Gerald P. Nye:
American Patriot & Midwestern Isolationist,
Part 2

Republican Senator Gerald P. Nye of North Dakota.

3,351 words

Part 2 of 2 (Part 1 here)

North Dakota’s newspaperman

Understanding how Americans were duped into entering the First World War while preventing America entering a second war became the life’s work of a North Dakota isolationist and politician named Gerald Prentice Nye (1892-1971). Nye’s life and work deserve serious study because the structure of American involvement overseas remains the same today. Whites, especially those in economically stressed areas such as the Rust Belt, pay the price for America’s overseas conflicts while only a small number reap any benefit. Additionally, those parties the United States supports are often hostile, duplicitous commercial rivals, not to mention anti-American and anti-white.

Gerald P. Nye’s ethnic roots stretched back to the Yankees of colonial New England. Both of his grandfathers served in Wisconsin regiments during the Civil War. Nye himself was born in Wisconsin in 1892, and his father was a newspaper man. Nye’s mother died when he was 14. In 1916 he moved to North Dakota and purchased a newspaper in Fryburg, a small town in the western part of the state. Nye became a supporter of the Nonpartisan League while there, and later moved to Cooperstown to become an editor and publisher of the paper there.

In the runup to America’s entry into the First World War, Nye’s editorials supported every step President Wilson took toward entering the war. For example, he criticized William Jennings Bryan when he resigned as Secretary of State in response to Wilson’s bellicose handling of the Lusitania’s sinking. But shortly after the war, Nye would come to believe that America’s involvement had been a terrible mistake.

In the early 1920s Nye supported a fellow progressive, Robert LaFollette, Sr. of Wisconsin, when he ran for President. When the Wilson administration had dragged America into the Great War with overwhelming, albeit temporary, public support, LaFollette had prophetically said:

Stand firm against the war and the future will honor you. Collective homicide cannot establish human rights. For our country to enter the European war would be treason to humanity.

LaFollette’s stance in the face of popular opinion is a testament to his courage and ability to keep his cool when those around him were losing theirs. Subsequent events proved him correct: the Great War was nothing but a disaster. America’s involvement in the conflict caused the war to end with a lopsided peace. It would have been better for all the parties involved had America not intervened.

The Nonpartisan League’s isolationism was temporarily overcome by the popular furor for war in 1917. Foreign affairs, however, was always secondary to the League’s agricultural focus. There was very little industry in North Dakota in the 1920s. The state’s economy was dependent on two things: cattle and wheat. The economies of the towns suffered when farmers and ranchers suffered. Although Nye was not a farmer and didn’t grow up on a farm, he was personally economically tied to the prosperity of North Dakota’s small farmers, and he understood their needs.

The 1924 election’s results: Robert M. LaFollette’s gains in North Dakota (in green) were greatly aided by Gerald Nye’s organizing and campaigning on his behalf.

Nye supported policies which helped North Dakota’s agricultural sector. He also channeled the Nonpartisan League’s energy into supporting Robert LaFollette, Sr.’s run for President in 1924. Nye ran for Congress that year as well, but he did not win. Nonetheless, Nye’s efforts greatly aided LaFollette’s campaign across the state, and he proved his ability to get votes. As a result, when a Senator died he was appointed in his place by Governor Arthur Sorlie.

Nye in the Senate

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Nye had enemies, however. The conservative Republicans who supported Calvin Coolidge didn’t like Nye’s progressivism or the Nonpartisan League. As a result, Nye’s appointment was challenged in the courts, because state law was vague regarding the Governor’s ability to appoint US senators. Nye was eventually seated with the support of progressives in the Senate. He then ran in a special election held at the end of June 1926 against Louis Hanna, winning due to his pro-agrarian policies. Hanna was also a Coolidge man, which didn’t help him. Nye won again in the general election in November.

Nye was a flashy dresser and a good speaker, and he could grab newspaper headlines. When the Teapot Dome scandal broke, Nye served on the Senate’s investigative committee, where he learned the mechanics of such work. He survived the crushing of the Republican Party in the 1932 national election because the Great Depression hadn’t affected North Dakota’s economy as much as the rest of the country. The region had already been economically depressed before the 1929 stock market crash, which made Nye electable. He was also well ahead of Roosevelt’s New Deal policies. He critiqued Roosevelt from the economic progressive Left rather than from the perspective of the big business-oriented Republican Right.

