Ohio History Journal

THE MIDDLE WEST AND THE COMING OF

WORLD WAR II*

 

by JEANNETTE P. NICHOLS

 

Such a topic as "The Middle West and the Coming of World

War II" admits the premise that public opinion in a particular

section of a nation can importantly affect the foreign policy of the

central government, particularly in a country run on the repre-

sentative principle. This premise has received endorsement re-

peatedly in the history of the United States and other countries,

and especially among historians of foreign policy and of the

Middle West; fairly recent illustrations include treatment of "The

Significance of the Mississippi Valley in American Diplomatic

History, 1686-1890" by Richard W. Van Alstyne; and "The

Mississippi Valley and American Foreign Policy, 1890-1941: An

Assessment and an Appeal" by Richard W. Leopold.1

Furthermore, the premise is illumined by a larger, far more

important trend observable world-wide in the twentieth century,

namely, the increasing influence of internal political exigencies

upon selection of external policies. In Britain and France, for

example, Prime Ministers Lloyd George, MacDonald, Chamberlain.

Briand, and Laval cultivated the growing habit of committing

their governments to important foreign policies without due con

sultation with their ambassadors abroad or diplomatic corps at

home. They allowed diplomatic reports to lie unread, or rejected

amply demonstrating how badgered politicians can grow overeage

to reach decisions in diplomacy.² While the factors affecting inter

national relationships have become excessively complicated, difficult

 

*This and the preceding article by Arthur S. Link were originally given as paper

in a joint session on "The Middle West and the Coming of the Two World Wars

at the forty-fifth annual meeting of the Mississippi Valley Historical Associatio

held at Chicago, April 17-19, 1952. It has been revised and notes and documentatio

added.

1 Published, respectively, in the Mississippi Valley Historical Review, XXXV

(1949-50), 215-238; XXXVII (1950-51), 625-642.

2 A cogent summary of British and French tendencies was provided by Gordo

Craig in "The Professional Diplomat and His Problems, 1919-1939," a paper rea

before the American Historical Association at its 1951 meeting.

 

122

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The Middle West and the Coming of World War II              123

to grasp and to control, and requiring much time for thoughtful

decisions, popular facilities for immediate intercommunication

have encouraged the public to skim the surface of events and raise

prompt clamor. Thus, in an era of extreme international sensitivity,

the need for sober caution and the use of it have tended to develop

in inverse ratio. Public opinion on international relations has indeed

become the acid test of democracy in the atomic age.

The interrelations of politics, propaganda, pressure groups, and

mass education in foreign affairs have inspired much serious analysis

in books, Ph.D. dissertations, and master's essays.³ More influential

and more revealing is the rising bulk of popular literature, because

of the tendencies it exposes: such tendencies as (a) popular ac-

ceptance of political pressure as a proper determinant of diplomatic

policy, (b) wide permeation of propaganda and other special-

interest processes of opinion-forming, and (c) overestimation of the

effectiveness of pressure and propaganda, due to their relentless

employment. It becomes difficult to keep in mind that pressure

and propaganda do not work in a vacuum; that much of the "credit"

and "blame" apportioned them can be unearned, when behavior

and opinion rest on uncomprehended but powerful long-term

trends.⁴ Only by trying to evaluate such factors, can historians

hope to avoid some serious distortions.

The increasing importance of foreign policy in individual Ameri-

can experience has been indicated by the fact that the bitterest

debates since 1896 have centered on diplomatic issues, namely, the

debates just after World War I, just before World War II, and

 

3 The better books include: Gabriel A. Almond, The American People and Foreign

Policy (New York, 1950); Thomas A. Bailey, The Man in the Street: The Impact

of American Public Opinion on Foreign Policy (New York, 1948); Edward H. Carr,

Propaganda in International Politics (Oxford, 1939); Ellis Freeman, Conquering

the Man in the Street: A Psychological Analysis of Propaganda in War, Fascism and

Politics (New York, 1940); Harold Lavine, War Propaganda and the United States

(New Haven, 1940); Lester Markel and others, Public Opinion and Foreign Policy

(New York, 1949); and Quincy Wright, Public Opinion and World Politics

(Chicago, 1933).

4 Specialists incline to agree that during the thirties events in Europe and Asia

were having far greater influence upon America's course than efforts of pressure

groups for and against intervention. See note 3 above and Harold F. Gosnell, Machine

Politics, Chicago Model (Chicago, 1937); Norman C. Meier and Harold W. Saunders,

The Polls and Public Opinion (New York, 1949); and two Ph.D. theses referred

to in notes 34 and 44 below.

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124      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

following the turn of the half-century. The middle one of these

periods--the 1930's--when World War II was in the making

behind the engrossing facade of the Great Depression--reveals

the Middle West (centering around Chicago) as becoming the

area nourishing the most sustained bitterness.⁵ This is not to claim

that opinions attributed to the Middle West at a given period

always resided there, or were localized solely within its borders.⁶

The state of Middle West opinion on diplomatic problems dur-

ing the Franklin D. Roosevelt era, especially the three or four

years just before Pearl Harbor, became significant for at least two

main reasons: (a) that locale became the most violent theater of

verbal warfare, warfare over whether the United States could and

should remain uninvolved in extra-hemisphere fighting; and (b),

and most importantly, this violence so enabled the section to

command the attention of the administration, the rest of the United

States, the Axis, and the Allied chancellories abroad, that the Middle

West affected policy in the highest places. The section's opinions,

propaganda, and pressure were measured and judged repeatedly

during that period;⁷ they have concerned historians ever since and

doubtless will continue to do so as long as American historiography

enjoys the stimulus of recurrent revisionism.⁸ It must be remembered,

however, that the Middle West differed only by a small percentage

from the rest of the country in its division of counsel; what

 

5 Pollsters with different slants, the press, and correspondence of disputants

abound in repeated references to the pre-war middlewestern influence.

6 Van Alstyne points out that the 1754 "isolationists" were of the seaboard and

that mid-nineteenth century imperialism got much of its leadership from the Valley,

but that the Valley apparently did not contribute a distinctive concept to American

foreign policy separable from those familiar to other parts of the country. "The

Significance of the Mississippi Valley," 221, 235. The nation-wide scope of isola-

tionism, 1934-37, is documented from the Congressional Record by William  G.

Carleton in "Isolation and the Middle West," Mississippi Valley Historical Review,

XXXIII (1946-47), 377-390.

7 This is not to imply that measurement of such confusion as foreign policy can be

precise or infallible.

