The America First Committee (AFC) 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.Dunn p 57
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, 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 antisemitism 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
American isolationism of the late 1930s 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, and pacifists." 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.Dunn p 65 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).Cole 1974, p 115 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.Schneider, p 113 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.Cole 1974, pp 76, 108, 118 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 (N.R.A.) 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.Dunn p 66
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.Cole 1974, p 116 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.Cole 1974, pp 116–117
Serious organization and recruitment efforts took place from Chicago, the national headquarters of the committee, not long after the AFC's September 1940 establishment.Cole 1974, pp 115–117 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 (New York Daily News) and his cousin, publisher Robert R. McCormick (Chicago Tribune).Cole 1953. p. 15. Other funding came from executives of Montgomery Ward, Hormel Foods, and the Inland Steel Company.
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.Bill Kauffman, Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008), pp. 6–7. Two-thirds of members were located within a 300-mile radius of Chicago,Cole 1953, p 30 and 135,000 members in 60 chapters throughout Illinois, its strongest state.Schneider p 198 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.Dunn pp 57, 335n4
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.Cole 1953, 25-33; Schneider 201-2
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.Dunn pp 268–271 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 (however he resigned from the AFC shortly afterward, lest he endanger his position as an assistant coach for Yale Bulldogs football);Dunn p 338n52 Potter Stewart also served on the original committee of the AFC. Author a Scottish journalist. Gore Vidal was the head of his local America First group at Phillips Exeter Academy. 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.
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.Cole 1974, p 117
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.