[dr_lew]

Claudine came on and said that's what Germans reckoned in the 1930s: just keep your head down and the storm will pass. How'd that work out?

I constantly think of this. You know, the Anglo-American experience of that decade has been seriously expunged and revised. There was a lot of support for German and Italian fascism among the intellectual class, not just in the political, but in the cultural and philosophical realm. If you dig deep you can find remnants of it, even though it was all speedily abandoned once the war commenced.

[antidisestablishment]

It was never abandoned; only disguised and repackaged. After all, words matter.

No one would ever support eugenics or racism, but only a Nazi would stand against choice and multiculturalism!

[FreedomPoster]

Much of it didn’t disappear until 1941.

Why 1941? Why not earlier?

Because a significant component of the American Left was taking its cues from Soviet Communists. And they were allied with Germany until 1941, at which point the Red Left got on board with stopping Hitler.

The fact that the USSR helped in the dismemberment of Poland in 1939 gets forgotten by most.

[oblomov]

I suggest reading this book:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312427433?ie=UTF8&isInIframe=1&n=283155&redirect=true&ref_=dp_proddesc_0&s=books&showDetailProductDesc=1#iframe-wrapper

The author is on the left, but the book is written with true scholarly objectivity. Schivelbusch draws several conclusions that should make admirers of FDR (and modern progressives in general) uncomfortable.

[Steve_Seattle]

"I constantly think of this. You know, the Anglo-American experience of that decade has been seriously expunged and revised. There was a lot of support for German and Italian fascism among the intellectual class, not just in the political, but in the cultural and philosophical realm. If you dig deep you can find remnants of it, even though it was all speedily abandoned once the war commenced."

Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism" talks about that at length, and it is well-documented. Also, C.S. Lewis's novel - "That Hideous Strength" - saw this coming as early as 1945.