THEN AND NOW
America First was a provocative movement in 1940 and it remains controversial eighty years later. America First as advocated in 1940 was incompatible with genuine American exceptionalism. Likewise, the 2020 version of America First is often confused with the original movement. But it is different. Therefore, let us expose what America First was then and is now.
COLLISION COURSE
In response to the global economic depression, the United States of America and Germany took quite different paths forward from economic collapse. Firstly, in 1933, a new American president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, launched the progressive New Deal. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, President Paul von Hindenburg of the Weimer Republic appointed the leader of the provocative National Socialist Party as chancellor of a coalition government. Within months, Adolf Hitler, and his Nazis centralized power to rebuild a new German Reich through ambitious public works and a military buildup. Therefore, a new and totalitarian fascist power set upon an inevitable collision course with liberal democracy in a cataclysmic struggle for the planet.
THE NAZI SWOON
Many corporate and political leaders around the world were prepared to accommodate Nazi Germany. Furthermore, some were even willing to collaborate. Notably. Hitler formed a grand alliance with fascist Italy and Imperial Japan. Likewise, Der Führer facilitated the victory of Francisco Franco and the fascist nationalists of Spain. Meanwhile, the Nazis deeply infiltrated Latin America. They subverted France and other European democracies in preparation for conquest and subjugation. Even the rival communist Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact with Berlin, which CBS commentator Elmer Davis characterized as “a death warrant for the world.” Significantly, the United Kingdom and the United States were also not immune from the “Nazi swoon.” In Detroit, automaker Henry Ford, and Alfred B. Sloan of General Motors had deep German connections and interests. Many everyday Americans admired Hitler’s apparent achievements.
CHARLES AUGUSTUS LINDBERGH
By 1936, popular aviator Col. Charles Augustus Lindbergh was among the most famous and admired Americans. To escape relentless publicity, Charles and Ann Morrow Lindbergh fled to England following the kidnapping and death of their infant son and the resulting trial of the suspect. Meanwhile, opportunistic Nazi Luftwaffe chief Herman Wilhelm Göring invited the Lindberghs to visit Germany. In Washington, Gen. Henry Arnold of the Army Air Corps saw this as an opportunity to gather intelligence. Therefore, when the Lindberghs made several goodwill trips to Germany as the apparent guests of the civilian Deutsche Lufthansa, the “Lone Eagle” took notes, and submitted detailed secret reports about ominous German aviation developments to Arnold. However, what the propaganda-savvy Joseph Goebbels fed the world were newsreels of Charles and Ann socializing with prominent Nazis, including Göring and Hitler. President Roosevelt was among the Americans deeply disturbed by what they saw and heard.
ISOLATIONIST IMPULSE
In October 1938, Göring awarded Lindbergh the Service Cross of the German Eagle one month before the infamous Kristallnacht. The award was a disaster for the Lone Eagle. The American media eviscerated him, and even TWA took the “Lindbergh Line” advertising slogan off its airplanes. Lindbergh returned home, where the Colonel started a high-profile campaign of personal appearances arguing for an American foreign policy of strength and neutrality. He and many others, including the American ambassador to Britain, Joseph P. Kennedy, were adamantly opposed to aid for Britain. In April 1941, Lindbergh joined prominent American political, corporate and academic leaders on the new America First Committee, a non-interventionist group founded in September 1940 among Yale University students; among them, Gerald R. Ford, Potter Stewart and Sargent Shriver. Harvard graduate John F. Kennedy sent them a contribution.
AMERICA FIRST 1940
The America First movement grew into a high-profile national organization centered in Chicago and led by Gen. Robert E. Wood of Sears, Roebuck and Co. In addition to the market-conscious automakers Ford and Sloan from Detroit, Chicago Tribune publisher Robert McCormick, architect Frank Lloyd Wright and numerous isolationist Democrat and Republican senators were big America First supporters. Prominent among the politicians were the outspoken and powerful Sen. Burton Wheeler (D-MT), Sen. Gerald Nye (R-ND) and Sen. David Ignatius Walsh (D-MA). American First and its Washington enablers were isolationists but not pacifists. Significantly, most Americans appeared to support America First, despite the fall of France, Battle of Britain, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and Rommel’s Afrika Korps approaching the Suez. And even more senators, including Harry Truman (D-MO), argued that America should stand back and let the Nazis and Soviets “beat each other to death.”
