: Following the pact, American Communists and fellow travelers adopted a staunchly isolationist, anti-war stance. They heavily criticized President Franklin D. Roosevelt's peacetime draft and any moves toward American intervention in the European conflict.
The central hook of "Plow Under" relies on a biting, satirical agricultural metaphor:
: On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union. Plow Under (Original Mix)
: In August 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression pact.
: To avoid hypocrisy and align with the new reality, The Almanac Singers and their associates physically raced to record shops to pull Songs for John Doe from the shelves. They even asked people who bought the records to return them. : Following the pact, American Communists and fellow
The Almanac Singers’ "Plow Under": An Analysis of Anti-War Protest Music 1. Contextualizing the Era
: By 1942, the group was recording fiercely pro-war, anti-fascist songs supporting the Allied war effort on their album Dear Mr. President . The central hook of "Plow Under" relies on
The "AAA" referenced in the lyrics is the Agricultural Adjustment Act, a major New Deal program introduced by the Roosevelt administration to combat the Great Depression. To raise the plummeting prices of crops and livestock, the government paid farmers to reduce supply, which famously resulted in the slaughter of millions of pigs and the plowing under of vast fields of cotton. The Human Cost