As Hitler’s army swept across Europe with lightning speed, the political dynamic in the U.S. changed rapidly as a result.
After German land grabs in Austria and Czechoslovakia, Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 and World War II began. On April 8, 1940, Hitler invaded and soon conquered Norway and Denmark. On May 10, Germany invaded Belgium and France, and just two days before the 1940 Republican National convention began, France surrendered. As these events were playing out, America – and particularly the Republican Party – was deeply divided between isolationists, who opposed any steps that might lead America into war, and those who felt that America should do more to oppose Hitler and support Britain before it was too late. Lynne Olson tells that story in Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America’s Fight over World War II, 1937-1941.
With a dozen or so candidates seeking the Republican nomination, it was a crowded field. The three leading contenders were Senators Robert Taft of Ohio and Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, and District Attorney Thomas Dewey of New York. But they all had significant weaknesses as candidates. Taft was the leader of the GOP’s conservative, isolationist wing, which included Vandenberg. Dewey, the high profile New York prosecutor who had jailed prominent mafia figures, was only 38, and he lacked any foreign policy experience. And so, in light of Hitler’s alarming progress, there was an opening for an unlikely, so-called “dark horse” candidate who wasn’t an isolationist.
Wendell Willkie was an unlikely Republican candidate to say the least. He’d never run for elected office, he was a former Democrat who’d supported FDR in 1932, and as Lynne Olson points out, he was supportive of many New Deal programs and more outspoken than Roosevelt about helping Britain as quickly and as much as possible.
Just seven weeks before the convention, Willkie had only 3% support among Republicans. On the first ballot, Dewey received 360 of the 501 votes necessary to win the nomination, but he lost support on every ballot thereafter. As Dewey’s support eroded and the lesser candidates withdrew, Willkie gained support, but so did Taft. Still, the momentum was with Willkie, and on the sixth ballot, he won the nomination. Historians consider it one of the most dramatic events in any national convention.
The important result was that at that critical time in American and world history, both Willkie and his Democratic opponent, incumbent President Franklin Roosevelt, essentially agreed that while technically neutral, America had to help Britain and oppose Hitler.
