I'm going to do my best to answer this one, but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to get really good coverage on this because I've traditionally studied the perspectives of the various political alliances rather than the individuals leading. But I can probably get most of the way.

Let’s start off with a bit of context. Who were the major players in the Temperance movement? And what were their motivations? Also, as a side note, the capital T in Temperance there is where the term teetotaler comes from. Total Temperance (or Total T) meant abstinence from all alcohol, not just from hard spirits. T-Total. Teetotaler.

First, we have the Protestants. Pro-Temperance Protestants belonged to a variety of sects which had, for various reasons, chosen to ban alcohol for members. The Methodists, for example, were founded by a man named John Wesley. While he championed a number of concepts that made Methodism enormously unpopular among the Episcopalians and Catholics, he also argued that a Godly life was a sober life, and many Methodists of the day believed that this meant complete Temperance. However, even among the Protestant faiths assembled, many continued to use it for Communion, and others were unwilling to allow the government to deny use of wine as a sacrament, even for the hated Catholics, as they didn’t want government oversight of Christian faiths to become common. This led to the exceptions within the 18th Amendment for religious ceremony, and to the massive number of Jewish converts and new Rabbis springing up in the territories of certain organized crime, as people flocked to the loopholes.

Feminists noted that wife-beating, a serious problem for women of the era, was closely tied to alcohol use (1, 2). Drunk husbands were significantly more violent than sober, and feminists were working on the simplest human rights a person could have; the right to exist without fear of constant beatings. Susan B. Anthony is arguably the most famous Pro-Temperance advocates in history. The Women’s Christian Temperance Union was one of the strongest organizations in support of Prohibition.

Some industrialists and members of the capitalist class, such as the Rockefellers, also advocated for Prohibition, believing that alcohol was the cause of laziness, illness, and other interruptions to productivity (2). Many of these same industrialists skirted the law by buying huge stocks of liquor between the passage of the Volstead Act and its actual live date, as it only banned the manufacture, transport and sale of liquor, not the actual act of consumption. Eleanor Roosevelt was famously embarrassed at FDR’s well-stocked home bar throughout Prohibition (1). Racists and xenophobes supported Prohibition partially out of spite, believing that whites would be able to easily work around the law (2, 3). They were generally correct, though minorities managed just fine as well. Finally, anti-corruption advocates also frequently took up the call, wishing to dismantle the backroom deals crooked politicians and machine bosses would make in saloons. The Anti-Saloon League had major overlap with organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan as well as anti-corruption advocates, and developed a wide range of strategies to advance their agenda. The ASL (now called the American Council on Addiction and Alcohol Problems) frequently took up issues near and dear to both the KKK as well as the WCTU, leading to an odd slate of lobbying efforts to attempt to solidify the big tent Prohibition built.

Regardless, Prohibition was pretty clearly a failure at convincing people to stop drinking.

John Rockefeller Jr., a noted champion of Prohibition, wrote to the New York Times in June of 1932 (full contents of the letter here, prior to the repeal of Prohibition, to advocate for its repeal. He notes that there was a proposal for the Republican Party Platform to include advocating the repeal of Prohibition, and that he had now swung his support behind this. He also hoped the Democratic Party would raise the same standard. He continued to advocate for capital-T Temperance, but believed that Prohibition had done nothing to advance that cause, and had, in fact, damaged it. That by attempting to stop people from drinking by force, all that Prohibition had achieved was enticing more people to try it.

When the Eighteenth Amendment was passed I earnestly hoped, with a host of advocates for temperance, that it would be generally supported by public opinion and thus the day be hastened when the value to society of men with minds and bodies free from the undermining effects of alcohol would be generally realized. That this has not been the result, but rather that drinking generally has increased; that the speakeasy has replaced the saloon, not only unit for unit, but probably two-fold if not three-fold; that a vast army of lawbreakers has been recruited and financed on a colossal scale that many of our best citizens, piqued at what they regarded as an infringement of their private rights, have openly and unabashed disregarded the Eighteenth Amendment; that as an inevitable result respect for all law has been greatly lessened; that crime has increased to an unprecedented degree - I have slowly and reluctantly come to believe.

Rockefeller goes on to discuss that he believes that lawful society has improved by removing alcohol from public spaces, but that these benefits did not outweigh the harms caused by society’s degraded belief in rule of law, and that Temperance advocates should continue to seek a way to remove alcohol from society.

Rockefeller was certainly not alone in his change of heart, but there were plenty who didn’t, and still don’t, agree with the repeal.

The Anti-Saloon League turned from juggernaut to joke through the course of Prohibition. The KKK had been largely winding down in the early 20th century, until the silent film The Birth of a Nation released in theaters, glorifying the Klan. The initial effect was a surge for the ASL, who were tightly interwoven with various anti-immigrant groups, but as the Klan rose to prominence again, they quickly wore out their welcome. The ASL, who were publicly tied to the Klan, caught a lot of the mud the Klan caught throughout the ‘20s and lost significant influence and power, both as a result of the various failures of Prohibition as well as their association with the Klan (3). As noted above, the ASL continues in a different form today, continuing to advocate for temperance, though they lobby on most drugs now rather than just alcohol.

The Women’s Christian Temperance Union continues operations under the same name to this day, and continues to advocate for temperance. I had trouble finding a ton about their reactions, but I stumbled across this Reuters interview with the (then) president, Rita Wort in 2008. Wort explains that the WCTU does not view Prohibition as a failure:

“We do not, however, think that Prohibition was a failure as does most of the rest of the world,” she explained.

Some of the benefits she cited were studies published in the 1960s that showed wife beating and the lack of family support dropped by 82 percent, drunkenness was down 55.3 percent and assault decreased 53.1 percent while Prohibition laws were in effect.

In summary, did Prohibitionists change their tune? Many did, absolutely. Others simply lost relevance. Anti-Prohibition movements gathered more and more power as Prohibitionists lost influence or focus. The increasing influence of organized crime also intimidated many social factions to swing their support towards repeal, and once critical mass had been reached, FDR was quick to deliver a deathblow to the Volstead Act.

(1) Liberated Spirits; Hugh Ambrose and John Schuttler

(2) Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition; Daniel Okrent

(3) Hoodwinked: The Anti-Saloon League and the Ku Klux Klan in 1920s Prohibition Enforcement; Thomas Pegram

(4) Prohibition: Thirteen Years that Changed America; Edward Behr