{"id":3356,"date":"2019-04-02T12:35:05","date_gmt":"2019-04-02T12:35:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/?p=3356"},"modified":"2020-08-16T16:39:57","modified_gmt":"2020-08-16T16:39:57","slug":"america-first","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/2019\/04\/02\/america-first\/","title":{"rendered":"America First"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Pressure groups also spearheaded the opposition.\u00a0 In July [1940], Yale University students and midwestern businessmen formed the America First Committee.\u00a0 As the name suggests, America Firsters ardently opposed intervention &#8211;and aid to Britain, which, they argued, would inevitably lead to intervention.\u00a0 They saw the war not as a great ideological conflict but as another round in the endless struggle among Europeans for power and empire.\u00a0 The United States, they insisted, had no stake in that conflict.\u00a0 Some like aviator hero Charles Lindbergh preached accommodation with Hitler.\u00a0 Others minimized the German threat and advocated defense of the Western Hemisphere.\u00a0 America First was an unwieldy coalition of strange bedfellows, businessmen, old progressives and leftists, and some strongly anti-Jewish groups.\u00a0 Many blamed Roosevelt&#8217;s interventionist policies on a personal lust for power.\u00a0 These various groups created local and regional offices, organized rallies, sent out mailings, and propagandized Congress.&#8221; &#8211;George Herring,\u00a0<em>From Colony to Superpower,\u00a0<\/em>p. 521-22.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Discussion Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What was the essential context behind the strong anti-war movement in the late 1930s and early 1940s?<\/li>\n<li>How did FDR overcome the opposition of America First and general isolationist sentiment to secure Lend-Lease aid for Great Britain (and later the Soviet Union)?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ZluIuRg2K7o\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&#8220;Pressure groups also spearheaded the opposition.\u00a0 In July [1940], Yale University students and midwestern businessmen formed the America First Committee.\u00a0 As the name suggests, America Firsters ardently opposed intervention &#8211;and aid to Britain, which, they argued, would inevitably lead to intervention.\u00a0 They saw the war not as a great ideological conflict but as another round [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":373,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"aside","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71431],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-aside","hentry","category-syllabus","post_format-post-format-aside"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/373"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3356"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3356\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-282pinsker\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}