Foreign Policy timeline, 1920s-40s
| 1928 | Kellogg-Briand Pact: Deeply sensible of their solemn duty to promote the welfare of mankind; Persuaded that the time has come when a frank renunciation of war as an instrument of national policy should be made to the end that the peaceful and friendly relations now existing between their peoples may be perpetuated; Convinced that all changes in their relations with one another should be sought only by pacific means and be the result of a peaceful and orderly process, and that any signatory Power which shall hereafter seek to promote its national interests by resort to war should be denied the benefits furnished by this Treaty; Hopeful that, encouraged by their example, all the other nations of the world will join in this humane endeavor and by adhering to the present Treaty as soon as it comes into force bring their peoples within the scope of its beneficent provisions, thus uniting the civilized nations of the world in a common renunciation of war as an instrument of their national policy; THE PRESIDENT OF THE GERMAN REICH, THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF THE BELGIANS, THE PRESIDENT OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC, HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF GREAT BRITAIN IRELAND AND THE BRITISH DOMINIONS BEYOND THE SEAS, EMPEROR OF INDIA, HIS MAJESTY THE KING OF ITALY, HIS MAJESTY THE EMPEROR OF JAPAN, THE PRESIDENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF POLAND THE PRESIDENT OF THE CZECHOSLOVAK REPUBLIC, Have decided to conclude a Treaty. Senator Hiram Johnson on Kellogg-Briand: "a helmless ship, a houseless street, a wordless book, a swordless sheath." |
| 1931 |
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| 1933 | US proclaims
“Good Neighbor” policy and recognizes |
| 1934 |
Senate's Nye Committee, variously influenced by the remnants of prairie populism, anti-New Deal small government types and socialists, conducts hearings on "Merchants of Death," blaming arms merchants and banks for foisting WWI on the people; finds out that the Du Ponts of Delaware sold $1.25B of chemicals to Allies, but ends in 1936 without finding link between British pro-war propaganda and US involvement, or "merchants of death" and US involvement
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| 1935 |
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| 1935-37 |
US passes neutrality legislation—no shipment of “arms, ammunition, or implements of war” (including oil? not clear) to any belligerents in war, irrespective of whether there is a moral difference between them; prohibition later extended to loans and credits as well; US citizens travel on belligerent nations’ vessels at own risk; Nazi Germany begins to implement racial laws. 2/37 poll shows 95% of Americans agree that nation should not participate in any future war. On 4/37, 20th anniversary of US entry into WWI, Emergency Peace Campaign's No Foreign War Crusade stages rallies in 2000 cities, 500 campuses to resist war, get ROTC off campus. 10/37, FDR's "quarantine" speech in Chicago, heart of isolationism, denounces "the reign of terror and international lawlessness" threatening civilization. "Peace-loving nations," he warns, can no longer ignore treaty violations or seek "escape through isolation or neutrality." Aggressors must be "quarantined," though he does not specify how. The next day, he tells reporters that he is "looking for some way to peace. I can't tell you what the methods will be. We are looking for a program." |
| 1936-1939 |
Germany occupies Rhineland (March); Spanish Civil War (July); Lawrence Dennis' The Coming American Fascism predicts that liberalism and capitalism will fail, inevitably bringing on a better fascist society. "There ought to be more emotionalism in politics," one of his followers says. Life later calls him "America's #1 intellectual Fascist." He's not alone: German-American Bund in NYC is pro-Nazi (here's their rally at Madison Square Garden in NYC, 1939); Silver Shirts are a homegrown fascist movement. Jan. 37—2/3 of American public has no opinion of war;
at year's end, it is not ranked among the ten "most interesting
events" of the year, although the Japanese invasion of Manchuria
is rated #2 (after floods in Ohio). In 1938, more than half of the population
has no opinion on the issue; of those who do, 75% sympathize with the
Republicans. Congress extends arms embargo to Spanish Civil War, as
well as to anyone in civil wars—except in Latin America--Franco calls US non-intervention in the war "a
gesture we Nationalists will never forget"; FDR later calls it
"a great mistake." Later (May 1937), US makes travel on belligerent
vessels illegal; raw materials OK to ship to belligerents, but only
via “cash-and-carry”: they pay cash for and carry such materials in
their own ships, so US can trade with belligerent countries, but not
really "help" them. NY Herald-Tribune: this law is
"an act to preserve the United States from intervention in the
War of 1914-18."
