America First Committee

The America First Committee (AFC) was the foremost United States isolationist pressure group against American entry into World War II.[1][2] Launched on September 4, 1940, the committee principally supported isolationism for its own sake, but many communists made use of the AFC as well as antisemitic and pro-fascist speakers who became its leaders.[3][4][5] Membership peaked at 800,000 paying members in 450 chapters, making the AFC one of the largest antiwar organizations in the history of the United States.[6][7] The committee was dissolved on December 10, 1941, three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war.

For similar terms, see America First.
America First Committee
AbbreviationAFC
FormationSeptember 4, 1940 (1940-09-04)
FounderRobert D. Stuart Jr.
Founded atYale University, New Haven, Connecticut, U.S.
DissolvedDecember 10, 1941 (1941-12-10)
TypeNon-partisan pressure group
PurposeNon-interventionism
HeadquartersChicago, Illinois, U.S.
Membership (1941)
800,000
Chairman
Robert E. Wood
Spokesperson
Charles Lindbergh
Key people
Subsidiaries450 chapters
Revenue (1940)
$370,000

Membership
Students at the University of California (Berkeley) participate in a one-day peace strike opposing U.S. entrance into World War II, April 19, 1940

The AFC was established on September 4, 1940 by Yale Law School student R. Douglas Stuart, Jr. (son of R. Douglas Stuart, co-founder of Quaker Oats), along with other students including future president Gerald Ford, future Peace Corps director Sargent Shriver, and future U.S. Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart.[8] At its peak, America First claimed 800,000 dues-paying members in 450 chapters, located mostly in a 300-mile radius of Chicago,[6] and 135,000 members in 60 chapters throughout Illinois, its strongest state.[9]

Fundraising drives produced about $370,000 from some 25,000 contributors. Nearly half came from a few millionaires such as William H. Regnery, H. Smith Richardson of the Vick Chemical Company, General Robert E. Wood of Sears-Roebuck, publisher Joseph M. Patterson (New York Daily News) and his cousin, publisher Robert R. McCormick (Chicago Tribune).[10]

The AFC was never able to draw funding for its own public opinion poll. The New York chapter received slightly more than $190,000, most of it coming from its 47,000 contributors. As the AFC never had a national membership form or national dues, and local chapters were quite autonomous, historians point out that the organization's leaders had no idea how many "members" it had.[11]

Serious organization efforts took place in Chicago, the national headquarters of the committee, not long after the AFC's September 1940 establishment. America First chose General Robert E. Wood, the 61-year-old chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Co., to preside over the committee. Wood remained in his post until the AFC was disbanded in the days after the attack on Pearl Harbor.[12]

The America First Committee contained its share of prominent businessmen and attracted the sympathies of political figures including Democratic senators Burton K. Wheeler of Montana and David I. Walsh of Massachusetts, and Republican senator Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota. Its most prominent spokesman was aviator Charles A. Lindbergh. Other celebrities supporting America First were actress Lillian Gish and architect Frank Lloyd Wright.[13]

Two future presidents, John F. Kennedy and Gerald Ford, supported and contributed to the organization. When he donated $100 to the AFC, Kennedy attached a note that read simply: "What you are doing is vital."[14] Ford was one of the first members of the AFC when a chapter formed at Yale University.[15] Potter Stewart, a future Supreme Court justice, served on the original committee of the AFC.[16]

Issues
Flyer for an America First Committee rally in St. Louis, Missouri in April 1941

When the war began in September 1939, most Americans, including politicians, demanded neutrality regarding Europe.[17] Although most Americans supported strong measures against Japan, Europe was the focus of the America First Committee. The public mood was changing, however, especially after the fall of France in the spring of 1940.[18]

The America First Committee launched a petition aimed at enforcing the 1939 Neutrality Act and forcing President Franklin D. Roosevelt to keep his pledge to keep America out of the war. The committee profoundly distrusted Roosevelt and argued that he was lying to the American people.

