DOCSLIB.ORG

Lawrence Dennis Papers, 1921-1975

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text

Load more

http://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf7n39n994 No online items Register of the Lawrence Dennis Papers, 1921-1975 Prepared by Rebecca J. Mead Hoover Institution Archives Stanford University Stanford, California 94305-6010 Phone: (650) 723-3563 Fax: (650) 725-3445 Email: [email protected] © 1999 Hoover Institution Archives. All rights reserved. Register of the Lawrence Dennis 84036 1 Papers, 1921-1975 Register of the Lawrence Dennis Papers, 1921-1975 Hoover Institution Archives Stanford University Stanford, California Contact Information Hoover Institution Archives Stanford University Stanford, California 94305-6010 Phone: (650) 723-3563 Fax: (650) 725-3445 Email: [email protected] Prepared by: Rebecca J. Mead Date Completed: 1985 © 1999 Hoover Institution Archives. All rights reserved. Descriptive Summary Title: Lawrence Dennis Papers, Date (inclusive): 1921-1975 Collection number: 84036 Creator: Dennis, Lawrence, 1893- Collection Size: 24 manuscript boxes(10 linear feet) Repository: Hoover Institution Archives Stanford, California 94305-6010 Abstract: Correspondence and writings, relating to fascist and isolationist movements in the U.S., and to American politics and foreign policy. Includes copies of the newsletters edited by L. Dennis, and subscription records. Physical Location: Hoover Institution Archives Language: English. Access Collection open for research. The Hoover Institution Archives only allows access to copies of audiovisual items. To listen to sound recordings or to view videos or films during your visit, please contact the Archives at least two working days before your arrival. We will then advise you of the accessibility of the material you wish to see or hear. Please note that not all audiovisual material is immediately accessible. Publication Rights For copyright status, please contact the Hoover Institution Archives. Preferred Citation [Identification of item], Lawrence Dennis Papers, [Box no.], Hoover Institution Archives. Access Points Fascism--United States. United States--Politics and government. United States--Foreign relations. United States--Foreign relations--20th century. United States--Neutrality. United States--Politics and government--20th century. Journalists. Register of the Lawrence Dennis 84036 2 Papers, 1921-1975 1893, Dec. Born, Atlanta, Georgia 25 1915-1917 Served at Plattsburg, commissioned 2nd Lt. U.S. Army, Aug. 1917 1918-1919 Served with American Expeditionary Force 1921-1927 U.S. Department of State. Posts in Haiti, Romania, Honduras (1925) and Nicaragua (1926-1927) 1927-1930 Employed by J. & W. Seligman & Co., bankers, New York City 1932 Author, Is Capitalism Doomed? 1936 Author, The Coming American Fascism 1936-1939 Employed by E.A. Pierce & Co., brokers, New York City 1939-1942 Editor and publisher of The Weekly Foreign Letter 1940 Author, The Dynamics of War and Revolution 1944-1947 Tried for sedition, 1944; case dismissed, 1947 1946 Author (with Maximilian J. St. George), A Trial on Trial 1946-1972 Editor and publisher of The Appeal to Reason 1969 Author, Operational Thinking for Survival 1977, Aug. Died, Spring Valley, New York 20 Box Box 1 BIOGRAPHICAL FILE, 1915-1973. Scope and Content Note Biographical sketches, clippings, interviews, lecture notices, foreign service materials, copies of military service materials, and miscellany, relating to the life of Lawrence Dennis, arranged alphabetically by form. Box Boxes 1-5 CORRESPONDENCE, 1930-1977. Scope and Content Note Significant correspondence of Lawrence Dennis, arranged alphabetically by correspondent. Includes a few letters neither to nor from Lawrence Dennis. Box Boxes 6-9 SPEECHES AND WRITINGS, 1931-1975. Scope and Content Note Drafts, manuscript copies, proofs, radio transcripts, other typed and printed copies of speeches and writings by Lawrence Dennis, arranged chronologically. Box Boxes 10-11 WEEKLY FOREIGN LETTER, 1938-1942. Scope and Content Note Numbers 1-206 (#7, #56, #83 missing) of weekly newsletter produced by Lawrence Dennis, arranged chronologically. Dennis began contributing with the issue of 1939 Feb. 17. Box Boxes 12-17 APPEAL TO REASON, 1946-1972. Scope and Content Note Numbers 1-892 (#24-25, #172, #184-209, #272, #326-329; #500, #506, #620 missing) of weekly newsletter produced by Lawrence Dennis, arranged chronologically. Box Boxes 18-22 OPERATIONAL FILE, 1940-1974. Scope and Content Note Materials dealing with the production and distribution of Dennis' two newsletters, The Weekly Foreign Letter, and The Appeal to Reason. Includes correspondence, subscription lists, ledgers, and bank statements. Arranged by physical form. Register of the Lawrence Dennis 84036 3 Papers, 1921-1975 SUBJECT FILE, 1925-1974. Box Boxes 23-24 SUBJECT FILE, 1925-1974. Scope and