Against Immediate Evil: American Internationalists and the Four Freedoms on the Eve of World War II

By Andrew E. Johnstone

In Against Immediate Evil, Andrew Johnstone tells the story of how internationalist Americans worked between 1938 and 1941 to convince the U.S. government and the American public of the need to stem the rising global tide of fascist aggression. As war approached, the internationalist movement attempted to arouse the nation in order to defeat noninterventionism at home and fascism overseas. Johnstone’s examination of this movement undermines the common belief that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor wrenched an isolationist United States into global armed conflict and the struggle for international power.

Johnstone focuses on three organizations—the American Committee for Non-Participation in Japanese Aggression, the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, and Fight For Freedom—that actively promoted a more global role for the United States based on a conception of the "four freedoms" later made famous by FDR. The desire to be free from fear was seen in concerns regarding America’s immediate national security. The desire to be free from want was expressed in anxieties over the nation’s future economic prosperity. The need for freedom of speech was represented in concerns over the potential loss of political freedoms. Finally, the need for freedom of worship was seen in the emphasis on religious freedoms and broader fears about the future of Western civilization. These groups and their supporters among the public and within the government characterized the growing global conflict as one between two distinct worlds and in doing so, set the tone of American foreign policy for decades to come.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cornell University Press
• Release date: Aug 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9780801454721

Book preview

Introduction

Four Freedoms

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II. Four days later, after both Germany and Italy also declared war on the United States, the United States became involved in ongoing wars in Asia and Europe. In a fireside chat to the nation, President Franklin Roosevelt explained to the American people why the nation was at war. The sudden criminal attacks perpetrated by the Japanese in the Pacific provide the climax of a decade of international immorality. Powerful and resourceful gangsters have banded together to make war upon the whole human race. In the face of such aggression, despite the setbacks of the previous days, the American people needed to remain strong and determined. The United States would win the war and win the peace that followed, as American force would be directed toward ultimate good as well as against immediate evil.¹

Yet while the attack on Pearl Harbor brought home the destructive nature of that evil, the preceding years had seen most Americans want little or nothing to do with the ongoing conflicts in Europe and Asia. The prevailing mood in the United States was one that has been commonly described as isolationist, though it is more accurately characterized as non-interventionist. At the height of non-interventionism in the spring of 1937, 94 percent of Americans favored efforts to keep out of war entirely over efforts to prevent war. As late as November 1941, despite clear evidence of fascist expansionism, opinion polls revealed that barely a quarter of Americans wanted an actual declaration of war against Germany, let alone Japan. This non-interventionist sentiment has been examined in considerable detail by historians who have attempted to understand why the United States seemed so unwilling to stand up to fascist aggression and engage with world affairs more broadly in the 1930s.²

Less well examined are those Americans who made the case for greater American involvement in world affairs prior to 1941. This book focuses on those internationalist Americans who worked to influence both the American government and the wider public about the need to stem the growing tide of fascist aggression. In particular, it focuses on three organized groups of American citizens: the American Committee for Non-Participation in Japanese Aggression, the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, and Fight for Freedom. Though they were initially in the minority, these Americans felt that world affairs—and the looming clouds of war in particular—could not be ignored. As the global situation worsened, they called for steps that moved the United States further from isolation and neutrality and closer and closer to conflict. By urging restrictions on trade with Japan, greater military support for Britain, and ultimately an American declaration of war before the Hawaiian attack, these organizations actively promoted a more global role for the United States between 1938 and 1941, long before war came to America. It is the aim of this book to examine the organization, activity, and ideas of these internationalist citizens’ groups in order to understand the nature of internationalism on the eve of World War II.

While it is possible to examine American internationalism in this period through an examination of President Roosevelt, his administration, or other key intellectuals from the time, these organizations (and their organizational predecessors) have been chosen for four reasons. First, these private citizens’ organizations were able to speak openly about foreign affairs and America’s stake in the world; in contrast, political constraints meant that Roosevelt was rarely so bold, especially prior to 1941. Second, unlike other long-standing citizens’ groups such as the Foreign Policy Association and the League of Nations Association, these three organizations were created very specifically to respond to the escalating world crises. Third, they sought to directly influence the political process. Unlike some smaller organizations created during this period that took a more abstract approach to educating the public (such as the Council for Democracy and Friends of Democracy), these three organizations attempted not only to educate but to translate that education into direct political action.

