THE U.S. ENTERS WORLD WAR TWO
In September 1939, when the European war broke out, opinion polls showed that the great majority of Americans favoured the Allies, although most were firmly opposed to joining them in their struggle against the Nazis. This dilemma was only to be resolved by factors unrelated to Europe. President Roosevelt was committed to the Allied cause, yet to win acceptance for this policy of support, he had to promise that he would not send American troops to fight in Europe. Roosevelt and his closest advisers, felt unable to say openly what they recognised in private: that Britain, by the end of 1940 could not win the war without American armed intervention. Therefore, rather than risk alienating the American public, Roosevelt judged that the best course was to win support for a policy of all aid; short of war. This was a significant shift away from strict neutrality.
All he could do was try and break down, bit by bit, the extreme neutrality behind which the United States had chosen in the 1920's and 1930's. Isolationism was as old as American history, it was the expression of a newly-independent nation's attitude towards its European ancestry. In general, Europe represented the corrupt and the decadent. Americans had no interest in European power politics, and wished to be left alone to construct their new society.
The product of this combination of moral disdain and political self -sufficiency took the form of a rigid abstention from what were described as 'entangling alliances', whether defensive or offensive. The much invoked Monroe Doctrine, which, with its hemispheric demarcation line between the virtuous New World and the amoral Old World was accepted by Americans as self-evident as those 'rights' which had justified their original breakaway.
Lacking any commitment to action, condemnation of Japan's aggression in the Far East served only as an irritant to the Japanese without deterring them in the slightest from realising their imperial goals. The fear of foreign entanglement was so intense that the administration went to great lengths to avoid open cooperation with the League of Nations. The refusal by the United States to agree to any positive commitment in the event of aggression killed the Geneva disarmament conference in 1934, for in the pursuit of the preservation of American freedom of action, America steadfastly refused to commit herself to action.
The results of the United States joining World War One in 1917 were the exact opposite of what they had expected. The Americans sincerely believed that the war had been 'the war to end all wars'. They had set out to put the world to rights, but the war itself, the peace negotiations, and the Treaty of Versailles had disillusioned them. And when in 1920 the Senate failed to ratify American membership in the League of Nations, the cause of collective security suffered a setback from which it did not recover for 20 years. By the time Roosevelt himself had become Democratic presidential candidate in 1932, he had hopelessly compromised his stand on foreign policy by repudiating the League. Whatever his private views on internationalism, Roosevelt was content, throughout his first term as President, to swim with the tide of isolationism which was sweeping the country.
The lessons of 1917-19, economic nationalism, the failure of the European nations to honour their war debts, all these seemed to confirm Washington's original opinion that it was in the United States' best interests to dissociate itself entirely from European affairs. The most extreme expression this attitude of mind came from was the isolationist bloc in Congress, and it was they who were responsible for those self- imposed shackles on American foreign policy; the neutrality laws.
The pressure for such legislation stemmed from the Senate's investigation of the munitions industry. It was alleged that the United States had gone to war in 1917 to protect the interests of profiteering bankers and munitions makers. The Senate pressed for legislation to prevent the circumstances of 1917 from recurring. The 1935 Neutrality Act put an embargo on the export of all war materials to belligerents, so as to preclude the possibility of arms manufacturers involving the nation in another foreign war (a ban on loans to belligerents was added in 1936).
The act also forbade American vessels to carry munitions to belligerents, and gave the President power to withhold protection from United States citizens travelling on belligerent vessels. The effect of these clauses was to surrender the freedom of the seas, and so the rights of neutrals which Wilson had gone to war to defend in 1917 were voluntarily given up. In 1937, however, the Neutrality Act was amended so as to incorporate a cash-and carry principle, whereby belligerents could purchase goods in America, but only if they paid cash, and transported them in their own vessels. This was the logical conclusion of Congress's concern to prevent contact with belligerents as far as was possible; short of undermining the American economy Roosevelt was, however, becoming increasingly disturbed by the spread of violence in the world, and America's negative response to it. In an effort to abate the tendency to seek solution to political problems without resorting to war. He formulated an ambitious plan to call together a world conference to lay down the basic principles to be observed in international relations.
Roosevelt had succeeded only in puzzling his chiefs of staff