History Literature / ItCantHappenHere

Based in part on the experiences of Lewis's wife, Dorothy Thompson, a journalist who was expelled from UsefulNotes/NaziGermany for writing articles critical of UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler. Lewis used Thompson's research and personal experiences in Germany and UsefulNotes/FascistItaly to imagine how America might become a fascist state. Unfortunately, he [[CompositeCharacter had many American figures]] to draw upon as well, from UsefulNotes/HueyLong, who planned to challenge UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt's reelection on his "Share Our Wealth" platform, to fringe figures like Gerald Winrod,[[note]]a Kansas evangelist whose antisemitism and admiration for Hitler earned him the nickname "the Jayhawk Nazi"[[/note]] Gerald L.K. Smith,[[note]]an evangelist who went from Long's chief adviser to, after Long's death, an antisemitic demagogue[[/note]] and William Dudley Pelley.[[note]]the leader of the paramilitary "Silver Legion of America," better-known as the Silver Shirts[[/note]] The book was a best-seller due to its unnerving contemporary resonance, and remains one of Lewis's best-known works.

Based in part on the experiences of Lewis's wife, Dorothy Thompson, a journalist who was expelled from UsefulNotes/NaziGermany for writing articles critical of UsefulNotes/AdolfHitler. Lewis used Thompson's research and personal experiences in Germany and UsefulNotes/FascistItaly to imagine how America might become a fascist state. Unfortunately, he [[CompositeCharacter had many American figures]] to draw upon as well, from UsefulNotes/HueyLong, who planned to challenge UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt's reelection on his "Share Our Wealth" platform, to fringe figures like Gerald Winrod,[[note]]a Kansas evangelist whose antisemitism and admiration for Hitler earned him the nickname "the Jayhawk Nazi"[[/note]] Gerald L.K. Smith [[note]]an evangelist who went from Long's chief adviser to, after Long's death, an antisemitic demagogue[[/note]] and William Dudley Pelley[[note]]leader of the paramilitary "Silver Legion of America," better-known as the Silver Shirts[[/note]]. The book was a best-seller due to its unnerving contemporary resonance, and remains one of Lewis's best-known works.

In the novel, the United States succumbs to a totalitarian government headed by President Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, a charismatic politician who wins over the voters through populism and empty promises. With his cadre of advisors and brutal private militia of Minute Men (M.M.s), Windrip oversees a new era of poverty, oppression, and fear; women and minorities are stripped of their rights, dissent is outlawed, and those who displease the government are imprisoned in concentration camps or killed.

Meanwhile, a UsefulNotes/{{Vermont}} newspaper publisher named Doremus Jessup watches these developments with horror. Doremus is torn between his own safety and the safety of his family, and his moral responsibility to speak out against the regime. After one of Windrip's advisors murders two innocent men in a drunken rage, Doremus is galvanized into using his voice.

Meanwhile, a UsefulNotes/{{Vermont}} newspaper publisher named Doremus Jessup watches these developments in horror. Doremus is torn between his own safety and the safety of his family, and his moral responsibility to speak out against the regime. After one of Windrip's advisors murders two innocent men in a drunken rage, Doremus is galvanized into using his voice.

[[quoteright:303:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/it_cant_happen_here_sinclair_lewis.png]]
[[caption-width-right:303:''[[Music/FrankSinatra If it could happen]] [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany there]]\\

In the novel, the United States succumbs to a totalitarian government headed by Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, a charismatic politician who wins over the voters through populism and empty promises. With his cadre of advisors and a brutal militia of Minute Men (M.M.s), Windrip oversees a new era of poverty, oppression, and fear. Women and minorities are stripped of their rights, dissent is outlawed, and those who displease the government are imprisoned in concentration camps or killed.

[[quoteright:305:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/it_cant_happen_here_sinclair_lewis.png]]
[[caption-width-right:305:''[[Music/FrankSinatra If it could happen]] [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany there]]\\

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/it_cant_happen_here_sinclair_lewis.png]]
[[caption-width-right:300:''[[Music/FrankSinatra If it could happen]] [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany there]]\\

Meanwhile, a Vermont newspaper publisher named Doremus Jessup watches these developments in horror. Doremus is torn between his own safety and the safety of his family, and his moral responsibility to speak out against the regime. After one of Windrip's advisors murders two innocent men in a drunken rage, Doremus is galvanized into using his voice.

* AlternateHistory: An unusual example. When it was written, in 1935, it was speculative fiction [[NextSundayAD set in the near future]]. Decades later, it reads very much like an alternate history, speculating what would have happened if a facist dictatorship took power in the US around the same time the Nazis came to power in Germany.

* AlternateHistory: Clearly. Rather than Buzz Windrip being one of a cast of universally fictional politicians designed as counterparts to real-life figures, he and his crew of advisors are inserted directly into real history, succeeding not some invented President but Franklin Roosevelt himself. Though the political ramifications of his election are not explored in any detail outside America, it is at one point mentioned that Walter Elliot, a rather obscure interwar politician, has become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, showing that Windrip's ascendance has indeed caused changes around the world.

* ColdBloodedTorture: The M.M.s delight in torturing detainees at the concentration camps. A favorite torture at Trianon is whipping prisoners and force-feeding them castor oil.

* RealityEnsues: Even after Doremus is briefly arrested for writing an anti-government editorial, things aren't too bad for Jessup and his family. He actually has a lot of fun writing propaganda for the resistance. Then Jessup is arrested and thrown in a concentration camp next to a bunch of his friends and family members and things get very real and very harsh.

* HistoricalDomainCharacter: Several real-life public figures of the '30s (including UsefulNotes/FranklinDRoosevelt, UsefulNotes/HueyLong, and Father Charles Coughlin) are mentioned in passing.