Nye’s isolationism

It was only after the disaster of the First World War that Nye’s isolationist views crystallized enough so that he could successfully propagate them. He had followed Woodrow Wilson off the cliff into war and afterwards came to recognize the difficulty of America intervening in morally dubious overseas conflicts. Nye’s conversion was like other conversions: he had been aware of isolationism all along, but didn’t make it a priority until circumstances reshuffled the values within his ideological outlook.

In his biography of Nye, Wayne Cole clarifies what isolationism meant:

The terms “isolationist,” “continentalist,” and “noninterventionist” are used to cover a major pattern of American reactions to changing world conditions. They are also used to identify one of several theories concerning the role the United States should pay in international affairs. The term “isolationist,” though almost universally used is misleading. Most of those whom the label was applied did not wish literally to isolate the United States from the rest of the world. Central themes in isolationist attitudes were “unilateralism” and “noninterventionism.” As unilateralists these people did not believe that the United States could prevent wars through cooperation with European states. They feared that international commitments would simply involve the United States in the wars that inevitably swept other parts of the world. They were determined to maintain a maximum degree of sovereignty and freedom of action for the United States in world affairs.[1]

American isolationists and anti-war activists were dedicated and well organized in the 1930s. One such activist was Dorothy Detzer. Ms. Detzer’s ancestry mostly stretched back to the early German settlers of Pennsylvania. Her twin brother, Private First Class Donald Detzer, had been gassed during the war and yet survived, and had a long hospital convalescence until 1919. He ultimately died at the age of 34 due to the long-term effects. Two of her other brothers later served as officers in the US military during the Second World War.

Detzer had been frustrated by America’s entry into the First World War, and she became the leader of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom in 1924. She believed that the munitions industry had pressured the US intervention. This idea was spreading across the political spectrum, so US senators paid attention to Miss Detzer.

Dorothy Detzer organized popular support for an investigation into the munitions industry and the causes of America’s entry into the First World War.

One of the senators who shared her concerns was George W. Norris of Nebraska. Norris and Detzer met in 1934, and after careful consideration, they determined that Senator Nye was the man to lead a senatorial investigation into the munitions industry. Nye had no industry in his home state that directly supported armaments, he had a large following, and he was not up for reelection for another four years — meaning the investigation would be over by the time of the next election.

Detzer convinced Nye to open such an inquiry, recommending two procedures to make the investigation successful. First, the investigative committee needed to be constituted as a special committee rather than a standing one, so Nye could be its head. Then, Nye’s efforts needed to be combined with those of Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, Jr. of Michigan, who was working with the American Legion to eliminate war profiteering as a means of preventing conflict.

Nye’s committee interviewed the leaders of the munitions industry. Rather than come across as bloodthirsty warmongers, the industrialists testifying at the hearings turned out to be ordinary businessmen who happened to be manufacturing munitions alongside other items. Nye came to realize that it was in fact government policy which was propping up the munitions industry.

Senator Nye was by no means the only isolationist in the US Senate. One of his biggest allies in the Upper House was a Democrat from Missouri, Bannett Champ Clark. Senator Clark had entered the US Army as a captain during the war and rose to colonel, serving on the staffs of two units made up of Midwesterners, the 35th and 88th Infantry Divisions. While serving on the investigative committee, Clark revealed that President Wilson had had knowledge of the secret treaties the British had signed during the war which would award certain territories to an ally, or add certain territories to the French or British empires, at the end of hostilities.

Bennett Champ Clark during the First World War. Clark’s later efforts in keeping America out of foreign wars was part of a trend. The most pro-white and pro-American men in the half-century after the First World War came from among the brave captains of the Great War.

This revelation was explosive. Wilson was a revered figure to many Democrats, and Nye’s committee had exposed his duplicity — and that exposure was not well-received. It also enraged the British. Nye’s investigation into the munitions industry was popular in the US, but its findings put foreign governments in a bind, as they were among the American arms industry’s main customers, and they were often using those arms in ways that the American public disliked.

