Hitler’s American Friends: The Third Reich’s Supporters in the United States

321 Pages·2018·6.64 MB·English

by  Bradley W. Hart

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INTRODUCTION
On the evening of September 11, 1941, one of America’s most famous men took
to a stage in Des Moines, Iowa, to discuss the national security issue that was on
everyone’s mind. Exactly six decades later the date of Lindbergh’s speech would
be associated with a far different type of threat, but on this night the famed
aviator—the first man to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, Time magazine’s
first Man of the Year, and once estimated to be the most photographed man in
the world—was discussing the war in Europe. The United States was not yet
involved in the conflict and, if Lindbergh and his fellow members of the
America First Committee had their way, it never would be.
“Lucky Lindy” had been traveling the country for months arguing against
American intervention in the war, making the case that the country’s geographic
separation from Europe and Asia, and its two bordering oceans, were sufficient
protection from foreign attack. The United States should prepare for defense, not
offense, Lindbergh and his associates believed; and if the country could establish
a ring of air and naval bases around its perimeter, it would become an
impenetrable fortress. Providing aid to Britain—the last Western European
country still fighting the Germans—would simply detract from building up the
country’s defenses. This was the standard isolationist position before Pearl
Harbor: let the Europeans fight their own conflicts and make sure America was
sufficiently prepared to stay out of them.1
This fateful Iowa evening, however, Lindbergh deviated from the standard
script. Perhaps he was full of confidence from becoming the America First
Committee’s most popular circuit speaker, receiving so many invitations to
towns and cities across the country that there was simply no way he could accept
all of them. No doubt he was partially inspired by the Roosevelt administration’s
recently passed Lend-Lease policy, which had made it through Congress earlier
in the year and allowed the president to provide military vehicles, aircraft, and
munitions to the ailing Allies. Whatever the exact alignment of reasons and
circumstances, Lindbergh chose that night to unveil his own interpretation of
American foreign policy. The consequences would haunt him for the rest of his
life.
In past speeches, Lindbergh had referred broadly to unnamed “powerful
elements” that were seeking to draw the United States into the war, but he left
the details up to the listeners’ imagination. Tonight, before a crowd of more than
seven thousand, he decided to reveal exactly whom he believed was behind the
alleged push to war. There were, he told the crowd, three groups that had
conspired to draw the country into the conflict: “the British, the Jewish, and the
Roosevelt administration.” Together, he continued, these groups had executed a
plan to draw the country into war gradually by building up its military and then
manufacturing a series of “incidents” to “force us into the actual conflict.”
Britain, he continued, might be able to hold out against the German onslaught.
Yet even if it did, there was no hope of invading Europe and liberating France.
Under normal circumstances the British government would have made peace
with the Germans long ago but was merely holding out to make the United
States responsible for the war “financially, as well as militarily.”2 President
Franklin D. Roosevelt was simply playing into the hands of the perfidious
British.
The bulk of Lindbergh’s ire, however, was reserved for the second group he
mentioned: the Jews. It was understandable that Jewish Americans sought war
against Germany, he claimed, because, “The persecution they suffered in
Germany would be sufficient to make bitter enemies of any race.” However, “the
Jewish groups in this country” should realize that in the event of war “they will
be among the first to feel its consequences.” Jews themselves, he concluded,
presented a unique danger to the country because of their “large ownership and
influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.”
Despite the alleged machinations of these groups, Lindbergh reserved hope that
they might cease their efforts to push the United States toward war. If that could
be managed, he continued, “I believe there will be little danger of our
involvement.”3
Lindbergh’s speech was covered by major papers and carried on page 2 of the
New York Times the following morning. It quickly sparked a firestorm. Was
Lindbergh blaming Jews for the outbreak of the war in Europe? Was he claiming
that Jews were in control of the Roosevelt administration? These seemed very
much like the same claims being made by Adolf Hitler and his fellow Nazis in
Berlin. The comparison did not go overlooked. White House press secretary
Stephen Early remarked that there was a “striking similarity” between
Lindbergh’s speech and recent “outpourings from Berlin.” New York City
mayor Fiorello La Guardia was less sparing in his condemnation, calling the
remarks “a carbon copy of a Nazi paper.”4 Jewish groups denounced the slurs
and called on Lindbergh to retract the comments, similarly evoking comparisons
to the anti-Semitism of the Nazis.5
The outrage spanned the mainstream political spectrum. Roosevelt’s past and
future Republican rivals for the presidency both denounced the remarks. His
1940 opponent, Wendell Willkie, proclaimed himself shocked by Lindbergh’s
bigotry. “If the American people permit race prejudice to arrive at this critical
moment, they little deserve to preserve democracy,” Willkie remarked.6
Roosevelt’s future opponent in 1944, Thomas Dewey, similarly told a
Republican Party picnic that Lindbergh had committed “an inexcusable abuse of
the right of freedom of speech.… When the religion or race of any individual or
group is made a part of the discussion of domestic or foreign policy, that is a
challenge to our freedoms,” he continued.7
Faced with growing pressure from all corners, the America First Committee’s
leaders—who had not reviewed Lindbergh’s speech prior to delivery—were
forced to put out a statement asserting that the organization was not anti-Semitic
and blaming the interventionists (those who sought to take the United States into
the war or, at a minimum, provide additional aid to the Allies) for inserting “the
race issue” into the “discussion of war or peace.” The attacks on Lindbergh, they
