Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Shadow of War

Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Shadow of War

Introduction • Americans in the 1930’s tried to turn their backs on the world problems. Americans had their own burdens to shoulder and the cost of getting involved in foreign problems seemed too great.

The London Government • The 66 nation London conference met in the summer of 1933 and hoped to organize a coordinated attack on the global depression. They were eager to stabilize the currency, and this was essential to the revival of world trade which had all but evaporated by 1933. • Roosevelt’s first thought was to send someone else, but he wanted to pursue his gold-juggling and other inflationary policies at home as a means of stimulating American recovery. At the time he was unwilling to sacrifice any domestic recovery for International Corporation. He scolded the conference for attempting to stabilize currencies and declaring America’s withdrawal from the negotiations.

The London Government • With this announcement the Conference was ruined, and this plunged the world into deeper into debt. Roosevelt’s actions played directly into the hands of the power mad dictators who were determined to shatter the peace of the world. American will eventually pay a high price for the narrow minded belief that the United States could go it alone in the modern world.

Freedom For(From?) the Filipinos and Recognition for the Russians • With the withdrawal from Europe Roosevelt also did this with Asia. President McKinley’s dream burst when the Great Depression hit. His dream was to have an imperialistic Far East. However, Americans were eager to drop the tropical liability in the Philippine Islands. • Congress passed the Tydings-McDuffie Act in 1934 which allowed for the independence of the Philippines after a 12 years period of economic and political tutelage that is by 1946. The United States agreed to abandon its army bases, but continued to have their naval bases.

Freedom For(From?) the Filipinos and Recognition for the Russians • The American people were not so much giving freedom to the Philippines as they were freeing themselves from the Philippines. With this it left the Philippines to their fate and yet in Tokyo, they were calculating that they had little to fear from an inward-looking America that was abandoning its principle possession in Asia. • Roosevelt made at least one international gesture was that he formally recognized the Soviet Union in 1933. By doing this Roosevelt was hoping that the Soviet Union would be a friendly counterweight to the possible threat of Germany manpower and a Japanese power in Asia.

Becoming a Good Neighbor • Roosevelt made new relations with Latin America by proclaiming that he would like this nation to have a good neighbor. New world powers suggested that the United States didn’t want world power, but their interests and activities confined to just the Western Hemisphere. • With what was going on in Europe, Roosevelt was eager to line up the Latin Americans to help defend the Western Hemisphere. Roosevelt had serious attempts to usher in a new era of friendliness, though hurting some US bondholders, paid rich dividends in goodwill among the people in the South. • Roosevelt was cheered and to the South the North seemed less like a vulture and more an eagle.

Storm-Cellar Isolationism • Post 1918 chaos in Europe, followed by a Great Depression allowed the spread of totalitarian to rise and that the state was everything and the individual was nothing. The USSR (Russia) led the way with their leader Joseph Stalin and will emerge as a dictator. In 1936 he began to execute hundreds of thousands of his own people, and banishing millions to labor camps. He also his own people destroyed who were suspected of challenging authority. Mussolini was also in the reins of power in Italy during 1922. Adolf Hitler also plots to gain control of Germany in 1933. • Hitler was the most dangerous out of all of them. He was a frustrated Austrian painter with hypnotic talents as an orator and a leader. He makes his mark by securing control of the Nazi party by making political capital of the Treaty of Versailles and Germany’s depression that is causing unemployment.

Storm-Cellar Isolationism • Germans had fallen behind on their payments and saw no way out of this escape from the plague of economic chaos and national disgrace. Hitler at the time withdrew from the League of Nations and illegally rearming his country. In 1936 Hitler and Mussolini both united together and formed the Rome-Berlin Axis. • This type of attitude was also spreading in the Far East. Japan had unresented feelings towards the Treaty of Versailles and like the others felt that they needed more space for their millions of people. Determined to find a place in 1934 they gave a termination notice to the Washington Naval Treaty. Also by 1935 had dropped out of the League of Nations. Five years later it joined arms with Germany and Italy in the pact.

Storm-Cellar Isolationism • Mussolini brutally attacked Ethiopia in 1935 with bombers and tanks. The League of Nations could have put it down, but they did not want to risk global hostilities, and by doing that they signed their own death warrant. • Isolationism was rotting in America, and they believed that their encircling seas conferred a kind of mystic immunity. Americans had no idea that revolutionary forces were being harnessed by dictators. American also feared that they might be drawn into it. There was nationwide talk of developing a constitutional amendment to forbid a declaration of war by Congress except in case of invasion unless there was a favorable popular vote.

Congress Legislates Neutrality • Responding to overwhelming pressure, Congress made haste to legislate the nation out of war. Action was spurred when Mussolini’s Ethiopian assault plunged the world into a new bloodbath. The Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936, and 1937 taken together, stipulated that when the president proclaimed the existence of a foreign war, certain restrictions would automatically go into effect. No American could legally sail on belligerent ships, sell or transport munitions to a belligerent, or make loans to a belligerent. • The Neutrality acts were specifically tailored to keep the nation out of a conflict like World War I. IF they had not been sucked in-at least not in April 1917. However neutrality proved to be tragically shortsighted, and America assumed that the decision for peace or war lay in its own hands. What remained was with these events are now going to be controlled by dictators.