Nye and Clark allied to enact a series of laws and policies designed to keep the US neutral in future conflicts. While not all of Nye’s proposals were adopted, they were considered, and parts of his ideas were incorporated into America’s neutrality laws. The thrust of Nye’s neutrality ideas was to

1. nationalize the munitions industry;
2. expand arms embargoes to belligerent nations to include petroleum as well as loans;
3. a “cash and carry” arrangement for non-embargoed goods sent to belligerents; and
4. restrictions on Americans’ ability to travel to warzones.

Nye also wanted to amend the Constitution in order to require a national referendum on American participation in any war, as well as creating a unified Department of Defense. Nye believed that the US Navy would be unable to defend America’s possessions in the Pacific that were west of Hawaii in the event of war. He therefore encouraged granting independence to the Philippines. The deployment of North Dakota’s soldiers to the Philippines during the Spanish-American War undoubtedly had an impact on Nye’s thinking. Sure enough, when the War in the Pacific broke out after Pearl Harbor, the US Navy was unable to defend the Philippines, Wake Island, or Guam, all of which fell into Japanese hands.

The 1930s

As the 1930s wore on, the economic crisis and its ensuing problems intensified. The western part of North Dakota was under severe pressure due to the drought that has come to be called the Dust Bowl. While Nye never neglected his state, his prominent role in international affairs at a time of ongoing economic and ecological crises at home opened him up for attack from rival North Dakota politicians.

During the Spanish Civil War, the United States sold arms to both Germany and Italy, and those nations in turn provided weapons to Francisco Franco’s army. Nye wanted to end the sale of arms to nations supplying weapons to Franco, thereby helping the Spanish Republicans. The Roosevelt administration, however, leaned toward supporting Franco. Nye’s principles favoring neutrality ironically put him in a position where a Midwestern American Republican was supporting a Leftist, pro-Soviet Government in Western Europe.

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Roosevelt and Nye were often allies throughout the 1930s, but after war broke out in Europe due to Britain’s unsolicited war guarantee to Poland, the two men suffered a permanent break. Soon Nye would become a pariah in the mainstream media, and the internationalists and others would rain calumny upon him.

Nye became a key member of the America First Committee, which bitterly opposed Roosevelt’s maneuverings to get America involved in the Second World War. The America First Committee included many prominent Americans, the most prominent of whom was Charles A. Lindbergh. Nye likewise supported Father Charles Coughlin, due to Coughlin’s support for isolationism as well as his ideas on financial policy.

When Nazi Germany conquered Norway in the spring of 1940, Nye lost critical support in North Dakota. Those of German origin in the state were mostly assimilated into the American mainstream. The Norwegians in the state, however, still retained connections to their homeland, and they were appalled by the German occupation. Nye, however, continued to support his isolationist views. He was not in the wrong; the occupation of Norway was a response to a British attempt to capture the country for themselves.

Nye was present at an America First meeting when he got word that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. The report was vague, however, and the scope of the attack was not yet fully understood. There had been many hyperbolic statements in the press about “attacks,” and Nye wanted to be sure that this one was real. He thus continued with his speech and only informed the audience of the attack when he was finished.

The isolationists were not proven wrong. They had done everything to keep America from entering a foreign war as it had in 1917. But unfortunately, the Japanese had responded unwisely to Roosevelt’s provocations. The Germans likewise declared war on the Americans. After Pearl Harbor, there was little the isolationists could do. The America First Committee disbanded, and many of its members joined the military. Two of Nye’s sons served in the war.

Many Norwegians had settled in the upper Midwest.

In 1944, Nye was up for reelection and his rivals were circling. William “Wild Bill” Langer, the other Senator from North Dakota, was one of them. While Nye was in Washington, DC, Langer had taken over the Nonpartisan League, leaving Nye outside of it, even though Nye remained an unquestioned supporter of the League’s goals. As a result of losing support from the Norwegians, the attacks from President Roosevelt and the mainstream media, and a three-way race that split the Republican vote, Nye was defeated.

Nye attempted to return to the newspaper business as well as mount a political comeback, but he chose to stay in Washington. As the Soviet Union advanced in the late 1940s, Nye became a Cold Warrior who supported Joseph McCarthy. He passed away in 1971.