On the day after Roosevelt's lend-lease bill was submitted to the United States Congress, Wood promised AFC opposition "with all the vigor it can exert." America First staunchly opposed the convoying of ships, the Atlantic Charter, and the placing of economic pressure on Japan. In order to achieve the defeat of lend-lease and the perpetuation of American neutrality, the AFC advocated four basic principles:

  • The United States must build an impregnable defense for America.
  • No foreign power, nor group of powers, can successfully attack a prepared America.
  • American democracy can be preserved only by keeping out of the European war.
  • "Aid short of war" weakens national defense at home and threatens to involve America in war abroad.

Charles Lindbergh was admired in Germany and was allowed to see the buildup of the German air force, the Luftwaffe, in 1937. He was impressed by its strength and secretly reported his findings to the General Staff of the United States Army, warning them that the U.S. had fallen behind and that it must urgently build up its aviation.[19] Lindbergh, who had feuded with the Roosevelt administration for years, delivered his first radio speech on September 15, 1939 through all three major radio networks. He urged listeners to look beyond the speeches and propaganda that they were being fed and instead look at who was writing the speeches and reports, who owned the papers and who influenced the speakers.

On June 20, 1941, Lindbergh spoke to 30,000 people in Los Angeles and billed it as a "Peace and Preparedness Mass Meeting". Lindbergh criticized the movements that he perceived were leading America into the war and proclaimed that the U.S. was in a position that made it virtually impregnable. He also claimed that the interventionists and the British who called for "the defense of England" really meant "the defeat of Germany."[20][21]

Charles Lindbergh speaking at an America First Committee rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana in early October 1941

A speech that Lindbergh delivered to a rally in Des Moines, Iowa on September 11, 1941 may have significantly raised tensions. He identified the forces pulling America into the war as the British, the Roosevelt administration, and American Jews. While he expressed sympathy for the plight of the Jews in Germany, he argued that America's entry into the war would serve them little better:

It is not difficult to understand why Jewish people desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany. The persecution they suffered in Germany would be sufficient to make bitter enemies of any race. No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution the Jewish race suffered in Germany. But no person of honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy, both for us and for them. Instead of agitating for war the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way, for they will be among the first to feel its consequences. Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastation. A few farsighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not. Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government.[22]

Many condemned the speech as antisemitic. Journalist Dorothy Thompson wrote for the New York Herald an opinion that many shared: "I am absolutely certain that Lindbergh is pro-Nazi." Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie criticized the speech as "the most un-American talk made in my time by any person of national reputation."[12]

A Dr. Seuss editorial cartoon from early October 1941 criticizing America First

Communists were antiwar until June 1941, and they tried to infiltrate or take over America First.[23] After Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, they reversed positions and denounced the AFC as a Nazi front (a group infiltrated by German agents).[24] Nazis also tried to use the committee; at the trial of the aviator and orator Laura Ingalls,[25] the prosecution revealed that her handler, German diplomat Ulrich Freiherr von Gienanth, had encouraged her to participate in committee activities.

After Pearl Harbor

After the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, AFC canceled a rally with Lindbergh at Boston Garden "in view of recent critical developments,"[26] and the organization's leaders announced their support of the war effort. Lindbergh gave this rationale:[27]

We have been stepping closer to war for many months. Now it has come and we must meet it as united Americans regardless of our attitude in the past toward the policy our government has followed. Whether or not that policy has been wise, our country has been attacked by force of arms and by force of arms we must retaliate. Our own defenses and our own military position have already been neglected too long. We must now turn every effort to building the greatest and most efficient Army, Navy and Air Force in the world. When American soldiers go to war it must be with the best equipment that modern skill can design and that modern industry can build.

With the formal declaration of war against Japan, the organization chose to disband. On December 11, the committee leaders met and voted for dissolution, the same day upon which Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. In a statement released to the press, the AFC wrote:

Our principles were right. Had they been followed, war could have been avoided. No good purpose can now be served by considering what might have been, had our objectives been attained. We are at war. Today, though there may be many important subsidiary considerations, the primary objective is not difficult to state. It can be completely defined in one word: Victory.[28]

Conservative commentator Pat Buchanan has praised America First and used its name as a slogan. "The achievements of that organization are monumental," writes Buchanan. "By keeping America out of World War II until Hitler attacked Stalin in June 1941, Soviet Russia, not America, bore the brunt of the fighting, bleeding and dying to defeat Nazi Germany."[29]

In his 2004 novel The Plot Against America, writer Philip Roth imagines that Lindbergh defeats Roosevelt in the 1940 presidential elections and signs treaties with Nazi Germany and Japan to restrict the parties from interfering with the others' foreign policies.

