You, Sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. That indeed answered everything I wanted to know, and more.
To add further, based on points Long made, I would be of the opinion that Long held very particular issues with the Treaty of Versailles. Most who disliked the Treaty, did so specifically because it treated Germany poorly. Long, I am not sure cared much for this (though he may have held some sympathy for the German public). His associate, S.J. Harper (whom Long called, a worker for the common folk), a senator in the Louisiana Assembly, published a series of articles and sedition regarding the First World War. He claimed (and Long cosigned, as at the time, Long was the new entry into the left populist movement emerging in Louisiana, a revival of old socialist aspirations) that the war represented a war an attempt by the corporate elites and war profiteers to subjugate and enslave the workers and farmers of the country. German guilt was not discussed nor touched upon, only that the rampant influence of the corporate interest and its web of connection to a British victory, effectively enslaved the American worker to the whims and goals of the capitalist elites whose goal and aspiration was the victory of the British in the war.
As such, the focus was upon the British empire and its role as a vector for coordinating and acting as a lightning rod for American capital interest. Then after this as a conclusion, the capital interest in the US, intends to then, using the war, clamp down upon resistance to the existing economic order. That is, to crush calls for economic redistribution, which were beocming mainstream once again after the failure in the eyes of Long and others of Theodore Roosevelt and his trust busting or the rise of the southern president Woodrow Wilson. Figures like William Jennings Bryan were called into question as traitors and enemies of the people, as was Theodore Roosevelt and certainly Woodrow Wilson, as the left populist upsurge in rural northern Louisiana picked up upon extreme unease and pressure gathered from terrible US management of the boll weevil situation and of the drop of farmers standard of living during the regime of Woodrow Wilson.
As their life was becoming less and less financially feasible, working class representatives like Harper, saw the political establishment make calls for prohibition, war in Europe, general moral reformism (which was targeted at the working poor) and a general trend of anti-labor legislation across the South. Some spoke of reformism, but this was quickly a losing notion in the US south in reality, despite reform being popular in the North among say governor Al Smith or Robert La Follette. In the South however, a more violent and radical outlook of the situation took shape which understood all policy through the lens of economic class and of enforcing dominance of one class over another.
In nearby Mississippi, the Southern elites and the Redeemers had managed to stamp down the calls for economic redistribution and of a resumption of war (such as against the US; though many of the working poor did not support secession, once the war was on, they were the maintainers of the Southern war effort, molding their war with a fight against capital interest) first during Reconstruction and then after 1897. For some time the populist movement was extirpated and the hands of capital (in the eyes of Long) came to grasp the farmers and workers of the South. However, in Mississippi, Jame Vardaman ascended to power and challenged the existing Southern elite in 1904. Mississippi was the last state to possess segregation policies from the state, due to the dominance of the local old aristocratic influence in the state which managed to as landlords, monopolize the freedmen vote as its cudgel against opposing politicians.
Vardaman playing off of class issues and deep poverty and loss of soil fertility in the area, rallied the poor white farmers into a group fixed upon the local aristocratic elites in the state. Vardaman argued that the freedmen population were the servants of the elites and the bastions of corporate slavery of the poor. This ushered in a age of mass lynchings, political violence and a destruction of all voting rights in the state by 1908 for the black population and the rise of a distinctly racially focused populist movement. It sought to beat down the establishment by pointing its grievances towards the freedmen. This move by Vardaman however, had come with an alliance to the middle class KKK and their stances on prohibition, war, economy and so forth. Thus, the rhetoric of Vardaman became totally focused upon race and destroying the local aristocracy whom he saw as lords of former slaves and a bastion of appeasement to northern capital. This did not translate to any pro-worker policy however and the state moved backwards in this respect and come WWI, when Vardaman resisted calls for war, his KKK allies destroyed his political career in alliance with President Wilson.
Long's movement emerged at the same time and avoided all of the mistakes of Vardaman. Focusing not upon race and entirely upon the issue of capitalism in the US and advocating against it, not through reform, but through a mass mobilization of the rural poor into a voting bloc to hammer in an authoritarian government in Louisiana that would centralize the government and propose mass economic redistribution. It would use slander, violence, deception, and all the levers of governmental power in order to achieve these goals and it would perform these while destroying all political opposition to it. That opposition being anyone to the right of Long, who did not submit and move left.
Considering the group we are dealing with, we begin to understand the issues Long held with the Treaty of Versailles. It was to him, a treaty that should never have been signed, which he mentioned several times and it was a treaty intended to force the American worker further into slavery under American capital interests. His entire foreign policy would fixate upon destroying this motive and reconstituting the US diplomatic wing as a force to resist and quell the flight of capital he intends to confiscate and to shield the US from British diplomatic and capital interest.
