Advances of a Democrat and Dictator

Fourteen years after the devastation of World War I, the American and German nations found themselves in a period of depression and disunity. Unemployment in the US had risen to nearly 25%, while nearly one-third of Germany’s worker’s was unemployed. In a time of crisis, both countries turned to new leadership in Franklin D. Roosevelt and Adolph Hitler in hopes of finding salvation to pull them out of their economic and mental depressions. Looking at the terms of the depression in each country, each leader had wildly different views of the causes behind why they were put in such a terrible state. President Roosevelt believed the biggest cause of the problems the US faced was the corrupted rulers- in this case, the bankers. The United States was in a very concerned state of distress. “Primarily, this is because the rulers of the exchange of mankind’s goods have failed, through their own stubbornness and their own incompetence, have admitted their failure, and abdicated.” (Cite One) Instead of rectifying their actions, however, all of the major bankers and corporations in the US just offered to lend even more money instead, aiming to help themselves out more than the people they claimed to be helping. The corporations begged to be trusted again, but Roosevelt believed they assumed a position of false leadership. Hitler, on the other hand, believed that there were two major causes behind the economic and moral depression in Germany: the effects of the Treaty of Versailles and communism. According to his Proclamation to the German Nation, Germany “never received the equality and fraternity that we had been promised, and we lost our liberty to boot. For when our nation lost its political place in the world, it soon lost its unity of spirit and will…” Hitler never outright said it was the after effects of the Treaty,