The
America First Committee
America First Committee (AFC) was the foremost United States
non-interventionist pressure group against the American entry into
World War II. Started on September 4, 1940, it was dissolved on
December 10, 1941, three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor had
brought the war to America. Membership peaked at 800,000 paying
members in 450 chapters. It was one of the largest anti-war
organizations in American history.[1][2]
Contents
1 Membership
2 Issues
3 See also
4 Footnotes
5 Bibliography
5.1 Historiography
5.2 Primary sources
6 External links
Membership[edit]
The AFC was established on September 4, 1940, by Yale Law School
student
R. Douglas Stuart, Jr.
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
Peace Corps director Sargent Shriver, and future
U.S. Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart.[3] At its peak, America
First claimed 800,000 dues-paying members in 450 chapters, located
mostly in a 300-mile radius of Chicago.[1]
It claimed 135,000 members in 60 chapters in Illinois, its strongest
state.[4] 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
Robert E. Wood of Sears-Roebuck, publisher
Joseph M. Patterson
Joseph M. Patterson (New
York Daily News) and his cousin, publisher Robert R. McCormick
(
Chicago
Chicago Tribune).[5]
The AFC was never able to get funding for its own public opinion poll.
The New York chapter received slightly more than $190,000, most of it
from its 47,000 contributors. Since it 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.[6]
Serious organizing of the
America First Committee
America First Committee took place in
Chicago
Chicago not long after the September 1940 establishment.
Chicago
Chicago was
to remain the national headquarters of the committee. To preside over
their committee, America First chose General Robert E. Wood, the
61-year-old chairman of
Sears, Roebuck and Co.
Sears, Roebuck and Co. Wood remained at the
head of the committee until it was disbanded in the days after the
attack on Pearl Harbor.[citation needed]
The
America First Committee
America First Committee had its share of prominent businessmen as
well as the sympathies of political figures including Democratic
Senators
Burton K. Wheeler
Burton K. Wheeler of Montana and
David I. Walsh of
Massachusetts, Republican Senator
Gerald P. Nye
Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota, with
its most prominent spokesman being aviator Charles A. Lindbergh. Other
celebrities supporting America First were actress
Lillian Gish
Lillian Gish and
architect Frank Lloyd Wright.[7]
Two men who would later become presidents,
John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy and Gerald
Ford, supported and contributed to the organization. When he donated
$100 to the AFC, Kennedy attached a note which read simply: "What you
are doing is vital."[8] Ford was one of the first members of the AFC
when a chapter formed at Yale University.[9] Additionally, Potter
Stewart, a future Supreme Court justice served on the original
committee of the AFC.[10]
Issues[edit]
When the war began in September 1939, most Americans, including
politicians, demanded neutrality regarding Europe.[11] 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.[12]
The
America First Committee
America First Committee launched a petition aimed at enforcing the
1939 Neutrality Act and forcing President
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt to
keep his pledge to keep America out of the war. They 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
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
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
Charles Lindbergh speaking at an AFC rally
Charles Lindbergh
Charles Lindbergh was admired in Germany and 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
United States Army, warning them that the U.S.
had fallen behind and that it must urgently build up its aviation.[13]
He had feuded with the Roosevelt administration for years. His first
radio speech was broadcast on September 15, 1939, on all three of the
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
Peace and Preparedness Mass Meeting", Lindbergh
criticized those movements which he perceived were leading America
into the war. He proclaimed that the
United States
United States was in a position
that made it virtually impregnable. He claimed that the
interventionists and the British who called for "the defense of
England" really meant "the defeat of Germany".[14][15]
Nothing did more to escalate the tensions than the speech which
Lindbergh delivered to a rally in
Des Moines, Iowa
Des Moines, Iowa on September 11,
1941. In that speech, 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. He said in part:
It is not difficult to understand why
Jewish
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
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
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
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.[16]
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
Creator: Theodor Seuss Geisel WWII Era Political Cartoon
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, AFC canceled a rally with Lindbergh
at
Boston Garden
Boston Garden "in view of recent critical developments",[17] and
the organization's leaders announced their support of the war effort.
Lindbergh said:[18]
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. In the statement which they released to the press was
the following:
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.[19]
Communists were antiwar until June 1941 and they tried to infiltrate
or take over America First.[20] 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).[21] Nazis also tried to
use the committee: at the trial of the aviator and orator Laura
Ingalls,[22] the prosecution revealed that her handler, Ulrich
Freiherr
.svg/240px-Princely_hat_(shaded).svg.png)
Freiherr von Gienanth, a German diplomat, had encouraged her to
participate in committee activities.
Conservative commentator
Pat Buchanan
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."[23]
See also[edit]
Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies
Footnotes[edit]
^ a b Wayne S. Cole, America First: The Battle against Intervention,
1940-41 (1953)
^ Bill Kauffman, Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar
Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism (2008)
^ 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.
^ Schneider p 198
^ Cole, Wayne S. (1953). America First: The Battle Against
Intervention. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. p. 15.
^ Cole 1953, 25-33; Schneider 201-2
^ Kevin Starr (2003). Embattled Dreams: California in War and Peace,
1940-1950. Oxford UP. p. 6.
^ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/still-america-first/
^ http://theweek.com/articles/621645/defense-america-first
^
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/mar/05/america-first-was-not-a-pro-nazi-organisation
^ Leroy N. Rieselbach (1966). The Roots of Isolationism: congressional
voting and presidential leadership in foreign policy. Bobbs-Merrill.
p. 13.
^ James Gilbert Ryan; Leonard C. Schlup (2006). Historical Dictionary
of the 1940s. M.E. Sharpe. p. 415.
^ James Duffy (2010). Lindbergh vs. Roosevelt: The Rivalry That
Divided America. Regnery. pp. 76–77.
^ Louis Pizzitola (2002). Hearst Over Hollywood: Power, Passion, and
Propaganda in the Movies. Columbia UP. p. 401.
^ Wayne S. Cole (1974).
Charles A. Lindbergh
Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle Against
American Intervention in World War II. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
p. 9.
^ Cole 1953, p. 144
^ "No America First Rally". The New York Times. Associated Press.
1941-12-09. p. 40.
^ "Isolationist Groups Back Roosevelt". The New York Times.
1941-12-09. p. 44.
^ "America First Group to Quit". The Telegraph-Herald. Dubuque, Iowa.
United Press International. 1941-12-12. p. 13. Retrieved November
16, 2011.
^ Selig Adler (1957). The isolationist impulse: its twentieth-century
reaction. pp. 269–70, 274.
^ Kahn, A. E., and M. Sayers. The Great Conspiracy: The Secret War
Against Soviet Russia. 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.
^ New York Times, December 18, 1941, "Laura Ingalls Held as Reich
Agent: Flier Says She Was Anti-Nazi Spy".
^
Pat Buchanan
Pat Buchanan (October 13, 2004). "The Resurrection of 'America
First!'". The American Cause. Retrieved 2008-02-03
Bibliography[edit]
Berg, A. Scott Lindbergh (1999) pp 384–432
Cole, Wayne S.
Charles A. Lindbergh
Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle against American
Intervention in
World War II
World War II (1974)
Cole, Wayne S. America First: The Battle against Intervention, 1940-41
(1953)
Doenecke, Justus D. The Battle Against Intervention, 1939-1941 (1997),
includes short narrative and primary documents.
Doenecke, Justus D., ed. In Danger Undaunted: The Anti-Interventionist
Movement of 1940-1941 as revealed in the Papers of the America First
Committee (1990)
Doenecke, Justus D. Storm on the Horizon: The Challenge to American
Intervention, 1939-1941 (2000).
Doenecke, Justus D. "American Isolationism, 1939-1941" Journal of
Libertarian Studies, Summer/Fall 1982, 6(3), pp. 201–216.
online version
Doenecke, Justus D. "Anti-Interventionism of Herbert Hoover," Journal
of Libertarian Studies, Summer 1987, 8(2), pp. 311–340. online
version
Doenecke, Justus D., ed. In Danger Undaunted: The Anti-Interventionist
Movement of 1940-1941 as Revealed in the Papers of the America First
Committee (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 1990).
Goodman, David, "Loving and Hating Britain: Rereading the Isolationist
Debate in the USA," in Britishness Abroad: Transnational Movements and
Imperial Cultures, ed. Kate Darian-Smith, Patricia Grimshaw, and
Stuart Macintyre, pp 187–204. (Carlton: Melbourne University Press,
2007) ISBN 978-0-522-85392-6
Gordon, David. America First: the Anti-War Movement, Charles Lindbergh
and the Second World War, 1940-1941; presentation to The New York
Military Affairs Symposium in 2003
Jonas, Manfred.
Isolationism in America, 1935-1941 (1966).
Gleason, S. Everett, and William L. Langer; The Undeclared War,
1940-1941 (1953). semi-official government history
Kauffman, Bill, America First!: Its History, Culture, and Politics
(1995) ISBN 0-87975-956-9
Parmet, Herbert S., and Marie B. Hecht; Never Again: A President Runs
for a Third Term 1968.
Schneider, James C. Should America Go to War? The Debate over Foreign
Policy in Chicago, 1939-1941 (1989)
Historiography[edit]
Doenecke, Justus D. "Literature of Isolationism, 1972–1983: A
Bibliographic Guide" Journal of Libertarian Studies, Spring 1983,
7(1), pp. 157–184. online version
Doenecke, Justus D. "Explaining the Antiwar Movement, 1939–1941: The
Next Assignment" Journal of Libertarian Studies, Winter 1986, 8(1),
pp. 139–162. online version
Hogan, Michael J., ed. (2000). Paths to Power: The Historiography of
American Foreign Relations to 1941. Cambridge University Press.
p. 258.
Primary sources[edit]
America First Committee
America First Committee (1990). In Danger Undaunted: The
Anti-Interventionist Movement of 1940-1941 As Revealed in the Papers
of the America First Committee. Hoover Press.
Doenecke, Justus D. The Battle Against Intervention, 1939-1941 (1997),
includes short narrative and primary documents.
External links[edit]
America First Committee
America First Committee Records, 1940-1942 at the Hoover Institution
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