WAR AND UNEASY NEUTRALITY
Before Roosevelt’s second term was well under way, his domestic program was overshadowed by the expansionist designs of totalitarian regimes in Japan, Italy, and Ger- many . In 1931 Japan had invaded Manchuria, crushed Chinese resis- tance, and set up the puppet state of Manchukuo . Italy, under Benito Mussolini, enlarged its boundar- ies in Libya and in 1935 conquered Ethiopia . Germany, under Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, militarized its economy and reoccupied the Rhine- land (demilitarized by the Treaty of Versailles) in 1936 . In 1938, Hitler incorporated Austria into the Ger- man Reich and demanded cession of the German-speaking Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia . By then, war seemed imminent .
The United States, disillusioned by the failure of the crusade for democracy in World War I, an- nounced that in no circumstances could any country involved in the conflict look to it for aid . Neutral- ity legislation, enacted piecemeal from 1935 to 1937, prohibited trade in arms with any warring nations, required cash for all other com- modities, and forbade American flag merchant ships from carrying those goods . The objective was to prevent, at almost any cost, the in- volvement of the United States in a foreign war .
With the Nazi conquest of Po- land in 1939 and the outbreak of
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World War II, isolationist sentiment increased, even though Americans clearly favored the victims of Hitler’s aggression and supported the Allied democracies, Britain and France . Roosevelt could only wait until pub- lic opinion regarding U .S . involve- ment was altered by events .
After the fall of France and the beginning of the German air war against Britain in mid-1940, the de- bate intensified between those in the United States who favored aiding the democracies and the antiwar faction known as the isolationists . Roos- evelt did what he could to nudge public opinion toward intervention . The United States joined Canada in a Mutual Board of Defense, and aligned with the Latin American re- publics in extending collective pro- tection to the nations in the Western Hemisphere .
Congress, confronted with the mounting crisis, voted immense sums for rearmament, and in Sep- tember 1940 passed the first peace- time conscription bill ever enacted in the United States . In that month also, Roosevelt concluded a daring executive agreement with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill . The United States gave the British Navy 50 “overage” destroyers in re- turn for British air and naval bases in Newfoundland and the North Atlantic .
The 1940 presidential election campaign demonstrated that the isolationists, while vocal, were a minority . Roosevelt’s Republican opponent, Wendell Wilkie, leaned
toward intervention . Thus the No- vember election yielded another majority for the president, making Roosevelt the first, and last, U .S . chief executive to be elected to a third term .
In early 1941, Roosevelt got Con- gress to approve the Lend-Lease Program, which enabled him to transfer arms and equipment to any nation (notably Great Britain, later the Soviet Union and China) deemed vital to the defense of the United States . Total Lend-Lease aid by war’s end would amount to more than $50,000 million .
Most remarkably, in August, he met with Prime Minister Churchill off the coast of Newfoundland . The two leaders issued a “joint state- ment of war aims,” which they called the Atlantic Charter . Bearing a remarkable resemblance to Wood- row Wilson’s Fourteen Points, it called for these objectives: no ter- ritorial aggrandizement; no territo- rial changes without the consent of the people concerned; the right of all people to choose their own form of government; the restoration of self-government to those deprived of it; economic collaboration be- tween all nations; freedom from war, from fear, and from want for all peoples; freedom of the seas; and the abandonment of the use of force as an instrument of inter- national policy .
America was now neutral in name only .