SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
America first is a phrase we have heard a lot in recent presidential elections. Former President Donald Trump has used it as a foreign policy rallying cry, and his running mate, JD Vance, is one of many Republicans who uses that framing when arguing against American support for the war in Ukraine, among other areas. The phrase dates back, though, to a domestic battle over America's entry into another foreign war, World War II. A battle raged in the late 1930s between two of the most famous men in the United States, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and aviation pioneer Charles Lindbergh.
In a new book, historian H. W. Brands tells the story of American isolationism by exploring this major divide - Americans who were torn between an inevitable entry into World War II and those who felt the U.S. entry into the war was meddling in European affairs. The book is called "America First: Roosevelt Vs. Lindbergh In The Shadow Of War." And Brands joins us now. Welcome.
H W BRANDS: Thank you. Glad to be with you.
DETROW: One of the things that I think this book really helps you fully understand is just how bitter the country was over World War I, which everyone referred to as the World War in this period of time, how that lingered and influenced everything happening in the late 1930s. How would you describe the general consensus in the United States about World War I and whether that was worth it?
BRANDS: Americans went into World War I at the urging of President Woodrow Wilson, who said that this was a war to make the world safe for democracy. Americans had to be talked into it. They didn't go in right away. But when they went in, they had high hopes. Over 100,000 Americans lost their lives, and within a short space of the end of the war, it was really clear that the war aims had not been accomplished. The world was not safe for democracy. And within six or eight years of the end of the war, Americans were saying, almost as a person, never again - we're not going to do this again.
DETROW: Franklin Roosevelt's role in this obviously makes a lot of sense. He's wrapping up his second term as president as this crisis unfolds. It's the reason why he puts forward for an unprecedented third term. But what about Charles Lindbergh? How did Charles Lindbergh find himself as a central figure in all of this?
BRANDS: This was the most unlikely part of the story. It's true that Lindbergh's father had been a member of Congress, but his father's experience had been unfortunate. His father had opposed American intervention in World War I and had been hounded out of politics as a result of that. Charles Lindbergh grew up thinking that politics was low and mean and not at all the kind of thing he wanted to get into.
So he took his career in an entirely different direction. He became this aviator, the most famous airman in the world. He designed and built a plane that flew across the Atlantic, and he became a celebrity on account of a tragedy that befell him when his and his wife's infant child was kidnapped and then murdered. And so he was this celebrity figure, but he also became America's foremost authority on air power. And this was the coming wave of military science. And so when he finally got around to speaking out, he spoke with an authority - a narrow authority, but an authority nonetheless - that almost nobody else had.
DETROW: Lindbergh's viewpoint on all of this is these days mostly viewed through a lens of antisemitism, I think for a few different reasons, including the prominence in recent years of that Philip Roth novel that kind of fictualizes (ph) all of this. I wanted to ask you a few questions of that. First of all, you're laying out his views over a multiyear period, using his speeches and journal entries to really tell the story of his thinking. Did they shift at all on that particular front?
BRANDS: Not as far as I can tell. Lindbergh's thinking on Jews - Jews in America, Jews in Europe - was pretty middle of the road for the United States at the time. For example, he thought that there should be no more Jews - Jewish refugees allowed from Europe into the United States, at a time when that was the position of the U.S. Congress and the U.S. president. So he was kind of right in the middle there. The speech for which he became most notorious was a speech in which he said - and this is in the autumn of 1941 - in which he said there are three groups in particular that are trying to get the United States involved in the war in Europe. There is Britain and the British lobby in the United States, which has understandable reasons. Britain is fighting for its life. There is the lobby, the influential voice of Jewish Americans who, as he saw, were overrepresented in the media. He said it's quite understandable that they should want the United States to get involved in the war.
And the third and the most nefarious group and the most influential group is the Roosevelt administration. And the Roosevelt administration wants the United States to get involved primarily so Franklin Roosevelt can become a great man and perhaps a president for life. This is after he had been elected for an unprecedented third term. Whether he was an antisemite depends sort of on what you consider an antisemite at that particular time in history.
DETROW: It's interesting because there are things that he's laying out that were wrong, and there are things that he was laying out that you write, especially at the very end of the book, he was pretty accurate on in terms of what all of this would mean for the United States. You know, he's talking about Roosevelt wanting to be president for life. Of course, Roosevelt is president for four terms and dies in office. But also, you point out that he's talking about warning that if America gets involved in this front, it could never extract itself from European politics. And I think that's, as you point out, pretty accurate.
BRANDS: Yeah, Lindbergh was in some ways a throwback to the 19th century when Americans did not dream that they would become the arbiter of European affairs. They were happy that their ancestors had left Europe, and they were glad that the Atlantic Ocean was as wide as it was. And Franklin Roosevelt believed that the United States could be and should be the leader of the world. And what Lindbergh didn't recognize was that first of all, Roosevelt was really persuasive and secondly, that Americans would buy into this and would be thrilled by it - and sufficiently thrilled by it that essentially until today, Americans have taken for granted that their country should be the leader of the world.
DETROW: What surprised you most putting this book together?
BRANDS: I was surprised at how effective Lindbergh was in putting together a speech, in conveying the speech and giving the speech. Although I do have to add, he made this huge political misstep at the end when I was describing the speech that - he gave it in Des Moines, Iowa, where he identified Jewish Americans as one particular group. And this essentially destroyed his credibility to the point where the America First Committee basically had to say to Lindbergh, don't give any more speeches. You basically destroyed our ability to move public opinion.
DETROW: And then, of course, just a few months later, Pearl Harbor happens, and all of this argument is irrelevant.
BRANDS: Right. Yeah, well, so along these lines, Lindbergh is talking to Herbert Hoover after this speech and after all the furor over it. And he's sort of scratching his head and said, you know, what did I say that was wrong? And Hoover says, you didn't say anything that was wrong. The fact that you said it was wrong. There are many things in politics you simply cannot say.
DETROW: Yeah.
BRANDS: In fact, this comes up in an earlier moment when Franklin Roosevelt, toward the end of the 1940 campaign, says, I will not send your sons to fight in any foreign wars. And James Roosevelt, his adult son, later said, Dad, how could you say that? You knew this was bound to happen. And he said, yeah, but if I allowed that possibility, all people would say is, he's going to send our boys to fight in foreign wars. And they would miss the bigger point, which was, at that point, I got to get reelected.
DETROW: That's author H. W. Brands joining us to talk about his new book, "America First: Roosevelt Vs. Lindbergh In The Shadow Of War." Thank you so much.
BRANDS: My pleasure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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