关于美国是否应该参加“二战”的激烈争论

War Torn
By JACOB HEILBRUNN August 13, 2013
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关于美国是否应该参加“二战”的激烈争论
JACOB HEILBRUNN 2013年08月13日
In July 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt met with senators from both political parties at the White House in a final effort to persuade them to amend the Neutrality Act preventing America from aiding other countries. After drinks were poured, Roosevelt and his secretary of state, Cordell Hull, argued that the world was approaching a catastrophic war. The 74-year-old Republican senator William Borah, who had led the fight against Woodrow Wilson and American entry into the League of Nations in 1919, shook his head in disgust. “There is not going to be any war in Europe this year,” he said. “All this hysteria is manufactured and artificial.” Two months later Hitler invaded Poland, and England and France declared war on Germany.
1939年7月，富兰克林·D·罗斯福(Franklin D. Roosevelt)在白宫会见两党的参议员，为劝说他们修改《中立法案》(Neutrality Act)做最后的努力。该法案禁止美国帮助其他国家。酒杯斟满之后，罗斯福和国务卿科德尔·赫尔(Cordell Hull)极力论证世界将爆发灾难性的战争。74岁的共和党参议员威廉·博拉(William Borah)厌恶地摇了摇头，1919年他曾领导了反对伍德罗·威尔逊(Woodrow Wilson)以及美国加入国际联盟的斗争。“欧洲今年不会爆发任何战争，”他说，“所有这种歇斯底里都是人为制造出来的。”两个月后希特勒进攻波兰，英国和法国宣布对德作战。
Now that it has become the good war fought by the greatest generation, the ferocity of the disputes over entering World War II has largely been forgotten. But the story of America’s anti-­interventionist lobby is not only historically fascinating, it also echoes in debates today over whether America should engage abroad or hold back. The historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. — whose memoir, Philip Roth said, inspired his novel “The Plot Against America,” about an alternative reality where the isolationists, led by Charles Lindbergh, defeat Roose­velt for the presidency — recalled the dispute as the “most savage political debate in my lifetime,” eclipsing those over McCarthyism and Vietnam in its intensity.
如今“二战”被认为是最伟大的一代人进行的正义战争，所以针对是否应该参战的激烈争论也被大多数人遗忘了。但是反对美国干涉他国的游说团体的故事不仅在历史上十分精彩，也与今天美国是否应该介入他国事务的争论遥相呼应。菲利普·罗斯(Philip Roth)声称是历史学家小亚瑟·施莱辛格(Arthur Schlesinger Jr.)的回忆录启发他创作了小说《反美阴谋》(The Plot Against America)。这部小说虚构了查尔斯·林德伯格(Charles Lindbergh)领导的孤立主义者打败罗斯福当选总统的情形。施莱辛格回忆说关于是否应该参加“二战”的那场辩论是“我一生中最激烈的政治辩论”，其激烈程度远远超过针对麦卡锡主义和“越战”的辩论。
The debate was largely rooted in disappointment over the outcome of World War I, when Wilson’s promised crusade for democracy ended with the punitive Treaty of Versailles. Leading liberal historians like Harry Elmer Barnes and Charles Beard, both of whom had noisily championed Wilson’s decision to intervene, now denounced it. The Harvard Crimson declared in an editorial, “We refuse to fight another balance-of-power war.” And after Joseph Stalin signed a nonaggression pact with Nazi Germany in 1939, American Communists obediently heeded Moscow and denounced Roose­velt as a warmonger.
这场辩论主要源于对“一战”结果的失望：威尔逊所承诺的民主战争最后沦为惩罚性的《凡尔赛和约》(Treaty of Versailles)。主要的自由主义历史学家哈利·埃尔默·巴尔内斯(Harry Elmer Barnes)和查尔斯·比尔德(Charles Beard)都曾大力支持威尔逊介入“一战”的决定，后来也转而开始谴责。《哈佛克里姆森报》(The Harvard Crimson)在社论中宣称：“我们拒绝参与另一场权力平衡的战争。”1939年约瑟夫·斯大林(Joseph Stalin)与纳粹德国签订互不侵犯条约之后，美国的***也忠顺地听从莫斯科的旨意，谴责罗斯福是个好战分子。
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Barry Blitt
针对美国是否应该参加二战的激烈争论在历史上十分精彩，其激烈程度远远超过针对麦卡锡主义和越战的辩论。
At the same time, senators like Gerald P. Nye, who had headed an investigation into the munitions manufacturers of World War I (“merchants of death”), attacked the idea of bailing out “British plutocrats.” What’s more, appeasers like Henry Ford, Joseph P. Kennedy and Lindbergh called for cooperation with the poor misunderstood Nazis, while The Wall Street Journal pleaded for “realism” in a June 1940 editorial, arguing that Hitler had “already determined the broad lines of our national life for at least another generation.” Just as American Communists hailed the progress represented by the Soviet Union, so appeasers on the right saw Hitler’s fascism as the inevitable wave of the future, even as they denounced Roosevelt’s New Deal totalitarianism.