claimed, were simply a distraction from bigger issues.8 This halfhearted
explanation did little to calm the controversy, with the New York Times noting in
an editorial that the Committee had not actually disowned Lindbergh’s
sentiments about Jewish Americans, and “By not disowning them it associates
itself with them.… What is being attacked is the tolerance and brotherhood
without which our liberties will not survive. What is being exposed to derision
and contempt is Americanism itself.”9
Behind the scenes, however, the Committee was seeing a grassroots
outpouring of support that very much contradicted the stories being seen by
readers of the Times. In the Committee’s mail room, at least 85 percent of the
letters being received were supportive of Lindbergh, in part because of the anti-
Semitic undertones of his speech. Some messages were so extreme in their racist
language that the Committee did not see fit to even respond, but others came
from regional leaders of their own organization and other paid-up members.
Lindbergh was clearly far from being the only America First member to harbor
such views about who was really responsible for the war.
The emerging controversy between the “respectable” voices within the
America First Committee’s leadership who saw the need to denounce Lindbergh,
and the rank-and-file membership, was symptomatic of the wider divisions in the
United States before Pearl Harbor. Lindbergh was just one of a wide range of
figures who argued positions ranging from isolationism to the establishment of
closer relations with Nazi Germany and, in the most extreme cases, the adoption
of Nazi policies in the United States. These groups and individuals often did not
get along with one another: it was supposedly forbidden for a member of the
German American Bund—the nation’s largest and most prominent Nazi-
emulating mass organization—to join the America First Committee, or so the
America Firsters claimed.10 Yet these organizations were working toward many
of the same goals whether they were aware of it or not. The America First
Committee’ goal was arguing to keep the United States from entering the war in
Europe, an objective perfectly in line with the intentions of the German
government and, in fact, the Bund itself. The German embassy in Washington,
DC, for its part, instructed one of its agents to support and promote America
First because it was “the best thing you can do for our cause”.11 Whether they
intended to do so or not—or were even aware of it—the leaders of America First
had become an important asset to Hitler’s government.
The German government was far from wrong in its belief that the United
States might be potentially kept out of the war in Europe. There were even some
indicators that Americans, however unlikely it might seem, might even be
receptive to National Socialism itself. In June 1938, Gallup polled Americans on
their views of the respective merits of fascism and communism, asking them
which “you think is worse.” While nearly half of respondents offered no answer,
32 percent thought communism was the worse ideology. Only 23 percent saw
fascism as more destructive. Seven months later, Gallup asked Americans, “If
you had to choose between Fascism and Communism, which would you
choose?” Around half again offered no answer, but among those who did,
fascism and communism tied at 26 percent each.12 Though this result was a
major decline from March 1937, when a full 45 percent of respondents who had
recently read about politics willingly chose fascism as their answer (with just 29
percent responding with communism), a level of comfort with the concept of
fascism endured.13 The United States was not at risk of an imminent fascist
takeover in the late 1930s, but there was certainly fertile terrain in which
dictatorship might be able to take root.
More important was American public opinion related to the war itself.
Intervention versus isolationism was the most potent political issue from late
1939 until Pearl Harbor, dividing friends and families against one another in a
way that would not again be seen until the Vietnam War era. The isolationists,
led by Lindbergh and some of the country’s leading congressmen, argued that
America had no business getting involved in the war. Any form of intervention,
they argued, would inevitably result in young men dying on faraway battlefields
and financial ruin at home.
President Roosevelt and his administration led the interventionist side,
arguing that Americans could not afford to sit the war out, lest the Germans and
Japanese become unstoppably powerful and a direct threat to the United States.
This became more than an academic argument when France fell to the Nazis in
the summer of 1940 and Britain was left to face the Nazi onslaught alone. With
London being bombed nightly and the British Expeditionary Force barely
making it out of Dunkirk, there was no guarantee that Britain would not become
the next Nazi-occupied country. If Britain were to fall, would America be next?
No one knew. In August 1940, Gallup asked Americans if they thought Hitler
would invade the United States if Britain fell under Nazi jackboots. Opinion was
evenly split, with 42 percent believing the Nazis would invade the United States
and 45 percent disagreeing.14
Public opinion was equally split on what the United States should actually do
under these circumstances. In 1940, the British ambassador to the United States,
Lord Lothian, told a friend in London that American public opinion was “95%
against Hitler and 95% against being drawn into the war, but as the fear complex
dies away, thinking Americans are beginning at last to ask themselves seriously
about their own future if the Allies don’t win the war.”15 This assessment was
not far off the mark. A year before Pearl Harbor, 79 percent of Americans said
they wanted their country to send supplies and equipment to Britain, but only 11
percent wanted the US military to actually help defend the country.16 Most
Americans believed sending aid would be beneficial to their own interests: in
January 1941, 57 percent of respondents told Gallup sending aid to the British
would help keep the United States out of the war.17 “U.S. is still extremely
friendly to the Allies and vehemently against both Hitler and Stalin, but they will
not abandon neutrality until their own vital interests are affected in some obvious
way,” Lothian presciently wrote in January 1940.18
Favorable polling numbers were certainly good news for the British, but
London was also aware that maintaining favorable American public opinion was