‘The hope of this country lies in its mothers’: We, the Mothers, Mobilize for America Inc.’s Vilification of World War Two

As part of the “Mothers’ Movement”, a significant domestic female response against US involvement in the war, from February 1941 Chicago’s We, the Mothers, Mobilize for America Inc. (WMMA) protested against war preparedness, the peacetime draft and the Lend-Lease Bill. However, unlike most anti-interventionist groups that collapsed after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, these mothers continued their violent rhetorical attacks on President Franklin Roosevelt, his administration, and the war itself throughout the entirety of the conflict and long into the postwar period. WMMA’s pro-fascist, anti-British, and anti-Semitic standpoints, plus their calls for a negotiated peace with the Nazis and Japan and the impeachment of FDR were particularly contentious. Increasingly classed as seditious, WMMA and their president, Lyrl Clark Van Hyning, were indicted by a Grand Jury. Whilst these mothers could be dismissed as outliers or “lunatics” (as FDR was inclined to characterize them), they represent an important facet of Christian, right-wing responses to World War II. Their condemnation of internationalism, their stand against world cooperation, especially the United Nations Organization, and their position as early Holocaust deniers mean that some of the ‘standard’ legacies of the conflict, the desire to collaborate to ‘prevent World War III’ and to learn the lessons of the Holocaust, were certainly lost on these mothers. They characterize a view of the conflict, American politics, and foreign policy, which certainly questions the prominence of the idea of World War II as the ‘good war’.