Appeasing Japan and Germany • In 1937 the Japanese militarists near Beijing touched off the explosion that led to an all-out invasion of China. In a sense this attack was the curtain raiser for WWII. • Roosevelt declined to invoke the recently passed neutrality legislation by refusing to call the China incident an officially declared war. If he had put the existing restrictions into effect, he would have cut off munitions which the Chinese were highly dependent upon. • In Chicago, President Roosevelt delivered the Quarantine Speech in 1937, and in the speech he called for positive endeavors to quarantine the aggressors by economic embargoes. Many feared that this quarantine would end up as a shooting quarantine. Startled by the response, he retreated and sought less direct means to curb the dictators.

Appeasing Japan and Germany • The isolationist mood intensified especially when it came to China. In 1937 Japan bombed and sank an American gunboat, the Panay, in Chinese waters. These types of actions usually caused all-out war, but Tokyo was quick to apologize and American breathed a deep sigh of relief. They took it further and they subject white Americans living in China to slapping’s and stripping’s. • Hitler was also growing louder and bigger in Europe. In 1935 he opened up a military service that went against the Treaty of Versailles. He marched into the Demilitarized Rhineland while France and Britain stood there in indecision. Hitler also took to persecute and exterminate the Jewish population. In the end he will wipe out 6 million Jews and will whip the German military and air force into a machine the world had yet seen.

Appeasing Japan and Germany • Hitler will then attack and occupy Austria, his birthplace, then he will begin to make bulling demands for the German-inhabited Sudetenland of neighboring Czechoslovakia. Leaders from Britain and France sought to appease Hitler and Roosevelt kept the wires hot with personal messages to both Hitler and Mussolini urging a peaceful settlement. • A conference was finally held in Munich Germany in September of 1938. In the conference Hitler publicly promised Studenland was to be the last territorial claim. Appeasement of the dictators was the symbol of Munich. However in March of 1939, six months later, Hitler suddenly erased the rest of Czechoslovakia from the map, contrary from his vow. The democratic world was again stunned

Hitler’s Belligerency and US Neutrality • Joseph Stalin was the key to the puzzle. While the British and the French were securing a mutual defense with Hitler, the Soviet Union signed a nonaggression treaty with the German dictator. • The Hitler-Stalin pact meant that the Nazi German leader saw the green light to make war on Poland and the Western democracies. With the signing of this act, WWII was only hours away. Hitler now demanded from Poland a return of the areas wrested from Germany after WWI. When Poland did not comply, he sent mechanized divisions crashing into Poland at dawn on September 1, 1939. • Honoring Poland, Britain and Poland declared war, but they were powerless to aid them, which allowed Germany to go on a 3 week of terror. The long-dreaded WWII was now fully launched, and the long truce of 1919-1939 had come to an end.

Hitler’s Belligerency and US Neutrality • President Roosevelt issued proclamations of neutrality, as Americans were overwhelming anti-Nazi and anti-Hitler, and they hoped that democracies would win. American however was desperately determined to stay out: they were not going to be suckers again. • Britain and France were urgently ill-prepared and urgently needing American airplanes and other weapons, but their Neutrality Acts of 1937 raised a sternly forbidding hand. After six weeks of considering lifting the arms embargo they made the Neutrality Act of 1939 which would let European democracies buy American war materials, it would be a carry and cash basis. Roosevelt was now also authorized to proclaim danger zones into which now also let American merchant ships would be forbidden to enter. Overseas demands in the end would end up solving the recession of 1937-1938 and solved the unemployment crisis.

The Fall of France • As Hitler was done invading Poland, he shifted his sights on France. At the same time the Soviets captured and flattened Finland. After the attack on Finland, Hitler began again when he overran his weak neighbors Denmark and Norway. Then in the next month he attacked the Netherlands and Belgium, followed by the paralyzing blow at France. By late June France was forced to surrender. • France’s sudden collapse shocked Americans out of their daydreams. The one country that stood in the way was Britain, and if Britain went under then it would be the death of constitutional governments in Europe. This frightening possibility which seemed to pose a threat to American security steeled the American people to a tremendous effort.

The Fall of France • Roosevelt called upon the nation to build huge fleets and a two ocean navy, which could also check Japan. Congress used 37 billion which was more than the total cost of fighting WWI and about 5 times larger than any New Deal annual budget. • Congress also made a peacetime measure that had 1.2 million troops being trained and also 800,000 reserves required for this global war.

Refugees from the Holocaust • During the late 19th century Jewish communities in Eastern Europe were frequent victims of mob attacks which were approved by local authorities. Instigated by a speech given by Joseph Goebbels, mobs ransacked more than seven thousand Jewish shops and almost all of the country’s synagogues. At least 91 Jews lost their lives and about 30 thousand were sent to concentration camps. This was called Kristallnacht, which means the night of broken glass. • After reports of the Nazi genocide began to be verified in 1942, Roosevelt created the War Refugee Board. However by the end of the war, some 6 million Jews had been murdered in the Holocaust.

