Wheeler's anti-war legacy reconsidered

By GAIL SCHONTZLER, Chronicle Staff Writer

Montana's late Sen. Burton Wheeler usually comes off looking pretty bad in history books about World War II, because of his isolationist opposition to war right up until Pearl Harbor.

Since U.S. entry into more controversial wars in Vietnam and Iraq, however, Wheeler's anti-war stance has been seen in a new light by a whole generation of historians, professor Gordon "Corky" Brittan said Thursday at Montana State University.

About 40 people, including historians and several Wheeler descendants, attended the conference on "Wheeler and the Coming of the War."

"War seldom if ever settles anything," Wheeler once said.

He said the U.S. had "no damn business" fighting in Vietnam and no doubt would have felt the same about the war in Iraq, Brittan said.

The Democratic Wheeler opposed President Franklin Roosevelt's efforts to prepare for and drag the nation into World War II -- and so was on the wrong side of arguably the most important issue of the 20th century, defeating Hitler and fascism.

Yet most Americans didn't want to go to war, aware of the staggering cost in lives and money of World War I, Brittan said.

Immediately after Pearl Harbor, however, Wheeler told reporters, "We must give Japan such a whipping they will not choose war again."

Wheeler's reputation took an ever bigger hit in Philip Roth's fictional 2004 novel, "The Plot Against America." Roth imagined what might have happened if hero-aviator Charles Lindbergh, with Wheeler as his vice president, had defeated FDR for president in 1940, signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler and begun repressing Jews.

The book is historically inaccurate and a great disservice to the truth, said Joe Sample, the veteran Montana broadcaster, who interviewed Wheeler. Sample added he never knew there were enough "paranoid masochists" to keep Roth's book on the best-seller list for many weeks.

Far from being right-wing, Wheeler voted for a socialist for president in 1940, Brittan said. Wheeler was such a staunch defender of civil liberties that he refused as a Montana prosecutor during World War I to persecute Germans, which earned him the nickname "Bolshevik Burt."

Wheeler was also skeptical of concentrations of power, which was one reason he led the Senate fight to block FDR's attempt to "pack" the Supreme Court, historian Tom Wessel said.

Despite his defense of civil liberties, Wheeler later became a supporter of Sen. Joe McCarthy, whose allegations of communist traitors infiltrating government and society spawned the "red scare."

Biographer Marc Johnson said Wheeler may have felt so stung by the "red" label in his 1920 run for governor that he was "bound and determined never to be smeared again."

"The more I read about Burton K. Wheeler," Sample said, "the more of an enigma he becomes."

Gail Schontzler is at gails@dailychronicle.com

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