Content Note Clippings, serial issues, pamphlets, reprints, leaflets, newsletters, other printed matter, press releases, speech transcripts, memoranda, legal briefs, notes and miscellany. Material relates broadly to contemporaneous political, economic, and social conditions in the United States, primarily domestic and foreign policy. Box Boxes 24-25 NOTES, n.d. Scope and Content Note Notes assembled by Lawrence Dennis for use in his speeches and writings, not readily divisible by subject. Predominantly notecards, but several small notebooks are also included in this series. BIOGRAPHICAL FILE, 1915-1973 Box 1, Folder 1 Biographical sketches, c. 1941-1946 Printed, c. 1941-1946 Non-printed, n.d. Typescript. Employment Folder 2 U.S. Foreign service, 1921-1930. SEE ALSO: Subject file/U.S. Foreign relations/Nicaragua Clippings, 1927-1930 Correspondence, 1921-1927. Also includes letter from Dennis offering his services in connection with WW II, 1941 Dec. 20. Folder 3 J. & W. Seligman & Co., 1927 E.A. Pierce & Co., 1937-1939 Folder 4 Correspondence, 1937-1939 Lectures (economic) Folder 5-6 Clippings, 1937-1938 Folder 7 Correspondence, 1937-1939 Notices and schedules, 1937 Non-printed material, 1938-1939 Independent commentator and writer (national and world affairs) SEE ALSO: Subject file/Isolationism and historical revisionism/Doenecke, Justus D.; Ribuffo, Leo P. Folder 8 Clippings, 1935-1973 Lectures, 1934-1953 Folder 9 Correspondence, 1934-1953 Folder 10 Notices and schedules, 1934-1953 Folder 11 Interviews, 1957-1960 Folder 12 Libel trial, 1947 General. Includes complaint, partial summary of proceedings and correspondence Clippings, 1947 Folder 13 Military training and service, 1915-1919 General, 1919 Correspondence, 1923. Also includes correspondence with Dennis, offering his services in connection with WW II, 1941-1942. Documents, 1915-1919 Folder 14 Miscellany, 1937-1971. Includes property documents, divorce documents, tax materials, loan statements, and other personal miscellany. Folder 15 Stock certificates, 1929-1931; 1958 CORRESPONDENCE, 1930-1977 Box 1 General, 1936-1975 General, 1936-1974 Fragments Folder 16 n.d. Register of the Lawrence Dennis 84036 4 Papers, 1921-1975 CORRESPONDENCE, 1930-1977 Folder 17 Dated, 1943-1972 Unidentified Folder 18 n.d. Folder 19 Dated, 1936-1974 Folder 20 Academics, 1940-1975. Arranged alphabetically by individual. Folder 21 Media organizations, 1938-1971. Correspondence with newspapers, radio stations, other serial publications, etc., arranged alphabetically by organization. The Atlantic Monthly (Mildred Boie, Asst. Editor), 1938 The Commercial and Financial Chronicle (A. Wilfred May, Executive Editor), 1946 Human Events (Robert D. Kephart, Business Manager), 1965 Libertarian Analysis (Chuck Hamilton), 1971 The Nation (Caroline Whiting, Editorial Secretary, 1934; 1944) The San Francisco News (John S. Piper, Financial Editor), 1940-1941 Zenith Radio Corporation (Ted Leitzell), 1952 Folder 22 Students, 1959-1972. Arranged alphabetically by individual. Box 2 Alphabetical, 1930-1977 General, 1936-1975 Folder 1 A-C, 1941-1973 Folder 2 D-G, 1935-1962 Folder 3 H-K, 1939-1975 Folder 4 L-N, 1940-1969 Folder 5 O-P, 1938-1974 Folder 6 R-S, 1938-1974 Folder 7 T-Z, 1936-1971 Individual, 1930-1977 Folder 8 Adamic, Louis, 1946-1951 Folder 9 Armstrong, Hamilton Fish, 1930 Folder 10 Arnold, Thurman, 1940 Folder 11 Aronson, Moses J., 1941-1942 Folder 12 Baldwin, Roger N., 1940-1949 Barnes, Harry Elmer Folder 13 1946-1951 Folder 14 1952-1956 Folder 15 1957-1968 Folder 16 Barton, Bruce, 1944-1959 Folder 17 Bazinet, John L. (Father), 1940-1947 Folder 18 Beard, Charles A., 1946-1948 Folder 19 Berle, A.A., Jr., 1933-1946 Folder 20 Biddle, Francis J., 1942 Folder 21 Billstein, Alfred H., 1958-1972 Box 3 Blodgett, John W., Jr. Folder 1 1941 Folder 2 1942-1972 Folder 3 Bone, Homer T., 1949 Folder 4 Borchard, Edwin, 1945-1948 Folder 5 Brophy, Frank Cullen, 1941-1960 Folder 6 Buckley, William F., Jr., 1951 Folder 7 Budd, Arthur D. (Lt. Col.), 1943-1962 Folder 8 Buffett, Howard (and Mrs.), 1951-1962 Folder 9 Carto, Willis A., 1955-1956 Folder 10 Chamberlin, William H., 1943-1946 Folder 11 Clarke, Carter W. (General), n.d. (fragment) Folder 12 Cless, George H., Jr., 1942 Folder 13 Collins, Seward B., 1940 Folder 14 Costigan, Edward P., 1933 Folder 15 Craney, Ed, 1952-1971 Includes copies of letters to Senators Frank E. Moss and Gale W. McGee Register of the Lawrence Dennis 84036 5 Papers, 1921-1975 CORRESPONDENCE, 1930-1977 Folder 16 Cudahy, John, 1941-1942 Folder 17 Culbertson, Ely, 1942 Folder 18 Current, Richard N., 1948 Folder 19 Cutting, Bronson, 1933 Folder 20 Deatherage, George E., 1944-1956 Folder 21 DeTerra, Eleanor, 1951-1959 Folder 22 Doenecke, Justus D., 1970-1974 Folder 23 Dorizas, Michael (and Mrs.),
Recommended publications
  • Philip Johnson, Architecture, and the Rebellion of the Text: 1930-1934

