America First Committee
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The America First Committee was the foremost pressure group against American entry into the Second World War. Often portrayed as somehow pro-Nazi they were in fact a disparate collection of Old Right Republicans, Midwest populists and left wing pacifists.
One of their most prominent spokesmen was the aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh. At its peak, the America First Committee had over 800,000 members.
The America First Committee originally had four major principles:
- The United States must build an impregnable defense for America
- No foreign power, nor group of powers, can successfully attack a prepared America
- American democracy can be preserved only by keeping out of the European war.
- "Aid short of war" weakens national defense at home and threatens to involve America in war abroad.
Although a popular cause through the early portion of the Second World War, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent German declaration of war led to the popular feeling that the Second World War was now a defensive war and that America had been provoked into joining. Therefore, the committee was dissolved four days after Pearl Harbor, on December 11, 1941.
Many felt that Roosevelt had intentionally provoked Japan as a means of getting the American people to support joining the war effort on the side of the Soviet Union and the British Commonwealth. A Roosevelt Administration document known as "Rainbow Five," which laid out plans for provoking an attack on America was leaked to the press and published in several major newspapers just days prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor. Some prominent right-wing members of the committee vowed to fight on for the principles of the America First Committee and founded the America First Party during the war.