Bolstering Britain • Now that France was fallen, now Hitler set his sights on Britain. Britain alone stood between Hitler and his dream of world domination, and the wisdom of neutrality seemed increasingly questionable. Hitler will then launch air attacks and for months the Battle of Britain raged over the British Isles. • The debate intensified in the United States over what foreign policy to embrace. Radio broadcasts from London brought the drama of the nightly German air raids directly into millions of American homes. Sympathy grew but not enough for American to get into the war. • Roosevelt now faced with the decision of going to war or staying the course with neutrality. Both sides of the war had advocates. Britain by this time was in desperate need of destroyers, because German submarines were threatening to starve out Britain with attacks on shipping. On September 2, 1940 Roosevelt transferred four funnel destroyers left over from WWI, and Britain gave 8 defensive base sites.

Bolstering Britain • The shifting of warships from a neutral United States to Britain was a violation in the neutrality acts; however public opinion polls demonstrated that the majority of Americans were determined, even at the risk of armed hostilities to provide the battered British with all aid short of war.

Shattering the Two-Term Tradition • The 1940 Presidential election came in the midst of this crisis. Roosevelt was on one side and two Republican senators Robert Taft and Thomas Dewey and a late bloomer Willkie who was an outspoken liberal on the other. Roosevelt wanted to retire, but he owed his experience hand to the service of his country and humanity. • In the realm of foreign affairs both candidate promised to stay out of war, and strengthen the nation’s defense. Willkie hit hard on Rooseveltian dictatorship and Roosevelt made only a few speeches and his most specific statement was “Your Boys are not going to be sent into any foreign Wars.” Roosevelt triumphed with an electoral win of 449 to 82 votes. Roosevelt might not have won if there hadn’t been a war crisis.

A Landmark Lend-Lease Law • The Lend Lease bill was put on the country when the election was over. The basis for the bill was that it would keep the nation out of war. The underlying concept was Send Guns, Not Sons, or Billions, not Bodies. Roosevelt promised the arsenal of democracy. It would send limitless supply of arms to the victims of aggression. This would also keep the war on the other side of the Atlantic. • The lend lease program marked the abandonment of neutrality, and it geared the US factories for all-out war production. The helped save America’s own skin when the shooting war burst around its head. • Hitler recognized the lend-lease program as an unofficial declaration of war. On May 21, 1941 the Robin Moor an unarmed American merchantman was torpedoed and destroyed by a German submarine outside the war zone.

Charting A New World • Hitler and Stalin were master dictators, and are now going to be masters at double crossing each other. Hitler therefore decided to crush his co-conspirator, seize the oil and other resources of the Soviet Union. On June 22, 1941 Hitler launched a devastating attack on his Soviet neighbor. This attack was a stroke of good luck for the democratic societies. • Roosevelt promised support by making some military supplies available. The United States extended 11 billion in the lend-lease program. However the red army combined with the winter halted Hitler’s invaders at the gates of Moscow. • With the impending doom of the Soviet Union’s surrender, an Atlantic Conference was held in August 1941. Winston Churchill, Roosevelt met in Newfoundland met to discuss the common problems including the menace of Japan in the Far East.

Charting A New World • They endorsed the Atlantic Charter and it was formally accepted by Roosevelt and Churchill and it outlined the aspirations of the democracies for a better world at war’s end. This charter will later help and lay the groundwork universal human rights. • The charter promised that there would be no territorial changes contrary to the wishes of the inhabitants. It further affirmed the right of a people to choose their own form of government abolished by the dictators.

Surprise Assault on Pearl Harbor • Japan’s position in the Far East had grown more and more volatile. The Chinese incident and their constant dependency on shipments of steel, scrap iron, and oil and gasoline from the United States was something that was constantly needed. • Late in the 1940’s finally imposed the first of embargoes and this came by freezing of Japanese assets in the United States and cessation of all shipments of gasoline and other strengths of war. Japan was faced with was either they could knuckle under to the Americans or break out of the embargo ring by a desperate attack on the oil supplies and other riches of Southeast Asia. • Tense negotiations finally came to a head in Washington when the department of justice insisted that Japan get out of China. Those Japanese imperialists refused to give up on a four war to China and they chose to attack.

Surprise Assault on Pearl Harbor • Roosevelt felt that they may attack in the Philippines or Malays. No one in high authority in Washington seems to have believed that the Japanese were either strong enough or foolish enough to strike Hawaii. • On December 7, 1941 it will be a date that will live in infamy; about 3000 casualties were inflicted on American personnel, many aircraft were destroyed, and the battleship fleet was virtually wiped out when all of 8 of the craft were sunk and numerous small vessels were damages or destroyed. • An angered congress officially declared war on December 11, 1941. This challenge was formally accepted on the same day by a unanimous vote of both the Senate and the House. Pearl Harbor was not the full answer to the question of why the United States went to war. This attack was but the last explosion in a long chain reaction.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Shadow of War