Wendell Willkie

American Lawyer
Wendell Willkie was a lawyer, corporate executive, and the 1940 Republican nominee for president. He appealed to many as the only interventionist in the race, supporting greater U.S. involvement in World War II, but ultimately lost the election to Franklin D. Roosevelt. After the election, Willkie served as an informal envoy for Roosevelt and advocated for liberal and internationalist causes.

About Wendell Willkie

Wendell Lewis Willkie (born Lewis Wendell Willkie; February 18, 1892 – October 8, 1944) was an American lawyer, corporate executive and the 1940 Republican nominee for president. Willkie appealed to many convention delegates as the Republican field’s only interventionist: although the U.S. remained neutral prior to Pearl Harbor, he favored greater U.S. involvement in World War II to support Britain and other Allies. His Democratic opponent, incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt, won the 1940 election with about 55% of the popular vote and took the electoral college vote by a wide margin.

Willkie was born in Elwood, Indiana, in 1892; both his parents were lawyers, and he also became one. He served in World War I but was not sent to France until the final days of the war, and saw no action. Willkie settled in Akron, Ohio, where he was initially employed by Firestone, but left for a law firm, becoming one of the leaders of the Akron Bar Association. Much of his work was representing electric utilities, and in 1929 Willkie accepted a job in New York City as counsel for Commonwealth & Southern Corporation (C&S), a utility holding company. He was rapidly promoted, and became corporate president in 1933. Roosevelt was sworn in as U.S. president soon after Willkie became head of C&S, and announced plans for a Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) that would supply power in competition with C&S. Between 1933 and 1939, Willkie fought against the TVA before Congress, in the courts, and before the public. He was ultimately unsuccessful, but sold C&S’s property for a good price, and gained public esteem.

A longtime Democratic activist, Willkie changed his party registration to Republican in late 1939. He did not run in the 1940 presidential primaries, but positioned himself as an acceptable choice for a deadlocked convention. He sought backing from uncommitted delegates, while his supporters–many youthful–enthusiastically promoted his candidacy. As German forces advanced through western Europe in 1940, many Republicans did not wish to nominate an isolationist like Robert A. Taft, or a non-interventionist like Thomas E. Dewey, and turned to Willkie, who was nominated on the sixth ballot. Willkie’s support for aid to Britain removed it as a major factor in his race against Roosevelt, and Willkie also backed the president on a peacetime draft. Both men took more isolationist positions towards the end of the race. Roosevelt won an unprecedented third term, taking 38 of the 48 states.

After the election, Willkie made two wartime foreign trips as Roosevelt’s informal envoy, and as nominal leader of the Republican Party gave the president his full support. This angered many conservatives, especially as Willkie increasingly advocated liberal or internationalist causes. Willkie ran for the Republican nomination in 1944, but bowed out after a disastrous showing in the Wisconsin primary in April. He and Roosevelt discussed the possibility of forming a liberal political party after the war, but Willkie died in October 1944 before the idea could bear fruit. Willkie is remembered for giving Roosevelt vital political assistance in 1941, which helped the president to pass Lend-Lease to send supplies to the United Kingdom and other Allied nations.

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Frequently asked questions about Wendell Willkie

Wendell Willkie was an American lawyer, corporate executive, and the 1940 Republican nominee for president.

Willkie appealed to many convention delegates as the Republican field’s only interventionist, favoring greater U.S. involvement in World War II to support Britain and other Allies.

Wendell Willkie’s Democratic opponent in the 1940 presidential election was the incumbent President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who won the election with about 55% of the popular vote.

Between 1933 and 1939, Wendell Willkie fought against the TVA before Congress, in the courts, and before the public, although he was ultimately unsuccessful.

After the election, Wendell Willkie made two wartime foreign trips as Roosevelt’s informal envoy and gave the president his full support, which angered many conservatives.

Willkie is remembered for giving Roosevelt vital political assistance in 1941, which helped the president to pass the Lend-Lease program to send supplies to the United Kingdom and other Allied nations.