Long though is unlikely to agree to the proposition of tariffs. From my understanding, Long was totally opposed to the normal tariffs en vogue in the US, especially Republic tariffs. His view was that the price of farming goods was not important. In terms of policy, he took it much further in a radical stance from the idea of rising agricultural prices. In 1929-1930, he advocated a 'grand union' of the farmers in the South. This union in brief entailed:
-No destruction of surplus
-No acquiescence to the exchanges of agriculture (the purchasers and land owners)
-The construction of granaries across the South which would be public property.
-A board of redistribution would be created to oversee the the situation
-Farmers who grew surpluses or produced goods in excess of their family would take their items to state constructed granaries or storage.
-The board of redistribution would then allocate goods back to the people without charge.
-Those who grew rice, receive cotton to make cloths, those who grew cotton receive rice for food and so forth.
-The matter would occur without any profit motive and this would not be sold or bought.
This is the famous collectivization of the agricultural market, which became Long's most vaunted and his greatest will in political life. The policy was rejected by his contemporaries in Texas and in nearby southern states, but taken up as the golden standard by the STFU (the Southern Tenant Farmers Union, the largest communist farmers league in the US) and by many other leagues of farming labor. Long took this as a long term policy too, as his writing suggests and his speeches indicate, it was not a relief bill but a reform. This policy is in stark contrast with the New Deal organization, the AAA. The AAA was most known for its maintenance of a profit based agricultural system and of a destruction of surplus so as to artificially increase prices. This policy above all others enraged Long, as he took himself into rages over the radio railing against the AAA for destroying the goods necessary to feed, cloth and rebuild the poor across America. This policy, we might say to be one of Long's hallmark five goals as a politician:
1. Collectivization of the agricultural market and redistribution of the proceeds as free commodities.
2. Nationalization of major industries related to resources, infrastructure and certain monopolies.
3. Creation of mass state controlled infrastructure across the US in the form of granaries, railways, roads, etc.. This is 'steady employment' for the workers.
4. The creation of large scale state controlled public services such as state controlled healthcare, schooling and so forth.
5. The destruction of the American corporate elite and their imperialist tentacles, which Long believed existed in the US and abroad. (the south being its first victim)
This of course was performed in Louisiana as part of his state policies, and required a planned economy under Long, which he seems to have intended to fully realize. FDR's policies in comparison, appear to be right wing, indeed. We thus can at least glean or gather lightly, that the process of Depression reaction from Long would be a wholly different beast than under FDR.
To jump back to Germany, and its situation for a moment.... Long was known to take very meticulous notes through his operatives in Washington, especially paying attention to statistics political trends. Long apparently, according to other senators in the Congress, paid journalists and groups of investigators to read books, statistics and to also comb Washington for new information, especially on new economic theories, policies and statistics both in Europe and in the US. This led to Long often being very well informed in comparison to his opponents, aside for FDR. This may be why Long was so well informed regarding the Nazi party upon its rise 1931-1932. Long mentioned the religious nature in particular he felt of the Nazi movement, stating his deep distaste for the Nazi party platform before such things were readily known in the US. Due to his dislike of the Nazi party and his ambivalence to the aspects to the notions of German resistance movements, we may assume that Long cared little for that type of plight at least not enormously. His main and primary worry was ensuring economic redistribution in the US and of destroying the tentacles of US capital-imperialism, which entailed a war internally and if a war is fought abroad, it is against the British empire, whom Long often took to task as enemies. This as I mention and I stress again, had nothing to do with solidarity with Germany.
Long however did show sympathy to the USSR... In 1929, 1930, 1931, 1933 and then in 1935, said to the effect at various occasions: 'if my plan is not implemented peacefully, it will be implemented by war as it was in Russia!' This goes much the same as the words of Milo Reno and the Workers Holiday movement, which ordered the rich to eat gold and that if it was done in Russia, let it be done here. For Long, such rhetoric was common and seemed to belie his political strategy. It nevertheless, framed the struggle for Bolshevism in Russia as the same struggle occurring in the US and begins to reveal perhaps the true goals, intentions and wishes of Long (though that is mostly conjecture). Norman Thomas, felt that Long was a demagogue of sorts, who wished to use deception to implement a form of socialism rather than through syndicalist or vanguard principles. Some words of Long suggest just this, when he supposedly claimed that 'names are the mother of sectarianism (referring to calling himself a communist), never name yourself... what chance has a socialist candidate have of winning the presidential election in the US of 1932 or 1936?... what does it matter what they call me, all that matters i power; once we gain power, we can implement what we please (refusing to deny that his policies in its heart are different from those pursued by Bolshevism).'
Anyway, do forgive the long message, I ended up going on a tangent. Hope this clear up your question and those of the other poster on some aspects of the New Deal legislation.