The Great Depression Images
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Huey P. Long, Louisiana populist and advocate of "Share Our Wealth."
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Charles Coughlin, "The Radio Priest," began as a backer of FDR's New Deal but eventually became a virulent critic and even a fascist sympathizer.
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The Townsend Plan, which called for generous state-funded pensions for the aged in order to boost spending and open up jobs for younger workers, attracted enthusiastic support in the 1930s, and Townsend Clubs spread across the land.
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While America's economy sputtered throughout the 1930s, Adolf Hitler's fascists seemed to have succeeded in rescuing Germany from economic collapse, encouraging Nazi sympathizers such as the German-American Bund to push for a fascist America.
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The Communist Party failed to instigate a proletarian revolution during the Great Depression, but it did move a bit further into the mainstream of American life.
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The 20,000 people who turned out for the German-American Bund's "Pro-American Rally" in February 1939 heard self-styled "American führer" Fritz Kuhn denounce "Frank Rosenfeld" and his "Jew Deal." Fortunately, the anti-Semitic Nazi sympathizers of the Bund remained a fringe minority throughout the 1930s.
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A dust storm—known as a "black blizzard"—approaches Stratford, Texas, in 1935.
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Dust Bowl refugees, bound for California.