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Five Days in Philadelphia: The Amazing "We Want Willkie!" Convention of 1940 and How It Freed FDR to Save the Western World

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Political mavens will recall Zell Miller's praise for Wendell Willkie at last summer's Republican Convention. Charles Peters provides the back story on Willkie's principled support for FDR's wartime initiatives during the 1940 election season.

Peters recounts how Willkie - the only internationalist in a field of avowed isolationists -- wrested the Republican nod from the grip of Dewey, Taft and Vandenberg, each of whom was implacably opposed to providing material assistance to the Allies as the Nazi juggernaut marched across Europe. France's astonishing capitulation the day before the Convention opened was the biggest factor, Peters avers, in galvanizing popular and delegate support behind Willkie - though it took six ballots to put him over the top. He also details the role of the Luce media empire and a sympathetic press generally, Wall Street and Eastern Establishment interests, and a grassroots campaign orchestrated by Elihu Root's (former Sec of State) grandson played in advancing Willkie's Darkhorse candidacy.

We also see the always-politically-dexterous FDR orchestrating a putative "draft" at the Democratic convention in Chicago, thereby sparing himself the indignity of having to actively seek an unprecedented third term. The nip-and-tuck struggle to add Henry Wallace to the ticket as VP is also recalled in fascinating detail. (Wallace's principal opponent was the father of actress Tallulah Bankhead, then the Speaker of the House, who would be dead less than 60 days after the convention.)

Confronting FDR as he secured re-nomination were two politically treacherous issues borne out of the hostilities in Europe: whether to provide England with 50 WWI vintage destroyers for its desperately depleted fleet, and whether to institute a military draft, the first for the U.S. in peacetime. Wilkie's support for universal conscription was unflagging throughout the campaign, pretty remarkable considering the fervent, visceral opposition this issue engendered among Republican regulars, not to mention legions of concerned American mothers. (Remember at this time, Pearl Harbor was still over a year away and isolationist sentiment was in the majority.) On FDR's exchange of the aged destroyers for U.S. basing rights in the Caribbean - a sound bargain for Uncle Sam - Willkie did not gainsay the decision. But he did loudly excoriate FDR's decision to end-run Congress (bipartisan opposition assured the plan' defeat) and implement it by executive order. After the hard-fought election, Willkie was an ardent supporter of FDR's Lend-Lease initiative, his Congressional testimony credited with providing the margin of difference.

"Five Days in Philadelphia" is an interesting look at how the loyal opposition should behave in wartime - an engaging, illuminating and all-around terrific read.

Throughout my life Wendell Willkie has always been portrayed as a colorful footnote to history... a man who rose from near obscurity and, with the help of convention galleries cheering him on, overcame more staid Republican opposition to face Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the general election of 1940. After reading "Five Days in Philadelphia", I'm convinced that Willkie's place in American history should stay just about where it has rested for over sixty years.

Willkie's story (and political timing) make a good book and Charles Peters has done a very good job at enlightening the reader about Willkie's life, both personal and political. Born in 1892 to rather prominent citizens of Elwood, Indiana, Willkie eventually taught history in Coffeyville, Kansas before going on to become a lawyer. Peters points out that Willkie was in all ways larger than life, had a penchant for booze and cigarettes and had a lifelong "wandering eye" for women. His lengthy affair with Herald Tribune editor Irita Van Doren was kept private for the most part, although it is fascinating to think that the two major presidential candiates of 1940 could have had serious political troubles had their affairs been exposed.

Peters is at his best when he tells of the five days of the Republican convention in June, 1940. It's nice to be reminded of a time when the convention choices were actually decided at the conventions and not in an arduous primary system as we have today. The author captures the events dramatically....from the searing heat to the deal-making to the roaring demonstrations...all of this is related with wonderful intensity. Had it not been for key players like Sam Pryor and Joe Martin, Willkie would never have been able to overcome the forces of Thomas E. Dewey and Senators Taft and Vandenberg.

"Five Day in Philadelphia" takes a strange turn, however, after the Republican convention for from here on out the focus is on FDR. It is at this juncture that the reader is reminded that the real players were people in the Democratic party...not only FDR, but his advisor Harry Hopkins, FDR's near convention opponent, James Farley, Eleanor Roosevelt and people on down the line. Much is made, as it should have been, about the discussion of lending Great Britain fifty destroyers and the debate about resuming the draft, but Willkie seems largely left out of the picture, except for a few references about how he helped strengthen Roosevelt's hand with his support for Britain. Peters repeatedly makes the assertion that Willkie's nomination was far better for the country, but I'm not convinced of that. Had Taft, Dewey or Vandenberg been the nominee, the lines between any of them and FDR would have been much more clearly delineated and may have given the president an easier time persuading the country about the perils of Hitler....a direction in which the country seemed to be headed already at the time.