Finally, building on the previous point, these organizations provide an insight into the relationship between politics and public opinion in the United States. All three played a key part in the great debate over the direction of American foreign policy on the eve of World War II. As war approached, and especially following the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, foreign affairs dominated the political agenda. Throughout this period, Roosevelt made numerous references to the power of public opinion. After the passage of the Lend-Lease Act in 1941, Roosevelt stated that we have just now engaged in a great debate. It was not limited to the halls of Congress. It was argued in every newspaper, on every wave length, over every cracker barrel in all the land; and it was finally settled and decided by the American people themselves. Such references to public opinion and the American people were not simply lip service to a democratic ideal; Roosevelt was all too sensitive to the power of the people. The new social science of opinion polling brought the views of the nation to Washington on a regular basis. But that mass opinion was also represented through citizens’ organizations that sprang up to symbolize the public mood, mobilize the American people, and influence the government.³

This project began with the aim of addressing a number of related issues with both broad and specific implications, but the underlying question was this: Why did many Americans want their country to play a more active world role prior to December 1941? This book examines the combination of political, economic, cultural, and security considerations that led them to such a position. More simply, it highlights the global aspirations of many Americans not just prior to the Cold War but before the nation joined the fight against fascism in 1941. The United States did not simply go from isolationism in 1941 to superpower status in 1945, and this book tells the story of the organizations that first made the case for that transition.

To examine this underlying question, a number of more specific issues are addressed. The significance of the key internationalist organizations of this period is assessed in detail. The aims, structures, and leadership of the organizations are examined in depth, as are their views on key policy debates. Links between the different organizations are evaluated, and the tensions and divisions between them are highlighted. To address these issues, this analysis has undertaken a detailed examination of the activity, writing, and rhetoric—both public and private—of all three organizations and of those individuals who led them.

Yet this is more than a bureaucratic history.⁴ It also looks to situate these organizations within the wider body politic. It does this by considering how these internationalist organizations sought to mobilize and represent the wider American public opinion around them. In addition, it examines the role they played in the creation of American foreign policy and how effective they were at influencing the Roosevelt administration. This analysis brings us closer to an understanding of American internationalism—what it stood for, who represented it, and how it functioned—in the crucial years immediately prior to American entry into World War II.

The Organizations

The first and least well known organization under consideration is the American Committee for Non-Participation in Japanese Aggression (ACNPJA). It was established in August 1938, just over a year after the Japanese invasion of China. The organization’s title successfully—if not succinctly—outlined its aim: to limit the ways in which the United States directly and indirectly assisted the aggressive Japanese war effort. In terms of personnel, the initial driving force was the missionary Harry Price. Of great significance as the committee developed was its president, the former Foreign Service member Roger Greene. From January 1939, its honorary chairman was former secretary of state and future secretary of war Henry Stimson. (The ACNPJA was occasionally referred to as the Price Committee but also as the Stimson Committee.) Other big names adding prestige to the group included former Harvard president A. Lawrence Lowell, Emporia (Kansas) Gazette editor William Allen White, and retired commander in chief of the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, H. E. Yarnell.

