23. Hoover left office determined to oppose government intervention to fight the depression
Herbert Hoover was 58 when he left office, and the only surviving ex-president. He left office embittered and angry. During the failed campaign he endured being pelted with eggs and vegetables at several stops as he attempted to deliver remarks defending his actions and outlining his plans. His speeches were interrupted by hecklers, his radio addresses were ignored, and the few Republican newspapers which endorsed him found their subscription bases reduced. His attempts to present FDR’s planned programs as socialism did not find an appreciative audience, other than the far-right wing of his own party. Nonetheless, he left office determined to oppose Roosevelt’s plans for expanding the government.
Hoover published the first of several books defending his Presidency and attacking FDR in 1934, titled The Challenge to Liberty. He called the Banking Act of 1933, which stabilized the banks and created the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), “gigantic socialism”. To Hoover, the National Recovery Administration and Roosevelt’s actions to save America’s small farms were “fascism”. Hoover drew thinly veiled comparisons between FDR’s New Deal and the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany. In 1938 Hoover went to Germany, stayed for a time at Herman Goering’s hunting lodge, Karinhall, and met Adolf Hitler. When FDR introduced Lend-Lease in 1940, which added American jobs, Hoover opposed it vehemently, calling it irresponsible war-mongering on the part of the President.