By Thomas F. Schwartz
Matthew Continetti’s The Right: The Hundred Year War for American Conservatism states that Herbert Hoover was a member of the America First Committee. This mistake has been repeated in other books citing Continetti as the source.
The America First Committee was composed of prominent politicians, business, other national figures who opposed America’s intervention in the European conflict that became World War II. Students at Yale University formed the group that quickly became a nationwide organization with an estimated membership of more than 800,000.
Politicians from both parties were members such as Senator Burton Wheeler [D] and Gerald Nye [R]. Business leaders R. Douglas Stuart, Jr. heir to the Quaker Oats Company fortune and General Robert Wood, CEO of Sears, Roebuck as well as publishers Robert McCormick of the Chicago Tribune and Joe Patterson of the New York Daily News were active in the organization. Celebrities such as Hollywood star Lillian Gish, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and aviator Charles Lindbergh were also members.
Hoover knew many of these individuals and shared their view that America needed to do everything possible to avoid getting involved in the European conflict; however, he declined the invitation to become a member.
On December 6, 1940, Hoover replied to an invitation by R. Douglas Stuart, Jr. National Director of the America First Committee:
“I have your kind letter of December 3rd.
In view of my obligation to organize a movement in the United States to break down the barriers against food to the five small democracies, I think it is desirable that for the present I should keep free of other connections.
I am completely possessed with the necessity of making clear the facts and the truth of the relation of the United States to the European situation. It is indeed a difficult job in view of the furious emotions and the enormous amount of propaganda that is flooding the country. This is injected to destroy even so humane a question of trying to save the lives of millions of innocent people from famine.”
Herbert Hoover, replying to an invitation from the America First Committee
As Hal Elliott Wert describes in Hoover vs. Roosevelt: Two Presidents’ Battle Over Feeding Europe and Going to War, Hoover was trying to resurrect something like the Commission for Relief in Belgium that successfully fed millions of non-combatant civilian populations in World War I. His argument for the need is described in a previous blog post.
Hoover was trying to avoid being accused of the slanders he felt were unjustly being leveled against individuals who felt non-intervention was the wisest course of action. The term “isolationist” is a pejorative term suggesting self-satisfied ignorance of the larger world and like a turtle retreating into its shell. Noninterventionists were willing to use force to defend American interests but only when necessary.
Despite Hoover’s clear statement that he would not be a member of the America First Committee, it did not stop critics by making him guilty by association. The American Labor Party held a rally using as a graphic a snake representing anti-democratic Nazi poison. On the snake’s body are swastikas and the names “Wheeler, Lindbergh, and Hoover,” leading critics of the Roosevelt Administration and two of the three, leading figure in the American First Committee. Lillian Gish was blacklisted in Hollywood for her involvement.
Once Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, most of the America First Committee placed their earlier concerns aside and became staunch supporters of the war effort.