How Charles Lindbergh Shaped American Isolationism
The impact of the famed aviator and the America First Committee
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“We have been stepping closer to war for many months. Now it has come and we must meet it as united Americans regardless of our attitude in the past toward the policy our Government has followed.” ~ Charles Lindbergh, December 1941
Before the break of dawn on September 1, 1939, the German army began its harrowing invasion of Poland. Two days later, France and Great Britain declared war on Germany, igniting World War II in Europe. Across the Atlantic Ocean, President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) continued to focus on pulling the United States out of the grips of the Great Depression. Still, he could not turn a blind eye to the troubles brewing in Europe, troubles he understood the majority of Americans wanted no part of. After the end of World War I, Americans danced through the Roaring Twenties and then wrestled through the Depression. With memories of the First World War remaining fresh in peoples’ minds, an isolationist attitude rippled across the country.
One year after the German invasion of Poland, on a crisp fall day in 1940, a group of impassioned and perturbed students at Yale University created the America First…