The ACNPJA kept a very tight focus on urging Congress to limit credit and the sale of war material to Japan. Their narrow focus reflected a concern for the victims of aggression and a feeling of guilt regarding American complicity in that aggression. This in turn reflected the missionary tendency in the organization’s origins. The group admitted that doctrinal isms, domestic issues, and the European situation, however important, are beyond its scope. This approach recognized the strength of wider non-interventionist trends in American public opinion at the time. While the Japanese were clearly the aggressor in Asia, even internationalist leaders were reluctant to promote wider embargoes on material to Japan, let alone policies that might draw the United States closer to conflict, such as aid to China. After the outbreak of war in Europe, however, the focus of the American people shifted to Europe, and the ACNPJA’s single-issue approach saw its influence fade as 1940 progressed. Nevertheless, the work of the American Committee for Non-Participation in Japanese Aggression reveals the first steps of internationalist organization on the eve of war. Just as important, it reveals that American internationalism had an Asian dimension.⁵

The largest and most well-known internationalist organization to develop between the outbreak of war in Europe and Pearl Harbor was the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies (CDAAA). Created in May 1940 in response to the dramatic German advances in Europe, the committee had more than eight hundred chapters by December 1941. Its origins lay in the conservative wing of the peace movement and can be traced through 1939 and 1940 in the work of two predecessor organizations, the American Union for Concerted Peace Efforts (AUCPE) and the Non-Partisan Committee for Peace through Revision of the Neutrality Law (NPC). Based in New York out of the offices of the League of Nations Association (LNA), the CDAAA included a number of ACNPJA members and was initially chaired by William Allen White. As a midwesterner and lifelong Republican, White provided geographical and political cover for an organization wary of being seen as part of a liberal eastern elite, and White was so closely associated with the CDAAA that it was frequently referred to as the White Committee (though this was also due to the cumbersome nature of the committee’s full title). However, the CDAAA was far more than simply William Allen White’s committee. Behind the scenes, the driving force of the organization was Clark Eichelberger, director of the LNA, and the CDAAA continued to grow after White’s resignation in January 1941.

The committee’s title may not have been elegant, but it was accurate, as its purpose was to urge the United States to provide all possible aid to Britain after the fall of France. The committee’s opening statement of purpose argued that the war in Europe represented a life and death struggle for every principle we cherish in America and that it was time for the United States to throw its economic and moral weight on the side of the nations of western Europe, great and small, that are struggling in battle for a civilized way of life. Unlike the ACNPJA, the CDAAA was focused largely on European matters, reflecting the greater public interest in the aggression of Nazi Germany. It was also far more willing to provide aid to those opposing aggression, rather than simply wishing to avoid assisting aggression. As a result, the CDAAA played a significant role in the debates through 1940 and 1941 over the destroyer-bases exchange, the Lend-Lease Act, and Atlantic convoying. It did not, however, go so far as to call for war.⁶

That final step was left to Fight for Freedom (FFF). This new group evolved out of a more informal collective that had been created the previous summer, known either as the Century Group (after the exclusive Century Club location where it met) or as the Miller Group (after one of its leaders, Francis Pickens Miller). Many were also CDAAA members but had become impatient with the CDAAA’s unwillingness to take the final step to call for war. Once the Lend-Lease Act was passed in March 1941 enabling maximum aid to the Allies, the CDAAA was seen by some to have reached its natural conclusion, and with no significant new policy from the CDAAA, Fight for Freedom was announced to the public in April 1941. Like the ACNPJA and the CDAAA, it had a prominent figurehead in its honorary chairman, Senator Carter Glass, and its chairman was the Reverend Henry Hobson of Ohio. Like the other organizations, however, FFF was driven largely by one of its less well-known members, in this case Ulric Bell, formerly of the Louisville Courier Journal, who served as chairman of the executive committee.

The more militant FFF agitated for full American involvement in the war. It argued that the world conflicts represented an irreconcilable struggle between dictatorship and freedom, and that if dictatorship wins in the present area of conflict, there will be little hope for freedom anywhere. We therefore represent all citizens who share our convictions that this is our fight for freedom in which we must play our full part. Bell admitted that the organization was in the propaganda business—for propagation of the truth. As the government was not equipped to mobilize and channelize public opinion, FFF filled a need, representing a real and insistent demand from thousands of citizens, high and low, for a medium through which to express their views.⁷

From its creation, FFF fought alongside the CDAAA to educate public opinion about the need to get material aid to Britain, China, and—from June onward—the USSR. Yet despite overlapping memberships and similar worldviews, the relationship between the organizations was not always easy. Each saw the other as competition, and many FFF members became increasingly frustrated with the CDAAA’s unwillingness to dissolve and make way for the more belligerent group. On a more personal level, there was animosity between some of the group leaders, most notably Eichelberger and Bell. On the whole, FFF policy was half a step in advance of the CDAAA.