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| 1937 |
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| 1938 |
Amendment's support drops near 50%, 1939. Never passed. Also re-proposed during Vietnam War, 1971. Kristallnacht (Nov.). In response, US recalls its German ambassador for "consultation." He never returns to Germany. Asked whether he would offer sanctuary to Jewish refugees, FDR says he has given the matter a great deal of study and refuses to raise immigration quotas.
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| 1939 |
January: FDR's State of the Union address requests nearly $1.5B for defense (in national budget of $9B) and says arms embargo is unfair and must be reformed: "the frontiers of the United States are on the Rhine," he tells a Senate committee, to "stony silence." He denies making the remark to reporters the next day and refuses to say where US borders end when asked point-blank (see map below as well). He also says that the US has "many methods short of war" to assist friendly regimes. Germany annexes rest of Czechoslovakia (March), as explained by Robot Chicken; Franco’s Fascists win Spanish Civil War (April) and are recognized by France, England, US; Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (Aug.) splits Poland and declares non-aggression between Germany and USSR; Germany invades Poland (September), starting WWII when France and England declare war 2 days later; in a fireside chat, FDR both warns listeners not to "thoughtlessly or falsely talk of America sending its armies to European fields" but also that "every word that comes through the air, every ship that sails the sea, every battle that is fought does affect the American future....When peace has been broken anywhere, peace of all countries everywhere is in danger. I cannot ask that every American remain neutral in thought. Even a neutral cannot be asked to close his mind or conscience"; US sentiment 84% pro-Allies (Oct.); Hitler: “America is not dangerous to us.” 68% of Americans agree that US should not have entered WWI; 34% blame "propaganda and selfish interests" for US entry. BUT: the US has the 18th-largest army in the world (just ahead of Bulgaria), 175,000 men. In May, 1940, it could support only 15,000 men in combat at one time; Germany has 2 million men with the same capacity. General George Marshall tells FDR, "if you don't do something, and do it right away, I don't know what is going to happen to this country."
Representative Beverly M. Vincent of Brownsville, Ky. had a trying week. First short, grey, steely-eyed Congressman Vincent was besieged in his office by a harpy-like group of women who said they were from Kentucky (the Congressman thought they were really from Cincinnati) and grew so bitter in their denunciation of conscription that he had to throw them out. Then, with the rest of the House, Representative Vincent had to sit through an equally violent denunciation of conscription by small, red-faced Martin L. Sweeney of Ohio. A Coughlinite and Irish patrioteer, Martin Sweeney declaimed that conscription was a scheme to deliver the U. S. to the British devils. When Representative Sweeney finally ran out of gas, he sat down next to Representative Vincent. It was too much.
Taking careful aim and with obvious satisfaction, Beverly Vincent planted a good hard right, smack! It staggered, and silenced, Martin Sweeney. Though Congressmen not infrequently threaten one another and have been known to throw bound copies of the [Congressional] Record when vexed, ancient Doorkeeper Joseph Sinnot said it was the best blow he had heard in his 50 years in the House....But regardless of differences and qualifications, one great question had been settled: for the first time in history the U. S. was going to force its citizens to learn the art of self-defense in peacetime—from which the House voted to expunge the Sweeney-Vincent colloquy. |
| 6/1940 |
(May) FDR appears before a join session of Congress to ask for immediate appropriation of $1B for defense. It eventually appropriates $6.4B for defense for 1941, as compared to $1.7B in 1940. (June) Hitler writes Mussolini that American arms production was "simply a joke," but that "the recurring undertone of threats" in FDR's words means that they should try to end the war as soon as possible. France falls; more than 60% of those polled believe US will eventually be drawn into the war, though 92% still oppose US entry (only 7% supported entering the war to help the British, barely more than those who supported entering the war on Germany's side); in address at UVa, FDR "proclaim[s] certain truths": victory for "the gods of force and hate" will endanger all democracies in the west, so the US must help its allies, and it must arm for war "full speed ahead." But he adds that "it's a terrible thing to look over your shoulder to when you are trying to lead--and find no one there," to his speechwriter. FDR deposes isolationist Secretary of War, evades Congress and starts loaning “surplus” arms to Britain (Summer), which fears a Nazi invasion from France--after begging from Churchill ("in the long history of the world, this is a thing to do now"), US sends England 54 WWI destroyers and England gives US 99-year no-rent lease on eight naval and air bases in Newfoundland, Caribbean, Bermuda, which makes it a trade and therefore not subject to Congress; FDR had been Assistant Secretary of the Navy during WWI and had "practically memorized" the work