The American Peace Mobilization (APM) was a peace group, officially cited in 1947 by United States Attorney General Tom C. Clark on the Attorney General's List of Subversive Organizations for 1948, as directed by President Harry S. Truman’s Executive Order 9835.
APM was created in 1940 from the remains of the American League for Peace and Democracy (previously known as the Comintern affiliate American League Against War and Fascism), which had dissolved following the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact in 1939.
Now on stable terms with Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union’s focus turned from overt anti-Fascist militancy to “peace.” In the midst of the London Blitz and the Battle of Britain, APM agitated for a cut-off of “warmonger” President Franklin Roosevelt’s Lend-Lease program, and any other U.S. aid to the U.K.
The APM, however, abruptly ended its 1,029-hour non-stop peace demonstration in front of the White House on June 21, 1941 — one day before the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union (Moscow time is 9-12 hours ahead, so the fact they stopped on 21 June in the US was June 22, 1944 when the Nazis turned on the Soviets). Reversing its position, APM now demanded immediate U.S. entry into the war. APM changed its name yet again, to the American Peoples Mobilization.
The executive director of APM at the time of this flip-flop was Frederick Vanderbilt Field; Congressman Vito Marcantonio was one of its vice chairs.
While the Communist Party and its various ersatz "peace" front organizations completely reversed their position on the war the moment the pact was violated, the non-interventionists of America First continued their opposition until the U.S. was attacked on December 7, when even the pro-Nazi German American Bund endorsed war on the Axis.
During the Cold War, the group re-discovered pacifism as the National Committee to Win the Peace in demanding nuclear disarmament, and U.S. and British withdrawal from Palestine, China, the Philippines, and Greece.
Read more about American Peace Mobilization: Goals, Subversive Activities Control Board
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