A Story of America First ― The Men and Women Who Opposed U. S. Intervention in World War II

The America First Committee, founded in September 1940 to keep the United States out of what became the Second World War, was the largest antiwar organization in American history. Its 800,000 members spanned the political spectrum from conservative Republican to Socialist; its spokesmen were prairie populists, Eastern patricians, and, most controversially, the aviator Charles A. Lindbergh. Written in 1942, but unpublished until now, this study of the America First Committee by its chief researcher and Senate lobbyist, Ruth Sarles, sheds new light on this frequently misunderstood and misrepresented group. An introduction by Bill Kauffman assesses the place of Ruth Sarles and America First in American history.

RUTH SARLES was chief researcher and Senate lobbyist for the America First Committee. A former editor with the pacifist National Council for Prevention of War, Sarles represents the often-unacknowledged liberal face of the anti-intervention movement of 1940-41. After marrying Bertram Benedict in 1943, Sarles worked as a Washington Daily News reporter and a State Department analyst. She died in 1996.

BILL KAUFFMAN is associate editor of The American Enterprise. He is the author of four books:With Good Intentions? Reflections on the Myth of Progress in America (Praeger, 1998),America First! Its History, Culture, and Politics (1995), Country Towns of New York (1995), and the novelEvery Man a King (1989).