8 Some revisionism is no less bitter than the debates to which it refers; see, for

example, The Court Historians versus Revisionism: An Examination of Langer and

Gleason, The Challenge to Isolation 1937-1940 (a 16-page pamphlet by Harry Elmer

Barnes privately printed and circulated by its author early in 1952). See also Charles S.

Tansill's Back Road to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy, 1933-1941, printed by

the publishing house of a strong Chicago isolationist, Mr. Regnery, in 1952; this

volume seems to treat Chicago's isolationist "America First" with silence.

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The Middle West and the Coming of World War II          125

sensitized the Middle West during the coming of World War II

to a large extent sensitized the rest of the nation also.

Shifts in the experience and influence of the Middle West

during the 1930's may be traced through three stages: I, from

January 30, 1933, the date of Hitler's accession to the chancellor-

ship, to February 8, 1934, when Senator Nye proposed a munitions

investigation; II, from February 8, 1934, to September 3, 1939, when

Britain and France declared war on Germany; and III, from

September 3, 1939, to December 7, 1941, when Pearl Harbor de-

stroyed what little remained of American neutrality, and signaled

the temporary defeat of the isolationism so hotly pressed from

the Middle West.⁹

 

I

During Period I the Middle West actually differed little from

other sections, or indeed from other nations, in their devotion to

national apartness. Absorption in domestic issues, over how to re-

cover from the depression and whether to reform the economy,

engrossed most attention, with rampant nationalism vetoing inter-

national cooperation in important fields at home and abroad.

However, Chicago and environs were building a big-business coterie

of cordial New-Deal Haters, some of whom would not prove

averse to locating in the Middle West the leadership of isolationism,

through the machinery of "America First"; but that was for the

future to reveal.

From the past the section has inherited some conditioning

factors likely to encourage hospitality toward political isolationism.

One was the area's past experience with the Progressive move-

ment, which it quite largely sponsored and lead; midwestern pro-

gressivism was "sectional-minded . . . concerned with immediate

problems solved in local terms."10 To expand the imagination and

 

9 The adjective "temporary" is used because any death rites for some aspects of

nationalistic isolationism have thus far proved premature, as events of 1950-53

indicate.

10 Russel B. Nye, Midwestern Progressive Politics: A Historical Study of Its

Origins and Development (Lansing, Mich., 1951), 381. The possible correlations be-

tween progressivism and isolationism open up a wide field worthy of further ex-

ploration.

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126      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

understanding so as to think in international terms might be diffi-

cult for many denizens. Another conditioning factor was the accretion

of Republicanism in the area, which had gone more Republican

than Democratic in national elections over a long period. Roosevelt's

predecessor in the White House had thought of isolationism--of

which he much complained--as rather a Republican than a Middle

West specialty" (a notion supported by many events of 1918-1932);

Hoover could not himself carry internationalism into commitments

entailing sanctions and force.12

Worldwise, nationalism was yielding very reluctantly to inter-

nationalism, especially in the United States. There isolationism was

one of the fundamental American tenets--adhered to for more

than one hundred and fifty years, a record in longevity.13 It cannot

be surprising that the Roosevelt of March 4, 1933, who entertained

a long-standing suspicion of Great Britain,l4 joined and led other

heads of states in wrecking the London Conference of 1933 on

nationalistic shoals.¹⁵

II

Period II, beginning February 8, 1934, started with middle-

westerners assuming foremost leadership in exposures which served

to fortify isolationism behind the ramparts of neutrality legislation.

It is not without significance      that the   Progressive-Republican

senator who on that date proposed to investigate the past misdeeds

of the munitioneers, was equipped with a thoroughly middlewestern,

small-town, middle-class background. Wisconsin villages were the

locale for Gerald P. Nye's birth (1892), his high school educa-

tion, and his early experience with a small newspaper. A brief

novitiate with Iowa papers preceded editorship of a small county-

 

11 Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: 1920-1933, The Cabinet and the Presidency (New

York, 1952), 35, 337.

12 A typical phrasing of his isolationism-internationalism reads: "Cooperation with

other nations--in the moral field as distinguished from the field of force." "My White

House Years," Collier's, CXXIX (April 19, 1952), 17.

13 Bailey points out that this is a far longer record of retention of a principle

than many nations can boast. The Man in the Street, 238.

14 His early presidential correspondence reflects this feeling in numerous instances.

15 See Jeannette P. Nichols, "Roosevelt's Monetary Diplomacy in 1933," American

Historical Review, LVI (1950-51), 295-317.

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The Middle West and the Coming of World War II                 127

 

seat weekly in North Dakota, whence he jumped in 1925 from the

narrow confines of an every-Thursday deadline to the broad arena

of the world's most powerful legislative body.

Nye was persuaded to undertake the munitions investigation by

another vigorous middlewesterner, Miss Dorothy Detzer, who was

aided by Senator Norris.¹⁶ Born in Fort Wayne (1900), Miss Detzer

had been trained in social service at Hull House, Chicago, and by

Friends abroad. She had become one of the most able and inde-

fatigable leaders of the peace movement on the congressional door-

step,17 and like many others turned toward isolationist instruments

in disgust over ineffective internationalism.

In the cooperation of Detzer and Nye the hopes of sincere peace

idealists were joined with those of ambitious politicians, working

worldwide consequences in foreign policy. If these two had not

functioned, doubtless other leaders would have stepped up, for

not only the Middle West but the whole nation was in line with

their approach. At that juncture "the dominant feeling was over-

whelmingly opposed, not only to any involvement in foreign quarrels

but to participation in any collective action to prevent or settle

such quarrels."18

The Nye investigation19 convinced most Americans that private

profit seekers--principally munitions makers and bankers--had

 

16 Norris' attitudes toward the First and Second World Wars contrast sharply;

while keenly alive to the dangers of another holocaust, he saw in Hitler and Mussolini

serious threats to democracy; although his mail was heavily isolationist he voted

for every step of American preparedness and found in lend-lease much of inspired

vision. Norris Manuscripts, Library of Congress, World War II Boxes; George W.

Norris, Fighting Liberal (New York, 1945), 188-213, 390-395.

17 She was executive secretary of the Women's International League for Peace

and Freedom, 1925-46; much of that time its offices were directly across the street

from the state department, beneath the windows of whoever was the reigning

secretary. Widely publicized recognition of her services was accorded by the syndicated

Pearson and Allen "Merry-Go-Round" listing of 1935; she gave some account of her

anti-munitions lobbying in Appointment on the Hill (New York, 1948), 151-171.

