The Ghost of Vice President Wallace Warns: "It Can Happen Here"

'Although most Americans remember that Harry Truman was Franklin D.Roosevelt's Vice President when Roosevelt died in 1945 (making TrumanPresident), Roosevelt had two previous Vice Presidents - John N. Garner(1933-1941) and Henry A. Wallace (1941-1945). In early 1944, the NewYork Times asked Vice President Henry Wallace to, as Wallace noted,"write a piece answering the following questions: What is a fascist? Howmany fascists have we? How dangerous are they?"

Vice President Wallace's answer to those questions was published in TheNew York Times on April 9, 1944, at the height of the war against theAxis powers of Germany and Japan."The really dangerous American fascists," Wallace wrote, "are not thosewho are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has itsfinger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants todo in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany ina Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence.His method is to poison the channels of public information. With afascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the publicbut how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving thefascist and his group more money or more power."'