By Bill Bucher Jr. 

I heard a saying once that “History doesn’t repeat itself, but it does ‘echo’.” Sometimes when I am reading the news, I suddenly get the feeling, “hasn’t this happened before?” It’s hard for a history buff like me not to recognize a few significant similarities between the events which eventually led to World War II and the events of today. 

The United States in the 1940s was not yet the world power that we are today. There was no United Nations, no NATO. The powerful block of Allied nations that prosecuted the end of World War I against Germany in 1918 had gone their separate ways, convinced that the “Great War,” as it was called at the time, would be the “War to end all wars.” Of course, this was not to be. 

Germany had begun secretly preparing for war during much of the 1930s. In late 1939, Hitler unleashed tank-led lightning attacks known as “blitzkriegs” upon Poland, and in the spring of 1940 he continued the invasion into eastern France. Totally unprepared, the entirety of Western Europe was now at risk of takeover by the German Wehrmacht. 

Just a few weeks later, Great Britain’s newly elected Prime Minister Winston Churchill cabled President Franklin D. Roosevelt begging him to provide aid short of declaring war, including older navy ships, new aircraft and anti-aircraft defensive weapons. Four months later, Roosevelt announced the “weapons for bases” program as a defensive posture for America. 

At the time, isolationist organizations in America such as the “America First Committee,” whose spokesmen included popular aviator Charles Lindbergh and radio personality Father Charles Coughlin, sought to influence public opinion against involvement in the war through print, radio and mass rallies. In September of 1941 — just three months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor — Lindbergh gave a speech in which he supported “an independent destiny for America.” 

“Such a destiny does not mean that we will build a wall around our country and isolate ourselves from contact with the rest of the world,” he proclaimed, “but it does mean that the future of America will not be tied to these eternal wars in Europe. It means that American boys will not be sent across the ocean to die so that England or Germany or France or Spain may dominate the other nations.” In fact, he asserted, he wanted “neither side to win.”   

It was an attractive argument, but he wasn’t finished. “The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration,” he stated, igniting a firestorm of protest from all three groups. 

Of course, you know the rest of the story. The Japanese unleashed their successful surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and Hitler declared war against the United States just four days after that. America was involved whether she wanted to be or not. 

The failure of the United States to anticipate these developments and support the sovereign countries resisting assaults from beyond their borders encouraged the aggressors, and presaged the inevitable involvement of our country in a second worldwide war in just a few decades. The futility of American isolationism was a lesson learned for yet a second time. 

And now Congress is grappling with whether to continue to support Ukraine in their desperate fight against what appears to be Russia’s war of total obliteration. Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy is begging the United States for support short of declaring war, to include new aircraft and anti-aircraft defensive weapons; the legislation to do so is stalled in Congress, which has shown a stubborn streak of isolationist views and a strongly partisan lack of willingness to compromise. Does any of this sound familiar? 

American isolationism has taught countries and terrorist organizations alike that they can be militarily aggressive against other weaker states without much fear of punishment as long as they do not directly involve the United States. Only the act of actually formally declaring war against America is hazardous, it seems, so now they understandably avoid doing that.   

The only question now is, will America also learn from its past, or will history repeat itself — again?  

Bill Bucher lives in Salisbury.