Eighty years on, we remember World War II as a fight on which most Americans could agree: Germany and its fascist allies must be stopped at all costs. But in the years before the war began, and even as European countries fell to Hitler’s tanks, the American public was fiercely divided.
President Franklin Roosevelt believed U.S. involvement in the war was inevitable and critical to our future place in the world. Though, he was quite reluctant to get involved – and that’s because many Americans, still smarting from the suffering brought on by the Great Depression and the loss of so many fathers and sons in the First World War, had no interest in entering the latest European conflict.
One of the most recognizable voices in the movement to stay out of Europe’s latest mess was also something of a folk hero at the time: pilot Charles Lindbergh, who in 1927 had crossed the Atlantic alone in a tiny airplane. But the fight over whether America should enter the war would prove no small matter, and the outcome would reshape America’s place on the world stage right up to today.
The struggle is the subject of the latest book by Pulitzer Prize finalist and UT Austin historian H.W. Brands, “America First: Roosevelt vs. Lindbergh in the Shadow of War.”
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Paint a picture for us of America in the late 1930s. Just how did this country see itself in relation to the rest of the world?
H.W. Brands: America had traditionally considered itself a country a continent apart from Europe, from the 18th century to the end of the 19th and to the early 20th century. Americans really were grateful for the fact that the Atlantic Ocean was wide and the troubles of Europe were far away, and they intended that distance to remain.
Briefly during World War I, Americans were persuaded to go in and basically rescue Britain and France from the imperialist designs of Germany. But the war ended and the peace ended badly for pretty much everybody. It looked as though another war in Europe was inevitable by the early 1930s.
And Americans had come to the almost universal opinion that their enterprise into Europe the first time around was a mistake, they shouldn’t have done it. And they were determined not to repeat it.
And so it was a broad consensus. It was written into law by Congress: In 1935, 36 and 37, Congress passed a series of laws called the Neutrality laws that said in the event of a war in Europe or other overseas region, the United States would remain neutral, it would not get involved.
Well, having said that, Roosevelt was elected in 32, took office in 33. Where was he on all this?
During his first term, from 33 to 37, he said almost nothing about foreign affairs. And when he did say something about foreign affairs, he would say, “we’re going to stay out of that.”
But once the war came, then he concluded that, “the United States is going to have to get in this one, too.” He was a believer that what happened in Europe would have effects on the United States. Beyond that, though, he was a believer in America’s destiny to become the leader of the world.
And the United States had put its toe in the water in the 1910s; it didn’t work. But Roosevelt concluded that this time around, the United States was going to go in and stay in. He didn’t say that in public, though, because he realized it was a tough sell.
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Let’s talk about the other player in your book: Lucky Lindy, as he was known. Charles Lindbergh was known as an aviation hero at the time. He was very much against the idea of the United States going to war and had visited Berlin. And I think some people attributed certain sympathies to the Nazi regime.
Where was he in all of this? And in fact, is that story about Lindbergh’s affinity for Hitler’s regime true?
So Lindbergh was this American celebrity. He became a hero to many Americans for conquering the Atlantic. He became the subject of tremendous sympathy when his child was abducted and killed. He, meanwhile, became probably the world’s leading expert on aviation. He wasn’t simply a pilot. He was a designer of planes; he was an engineer of planes.
And because he was so well-known and because he was so knowledgeable, the air forces of the major countries of the world, they wanted him to come around – “Take a look at our planes; tell us what you think. How can they be improved?”
And during the 1930s, this was perfectly unobjectionable because the United States was at war with nobody and nobody was really at war with anybody else. And Lindbergh also could bring back what he had learned about the German air force, the Russian Air force, the British Air Force, the French Air force, the Japanese air force bring it back to the United States. He was a reserve colonel in the U.S. Air Corps.
And so Lindbergh, he only stepped forward to talk against intervention when he thought that Franklin Roosevelt – whom he had met, at first hoped that he could work with, but discovered nah, Roosevelt simply wanted to use him to further Roosevelt’s agenda – Lindbergh decided somebody had to speak out against the direction that Roosevelt was taking the country.
Because Lindbergh inferred pretty early on that Roosevelt had this design of getting the United States into the war, despite everything Roosevelt said about doing his best to keep America out of the war.
The divide between the way Roosevelt saw America’s place in the world and the way Lindbergh saw it – to what extent was that known by the public? Was that part of the conversation?
So the book is largely arranged as a debate between Franklin Roosevelt and Charles Lindbergh. Now, they never debated each other on the stage. They only spoke to each other once or twice directly.
But what would typically happen is Roosevelt would give a speech saying “we need to weaken the neutrality laws.” And Lindbergh would then go on the radio – the radio stations would give him airtime – and he would say, “we should not weaken the neutrality laws.” And then Congress would do what it was going to do, and then Roosevelt would propose something else, another step toward war.
And Lindbergh would say, we shouldn’t take that, because each step that we take, that the president says is going to keep us out of the war by letting the British and the French do the fighting for us, no, no, that’s going to lead us closer to the war. Because when the aid that we give them doesn’t work – well, if you said that the principle of America ought to be to defend Britain and France, if they can’t do it with American weapons, then they’ll have to do it with American soldiers.
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Lindbergh, though, you write, saw this path, saw where America was headed, and “found it appalling Americans trod the path and found it irresistible.”
So this is actually the secret of Franklin Roosevelt’s success: He understood where Americans could be persuaded to go. He told Americans before it became a reality that America needs to be the leader of the world, and this will be a great thing.
Before then, no president ever said that. And Americans would have said, “we don’t think that’s our job,” you know, “we want to worry about things that are going on here at home.”
So Roosevelt made it appealing to America, and he made it a reality. And once it became a reality, then Americans for three generations since have absorbed it. And so these days, most Americans tend to think just sort of reflexively, without even thinking about it, that, yeah, if something bad happens in the world, the United States ought to think about fixing it, that the United States ought to be involved in all of these big issues.
And this is diametrically opposite of what it was as late as the mid 1930s. But then the decision was made in 1940 with Roosevelt getting elected, in 1941 with Pearl Harbor. And Americans really haven’t revisited that since.
And I think that no matter what your view on this is – whether you are in favor of continued American world leadership or you think it’s time to reconsider – we live in a democracy, and democracies ought to rethink these things every now and then and put them to voters to see what voters think. Otherwise, you make decisions by default, and that’s not a good thing.
Listen to an extended interview with H.W. Brands in the audio player at the top of this story.