Willkie ran for the Republican nomination in 1944, but bowed out after a disastrous showing in the Wisconsin primary in April.

Quotes by Wendell Willkie

A good catchword can obscure analysis for fifty years.

Wendell Willkie

A true world outlook is incompatible with a foreign imperialism, no matter how high-minded the governing country.

Wendell Willkie

And political parties, overanxious for vote catching, become tolerant to intolerant groups.

Wendell Willkie

But if we had to trade with a Europe dominated by the present German trade policies, we might have to change our methods to some totalitarian form. This is a prospect that any lover of democracy must view with consternation.

Wendell Willkie

But it required a disastrous, internecine war to bring this question of human freedom to a crisis, and the process of striking the shackles from the slave was accomplished in a single hour.

Wendell Willkie

But we cannot just take this historical fact for granted. We must make it live.

Wendell Willkie

Education is the mother of leadership.

Wendell Willkie

Emancipation came to the colored race in America as a war measure. It was an act of military necessity. Manifestly it would have come without war, in the slower process of humanitarian reform and social enlightenment.

Wendell Willkie

For now more than ever, we must keep in the forefront of our minds the fact that whenever we take away the liberties of those we hate, we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love.

Wendell Willkie

Free men are the strongest men.

Wendell Willkie

Freedom is an indivisible word. If we want to enjoy it, and fight for it, we must be prepared to extend it to everyone, whether they are rich or poor, whether they agree with us or not, no matter what their race or the color of their skin.

Wendell Willkie

History shows that our way of life is the stronger way. From it has come more wealth, more industry, more happiness, more human enlightenment than from any other way.

Wendell Willkie

I have noticed, with much distress, the excessive wartime activity of the investigating bureaus of Congress and the administration, with their impertinent and indecent searching out of the private lives and the past political beliefs of individuals.

Wendell Willkie

If the British Fleet were lost or captured, the Atlantic might be dominated by Germany, a power hostile to our way of life, controlling in that event most of the ships and shipbuilding facilities of Europe.

Wendell Willkie

If we want to talk about freedom, we must mean freedom for others as well as ourselves, and we must mean freedom for everyone inside our frontiers as well as outside.

Wendell Willkie

In addition, as citizens, we must fight in their incipient stages all movements by government or party or pressure groups that seek to limit the legitimate liberties of any of our fellow citizens.

Wendell Willkie

In no direction that we turn do we find ease or comfort. If we are honest and if we have the will to win we find only danger, hard work and iron resolution.

Wendell Willkie

It has been a long while since the United States had any imperialistic designs toward the outside world. But we have practised within our own boundaries something that amounts to race imperialism.

Wendell Willkie

It is from weakness that people reach for dictators and concentrated government power. Only the strong can be free. And only the productive can be strong.

Wendell Willkie

It is, therefore, essential that we guard our own thinking and not be among those who cry out against prejudices applicable to themselves, while busy spawning intolerances for others.

Wendell Willkie

No man has the right to use the great powers of the Presidency to lead the people, indirectly, into war.

Wendell Willkie

The constitution does not provide for first and second class citizens.

Wendell Willkie

The defense of our democracy against the forces that threaten it from without has made some of its failures to function at home glaringly apparent.

Wendell Willkie

The test of good manners is to be able to put up pleasantly with bad ones.

Wendell Willkie

Today it is becoming increasingly apparent to thoughtful Americans that we cannot fight the forces and ideas of imperialism abroad and maintain any form of imperialism at home. The war has done this to our thinking.

Wendell Willkie

We cannot, with good conscience, expect the British to set up an orderly schedule for the liberation of India before we have decided for ourselves to make all who live in America free.

Wendell Willkie

We must honestly face our relationship with Great Britain.

Wendell Willkie

When we talk of freedom and opportunity for all nations, the mocking paradoxes in our own society become so clear they can no longer be ignored.

Wendell Willkie