of Alfred Thayer Mahan, with its emphasis on bases to extend American power. About 60% of population favors the deal, though isolationists are furious: Rep. George Tinkham (R-Mass.) blasts him as "a lawless dictator," the St. Louis Post-Dispatch says he has committed an act of war and calls him "America's first dictator....We may as well say good-bye to our liberties," and Republican nominee Wendell Willkie calls this "the most arbitrary and dictatorial action ever taken by any President in the history of the United States." Several years later, he says that he regrets these words more than anything else he said during the campaign. Churchill says it was "decidedly un-neutral" and might justify a German declaration of war against the US. The chief of the German admiralty demands, but is not granted, the right to unlimited submarine warfare, including into US ports. At the same time, Hitler postpones the Nazi invasion of England, originally planned for Sep. 15. America First committee forms (Sept. 4—day after Lend-Lease Bill submitted to Congress), joining the American Fellowship Forum, founded spring 1939; membership 800,000 at its height. Anne Morrow Lindbergh's The Wave of the Future makes the most notorious argument that when Fascism comes here, it will be "peculiarly American, crisp, clear, tart, sunny and crimson--like an American apple...as American as a boy's slang...baseball and blue jeans"; there are more than 100 fascist organizations formed in America, 1933-41; draft starts in US; a majority of Americans now believe that helping Great Britain is crucial, "even at the risk of war" (Sept. 16)
At the end of October, the same day Italy attacks Greece, FDR promises "there will be no entanglement" in "some episode beyond our borders." Nominating conventions: FDR pledges non-involvement in foreign wars, but both he and Republican candidate Wendell Willkie are internationalists. (Days before the election, he famously promises the mothers and fathers of America, “Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign war.” He leaves himself a wide loophole, though, explaining to speechwriter Robert Sherwood, “If somebody attacks us, then it isn’t a foreign war, is it?”) Neither party platform really is internationalist, though: Republicans declare themselves "firmly opposed to involving this Nation in a foreign war," though also for the build-up of national defenses; reject the notion of "allies"--US will aid "all peoples fighting for liberty" with anything "not in violation of international law." Democrats are also not going to war "except in case of attack," will also not speak of "allies," and will aid "liberty-loving peoples" in a way "consistent with law." (Republican attacks on FDR for running for a third term: "you may never go to the polls again.") Charles Lindbergh, after the election: "'Democracy' as we have known it is a thing of the past." FDR had told a confidant, "I am absolutely convinced that Lindbergh is a Nazi" in May. FDR's Arsenal of Democracy speech, Dec. 29: "We met the issue of 1933 with courage and realism. We face this new crisis, this new threat to the security of our nation, with the same courage and realism. Never before since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock has our American civilization been in such danger as now....If Great Britain goes down, the Axis powers will control the Continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, Austral-Asia, and the high seas. And they will be in a position to bring enormous military and naval resources against this hemisphere. It is no exaggeration to say that all of us in all the Americas would be living at the point of a gun -- a gun loaded with explosive bullets, economic as well as military....Frankly and definitely there is danger ahead -- danger against which we must prepare. But we well know that we cannot escape danger, or the fear of danger, by crawling into bed and pulling the covers over our heads....Let us no longer blind ourselves to the undeniable fact that the evil forces which have crushed and undermined and corrupted so many others are already within our own gates. Your government knows much about them and every day is ferreting them out. Their secret emissaries are active in our own and in neighboring countries. They seek to stir up suspicion and dissension, to cause internal strife. They try to turn capital against labor, and vice versa. They try to reawaken long slumbering racial and religious enmities which should have no place in this country. They are active in every group that promotes intolerance....Democracy's fight against world conquest is being greatly aided, and must be more greatly aided, by the rearmament of the United States and by sending every ounce and every ton of munitions and supplies that we can possibly spare to help the defenders who are in the front lines. And it is no more un-neutral for us to do that than it is for Sweden, Russia, and other nations near Germany to send steel and ore and oil and other war materials into Germany every day in the week....We must have more ships, more guns, more planes -- more of everything. And this can be accomplished only if we discard the notion of "business as usual."...I want to make it clear that it is the purpose of the nation to build now with all possible speed every machine, every arsenal, every factory that we need to manufacture our defense material. We have the men, the skill, the wealth, and above all, the will.