18 William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Challenge to Isolation, 1937-

1940 (New York, 1952), 15. Faith in neutrality as a vesture of security overlooked

the penetrable weakness of such armor. The Langer-Gleason analyses of the shifting

tides of opinion during these years are based upon exhaustive research in the tre-

mendous body of data bearing on United States policy in these years; they command

respect in nearly all quarters for their thoroughness and dispassionateness.

19 The other senators were two Republicans--the then strongly isolationist Arthur

Vandenberg of Michigan and the relatively inactive Warren Barbour of New Jersey--

ed four Democrats--Bennett Clark of Missouri, Walter George of Georgia, James

Pope of Idaho, and Homer Bone of Washington.

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128       Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

dragged the United States into an imperialistic World War I.

Anyone venturing to inquire whether other powerful factors also

pulled in that direction was likely to be called a simpleton. The

fact is, that in the past investments actuated solely by private profit

motives had been less often directly productive of international

friction than investments which were pressed into the service of

naval and political strategy which the investments themselves did

not originate. In other words, legislation establishing government

control over private international investments, as a reliance for

avoiding war, is unsound in theory and ill-suited to its object.²⁰

Nevertheless, overly simple notions as to the direct interplay

of private investment and foreign policy took a firm grip upon

public thinking, leading congress to construct the neutrality legis-

lation of 1935, 1936, and 1937 as their Maginot Line against

involvement in another European conflict. Neither the physical

nor the ideational Maginot Line, when put to the test, effectively

blocked the attack of aggression upon world peace. The false

sense of security inspired by the Maginot Lines had discouraged

study of other war-causing factors, and fatally postponed work

upon more fitting safeguards against would-be destroyers of the

peace.²1 Thus, the neutrality legislation of 1935-37 now appears

to have hindered the pursuit of peace. The active isolationists of

the Middle West share the responsibility with those of other

sections.

The confused and frantic search for security in other important

countries besides the United States, clouded the vision of would-be

20 Such is the considered conclusion of Eugene Staley, who explored all the im-

portant cases, 1880-1935, in which anyone alleged that private investment had been

a factor in international political disputes, to ascertain what direct relationships

existed. He produced an outstanding analysis of the political aspects of international

investments in War and the Private Investor: A Study in the Relations of Inter-

national Politics and International Private Investment (New York, 1935). Apparently

private "foreign investments have been considerably more useful as an aid and

protection of navies than navies have been as an aid and protection to foreign in-

vestments." 100. While international investments have been the immediate source

of some serious international controversies, in the majority of these cases capitalists

have been reluctantly persuaded to invest by a government seeking to implement

political objectives. "Private investments seeking purely business advantage . . . have

rarely of themselves brought great powers into serious political clashes." 360.

21 Atom and hydrogen bombs and anti-Red legislation became the post-1945 Maginot

Line of many Americans, broadly scattered, while McCormick and some other

Middle West publicists loudly denounced the United Nations as a futile instrument

for peace.

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The Middle West and the Coming of World War II             129

 

architects of peace, whether internationalists or isolationists. The

American administration dared not stand up against the isolationism

of 1935, could not set controls over it, and actually--through two

serious mistakes by Hull and one by Roosevelt--unwittingly ex-

pedited the action of congress in the general field besides making

congressional action more drastic.

The administration undertook to show cooperation in the popular

Nye investigation, and Hull, eager to bring a munitions control

board into existence, suggested that Roosevelt invite Nye's group

to call at the White House. There Roosevelt gave them the im-

pression that he desired them to sponsor neutrality legislation, a

job which they had not planned to undertake but shouldered with

alacrity. Their bill-drafting was terminated by Senator Pittman,

who had been before the electorate the year before and insisted that

his foreign relations committee take over. At this moment the

luckless Hull, who did not want general neutrality legislation, was

insisting that congress should not adjourn without passing an arms

embargo resolution (aimed at Mussolini) which should place

action at the discretion of the president.

But Pittman had his own brand of isolationism, which included

opposition to trade agreements and to entrance into the World

Court, and he was sensitive to charges that his committee was an

appendage of the state department. He proceeded to make the

embargo clause mandatory; the best the administration could do

was to get an expiration date of February 29, 1936, for that clause;

and Hull advised Roosevelt not to try a veto of the 1935 neutrality

act forbidding export of armament to belligerents. This episode

testified to the naive faith of a confused, disgusted nation in the

protective powers of neutrality legislation, and to the ease with

which an unwary executive department may contribute to the

hurried placing of restrictions on its own functioning.²²

22 The Memoirs of Cordell Hull (2 vols., New York, 1948), I, 397-417. Hull

analyzes the mainsprings of administration tactics. The state department did not

actually want neutrality legislation, for they had been exploring the field since

June 1934, and knew that it was full of pitfalls. However, the numerous neutrality

bills in the hopper that summer of 1935 indicated ultimate legislation in the field.

Spurred by the White House mishap and by Hull's pressure for embargo action,

Pittman introduced his joint resolution August 20 and by August 31 Roosevelt was

signing it. This first neutrality act also prohibited carrying of munitions to

belligerents in United States owned ships and established a munitions control board.

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130      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

The confused state of thinking on the neutrality measures was

reflected in the widely diverse reasoning of their proponents as to

why they would be effective. By the time of the second (1936)

neutrality act (which extended the embargo to May 1, 1937, and

strengthened the 1934 Johnson act denying loans to war debt de-

faulters, by forbidding loans and credits to any belligerent), Hull

judged that isolationism was stronger than in 1935, due to the failure

of the League of Nations to prevent such developments as German

rearmament and the wars in China and Ethiopia.²³

As the European and Asiatic trends of 1936-37 moved the

administration toward a wish to counter isolationism, it developed

that neither Roosevelt nor Hull was well equipped to fight it.

The memory of Wilson's defeat exercised considerable restraining

influence upon the president until late in the thirties, and upon his

secretary of state somewhat longer. Roosevelt signed the May 1937

third neutrality act, which reiterated the main munitions and credit

prohibitions and added a "cash and carry" requirement that any

belligerent purchaser of raw materials must pay on delivery and

carry in its own ships.

To Hull, "trying to win over the isolationists was . . . a nerve-

wracking and back-breaking experience," aggravated by his per-

sonal friendship with Borah, Clark, Fish, Pittman, and Wheeler.

He felt that isolationists of the thirties were not like the "purely

selfish" ones of 1919-20. He deplored their position and believed

it was preventing peace-loving nations from averting World War II,

but he feared, until 1941, that they might throw out the adminis-

tration and install a regime like that of the twenties, if provoked

too far. This was the secretary of state from the Great Valley

upon whom Roosevelt placed much reliance as a taker of con-

gressional temperature, one whose thermometer was affected by

his nerves and congressional background.²⁴ Also, the regime in-

cluded enthusiastic New Dealers who, like some New Dealers

 

23 Ibid., 465. For this state of feeling the Nye disclosures were in large part

responsible.

