Posted on 09/11/2018 11:45:18 AM PDT by iowamark
It is now two years since this latest European war began. From that day in September, 1939, until the present moment, there has been an over-increasing effort to force the United States into the conflict.
That effort has been carried on by foreign interests, and by a small minority of our own people; but it has been so successful that, today, our country stands on the verge of war.
At this time, as the war is about to enter its third winter, it seems appropriate to review the circumstances that have led us to our present position. Why are we on the verge of war? Was it necessary for us to become so deeply involved? Who is responsible for changing our national policy from one of neutrality and independence to one of entanglement in European affairs?
Personally, I believe there is no better argument against our intervention than a study of the causes and developments of the present war. I have often said that if the true facts and issues were placed before the American people, there would be no danger of our involvement.
Here, I would like to point out to you a fundamental difference between the groups who advocate foreign war, and those who believe in an independent destiny for America.
If you will look back over the record, you will find that those of us who oppose intervention have constantly tried to clarify facts and issues; while the interventionists have tried to hide facts and confuse issues.
We ask you to read what we said last month, last year, and even before the war began. Our record is open and clear, and we are proud of it.
We have not led you on by subterfuge and propaganda. We have not resorted to steps short of anything, in order to take the American people where they did not want to go.
What we said before the elections, we say [illegible] and again, and again today. And we will not tell you tomorrow that it was just campaign oratory. Have you ever heard an interventionist, or a British agent, or a member of the administration in Washington ask you to go back and study a record of what they have said since the war started? Are their self-styled defenders of democracy willing to put the issue of war to a vote of our people? Do you find these crusaders for foreign freedom of speech, or the removal of censorship here in our own country?
The subterfuge and propaganda that exists in our country is obvious on every side. Tonight, I shall try to pierce through a portion of it, to the naked facts which lie beneath.
When this war started in Europe, it was clear that the American people were solidly opposed to entering it. Why shouldn't we be? We had the best defensive position in the world; we had a tradition of independence from Europe; and the one time we did take part in a European war left European problems unsolved, and debts to America unpaid.
National polls showed that when England and France declared war on Germany, in 1939, less than 10 percent of our population favored a similar course for America. But there were various groups of people, here and abroad, whose interests and beliefs necessitated the involvement of the United States in the war. I shall point out some of these groups tonight, and outline their methods of procedure. In doing this, I must speak with the utmost frankness, for in order to counteract their efforts, we must know exactly who they are.
The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration.
Behind these groups, but of lesser importance, are a number of capitalists, Anglophiles, and intellectuals who believe that the future of mankind depends upon the domination of the British empire. Add to these the Communistic groups who were opposed to intervention until a few weeks ago, and I believe I have named the major war agitators in this country.
I am speaking here only of war agitators, not of those sincere but misguided men and women who, confused by misinformation and frightened by propaganda, follow the lead of the war agitators.
As I have said, these war agitators comprise only a small minority of our people; but they control a tremendous influence. Against the determination of the American people to stay out of war, they have marshaled the power of their propaganda, their money, their patronage.
Let us consider these groups, one at a time.
First, the British: It is obvious and perfectly understandable that Great Britain wants the United States in the war on her side. England is now in a desperate position. Her population is not large enough and her armies are not strong enough to invade the continent of Europe and win the war she declared against Germany.
Her geographical position is such that she cannot win the war by the use of aviation alone, regardless of how many planes we send her. Even if America entered the war, it is improbable that the Allied armies could invade Europe and overwhelm the Axis powers. But one thing is certain. If England can draw this country into the war, she can shift to our shoulders a large portion of the responsibility for waging it and for paying its cost.
As you all know, we were left with the debts of the last European war; and unless we are more cautious in the future than we have been in the past, we will be left with the debts of the present case. If it were not for her hope that she can make us responsible for the war financially, as well as militarily, I believe England would have negotiated a peace in Europe many months ago, and be better off for doing so.
