Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941 QUOTES

1 " After Rep. Martin Sweeney of Ohio delivered a scathing attack on the Roosevelt administration for allegedly using conscription as a way to get the United States into the war, Rep. Beverly Vincent of Kentucky, who was next to Sweeney, loudly muttered that he refused “to sit by a traitor.” Sweeney swung at Vincent, who responded with a sharp right to the jaw that sent Sweeney staggering. It was, said the House doorkeeper, the best punch thrown by a member of Congress in fifty years. "

― Lynne Olson , Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

2 " THE MAN WHO, MORE than any other private citizen, helped unite the country behind the idea of aiding Britain and opposing Germany spent the war promoting the importance of international cooperation after the conflict. Although he rejected an attempt by FDR to bring him into his administration, Wendell Willkie, whom one newspaper labeled “a vocal and patriotic alarm clock,” became a sort of ambassador-at-large for Roosevelt, traveling around the globe to meet with Allied heads of state, soldiers, and ordinary citizens. "

― Lynne Olson , Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

3 " Although thoroughly discredited and defanged, the Bund, in the public mind, "

― Lynne Olson , Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

4 " The German embassy in Washington had spent thousands of dollars to send fifty isolationist Republican congressmen to the convention to work for the adoption of an isolationist platform. "

― Lynne Olson , Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

5 " In times of great crisis, Americans have traditionally turned to their president for leadership, and they did so with Roosevelt now. "

― Lynne Olson , Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

6 " From then on, most of America First’s leaders would be midwestern businessmen whose social and political views were considerably more conservative than those of the group’s founders. "

― Lynne Olson , Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

7 " Underlying such suspicions was the enormous gulf of knowledge and understanding between America’s heartland and the East Coast—and in particular the East’s financial and cultural hub, New York City. "

― Lynne Olson , Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

8 " Echoing Cantril’s view, George Gallup had earlier noted that “the best way to influence public opinion” on an issue was “to get Mr. Roosevelt to talk about it and favor it. "

― Lynne Olson , Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

9 " I do know that in every direction I find a growing discontent with the President’s lack of leadership,” Ickes wrote in his diary. “He still has the country if he will take it and lead it. But he won’t have it very much longer unless he does something. "

― Lynne Olson , Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

10 " The grieving Lindberghs were convinced that the excesses of the press were responsible for their son’s abduction and murder. “If it were not for the publicity that surrounds us, we might still have him,” Anne bitterly wrote in her diary. "

― Lynne Olson , Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

11 " On your marks, he had said to the nation, for a race with destiny.… Get set for the greatest effort of our history. Then, while the people waited poised and tense, he tucked the starter’s gun back in his pocket and went off to a Hyde Park weekend.” The "

― Lynne Olson , Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

12 " Even before the tragedy, Lindbergh had come to hate the mass-circulation newspapers, viewing them as “a personification of malice, which deliberately urged on the crazy mob.” That conviction was only strengthened when two news photographers broke into the morgue where his son’s body lay, opened the casket, and took pictures of Charlie’s remains. "

― Lynne Olson , Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

13 " On your marks, he had said to the nation, for a race with destiny.… Get set for the greatest effort of our history. Then, while the people waited poised and tense, he tucked the starter’s gun back in his pocket and went off to a Hyde Park weekend.” The British, "

― Lynne Olson , Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

14 " Lindbergh decided that he and his family had no alternative but to leave America. “Between the … tabloid press and the criminal, a condition exists which is intolerable for us,” he wrote his mother. A few days before his departure, Lindbergh told a close friend that “we Americans are a primitive people. We do not have discipline. Our moral standards are low.… It shows in the newspapers, the morbid curiosity over crimes and murder trials. Americans seem to have little respect for law, or the rights of others. "

― Lynne Olson , Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

15 " What would have happened if Hitler had not declared war on the United States, or if the Japanese had not attacked American soil? "

― Lynne Olson , Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

16 " Lindbergh would later write: “I shared the repulsion that democratic peoples felt in viewing the demagoguery of Hitler, the controlled elections, the secret police. Yet I felt that I was seeing in Germany, despite the crudeness of its form, the inevitable alternative to decline. "

― Lynne Olson , Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

17 " As the country’s most powerful creator of mass culture, Hollywood was considered an especially potent threat by Wheeler and other isolationist leaders. There was little doubt about the influence of movies: more than half of the American people saw at least one movie a week in the late 1930s and early 1940s. "

― Lynne Olson , Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

18 " Happily for the Allies, none of those scenarios became reality. As Dean Acheson aptly put it, “At last our enemies, with unparalleled stupidity, resolved our dilemmas, clarified our doubts and uncertainties, and united our people for the long, hard course that the national interest required. "

― Lynne Olson , Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

19 " Just the night before, he had made another national broadcast, this one calling for conscription, repeal of the entire neutrality law, and the dispatch of massive numbers of planes and munitions to Britain—if necessary, in American ships and under American naval protection. “Short of a direct declaration of war, it would have been hard to frame a more complete program of resistance to the Nazis,” noted McGeorge Bundy, the future aide to Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, who helped Stimson write his autobiography after the war. "

― Lynne Olson , Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941

20 " But by 1940, as the specter of war once again faced the United States, a reevaluation of rights and liberties, especially those relating to the First Amendment, had begun. "

― Lynne Olson , Those Angry Days: Roosevelt, Lindbergh, and America's Fight Over World War II, 1939-1941