24 Hull continually waxes eloquent on his quandary, citing numerous instances

where his apprehensions affected executive decisions. See, for example, Memoirs, I,

215-218, 279, 405, 409-415, 417, 588-589, 666, 803; II, 943, 959-960, 1734. Langer

and Gleason repeatedly cite this influence.

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The Middle West and the Coming of World War II      131

 

outside, feared that foreign involvements might jeopardize domestic

reform. All these apprehensions within the official family ad-

vantaged the isolationists without.

In the summer of 1937 isolationism was rampant even on

Far East issues, where it normally was less intransigeant, and so

the administration rejected British proposals of joint action to get

Japan to end hostilities. Yet some moderating in the hostility to

international cooperation seemed so imperative that Hull and

Norman Davis suggested that Roosevelt use the occasion of a

speech in Chicago to counteract isolationism somewhat. He was

nothing loath, for by now he had shifted from distrust of Britain

to active dislike of the Nazis. The Middle West by this time was

recognized as the home of extremely vocal opposition, and if there

had been any doubt of the fact, the president was assured of it as

he mounted the platform October 5 in Chicago. Facing him as he

spoke was a huge sign painted on the paper warehouse of the

Chicago Tribune; Editor Robert R. McCormick was hurling de-

fiance with the one word "Undominated."²⁵

Again a Hull suggestion backfired. The president, facing

McCormick's sign, went far beyond his advisor's expectations and

called for a "quarantine" of aggressors,²⁶ which was interpreted

as advocacy of an extreme form of sanctions, as a venture into

collective security. The resulting storm of disapproval set back

collective action by six months, Hull thought. The Chicago episode

was but one in a long series of isolationist influences which re-

assured or disappointed foreign chancellories, depending on where

they were located. Roosevelt himself sought to reassure Americans

a week later by announcing that sanctions against Japan were not

being considered, and he heeded Hull's objections to a convocation

of foreign diplomats at the White House.²⁷

The isolationist excitement in Chicago, which ramified through-

out the nation, was aggravated by domestic miscalculations. Roose-

velt since 1936 had been creating within the Democratic party a

 

25 Robert R. McCormick to J. P. Nichols, March 25, 1952, in Nichols Manu-

scripts; Hull, Memoirs, I, 544-545.

26 Secretary of Interior Harold Ickes, who favored aid to Britain, has been assigned

the distinction of suggesting the word "quarantine" to Roosevelt.

27 Hull, Memoirs, I, 546-549.

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132     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

Roosevelt party, and further impaired his own party's unity in

congress by his court-packing proposal of 1937, which the Re-

publicans fully exploited and many Democrats resented. The

administration had to exert its full force to defeat a resolution

introduced by Representative Louis Ludlow, Indiana Democrat,

requiring a national referendum (except in case of invasion)

before a United States declaration of war could become effective.

The closeness of the vote, 209-188, revealed to Hitler and Chamber-

lain the tremendous strength of American isolationists as of

January 10, 1938.28

They both realized it anew during the Munich negotiations of

September over Czechoslovakia when Roosevelt couched his

arbitral proposals to Hitler in "minimum terms." The congressional

campaign (waged currently against a slight economic recession)

was moving Roosevelt to appeasement of isolationists. He re-

iterated the principle of no political involvement in Europe's dis-

putes on September 27, and he based an October 11 call for

increased armament upon the need for more continental defense.²⁹

The voters in November scotched his party purge and gave the

Republicans eighty-one more seats in the house and eight more

in the senate. All the upper Midwest except Illinois and Missouri

went Republican. Almost all Republicans and many Democrats

then were isolationist regardless of locale, with Gallup reporting

about 95% of Americans determined to stay out of war and two-

thirds opposing sale of munitions to either side.30 Roosevelt's

domestic disabilities aggravated his diplomatic vulnerability in every

hotbed of isolationism. It has been said that his strategy of "never

getting too far ahead of public opinion, of speeding up and slowing

down, depending upon national and international exigencies, was

understandable and probably necessary."³¹ At any rate, evidence

28 Ibid., 563-564.

29 Evidence that Roosevelt's political influence was lower late in 1938 than since

1933 is marshaled by Langer and Gleason. The Challenge to Isolation, 32-39.

30 Among the analyses of pre-1940 polls special note should be taken of Francis S.

Wickware, "What We Think About Foreign Affairs [1935-1939]," Harper's Maga-

zine, CLXXIX (1939), 397-406, and Philip E. Jacob, "Influences of World Events

on United States 'Neutrality' Opinion," Public Opinion Quarterly, IV (1940), 48-65.

31 Daniel Aaron, Men of Good Hope (New York, 1951), 292.

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The Middle West and the Coming of World War II           133

 

abounds that congress then was not sanctioning any move to be

interpreted as another attempt to get dictatorial powers for the

executive. His opponents continually shouted that he "was not to

be trusted," and his sometimes unnecessary lack of candor fed the

charge. Any hint of administrative leaning toward international

cooperation was instantly pounced upon.³²

Roosevelt during 1938 had rather avoided a major debate on

foreign policy, lest his own political defeat destroy fulfillment of

his foreign program. However, by December 1938, Americans had

returned to their former tolerance of a firmer policy toward the

Far East, a "moral" embargo was placed on planes to Japan, and

credits were extended to China for purchases in the United States.

January 4, 1939, he again began asking congress to modify the

neutrality laws, and the effort to lift the embargo of arms to

belligerents continued through the spring and summer. Pittman

again proved overconfident of his ability to secure administrative

objectives without active White House aid and Roosevelt was

checkmated. The embargo remained unlifted until two months

after September 3.33

 

III

The time between the British and French declaration of war and

the bombing of Pearl Harbor (September 3, 1939-December 7,

1941) was the period when the Middle West really came into its

own as the generally-attributed hotbed of isolationism. But even

then, isolation knew no boundaries and defied definition. In one

sense the entire nation remained almost wholly isolationist, because

at the very eve of Pearl Harbor the polls indicated that over 80%

were unwilling to vote outright for entrance into war. In another

sense, there were no isolationists, for everyone was taking sides,

 

32 Hull frequently refers to suspicion dogging their every step and to the extreme

care with which they strove to word every statement. Memoirs, I, 400, 429-432,

575, 588. This suspicion is reanimated on many pages of the Tansill narrative.

Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson felt Roosevelt could have used more candor.

