It's also worth looking at what groups in the USA opposed getting involved in foreign wars in the years before US entered WW2 after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
A group, the America First Committee (AFC), formed in September 1940, stood for isolationism. Specifically it opposed US entry into WW2, which had been underway in Europe for a year. It opposed Franklin Roosevelt's efforts at arming or assisting the Great Britain. Supported actively by Charles Lindbergh, AFC membership peaked at 800,000 paying members in 450 chapters, making the AFC one of the largest antiwar organizations in the history of the United States. I see parallels between the AFC and today's isolationist, anti-NATO GOP under Trump. It's worth noting that Trump deliberately chose the words "America First" as he campaigned for president in 2016.
At its peak, the AFC claimed 800,000 dues-paying members in 450 chapters, located mostly in a 300-mile radius of Chicago, and 135,000 members in 60 chapters throughout Illinois, its strongest state. Fundraising drives produced about $370,000 from some 25,000 contributors. Nearly half came from a few millionaires such as William H. Regnery, H. Smith Richardson of the Vick Chemical Company, General Robert E. Wood of Sears-Roebuck, publisher Joseph M. Patterson (New York Daily News) and his cousin, publisher Robert R. McCormick (Chicago Tribune). The two newspaper owners had a long record of opposing FDR, and continued that effort as the war loomed.
en.wikipedia.org
(Aside on McCormick: Half a year later, McCormick was directly involved in a serious breach of national security soon after the Battle of Midway in June 1942. His newspaper, the
Chicago Tribune, published highly classified information about what US Navy intelligence knew of Japanese plans before the battle. It revealed that the US Navy had broken Japanese naval codes. It was, perhaps, the first example of what was described as the US government's inability to prosecute someone in a criminal court for revealing classified information, without having to introduce into evidence the very secrets it was trying to protect. See attached document.)
The AFC advocated four basic 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.
A Sept. 1941 speech by Charles Lindbergh may have significantly raised tensions in the US. He identified the forces pulling America into the war as the British, the Roosevelt administration, and American Jews. While he expressed sympathy for the plight of the Jews in Germany, he argued that America's entry into the war would serve them little better. Others, such as GOP presidential candidate Wendell Willkie, criticized Lindbergh's speech as "the most un-American talk made in my time by any person of national reputation."
The AFC dissolved itself on December 11, 1941, four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and three days after Germany and Italy declared war on the USA. Some of it's adherents stubbornly claimed for years that the US would never have had to go to war if their principles had been followed.
I believe the AFC was as wrong in 1941, as the isolationist wing of the GOP today is wrong today about the USA's major involvement in NATO – the only thing Putin fears. However, the AFC had the good sense to quickly dissolve itself soon after Pearl Harbor. I've yet to see any effort by GOP leadership to oppose Trump and his isolationists.