England has devoted, and will continue to devote every effort to get us into the war. We know that she spent huge sums of money in this country during the last war in order to involve us. Englishmen have written books about the cleverness of its use.
We know that England is spending great sums of money for propaganda in America during the present war. If we were Englishmen, we would do the same. But our interest is first in America; and as Americans, it is essential for us to realize the effort that British interests are making to draw us into their war.
The second major group I mentioned is the Jewish.
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 of the Jewish race 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 devastations. A few far-sighted 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.
I am not attacking either the Jewish or the British people. Both races, I admire. But I am saying that the leaders of both the British and the Jewish races, for reasons which are as understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war.
We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction.
The Roosevelt administration is the third powerful group which has been carrying this country toward war. Its members have used the war emergency to obtain a third presidential term for the first time in American history. They have used the war to add unlimited billions to a debt which was already the highest we have ever known. And they have just used the war to justify the restriction of congressional power, and the assumption of dictatorial procedures on the part of the president and his appointees.
The power of the Roosevelt administration depends upon the maintenance of a wartime emergency. The prestige of the Roosevelt administration depends upon the success of Great Britain to whom the president attached his political future at a time when most people thought that England and France would easily win the war. The danger of the Roosevelt administration lies in its subterfuge. While its members have promised us peace, they have led us to war heedless of the platform upon which they were elected.
In selecting these three groups as the major agitators for war, I have included only those whose support is essential to the war party. If any one of these groups--the British, the Jewish, or the administration--stops agitating for war, I believe there will be little danger of our involvement.
I do not believe that any two of them are powerful enough to carry this country to war without the support of the third. And to these three, as I have said, all other war groups are of secondary importance.
When hostilities commenced in Europe, in 1939, it was realized by these groups that the American people had no intention of entering the war. They knew it would be worse than useless to ask us for a declaration of war at that time. But they believed that this country could be entered into the war in very much the same way we were entered into the last one.
They planned: first, to prepare the United States for foreign war under the guise of American defense; second, to involve us in the war, step by step, without our realization; third, to create a series of incidents which would force us into the actual conflict. These plans were of course, to be covered and assisted by the full power of their propaganda.
Our theaters soon became filled with plays portraying the glory of war. Newsreels lost all semblance of objectivity. Newspapers and magazines began to lose advertising if they carried anti-war articles. A smear campaign was instituted against individuals who opposed intervention. The terms "fifth columnist," "traitor," "Nazi," "anti-Semitic" were thrown ceaselessly at any one who dared to suggest that it was not to the best interests of the United States to enter the war. Men lost their jobs if they were frankly anti-war. Many others dared no longer speak.
Before long, lecture halls that were open to the advocates of war were closed to speakers who opposed it. A fear campaign was inaugurated. We were told that aviation, which has held the British fleet off the continent of Europe, made America more vulnerable than ever before to invasion. Propaganda was in full swing.
There was no difficulty in obtaining billions of dollars for arms under the guise of defending America. Our people stood united on a program of defense. Congress passed appropriation after appropriation for guns and planes and battleships, with the approval of the overwhelming majority of our citizens. That a large portion of these appropriations was to be used to build arms for Europe, we did not learn until later. That was another step.
To use a specific example; in 1939, we were told that we should increase our air corps to a total of 5,000 planes. Congress passed the necessary legislation. A few months later, the administration told us that the United States should have at least 50,000 planes for our national safety. But almost as fast as fighting planes were turned out from our factories, they were sent abroad, although our own air corps was in the utmost need of new equipment; so that today, two years after the start of war, the American army has a few hundred thoroughly modern bombers and fighters--less in fact, than Germany is able to produce in a single month.
Ever since its inception, our arms program has been laid out for the purpose of carrying on the war in Europe, far more than for the purpose of building an adequate defense for America.
Now at the same time we were being prepared for a foreign war, it was necessary, as I have said, to involve us in the war. This was accomplished under that now famous phrase "steps short of war."