On Active Service in Peace and War (New York, 1947), 374-375. Langer and

Gleason often suggest the same.

33 Langer and Gleason, The Challenge to Isolation, 79-81, 136-147; Joseph Alsop

and Robert Kintner, American White Paper (New York, 1940), 44-46.

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134      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

as the "phony" war advanced into the blitzkrieg and stretched on

into repeated Axis victories. The various gradations of isolationism

became too fluid and numerous to make any label accurate.

Yet the course of events cut a demarcation line through the

pervasive isolationism, in the Middle West and elsewhere, ranging

the citizenry on opposite sides of the question whether a British

defeat would be contrary to American interests. Gradually the

majority, nation-wise, came to believe that a Hitler victory was a

threat and they therefore reluctantly tolerated advancing steps in

aid to Britain, as measures "short of war" devised to further peace.

They were "sympathetic"; but few of them were the actual

"interventionists" which their opponents labeled them. The opposite

group, reasoning that a British victory would not improve matters,

defined the aid to Britain as a warlike measure, fought every move,

and mainly were last-ditch isolationists; some preferred the con-

notations of the term "non-interventionists." Every section had both

kinds of opinion.

In this period the label "isolationist" was fastened to the Middle

West because (a) it was slightly more isolationist than other

sections and (b) it furnished the most vigorous leadership in the

fight against aid to the Allies. Some polls indicated that the Middle

West was not more than 4%  more isolationist than the East and

only about 11% more isolationist than  the South--the section

reputedly the most interventionist of them all.³⁴ But the Midwest

is known to have been more consistently isolationist (though often

by only 1% or 2%) than the rest of the country in all the public

opinion polls on neutrality and intervention, 1935-41.35

Also, middlewestern isolationists were extremely vocal; they

were unmatched for the earnestness, skill, and persistence of the

 

34 Detailed analysis of the polls reported by Gallup, Fortune Magazine, Public

Opinion Quarterly, and others, with other relevant factors, is presented in "Isolationist

Propaganda, September 1, 1939-December 7, 1941," a 1943 Ph.D. thesis in inter-

national relations written by William Cecil Rogers at the University of Chicago,

use of which is acknowledged herewith, with appreciation. He states that the con-

gressional mail showed the South and large urban areas less responsive to propaganda

than was the Middle West in general.

35 Bailey, The Man in the Street, 109. Bailey found that on nine major bills con-

cerning foreign policy and preparedness, 1939-41, Middle West congressmen voted

97% against administration measures, which he interpreted as reflecting more

partisanship than isolationism.

• 13
 

The Middle West and the Coming of World War II             135

 

leadership they provided, whether for the New-Deal-hating wing

of the isolationists, the Republican wing, the anti-British wing, the

pro-German wing, the fascist wing, or the pacifist wing. The

decibels of Middle West leaders magnified their influence far

beyond the number of their nation-wide followers. No small reason

for the Middle West's isolationist label was the long-standing

Republican slant of the area, under political machines which tended

to be dominated by the since-Wilson tradition of irreconcilability.

Also the ethnic influence in large German, Scandinavian, and Irish

elements revealed itself strongly in isolationist-voting counties.36

Chicago isolationist leadership was going to be galvanized when

New York interventionist leadership undertook to help build support

of modifications in the neutrality statutes. Action on Roosevelt's

January plea for neutrality changes had been prevented by a coalition

of almost all senate Republicans and about one-fourth of the senate

Democrats. Through the summer of 1939 the administration had

lagged behind public opinion on domestic defense outlays (in the

opinion in retrospect of Langer and Gleason), for fear of stirring

up an isolationist hornets' nest; and America remained rather

immobilized internationally.³⁷

Then came Hitler's invasion of Poland and the Franco-British

declaration of war against the Axis, September 3, forcing Roosevelt

to issue a neutrality proclamation (September 5), which in the

existing state of the statutes automatically cut off Britain and

France from the armament they had on order. Roosevelt called

a special session for September 21 to handle the issue of neutrality

revision in general and repeal of the arms embargo in particular.

But the day before congress convened Senator Charles McNary of

Oregon, who was more interventionist than most Republican

 

36 Samuel Lubell, in The Future of American Politics (New York, 1952), reports

that analysis of election returns of more than 3,000 counties and all major cities

for the last sixty years shows pro-German and anti-German ethnic groups "by far

the commonest characteristic of isolation-voting counties." Cardinal Mundelein of

Chicago and Archbishop Spellman of New York were enlisted by Roosevelt in the

effort to counter anti-British opposition to revision. Langer and Gleason, The

Challenge to Isolation, 226.

37 Langer and Gleason, The Challenge to Isolation, 129-131. The administration

placed its emphasis upon insulation of the New World from the Old in the

Panama Conference of September 25-October 3, 1939, a reflection of determination to

keep out of war. Ibid., 211-218.

• 14
 

136     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

senators, warned a White House conference that the embargo clause

could not be repealed without qualification, because the public

would think that that would be repealing American neutrality.38

However, a change was coming over the scene, which moved

ardent Middle West isolationists to gird their loins for bitter

combat. While congressional mail, against neutrality revision by

almost five to one, poured in upon congress, largely from the

Middle West, the nation-wide polls were reporting a growing

majority for revision. Much effort to arouse support for revision

was expended by one of the most influential Republican editors

of the Middle West, William Allen White of Emporia, Kansas.

Converted to the principle of cash and carry in 1937, he defied

the unanimous sentiment of Kansas Republicans in the house by

chairmaning an eastern-sponsored "Non Partisan Committee for

Peace Through Revision of the Neutrality Law," proving especially

effective in the Middle West and West.³⁹

After forty-three days and nights of heavy bombardment of

congress, while Pittman and Sol Bloom fumbled with the bill's

management in senate and house, congress in tortuous language

registered retreat from neutrality. The law of November 4, 1939,

repealed the arms embargo so far as to open American munitions

trade to such belligerents as could proceed on a cash and carry

basis. Roosevelt had had to stress a very limited measure, as the

best way to keep out of war. After this experience he acted as if

he thought public opinion would advance no further for a time.⁴⁰

What Roosevelt, and White, would do next depended largely on

what Hitler did. Between the onset of the blitzkrieg and Roosevelt's

proposal of lend-lease (April 9-December 29, 1940) German

victories destroyed the sense of security of many Americans, even

in the Great Valley, which had seemed so safe because it had

no view of the ocean. The polls indicate that the April-through-

 

38 Ibid., 218, 235; Hull's treatment is more fragmentary but not essentially dif-

ferent. Memoirs, I, 692-697.