ATLANTIC CHARTER
The concerns of America First went beyond FDR’s Lend-Lease and peacetime draft initiatives, veering beyond nationalism and into inappropriate racial and religious prejudice. A favorite target for the Anglophobes Wheeler and Nye was Hollywood and anti-fascist motion pictures that they deemed “Jewish” and “British” pro-war propaganda. Endless grandstanding senate hearings featured high-profile witnesses, including Lindbergh, and produced nothing. Republican Wendell Willkie proved to be an adroit and effective defender for Hollywood and FDR’s policies. Willkie tied the clumsy Wheeler and Nye into knots. Then, in August 1941, FDR met British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in Newfoundland. Moreover, the leaders of the new “grand alliance” issued the seminal Atlantic Charter. Consequently, this was an audacious statement of mutual war aims and a postwar vision. Moreover, there could now be no doubt in Berlin or anywhere about which side America was on. But the determined America First Committee persisted.
DES MOINES DISASTER
Finally, the tipping point came on the evening of September 11, 1941, from the unlikely Coliseum in Des Moines, Iowa. There, Lindbergh made one of the most counterproductive addresses in American history. Furthermore, his speech was delayed by a last-minute presidential address about a Nazi attack on the American destroyer uss Greer near Iceland. Moreover, following the delay, the Coliseum audience booed FDR and gave Lindbergh a rousing reception. But then Lindbergh launched into his incendiary speech, Who Are the Agitators? which Ann had urged him to cancel. In it, he named Britain, FDR and “the Jews” as America’s enemies. Lindbergh ignited a firestorm of protest. Newspapers normally sympathetic to America First trashed the ill-considered speech as un-American. Republican leaders Willkie and Thomas E. Dewey condemned Lindbergh. Consequently, not only was Lindbergh’s credibility shattered but America First was on the defensive, trying to justify his overt racism.
TOKYO ENDS THE DEBATE
On the sobering Sunday afternoon of December 7, 1941, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, Elmer Davis told stunned Americans “well, the debate about American foreign policy and aid to Britain has been settled by Tokyo.” America First humbly disbanded on December 11, 1941, and Col. Lindbergh pledged his unqualified support for the war effort. But FDR would never forgive the adversary that he considered to be Nazi sympathizer and did not allow Lindbergh to regain his Air Force commission. Consequently, America First was exposed by the genuine American exceptionalism of the sixteen million Americans who served in World War II and incinerated fascism. They renounced territorial conquest, created a new liberal democratic, multilateral world order, and transcended communism. Thus, FDR put a dynamic America First, as opposed to the now discredited leaders who had favored a fortress America First.
ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY
The patriotic and brilliant Edsel Ford forced his father to allow Ford Motor Company to support FDR’s “Arsenal of Democracy” and the coming war effort before Pearl Harbor. Moreover, Ford built the largest airplane factory in the world at Willow Run, Michigan and produced B-24 Liberators “one bomber an hour.” Gen. George C. Marshall and Gen. Arnold convinced American industry to convert from civilian to military production. Likewise, after rooting out numerous German operatives and Nazi sympathizers, General Motors built airplanes, tanks and numerous vehicles for Uncle Sam. Kaiser on the west coast and Bethlehem Steel on the east coast built and launched many thousands of ships. At Boeing, Martin and Bell aircraft in Seattle, Omaha and Wichita, the ultramodern B-29 bomber rolled off assembly lines as exceptional Americans won World War II at home, as well as on the battlefields overseas.
Moreover, Charles Lindbergh redeemed himself by serving as a test pilot and consultant for Ford and other airplane manufacturers. He was a human aviation medicine guinea pig at the Mayo Clinic. Consequently, he flew Lockheed P-38 Lightning and Vought F4U Corsair fighters in combat against Japan to train Army Air Forces and Navy pilots.