Wendell Willkie was in the national spotlight for roughly six months. I'm sure there were times that his support of FDR was welcome but I don't think that Charles Peters makes a very good case for making Willkie so influential. It's a leap of faith that doesn't work very well.

Still, "Five Days in Philadelphia" is a good book and one that adds to our knowledge of Wendell Willkie, a colorful character who captured the American spirit for a brief moment. The book is an often swift read and the narrative is written well. For those reasons it is a worthwhile venture.

That Wendell Wilkie was the only man on the Republican ticket in 1940 who made it possible for FDR to offer the military aid to Britain he wanted so desperately to give without it becoming so unpopular that he would lose the election, is an interesting idea, and although it's partially true (all the other Republican candidates were staunch isolationists), it's only hyperbole that, as Peters's subtitle declares, Wilkie's nomination "saved the Western world." Wilkie feared and hated Hitler, and the possibility that Britain would fall, as France had done, was very real, with grave consequences for the US. Thus he was all in favor of Roosevelt's wanting to help the British militarily, as well as reinstituting the draft (the first time there would ever be a peace-time draft in America). Peters is best when recounting the events at the Republican convention in Philadelphia, showing how Wilkie came out of nowhere to snag the nomination. He is also good at showing how Roosevelt came around to "accepting" a third-term nomination by the Democrats. Peters is a popular historian, however, and is weakest when attempting to sketch "background" to put events in context, and worst of all, when he even makes himself a part of the story at the beginning as an interested 13-year-old at the time. Although the book is not necessarily shallow, it's also not very deep: I read the book in one sitting. Interesting, but not essential.

Charles Peters's "Five Days in Philadelphia" is an incisive work that combines the best of narrative history alongside a defining moment explaining America at a critical crossroad. This defining moment occurred in Philadelphia at the 1940 Republican National Convention. Its repercussions reverberated throughout Europe as well as the rest of the world.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had anticipated continuing the American tradition of presidents not seeking third terms, decided to shatter that precedent and, in effect, unwritten law by running in 1940. The reason was increasingly darkening European clouds as the forces of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich focused on completing domination that Roosevelt and his advisers were concerned would soon threaten America as well. As Hitler talked about a Third Reich that would endure for one thousand years Roosevelt planned a reelection campaign buttressed around America allying itself with Winston Churchill and a besieged England along with further perpetuating the New Deal.

Two prominent Republican Senators, Robert Taft of Ohio and Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, along with youthful district attorney Thomas E. Dewey from New York, vied for their party's nomination at the Philadelphia convention. They adhered to traditional Republican isolationist views that alarmed Roosevelt and his brain trust.

Into the mix, in a manner reminiscent of a Frank Capra movie, came the man they then called the "barefoot lawyer" from Indiana, Wendell Willkie, who became the wild card of the proceedings. Willkie was a prominent corporate attorney then living in Ohio who had been an early New Deal supporter of Roosevelt's before breaking with him on anti-trust policies. Delegates looking for a fresh face and a contrast from the presented archetypal image of a Republican old guard bent on opposition and mired deeply in the past liked what they saw in the folksy Indianan with Horatio Alger roots.

In the classic historical American example of a genuine draft, the outsider and, until recently, Roosevelt Democrat took the convention by storm as delegates and gallery onlookers sustained a steady chant of "We want Willkie!" When the political novice won the nomination the question emerged as to where Willkie stood on foreign affairs. To the relief of Roosevelt and the Democratic Party Willkie embraced an active policy of assisting England and the European allies, rejecting an isolationist contrasting approach.

With the campaign assuming a bipartisanship in the field of foreign policy the conflict was focused on economic policy as both nominees assumed a staunch anti-Hitler stance. The repercussions of Willkie's strong pro-Europe stance affected the conflict abroad. America became more unified than ever concerning the European theater of war. The stiffened resistance and effective unity enabled America to move forward in resisting Hitler without the numerous difficulties that would have otherwise abounded in a nation wherein the isolationist presence of the charismatic aviation hero Charles A. Lindbergh had held such strong sway.

