In article ,
(Jussi Jalonen) writes:
"Kevin Brooks" wrote in message ...

He was not arguing feasibility--he was pointing out that yahoos like you
would indeed have been labeling FDR a "warmonger" and condemning him for
prosecuting a preemptive war had he been able and willing to act in the
manner he described.

Considering FDR's party affiliations, I would suspect that most of the
people who would have condemned him for prosecuting a pre-emptive war
would have been Congressional Republicans. That is, yahoos like...
well, you, I suspect.

Actually, that wasn't the case. In the 1940 election, the most
virulent opposition to FDR's candidacy came from the Midwest
Progressives - the Socialist/Ultra-Liberal wing of the Democratic
Party. They were overtly aided an abetted by the German Abwehr.
Principal among these people were John L. Lewis, President of the
United Mine Workers and the CIO (Pre-AFL-CIO merger) William Rhodes
Davis, President of the Crusader Oil Company, and the main supplier of
Bunker Oil to the Kreigsmarine (Including shipping oil out of Mexico
under false pretenses.) (Davis, btw, was carried on the Abwehr's books
as Agent C-80. Lewis was carried as Sub-agent C-80/L. It was
certainly an overt relationship - Lewis on several occasions with
Dr. Hertslet, the Abwehr's head of the American Desk. Lewis and Davis
were the main conduit of roughly $3,000,000 of German government funds
funelled to various members of the Democratic Party for the defeat of
Rossevelt. (Note that that's at a time when $1,000/year was a
comfortable living. It's the equivalant of about $150,000,000 in
today's money.) Also complicit in this campaign were Senator Burton
K. Wheeler (D-Montana). It should be noted that the Abwehr didn't
confine its attempts at influencing the Election to the Democrats -
They also threw money at the Republican Party in a two pronged effort
- they wanted Roosevelts defeat, and they also wanted to head off the
candidacy of Wendell Willkie, a very public Interventionist, whose
views on Germany parallelled Roosevelt's. The Abwehr also stuck iself
in with an independant propoganda campaign, populated by shadow
organizations, falsified documents,
Others of the Midwest Progressives who threw in with the Nazis include
Philip Fox LaFollette, theGovernor of Wisconsin, Senator Wayland
Brooks, of Illinois, and Robert McCormick, publisher of the Chicago
Tribune.

In the end, it was all for nought - Roosevelt adn Willkie wer
resoundingly nominated, and the election went bad for Germany.

Why these noted Liberal of their time would so whole-heartedly hate
FDR, or, for that matter throw in with the Nazis is an interesting
question. A fiar chunk of the hatred and resentment seems to come
from the idea that FDR "hijacked" their programs and platforms for teh
New Deal. Some of it may have been a legitiamate fear of being drawn
into another European War. There may be another factor as well- the
1930s was The Age of Dictators. Social change was seen to be achieved
not through evolution, or even widesprad Revolution, but by a "Strong
Leader" (read violent thug, such as Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin) who
sezed power and forced his nation to his will. (:aFollette was
particualry subject to this - he was very nearly Roosevelt's Attorny
General, until he started running his own vest-pocket Nuremburg
Rallys. (LaFollette had attended several of the real Nuremburg
Rallys.)

A good place to start researching this it Ladislad Farago's "The Game
of the Foxes", which is mostly based on the Abwehr Records found at
teh end of the war, and C.John Rogge's "The Official German Report"
(Rogge served as Assistant United Stated Attorney General in charge of
the Criminal Division of teh Justice Department during the war, and
ran the DOJ's investigation into German activites in the U.S.

I find the parellels fascinating.

--
Pete Stickney
A strong conviction that something must be done is the parent of many
bad measures. -- Daniel Webster