These incriminating facts are known to many progressive scholars. But after World War II, as this group came increasingly to dominate the academy--a dominance that was fully consolidated by the late 1960s--the progressives recognized how crushing it would be if Americans knew about the actual record of progressivism and the Democratic Party. What if people, especially young people, knew the links between revered progressive figures like Wilson, FDR, and JFK on the one hand, and the hated Mussolini and Hitler on the other? Such knowledge would not merely topple progressive heroes from their pedestal. Basically it would be the end of progressivism and the Democratic Party.