This book pinpoints the key events leading up to and following the historic 1940 Philadelphia Republican conclave, then effectively broadens the text to explain how America was then able to play an active role in the European conflict by vigilantly opposing Hitler's onslaught.

This is an excellent cause and effect historical work that explains how a pivotal event reverberated around the world and enabled America to react to an emergency in a more unified manner. The author's approach was both highly readable and thoroughly professional.

The 1940 Presidential election was one of the more interesting and more important elections in US history.

It was a time when the bulk of the American public was strongly isolationism, while a world view of Germany and Japan called for cooperation with the rest of the world to stop them.

It was a time of a calm before the storm as Pearl Harbor was only about a year away. With that incident, the mood of the country changed immediately to make America ready to go to war.

It was a time when FDR was running for a third time. Something that had never happened before and which later was made impossible by the twenty-second amendment. (The 1940 Republican platform called for a two term limit.)

It was a time when foreign intelligence services were active in trying to influence the American political system. The Germans were running isolationist advertisments in newspapers, ostensively being placed there by isolationist politicians. The British intelligence service was active including supplying a mistress to the leading Republican candidate. (The subject of foreign intelligence activities in the election of 1940 would make a good book in its own right, it's just touched on here.)

As a forerunner of things to come, the Republican platform called for an end to discrimination against the Negros in the military, the civil service, and all areas of Government. This subject was to wait a long time before the Democrats made it their own issue.

Philip Roth's novel 'The Plot Against America' imagined what would have happened if an isolationist Republican president had been elected over FDR. Now this book does an excellent job examining another aspect of the election. There is a lot yet to be learned about this pivotal election.

I came to Charles Peters' study "Five Days in Philadelphia" (2005) after reading Steve Neal's biography of Wendell Willkie, "Dark Horse" Dark Horse: A Biography of Wendell Willkie. I wanted to get to revisit the fascinating and now almost forgotten Republican presidential candidate of 1940. Reading about Willkie (1892 -- 1944) intrigued me when I was young.

Charles Peters is a Washington political insider who founded the "Washington Monthly" political magazine and edited it for thirty years. He has written a study, "How Washington Really Works" How Washington Really Works. His most recent book is a succinct study of Lyndon Johnson for the American Presidents Series Lyndon B. Johnson: The American Presidents Series: The 36th President, 1963-1969. "Five Days in Philadelphia" was greatly influenced by Neal's biography of Willkie. But Peters' book has a personal element. As a teenager in Charleston, West Virginia, Peters developed the love of the political process to which he would devote his life. He and his family became fascinated by Willkie and by the 1940 presidential election. Indeed, he and his family traveled from Charleston to Chicago in the summer of 1940 to attend the tumultuous Democratic convention which nominated President Roosevelt for a third term together with his chosen running mate, Henry Wallace. Roosevelt's choice of Wallace bitterly divided his party. Peters' account is based upon his impressions as a politically precocious adolescent together with his broad reading at the time and the development of subsequent historical sources.

The book is not a biography of Willkie. Instead its focus is on international events -- the fall of France and the fear of German invasion of England -- on American politics in 1940, and on Willkie's improbable rise to the Republican presidential nomination. With the exception of military leaders, such as Grant or Eisenhower, Willkie remains the only presidential nominee of a major party who had never held a political office. Willkie had been a successful Wall Street lawyer and utlilities executive who came to prominence by his opposition to the Tennessee Valley Authority. He had been a lifelong Democrat until he changed his political registration to Republican late in 1939. With strong support from the news media and Wall Street together with the force of his personality Willkie rose to become a dark horse contender for the 1940 nomination. He was also supported by a powerful, well-organized grass roots movement.

The leading contenders for the Republican nomination, Dewey, Taft, and Vandenberg had been isolationists who opposed United States assistance to England and United States entry into the war. In a day-by-day analysis of the Republican convention in Philadelphia from June 24 -- June 28, 1940, Peters offers a dramatic account of how growing internationalist sentitment resulting from the fall of France propelled Willkie to the nomination on the sixth ballot. Peters' offers a positive and detailed account of Willkie's path to the nomination which rejects the claim sometimes made that the Eastern establishment engineered it. Peter's agrees instead with the view expressed at the time that the nomination constituted "a genuine popular revolt" and "a tremendous and historical revolt of the people against the politicians." (p.115) The story still has the capacity to inspire. Peters also examines the Democratic convention in Chicago in August, 1940. Although Roosevelt was easily renominated, the Democratic convention was nearly as contentious as the Republican.

