Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies

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."

...
Wikipedia