America First Committee
The America First Committee was an American isolationist pressure group against the United States' entry into World War II. Launched in September 1940, it surpassed 800,000 members in 450 chapters at its peak. The AFC principally supported isolationism for its own sake, and its varied coalition included Republicans, Democrats, Progressives, farmers, industrialists, communists, anti-communists, students, and journalists - however, it was controversial for the antisemitic and pro-fascist views of some of its most prominent speakers, leaders, and members.
The AFC was dissolved on December 11, 1941, four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor and three days after Roosevelt declared war on Japan alone. It was the day of Hitler's Nazi German declaration of war against the United States as well as the Fascist Mussolini's Italian declaration of war on the United States on December 11, 1941. Their declarations of war on the United States brought it into the wider European theatre of World War II. This resulted in United States joining Britain and all the British Commonwealth countries that had been standing alone at war with Germany since shortly after its outbreak in early September 1939 after the German Invasion of Poland when Hitler had broken the terms of the Munich Agreement.
The AFC argued that no foreign power could successfully attack a strongly defended United States, that a British defeat by Nazi Germany would not imperil American national security, and that giving military aid to Britain would risk dragging the United States into the war. The group fervently opposed measures for the British advanced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt such as the destroyers-for-bases deal and the Lend-Lease bill, but failed in its efforts to block them.
The AFC was founded by Yale Law School student R. Douglas Stuart Jr., a Princeton graduate who was heir to the Quaker Oats Company fortune, and headed by Robert E. Wood, a retired U.S. Army general who was chairman of Sears, Roebuck and Co. Its highest-profile early official member was Henry Ford, the automotive pioneer and notorious anti-Semite, who resigned in controversy. Halfway through the committee's 15-month existence, aviator Charles Lindbergh, who had already delivered 13 speeches on the group's behalf, officially joined it and became the most prominent speaker at its rallies. Lindbergh's presence resulted in increased criticism that America First embraced overt anti-Semitism and fascist sympathies. Historian Susan Dunn has concluded that, "Though most of its members were probably patriotic, well-meaning, and honest in their efforts, the AFC would never be able to purge itself of the taint of anti-Semitism."
Background and origins
had many adherents, and as historian Susan Dunn has written, "isolationists and anti-interventionists came in all stripes and colors—ideological, economic, ethnic, geographical. Making up this eclectic coalition were farmers, union leaders, wealthy industrialists, college students, newspaper publishers, wealthy patricians, and newly arrived immigrants. There were a potpourri of affiliations and beliefs: Democrats, Republicans, Progressives, liberals, conservatives, socialists, communists, anti-communists, radicals, pacifists, and simple F.D.R.-haters." One of the most famous incidents occurred in February 1939 with a German American Bund organization's Nazi-sympathizing rally, held at the famous sports arena Madison Square Garden in New York City, which attracted thousands.Much of the impetus for this isolationism came from college students, with Yale University being a particularly strong outpost of such sentiments. The America First Committee was established on September 4, 1940, by Yale Law School student R. Douglas Stuart, Jr.. Stuart had been part of an earlier anti-interventionist student organization at Yale Law School, one that began in Spring 1940 and included future president Gerald Ford, future U.S. Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart, and future diplomat Eugene Locke as signatories to an initial organizing letter. Other Yale students who became involved were future Peace Corps director during the Kennedy presidential administration Sargent Shriver, and Kingman Brewster Jr., who would later become president of Yale University. Stuart dropped out of Yale to focus on the anti-intervention cause, and during Summer 1940, he and Brewster found support for the cause among politicians in Washington and party conventions, and among corporate figures in Stuart's home area of Chicago.
On September 5, the committee was publicly launched in a national radio broadcast by retired General Hugh S. Johnson, who had headed the National Recovery Administration during the early Great Depression as part of the New Deal programs combating the bad economic conditions for a while before President Roosevelt discharged him in 1934.
Organization and membership
America First chose retired Brigadier 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 after Germany and Italy declared war on the United States on 11 December 1941 four days after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor.Organizationally, America First had an executive committee of about seven people, which took the lead in forming America First policies. Its initial members included Wood, Stuart, and several businessmen from the Midwest. There was also a larger national committee, which was composed of prominent individuals who supported America First's aims. Over the course of the organization's existence, some fifty people were part of the national committee. Finally, there were local chapters organized in cities and towns of various size wherever a sizeable anti-interventionist feeling existed. The existence of chapters permitted a more decentralized fundraising structure, with the chapters typically relying more on small contributions than the national entity.
