As the United States was drawn into World War II, many prominent Americans warned against repeating the excesses against dissenters that had characterized the World War I era. There were some abuses, but government officials (particularly in the Justice Department), keenly aware of the tension between civil liberties and unreflective pursuit of public opinion, kept them to a minimum. President Franklin D. Roosevelt at times wanted to squelch the more vocal and extreme critics of his wartime policies, but his subordinates typically resisted his calls for indictments or other repressive measures against dissenters.
Several key differences between the way America entered war in 1917 and 1941 are crucial to understanding the different status of civil liberties in the two eras