与此同时，一些参议员也反对帮助“英国富豪”摆脱困境，其中包括杰拉尔德·P·奈(Gerald P. Nye)，他带头对“一战”军火制造商（“死亡贩子”）进行调查。另外，亨利·福特(Henry Ford)、约瑟夫·P·肯尼迪(Joseph P. Kennedy)和林德伯格等绥靖分子呼吁美国与可怜的、被误解的纳粹合作。《华尔街日报》在1940年6月的社论中呼吁人们“现实一点”，辩称希特勒“已经决定了至少未来一代人的时间里未来生活的大方向”。尽管美国***赞美以苏联为主的国家取得的进步，但是右翼绥靖主义者认为希特勒的法西斯主义是未来一股不可阻挡的潮流，同时又谴责罗斯福的新政是极权主义。
“Those Angry Days,” by Lynne Olson, a former White House correspondent for The Baltimore Sun and the author of several books on England and World War II, and “1940,” by Susan Dunn, a professor of humanities at Williams College, powerfully recreate this tenebrous era. Olson captures in spellbinding detail the key figures in the battle between the Roosevelt administration and the isolationist movement. She maintains that the president was too timorous in challenging Congress, but the fervor and depth of isolationist sentiment suggest a more sympathetic verdict. Far from shirking the conflict, Roosevelt played his cards well, seizing upon events to nudge the country toward war and patiently waiting, as he told Winston Churchill, for the big crisis that would settle the debate. Dunn superbly depicts the 1940 election between Roosevelt, who was seeking an unprecedented third term, and his internationalist Republican opponent, Wendell Willkie.
琳内·奥尔森(Lynne Olson)的《那些愤怒的日子》(Those Angry Days)和苏珊·邓恩(Susan Dunn)的《1940》有力地重现了那个黑暗的年代。奥尔森曾是《巴尔的摩太阳报》驻白宫的通讯记者，出版过关于英国和“二战”的几本书。邓恩是威廉姆斯学院人文学科的教授。奥尔森以引人入胜的细节描绘了罗斯福政府和孤立主义运动之间的斗争中的关键人物。她认为罗斯福在挑战国会方面太过懦弱，但是孤立主义者的热情和深度暗示着一个更能让人理解的结论。罗斯福没有逃避冲突，而是巧妙运筹，抓住机会推动美国参战，就像他跟温斯顿·丘吉尔(Winston Churchill)说的那样，自己在耐心等待着终结这场辩论的重大危机。邓恩精彩地讲述了1940年罗斯福和温德尔·威尔基(Wendell Willkie)之间的选战。罗斯福当时在争取史无前例的第三个任期，威尔基是国际主义共和党人。
It was Willkie, more than any other Republican politician, who ended up challenging the party’s embrace of isolationism, but this did not really occur until after the election, when he traveled to Britain with Roosevelt’s approval and was promptly denounced as a “Republican Quisling” by Col. Robert McCormick, the rabidly isolationist publisher of The Chicago Tribune. To the consternation of mossback Republicans, Willkie had captured the nomination by riding a groundswell of enthusiasm for an outsider. As a candidate, however, he began to hedge on interventionism. So, Dunn shows, did Roosevelt.
最后却是威尔基，而非其他共和党人，开始质疑该党对孤立主义的拥护，但这发生在大选结束之后。当时他经罗斯福同意去英国考察，很快被《芝加哥论坛报》激进的孤立主义出版人罗伯特·麦考密克上校(Col. Robert McCormick)谴责为“共和党内奸”。让极端保守的共和党人惊愕的是，威尔基是因为极力支持置身局外而获得提名的。但是成为候选人之后，他开始避免正面回答关于干涉主义的问题。邓恩表明，罗斯福也是如此。
Olson argues persuasively that Roose­velt drew a lesson from his failed Supreme Court packing scheme in 1937 (the opposition to it was spearheaded by Senator Burton K. Wheeler, the Montana Democrat) and his inability to defeat Republicans in the 1938 Congressional elections: he could never get ahead of public opinion. Olson also reports that numerous high-ranking officers in the Army, Navy and Army Air Corps sought to sabotage Roosevelt and that “just before Pearl Harbor, Hap Arnold, the Air Corps chief of staff, was implicated in the leak of one of the administration’s most closely guarded military secrets — a contingency plan for all-out war against Germany.”
奥尔森令人信服地证明罗斯福从1937年最高法院改组计划的失败（带头反对的是蒙大拿民主党参议员伯顿·K·惠勒[Burton K. Wheeler]）以及1938年国会选举的失败中吸取了教训：他永远无法征服民意。奥尔森还提到陆军、海军和空军的很多高级军官蓄意破坏罗斯福的计划，“就在珍珠港事件之前，空军司令哈·阿诺德(Hap Arnold)涉嫌泄露政府的一项最高军事机密——对德全面战争的应急计划”。
In the Senate it was none other than Wheeler who denounced Roosevelt’s modest attempts to keep Britain afloat as it single-handedly battled Germany. When Roose­velt backed a bill for conscription in 1940, Wheeler was apoplectic: “If this bill passes, it will slit the throat of the last great democracy still living — it will accord to Hitler his greatest and cheapest victory.” Members of right-wing groups like the Congress of American Mothers traveled to Washington dressed in black to scream and spit at recalcitrant legislators and hang an effigy of Senator Claude Pepper wearing a sash inscribed with the words claude “benedict arnold” pepper.