Despite their policy differences, the leaderships of all three organizations had a great deal in common. While they sought to represent the American people, none of them had leaderships that reflected a cross section of American society (though they did reflect the social structures of the time). Many of the leaders were drawn from the eastern establishment elite—white male Anglo-Saxon and Anglophile Protestant figures educated at East Coast preparatory schools and Ivy League universities. This was especially true in FFF, which evolved from the socially exclusive Century Club. The CDAAA tried to be more representative of the public, or at the very least it sought to bring in people who could be seen to represent the wider public. Yet on the whole, the groups’ similarities outweighed their differences.

Understanding Internationalism

In addition to examining who the internationalists were and what they did, the larger and more important question is, why did they do it? By examining the longer-term geopolitical, economic, and cultural assumptions supporting American internationalism and considering how internationalist organizations perceived the threats posed by Germany, Italy, Japan, and even the Soviet Union, we can develop a more detailed understanding of American internationalism and how it evolved in the crucial years immediately prior to American entry into World War II. This movement was not just of significance on the eve of war but would dominate American foreign relations for years to come.

A brief consideration of the term internationalism is required here. The phrase is frequently used by historians of American foreign relations, but it is rarely clearly defined. The historians Warren Kuehl and Gary Ostrower have highlighted that the term has had different meanings for nearly every generation of citizens and diplomats. It has also had different meanings for different historians, international relations theorists, and politicians, to the point where it has almost no meaning left at all. A 1986 article by Kuehl represents one of the few attempts to analyze the term. He expressed surprise at how little had been done to analyze internationalism as a concept, and little more has been done since.⁸

At its most basic, internationalism has been used to describe any American involvement overseas—whether it is action undertaken multilaterally or unilaterally, whether it is for the good of the world or in America’s narrow self-interest—simply because it is international in a geographic sense. This understanding of internationalism has little analytical value, as it is so broad that it includes almost every aspect of American foreign relations. It is also limited, as it is often posed in opposition to the supposed isolationism that runs through American foreign relations—a term that is equally flawed. The history of American foreign relations in the 1930s and 1940s is far more complex than claiming that the United States was isolationist until Pearl Harbor and internationalist after.

However, attempting to create a universal definition is arguably a Sisyphean task in the face of such a wide variety of internationalisms. Instead, given the diverse array of meanings, it is more effective to analyze the term in a particular historical context. The very fact that the meaning of internationalism has changed through the years reveals a great deal about evolving American attitudes regarding the nation’s place in the world. This book therefore gives detailed consideration to the internationalist ideas that existed immediately prior to Pearl Harbor. More than that, it considers the different factors and motives that lay behind those ideas. In examining why internationalists sought a greater role for the United States in world affairs, it is necessary to look at the particular ideas, convictions, and assumptions that underpinned their arguments and their worldview. As they saw a potential—if not immediate—threat to these convictions, they felt compelled to respond.

Ultimately, there is much more to internationalism on the eve of World War II than a simple desire to defeat isolationism for its own sake. The internationalism that resulted was complicated, but any simple definition would be misleading. What the history of the movement proves is that a purely narrative approach to this period is insufficient. A history that sees the United States as following a seemingly inevitable step-by-step series of events that led to the Pearl Harbor attack overlooks the Americans who recognized—for whatever reason—that the United States needed to engage more comprehensively with global affairs. Emily Rosenberg has highlighted the infamy framework of remembering the war that builds upon a tradition of national history in which World War II makes its appearance on December 7, 1941. Yet it is not sufficient to simply say that war came to America. Many Americans were already looking for it. And they were looking for four main reasons.⁹

Four Freedoms Foretold

In his annual message to Congress on January 6, 1941, Franklin Roosevelt outlined his future vision of a world founded on four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression—everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way—everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want—which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants—everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear—which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbour—anywhere in the world.

