For today’s post, I’ll talk about America’s isolationist movement leading up to WWII.
In 𝑹𝒐𝒔𝒆 𝒐𝒇 𝑨𝒏𝒛𝒊𝒐, Anthony’s Uncle, Leon Caldwell was a big supporter of the America First Committee (AFC), which was formed to advocate against war intervention. When Anthony began his sophomore year, Leon tried to recruit Anthony to start a student branch of the AFC at the University of Chicago campus. The AFC was real. In fact, it had its greatest support in the state of Illinois, and Chicago was where its national headquarters was based.
The AFC was originally formed by two Yale students, R. Douglas Stuart, Jr., and Kingsman Brewster. Stuart’s father was the founder of Quaker Oats. His classmates who joined him included future president Gerald Ford, future Peace Corps director Sargent Shriver, and future Supreme Court justice Potter Stewart. The isolationist movement also included the colorful character Charles Lindbergh. This historically rich background set the stage for me to create the story arc of Anthony’s dilemma as to whether to join his uncle’s cause. As written in my story (and true), the AFC began to seriously organize in 1940, and their members elected Robert E. Wood, chairman of Sears, Roebuck, as its president.
In 1940, Europe was steep in war. France had fallen in the summer, and England was facing Nazi Germany alone. Most Americans had already heard about the horrific events of Kristallnacht in 1938. But public opinions still swayed heavily against American involvement. Support for non-intervention would remain strong until the Pearl Harbor attack.
There are many theories why Americans were so strongly against intervention. Historically, our founding father George Washington had warned against entanglement in affairs of Europe. Having just recovered from the Great Depression, people didn’t want to divert their resources to a war elsewhere to other countries. Political antagonism against Roosevelt, too, played a part, as the president did want more American involvement. Geographical distance probably added to the indifference. At its extreme, xenophobia and antisemitism also drove some people to sympathize with Germany.
What I found most interesting was the mutual distrust between the Midwest and East Coast states. I tried to illustrate this point through Anthony’s uncle Leon. For the Midwesterners whose economy depended on manufacturing, there was a huge suspicion that the bankers in New York were war profiteers who wanted to sacrifice American lives for profits. Their beliefs partially stemmed from America’s involvement in the first World War. Although American suffered minimal losses in that war, young men were killed and speculators did profit from it. The failure of WWI to prevent another great European war and the lingering feeling that the war only served the European countries’ self-interests, further soured the opinions of the Americans.
Today, we continue to see the same ideological rift between the coastal states and the Midwest and the South. For those of us who are not students of history, we might think that the division in our country is the worst it has ever been. We wonder if the division might spell our doom. But in fact, the rift has always been there, and the feelings of those on each side were no less heated surrounding the political issues of the day. Two years ago, when I visited President Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage in Nashville, I was amazed to find that the political arguments in newspapers back when he was running for office in the late 1700s to the early 1800s sounded extraordinarily similar to ours 200 years later.
If you would like to read more about America First and the isolationist movement, here are some interesting links:
https://www.americanhistoryusa.com/power-of.../
http://bobrowen.com/nymas/americafirst.html
Feel free to add your comments. I’d love to hear your thoughts.