A speech that Lindbergh delivered to a rally in
Des Moines, Iowa, on September 11, 1941, may have significantly raised tensions. 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:
It is not difficult to understand why Jewish people desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany. The persecution they suffered in Germany would be sufficient to make bitter enemies of any race. No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution the Jewish race suffered in Germany. But no person of honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy, both for us and for them. Instead of agitating for war the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way, for they will be among the first to feel its consequences. Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastation. A few farsighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not. Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio, and our government.
[46]
Many condemned the speech as
antisemitic. Journalist
Dorothy Thompson wrote for the
New York Herald Tribunean opinion that many shared: "I am absolutely certain that Lindbergh is pro-Nazi."
[4] Republican presidential candidate
Wendell Willkie criticized the speech as "the most un-American talk made in my time by any person of national reputation."
[13] In the end, Lindbergh's remarks hurt the cause of the isolationists.
[19]
During the period after Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union had signed the
Molotov–Ribbentrop non-aggression pact, most American Communists were opposed to the United States entering World War II, and they tried to infiltrate or take over America First.
[47][
verification needed] After June 1941, when
Hitler launched
Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union, they reversed positions and denounced the AFC as a Nazi
front, a group infiltrated by
German agents.
[48] Nazis also tried to use the committee. The aviator and orator
Laura Ingalls' pro-Nazi rhetoric and straight-armed Nazi salutes on her America First speaking tour worried the group's leadership, but they allowed her to continue because of praise from local chapters where she had spoken.
[49][50]When Ingalls was arrested in December 1941 and put on trial for being an unregistered Nazi agent, the prosecution revealed that her handler, German diplomat Ulrich Freiherr von Gienanth, had encouraged her to participate in AFC activities.
[49] In addition to Ingalls, who was convicted, another America First speaker would be convicted for failing to register as a Japanese agent.
[51]
www.bt.no
www.forbes.com
www.dagbladet.no
www.counterpunch.org
en.wikipedia.org
www.vg.no