* DeadlyDecadentCourt: Windrip's administration. His closest advisors are constantly vying for power, and coups abound by the end of the novel. They also aren't slouches in the "decadent" department; Macgoblin once hosts meetings with business leaders in a Roman-era ship with nude hostesses, while Sarason hosts orgies with handsome young men [[spoiler: after he exiles Windrip]].

** Which is rather interesting, when you consider that characters like Windrip and Bishop Prang are clearly intended as [[NoCelebritiesWereHarmed stand-ins]] for people like Long and Coughlin.

* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: Windrip's regime is ''extremely racist''. Huey Long, for all his faults, and while not exactly egalitarian, was still generally better than most of his rivals in Louisiana, and his programs did help the black Louisianans. He also hated TheKlan[[note]]The feeling was mutual. The head of the KKK actually threatened to run for governor of Louisiana just to oppose him[[/note]], calling its leader at the time an "Imperial Bastard"[[note]]At the time, the head of the KKK was titled "Imperial Wizard". Yes, really[[/note]] and a son of a bitch[[note]]Then clarifying that, when he called him that, he wasn't being profane, since he was simply referring to the circumstances of his birth[[/note]]. Windrip's overt bigotry probably owes less to Long than to the fascist leader [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Dudley_Pelley William Dudley Pelley]], a novelist-turned-demagogue who organized a right wing paramilitary group called the Silver Shirts in the '30s and '40s.
** A number of historical characters who dedicated themselves to fighting Fascism during WWII are depicted as happily cooperating with the Corpo regime.

* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: Windrip's regime is ''extremely racist''. Huey Long, for all his faults, and while not exactly egalitarian, was still generally better than most of his rivals in Louisiana, and his programs did help the black Louisianans. He also hated TheKlan[[note]]The feeling was mutual. The head of the KKK actually threatened to run for governor of Louisiana just to oppose him[[/note]], calling its leader at the time an "Imperial Bastard"[[note]]At the time, the head of the KKK was titled "Imperial Wizard". Yes, really[[/note]] and a son of a bitch[[note]]Then clarifying that, when he called him that, he wasn't being profane, since he was simply referring to the circumstances of his birth[[/note]].

* HistoricalHeroUpgrade: Bishop Prang compared to Father Coughlin. Where Prang ends up objecting to the brutality of the Windrip regime, Coughlin was viciously anti-Semitic and a fascist, to the point that a large number of American bishops, the Apostolic Nunciature to the United States, and the Vatican itself wanted his radio show shut down, with it only remaining on air so long was because only Coughlin's direct superior had the authority to do so, and he was one of the few bishops who supported him.[[note]]It got so bad that the Federal government created new laws about broadcasting permits just to get him off the air, and when he found a way around that, the National Association of Broadcasters put limitations on the sale of airtime to 'spokesmen of controversial public issues' ''specifically to get rid of him''. Even then, he still spread his ideas through his magazine, to the point that the Attorney General recommended that the Postmaster General revoke his second-class mailing privilege, which the Postmaster actually planned to do, even scheduling a hearing. The only reason he didn't is because Edward Aloysius Mooney became the new bishop of Detroit and therefore Coughlin's new superior, and the Attorney General asked a friend of Mooney's to ask him to get Coughlin to shut up, which he did, threatening to defrock Coughlin[[/note]]
* HistoricalVillainUpgrade: Windrip's regime is ''extremely racist''. Huey Long, for all his faults, and while not exactly egalitarian, was still generally better than most of his rivals in Louisiana, and his programs did help the black Louisianans. He also hated TheKlan[[note]]The feeling was mutual. The head of the KKK actually threatened to run for governor of Louisiana just to oppose him[[/note]], calling it's leader at the time an "Imperial Bastard"[[note]]At the time, the head of the KKK was titled "Imperial Wizard". Yes, really[[/note]] and a son of a bitch[[note]]Then clarifying that, when he called him that, he wasn't being profane, since he was simply referring to the circumstances of his birth[[/note]].
** A number of historical characters dedicated themselves to fighting Fascism during WWII are depicted as happily cooperating with the Corpo regime.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: Ominous weather foreshadows the arrival of M.M.s at the Jessop home, who proceed to vandalize the house, brutalize Doremus, and eventually haul Doremus away to Trianon.

* LaResistance: Lorinda, Doremus, and several members of the Jessop household disseminate forbidden news that they receive from Canada. At the end of the novel, a full-blown rebellion against the Haik regime has erupted across the country.

* BlackSheep: What both Doremus and his son Philip see the other as due to their opposing views.

* HangingSeparately: The different political factions fail to combine to prevent Windrip's election. The Communists refuse to form a common front with the other LaResistance factions even as the full scope of Corpo tyranny is revealed.

** Christmas under Corpoism is, unsurprisingly, a decidedly non-joyful affair for the Jessup family.
-->To make the holiday as good an imitation of mirth as possible, they were very noisy, but their holly, their tinsel stars on a tall pine tree, their family devotion in a serene old house in a little town, was no different at heart from despairing drunkenness in the city night. Doremus reflected that it might have been just as well for all of them to get drunk and let themselves go, elbows on slopped café tables, as to toil at this pretense of domestic bliss. He now had another thing for which to hate the Corpos—for stealing the secure affection of Christmas.

* UndergroundRailroad: How many refugees flee to Canada including Dorms.

-->'''Windrip:''' "Lee! Do you remember the time when your old mother was so sick, and I gave you my last cent and loaned you my flivver so you could go see her, and I hitch-hiked to my next meeting? Lee!"
-->'''Sarason:''' "Hell. I suppose so."