39 Walter Johnson, William Allen White's America (New York, 1947), 513, 516-

520; Walter Johnson, The Battle Against Isolation (Chicago, 1944), 32-54.

40 Langer and Gleason, The Challenge to Isolation, 269-272; the act also had

highly involved provisions forbidding American vessels to carry passengers or freight

to belligerent shores.

• 15
 

The Middle West and the Coming of World War II             137

 

June days of 1940 blitzkrieg and French surrender raised American

support for more aid to the Allies, supposedly from 25% to 78%.

The interest in the polls was considerable and inspired much

analysis of their trends, but congressional behavior was the im-

portant question, especially in the senate, where debate was nearly

unlimited.

Senate isolationists, captained by Wheeler of Montana, who

felt that Roosevelt had not accorded him his political due, con-

sisted of both moderate and last-ditch isolationists, largely from

the Middle West and of the Republican party.⁴1 They undertook

delaying tactics, hoping that time would quiet the warring fronts

so that interventionist sentiment could die of attrition, as pro-

League sentiment had died in the twenties. Across the land the

public formed a great many small groups to pressure Washington

for or against aid to the Allies, for divers reasons, some respectable

and some otherwise.⁴² These small fry mostly aligned themselves

with either one or the other of the two big, powerful organizations

--the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, and the

America First Committee.

Each of these two committees had its special meaning in the

experience of the Middle West during          the coming    of World

War II. They and their respective followers fought one bitter

engagement after another over successive developments: over the

destroyer-bases deal, the 1940 presidential campaign, selective

service, military appropriations, convoys, and above all, over the

?end-lease fight of January 10-March 11, 1941, ending up with the

fight on the neutrality repeal act of November 17, 1941. Their

great importance lay in their demonstration that in the heart of

 

41 Members of congress notable for isolationist speeches included Ohio's Taft,

Michigan's Vandenberg, Wisconsin's LaFollette, Missouri's Clark, North Dakota's Nye,

?d New York's Fish, all Republicans.

42 Those opposing aid, to varying degrees and for varying periods of time, in-

cluded such disparate elements as: the Women's International League for Peace and

Freedom and about thirty other women's isolationist groups, the National Council

or Prevention of War, World Peaceways, Citizen's Keep America Out of War

Congress, No Foreign War Committee, Anti-War Mobilization Committee, Silver

Shirts, Grey Shirts, KuKluxers, and Bundists. Some personalities in these groups

?eappear as active supporters of the Red-Hunt of 1950-53 and as detractors of

the United Nations.

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138      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

America unity did not reside. Other governments must deal with a

hobbled American diplomacy.

The Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies was

set up in May of 1940, largely under eastern auspices.⁴³ White was

persuaded to chairman it. A representative list of nation-wide

notables accepted membership as a starter, and by November there

were 753 local chapters scattered over all the states, with about

10,000 active workers and a chest of $230,000. Regional offices

were in Chicago, Boston, Chapel Hill, and San Francisco; main

headquarters were in New York because most of the active, executive

leadership came from the Atlantic seaboard. White, however,

kept scrupulous oversight of projects, releases, and many of the other

techniques, which were employed under the supervision of a

continuously resident executive chairman, Clark Eichelberger, who

worked closely with White.

To negative the so-called "White Committee," McCormick

suggested a "Save America First Committee."⁴⁴ In July a group of

successful, conservative businessmen of the Chicago environs--at

one in their hatred of the New Deal and their fear of any ex-

pansion in Roosevelt's powers--began to set up the "America First

Committee." They chose General Robert E. Wood, a Kansas-born

Democrat risen to headship of Sears Roebuck, as chairman and

won their own representative list of notables as sponsors. The

papers of America First are said to be sealed in the Hoover Library,

and exact data seem unobtainable, but they seem to have developed

some 500 semi-autonomous chapters and affiliates, very loosely

 

43 For authentic details on the White committee, see Johnson, William Allen

White's America, 524-554.

44 An early analysis of this group is an M.A. thesis presented at Emory University

in 1942 by M. Burns Stanley, "The America First Committee: A Study in Recent

American Non-Interventionism." Stanley's narrative is based largely on a file of the

bulletins issued by the Chicago headquarters of America First (loaned to Stanley by

General Wood), on correspondence with the majority of the national committeement

of America First, and on personal contacts with people who knew the organization

intimately; more than 750 bulletins were issued January 15-early December 1941

There is now in press at the University of Wisconsin a 1951 Ph.D. thesis by Wayne

S. Cole, "The Battle Against Intervention: A History of the America First Com

mittee"; some of his findings were embodied in "The America First Committee,

Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, XLIV (1951), 305-322. The writer o?

this article is happy to acknowledge the loan of Mr. Stanley's thesis and the receip

of a helpful letter from Mr. Cole.

• 17
 

The Middle West and the Coming of World War II             139

 

held together. Apparently they enjoyed much bigger financing

than they admitted. Their state organizations seem to have

functioned best in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, and

Indiana, with Iowa and Michigan also important. They had perhaps

1,000,000 members, centering in the Middle West, on the Pacific

Coast, and in the New York area, with the South largely un-

represented. The New York chapter was second only to Chicago

in membership.⁴⁵

America First was run mainly by a staff of professional propa-

gandists-working in the Chicago office and a Washington

"Research Bureau"-whose skill made the organization largely

responsible for the strength of the isolationist campaign. They staged

innumerable mass-meetings and emitted a constant flow of reports,

propaganda, general information, and exhortations to pressure,

cleverly using name-calling, card-stacking, and band-wagon tech-

niques. Although no congressmen appear to have joined officially,

there was very close cooperation with the most active isolationist

senators and representatives. The Washington research bureau kept

a nice correlation between the supply of speech material for legis-

lators and the supply of franked envelopes and postcards for

America First. Assiduous watchfulness over the "Hill" and the

White House ensured that the heat would be turned on at strategic

junctures.

Both committees got into trouble through their conglomerate

membership. In America First, fascist, New-Deal-hating, Bundist,

hyphenate, subversive, and anti-Semitic elements tended to frighten

away the initial contingent of liberal, neutralist, pacifist, and non-

partisan respectables. Support from Father Coughlin's anti-British,

fascistic Social Justice group proved embarrassing; his anti-Semitism

 

45 The New York chapter of America First, organized by John T. Flynn, who

was an Irish opponent of international bodies, gave the New York Times (January

28, 1941), a listing of initial membership, which included such respectables

as Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, Archibald B. Roosevelt, and Amos Pinchot. The

variety of its clientele is indicated in Chester Bowles, Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh,

and Irvin S. Cobb, members at one time and another. Very useful to America First

were the activities of President Robert M. Hutchins of the University of Chicago,

although he refused to consider himself an associate of the committee, or of the

isolationists. Rogers, "Isolationist Propaganda," 143; Stanley, "The America First

Committee," 23, 40, 41, 57.

