ABSTRACT
The committee was founded by Sears, Roebuck president Robert E. Wood (q.v.) in September 1940. Its purpose was to keep the United States out of the war in Europe. The organization fought every effort by the Roosevelt administration to aid the Allies. The committee would fold following Pearl Harbor. It reached a peak of more than 800,000 members. Among the most prominent were General Hugh Johnson, Eddie Rickenbacker (q.v.), Chester Bowles, William Benton, William Randolph Hearst, Robert R. McCormick, Norman Thomas (q.v.), Alice Roosevelt Longworth, and U.S. Senators Henry Cabot Lodge, Gerald Nye, Burton K. Wheeler (q.v.), Robert M. LaFollette, Jr., and Arthur Vandenberg. Henry Ford was originally a member of the group, but he was dropped because of his reputation for promoting anti-Semitism. The commmittee's major spokesman was aviation hero Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. (q.v.). His most wellknown speech on behalf of the America First Committee was delivered at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, in which he said:
14 72. The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt administration.
