THE SHADOW
OF WAR
International Affairs
1921-1941
A26q
7.3.20
GUIDING QUESTION
● How and for what reasons did
U.S. foreign policy change
between 1920 and 1941?
(To what extent did the United States
adopt an isolationist policy in the 1920s
and 1930s?)
U.S. Foreign Policy to WWI
● isolationism
● nationalism
● internationalism
DIPLOMACY IN THE 1920S:
ENGAGEMENT WITHOUT ENTANGLEMENTS
● Peace with Germany, 1921
● League of Nations - “unofficial observers”
● Washington Conference (1922)




Five-Power Naval Treaty of 1922
Four-Power Treaty
Nine-Power Treaty – “Open Door” in China
Significance: battleships and aircraft carriers only;
no enforcement mechanism
● Kellogg-Briand Pact (Pact of Paris)

(1928)
Problems: “defensive wars”, no enforcement mechanism
● Fordney-McCumber Tariff
● Dawes Plan (1924)
(1922)
DIPLOMACY IN THE 1930s:
FROM ENGAGEMENT TO ISOLATIONISM
● Manchuria (1931) - “Stimson Doctrine” (1932)
● Hoover – troops out of Haiti (1932), Nicaragua (1933)
● “Good Neighbor Policy”




1933 – US renounced intervention (Roosevelt Corollary)
1934 - Marines pulled out of Haiti
1934 – Cuba released from terms of Platt Amendment
1938 – Mexico nationalized oil cos.; money settlement instead
armed intervention
● U.S. recognized the Soviet Union (1933)
● World Economic (London) Conference (1933)
FROM ISOLATIONISM TO WAR
● Nye Committee (1934)
● Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936 and 1937
● German aggression



1935 – compulsory
military service; air
force and armored
divisions
Rhineland, 1936
Austria, 1938
● Munich Conference
(Sept 1938)

appeasement
● March 1939 – Germany
took remainder of
Czechoslovakia
FROM ISOLATIONISM TO WAR
● Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression
Pact (August 1939)
● Invasion of Poland (Sept 1, 1939)
● blitzkrieg




Denmark
Norway
France
Dunkirk
● Battle of
Britain
(Aug. 1940 –
June 1941)
● Invasion
of Soviet
Union
(June 1941)
●
● Soviet Aggression


Eastern Poland (Sept 1939)
Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania (1940)
● “moral embargo”
against USSR
FROM ISOLATIONISM TO WAR
● FDR’s “Quarantine” speech
(1937, after Japanese invasion of China)
● “Preparedness”
● Change in US Policy


Most alarmed by German conquests, but wanted no
part in war
FDR: Britain essential to US defense; began chipping
away at neutrality legislation any way he could to
assist GB
● cash-and-carry policy (1939)
● Selective Service Act (Sept 1940)
● Destroyers for Bases Deal
(Sept 1940)
● Election of 1940

Wendall Willkie
Anti-Third Term Buttons, 1940
Gallup Polls: European War and World War 1938–1940
FROM ISOLATIONISM TO WAR
●
●
●
●
●
“Arsenal of Democracy”
Lend-Lease Act (March 1941)
America First Committee
“shoot on sight” (July 1941)
Atlantic Charter (Aug 1941)
Roosevelt and Churchill at Atlantic Charter
Meeting, 1941 (Franklin D. Roosevelt Library)
America First bumper sticker: "Keep Our Boys at Home"
(Herbert Hoover Presidential Library)
Japanese Aggression 1931-1941
Japanese Aggression through 1941
FROM ISOLATIONISM TO WAR
DISPUTES WITH JAPAN
● economic pressure on Japan (steel, oil)
● Pearl Harbor (Dec 7 1941)


2400 killed (over 1100 on Arizona), 1200 wounded;
20 warships sunk or severely damaged; 150 planes destroyed
FDR before
Congress asking
for a Declaration
of War against
Japan, Dec. 8,
1941
The U.S.S. West Virginia, Pearl Harbor
(U.S. Army)
Japanese
Expansion and
Early Battles in
the Pacific