The passage went on to be one of Roosevelt’s most memorable, helped by Norman Rockwell’s 1943 paintings of the four freedoms.¹⁰

Although Roosevelt’s message was an important one, it was not entirely original. The arguments of the internationalist movement for the previous two and half years had been based on largely the same themes. For the movement, internationalism was defined by a combination of the four freedoms. The desire to be free from fear was seen in concerns regarding America’s national security. The desire to be free from want was expressed in anxieties over the nation’s future economic prosperity. The need for freedom of speech was represented in concerns over the potential loss of political freedoms. Finally, the need for freedom of worship was seen in the emphasis on religious freedoms.

National security was at the forefront of internationalist concerns, especially after the fall of France in June 1940. This was in part due to a genuine fear of an existential threat to the continental United States. While an outright attack might not have been imminent in 1941, internationalists believed that the nation’s future security was ultimately threatened by the rise of fascism (and Nazi Germany in particular). The prospect of a Battle for America (in the name of one CDAAA pamphlet) was not entirely beyond the realm of possibility. One result of this fear was an expanded conception of American national security interests that extended beyond U.S. borders to the wider Western Hemisphere and beyond into Europe and Asia. Even if a direct attack remained a distant prospect, the fear and emotional reaction conjured by such an idea was a powerful force to mobilize. You did not have to believe in the prospect of an attack on the United States to recognize that the best way to appeal to the public was on the most basic grounds of self-defense and survival. Americans wanted freedom from fear, and given the growing evidence of the strength of fascist forces, it appeared that the United States was no longer safe behind two oceans.¹¹

While national security concerns may have been the most prominent aspect of prewar internationalism, they were by no means the only aspect. Other ideas were often more prominent than national security considerations, especially in the two years prior to the fall of France, as events overseas represented a broader threat to the American way of life. Three other less concrete but significant ideas were promoted as part of the internationalist worldview.

Perhaps the most surprising in the context of the 1930s was the internationalist emphasis on economics. The desire to be free from want was clearly displayed in the emphasis on the potential economic impact on the United States of successful fascist aggression, even if it did not penetrate the Western Hemisphere. As a popular book promoted by FFF argued, You can’t do business with Hitler. The economic implications of a fascist victory were an openly stated concern for the internationalists. The need to promote global free trade was at the heart of such thinking, and the inability of the United States to prosper in a world driven by slave labor was a theme that came up again and again. The implications were clear to the internationalists: the spread of global fascism represented a direct threat to American standards of living, which were still struggling to improve in the aftermath of the Great Depression.¹²

Of course, these were just the explicitly stated economic concerns. There is no doubt that the Anglo-American business connections of many internationalists benefited from a world of free trade and international commerce. Such connections went unmentioned, as no one wanted to appear eager to profit from war. They were particularly controversial in the context of the 1930s, when debates about the nature of America’s entry into World War I were still very much alive, and there was a strong sense that the United States had been drawn into war in 1917 to line the pockets of international financiers and munitions manufacturers. However, it is clear that many internationalist businessmen on the eve of World War II did not want war, preferring the ease of international trade, limited governmental regulation, and controlled production levels that came with peace.¹³

Because many internationalists believed that a sustained international peace could exist only in a world of democratic nations, it was no surprise that they fully supported democratic political systems. The need for a world with freedom of speech was reflected in the internationalist promotion of political freedoms and democracy in particular. The developing wars in Asia and Europe were depicted as ideological ones by which totalitarian aggression was inflicted upon innocent democracies. To simplify this picture, the worst excesses of the British Empire and the limited nature of democracy in China were hastily glossed over. What remained was a story of right and wrong, and of conflict between two worlds. With the nation’s deep historical commitment to democracy and political freedom, there was no question where American internationalist sympathies lay.

