Episode guest: William Hitchcock
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When Franklin Delano Roosevelt entered the White House in 1933, the country was paralyzed by the Great Depression and fascist jackboots were trampling democracy in Europe. As the 1930s wore on, the president and the American people came to see fascism as not only a threat to societies on the other side of the Atlantic, but as a danger to the American way of life, too. But what to do about it?
How did FDR prepare the country for what he correctly foresaw as an inevitable war against the fascist powers? How did public opinion compel the president to leave neutrality behind?
Americans then tangled with the same questions we’re grappling with today, although under a dramatically different set of circumstances. When do problems in faraway places necessitate U.S. involvement? Does our democracy depend on the survival of other democracies?
Our guest is University of Virginia historian William Hitchcock, the author of "A Shadow Over the World: Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Rise of Fascism, and the Making of America's World War II."