在参议院，正是惠勒谴责罗斯福在英国单独对德作战时试图适度帮助英国。1940年罗斯福支持征兵法案时，惠勒特别愤怒：“如果这个法案通过了，那它将扼杀最后一个伟大的民主国家——那将是给予希特勒的最大的、代价最小的胜利。”像美国母亲会(Congress of American Mothers)这样的右翼组织的成员来到华盛顿，身着黑衣，对执拗的立法者尖叫、吐口水，悬挂参议员克劳德·佩珀(Claude Pepper)的肖像，肖像中的佩珀戴着一个绶带，上面写着克劳德·“贝内迪克特·阿诺德”·佩珀（贝内迪克特·阿诺德是美国独立战争时期的一个将军，后向英军叛变——译注）。
Olson shows that the campaign against the isolationists was successfully waged by several prominent citizens’ groups, including members of New York’s Century Association, who called themselves “Centurions.” These establishment worthies, led by the lawyer Grenville Clark, enjoyed close contacts in the Roosevelt administration. Clark persuaded the Republican statesman and interventionist Henry Stimson to join Roose­velt’s cabinet in June 1940 as secretary of war. In addition, Frank Knox, a Republican and the publisher of The Chicago Daily News, joined as secretary of the Navy. Both were drummed out of the Republican *** at its national convention.
奥尔森指出，有几个杰出的市民组织成功地开展了反对孤立主义者的运动，包括纽约世纪联合会(New York’s Century Association)的成员，他们自称“百夫长”(Centurions)。这些组织中的知名人士由律师格伦维尔·克拉克(Grenville Clark)领导，与罗斯福政府有着密切联系。1940年6月，克拉克说服共和党国务活动家、干涉主义者亨利·斯廷森(Henry Stimson)加入罗斯福的内阁，任战争部长。另外，共和党人、《芝加哥每日新闻报》的出版人弗兰克·诺克斯(Frank Knox)任海军部长。在共和党的全国大会上，他们两个被开除出党。
The most nettlesome antagonist Roose­velt faced was Lindbergh. He presented himself as a cool and dispassionate realist, assuring his American audiences that England was doomed and that there was no choice but to cozy up to the Third Reich. But he tipped his hand at an America First rally in September 1941 in Des Moines, when he announced that the real enemy was internal and Jewish — “their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.”
让罗斯福最恼火的对手是林德伯格。他把自己塑造成冷静、沉着的现实主义者，让美国观众相信英国注定要失败，美国别无选择，只能迎合第三帝国。但是1941年9月在得梅因市的“美国第一”(America First)集会上，他无意中透露了自己的真实想法，宣称美国真正的敌人是国内的犹太人——“他们对这个国家最大的威胁在于他们拥有的大量财富以及对美国电影业、出版业、电台和政府的影响力。”
After World War II, the right continued to search for internal subversion. Having previously flayed Roosevelt for trying to stop Nazism, conservatives now complained that he had been too soft on Communist traitors. But as Schlesinger showed in a 1952 article in The Atlantic titled “The New Isolationism,” figures like Senators Robert Taft and Joseph McCarthy were really trying to camouflage their lack of enthusiasm for military intervention abroad by endorsing witch hunts at home. Probably no historical account can match the skill with which Philip Roth evokes this isolationist witches’ brew in “The Plot Against America.” But as Olson and Dunn valuably remind us, Roosevelt got it right. Had he wavered, events could have turned out very differently. No less than Churchill, Roosevelt saved Western civilization from the greatest menace it has ever known.
“二战”之后，右翼继续寻找在国内搞破坏的机会。保守派之前批评罗斯福努力阻扰纳粹，现在抱怨他对***叛徒太过仁慈。但是就像施莱辛格1952年在《大西洋月刊》上发表的文章《新孤立主义》(The New Isolationism)阐释的那样，类似参议员罗伯特·塔夫托(Robert Taft)和约瑟夫·麦卡锡(Joseph McCarthy)这样的人物其实是在通过支持国内的政治迫害来掩饰自己对国外军事干涉所缺乏的热情。很可能，什么历史描述都赶不上菲利普·罗斯在《反美阴谋》中对孤立主义这种毒药的描述。但是奥尔森和邓恩可贵地提醒我们：罗斯福做对了。假如他当时犹豫了，结果会大不一样。罗斯福拯救了西方文明，使它抵挡住了前所未有的重大威胁，他做出的贡献不比丘吉尔少。