Propaganda among other sorts of techniques are used in three ostensibly opposed forms of governance to achieve similar goals. Bernays equated what propaganda is to a democratic society to what force is to a dictatorship. Wolfgang Schivelbusch's Three New Deals and John Garraty's New Deal, National Socialism, and The Great Depression discusses America under president Franklin D. Roosevelt, fascist Germany under Adolf Hitler, and Italy under Benito Mussolini. Schivelbusch examines the rise of three separate political systems, all with different goals, that have some unexpected yet undeniable similarities. He correlates the political and social reactions of the three regimes to the economic crisis of the 1930s. And compares the manner in which these leaders used grand public works, propaganda, and the style of leadership they employed. Garraty argues that Nazi and New Deal anti depression policies bear striking similarities, and because the systems were perceived to be so fundamentally different his comparison is expository of how people handled the crisis. He accomplished this by focusing on the policies and their effects not on the motives of the policy makers. Garraty suggested similarities between the two systems were: having a strong leader, an ideology stressing the nation, the people, the land, the state control of economic and social affairs, and the quality and quantity of government propaganda. John Dewey's The Public and Its Problems is geared towards major questions about political philosophy. He contends that until the Great Society is converted into a Great Community the public will remain a formless and an incoherent body of citizens. In Public and its Problems he states "Our Babel is not one of tongues but of signs and symbols without which shared experience is impossible". His discussion of propaganda and symbols is based on the idea of democracy in the United States.
