American Isolationists During WWII

​Virtual Museum Exhibits:

• This page from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has more information on different isolationist groups and their reasons for being against U.S. intervention in WWII. Some people were against the war for personal, economic, or moral reasons. Others, like Charles Lindbergh and the America First Committee, promoted or tolerated anti-Semitism.
  ​https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-united-states-isolation-intervention
• Also from the museum, this interactive timeline demonstrates how public opinion about intervention changed over time: 
  https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/americans-and-the-holocaust/us-public-opinion-world-war-II-1939-1941

Articles:
This article from The Atlantic discusses the debate over American intervention characterized by FDR on one hand, and aviator Charles Lindbergh on the other. Here’s a snippet:

• Despite his exuberant enthusiasm for Germany, his disenchantment with democracy, the zealous applause he received from fascists in the United States and in Germany, his admiration for the racial ideas of Alexis Carrel, his increasingly extremist and anti- Semitic speeches, and the fact that his simplistic views mirrored Nazi propaganda in the United States, Lindbergh seemed to want what he believed was best for America. And yet Franklin Roosevelt may have been instinctively correct in his own less nuanced view.
  "I am absolutely convinced that Lindbergh is a Nazi," FDR said melodramatically to his secretary of the treasury and old Dutchess County neighbor and friend, Henry Morgenthau, in May 1940, two days after Lindbergh's May 19 speech. "If I should die tomorrow, I want you to know this."

Link to article: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2013/07/the-debate-behind-us-intervention-in-world-war-ii/277572/
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Did you know? Walt Disney was an isolationist. Here’s a brief history of American isolationism from The Week:
https://theweek.com/articles/627638/brief-history-american-isolationism

What was Charles Lindbergh’s response to the U.S. entering WWII? From Wikipedia:

• “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. Whether or not that policy has been wise, our country has been attacked by force of arms and by force of arms we must retaliate. Our own defenses and our own military position have already been neglected too long. We must now turn every effort to building the greatest and most efficient Army, Navy and Air Force in the world. When American soldiers go to war it must be with the best equipment that modern skill can design and that modern industry can build.”
  
  

A history mystery: Were Lindbergh and the America First Committee motivated more by opposition to foreign entanglements or by their anti-Semitic beliefs in supporting isolationism? 

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