While Americans fought the Depression, dictators rose abroad. Japan invaded Manchuria (1931) and China (1937); Italy invaded Ethiopia (1935); Nazi Germany rearmed and seized Austria and Czechoslovakia. Most Americans, remembering the Great War, wanted to stay out.
Key idea
The Neutrality Acts (1935 to 1937) aimed to keep the U.S. out of foreign wars. After war began in Europe (1939), cash and carry, Lend-Lease (March 1941) and the Atlantic Charter (August 1941) moved the country toward the Allies, while isolationists argued against it.
Why it works
Why neutrality laws? A Senate committee led by Gerald Nye (1934 to 1936) argued that bankers and arms makers had pulled the U.S. into World War I. The Neutrality Acts banned selling arms to nations at war and, later, travel on their ships. When Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Roosevelt got Congress to allow arms sales on a cash-and-carry basis: buyers paid cash and carried goods in their own ships, which favored Britain and France, who controlled the seas. After France fell in 1940, Britain stood almost alone. Roosevelt traded fifty old destroyers for bases, called the U.S. the "arsenal of democracy," and, when Britain ran out of cash, won Lend-Lease: weapons lent or leased to nations whose defense was vital to the U.S.
| Interventionists | Isolationists (non-interventionists) |
|---|---|
| Roosevelt; the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies | The America First Committee (1940); Charles Lindbergh; many in Congress |
| A Nazi victory in Europe would threaten the Americas; aid to Britain could keep the U.S. out of the fighting | Oceans protected the U.S.; aid would drag it into a war that was not its own, as in 1917 |
Work it through
Worked example: How far from neutral?
Order these steps and say how each moved the U.S. toward the Allies: Lend-Lease; Neutrality Act of 1935; cash and carry for arms; the Atlantic Charter.
- 1935, Neutrality Act: no arms sales to any nation at war (neutral).
- 1939, cash and carry: arms sales allowed, but only for cash and in the buyer's ships (helped Britain and France).
- 1941, Lend-Lease (March): arms on credit to Britain and others (open support).
- 1941, Atlantic Charter (August): Roosevelt and Churchill set out shared war aims.
Answer: Neutrality Act, cash and carry, Lend-Lease, Atlantic Charter.
Common mistake
Many students think the U.S. was at war from 1939. It sent aid, and by late 1941 its navy was escorting convoys in the Atlantic, but it did not enter the war until December 1941, after Pearl Harbor.