Two Depression-battered nations confronted destiny in 1932, going to the polls in their own way to anoint new leaders, to rescue their people from starvation and hopelessness. America would elect a Congress and a president--ebullient aristocrat Franklin Roosevelt or tarnished Wonder Boy Herbert Hoover. Decadent, divided Weimar Germany faced two rounds of bloody Reichstag elections and two presidential contests--doddering reactionary Paul von Hindenburg against rising radical hate-monger Adolf Hitler. The outcome seemed foreordained--unstoppable forces advancing upon crumbled, disoriented societies. A merciless Great Depression brought greater--perhaps hopeful, perhaps deadly--transformation: FDR's New Deal and Hitler's Third Reich. But neither outcome was inevitable.