America First Committee


The America First Committee was the foremost United States non-interventionist pressure group against American entry into World War II. 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. 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. The committee was dissolved on December 10, 1941, three days after the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into the war.

Membership

The AFC was established on September 4, 1940 by Yale Law School student R. Douglas Stuart, Jr., along with other students including future president Gerald Ford, future Peace Corps director Sargent Shriver, and future U.S. Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart. At its peak, America First claimed 800,000 dues-paying members in 450 chapters, located mostly in a 300-mile radius of Chicago, and 135,000 members in 60 chapters throughout Illinois, its strongest state.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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." Ford was one of the first members of the AFC when a chapter formed at Yale University. Potter Stewart, a future Supreme Court justice, served on the original committee of the AFC.

Issues

When the war began 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.
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:
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. 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."
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:
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."
Communists were antiwar until June 1941, and they tried to infiltrate or take over America First. After Hitler attacked the Soviet Union in June 1941, they reversed positions and denounced the AFC as a Nazi front. Nazis also tried to use the committee; at the trial of the aviator and orator Laura Ingalls, 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," 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 Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. In a statement released to the press, the AFC wrote:
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."

In popular culture

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.