• 18
 

140     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

and a Lindbergh speech interpreted as anti-Semitic caused many

resignations. Next to war, the leaders most hated Roosevelt, and

plans for entering the political arena jeopardized unity.

Within the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies

there developed a schism most revealing of the Middle West pre-

dicament in the age-old basic conflict between interventionism and

isolationism. Under the leadership of Francis P. Miller a so-called

"Century group" early emerged in New York, and on June 9, 1941,

issued a call for an American declaration of war. Six of the thirty

signers of this call were members of the executive body of the White

committee. They strove to advance the committee from a position

sympathetic to Britain to one of actual belligerency.⁴⁶

This flouted the position of White and the vast majority of

Americans, who as late as the end of 1940 clung desperately to

the hope that the United States need not approach nearer to war

in order to save England from defeat. The schism came to a head

after the national organization issued, November 26 and December

7, 1940, two obliquely worded policy statements which implied,

but did not explicitly state, endorsement of the sending of convoys

and outright repeal of the neutrality act. Accusations became rife

that the White committee took these positions and, ergo, admitted

a concealed war objective.

Thereupon White wrote a letter to Roy Howard of the Scripps-

Howard chain, and allowed it to be broadcast through the press,

explicitly denying these allegations. He aimed to refute the charges,

to make his own position clear, and to serve notice on the Century

group and the eastern wing of the committee that the committee

"should not move too fast for opinion in the Middle West."⁴⁷

Lindbergh, Wood, and other America Firsters capitalized on the

rift in the committee, and to its national headquarters came protests

from all over the country against White's position, including some

resignations. The executive committee could not budge White from

his position. He had "always felt on the defensive about New

 

46 The schism in the White group is detailed in Johnson, Battle Against Isolation,

170-205; it was symptomatic of the national schism as Americans strove to keep in

their laws a neutrality they no longer felt in their hearts.

⁴7 Ibid., 183.

• 19
 

The Middle West and the Coming of World War II           141

 

York"; he believed that it thought "it was the whole country"

and that the New York committee people failed "to realize that

the temper of the people in the Middle West was different from

that in the East."⁴⁸ He withdrew      from  the committee. His in-

transigeance was fortified by the fact that he received as many

telegraphic endorsements from the Middle West as criticisms from

New York City. He had no confusion on the moral issue. As his

biographer Johnson explained, "It was only the legal barrier which

he could not hurdle, and which he felt that the Middle West did

not wish to tear down ... and White was not ahead of the Middle

West."⁴⁹

In the battle between America First and the White committee

the press was a valued weapon. Over the nation as a whole, press

endorsement went more to White's committee than to the Chicago

group, because editors tended to become more sympathetic to inter-

vention than to isolationism. But what America First lacked in

quantity it made up in virulence, with the doughty Colonel

McCormick, his cousin Robert Patterson of the New York Daily

News, Hearst, and (for a time) Roy Howard of the Scripps-Howard

chain firing the heaviest salvos. McCormick's Tribune did an out-

standing job with slanted news, smear cartoons, and all the other

ingenious techniques which a very highly skilled staff under un-

compromising dictation can devise. Equally continuous ingenuity

and ruthlessness were not demonstrated by the other leading

isolationist editors, for various reasons. It should be noted that

the isolationist organ with the biggest circulation, Patterson's

New York Daily News, greatly jumped its sales by joining the

isolationist ranks.

It is significant that such widely circulated magazines as the

Saturday Evening Post and the Reader's Digest were anti-interven-

tionist. Of the two the latter was the more important because of

 

48 Ibid., 197. The concept of White as midwest Lochinvar was still strong eight

years after his death; novelist Kenneth Davis, writing on "Wit and Wisdom by

Will White" (New York Times Magazine, April 20, 1952), recalled, "He made

us rural Kansans seem respectable in our own eyes, if not actually superior, when

measured against 'city slickers.'"

49 Ibid., 205. Johnson proffers further explanation that "White back in the Middle

West by December was no longer as conscious of the gravity of the situation as

he had been when he was in the East." Ibid., 178.

• 20
 

142      Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

its special emphasis upon appeal to ordinary readers; both the

owner of the Digest and her husband, the co-editor, had Middle

West backgrounds with missionary overtones. The most widely read

Protestant paper, the Christian Century, published in the Middle

West, also supported isolationism vigorously,⁵⁰ as did most of the

Catholic periodicals. In the radio field expert local propaganda

completely overshadowed short wave.⁵1

Such was the nature of the propaganda and pressures emanating

from America Firsters, captained in Chicago, and from their allies

and opponents. While the non-interventionists fought their losing

fight against the course of world events, America Firsters at every

defeat gloried in postponements and limitations. Their bulletins,

citing Roosevelt's sensitivity to mail, continually claimed credit for

moderating his speeches and forcing his actions into roundabout

channels, and he admitted their hindrance.⁵² They kept in question

the weight of public opinion, and this question restricted the

administration far more than any limitations written into law. The

chronicle of their achievements was written between July of 1940

and December 1941, while uncertainties and mounting dread were

moving a majority of a divided nation toward a belief that British

defeat spelt American calamity.

The major party platforms of 1940, written against the back-

ground of Dunkirk and the fall of Paris, both admitted the need

to extend material aid to victims of aggression and stressed national

defense; they were more anti-war than isolationist. But the qualified

endorsement of Democratic diplomacy expressed by the Republican

standard-bearer--Wendell Willkie of Indiana influenced by White

 

50 Most of the Catholic periodicals were anti-British, isolationist, and strongly

attracted to fascism as a counterweight to communism. Rogers thinks their influence

small; he considers the liberal, non-interventionist Christian Century more in-

fluential. "Isolationist Propaganda," 83-85, 162-163. On the influence of the Reader's

Digest, see Bailey, The Man in the Street, 312-313, and James P. Wood, Magazines

in the United States (New York, 1949), 203, 304.

51 The high temperature and skill of printed and radio propaganda in America,

on both sides, made any foreign-based propaganda seem tepid, inept, and unneeded.

The Middle West did not get good short-wave reception. See Harwood Child and

J. B. Whitton, Propaganda by Short Wave (Princeton, N.J., 1942).

52 Stanley, "The America First Committee," 85-86, 210-259. Roosevelt's intro-

duction to the 1940 volume of his Public Papers and Addresses, signed October 11,

1941, surveys some hindrances. Columnists frequently and frankly commented on his

dilemma.