    Philip Johnson, Architecture, and the Rebellion of the Text: 1930-1934

    PHILIP JOHNSON, ARCHITECTURE, AND THE REBELLION OF THE TEXT: 1930-1934 The architect Philip Johnson, intermittently famous for provocative buildings— his modernist Glass House, 1949, and the Postmodern AT&T (now Sony) Building, 1984—will be remembered less for his architecture than for his texts. He first made a reputation as co-author (with Henry Russell Hitchcock) of the 1932 book The Interna- tional Style, which presented the European Modern Movement as a set of formal rules and documented its forms in photographs. In 1947, on the verge of a career in archi- tectural practice, Johnson authored the first full-length monograph on Mies van der Rohe. To these seminal texts in modernism’s history in America should be added a number of occasional writings and lectures on modern architecture. In addition, the exhibitions on architecture and design Johnson curated for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), beginning with the seminal Modern Architecture in 1932, should also be considered texts, summarizing, or reducing, architectural experience through selected artifacts and carefully crafted timelines. In the course of a very long career, Johnson was under almost constant fire for de-radicalizing modernism, for reducing it to yet another value-free episode in the history of style, or even of taste. The nonagenarian Johnson himself cheerfully con- fessed to turning the avant-garde he presented to America into “just a garde” (qtd. in Somol 43). Yet in 1931 Johnson described the spirit of his campaign for modernism as “the romantic love for youth in revolt, especially in art, universal today” (Johnson, Writings 45).
  • Lawrence Dennis and the Coming of World War 11*

