Subject: [lbo-talk] 1930s Peace Movement In the U.S.
> Would anyone happen to know of any good scholarship on
> this topic? I've always heard that pacifists delayed
> U.S. entry into WWII and almost caused us to lose the
> war (obviously, it's a big line with neocons), and
> I've often wondered if it's true. I remember reading
> once that the Republicans almost defeated FDR in 1940
> by tapping anti-war sentiment.
Do you mean "pacifism" or "isolationism?" Pacifism per se has always been pretty marginal as a political force, but there is a strong and persistent isolationist strain in American politics, which at least rhetorically sometimes takes on pacifist tones. However, one couldn't really say that "pacifists" delayed American entry into WWII. Isolationism, in the conventional wisdom, was "discredited" by WWII, but it never really goes away. A perennial dilemma for the progressive left in the US has always been how "opportunistic" to be in appealing to isolationist feeling. The broad "left" may oppose war and preparations for war on other grounds (e.g., anti-imperialism), but the quickest way to attract a following for an anti-war policy is to appeal to isolationist feeling, which may at times have a "pacifist" ring, but also carries strong nativist and xenophobic overtones. (The predecessors of todays neocons blasted George McGovern for "neo-isolationism").
FDR's opponent in 1940 was Wendell Wilkie, a corporate lawyer and utility executive. Willkie was a political non-entity who had been a Democrat until just a few years before he became the GOP's nominee for president. He projected a down-home, folksy image, which caused Harold Ickes (Sr.) to make one of the most famous quips in American political history: Yep, said Ickes, that Wendell Willkie's just a "simple, barefoot Wall Street lawyer." Willkie was pushed forward by the "internationalist" wing of the GOP, which favored Roosevelt's policy of aid to Britain, precisely in order to oppose the midwestern isolationists. Henry "American Century" Luce was one of Willkie's key backers. Without the financial backing of the eastern internationalists for Willkie, the GOP would probably have nominated someone like Arthur Vandenburg, a hard-line isolationist. (Vandenburg's later conversion to internationalism in 1947 in support of the early Cold War--the Truman administration's intervention in Greece, taking over from the exhausted Brits--was a key turning point). Willkie came out in favor of Lend-Lease and the selective service act, but on the other hand denounced FDR as a warmonger, and was stridently supported by the aviator Charles Lindbergh, the leading isolationist spokesman. I suppose you could say that Willkie spoke out of both sides of his mouth, reassuring the east coast internationalists while throwing enough red meat to the midwestern isolationists in an effort to hold together an electoral coalition big enough to defeat Roosevelt. He gave FDR a scare, but in the end the election was not really close. Willkie carried 9 or 10 states, I think.
The standard work on isolationism is Manfred Jonas, _Isolationism in America_ pub. 1960s--too lazy to look up the exact cite. A good general orientation in the period is David M. Kennedy, _Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War_, part of the Oxford History of the United States series edited by C. Vann Woodward.
Jacob Conrad