Download 58. Prelude to War

Prelude to War
The American Dream as it was known in the era of Big Business died with Henry
Ford. His was the last “rags-to-riches” story for decades. When the reality of the Great
Depression sank in, the Roaring Twenties were immediately rejected as frivolous and
wasteful, a national embarrassment. The hedonism of the flapper youth looked doubly
vulgar. Since the unlimited escalator of prosperity disappeared, the United States
experienced an identity crisis. Would American democracy lead to bankruptcy? An
ancient Greek’s criticism of democracy seemed about to come true in America, that the
people would always vote into power those who promised them the most money. And
then the money would run out. Whatever one thinks of FDR and the New Deal, the
social responsibility of Progressive reform unmanned rugged individualism, the uniquely
American notion that had built the country from a few colonies to a world power.
FDR, after all, was the American president that opened relations with the Soviet
Union. As more and more New Deal agencies flirted with socialism, Roosevelt
Administration advisers were sent to the Soviet Union to consider it as a model. Of
course, Joseph Stalin made sure the visitors saw only the pockets of Soviet success. The
Americans returned with glowing reports, and only a timely series of bloody purges
motivated by Stalin’s paranoia kept large numbers of American intellectuals from
embracing Marxism and the Soviet system. Of course, some Americans still embraced
these radical ideas and probably fantasized about who they were going to shoot first.
Many historians, however, make the case that the Great Depression and the
collectivization FDR mandated (with a rubber-stamp Congress consenting) were both
preparing us to fight and to win World War II. Ernest Hemingway, playwright Robert E.
Sherwood, and John Steinbeck are said to have captured a new spirit of self-sacrifice in
their works that reportedly either prepared or mirrored the preparation of Americans to
give their lives in a higher cause than material success. Rose of Sharon lost her baby in
the end of The Grapes of Wrath, but her loss prepared her to save a man’s life by
“nursing” him back from the brink of starvation. The United States was about to do
something similar for the entire world.
Now we must turn our attention to world history for a time. The road to the worst
war the world has ever seen began in Germany which was weak and near bankruptcy. A
new form of socialism, fascism, was taking root in Germany and other countries in the
worldwide economic depression. These countries included Spain, Italy, and Japan. The
United Kingdom was also weak in the face of this threat. Most industrialized nations
avoided international trade and thereby deepened the depression. Imperialism,
militarism, and economic nationalism were latent in the twenty years following World
War I, but they were about to break out again. Eventually Germany, Italy, and Japan
would ally in a mutual quest to take over the world.
Japan started by trying to take over China. The Japanese seized Manchuria in
September of 1931 using aerial bombing, the great theme of World War Two, to
devastating effect. President Herbert Hoover responded by 1932 with the HooverStimson Doctrine, a refusal to heed treaties that violated the old Open Door Policy.
Hoover and others believed that the idealistic Kellogg-Briand Peace Pact would keep us
safe. This document was circulated by some American and British pacifists and
supposedly convinced many nations to “renounce military aggression as an instrument of
national policy.” Both FDR and Adolph Hitler came to power in their respective
countries in 1933, the Democrat and the Dictator, as they are known. Hitler had no
intention of renouncing war.
The rise of the Nazi (National Socialist) Party was partly due to Hitler’s rhetorical
skills. He blamed the Treaty of Versailles for Germany’s economic plight and set about
rearming his country in direct violation of the punitive provision in the treaty that forbade
Germany to ever have an offensive military force again. Historians say that Hitler
modeled much of his style and political beliefs after those of Benito Mussolini of Italy.
Mussolini invaded Ethiopia, as poor and weak a nation as existed on the globe, in
October of 1935 to distract his nation from their woes.
Franklin Roosevelt recognized the USSR in November of 1933 and pushed for the
US to join deliberations in the World Court by 1935. The New Deal, of course, took
precedence as the domestic crisis of the Great Depression deepened. The US was nearly
entirely isolationist between the World Wars except for FDR’s “Good Neighbor Policy”
for Latin America. He personally went there in 1936 in an attempt to influence Latin
American countries without dominating them as his cousin, TR, had done. We did set up
Fulgencio Batista as the ruler of Cuba, a step we would later regret.
All eyes turned to Europe and Asia, however, as aggressive nations continued to
threaten peace. Italy annexed Ethiopia as a colony by 1936 and backed Francisco Franco
during the Spanish Civil War which made Franco the dictator of Spain by 1939. Italy
and Germany formed an alliance which gave Hitler the temerity to move his military to
occupy the Rhineland provinces that had been taken away from Germany and given to
France after World War I. The area was supposed to remain neutral and demilitarized
according the Treaty of Versailles, but Hitler merely ignored the will of his neighbors.
When none of them tried to stop him he attempted the Anschluss, or connection, by
annexing Austria in March of 1938. Hitler believed the German-speaking Austrians
should join the nation of Germany, and as portrayed in The Sound of Music, he was
successful.
