Download Franklin D Roosevelt and the Shadow of War - apush

“The epidemic of the world lawlessness is spreading. When an
epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community
approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients in order to
protect the health of the community against the spread of the
disease…. There must be positive endeavors to preserve
peace.”
–Franklin D. Roosevelt, Chicago “Quarantine Speech,” 1937
THE LONDON WORLD CONFERENCE
• London Epidemic Conference- sixty-six nation meeting in the
summer of 1933
• Hoped to organize an international attack on the world-wide
depression
• FDR had second thoughts about conferences agenda and
wanted to pursue inflationary policies in America as a means of
stimulating “reconstruction”
• Scolded conference for trying to stabilize currencies and
declared Americas withdrawal from the ensuing negotiations
• The collapse of the London Conference strengthen nationalism
and made international negotiations even more difficult.
FREEDOM FOR (FROM?) THE FILIPINOS AND
RECOGNITION FOR THE RUSSIANS
• With the rise of hard times upon the nation, taxpayers were eager
to abandon expensive tropical-liability in the Philippine Islands
• Congress passes the Tydings-McDuffie Act in 1934
• Provided independence for the Philippines
• US agrees to relinquish Army bases but Naval bases reserved for
future discussion.
• Roosevelt reorganizes Soviet Union in 1933
BECOMING A GOOD NEIGHBOR
• Roosevelt’s non involvement in Europe, emancipation from Asia
and embrace of New World neighbors suggested that the US was
abandoning its ambition to become a world power
• Roosevelt eager to form alliance with Latin America to protect the
Western Hemisphere
• Roosevelt made clear it clear in the beginning of his plan to
renounce armed intervention and in particular one that
contradicted the corollary of his cousin Theodore Roosevelt.
To what document was FDR referring to?
• At the Seventh Pan-American Conference in Montevideo, Uruguay,
US delegates formally announced endorsement of
nonintervention.
• The Good Neighbor Policy, the endorsed consultation and
nonintervention was tested when the Mexican government seized
Yankee oil properties in 1938
• The Good Neighbor Policy gave great amounts of goodwill among
people south of the border.
SECRETARY HULL’S RECIPROCAL TRADE
AGREEMENTS
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Along with the Good Neighbor Policy came the reciprocal trade policy
of the New Dealers pioneered by Secretary of State Hull
Congress passed the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act (1934) and
was designed to lift American export trade from the restraints of
depression.
Secretary Hull succeeded in negotiating alliances with 21 countries
by the end of 1939
Foreign trade increased greatly, bettered economic and political
relations with Latin America and proved to be an influence of peace.
Reversed the traditional high protective tariff and paved the way for
the American-led free-trade international economic system that
manifested after WWII
STORM CELLAR ISOLATIONISM
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Totalitarianism; the individual was nothing, the state was everything
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With the communist USSR paving the way with Joseph Stalin at its head,
hundreds of thousands of people were executed or banished to remote
Siberian forced-labor camps
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Adolf Hitler, the most dangerous of the power-hungry dictators, secured
control of the Nazi party by making political capital of the Treaty of
Versailles and the depression spawned unemployment
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In 1936 the Nazi Hitler and the Fascist Mussolini created an alliance in
the Rome-Berlin Axis
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1934, Tokyo gave notice of the termination of the 12 year old
Washington Naval treaty in order to find a place in the Asiatic sun.
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Denied of complete parity, Japan quit the League and 5 years later
joined arms with Germany and Italy in the Tripartite Pact.
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Congress passed the Johnson Debt Default act which prevented debt
dodging nations from borrowing further in the US.
