How World War II Almost Broke American Politics
The nation that waged that war was racked by deep political divisions, some with echoes that are still reverberating today.
Famed aviator and outspoken isolationist Charles Lindbergh told a national radio audience in October 1939:
“Racial strength is vital, politics is a luxury.” Urging listeners to close ranks with Germany in a common struggle against “Asiatic intruders”—Russians, Persians, Turks and Jews—who would defile America’s “most priceless possession: our inheritance of European blood,”
Lindbergh tapped into a deep well of popular nativism. It was a theme he hammered relentlessly from his perch as a spokesman for the America First Committee, an anti-interventionist organization that marshaled considerable support from prominent names in business and industry to oppose aid to Britain and France.
In an editorial titled “A Plea for Realism,” the Wall Street Journal argued in 1940 that “our job today is not to stop Hitler,” who had “already determined the broad lines of our national life at least for another generation.”
Instead, Americans would better direct their focus to “modernize our thinking and our national planning,” a none-too-subtle nod to Nazi state planning and central power.
On the West Coast, the Office of War Information encountered widespread rumors that Japanese Americans confined to internment camps were living high on the hog in the camps: consuming meat, sugar and other items that fell under scarce rationing; burning gasoline during long joy rides; and buying up household luxuries.
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2019/06/06/how-world-war-ii-almost-broke-american-politics-227090
