America First Committee

January 25, 2009 at 3:01 pm | Posted in Historical | 2 Comments
Tags: America First, Avery Brundage, Burton Wheeler, Charles Lindbergh, china, Father Coughlin, Gerald Ford, Gerald Smith, germany, Henry Ford, Hitler, Japan, John F. Dulles, Joseph Goebbels, Nazis, Sears-Roebuck, WWII

"He's one of our best customers" - Cartoon shows Senator Burton K. Wheeler, wearing a large "America First" button, with his hand lying protectively on the head of a small Japanese soldier. In 1941, as Japanese aggression in China intensified, Wheeler, one of the leading Congressional isolationists and a spokesman for the America First Committee, stated publicly, "Japan is one of our best trading partners . . . and there is no reason why we should not live in peace with her." Several months later, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Published August 29, 1941. Rollin Kirby, artist.

In 1940, [Hugh] Johnson was on the national board of the America First Committee (AFC) with Gen. Robert Wood, head of Sears Roebuck [sic]. It was the leading lobby against U.S. entry into WWII.

Started by Yale’s Douglas Stuart Jr., its key backers included Gerald Ford (later U.S. president), and well-known fascists Charles Lindbergh (aviation hero, AFC spokesman and Nazi-medal recipient), Coughlin (Father of hate radio) and Gerald Smith (a fascist priest who called Roosevelt, “Rosenfeld”), Avery Brundage (Olympic athlete, member of the International Olympic Committee in 1936, and the U.S. Nazi Party), Henry Ford (another Nazi-medal recipient), Hanford MacNider (American Legion commander), Senator Burton Wheeler, John F. Dulles (Nazi lawyer and later Secretary of State).

In 1941, Nazi Propaganda Minister, Joseph Goebbels, said: “The America First Committee is truly American and truly patriotic!”

(Source: Arlington National Cemetery)

In 2003 Justin Raimondo reviewed a book titled “The Last Word on America First.” It was his opinion that America joining the Allies in World War II was a terrible mistake, opposing Hitler a betrayal of all that is good and right:

Roosevelt, many Republicans were convinced, was using the war scare to divert attention from the failure of the New Deal and to increase the power of the executive branch beyond anything yet dreamed. Yet the GOP was oddly quiescent. This lack of an effective opposition party led to the creation, in a very short time, of the biggest antiwar movement in American history.

Emaciated man lying on straw at Sachsenhausen, Germany concentration camp. (Published between 1942 and 1944; "Distributed by the Ceskoslovenská tisková kancelár, Prague.")

The America First Committee was founded, too, because of the abdication of the Left, which joined the War Party when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union. In the face of these serial betrayals, the job of keeping us out of the biggest mass slaughter in human history was left to a group of anti-New-Deal businessmen, retired military officers, and college students of a conservative disposition

.

Well, let’s hope the current crop of “businessmen, retired military officers, and college students of a conservative disposition” are as successful in their efforts as those so admired by Mr. Raimondo.