My Review of H.W. Brands' "America First: Roosevelt vs. Lindbergh in the Shadow of War"

 The First America First

With Donald Trump’s victory America First as foreign policy is yet again being thrust into the limelight. Thus, it is important to understand its origins making University of Texas historian H.W. Brands new history of the first America First movement is especially timely. Brands views America First through the lens of the shadow war between Franklin Roosevelt and Charles Lindbergh with the latter being the most prominent proponent of America First.

There is not much new in the Roosevelt side of the equation, but Brands, at least for me plows new ground on Lindbergh by carefully researching his diaries and speeches from the late 1930’s to America’s entry into the war in December 1941. What I learned was that Lindbergh was a foreign policy realist in understanding the decadence of 1930’s Britain and the weakness of France. In his view Germany was the rising power in Europe, so much so that it would overwhelm both Britain and France. 

He believed that with adequate military preparedness the United States would be able to fend off any cross Atlantic attack from a Europe under the auspices of Nazi Germany. Roosevelt, on the other hand was far more clear-eyed in understanding what a Nazi dominated Europe would mean for the security of the United States. From 1939 his globalist vision pushed the United States for war with Germany. Indeed. within the space of a few weeks between late December 1940 and early January 1941 Roosevelt called on America to become the arsenal of democracy and then articulated his Four Freedoms.

Although losing the public relations battle Lindbergh plowed ahead in attacking Roosevelt and his interventionist policies. He reached a dead-end with his infamous Des Moines speech in September 1941 when he, echoing Nazi propaganda, called out the Roosevelt, the British and the Jews for leading America into war. There was near universal condemnation of his speech and for both Lindbergh and America First it was downhill from there.

Beneath his realpolitik there was his underlying racism against Jews and the non-white races. He viewed the war as dividing the white world, when instead it should have been focusing on the dangers coming from the non-white world, no matter that Germany was allied with Japan.

Unfortunately, there are too many similarities to the world of Trump and the world of Lindbergh. America can’t stand aside today in a very dangerous world, but as Brands noted in 1941 the U.S. was the dominant economic power in the world; this is no longer the case. This makes the case that the most important task before us is to strengthen our economy.