anxious t o preserve world hegemony, offered Ger-
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