What I Am Reading: "1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler - the Election Amid the Storm" by Susan Dunn

Sometimes, the textbook version of an election captures things perfectly: in 1940, FDR won an unprecedented third term, but his opponent's interventionism help solidify the consensus that America should back the Allies in World War 2. This book (as promised by its terrible title) expounded on the details of the process a little, and shed light on a few new sub-topics, but the main lessons are pretty much in the bag before starting.

That's not to say that the book isn't worthwhile, however. Professor Susan Dunn does a workwomanlike job steering us through the campaign trail and the wider American and international context, usually with various pro-Roosevelt and pro-intervention asides (understandable). I found it and was inspired to read it after a review of a new book on Roosevelt’s opponent, Wendell Willkie, and his internationalist vision. Additionally, as I was going through I also dredged up my interest in Henry Wallace, one of our most interesting Vice Presidents; he was also the subject of a recent book, which I learned about through negative review. This book substitutes for both of those, for the time being.

Another book that this dovetails well with is Hitler's American Friends, which I read a year ago already, and many of the fringe figures who appear in Hart's book appear here as well; including the least-fringe, such as isolationist leader and Nazi-sympathizer Charles Lindbergh, or legislators like Burton K. Wheeler and Hamilton Fish who took German money or spread German propaganda.

That book, however, went into less detail on mainstream isolationists, and Dunn's book fills that necessary gap. In fact, this book left me with a firm impression that the entire Republican Party came out of the pre-war period quite poorly (this is another brick in the wall alongside Pietrusza's book on the 1932 election which, if a little too light for me, did cover Hoover's support for white supremacy). My appetite for this was whetted by an article I read on the TV version of The Plot Against America (a book I enjoyed right after Trump's election, but is out of my favor now for various reasons), where historian Eric Rauchway said,

"Meanwhile, in real life, there were very loud voices opposing aid to Britain, let alone actual U.S. intervention. There was the Hearst newspaper chain and the Associated newsreels—that’s media saturation there, already, for the idea. Colonel McCormick, who had the Chicago Tribune and the radio station WGN, was opposed to intervention. The Daily News, in New York City, was massively against it.

So there were these powerful voices in real life pushing against Roosevelt’s interventionist policy—and Roosevelt still won the 1940 election by a landslide! Roosevelt basically faced that kind of campaign that Roth is imagining, and beat it by a lot."

Indeed, Willkie the committed internationalist only won the nomination through a lucky throw of the dice. This was one of the topics I was most interested in learning more about. Willkie was the CEO of a utilities holding company who came to prominence in the couple of years before the election by speaking out about the New Deal - but not entirely as an opponent of it. Instead, an economic moderate, he took the usual moderate Republican line - helping people was good and necessary, but conservatives could do it more efficiently, with less bureaucracy and better economic outcomes. Additionally, as the situation in Europe grew more dire into 1940 and the war itself started, he spoke in favor of support ("short of war," as they all always said) for Britain. This position gained popularity in the Republican Party and the country at large as France, Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg fell to the Blitzkrieg.

Willkie unofficially campaigned for a while prior to the June nominating convention. He had considerable support from Henry Luce and other odious but admittedly interventionist press barons, who gave him reams of promotion and favorable coverage. Meanwhile, he was up against several opponents, none of whom staked out a similar position. Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio was a committed isolationist, as was prominent prosecutor District Attorney Thomas Dewey, on the advice of his consultants. Senator Arthur Vandenberg tried to square the circle by being an "insulationist," and former president Hoover, hoping for a draft nomination, crept closest by favoring much more preparedness. However, these less-than-interventionists failed to form a common front: nobody would accept an offer to be someone else's Vice President. Therefore, with some smart conventioneering (holding votes back so that support appeared to increase each round, thus leading to a stampede; a favorable presiding officer; and a generally uncommitted and "unbossed" convention to start with), Willkie clinched the nomination on the sixth ballot, staving off a Taft surge.

Being a party's nominee, though, did not make Willkie its leader (in fact, he had until recently been a Democrat). Isolationism, before it dwindled in the face of the reality of war, had broad support from various sectors of the population, from business leaders who did not want to see disruption of their businesses to students (often at elite colleges; though I'll give Williams College a shout-out for being anti-Nazi early and often) who did not want to fight. It included Communists, at least during the time of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (covered yourself in glory there, Almanac Singers, didn't you?) and Anticommunists, who wanted to join Hitler in a fight against the Soviets, as well as all manner of homegrown fascists and populists, especially in the Midwest and farm states. Many of these demographics, Midwesterners and businessmen especially, were Republican constituencies at the time, and the party was bitterly split between isolationists and internationalists.

Roosevelt, despite his usual waffling around and policy of keeping his options open, favored some level of support for the allies and antifascists (see, once again, FDR and the Spanish Civil War by Dominic Tierney). Dunn says that his decision to run for another term came about in the spring of 1940 concurrently with a drive to support the Allies more actively; a drive the country came to share as there came to be fewer Allies to support. Working toward this goal while also scoring political points, he appointed two Republicans to his cabinet in July of 1940: publisher and 1936 VP nominee Frank Knox as Secretary of the Navy, and Hoover's former Secretary of State Henry Stimson as Secretary of War, both in favor of preparedness and intervention. This kneecapped Republicans to some extent, who could only fulminate as their grandees switched sides and leant bipartisan credentials to Roosevelt’s administration.

