1940 United States presidential election (Lucky With Lindy)

The 1940 United States presidential election was the 39th quadrennial presidential election. It was held on Tuesday, November 5, 1940. Republican candidate, Charles Lindbergh, defeated incumbent, Secretary of State, Cordell Hull.

The election was contested in the shadow of World War II in Europe, as the United States was emerging from the Great Depression. Franklin D. Roosevelt declined to run for a third term due to the Intervention Papers, which were transcripts from a secretly recorded conversation in which Roosevelt expressed his support for intervening in World War II. The papers damaged Roosevelt's popularity and led to his choice not to run again, which left the Democratic Party without a clear candidate. Overall, 11 people declared their candidacy for the nomination, however, three stood to gain the nomination. New York Postmaster General James A. Farley, Vice President John Nance Garner, and Cordell Hull. While Garner represented the conservative Southern Democrats, both Farley and Hull represented the Democrats more closely aligned with Roosevelt. Hull would win over Farley and Garner due to his credentials in foreign policy and having served with Roosevelt, with Farley nominated as Hull's running mate.

In the Republican National Convention, Wendell Willkie, Robert Taft, and Thomas Dewey went back and forth in the polls, however, when Charles Lindbergh announced his candidacy, Lindbergh began polling ahead. Lindbergh represented the hardline isolationalists and he would win the nomination of the ninth ballot, Lindbergh chose Hamilton Fish III as his running mate.

While Hull mainly ran a reserved and calm campaign, focusing on his credentials and stating his experience would keep America out of war, Lindbergh ran a fiery campaign where he attacked Hull and the Roosevelts as bringing America to the brink of war. Lindbergh would lead early polls until Hull's campaign would begin attacking Lindbergh for his Anti-Semitic remarks and his endorsement by the America First Committee. Lindbergh's comments would bring his wide lead closer, and the last poll held before the election had Hull winning by 49% to Lindbergh's 48%. Lindbergh, despite the polls, would win in an electoral college landslide, carrying 318 electoral votes, and winning the popular vote with 50.1%. Hull would win just 213 electoral votes and 48.9% of the popular vote.

Republican Party
In the months leading up to the opening of the 1940 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the Republican Party was deeply divided between the party's isolationists, who wanted to stay out of World War II at all costs, and the party's interventionists, who felt that the United Kingdom needed to be given all aid short of war to prevent Nazi Germany from conquering all of Europe. The three leading candidates for the Republican nomination - Senator Robert A. Taft from Ohio, Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg from Michigan, and District Attorney Thomas E. Dewey from New York - were all isolationists to varying degrees.

Taft was the leader of the conservative, isolationist wing of the Republican Party, and his main strength was in his native Midwestern United States and parts of the Southern United States. Dewey, the District Attorney for Manhattan, had risen to national fame as the "Gangbuster" prosecutor who had sent numerous infamous Mafia figures to prison, most notably Lucky Luciano, the organized-crime boss of New York City. Dewey had won most of the presidential primaries in the spring of 1940, and he came into the Republican Convention in June with the largest number of delegate votes, although he was still well below the number needed to win. Vandenberg, the senior Republican in the Senate, was the "favorite son" candidate of the Michigan delegation and was considered a possible compromise candidate if Taft or Dewey faltered. Former President Herbert Hoover was also spoken of as a compromise candidate.

However, each of these candidates had weaknesses that could be exploited. Taft's outspoken isolationism and opposition to any American involvement in the European war convinced many Republican leaders that he could not win a general election, particularly as France fell to the Nazis in June 1940 and Germany threatened the United Kingdom. Dewey's relative youth—he was only 38 in 1940—and lack of any foreign-policy experience caused his candidacy to weaken as the Wehrmacht emerged as a fearsome threat. In 1940, Vandenberg was also an isolationist (he would change his foreign-policy stance during World War II) and his lackadaisical, lethargic campaign never caught the voters' attention. Hoover still bore the stigma of having presided over the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression. This left an opening for a dark horse candidate to emerge.

With a lack of a clear candidate, Wall Street-based industrialist, Wendell Willkie emerged as an unlikely candidate. Willkie was an avid interventionist, and supported aiding Britain in everything "short of declaring war". Willkie's interventionism would gain the eyes of Republicans from the East Coast of the United States, who disagreed with the Isolationists in Congress. Willkie's popularity would soon be overshadowed by the entrance of Charles Lindbergh.



Charles Lindbergh was a famous aviator who gained worldwide fame for being the first person to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean. Lindbergh would serve as a Colonel in the United States Army Air Corps Reserve from 1927 until his resignation in 1939. Lindbergh made headline news with his resignation, he said the Intervention Papers caused him to resign and attacked Roosevelt for trying to drag the United States into war.

Lindbergh would become a major isolationist voice, joining the America First Committee, a political group dedicated to keeping the United States out of World War II and ending U.S. aid to Britain. Lindbergh, while leading by a wide margin after Dewey made news for his attacks on Lindbergh's anti-Semitic remark in 1939 in which he said "We must ask who owns and influences the newspaper, the news picture, and the radio station, ... If our people know the truth, our country is not likely to enter the war".

His remarks with the America First Committee would cause his support to dampen, with several figures denouncing Lindbergh for them, including Roosevelt, Willkie, and Dewey. Lindbergh would apologize for the remarks, saying "The statement I made last year is one in which I, simply, misspoke and my meaning came out incorrectly. I apologize for what these remarks implied and ask for us to focus on the issues of 1940". The apology would be taken well, with Lindbergh's support stabilizing, Lindbergh would lead polls with a Gallup poll in May showing him leading with 30% of Republicans with Robert Taft behind him with 26%.

The German Army's rapid Blitzkrieg campaign into France in May 1940 shook American public opinion, even as Taft was telling a Kansas audience that America needed to concentrate on domestic issues to prevent Roosevelt from using the war crisis to extend socialism at home. However, Lindberg, Dewey, and Vandenberg also continued to oppose any aid to the United Kingdom that might lead to war with Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, sympathy for the embattled British was mounting daily, and Lindbergh would express his sympathies to Britain while still saying the United States should not intervene. Lindbergh would make headlines by calling the German Air Force a mighty force, and saying that Winston Churchill's desperate plan to win the war is to bring America into war. While the comment would be condemned by Willkie and Roosevelt, the comment would be met with support by Republican voters.

Groups would pop up across the United States, the groups would be named the America First Clubs, and just over a million telegrams urging support for Lindbergh would pour in. Lindbergh would start an air-based campaign, flying across the nation and giving speeches to crowds in the hundreds of thousands. Historians would cite Lindbergh's flights as a reason for his growing support, as they reminded people of his flight across the Atlantic in 1927. Lindbergh's main rival would be Robert Taft, with Establishment Republicans, who were scared of Lindbergh's extreme views, pledging their support for Taft.

At the 1940 Republican National Convention, hundreds of Lindbergh supporters would gather in the upper galleries of the Convention Hall, chanting "We Want Lindy!" and booing opposing speakers. The convention would become disorganized, with delegates becoming the targets of harassment from Lindbergh supporters. Lindbergh led off the first ballot by a narrow margin, however, he would consistently swap with Taft for the lead, with Dewey in a close third. However, Dewey's support would collapse and mainly go to Lindbergh. The collapse of the lesser-known candidates' campaigns would give Lindbergh the lead, winning the nomination on the ninth ballot.

Lindbergh would endorse Hamilton Fish III for the vice presidency, and while there was a significant draft movement for a more moderate candidate, though Robert LaFollette, Jr., Fish was nominated as Lindbergh's running mate