America First Committee

The America First Committee (AFC) was an American isolationist pressure group against the United States' entry into World War II.

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 (France, Belgium, Holland, Norway along with the other European nations had been overrun and occupied by German forces shortly afterwards).

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. 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." The America First Committee 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). Stuart had been part of an earlier anti-interventionist student organization at Yale Law School, Other Yale students who became involved were future Peace Corps director during the Kennedy presidential administration (and brother-in-law) 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.

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.

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.

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. Other funding came from executives of Montgomery Ward, Hormel Foods, and the Inland Steel Company.

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 (Great Britain) 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. 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. (however he resigned from the AFC shortly afterward, lest he endanger his position as an assistant coach for Yale Bulldogs football); 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 (Joseph P. Kennedy Sr.), John F. Kennedy contributed $100 with an attached note, "What you are doing is vital."

Issues

When the war began in Europe (Nazi Germany's invasion of Poland) 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. 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.

thumb|upright=1.0|A [[Dr. Seuss editorial cartoon from early October 1941 criticizing America First]]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, 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 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 response, America First removed Ford from the national committee and also removed from it Avery Brundage, whose actions at the 1936 Berlin Olympics were associated with anti-Semitism.

The world-famous American aviator 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. 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. his speech argued that instead of fighting, all of Europe and the United States should "defend the white race against foreign invasion".

For the first half of America First's 15 months of existence, the group and Lindbergh kept at arm's length from each other, as Stuart was leery of being too closely associated with some of the extreme views of Lindbergh's circle, while for his part the aviator preferred to act independently. Wood, however, wanted to bring Lindbergh on, and on April 10, 1941, it was agreed that Lindbergh would join the national committee, with the aviator's first rally appearance taking place on April 17 at the Chicago Arena.

Once he did join,

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."

thumb|upright=1.5|left|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.

Many condemned the speech as antisemitic. Journalist Dorothy Thompson wrote for the New York Herald Tribune an opinion that many shared: "I am absolutely certain that Lindbergh is pro-Nazi." After June 1941, when Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, they reversed positions and denounced the AFC as a Nazi front, a group infiltrated by German agents. Nazis also tried to use the committee. The aviator and orator Laura Ingalls' pro-Nazi rhetoric and straight-armed Nazi salutes on her America First speaking tour worried the group's leadership, but they allowed her to continue because of praise from local chapters where she had spoken. When Ingalls was arrested in December 1941 and put on trial for being an unregistered Nazi agent, the prosecution revealed that her handler, German diplomat Ulrich Freiherr von Gienanth, had encouraged her to participate in AFC activities.

Various historians have described attempts to keep Nazi and fascist sympathizers out of its chapters as not always successful.

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," and the organization's leaders announced their support of the war effort. Lindbergh gave this rationale:

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 Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy declared war on the United States. In a statement released to the press, the AFC wrote:

Once war was declared, the national leaders of the America First Committee supported the United States war effort, with many serving in some capacity. Similarly, many of the leaders of local chapters volunteered for service in the U.S. armed forces; a few continued to involve themselves in anti-war actions.

Legacy

In 1983, after his time as president of Yale had concluded, Brewster said he was glad that he and the other isolationists had failed. He also acknowledged that, consciously or not, there was anti-Semitism among the elites at Yale during that period. Historian Wayne S. Cole concludes that while the America First Committee did not actually defeat any Roosevelt administration proposal in Congress, it made the margins of several such actions smaller than they would have been otherwise; and that throughout 1941, Roosevelt was constrained in his actions in support of Britain due to isolationist pressures in public opinion that America First did the most to mobilize.

The re-use of the "America First" phrase by Donald Trump in the 2016 United States presidential election led to a look back at the America First Committee through the filter of contemporary events. This included views on the level of extremism found in the 1940–41 movement as well as analysis of whether the new Trump administration was isolationist in the same sense.