Download USA Sidelines during WWII. Pearl Harbor

 Americans
saw what happened last time they
got into war.
 Did
not want to go to war again, especially
since Great Depression is going on.
 Stay
Isolated was the motto.
 “Cash
and Carry” – allow nations to buy
American arms as long as they paid cash and
carried the goods home in own ships.

Why would the United States do this?

It allowed the United States to help the British and
French while staying out of the war
 Once
the Axis Powers formed an alliance, the
US definitely did not want to get involved…
why???

It would have to fight a 2-ocean war. Germany
and Italy in the Atlantic and Japan in the Pacific
 Fireside
chat: Knew there was no hope of
negotiating a peace with Hitler

“No man can tame a tiger into a kitten by
stroking it”
 He
knew that if Britain fell, the axis powers
would be left unchallenged to conquer the
world

“All of us in all the Americas would be living at
the point of a gun.”
 Britain
out of cash so FDR came up with
Lend-Lease Plan
 Under this plan, FDR could lend or lease
arms and supplies to “any country whose
defense was vital to the United States”
 Hitler
ignores peace with USSR on June 22,
1941- invades
 Predicts will only take 6 weeks
 Soviets had great resistance
 When overrun they used a “scorched earth
policy”

Destroy everything that might be of use to the
invaders
6
weeks turned into 6 months and Russian
winter becomes key… why?
 Why would some Americans not want to do
the lend-lease program with the USSR?
 “If
Hitler invaded Hell, the British would be
prepared to work with the devil himself”
-Winston Churchill
But
why did Japan
really attack Pearl
Harbor?