England and France would win if the United States would only repeal its arms embargo and sell munitions for cash, we were told. And then [illegible] began, a refrain that marked every step we took toward war for many months--"the best way to defend America and keep out of war." we were told, was "by aiding the Allies."
First, we agreed to sell arms to Europe; next, we agreed to loan arms to Europe; then we agreed to patrol the ocean for Europe; then we occupied a European island in the war zone. Now, we have reached the verge of war.
The war groups have succeeded in the first two of their three major steps into war. The greatest armament program in our history is under way.
We have become involved in the war from practically every standpoint except actual shooting. Only the creation of sufficient "incidents" yet remains; and you see the first of these already taking place, according to plan [ill.]-- a plan that was never laid before the American people for their approval.
Men and women of Iowa; only one thing holds this country from war today. That is the rising opposition of the American people. Our system of democracy and representative government is on test today as it has never been before. We are on the verge of a war in which the only victor would be chaos and prostration.
We are on the verge of a war for which we are still unprepared, and for which no one has offered a feasible plan for victory--a war which cannot be won without sending our soldiers across the ocean to force a landing on a hostile coast against armies stronger than our own.
We are on the verge of war, but it is not yet too late to stay out. It is not too late to show that no amount of money, or propaganda, or patronage can force a free and independent people into war against its will. It is not yet too late to retrieve and to maintain the independent American destiny that our forefathers established in this new world.
The entire future rests upon our shoulders. It depends upon our action, our courage, and our intelligence. If you oppose our intervention in the war, now is the time to make your voice heard.
Help us to organize these meetings; and write to your representatives in Washington. I tell you that the last stronghold of democracy and representative government in this country is in our house of representatives and our senate.
There, we can still make our will known. And if we, the American people, do that, independence and freedom will continue to live among us, and there will be no foreign war.
Read it again:
Add to these the Communistic groups who were opposed to intervention until a few weeks ago, and I believe I have named the major war agitators in this country.
I didn't read it as particularly antisemitic, at least not openly and violently so. He does not seem to treat Jews any worse than "the British". I saw no particular hostility to Jews, just opposition to a cause favored by most Jews. Again, you citation, in more context:
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.That last paragraph could be more clear. I didn't see it as threat, maybe a misdirected warning. I wasn't sure if it was intended to warn of consequences to German or American Jews. Pearl Harbor, or no Pearl Harbor, the brunt of the task of defeating Germany fell to Russia. Without Russian success, which was by no means assured in 1941, the War in Europe would have at best been a tie. If Japan had helped Germany finish off Russia, she could have had easy pickings in Siberia, and a strong ally against the United States.No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race 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 devastations. A few far-sighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not.
I find it interesting to read of so many Freepers condemning Lindbergh for his isolationism and his supposed hatred of Jews and of being a Nazi.
One has to remind Freepers that he was speaking about twenty years after the “Great War’ in which millions died, including Americans for, not to “Make the world safe for Democracy” but to gain colonies abroad and redrawn Continental Europe.
Democracy was “safe” for millions around the world under the thumb of either empires or dictatorship. Many of which were our most dearest allies.
Hypocrisy was abounding then just as it does today.
Lindbergh witnessed this and his greatest fear was being dragged into another war for ‘Democracy” abroad.
We have lost about 5,000 military there and untold billions in our foreign wars to “Make the world Safe for Democracy”
How many of us are willing to got back into the middle east to save Christians there from being exterminated? Yet be are soooo critical of Lindbergh who was only giving voice to what the majority of Americans were thinking prior to Dec 7.
So save your judgmentalism for your own generation.
German antisemitism incited opposition among American Jews, who like German Jews prior to 1933, held influence and wealth disproportionate to their numbers. This incites my admiration, in others, sadly, envy.
People may or may not have cared about the Jews - though obviously many actually did, including many Germans in Germany - but there was very little anyone could do for them by 1941, except perhaps, accept them as refugees. As Churchill put it, “The world is divided into two great camps. Those who want to get rid of the Jews, and those who do not want to accept them.”