See also

References

Notes

  1. "History Lessons: The America First Committee Forms". Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved 2020-04-21.
  2. "America First Committee". u-s-history.com. Retrieved 2020-04-21.
  3. Bennett, Brian (20 January 2017). "'America First,' a phrase with a loaded anti-Semitic and isolationist history". latimes.com. Retrieved 2018-11-23.
  4. Calamur, Krishnadev (2017-01-21). "A Short History of 'America First'". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2018-11-23.
  5. Dunn, Susan (2013-06-04). 1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler-the Election amid the Storm. Yale University Press. p. 66. ISBN 978-0300195132.
  6. Wayne S. Cole, America First: The Battle against Intervention, 1940-41 (1953)
  7. Bill Kauffman, Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism (2008)
  8. Kauffman, Bill; Sarles, Ruth (2003). A story of America First: the men and women who opposed U. S. intervention in World War II. New York: Praeger. p. xvii. ISBN 0-275-97512-6.
  9. Schneider p 198
  10. Cole, Wayne S. (1953). America First: The Battle Against Intervention. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. p. 15.
  11. Cole 1953, 25-33; Schneider 201-2
  12. Solly, Meilan (16 March 2020). "The True History Behind 'The Plot Against America'". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 2020-04-21. The America First Committee officially disbanded three days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
  13. Kevin Starr (2003). Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace, 1940-1950. Oxford UP. p. 6. ISBN 9780195168976.
  14. "Still America First".
  15. "In defense of America First". 2 May 2016.
  16. Letters (5 March 2017). "America First was not a pro-Nazi organisation - Letters". the Guardian.
  17. Leroy N. Rieselbach (1966). The Roots of Isolationism: congressional voting and presidential leadership in foreign policy. Bobbs-Merrill. p. 13.
  18. James Gilbert Ryan; Leonard C. Schlup (2006). Historical Dictionary of the 1940s. M.E. Sharpe. p. 415. ISBN 9780765621078.
  19. James Duffy (2010). Lindbergh vs. Roosevelt: The Rivalry That Divided America. Regnery. pp. 76–77. ISBN 9781596981676.
  20. Louis Pizzitola (2002). Hearst Over Hollywood: Power, Passion, and Propaganda in the Movies. Columbia UP. p. 401. ISBN 9780231116466.
  21. Wayne S. Cole (1974). Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle Against American Intervention in World War II. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p. 9. ISBN 9780151181681.
  22. Cole 1953, p. 144
  23. Selig Adler (1957). The isolationist impulse: its twentieth-century reaction. pp. 269–70, 274. ISBN 9780837178226.
  24. Kahn, A. E., and M. Sayers. The Great Conspiracy: The Secret War Against Soviet Russia Archived 2009-04-12 at the Wayback Machine. 1st ed. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1946, chap. XXIII (American Anti-Comintern), part 5: Lone Eagle, pp. 365-378. Kahn, A.E., and M. Sayers. The Plot against the Peace: A Warning to the Nation!. 1st ed. New York: Dial Press, 1945, chap. X (In the Name of Peace), pp. 187-209.
  25. New York Times, December 18, 1941, "Laura Ingalls Held as Reich Agent: Flier Says She Was Anti-Nazi Spy".
  26. "No America First Rally". The New York Times. Associated Press. 1941-12-09. p. 40.
  27. "Isolationist Groups Back Roosevelt". The New York Times. 1941-12-09. p. 44.
  28. "America First Group to Quit". The Telegraph-Herald. Dubuque, Iowa. United Press International. 1941-12-12. p. 13. Retrieved November 16, 2011.
  29. Pat Buchanan (October 13, 2004). "The Resurrection of 'America First!'". The American Cause. Retrieved 2008-02-03. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

Bibliography

Primary sources
Historiography
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