Page "Gertrude Stein" Paragraph 60

Stein was politically conservative, though the nature of her opinions is debated.

According to Janet Malcolm's Two Lives: Gertrude and Alice, Stein was a lifelong Republican and vocal critic of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the New Deal.

She publicly endorsed General Francisco Franco during the Spanish Civil War and admired Vichy leader Marshal Philippe Pétain, translating some of the latter's speeches into English.

These unpublished translations included a favorable introduction in which she compared him to George Washington.

Some have argued for a more nuanced view of Stein's collaborationist activity, arguing that it was rooted in her wartime predicament and status as a Jew in Nazi-occupied France.

Prior to World War II she remarked in an interview with The New York Times Magazine that Adolf Hitler should be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

" I say that Hitler ought to have the peace prize, because he is removing all the elements of contest and of struggle from Germany.

By driving out the Jews and the democratic and Left element, he is driving out everything that conduces to activity.

That means peace ... By suppressing Jews ... he was ending struggle in Germany " ( The New York Times Magazine, May 6, 1934 ).

Stein used clear irony in this statement, as she herself was a Jew and opposed the " peace " promised by Hitler.

As Stein explains later in the same interview: " Building a Chinese wall is always bad.

Protection, paternalism and suppression of natural activity and competition lead to dullness and stagnation.

It is true in politics, in literature, in art.

Everything in life needs constant stimulation.

It needs activity, new blood.

" Similarly, Stein commented at 1938 on Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin and Leon Trotsky: " There is too much fathering going on just now and there is no doubt about it fathers are depressing.