    Lawrence Dennis and the Coming of World War 11*

    The Isolationist as Collectivist: Lawrence Dennis and the Coming of World War 11* by Justus D. Doenecke Departmenr of History, New College of the University of South Florida To most historians, and to much of the general public as well, the name of the late Lawrence Dennis has long been associated with American "fascism." Arthur S. Link calls him "the intellectual leader and principal adviser of the fascist groups." Charles C. Alexander sees him as "the leading intellectual fascist in America." When Dennis's thought is treated in depth, it is usually in the context of anti-democratic political philosophy and elitist theory.' Beginning in the sixties, some commentators have started to refer to Dennis in slightly more appreciative terms. In 1960 Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., while arguing that Dennis's formulas were both authoritarian and romantic, claimed that "his analysis cut through sentimental idealism with healthy effect." In 1969 Frederick L. Schuman, a "popular front" advocate who had debated Dennis in the 1930's, went much further, declaring that his pleas for isolation "would probably have contributed more to the welfare, health and survival of the human race than the course which Washington policy makers did in fact pursue . since 1917." Then, beginning in 1972, historians started to find Dennis a forerunner of Cold War revisionism, with Ronald Radosh calling him America's "earliest and most consistent critic of the Cold War." To Radosh, Dennis's stress on market factors alone shows the man's perception.' Despite such fresh examination, scholars have not yet described, much less explained, Dennis's reaction to the rise of the Axis powers, and to the outbreak of World War 11.
  • Isolationism

    Isolationism

    Isolationism Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History Isolationism Justus D. Doenecke Subject: 20th Century: Post-1945, Foreign Relations and Foreign Policy Online Publication Date: Aug 2017 DOI: 10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.49 Summary and Keywords For the United States, isolationism is best defined as avoidance of wars outside the Western Hemisphere, particularly in Europe; opposition to binding military alliances; and the unilateral freedom to act politically and commercially unrestrained by mandatory commitments to other nations. Until the controversy over American entry into the League of Nations, isolationism was never subject to debate. The United States could expand its territory, protect its commerce, and even fight foreign powers without violating its traditional tenets. Once President Woodrow Wilson sought membership in the League, however, Americans saw isolationism as a foreign policy option, not simply something taken for granted. A fundamental foreign policy tenet now became a faction, limited to a group of people branded as “isolationists.” Its high point came during the years 1934– 1937, when Congress, noting the challenge of the totalitarian nations to the international status quo, passed the neutrality acts to insulate the country from global entanglements. Once World War II broke out in Europe, President Franklin D. Roosevelt increasingly sought American participation on the side of the Allies. Isolationists unsuccessfully fought FDR’s legislative proposals, beginning with repeal of the arms embargo and ending with the convoying of supplies to Britain. The America First Committee (1940–1941), however, so effectively mobilized anti-interventionist opinion as to make the president more cautious in his diplomacy. Page 1 of 28 PRINTED FROM the OXFORD RESEARCH ENCYCLOPEDIA, AMERICAN HISTORY (americanhistory.oxfordre.com).
  • Swastikas and Silver Shirts: the Dawn of American Nazism

    Swastikas and Silver Shirts: the Dawn of American Nazism

    ABSTRACT SWASTIKAS AND SILVER SHIRTS: THE DAWN OF AMERICAN NAZISM by Austin Carter Hall From 1922-1936, there was a considerable effort by Americans, German-Americans, and Germans to spread Nazi ideology throughout the United States. Figures such as Henry Ford who owned the anti-Semitic newspaper the Dearborn Independent was one of the first people to exert a concerted, nation-wide effort to fund anti-Semitic literature aimed at the common folk of America. With the NSDAP forming in 1920, some Nazis looked to the United States as a place outside of Germany where Nazism could flourish. Numerous organizations emerged in an attempt to spread hateful ideological stances. Alongside the rise of the “Second Klan,” American Nazism began to rear its head culminating in 1933 with the formation of the two groups that are prevalent in this study: William Dudley Pelley’s Silver Shirt Legion of America and Heinz Spanknöbel’s Friends of New Germany. A failed Hitleresque Beer Hall Putsch attempt by the San Diego Silver Shirts, the smuggling in of Nazi propaganda by the Friends of New Germany, and the ensuing Congressional investigations into these two groups demonstrates the lengths that some organizations and their leaders went in order to provide anti-Semitic, anti-democratic, pro-Hitler, and pro-fascist literature, ideals, and ideas throughout the United States in the interwar era. SWASTIKAS AND SILVER SHIRTS: THE DAWN OF AMERICAN NAZISM Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Miami University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts by Austin Carter Hall Miami University Oxford, Ohio 2019 Advisor: Dr.
  • Philip Johnson Begins a Much-Needed Re-Evalu- Ation of the Intellectual Legacy of One of 20Th-Century Architecture’S Most Significant Figures