Meanwhile, Japan ignored the international limitations placed on its naval
strength by the Washington Naval Conference. This disarmament treaty created a ratio of
capital ships among five nations: USA, UK, Japan, Italy, and France. The ratio was
5:5:3:1.5:1.5, respectively. Japan was insulted that it was expected to remain with three
battleships for every five the US and the UK could possess, so they didn’t. In China, the
Japanese conquered Chiang Kai-Shek’s forces and virtually all of China by October of
1938. They totally ignored the sanctions imposed by the League of Nations.
Back in Europe the British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, attended the
Munich Conference with Hitler and returned home with the famously naïve words, “I
give you peace in our time.” As he said this he was holding aloft the agreement he and
Hitler had signed that if the world would just allow Hitler to have the Sudetenland, a
German-speaking province that made up much of Czechoslovakia, the Germans would
not seek any further territorial expansion. This agreement marks the classic example of
appeasement of authoritarian dictators as a bad idea. The war-weary world desired to
believe Chamberlain.
Enough isolationist US leaders believed Senator Nye’s assertion, that banks and
munitions manufactures had drawn us into World War I just to get rich, to pass Neutrality
Acts in 1935, 1936, and 1937. Nazis, meanwhile, began to attack German Jews as early
as 1938, but we still blocked immigration of refugees with our quota system. Historians
say we did not know of the Holocaust measures of Nazi Germany until 1941. FDR’s one
response to the rise of fascism was to call for a quarantine of aggressor nations in a
speech in 1937. The US did not belong to the League of Nations, but FDR intended to
impose some sanctions of his own.
World War II officially began when Hitler ignored the Munich Agreement and
invaded Poland in September of 1939. Both the UK and France declared war. Stalin sat
out at first due to a non-aggression agreement with Hitler in an effort to obtain part of
Poland for the USSR. Polish Jews were now in jeopardy, and Nazi aggression had only
just begun. By April of 1940, Germans swept through Norway, Denmark, the
Netherlands, and Belgium again on their way to France. All of France was occupied by
June. After the miraculous evacuation of French and British soldiers at Dunkirk, only the
UK remained free in Western Europe. Neville Chamberlain was then replaced by
Winston Churchill who famously said, “We will never surrender.” Japan joined the
Germans and the Italians in September of 1940 in what became known as the
Rome/Berlin/Tokyo Axis.
Americans desperately hoped for non-involvement and elected FDR to an
unprecedented third term in the midst of the crisis. He had been opposed by a liberal
Republican named Wendall Willkie who favored intervention in Europe but could not
come up with a better domestic program than promising “. . . a new New Deal.” FDR
said during the campaign, “Your President says this country is not going to war.” He had
initiated a “Cash and Carry” program in 1939 to sell munitions to the British, eerily
reminiscent of Woodrow Wilson’s handling of the outbreak of World War I. Upon
winning the Election of 1940, FDR immediately prepared for war. The first peacetime
draft was set in motion by the Selective Service Act, and Roosevelt tried to mobilize the
American economy by calling the US the “arsenal of democracy.” By the end of 1940
FDR pledged “All aid short of war” to the British. He gave them unlimited access to
American credit.
As 1941 opened, we remained neutral. FDR swapped some destroyers (antisubmarine ships) for some British bases in the Caribbean Sea. By March the Lend-Lease
Act was justified by saying “loaning” war materials to the British actually protected the
US from involvement. We sent arms to the UK for free, then, which we said could be
returned after peace. Deficit spending paid for this program just as any other New Deal
program, but cost 51 billion dollars. Here is the beginning of why World War II was
actually responsible for ending the Great Depression in the United States as our industrial
capacity began to produce for the war.
The Nazis, meanwhile, conquered the Balkans by June of 1941, and then invaded
the USSR. Hitler had only feigned peace with Stalin to allow Germany to conquer
Europe. American involvement grew closer as we sent Lend-Lease material to the
Soviets and began escorting our shipments to the British as far as Iceland. At this point,
FDR and Churchill met personally off the coast of Newfoundland in the first significant
World War II conference. The two leaders of the free world planned support and even
what should be done after the Nazis were defeated. The document they produced was
known as the “Atlantic Charter” and formed the basis for international relations in the
post-war world.
In September we occupied Greenland and our own destroyers began hunting
down German subs that threatened our convoys to Iceland. A German U-Boat fired upon
the U. S. S. Greer, and FDR issued “Shoot on sight” orders. By November the United
States armed its merchant vessels. We were at war with Germany, yet unofficially.
Japan sent ambassadors to Washington, DC hoping to ease the US embargo.
They had violated the Open Door and been quarantined, but they were in desperate need
of raw materials like oil and scrap steel. Japan kept advancing in East Asia and in the
Pacific Ocean, so FDR froze Japanese assets in the US and stopped all shipments of oil
and steel. The Japanese ambassadors launched protests knowing that their nation had
already launched a carrier fleet to carry out a surprise attack on the United States Pacific
Fleet. We discovered later that the final exam question for ten years for graduates of the
Japanese Naval Academy had been, “How would you plan an attack on Pearl Harbor,
Hawaii?”
When that attack came for real on December 7, 1941, the Japanese destroyed 18
ships and 188 planes and killed 2,403 Americans and wounded 710. Most of our Pacific
Fleet had been destroyed on that day which FDR pronounced, “. . . a day which will live
in infamy,” in his war message asking the Congress to act. The United States declared
war with the United Kingdom against the Japanese Empire, and Germany and Italy
responded by declaring war against us. American isolationism was dispensed with, and
the New Deal became obsolete as the largest mobilization in American history was
launched.