The Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies (CDAAA) was an American political action group formed in May 1940. It was at the forefront of the effort to support a "pro-British policy" against Axis aggression. It advocated American military materiel support of the United Kingdom as the best way to keep the United States out of the conflict in Europe
Politically pro-intervention, it strongly believed the US should actively assert itself in the Second World War in Europe. The CDAAA competed for American sympathy with the America First Committee, the main pressure group supporting complete neutrality and non-intervention.
The CDAAA supported the Lend-Lease Act and opposed the various Neutrality Acts of the late 1930s and sought their revision or repeal. The CDAAA was also influential in mobilizing public support for the Destroyers for Bases Agreement by 600 local chapters and national radio addresses by individuals such as John J. Pershing and William Harrison Standley.
When the No Foreign War Committee organized in mid-December 1940, its chair, Verne Marshall, said its mission was to counter the "propaganda" of the CDAAA, which had, he said, "the same public psychology as that which was carefully created during the war period preceding our declaration of hostilities in April 1917." He said his group aimed to force the CDAAA to provide details "specific, exact, and unequivocal" of what it meant when it called for "steps short of war."
William Allen White, the group's national chair, in late October as the November midterm elections neared, said his group remained nonpartisan because both Franklin Roosevelt and Wendell Willkie has backed providing assistance to Britain. Following the election, on November 26, 1940, the CDAAA released a new statement of policy. It included support for "the maintenance of the lifeline between Great Britain and the United States," the "assumption by Congress of greater responsibility with the President," and the repeal of "restrictive legislation."
Late in 1940, there were reports of differences of opinion in the group's leadership after White made remarks that some thought to be at odds with the CDAAA program. He said: "The only reason in God's world I am in this organization is to keep the country out of war.... If I were making a motto for the Committee it would be 'The Yanks Are Not Coming.'"
New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia wrote White a letter of protest, accusing him of "doing a Laval." French minister of state Pierre Laval, the principal figure in France's Vichy government's co-operation with Germany. Herbert Bayard Swope supported the mayor and said that the organization as a whole, despite what White had said, takes as its priority "all possible aid to Britain and the allies." The national director denied any differences and said everyone in the group supported Lend Lease and opposed both appeasement and a negotiated peace. He quoted and endorsed White's statement: "appeasement is treason to democracy
Ernest W. Gibson, Jr. succeed White as national chairman in January 1941. The CDAAA, by then, had 700 local chapters. White had cited his age as his reason for resigning.
After Germany/invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the CDAAA dropped the "by Aiding the Allies" from their name and became simply the Committee to Defend America (CDA) because of a strong aversion from many in the group to embracing Joseph Stalin and communism. It now viewed the Soviets as fellow-fighters against Hitler and fascisme Soviets were allies of immediate necessity but not true allies. The CDA always maintained an officially anticommunist stance.
The Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 effectively brought an end to both the CDA and the America First Committee. In January 1942, the CDA merged with the Council for Democracy to form Citizens for Victory: To Win the War, To Win the Peace. The combined organization officially dissolved in October, 1942. The America First Committee had officially dissolved four days after Pearl Harbor.
Prominent members of the CDAAA included Executive Secretary Gibson, National Director Eichelberger, Adlai Stevenson II, U.S. Rep. Claude Pepper (D-Fla), White, former federal Budget Director Louis W. Douglas, Hollywood screenwriter and activist Philip Dunne, the historian Conyers Read, and Swope.