    Philip Johnson Begins a Much-Needed Re-Evalu- Ation of the Intellectual Legacy of One of 20Th-Century Architecture’S Most Significant Figures

    The THE NEWSPAPER OF THE LITERARY ARTS Volume 5, Number 2 March 1995 Ithaca, New York A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Lincoln Center Ph ilip Johnson: Life and Works Franz Schulze Knopf, 465 pages, $30 Kazys Varnelis Franz Schulze’s biography of Philip Johnson begins a much-needed re-evalu- ation of the intellectual legacy of one of 20th-century architecture’s most significant figures. While the quality of his designs may be open to debate, Johnson has played a key historical role in shaping architectural discourse as the founder of the Museum of Modem Art’s architecture department, co-organizer of MoMA’s seminal exhibit on “International Style” modern architecture in 1932, and subsequent promoter of German architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, historical eclecticism, postmodernism, and deconstructivism. In this first book-length biography on the architect, Schulze has some sur­ prises in store for the general public, chiefly in documenting Johnson’s activities in the late 1930s as a fascist, anti-Semite, and active propagandist for the Nazi govemment.The book may well prove scandalous for architecture, whose criti­ cal-historical establishment has maintained a public silence on the topic while gossiping about it in private. Sources on Johnson’s past—contemporary accounts, his own writings, histories of the period, even articles in magazines like The New Yorker and Esquire—were available many years prior to the publication of Schulze’s biography, but printed references to Johnson’s past in the architectural media have always been carefully circumscribed. (In contrast, over 300 articles have been published on Paul de Man’s collaboration with the Nazis and similarly copious discourse exists on Martin Heidegger.) Although not an authorized biography, the Schulze book was written with Johnson’s cooperation.
  • The Foreign Policy of the Old Right*

    The Foreign Policy of the Old Right*

    JournololLikrtu~onSrudler,Vol. 2. No. I. m.85-96 Pcrgamon Prcrs, 1978. Piintcd in0rc.t Britain THE FOREIGN POLICY OF THE OLD RIGHT* MURRAY N. ROTHBARD Deporrmenr of Social Sciences. Polyrechnic Inslirule of New York The categories of "right" and "left" have been Big government, government intervention, changing so rapidly in recent years in America social and economic, foreign and domestic, were that it becomes difficult to recall what the labels considered to be invasions of the liberty of the stood for not very long ago. In the case of the individual and a grave and increasing threat to left, this has become common knowledge, and freedom in America. The Old Right favored the we are all familiar with the contrasts between liberty of the individual as its central principle, "Old Left" and "New Left", as well as with the and advocated a free-enterprise and free-market rapidchanges that the "new" Left itself has been economy as the economic corollary and applica- undergoing. But in the case of the right-wing, tion of that principle. The menace to that liberty which has rarely been an object of careful was its polar opposite: intervention and control scrutiny by journalists or historians, no such by coercive government. categories have come into play. The "Right" is The Old Right applied its aversion to govern- now largely identified with the Buckley-National ment to foreign policy as well as domestic. It Review-Goldwater-Reagan conservative move- held the increasing interventions of the ment, as well as the less reputable and more American government in the affairs of other "extreme" Birch Society variant.
  • Defending the Defender

    Defending the Defender

    36 Defending the Defender: Gerald Winrod and the Great Sedition Trial Seth Bate The Rev. Dr. Gerald B. Winrod, an evangelist based in Wichita, Kansas, viewed himself and his followers as defenders. He came to call his media and ministry organization the Defenders of the Faith and its flagship magazine, The Defender. From Winrod’s view, the Defenders provided a moral bulwark against Darwinists, saloon keepers, women who wore revealing clothes, Catholics—sometimes, Jews, and especially Communists. At times, Winrod used very thin evidence to apply these labels to those he viewed as threats to American morality. For example, Winrod widely promoted his assertion that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was both a Jew and a Communist.1 As Richard Polenberg explained in War and Society, the Roosevelt White House was sensitive to the civil rights abuses that occurred during World War I and endeavored not to repeat them during World War II. Even so, wartime pressures and poor judgment led to such spectacular abridgments of rights as the forced internment of Japanese residents, Japanese Americans, and Aleutian natives during the war.2 Though not on the same level, the Roosevelt administration’s Department of Justice also erred in initiating the farce that became known as the Great Sedition Trial, in which thirty radicals of various degrees of influence, notoriety, and sanity were tried collectively. Acknowledging that the trial was an infringement on their rights does not mean that the defendants were a sympathetic lot. In particular, Winrod was an outspoken anti-Semite given to promoting the long-discredited Protocols of the Elders of Zion in blaming Jews for many of the world’s ills.
  • BETRAYAL of the AMERICAN RIGHT the Ludwig Von Mises Institute Dedicates This Volume to All of Its Generous Donors and Wishes to Thank These Patrons, in Particular