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| 3/41 |
Lend-Lease begins, funded by $7B from Congress. The bill, symbolically numbered #1776, passes Senate 60-31, House 317-71, aided materially by eyewitness testimony about conditions in England from Willkie; 56% of Americans support it. Even before it passes, FDR covertly sends British 250,000 rifles and 50M rounds of ammunition. Captain America's cover, drawn 12/40, shows our hero punching Hitler, occasioning death threats to the writers. In State of the Union address (Jan.), FDR first describes Four Freedoms. FDR’s firehose analogy. Excerpts from press conference, April 15, 1941: THE PRESIDENT: I don't think I have anything except a little human interest thing that I have saved out yesterday. In the first list of non-military equipment which the British Purchasing Commission wanted, I ran my eye down the list and suddenly it brought back something to me. I remember, once upon a time, I was talking about what people would do if their neighbor's house caught fire—if they happened to have some garden hose in the cellar they would take it out and lend it to their neighbor to put his fire out. On this first list, there are a number of different items like tar, kettles, and road rollers, and pumps, and graders. The last three items are for 900,000 feet of garden hose! (Laughter) Not garden hose but fire hose—actually fire hose—at a total cost of about $300,000. I thought it was a rather nice little coincidence. Q. Mr. President, you said you were going to loan them to them at the time? THE PRESIDENT: Yes, yes. THE PRESIDENT: We will have to get it over the ocean some way. Q. Mr. President, do you have any ocean-going fire hose? A week later, he compares Lindbergh to Civil-War Copperheads: "I don't call that good Americanism." (May) FDR gives nationwide radio address telling listeners that an "unlimited national emergency" exists and "the advance of Hitlerism" must be checked now: strengthen American defenses "to the extreme limit of our national power and authority," making the country "the arsenal of democracy." German military planners realize they're in for a long war; Hitler studiously avoids direct conflict with the US but continues with plans to invade the USSR. J Recall the debate about borders from 1939. American borders keep widening, and they are not enforced equally: US ships "escort" German ships attempting to escape the "neutral zone" by running without lights or radio noise, broadcasting their presence to waiting British ships that sink them as soon as they pass the limits of the border. Hitler, fearful of a two-front war involving the US, orders submarines not to attack any convoys.
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| 8/41 |
Roosevelt and Churchill sign Atlantic Charter—essentially states Wilsonian goals for postwar world (free trade, self-determination, non-aggression, freedom of the seas--it essentially predicts the UN and NATO), which England, and Churchill in particular, is ambivalent about. He tells his Secretary of State for India that the Charter clearly does not "intend to suggest that the natives of Nigeria or East Africa could by a majority vote choose the form of Government under which they live, or the Arabs by such a vote expel the Jews from Palestine. It is evident that prior obligations require to be considered and respected, and that circumstances alter cases." 9/11/41: Lindbergh's notorious America First speech, blaming British and Jews for pushing American intervention, destroys his reputation even among isolationists. "Un-American," say the anti-interventionist Hearst papers. The Des Moines Register calls it "intemperate, unfair, and dangerous in its implications." Still, in 1940 about 20% of Americans see Jews as a "national menace," more than any other group--including Germans, and 1/3 anticipate a "widespread campaign" against Jews. Even in July 1942, when news of the Holocaust has leaked, nearly 1 in 6 of those polled think that Hitler is "doing the right thing" to the JewsAs late as Nov., 31% oppose revisiting Neutrality Acts despite obvious aggression by Nazis. House repeals remaining parts of Neutrality Act, 212-194 (Senate 50-37) in Oct. and renews draft (in August) by narrowest possible margin, 203-202. Japan pushes ahead with Pearl Harbor plans, despite the opposition of Admiral Isoru Yamamoto, who is in charge of the operation but thinks "a war with so little chance of success should not be fought." In October, German u-boat U568 hits the USS Kearny, which is escorting a convoy, with a torpedo, killing 11, the first official US combat deaths in WWII. |
| 12/7/41 |
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Some broader questions: does this chain of events suggest
that the