CONGRESS LEGISLATES NEUTRALITY
• The 1934 Nye Committee was formed to investigate the “Blood
Business”
• The Neutrality Act of 1935, 1936, and 1937 stipulated that when
the president proclaimed the existence of foreign war, certain
restrictions would be automatically put in place
• The key flaw with these acts was that they were designed to
prevent America from being dragged into a war much like WWI,
but WWII proved to be a completely different story
AMERICA DOOMS LOYALIST SPAIN
• During the Spanish Civil War, rebels led by Fascist General
Francisco Franco rose up against leftist-leaning republican
government
• Assistance from Hitler, Mussolini and by a much smaller-scale
the Soviet Union, Americans were torn. Some Americans
sympathies subsided while others burned and some 3,000 men
and women volunteered to fight in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
• During the war, America watched from the sidelines and failed to
build up its fleet
• It was not until 1938 the Congress passed a billion-dollar naval
construction act
APPEASING JAPAN AND GERMANY
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In 1937, the Japanese militarists took the first step at “raising the curtain” of
WWII
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In the autumn of 1937, Roosevelt delivered his Quarantine Speech and called for
“positive endeavors” to “quarantine” the aggressors
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December 1937, the Japanese bomb and sank the American gunboat, the Panay
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Meanwhile, Hitler was growing bolder and bolder after being allowed to introduce
mandatory military service in Germany, take over the German Rhineland,
persecute and exterminate about six million Jews, and occupy Austria—all
because the European powers were appeasing him.
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The Munich Conference held in September 1938 hoped that the concessions at
the meeting would delay Hitler’s thirst for power and bring “peace in our time”
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Barely 6 months after his promise, in March 1939 Hitler erased the rest of
Czechoslovakia leaving the democratic world stunned
HITLER’S BELLIGERENCY AND U.S. NEUTRALITY
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Hitler-Stalin Act- meant that the Nazi German leader had the go ahead to wage
war on Poland and the Western democracies without fear of a stab in the back
from the Soviet Union
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On September 1, 1939, Adolf Hitler invaded Poland. Keeping to their promise,
Britain and France quickly declared war.
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Americans were anti-Nazi and anti-Hitler but were desperately determined to stay
out of this war and heavily relied on a victory from the democracies.
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European powers were in desperate need of American supplies but the Neutrality
Act of 1937 strictly forbade such help.
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The Neutrality Act of 1939 provided that henceforth the European democrats
might buy American war materials but only on a cash and carry basis.
THE FALL OF FRANCE
• After the defeat of Poland, Adolf Hitler positioned his troops to
fledge a full attack on France.
• The Soviets soon were positioned to capture Finland in order to
secure a strategic buffer barrier. The Finns were soon granted
$30 million from an isolationist congress for “nonmilitary”
supplies.
• In 1940 the “phony war” came to an abrupt stop when Hitler
captured Denmark and Norway and the very next month seizing
the Netherlands and Belgium followed by a detrimental blow to
France.
• Roosevelt made is move and called upon the nation to build huge
air fleets and a two-ocean navy. Within a year Congress
appropriated $37 billion and also passed a conscription law
making provisions were training each year 1.2 million troops and
800,000 reserves.
• At the Havana Conference of 1940, the U.S. agreed along with its
New World neighbors to uphold the Monroe Doctrine.
EXAMINING THE EVIDENCE: PUBLIC-OPINION
POLLING IN THE 1930’S
• In 1936 the news publication Literary Digest took a major
chance when they relied on public-opinion to forecast a victory
for Alf London over FDR.
• The Digests error had been its compiling of polling lists from he
records of automobile registration and telephone directories.
• This mistake ended an era of informal polling techniques as
scientifically sophisticated polling organizations arose.
• Controversy has long hung over polling because of the
relationship between pollsters and politicians and their deceptive
ways.
• Roosevelt confronted this issue when polls seemed to confirm
growing isolationism even when the president advocated for a
more active international role.
REFUGEES FROM THE HOLOCAUST
• Adolf Hitler aroused the feelings of long disputed Anti-Semitism
and Jewish communities throughout Europe were frequently
attacked
• Kristallnacht- “the night of broken glass” November 9, 1938 after
a speech from Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels massive mobs
ransacked Jewish communities and synagogues. Almost 30,000
were sent to concentration camps
• Many Jews attempted to escape but were denied lack of entry to
Cuba and the U.S.
• Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board, saved thousands of
Hungarian Jews from deportation to Auschwitz but only about
150,000 found refuge in the U.S. and some 6 million Jews were
murder victims of the Holocaust
BOLSTERING BRITAIN
• As Britain stood alone and Hitler gaining more and more power
toward his dream of world domination, neutrality became
questionable.
• Roosevelt faced a historic decision, hunker down in the Western
Hemisphere, assume a “Fortress America” defensive posture and
leave the rest of the world for itself or bolster beleaguered Britain
by all means short of war itself.
• Supporters of aid formed propaganda groups and it could appeal
for direct succor to the British by slogans. To isolationists it could
appeal for assistance to the democracies by “All Methods Short
of War”
• On September 2, 1940, Roosevelt agreed to transfer to Great
Britain fifty old-model, four-funnel destroyers from WWI in return
the British promised to hand over eight valuable defense base
sites.
SHATTERING THE TWO-TERM TRADITION
• Come 1940, Robert A. Taft or Thomas E. Dewey were thought to
be the candidates for the Republicans.
• Wendell L Willkie, a latecomer, swept the Republican party off
their feet and became the Republican candidate that would run
against Franklin D. Roosevelt.
• Both candidates were similar in opinions on foreign affairs but
Willkie attack FDR with his thoughts on a 3rd term
• FDR wins election because America believes if were going to war
he will be the best man to lead us there.
A LANDMARK LEND-LEASE LAW
• With Britain quickly running out of money and Roosevelt’s need
to avoid the hassles with debt he came up with the lend-lease
program in which the arms, ships and supplies landed would be
returned once they were unneeded.
• The Lend-Lease Bill was praised by the administration as a
device that would keep the nation out of war rather than drag it
in.
• It was heatedly debated throughout Congress but nevertheless
was approved March 1941 by majorities in both houses of
Congress
• After passage of the Bill, Hitler realized it was the end of
American neutrality. He soon fired back sinking and firing at U.S.
ships such as the May 21, 1941 torpedoing of the Robin Moor.
CHARTERING A NEW WORLD
• Two major world-rattling events that foreshadowed WWII was the
fall of France June 1940 and Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union
in June 1941.
• On June 22, 1941, Hitler launched his attack on the Soviet
Union. Neither Stalin nor Hitler trusted each other had were both
planning to double cross one another
• The Atlantic Conference was held in August 1941 between
Churchill and Roosevelt and the result was the eight point
Atlantic Charter. It outlined the aspirations of the democracies for
a better world at wars end. It argued for rights for individuals
rather than nations and laid the groundwork for later advocacy
on behalf of universal human rights.
U.S. DESTROYERS AND HITLER'S U-BOATS
CLASH
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Because of fear of German submarine sinking, the U.S. agreed to escort British
ships carrying provisions as far as Iceland.
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Clashes between U.S. and German ships were inevitable Example: the Greer, the
Kearny, and the Reuben James
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By the middle of November 1941, Congress annulled the useless Neutrality Act of
1939.
SURPRISE ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR
• Still involved in war with China, enraged at America for imposing
embargos on key supplies in Japan in 1940, Japan has no choice
but to back off China or attack the U.S. They chose the latter.
• Because the Americans broke Japanese code and knew war was
impeding upon them but could not attack. They suspected an
attack on British Malaya or the Philippines.
• On December 7, 1941, Japanese air bombers attacked the navy
base located at Pearl Harbor and wiped out dozens of ships and
wounding or killing 3,000 men.
• One day after the “date that will live in infamy” the U.S. declared
war on the Japanese and on December 11, 1941, Germany and
Italy declared war on the U.S.
AMERICA’S TRANSFORMATION FROM
BYSTANDER TO BELLIGERENT
• Up until the attack on Pearl Harbor most Americans wanted to
stay out of the war but the attack on American soil enraged
Americans and gave them a fighting passion.
• Although the United States wanted to stay out of the war, the
helped the British but was extremely against Japanese
aggression it was stuck in the middle.
• After coming to the realization the appeasement didn't’t work
against “iron wolves” Americans finally realized that only full war
was needed to keep the world safe for democracy and against
anarchy and dictatorship