    BETRAYAL of the AMERICAN RIGHT the Ludwig Von Mises Institute Dedicates This Volume to All of Its Generous Donors and Wishes to Thank These Patrons, in Particular

    THE BETRAYAL OF THE AMERICAN RIGHT The Ludwig von Mises Institute dedicates this volume to all of its generous donors and wishes to thank these Patrons, in particular: The Lowndes Foundation, Douglas E. French and Deanna Forbush, Frederick L. Maier, Mr. and Mrs. Leland L. Young Ross K. Anderson, John Hamilton Bolstad, Mr. and Mrs. J. Robert Bost, Mr. and Mrs. Roger H. Box, Martin Brusse, Timothy J. Caldwell, Carl S. Creager, Kerry E. Cutter, Peter C. Earle, Reza Ektefaie, Ramallo Pallast Wakefield & Partner, Mr. and Mrs. Willard Fischer, Keith M. Harnish, John F. Kane, Roland R. Manarin, Mr. and Mrs. William W. Massey, Jr., Dr. and Mrs. Donald W. Miller, Jr., James M. Rodney, Sheldon Rose, Walter M. Simons, Norman K. Singleton, top dogTM, Sol West III, Peter J. White, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Woodul III Lloyd Alaback, Anonymous, Regis Alain Barbier, Helio Beltrao, Dr. Karl Blasius, Roman J. Bowser, Dr. John Brätland, John E. Burgess, Aubrey T. Carruth, R. Leahman Davidson, Mr. and Mrs. Jeremy S. Davis, Paul Dietrich, Dr. and Mrs. George G. Eddy, Dr. Larry J. Eshelman, Jason H. Fane, Lundy Fetterman Family Foundation, Greene View Foundation, Charles C. Groff, James E. Hall, Curtis and LaRae Hamilton, Dr. Frederic Herman, Robert S. James, Martin Jungbluth, Robert N. Kennedy, Richard J. Kossman, M.D., Carlton W. Laird, William M. Laub, Sr., Arthur L. Loeb, Björn Lundahl, Jack E. Magoulakis, Dr. Douglas R. Mailly, Joseph Edward Paul Melville, Anders Mikkelsen, Robert A. Moore, James O’Neill, Vincent J. O’Neill, Professor and Mrs. Stanley E. Porter, Mr. and Mrs.
  • “In Time of Stress, a Civilization Pauses to Take Stock of Itself”: Adolf A

    “In Time of Stress, a Civilization Pauses to Take Stock of Itself”: Adolf A

    “In Time of Stress, a Civilization Pauses to Take Stock of Itself”: Adolf A. Berle and the Modern Corporation from the New Era to 1933 Mark Hendrickson* INTRODUCTION In the spring of 1933, when Adolf A. Berle penned his review of Recent Social Trends, quoted in this Article’s title, the U.S. economy had disintegrated with a quarter of the nation’s workforce unemployed and gross domestic product (GDP) plummeting nearly fifty percent since 1929.1 The banking system nearly ceased to function and deflation drove prices down by twenty-five percent.2 Times of uncertainty and panic require explanation and action grounded in an understanding of the nature of the problem at hand. Berle’s argument in 1933—“In time of stress, a civilization pauses to take stock of itself”—applied more than once in the period during which Berle rose to prominence in the WWI era and when he wrote his review in 1933.3 This Article considers the period beginning when Berle left the U.S. Army after his service with the American Commission to Negotiate the Peace in Paris in June of 1919 and follows important aspects of his career and thinking up to the arrival of Berle and * Associate Professor of History, University of California, San Diego. My thanks to Chuck O’Kelley for the invitation to participate in Berle X: Berle and His World and this volume. Thanks as well to participants in the symposium for their helpful comments and engaging discussion of Berle and his world. And, finally, many thanks to the fine editors at Seattle University Law Review for their assistance in ushering this Article and volume to completion.