It Can't Happen Here is a 1935 dystopian political novel by the American author Sinclair Lewis. Set in a fictionalized version of the 1930s United States, it follows an American politician, Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, who quickly rises to power to become the country's first outright dictator (in allusion to Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Nazi Germany), and Doremus Jessup, a newspaper editor who sees Windrip's fascist policies for what they are ahead of time and who becomes Windrip's most ardent critic.
The novel was adapted into a play by Lewis and John C. Moffitt in 1936.Archived at Ghostarchive and the Wayback Machine:
Premise It Can't Happen Here was published during the heyday of fascism in Europe, which was reported on by Dorothy Thompson, Lewis's wife. The novel describes the rise of Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, a demagogue who is elected President of the United States, after fomenting fear and promising drastic economic and social reforms while promoting a return to patriotism and "traditional" values. After his election, Windrip takes complete control of the government via self-coup and imposes totalitarian rule with the help of a ruthless paramilitary force, in the manner of European fascists such as Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. The novel's plot centers on journalist Doremus Jessup's opposition to the new regime and his subsequent struggle against it as part of a liberal rebellion.
Plot In 1936, American Senator Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip enters the presidential election campaign on a populist platform, promising to restore the country to prosperity and greatness, and promising each citizen $5,000 per year (). Portraying himself as a champion of "the forgotten man" and "traditional" American values, Windrip defeats incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt for the Democratic nomination, and then beats his Republican opponent, Senator Walt Trowbridge, in the November election.
Having previously foreshadowed some authoritarian measures to reorganize the government, Windrip outlaws dissent, incarcerates political enemies in concentration camps, and trains and arms a paramilitary force called the "Minute Men" (named after the Revolutionary War militias of the same name), who terrorize citizens and enforce the policies of a corporatist regime. One of Windrip's first acts as president is to eliminate the influence of Congress, which draws the ire of many citizens as well as the legislators themselves. The Minute Men respond to protests harshly, attacking demonstrators with bayonets.
In addition to these actions, Windrip's administration, known as the "Corpo" government, curtails women's and minority rights, and eliminates individual states by subdividing the country into administrative sectors. The government of these sectors is managed by Corpo authorities, usually prominent businessmen or Minute Men officers. Those accused of crimes against the government appear before kangaroo courts presided over by military judges. A majority of Americans approve of these dictatorial measures, seeing them as painful but necessary steps to restore American power.
Open opponents of Windrip, led by Senator Trowbridge, form an organization called the New Underground (named after the Underground Railroad), helping dissidents escape to Canada and distributing anti-Windrip propaganda. One recruit to the New Underground is Doremus Jessup, a Fort Beulah, Vermont newspaper editor who is a traditional liberal and an opponent of both corporatism and communism, the latter being suppressed by Windrip's administration. Jessup's participation in the organization results in the publication of The Vermont Vigilance, a periodical in which he writes editorials decrying Windrip's abuses of power.
Doremus' family suffers from their resistance to Windrip. Doremus' son-in-law, Fowler Greenhill, a doctor, resists aristocratic military judge Effingham Swan, who then has him killed. Greenhill's spirited wife Mary, Doremus' elder daughter, becomes depressed, but eventually gets her revenge by becoming a military pilot and suicide-attacking Swan's plane, killing herself and Swan and his entourage.
Meanwhile, Doremus' son Philip joins the Corpo regime as a military judge himself, to his father's dismay. Doremus' wife Emma shows only limp opposition to the Corpos, unlike Lorinda Pike, Doremus' secret lover and a local feminist/social activist, who fights Windrip tooth and nail. However, the Underground transfers her to other posts far away from Doremus, so the two regretfully part, though they re-encounter from time to time.
Shad Ledue, the local district commissioner and Doremus' former hired man, resents his old employer. After discovering Jessup's actions, Ledue has him sent to a concentration camp, where he is abused and tortured. Ledue terrorizes Doremus' family and particularly his younger daughter Sissy, whom he unsuccessfully attempts to seduce. (Sissy is dating Julian Falck, a college student who eventually joins the Minute Men as a spy for the Underground.) Sissy discovers evidence of corrupt dealings on the part of Ledue, which she exposes to Francis Tasbrough, a one-time friend of Doremus, and Ledue's superior in the administrative hierarchy.
Tasbrough has Ledue imprisoned in the same camp as Doremus, where inmates sent there by Ledue organize Ledue's murder. Doremus eventually escapes when his friends bribe one of the camp guards. He flees to Canada and rejoins the New Underground. He later serves the organization as a spy, passing along information and urging locals to resist Windrip.