Serious organization and recruitment efforts took place from Chicago, the national headquarters of the committee, not long after the AFC's September 1940 establishment. These included the taking out of full-page advertisements in leading newspapers in various cities and paying for radio broadcasts.
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 and his cousin, publisher Robert R. McCormick. Other funding came from executives of Montgomery Ward, Hormel Foods, and the Inland Steel Company.
Image:America First Rally flyer April 4 1941.jpg|thumb|right|upright=1.0|Flyer for an America First Committee rally in St. Louis, Missouri in early April 1941
Renowned aviator Charles Lindbergh and controversial Catholic radio priest Charles Coughlin would serve as the main spokesmen for the committee.
At its peak, America First claimed 800,000–850,000 members in 450 chapters, making the AFC one of the largest anti-war organizations in the history of the United States. Two-thirds of members were located within a 300-mile radius of Chicago, and 135,000 members in 60 chapters throughout Illinois, its strongest state. There were almost no AFC chapters in the American South, where traditions of involvement in the military and ancestral ties to the United Kingdom were both strong.
The AFC was never able to draw sufficient funding to conduct its own public opinion polling. 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.
The America First Committee attracted the sympathies of political figures, including: Democratic senators Burton K. Wheeler of Montana and David I. Walsh of Massachusetts, and Republican senators Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota and Henrik Shipstead of Minnesota. Philip La Follette, former Governor of Wisconsin and a founder of the Wisconsin Progressive Party, was another prominent member. Overall, support from politicians was strongest in the Midwest. Wheeler and Nye were especially active as speakers at America First rallies. Other celebrities supporting America First were actress Lillian Gish and architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Following his resignation as ambassador to the Court of St. James's in late 1940, the increasingly isolationist, anti-British, and defeatist Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. was offered the chance to head the America First Committee. Members of the national committee included: advertising executive Chester Bowles, diplomat William Richards Castle Jr., journalist John T. Flynn, writer and socialite Alice Roosevelt Longworth, military officer and politician Hanford MacNider, novelist Kathleen Norris, New Deal administrator George Peek, film director Jack Conway and World War I flying ace and later aviation executive Eddie Rickenbacker.
The aforementioned Gerald Ford was one of the first members of the AFC when a chapter formed at Yale University ; Potter Stewart also served on the original committee of the AFC.
Another future president, and son of the former and recently resigned American ambassador to Britain, John F. Kennedy contributed $100 with an attached note, "What you are doing is vital."
Issues
When the war began in Europe in September 1939, most Americans, including politicians, demanded neutrality regarding Europe. 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. Still, while a majority of the public favored sending material assistance to Great Britain in its fight against Nazi Germany, a majority also wanted the United States to stay out of direct participation in the war.There were various uncoordinated isolationist groups active during 1939–40, but the public disclosure by President Roosevelt of the destroyers-for-bases deal led to the announcement the following day, September 4, 1940, of the America First Committee, which would become the strongest such group. In its announcement, 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.
On January 11, 1941, 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 involving the U.S. Navy, believing that any exchange of fire with German forces would likely pull the United States into the war. It also opposed the Atlantic Charter and the placing of economic pressure on Japan.
Consequently, America First objected to any material assistance to Britain, such as in destroyers-for-bases, that might drag the United States into the war and remained firm in its belief that Nazi Germany posed no military threat to the United States itself. The America First Committee was not a pacifist organization, however, and it based its beliefs around the aim that the United States would embody preparedness with a modern, mechanized army and a navy that would be strong in both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.
The principal pressure group opposing America First was the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, which argued that a German defeat of Britain would in fact endanger American security, and which argued that aiding the British would reduce, not increase, the likelihood of the United States being pulled into the war.
The Lend-Lease bill was debated fiercely in Congress for two months, and the America First Committee devoted its strength towards defeating it, but with the addition of a few amendments it was passed with solid margins in both houses of Congress and signed into law in March 1941. In the end, America First failed in all its efforts to prevent Roosevelt's increasingly close relationship with Britain and failed in its efforts to legislatively block Roosevelt's actions.