The United States in World
War II
Lesson 34
America Moves Toward War
Part 1
Back in America, the
people still did not
want to get involved.
President Roosevelt
knew that the allies
needed help. So he
talked Congress into
allowing the allies to
buy American arms.
They would have to
pay cash and carry
them back on their
own ships.
Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act, March, 1941 allowing America
to lend or lease arms to countries that were vital to American
security. The U.S. Navy began escorting British ships. Hitler began
ordering his submarines to sink any cargo ship.
President Roosevelt compared it to “lending a garden hose to a next-door
neighbor whose house is on fire.”
From the spring through the fall of 1941, individual surface attacks by
individual U-boats gave way to what became known as the wolf pack attack.
At night groups of up to 40 submarines patrolled areas in the North
Atlantic where convoys could be expected. Wolf packs were successful in
sinking as much as 350,000 tons of shipments in a single month.
Japan had begun expanding in 1931 when they took over
Manchuria in Northern China. Then they went after the rest
of China. The Japanese then decided to go after the European
colonies in Southeast Asia.
The Americans had found out about this by cracking a Japanese secret
code. They were worried about losing the Philippine Islands and Guam. The
U.S. began sending aid and advisors to the Chinese. When the Japanese
took over French Indochina in July, 1941, Roosevelt cut off oil shipments to
them.
The United States refused to recognize Japanese conquests in
Asia and imposed an embargo on exports of oil and steel to
Japan, which Japan desperately needed.
Roosevelt began planning for the war he was
certain would come. He proposed to extend the
term of draftees passed in the House of
Representatives by only one vote.
While Congress voted on the extension of the draft, Roosevelt and
Churchill met secretly in August, 1941, at a summit aboard the battleship
USS Augusta.
Although Churchill hoped for a military commitment, he settled for a joint
declaration of war aims, called the Atlantic Charter. Both Britain and the
US pledged the following: collective security, disarmament, selfdetermination, economic cooperation, and freedom of the seas.
Roosevelt and Churchill secretly met and signed a declaration
called the Atlantic Charter. The Atlantic Charter upheld free
trade and allowed people the right to choose their own
government.
Roosevelt
disclosed to
Churchill
that he
couldn’t ask
Congress for
a declaration
of war
against
Germany,
but “he
would wage
war” and do
“everything”
to “force an
incident.”
The Atlantic Charter became the basis of a new document called “A
Declaration of the United Nations.” The term United Nations was
suggested by Roosevelt to express the common purpose of the Allies, those
nations that had fought the Axis powers.
On September 4th, 1941, a U-boat fired on a U.S Navy destroyer. Roosevelt
told the U.S. Navy to shoot on any German submarines on sight. This was
somewhat of an undeclared war at sea with the Germans.