This is what the "New Deal" means to me, an era of acute social consciousness and realization of mutual responsibility, a time of reciprocal helpfuln… - Harold L. Ickes

Relations between the United States and the Third Reich opened in 1939 on a distinctly sour and strident note. It began when Harold L. Ickes, the Secretary of the Interior, speaking to a Zionist Society dinner in Cleveland at the end of 1938, declared Hitler had taken Germany back to "a period when man was unlettered, benighted, and brutal." The November pogrom demonstrated Hitler counted "the day lost when he can commit no crime against humanity." Ickes attacked Ford and Lindbergh for accepting decorations from the "same hand" that was "robbing and torturing thousands of fellow human beiongs."

It is impossible to carry the American people along with you on a program of caution to forestall a threatening position.

In the early days our forefathers could cut down a forest or exhaust the fertility of a farm and then blithely move to a new forest or a new farm... The highest concept of statesmanship was to make it possible for the eager, aggressive pioneer to possess, to despoil and then repeat the process indefinitely. ...[Shortsided and unchecked greed resulted in] denuded forests, floods, droughts, a disappearing water table, erosion, a less stable and equable climate, a vanishing wildlife.