The second part of Peters' book focuses on the 1940 campaign and on the relationship between Roosevelt and Willkie. During the campaign, Willkie courageously supported the Selective Service Act. Somewhat more tentatively, he also supported Roosevelt's proposal to sent 50 destroyers to England to assist in its fight for survival against Germany. Peters argues forcefully that no other possible Republican candidate would have taken these stances. Willkie was able to put his view of the good of the nation above narrow partisanship. In so doing, Peters argues, he made it possible for Roosevelt's program of assistance and military preparedness to succeed.

After Willkie's defeat, his actions became even more governed by principle rather than by political expediency. Peters describes the Lend-Lease program of 1941 which gave the president broad authority to authorize military assistance to American allies. By contemporaneous accounts, Willkie's testimony before Congress was instrumental in securing enactment of the lend-lease program.

Peters offers high praise to Willkie, to Roosevelt, and to the American people for coming together on principle at a moment of significance and danger. Willkie's nomination was in part a stroke of luck and in part an exemplification of American politics at its best. His support of Selective Service, the destroyer deal and Lend-Lease made it possible for Roosevelt to pursue his programs with a showing of bipartisanship. It would be difficult to conceive of a Willkie story in current American politics with the changes in the convention system. Furthermore, Willkie had his personal weaknesses, which primarily involved womanizing (a trait he shared with FDR) as well as excessive use of alcohol. Peters observes that in the current political environment that these flaws would likely have prevented Willkie's political activity at the outset.

Before his death in 1944, Willkie told a friend that "If I could write my own epitaph and I could choose between 'Here lies an unimportant president' or "Here lies one who contributed to saving freedom at a moment of great peril' I would prefer the latter." (p. 195) His idealism and determination during his short political career confirm his statement. Willkie's story, Roosevelt's story, and the American people's story in 1940 remains inspiring. I have learned a great deal in revisiting my youthful interest in Wendell Willkie.

Robin Friedman

The real story of Wilkie's nomination and campaign has to do with the unity of the big business forces that control America including the Republican and Democratic parties, over the question of going to war with Germany and Japan. Wilkie's agreement with that perspective moved him from being a member of the Democratic party to being the Republican candidate for president, insuring that on that crucial issue no disturbance would be made.

Whatever you think about it, Roosevelt ran the election under the slogan "I hate war" and on his many pledges not to send Americans to fight in the Second World War. However, in reality, Roosevelt was covering for a series of actions that could only be described as warfare against Germany, Italy, and Japan. As soon as Roosevelt won the 1940 election these actions escalated.

In November 1940, Roosevelt sent the US navy into the Atlantic to attack and sink German and Italian submarines in complete cooperation with the British. This was despite the fact that the German and Italian submariners tended to stay away from American ports and American ships to avoid provoking American public opinion. What they were able to do if they had really preyed upon American shipping was shown in 1941 and 1942 after Germany and Italy declared war on Washington. Hundreds of ships were sunk within site of the Atlantic coast of America and Britain was seriously threatened with strangulation. However, major incidents like the sinking of the Reuben James were provoked by aggressive US Navy attacks on German submarines either separate from or in direct cooperation with the British and Canadian navies.


American Navy pilots worked directly with the British. In fact it was an US Navy, not RAF, pilot who flew the plane that torpedoed the Bismark and left it unable to steer. The destroyer deal not only supplied the British with destroyers, but sent US troops to the bases that protected British colonies in the Americas. American marines occupied Iceland, an action not really favored by the Icelandic government which had tried to stay neutral.

In Asia, Roosevelt launched the Flying Tigers. Rather than being a mercenary program by the Chaing Kai Shek government, the Flying Tigers were totally financed by the United States Army Air Force. All of the Tigers were serving Navy or Army pilots who were ordered to (and allowed to, strange in a prewar situation)leave the Navy and the Army to accept positions with the Tigers. Plans for the Tigers included building a huge American-staffed and paid for Chinese airforce that would possess long range bombers to attack Japan.

Commissions of the US military and naval general staffs and their British counterparts were set up to plan a US-British war against both Germany and Japan. The US Navy began to build a major base in Northern Ireland.

Roosevelt's course was not simply pro-British. It was to get as deeply involved in the Second World War as US public opinion allowed regardless of his breach of US and International law. Those who wonder why Germany declared war on the USA and feel this was some gratuitous action in solidarity with Japan miss the real question. The real question is why did Germany wait so long to declare war on the USA when the USA had legally been carrying on warfare against Germany since the fall of 1940.