Not exactly. Before the ambush that killed Yamamoto, Lindbergh had worked with engineers at Lockheed working out carburetor and throttle settings and altitude regimes for long range flights in the P-38. The length of the mission exceeded to official capability of Lightning. Then we went to South Pacific and personally worked with and trained the pilots who carried out the mission, participating in test and training flights in a combat zone. Flights during which he reported shot down a couple of Zeros. The pilots greatly appreciated Lindbergh's expertise and the benefit of his experience.
http://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2014/04/17/blogs/post-perspective/lindbergh-re-examined.html/2
......Unquestionably, Lindbergh himself was responsible for much of the controversy that arose in the postwar years over his isolationism. To the end of his life, he never admitted he was wrong about anything he had said or done. Unlike Anne, who acknowledged that “we were both very blind, especially in the beginning, to the worst evils of the Nazi system,” he uttered no word of remorse or apology for his uncritical attitude toward the horrors of Hitler’s regime. When his wartime journals were published in 1970, Lindbergh defiantly equated the Nazis’ wholesale murder of Jews with other war crimes, including the brutality of some American troops toward Japanese prisoners of war. He still insisted that the United States had made a mistake in entering the war.
“Like many civilized people in this country and abroad, he could not comprehend the radical evil of Nazism,” The New York Times wrote about Lindbergh and his journals. “Even in the retrospect of a quarter-century, he is unable to grasp it.…[T]here is simply no comparison between individual misdeeds of American soldiers toward dead or captured Japanese and the coldly planned, systematically executed German government policy of murdering or enslaving Jews, Slavs, and other ‘inferior’ people.…The world is admittedly not what Americans–or anyone else–would like, but it is decidedly better than it would have been if the United States had not helped to defeat German and Japanese militarism.…If any war can be said to be worth fighting and winning, it was World War II.”
(Also those wartime journals were edited to remove the worst Jew hating excesses, though there were still plenty in there.)
The paragraph after your last quoted paragraph reads:
Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.
That's a well-worn antisemitic slur.
Lindbergh was racist and anti-Semitic, although this was relatively common among Americans at the time. Of Swedish ancestry himself, he believed that northern Europeans were racially superior. His admiration for the Nazis was quite real. He developed a disgust for democracy after the chaos of the kidnapping-murder of his son, and the sensational Hauptmann trial.
That’s complete bull crap to say France didn’t fight. They lost a total of 360000 dead and wounded in that 6 week fight. They were completely outclassed by the modern German method of warfare, and let down by the British who abandon their flank and fled the battlefield at Dunkirk.
But they did Kill nearly 30,000 Germans, and wounded 111000. That’s hardly a refusal to fight.
That’s the half of it. For over 20 years he had another family I believe in Germany that Anne Lindbergh knew nothing about.
I don't know. It may be more a home truth than a slur. I look at the accomplishment of the Jews and am filled with admiration and gratitude. (Thank you, Dr. Salk!) Others with envy and resentment.
I would like to see where Lindbergh made overtly pro-Nazi statements. I haven't researched this deeply, but nothing in this post shows outright Nazi sympathies, more a realistic appreciation of German capabilities. Had the Russians collapsed, as they appeared to be in the process of doing in September 1941, the U.S. and Britain would never have been able to mount an invasion of the Continent prior to 1950, at the earliest. I doubt we would have persisted that long.
BTW, the Wansee Conference took place in January 1942, shortly after Lindbergh spoke and after the U.S. had entered the War against Germany. And after German reversals outside of Moscow. One could argue that Lindbergh was prescient, that the Wansee conference was at least in part a reaction to the U.S. entry into the War, when it became apparent to Nazis that they might not win the thing.
In the posted speech he just seemed ignorant while being complimentary to Jews. I'd like to see him in a youtube video doing the Nazi salute something more convincing. I'll have to search youtube for that.
He had at least three other families. But that was after the war.
The Holocaust, organized genocide and mass murder, began immediately with the invasion of the USSR in June 1941. The development of the death camps and gassing was not really related to the US entry into the war.