These two and Willkie were the only good Republicans. On everything else, for years, the Republicans had opposed Roosevelt's measures in favor of a level of isolationism worthy of Neville Chamberlain (a common insult on the campaign trail). In 1939, 122 Republican Congressmen voted against increasing the size of the Army Air Corps, compared to 5 in favor; a similar margin voted against a repeal of the arms embargo (p. 59). On the conscription bill, in September 1940, the House attached a poison poll amendment from Ham Fish, then Republicans voted 52 in favor and 112 against (compared to 211-33 for the Dems) (p.185). The Republican Senate delegation had been evenly split on the bill the previous month (p.182). When the two versions were reconciled, 133 Republicans voted against it in the House and only 21 in favor (p.186). Later, after the election, they did better on Lend-Lease after Willkie's strong support, with 94 in favor and 54 against (p.288). The Neutrality Act's repeal in 1941, only a month before Pearl Harbor, was carried with 22 Republicans voting to repeal and 137 voting against it (p.305). And these are just raw numbers, not taking into account the rhetoric of the party leaders, always willing to carp about anything Roosevelt did., or the funds from Nazi sources.

Willkie, on the other hand, proved to have much more spine and foresight. Before I get to that, though, I must get to his campaign, which was terrible. Despite, or perhaps because of, the media enthusiasm, his pre-convention campaign was run by enthusiastic amateurs, and with them he went into the general election. I know elections then operated on a traditionally more condensed window than they do now, but Willkie's long working vacations after the convention and later on the campaign trail would make any modern campaign manager tear their hair out. Willkie's amateur staff did not come up with compelling messages for the campaign propaganda or for the candidate to deliver on the stump; and did not focus on the swing states, a preponderance of which they needed to win to have a chance in the electoral college. Additionally, despite the benefit that Willkie's ideology did the country by legitimizing interventionism, it was hard to run against Roosevelt when your positions were so close to his, including both Willkie's economic moderation and broadly-speaking support for the New Deal. Roosevelt campaigned as an incumbent, and until the last weeks mostly made appearances and speeches at armament factories and infrastructure projects. The Republicans also suffered from their deep ideological split, and both Willkie (as well as Roosevelt) denounced warmongering one day and then declared "all support short of war" the next. Willkie, a former Democrat and an insurgent, did not have close relationships with the party machinery.

Meanwhile, on the Democratic side, Roosevelt had high levels of support even as he held out until the last minute on declaring for a third term. He kneecapped his potential opponents by encouraging them all to run, and thus allowing no consensus to form for any one candidate. The delegates to the DNC cheered Roosevelt hoarse and were happy to support him again, but the accurate perception of a fait accompli almost scuttled Roosevelt's choice of a running mate, Henry Wallace. I was always interested in how Wallace came to be nominated. He was an odd character, the Secretary of Agriculture and the type of crusading administrator that the New Deal did so well with, but he was also a leftist, a hippie before there were hippies, and a former Republican with no real political experience. The answer of how he came to be nominated is actually easy: he was Roosevelt's choice, and FDR told various string-pullers that it was Roosevelt and Wallace or neither. As other candidates withdrew, the convention was left with only ornery Speaker of the House William Bankhead (Tallulah's father) as a second option, and the delegates fell in line. They were not happy about it, though, and Wallace was talked down from delivering his acceptance speech until later, lest he be booed down.

How did Wallace come to be Roosevelt's choice, though? Dunn quotes one of Roosevelt's letters to Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins (a frequent source of quotes), where FDR lays out how Wallace is smart, hard-working, loyal, and a capable administrator who presided over a massive increase in the size and complexity of the Department of Agriculture. Moreover, he was an internationalist, which Roosevelt wanted in 1940, and he was a farm-expert from the Midwest: two attacks on enemy territory, politically-speaking (p.143). Wallace is an interesting character, frustrating for some of his Cold War leftism but impressive in his administrative skill and his defiance of McCarthyism. I read the above-linked article about him with great interest.

In the end, Willkie's campaign fell short, and he lost by about 55% to 45%, about five million votes, and 449 to 82 in the Electoral College. However, as alluded to above, he immediately turned around and became a supporter of Roosevelt's policies on the war. Roosevelt liked him, and sent him as an emissary to Britain in 1941, and then after the US entered the war, to China, Russia, and the Middle East. He tried (and succeeded, to some extent) to urge the Republicans to lead the way on interventionism, setting the curve instead of falling behind. This advocacy estranged him from the Republican Party, but he became a committed internationalist, and his book One World was very influential in its time. However, Dunn's book foreshadows: Willkie is seen smoking, drinking, and relaxing at gatherings while others play tennis and hike, and these vices crop up with frequency. Willkie died of a heart attack late in 1944, and the post-war career he might have had is rendered forever a might-have-been.

So this book did a good job filling in blanks; though it might not serve forever as a substitute for the deeper divers on Willkie and Wallace. I enjoyed unexplored territory in a time period, the Roosevelt Administration, that I am very interested in, and watched as he pivoted from New Deal Roosevelt to World War 2 Roosevelt. I also have a book on an even more neglected election, 1944, but I might sit on that for the time being.