THE GATEKEEPERS
The American high-tech monopolies of 2020 Silicon Valley are not unlike the automobile manufacturers of 1940 Detroit. As they consolidate economic and political power, the corporations tend to act in their self-interest rather than the national interest. Meanwhile, Beijing has replaced Berlin as a manufacturing and distribution collaborator. Therefore, now as then, many Democrat and Republican politicians enable the monopolies and rationalize Beijing. However, today’s Silicon Valley oligarchs claim an enlightened globalist perspective. Their modern traditionalist opposition has branded itself as America First, a role reversal from 1940, when America First and Detroit were initially united. Moreover, today’s Silicon Valley oligarchs wield tremendously more power as gatekeepers of information. Their power to subjectively censor individual expression and content is unprecedented. Likewise, their ability to control access to information appears to align with the ambitious objectives of the People’s Republic of China to rule global thought and dominate world commerce.
BEYOND BEIJING
Among its inventions and achievements, exceptional America created the Internet that now links all private, corporate, and public computers and networks worldwide. This ought to be democratizing, as were America’s important post World War II economic and security initiatives. But, as Churchill observed, dictators fear ideas, and the American right of free speech is not yet a universal practice. Moreover, the PRC, among others, seeks to censor and manipulate the Internet as a strategic avenue for disinformation, theft of intellectual property and electronic warfare. Likewise, Beijing reportedly spends fifteen times as much as the United States on information technology development. Meanwhile, modern American revisionist elites instinctively loathe any assertion of American self-interest or traditional values as racist, imperialist and dishonest. Therefore, this attitude combined with corporate self-interest concedes a captive world order governed by an assertive and Maoist PRC. The stakes for civilization are arguably greater than in 1940.
AMERICA FIRST 2020
America First 2020 as defined by President Donald Trump is unilateralist, whereas America First 1940 was isolationist. The 2020 version of America First fundamentally fails to address today’s challenges or opportunities. FDR and his successors led effective multilateral economic and security alliances. This is not to say that decisions in America’s self-interest, such as canceling the seriously flawed Iran nuclear deal, are inappropriate. Nor is modernizing long-established alliances. And often American leaders must make unilateral decisions in emergencies. However, prolonged unilateral actions and occupations such as Vietnam and Iraq have tended to go poorly, whereas proportionate multilateral actions such as the Gulf War (Kuwait) have worked. Moreover, the restorations of Germany and Japan, the Marshall Plan and NATO are among America’s finest achievements that were all in our national interest. But tempting anxious Americans with isolationist or unilateralist nationalism was derelict in 1940 and it is negligent in 2020.
RATIONAL LEADERSHIP
Ronald Reagan would today pursue engagement and he would lead with aplomb. Exceptional America would match China’s investment in information technology with a new Manhattan Project-type initiative to engage (or perhaps force) the American information corporations to be strategic partners in the national interest, much as FDR did in World War II or when JFK accelerated the space program. Traditional America must offer a reasoned and constructive progressive vision that encompasses liberal democratic values of individual rights, competitive private sector capitalism, free markets, fair trade, technological innovation, invention, space exploration, racial and gender equality and justice, religious tolerance and responsible environmental stewardship. Therefore, liberty. We put America First through rational leadership rather than counterproductive invective. The international order that we established after World War II is beneficial, but it is scorned by America First 2020 as burdensome. America has vital interests that require strategic clarity, self-confidence, and resolve.
LAST BEST HOPE
Furthermore, unilateralist America First 2020 challenges the status-quo of our multilateral World War II and postwar economic and security order, which defeated Nazi fascism and transcended Soviet communism. However, an ascendant America reached the moon, and an assertive America was a beacon of liberty by being a multilateral leader. As the oceans did not protect America in 1940, today our essential interconnected online infrastructure is vulnerable. Silicon Valley is the new battlefield. As we recalibrate our relationship with China, an adept modern America must set aside the temptation of America First to compete and win. Beyond COVID-19 and united with and for humanity, we can be the “last best hope” that Ronald Reagan cherished. In conclusion, learn more about America First and the great American debate about World War II in America Ascendant, the Rise of American Exceptionalism. See also my recent article One World vs. America First.
Note: primary source material is from America Ascendant, the Rise of American Exceptionalism, Chapter 3, Arsenal of Democracy, with references noted on pp. 347-51.