• 21
 

The Middle West and the Coming of World War II          143

of Kansas^53--was poles apart from the virulent denunciations by

the Republican rank and file charging that Roosevelt led down

the path toward war. So, Wheeler managed to push into the

Democratic platform a pledge not to send forces outside the

Americas "except in case of attack,"⁵⁴ and Roosevelt had to press

his campaign on the plane that the Republicans hindering re-

armament were "playing politics with national security." He selected

for vice presidential candidate, Henry Wallace of Iowa, who under-

stood that he was to counter midwest German appeasement

clamor.⁵⁵

By September 2, 1940, during the desperate "Battle for Britain"

and much activity among the Committee to Defend America by

Aiding the Allies, public opinion rather pushed Roosevelt into

consummating and announcing the destroyer-bases deal;⁵⁶ it ex-

pressed the popular hope to avoid war by aiding Britain. After his

reelection (by a tally of approximately 27,000,000 to 22,000,000),

Roosevelt resolved to put this principle to the test; at year's end

he called upon Americans to rally behind the "Four Freedoms"

and to endorse lend-lease in self-defense.

The nation, like the Republicans, divided, with Willkie endorsing

lend-lease while Taft, Hoover, and Landon opposed it. Isolationists

attained the peak of their activity, pouring several million protests

upon Washington, although Gallup polls reported Roosevelt's

popularity rising to 72%. At any rate, the coalition of conservative

southern Democrats with the Republicans did not hold enough to

prevent lend-lease from becoming law March 11, 1941.⁵⁷

After a $7,000,000,000 appropriation bill went through (March

14) to implement lend-lease, America First devoted itself to fighting

use of convoys; on these a New York Times editorial of April 26

 

53 Willkie to Walter Johnson, May 13, 1941, cited in Johnson, Battle Against

Isolation, 249.

54 Wheeler credited this pledge to efforts of the National Council for Prevention of

War and the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. John W. Masland,

"The Peace Groups Join Battle," Public Opinion Quarterly, IV (1940), 665.

55 Russell Lord, The Wallaces of Iowa (Boston, 1947), 475-476.

56 Langer and Gleason, The Challenge to Isolation, 770-776.

57 Rogers, "Isolationist Propaganda," 23, 157-158; Johnson, Battle Against

Isolation, 209. The administration decided to let the opposition talk itself out,

to end their role of persecuted martyrs.

• 22
 

144     Ohio State Archaeological and Historical Quarterly

 

declared that Roosevelt again lagged behind the nation.⁵⁸ However,

a late extension of military training enacted August 12 passed the

house by but one vote, just two days before Roosevelt and Churchill

proclaimed the Atlantic Charter. Repeal of remaining neutrality

legislation--so as to permit arming of United States vessels and

sailing them into belligerent ports--was not secured until November

17, and the vote (house, 212-194; senate, 50-37) testified anew to

the longevity of disunity.

*          *         *

From the foregoing it seems clear that the Middle West could

not escape sharing with other Americans, and indeed with the

people of other countries, a condition of domestic and international

confusion. No people enjoyed a clear view of their own horizons

or proved able to glimpse more than a part of others' horizons.

The Roosevelt administration suffered confusions of its own

which helped to compound obstacles to consistent pursuit of long-

range planning. Roosevelt's confusion was aggravated by a tendency

to overestimate isolationist influence upon senate action. The super-

imposition of nation-wide confusion upon administration confusion

and upon confusion in other countries,⁵⁹ perforce throws some doubt

upon the charge of predominant, personal responsibility for Amer-

ican involvement which some isolationists and revisionists fain

would attach to Franklin D. Roosevelt for all time. On this the

president's frequent lack of candor (itself partly inspired by fear

of "McCormickism") serves him ill, but the extreme propaganda

techniques proudly owned by those critics who were inspired by

partisan and (or) fascistic motives, have had the boomerang effect

of bolstering somewhat his higher repute in history.

Some of the people who have spent much time in measuring

these movements report that they think the influence of one group

tended to cancel out that of the other. They suggest that the

achievements of either group--in "converting" members of the

58 The New York Times reported May 6 that the Japan Times Advertiser (Japan's

foreign office organ) was citing America's "disunity and interior strife"; America

First Bulletin 317 (June 14, 1941) claimed that the organization had prevented

convoys, preserved neutrality, and kept the United States out of war. Stanley, "The

America First Committee," 175-203.

59 Hull became thoroughly convinced of the debilitating influence of isolationisn

both within and without governments. Memoirs, I, 288; II, 943, 1104, 1297, 1734

• 23
 

The Middle West and the Coming of World War II       145

other--could not well be outstanding; their conversion effectiveness

probably did not go far beyond (a) increasing the intensity of

their own adherents and (b) decreasing the intensity of the weakest

factions in the principal opposition camp. The overall course of

events, as observed by that majority of Americans who wished to be

neither outright interventionist nor outright isolationist, especially

between September 3, 1939, and December 7, 1941, had far more

influence than the propagandists.

The energetic, skillful, unremitting activities of the isolationist

wing of the American people, centering around Chicago, con-

tributed to at least three major achievements of dubious worth.

They retarded certain broad defense preparations although de-

manding midcontinent defense, thus making the United States more

vulnerable to the ultimate attack. They slowed appreciably the pace

of aid to Hitler's opponents and affected its kind, thus failing to

toughen by this much the obstructions in his path. Most important,

they encouraged Hitler to base his plans upon an underestimate of

ultimate American interventionism, a miscalculation which increased

his momentum. These were not picayune effects; altogether, they

vastly multiplied the difficulties of Hitler's defeat.

It must not be forgotten, however, that these same isolationists

made at least two constructive contributions, though not quite as

intended. They helped to obstruct formal entrance into World

War II until enemy bombing of United States territory gave the

administration a nation united in support of the war effort. More

important, the fury of their fight with the interventionists hastened

the death of isolationism in the purest sense; for the "joint

debate" did much to end public indifference on diplomatic issues.⁶⁰

Thenceforward, that American would be rare indeed who did not

form and vehemently hold opinions as to the optimum course of

diplomatic policy. Whether such opinion, often ill-informed and

hasty, makes for wise diplomacy is debatable. At least as an exercise

in democratic functioning it is in the American tradition, and the

Middle West has had no small part in animating it.

 

60 Stanley ("The America First Committee," 401-403) and some magazine writers

attribute to America First additional achievements to which this writer is reluctant

to subscribe.

• 24