The choice of Wilkie and his agreement to make the war a non-issue reflected how great the pressure from the top was to keep this active war course at the center of the government and to deny the American people any semblance of the supposed choice that they were told they had in the election---deciding how the country would stay out of the war.

The story of Wendell Wilkie and how he became the 1940 Republican candidate for President as FDR ran for an unprecedented third term is not on told often and mores the pity, really. It was an interesting time, one that author Charles Peters relates to us in an easy to read conversational manner. His folksy style causes one to imagine himself listening to a favorite next door neighbor or kindly grandfather tell an engrossing tale of yesteryear.

The story of one of the last consequential Party conventions in US history is an interesting tale but, unfortunately, I found author Peters not wholly up to the task. Folksy manner aside, he did not present a solidly convincing argument to support his thesis. Perhaps I am too used to more ponderous historical tomes but Peters' more journalistic and colloquial style just didn't satisfy.

This quick reading book does not seem to have much original scholarship. Most of the footnotes reveal the story to be gleaned from contemporary media accounts and secondary sources, but it certainly gives the reader a feel for how the country felt on the eve of the US entry into World War II. Peters also convincingly shows how out of touch the Republican Party of 1939-40 was with the fast as lightning, world shaking events that were occurring on a daily basis and how out of touch they were with many Americans. He also shows how Wilkie was just as much a media creation as a solid, grass roots candidate.

The author suffers from such hero worship of FDR, however, that he seems oblivious to the warts of the Roosevelt administration even as he relates them. Peters acts as if the many missteps, such as FDR's ridiculous court packing scheme, and failed New Deal programs as well as the stagnation of the national economy that FDR caused was unimportant or even somehow quaintly endearing. For instance, on page 44 Peters glows about how much more "generous" FDR's US aid to France was in the early days of the war as Germany was pressing down on beleaguered French forces than was England's. To Peters' credit, he does mention that FDR had an ocean to protect him and the US from German aggression whereas the English had but the channel to serve them, though.

Peters even seems to make the assumption that no other president or presidential candidate could possibly have been up to the task of managing WWII from the US perspective. I would disagree in light of the mash FDR made with his dealings with the Russians as "allies" among other things.

I suppose Peters can be excused for this blind hero worship as it is quite common in jouranalism circles. At one point he even praised FDR imagining him so all knowing that he "could now count on support for his foreign policy from the Republican nominee" once Wilkie was given the GOP nod. Apparently FDR could read the future as far as Peters is concerned.

Even the cover of the dust jacket seems geared to prove that FDR was the "best man" for the job as it portrays a smiling FDR in front of a bevy of microphones in nearly full face view, but a harried looking Wilkie looking way off to the left. Not that Peters chose the cover art, but it is indicative of FDR hero worship, none-the-less.

Also, author Peters is so caught up with modern Democratic Party loyalty he even seems bemused that blacks might have wished to vote Republican in 1940 saying in an offhanded way that the GOP was "still enough the party of Lincoln" to attract some black votes. Even though the GOP fought the Klan and had a strong pro black plank right in its convention platform in 1940. And even though FDR never showed a single interest in American blacks or their plight. Ignoring even his wife's urging, FRD assisted the Unions to exclude black workers from Union jobs and ignored blacks being systematically kept from voting in the south by poll taxes and Jim Crow laws. Roosevelt stuck to his decision to ignore all civil rights issues altogether throughout his four terms in office. Despite Peters' apparent bemusement at blacks voting Republican, no Democrat had given them much reason to vote Democratic throughout FDR's days and for many years thereafter.

But Peters' main thesis is the biggest problem with this book. I was struck by how slim the framework is with which the author supports his theory. Peters wrote this book to expound on the idea that FDR couldn't have assisted the English and French at the start of WWII or institute the draft without Republican assistance and that assistance would not have been forthcoming without Wendell Wilkie as their candidate. As I finished the book I found myself intrigued, but unconvinced and hoping a real historian would take a crack at the idea.

As Peters points out FDR's Democratic Convention in Chicago was in disarray and his supposed "draft" to become the candidate of the Party for president was a sham. Peters feels this shows FDR's weakness to the point where he would not have been effective with his aid to England aims. Yet the president was still stubbornly strong enough in the Party to create this fake draft effort as well as stuff an unpopular Vice-Presidential candidate, Henry Wallace from Iowa, down the convention's throat. Is it likely that he was powerful enough to make such a frivolous expense of his waning power with as simple a thing as a VP candidate yet not with important international policy?