North Dakota remained isolationist in the 1950s

Gerald Prentice Nye represented a genuine isolationist community. All his rivals, including “Wild Bill” Langer, were themselves isolationists. After the war, the state remained dead set against American involvement in any further foreign entanglements.

Senator Langer voted against the United States joining the United Nations. Langer and North Dakota’s Congressman, Usher Burdick, likewise voted against the Marshall Plan as well as a plan for the US to provide arms to NATO. They continued to press their views during the Korean War. The state legislature called for troops to be withdrawn from Korea, and Governor Norman Brunsdale attempted to force the withdrawal of US Army recruiters from the state.

Reflections on Nye’s work

Gerald Nye was accused of anti-Semitism during his campaign to keep America out of war. He denied this, however. He later wrote:

I couldn’t in good conscience undertake a hand in any stirring of class strife against the Jewish race or any other race of people. I don’t suppose anyone has larger cause than I have to entertain a spirit of revengefulness against the Jews for they were a pretty solid lot in opposition to me in my late campaign. But, somehow, I’m not so much blaming them as I am blaming the New Deal propagandists who, in my estimation, are wholly responsible for stirrup up the prejudices of the Jews and must stand responsible for the day when retaliation will doubtless be undertaken. Incidentally, that day will find me doing whatever I can to bring America back to sanity, with highest regard afforded the cause of freedom to worship.[2]

Nye’s biographer, Wayne S. Cole, wrote an outstanding account of the Senator’s career. Cole makes it clear that Nye always represented agrarian interests, and isolationism naturally flowed from that political philosophy. Nye was therefore doomed from the outset by the progress of urbanization and industry, as was isolationism itself.

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The biography was written in 1962, when American industry was at it peak. The Korean War was already forgotten, and Vietnam was still only a cloud on the horizon. The consensus of all American political leaders was that aggressive “dictators” should be “stopped” at “Munich.” President Kennedy had even claimed that America “shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

Agrarian populism, however, has nothing inherently to do with foreign policy. Gerald Nye had few supporters in the agrarian South, for example. In fact, the American South was ready to intervene in the Second World War long before the rest of the country was. Additionally, the triumph of industry over agriculture in America was not permanent. In the 1990s, bad trade agreements destroyed America’s industrial heartland. It turns out that there is something worse than industry drawing ahead of agriculture: industry getting outsourced.

Gerald P. Nye was also an ethnic activist, although as shown in the quote above, he denied it vigorously. He was an old-stock American, a Yankee whose ancestors originated in East Anglia. In every major social controversy, be it war or peace, the Cold War, or pornography, one side tends to be represented by men and women who have Yankee ancestry, while the other is represented by Jews. Nye fought a battle against those Jewish activists who wanted to use American power to serve their own ends. It is unfortunate that Nye didn’t recognize this fact, and there was not yet a vehicle through which an American politician could express this great truth in the 1940s.

Many of the themes of Nye’s career would be taken up again by others. President Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex — the munitions industry — interfering with policy in his farewell address in 1960. The Vietnam War turned out to be a mistake, and Nye’s claim that wars end up being more detrimental than positive for society as a whole was certainly the case in the 1970s, and again after the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

The global situation today is far more complex than it was in the 1930s, when America had a clear and valorous ally the British Empire, and clear enemies among the Axis. Today, allies such as Israel carry out morally dubious operations while America pays for them. Similarly, the biggest attack on America since the Second World War was carried out primarily by Saudi Arabians, a nation that is a supposed ally. America’s “enemies,” for their part, are no longer nations bent on world conquest, but are rather rivals of those nations who have good lobbyists in the US Congress, or else they have been made mighty by bad trade agreements — such as is the case with China.

The munitions industry likewise adapted to Senator Nye’s criticisms. Today, the components for every major weapons program are manufactured in every Congressional district. As a result, there is no Senator who can afford to stand up to the military-industrial complex.

Bibliography

Elwyn B. Robinson, History of North Dakota (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1966)

Madison Grant, The Conquest of a Continent (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1933)

Wayne S. Cole, Senator Geral P. Nye and American Foreign Relations (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1962)

Notes

[1] Wayne S. Cole, Senator Gerald P. Nye and American Foreign Relations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1962), p. 4.

[2] Ibid., pp. 218-219.