Mercedes-Benz Lecture

American Democracy during the Rise of Fascism, 1922-1941

In an earlier period of rising authoritarianism around the world, how did Americans react to the rise of fascism? Scholars have long held that Americans were isolationist in the interwar years, and that they ignored European politics. William Hitchcock’s lecture challenges that view, showing that during the “age of fascism” Americans engaged in a bitter argument about the meaning and threat of Nazism and Italian Fascism. Exploring the racial, social, and cultural context of the period, Hitchcock points to the intense American debates about the many crises of the era from the war in Ethiopia through the outbreak of WWII. He shows how Americans gradually came to understand the threat fascism posed to their own democracy, concluding that only by confronting fascism in the world could they secure American democracy at home.