1940 Presidential Election

The context of the 1940 election was unlike any previous American presidential contest. In April and May, Nazi Germany had conquered Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, and Belgium in rapid succession. On June 22, France signed an armistice with Germany — the fall of the greatest power on the European continent in six weeks. Britain stood almost alone. The Battle of Britain — Germany’s air campaign to destroy the RAF before an invasion — raged through the summer. Winston Churchill was broadcasting defiant speeches to a world that was not certain Britain would survive.

Roosevelt had already begun positioning America for involvement. The Destroyers-for-Bases agreement in September 1940 — trading 50 aging destroyers to Britain in exchange for naval base rights — was a clear step toward belligerency. Selective Service, the first peacetime draft in American history, was enacted in September. FDR was preparing the country for war while publicly assuring mothers that their sons would not be sent into any foreign wars.

The Republican base had nominated Wendell Willkie on the sixth ballot at a convention marked by gallery chants of “We want Willkie!” Willkie had never held office and had been a registered Democrat until 1938, but he was an internationalist who supported aid to Britain and accepted the basic structure of the New Deal. The isolationist wing of the Republican Party, which had hoped to run a candidate who would draw a sharp contrast with FDR on foreign policy, was outmaneuvered. Willkie ran well but could not overcome the combination of FDR’s incumbency, the war crisis, and the New Deal coalition.

The 1940 election produced the 22nd Amendment, which limits presidents to two terms. The amendment was adopted in 1951, ratified by states still smarting over FDR’s decision to serve four terms. It remains the most consequential change to presidential power resulting from a single election — Eisenhower, Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump were all term-limited under its provisions.

The 1940 debate between isolationism and intervention parallels debates in every subsequent generation about America’s role in the world. The America First argument that Lindbergh and others made in 1940 — that America’s vital interests do not require global engagement and that foreign alliances drag the country into other people’s wars — has recurred in various forms from the Vietnam era to debates over NATO commitments in the 21st century.

The use of genuine emergency — a world war — to justify breaking democratic norms about presidential tenure raises questions that remain live. Every subsequent president who sought to stretch executive power has pointed to FDR’s wartime leadership as a precedent. The tension between emergency governance and constitutional limits on power has never been fully resolved and continues to define debates about presidential authority.