So, on one hand the GOP was strong enough to quash FDR's war aims yet so weak they ended up nominating someone who was practically a mirror of FDR as their presidential nominee. To me it seems that the GOP of 1940 just never had the power to oppose FDR, Wilkie or no Wilkie.

One thing that is a good reminder for us all, though, is Peters' spotlighting of the workings of the media in pre-WWII America. Peters relates how closely the media worked together with two examples in his story. The first example is that most of the high rollers in the media created the Wilkie grass roots steamroller in their editorial rooms, before too many Americans had even heard of him. The second was that those same media figures conspired together to convince the American people of the efficacy of leasing England our mothballed destroyer fleet, thereby setting the precedent of helping the Brits face Hitler.

In today's cutthroat media world, it is hard to imagine them working together for such aims today. Regardless of the much ballyhooed and obvious left leaning bias that forms the undercurrent of much of the reporting done by the today's media, who could imagine them all working as closely together now as they did in WWII?

Another thing is evident. Wilkie did agree with the New Deal and with President Roosevelt in many ways and as the presidential contest gave the White House back to Roosevelt, Wilkie returned to his very vocal and public support of the administration to the detriment of further Republican success. After all, Wendell Wilkie was not a registered Republican having voted Democrat all his life until 1940. No wonder many Republicans in 1940 bemoaned that Wilkie was NO Republican. Unfortunately for the GOP, NO Republican could have beaten Roosevelt in the first place.

So, for an interesting, if not entirely satisfying, read, give Charles Peters' "5 Days in Philadelphia" a try.

Charles Peters has primarily given us in his book Five Days in Philadelphia, the story of the Republican convention of 1940. In addition to recounting the convention, leading to the nomination of Wendell Wilkie as the GOP candidate for the Presidency, Peters also gives us some background information on the Presidency of Franklin Roosevelt and how Willkie allowed FDR to continue down the path of arming America and her allies for war.

Peters makes the argument that had any of the other prime candidates for the nomination been successful in their quest (i.e. Robert Taft or Arthur Vandenberg), such critical foreign policy manuevers as the destroyer deal of 1940 or the Lend-Lease act of 1941 would not have come to be, since the Republicans would have used these as a political weapons to attack the internationist (or interventionist) policies of the incumbant Democratic administration.

In reality, most of the book is spent on Wendell Wilkie - an interesting fellow that many people know little about. There is little, if any, doubt that his involvement in American politics played a large role in FDR's plans to send arms to Britain, or to quash many of the isolationist feelings that would have prevented the first peacetime draft in America's history. Despite this interesting man, the book just doesn't quite live up to its title - it comes pretty close, but after reading the book I am not quite convinced that the convention freed FDR to continue down the most interventionist path. Instead, I think that Wendell Wilkie, after the convention, allowed Roosevelt to take those steps he saw as necessary to try to keep America out of war and provide for her defense as much as possible.

Wendell Willkie, the Republican nominee for the U. S. presidency in 1940, is a man that history has generally forgotten. That is unfortunate, for his actions had a great deal to do with England surviving against the German onslaught in 1940 and '41 and with the United States being somewhat prepared for war when Japan attacked in 1941. It is largely lost to the American national memory that as the war clouds gathered in Europe and Asia, the Republican Party was strongly isolationist. In fact, as the recent comments of a noted conservative indicate, even some Republicans have forgotten that fact.
This isolationist mentality was so strong that leading candidates for the Republican nomination still held the position that the United States should let England fall, even after German armies had taken over nearly all of Europe. President Franklin Roosevelt was determined to do all he could to aid England, but risked a serious backlash if he went beyond what were very narrow bounds.
It was at this point where Wendell Willkie demonstrated the traits of a real patriot and the Republican Party demonstrated a collective genius. Going from almost nowhere to becoming the Republican nominee in 1940, Wendell Willkie made no secret of his support for the internationalist actions of President Roosevelt. He supported the destroyers for bases swap with Great Britain and even after he lost the election to Roosevelt, Willkie came out strongly in favor of the Lend Lease program. Some argue that it was his open and tacit support during and after the 1940 presidential campaign that allowed Roosevelt to send Britain the aid that kept it fighting.
Some history is made over years, but at times a lot is made in only a few days. That is what happened when the strongly isolationist presidential contenders in the Republican party were cast aside by the delegates to the convention in favor of a man that put country over personal ambition. This is an excellent story and one that the current crop of political crud could learn a great deal from.