The fear of undemocratic totalitarian regimes was largely a result of fascist aggression, but there was also a pronounced fear of Soviet communism. This was certainly the case until the German invasion of the USSR in June 1941, though the situation became less clear after the American decision to aid the Soviets in the shared fight against fascism. But even after the decision to provide Lend-Lease aid to the USSR, both main internationalist groups continued to keep their distance from American organizations (or international ones) that were sympathetic to communism, especially those whose stance on American involvement reversed in the immediate aftermath of Operation Barbarossa. The exception to this general anticommunist stance was a limited amount of support for Chinese communism in the ACNPJA, though this Marxist interpretation of internationalism was never more than a minority view. This was largely because of the incompatibility of communism with the main driving force of the ACNPJA: religion.

Religion was in fact a key issue for all three main internationalist organizations, and freedom of worship was a core element of the internationalist worldview, though it was particularly prominent in the ACNPJA and in a broader sense for FFF and its predecessor, the Century Group. In both cases, the connection between organizational leadership and religion is clear. The ACNPJA leadership had a tradition of missionary service, and religious language and views were prevalent in the organization’s thinking and its literature. Not only did it make arguments on explicitly religious grounds, but it targeted its materials at religious audiences who were perceived to be at the heart of the non-interventionist movement. After Nazi advances across Europe, however, there was the perception of a broader, longer-term threat to Christianity in the United States. FFF subsequently argued that Hitler sought to destroy Christianity.¹⁴

However, the internationalist desire for freedom of religion did not exist simply in the sense of freedom of worship. It can also be seen in the broader sense of concern for the future of Western or Anglo-American Christian civilization. The internationalist view of history was one in which modern civilization had developed in a particular teleological fashion that reached its zenith in the American experience. The wars in Europe and Asia represented a threat to that very civilization—a world revolution, in fact. Arguably the most significant and lasting part of that civilization was religion. The leadership of FFF in particular promoted ideas about the relationship between the United States and Europe—and Britain in particular—in the development of Western civilization. Their activist view of Christianity, informed by the Social Gospel movement, was also clearly visible in their internationalist activity.¹⁵

Despite the overlapping memberships of the internationalist organizations, there was of course diversity within the movement, and emphasis on the four freedoms varied between organizations. Internationalists differed in their geographic concerns, with emphasis on Europe and Asia but not always both. While they shared an interest in immediate events, they differed in their level of concern with long-term interests. The combination of sympathy for victims of aggression, international responsibility, and national interest that drew them into international affairs also varied. They shared the view, however, that an internationalist vision based on the four freedoms led to an acceptance of the need for the United States to play a greater world role.

Of course, one main area in which internationalists disagreed was on the issue of a declaration of war. Some were far more openly interventionist in that sense than others, and the issue proved to be a significant area of contention for the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies in particular. Yet unlike some works that examine this period, this book makes no attempt to distinguish between internationalists and interventionists. This is because the line between the two was not as clear as might be expected, even well into 1941, and especially on an organizational level. On the face of it, Fight for Freedom was openly interventionist, yet it did not call for a formal declaration of war until October 1941, almost six months after its creation. Meanwhile, the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies never called for a declaration of war because even though a number of its leaders quietly supported war prior to Pearl Harbor, they held back for fear of alienating their domestic audience.

Admittedly, the internationalist version of the four freedoms focused on their importance for that domestic audience and did not immediately share the president’s concern with ensuring freedoms everywhere in the world. Indeed, largely missing from the internationalist worldview expressed by these organizations was a sense of the wider world itself. With so much emphasis placed upon convincing the forces of non-interventionism within the United States to play a greater role in the world, there was little detail on what that role would be—beyond the not insignificant immediate task of helping to defeat the global forces of totalitarian fascism. It seemed obvious that the freedoms promoted by the internationalists would need to be sustained in the long term. Yet questions about exactly what role the United States should play in the world, or how the United States should play a greater role in world affairs beyond the war went largely unanswered, if they were even asked to begin with. The exception here is the emphasis placed by the CDAAA on winning the peace through a belief in international cooperation and multilateral institutions such as the League