Lindbergh’s “Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastations.” was a threat directed at US Jews. There was no tolerance in Nazi Germany.
Thanks babble-on. Having had a lot of older (b 19th c) relatives that I remember well, the everyday hostility toward Jews clearly displayed by Lindbergh (despite denials, including those in this topic) has always seemed unremarkable to me. I was, uh, surprised to see that retired comedian Robert Klein, in his appearance on Seinfeld's "Comedians In Cars" show, showed off his model of the Spirit of St Louis, and expressed admiration for the flying exploits of Lindbergh, but then joked, but we mustn't forget that he was 'very fond of Hitler'. Heh. Lindbergh was a patriot, but and served his country, but he also had an undying admiration for Hitler, much like (as someone mentioned up there) Henry Ford.
The fact is, FDR was a populist, and enjoyed the undying support of a large majority, even for US participation in WWII.
OTOH, I don't buy into the line of total innocence claimed by his still-rabid defenders -- he obviously knew that Pearl Harbor was likely to be attacked (I also agree with those who have written that he even knew the date, finding out barely in time, but at minimum, it was Pearl where the attack was going to come), which is the reason the Pacific Fleet's aircraft carriers were all kept out of Pearl and well out of the range of potential attacks by Japan. They were going to be crucial in the coming war. I also don't have any problem with that, the outcome of WWII was not ideal, but it was the best that could be managed, given the possibilities.
“Lindbergh was more right than he was wrong.
I find it interesting to read of so many Freepers condemning Lindbergh for his isolationism...Lindbergh who was only giving voice to what the majority of Americans were thinking prior to Dec 7.
So save your judgmentalism…” RedMonqey, post 62]
It isn’t “judgementalism” to point out the impossibility of pursuing a particular policy.
America was founded as a trading nation. Trading nations cannot be isolationist. These two statements were objectively true in 1780. And in 1812, 1860, 1914, 1939 - any date you care to mention. To pretend otherwise is to evaluate geopolitics, grand strategy, and world history from the viewpoint of a nine-year-old.
We Americans of today need to find the courage to re-examine what the Founders said about “entangling” alliances. We must confront the possibility they were wrong (they were mere mortals, not purveyors of Holy Writ). And we must summon the self-awareness to notice that almost a quarter of a millennium has passed since then. Reconsidering the admonitions of the Founders, in light of all that has happened since they left the scene, is not blasphemy; it’s prudence.
“Shining city on a hill” might make for inspiring rhetoric, but it cannot provide much useful input in crafting current policy.
“Making the world safe for democracy” was also rhetoric, not a fully-fledged policy. Those who wring their hands over T Woodrow Wilson’s refusal to honor this or that campaign promise have missed the point: the world situation had changed from the 1916 presidential campaign to early 1917. He requested a declaration of war from Congress because US trading partners were in peril, and because Imperial Germany had commenced unrestricted submarine warfare - after having committed a number of acts of war against the US already. Disappointment visited on voters was a lesser evil than Allied collapse, victory for the Central Powers, American economic collapse, and continued existence only as a German client state.
Charles Lindbergh made a quintessentially American mistake: he looked at the conduct of World War One, and decided that because it did not always go according to hopes & predictions, that the strategic goals and survival imperatives were not valid in the first place. In a word, the outcome wasn’t worth the effort, therefore we should have avoided it. Confusing the two is a grave error: the strategic worth of a particular policy cannot be evaluated in terms of how one goes about prosecuting that policy. They are measured along different axes.
Americans of 1970 proved we had learned nothing from 1940, or 1914. In concluding that the nation’s actions in Southeast Asia were flawed, therefore we should never have gotten involved to begin with, Americans proved to the world we were cowards bereft of honor. With short attention spans.
Facts don’t matter Ben
A multiple exodus freeper is having some fun
Forgot to say thank you! Is Peter Hitchens’ brother?
I was lazy, just looked him up. A less debauched, less hard li ing Hitchens, but definitely a Hitchens! I miss him.....
Living
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.