In time, Windrip's hold on power weakens as his promised economic prosperity fails to materialize, and increasing numbers of disillusioned Americans, including Vice President Perley Beecroft, flee the country. Windrip also angers his secretly-gay Secretary of State, Lee Sarason, who had served earlier as his chief political operative and adviser. Sarason and Windrip's other lieutenants, including General Dewey Haik, seize power and exile the president to France. Sarason succeeds Windrip, but his extravagant and relatively weak rule creates a power vacuum in which Haik and others vie for power.
In a putsch, Haik leads a party of military supporters into the White House, kills Sarason and his associates, and proclaims himself president. The two coups cause a slow erosion of Corpo power. Haik's government tries to arouse patriotism by launching an invasion of Mexico, slandering the country in state-run newspapers and ordering a mass conscription of young American men, infuriating many who had until then been Corpo loyalists. Riots and rebellions break out across the country, with many realizing the Corpos have misled them.
General Emmanuel Coon, one of Haik's senior officers, defects to the opposition with a large portion of his army, giving strength to the resistance movement. Although Haik remains in control of much of the country, a civil war soon breaks out as the resistance tries to consolidate its grasp on the Midwest. As the conflict begins, Doremus works as an agent for the New Underground in Corpo-occupied portions of southern Minnesota; the final words of the novel are that "a Doremus Jessup can never die."
Reception
Reviewers at the time, and historians and literary critics ever since, have emphasized the resemblance to Louisiana politician Huey Long, who used strong-arm political tactics and who was building a nationwide "Share Our Wealth" organization in preparing to run for president in the 1936 election. Long was assassinated in 1935 just prior to the novel's publication. The inspiration for Windrip backer Bishop Prang was renowned radio priest Charles Coughlin, who in real life conspired with Long to oust Roosevelt in the 1936 U.S. presidential election.
According to Boulard (1998), "the most chilling and uncanny treatment of Huey by a writer came with Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here." Lewis portrayed a genuine U.S. dictator on the Hitler model. Starting in 1936, the Works Progress Administration, a New Deal agency, performed the stage adaptation across the country; Lewis had the goal of hurting Long's chances in the 1936 election.
Keith Perry argues that the key weakness of the novel is not that he decks out U.S. politicians with sinister European touches, but that he finally conceives of fascism and totalitarianism in terms of traditional U.S. political models rather than seeing them as introducing a new kind of society and a new kind of regime. Windrip is less a Nazi than a con-man-plus-Rotarian, a manipulator who knows how to appeal to people's desperation, but neither he nor his followers are in the grip of the kind of world-transforming ideology like Hitler's Nazism.See also
Adaptations Stage In 1936, Lewis and John C. Moffitt wrote a stage version, also titled It Can't Happen Here, which is still produced. The stage version premiered on October 27, 1936, in 21 U.S. theaters in 17 states simultaneously, in productions sponsored by the Federal Theatre Project.
The Z Collective, a San Francisco theater company, adapted the novel for the stage, producing it both in 1989 and 1992. In 2004, Z Space adapted the Collective's script into a radio drama that was broadcast on the Pacifica radio network on the anniversary of the Federal Theatre Project's original premiere.
A new stage adaptation by Tony Taccone and Bennett S. Cohen premiered at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre in September 2016.
Unfinished film Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) purchased the rights in late 1935 for a reported $200,000 from seeing the galley proofs, with Lucien Hubbard (Wings) as the producer. By early 1936, screenwriter Sidney Howard completed an adaptation, his third of Lewis's novels. J. Walter Ruben was named to direct the film with the cast headed by Lionel Barrymore, Walter Connolly, Virginia Bruce, and Basil Rathbone. Studio head Louis B. Mayer indefinitely postponed production, citing costs, to the publicly announced pleasure of the Nazi regime in Germany. Lewis and Howard countered that financial reason with information pointing to Berlin's and Rome's influence on movies. Will H. Hays, responsible for the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Code, had notified Mayer of potential problems in the German market. Joseph Breen, head of the Production Code Administration department under Hays, thought the script was too "anti-fascist" and "so filled with dangerous material".David Mikies "Hollywood’s Creepy Love Affair With Adolf Hitler, in Explosive New Detail", Tablet, June 10, 2013
In December 1938, Charlie Chaplin announced his next movie would satirize Hitler (The Great Dictator). MGM's Hubbard "dusted off the script" in January, but the "idea of a dictator ruling America" had now been discussed in public for years. Hubbard rewrote a new climax, "showing a dictatorship in Washington and showing it being kicked out by disgruntled Americans as soon as they realized what had happened." The film was placed back on the production schedule for the third time with shooting starting in June and Lewis Stone playing Doremus Jessup. By July 1939, MGM "admitted it would not make the movie after all" to some criticism.
Television The 1968 television movie Shadow on the Land, which also went by the title United States: It Can't Happen Here, was produced by Screen Gems as a backdoor pilot for a series. The TV movie, a thriller which takes place following the fascist takeover, is often cited as an adaptation of Lewis's novel but does not credit the novel.