[America First: Roosevelt vs. Lindbergh in the Shadow of War by H.W. Brands (Doubleday Books, 2024; 444 pp.)]

In an interview for The Atlantic amidst tensions in the Middle East, President Donald Trump argued that he was the one who got to define what an “America First” foreign policy really means. He remarked, “Well, considering that I’m the one that developed ‘America First,’ and considering that the term wasn’t used until I came along, I think I’m the one that decides that.” President Trump certainly has come into prominence using this slogan, yet his statement is incorrect. He was not the first to use “America First” as a slogan—its first users being documented, in part, by University of Texas Historian H.W. Brands.

Brands is hardly a heterodox historian, having been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for his work on such figures as George Washington. This makes it all the more surprising that Brand’s latest book America First offers a refreshingly honest look at Charles Lindbergh and his relationship with President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Brands does not tackle wholly the America First Committee but rather follows the man who came to define the committee itself. One cannot carefully study opposition to the Second World War without encountering the pilot of The Spirit of St. Louis and his downfall.

America First begins with the tale of Lindbergh and his rise to fame—becoming perhaps the most famous American alive for flying across the Atlantic on his own. His child was kidnapped and murdered, driving the Lindbergh family to Europe to escape. Here, Lindbergh witnesses the weaknesses of France and England in the face of a rearming Germany. Lindbergh knew that England and France were not prepared for conflict, that if war were to come then they would surely lose. Brands does not paint Lindbergh as someone enamored with Nazi Germany—something that could not be said of many of the brain trusters of FDR’s cabinet—but as someone with a love for Western Europe and a desire to not see it tear itself apart. An underlying theme only made explicit later in the book is of the looming threat of Communism to the East. When the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa, Lindbergh could cite the horrors of the United States siding with the soon-to-be Butcher of Eastern Europe as a supposed lesser of two evils.

The most intriguing part of this story is the role opposite of the Lone Eagle. Roosevelt is painted in a less than stunning light, as a true Machiavellian in how he approached the war. The mainstream narrative paints Roosevelt as a man who did not desire US entry into World War II, yet saw it as the unique responsibility of the United States to arm the free world in their fight for democracy. Then the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred and Roosevelt knew he had to lead the nation.

Brands doesn’t make the claim that Roosevelt had ulterior motives by any means, though one might very well believe they existed. Roosevelt had seen the NIRA and AAA struck down by courts, failed in his court packing scheme, and faced increasing unemployment from the recession with the depression of 1937. Perhaps he saw war socialism as a means to spur the economy back into shape, or he was pushed by the Morgans and the Rockefellers as Murray Rothbard argued.

Brands does show the means through which Roosevelt and the British dragged America in the war, “through the backdoor” as Robert E. Wood of Roebuck & Sears would remark after Pearl Harbor. As the foil to the carefully-written and bleeding-heart journal entries of Lindbergh are presented the deceptive secretive correspondence of Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. In it, it is shown how Roosevelt fought tooth and nail to trick the United States into the war. Churchill’s continued impressment on Roosevelt of his need for destroyer ships and the British secret operations inside the United States to discredit non-interventionists are on full display.

The famed speech that doomed Lindbergh did not mention only American Jews as interested parties in participation in the war—a position that Brands does not use to paint Lindbergh as an anti-Semite, but rather someone understanding the emotions of a people whose relatives faced persecution abroad, and also the British and Roosevelt administration. Caught in the floodlight of Brands’ tale is just that: the British and Roosevelt plot to lure the United States into the war.

Their smears are not dismissed as such but shown to be ridiculous by Brands. The America First Committee was a group of Americans, of American ideologies, that prohibited the Red-Brown Alliance from membership. They were not rogue anti-Semites, but citizens opposing a repetition of the mistakes of the Great War. The anti-interventionists are the ones cast as underdogs in the better light. Roosevelt is cast as a snake, twisting words, lying blatantly, and falling for British propaganda, but this snake was not cast out of the Garden by Lindbergh.

Brands doesn’t appear to have an idyllic view of the war. Millions died and half of Europe was cast behind the Iron Curtain. The United States chose to make use of the most horrific weapons in history to end the conflict (if one believes that was the reason the conflict ended at all). He doesn’t indulge in speculations of Hitler’s possible benevolent rule over Europe, an accusation that opponents of revisionism will furl at any attempt at revisionism.

What Brands does is open the door once again to a serious discussion of the costs of war. Lindbergh, at the least, wanted an open debate about our prospects for war. Roosevelt attempted to deny him that, through backroom dealing, smears, and espionage. Roosevelt did everything he could to trick the American public into war. Lindbergh did everything he could to honestly prevent it. For that reason alone, Brands’ America First is worthy of reading by anyone interested in the battle between these two titans of American history.