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36 Cards in this Set
- Front
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London Economic Conference, 1933
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revealed how thoroughly Roosevelt’s early foreign policy was subordinated to his strategy for domestic economic recovery. The delegates of this meeting hoped to organize a coordinated international attack on global depression. They were particularly eager to stabilize the values of the various nations currencies and the rates at which they could be exchanged. Roosevelt had first agreed to send an American delegation , including Secretary of State Cordell Hull, but he started to have second thoughts about the conference’s agenda. Roosevelt was unwilling to sacrifice the possibility of domestic recovery for the sake of international cooperation. America withdrew from the negotiations and scolded the conference for attempting to stabilize currencies.
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Good Neighbor Policy
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Roosevelt’s noninvolvement in Europe and withdrawal from Asia, along with the brotherly embrace of the New World neighbors, suggested that the US was giving up its ambition to be a world power and would content itself instead with being merely a regional power, its interests and activities confined exclusively to the Western Hemisphere.
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Mexican oil expropriation, 1938
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When the Mexican gov’t seized Yankee oil properties in 1938, American investors vehemently demanded armed intervention to repossess their confiscated businesses. But Roosevelt successfully resisted the badgering and a settlement was threshed out in 1941, even though the oil companies lost much of their original stake.
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Cordell Hull
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Secretary of State who was supposed to be sent to the LEC; his zeal for reciprocity was unflagging and he succeeded in negotiating pacts with 21 countries by the end of 1939.
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Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act, 1934
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Designed in part to lift American export trade from the depression doldrums, this enlightened measure was aimed at both relief and recovery. At the same time, it activated the low-tariff policies of the New Dealers.
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The rise to power of Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini, and Adolf Hitler
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Post 1918 chaos of Europe and the Great Depression, spawned the spread of totalitarianism. The Communist USSR led the way, with the crafty and ruthless Joseph Stalin finally emerging as dictator. Benito Mussolini, a swaggering Fascist, seized the reigns of power in Italy during 1922. Adolf Hitler, a fanatic, plotted and harangued his way into control of Germany in 1933 with liberal use of the “big lie.”
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Rome-Berlin Axis, 1936
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Nazi Hitler and the Fascist Mussolini allied themselves.
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Ethiopian Invasion, 1935
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Mussolini, seeking glory and empire in Africa, brutally attacked Ethiopia in 1935 with bombers and tanks. The brave defenders armed with spears and ancient firearms were speedily crushed. Members of the League of Nations could have caused Mussolini’s war machine to creak to a halt.
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Isolationism
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received a strong boost from these alarms abroad. Though disapproving of the dictators, Americans still believed that their encircling seas conferred a kind of mystic immunity.
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Nye Committee
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A Senate committee, headed by Senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota, was appointed in 1934 to investigate the “blood business.” The blood business was the people who were writing articles and books that condemned munitions manufacturers as war-fomenting “merchants of death.”
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Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936, 1937
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They 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 a belligerent ship, sell or transport munitions to a belligerent, or make loans to a belligerent.
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Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939
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Spanish rebels who rose gainst the left leaning republican government in Madrid were headed by fascistic General Francisco Franco. He undertook to overthrow the established Loyalist regime. At first, Washington continued relations with the Loyalist government but Congress, with the encouragement of Roosevelt, amended the existing neutrality legislation so to apply an arms embargo to both Loyalists and rebels.
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Japanese invasion of China, 1937
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The Japanese militarists, at the Marco Polo bridge near Beijing, touched off the explosion that led to an all-out invasion of China. In a sense this attack was the curtain raiser of the WWII. Roosevelt declined to invoke the neutrality legislation by refusing to call the China incident an officially declared war.
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FDR’s quarantine speech, 1937
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Alarmed by the recent aggressions of Italy and Japan, he called for “positive endeavors” to “quarantine” the aggressors—presumably by economic embargoes. The speech trigged a cyclone of protest from isolationists and other foes of involvement;
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Panay incident, 1937
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In December of 1937, Japanese aviators bombed and sank an American gunboat, _____, in Chinese waters, with a loss of two killed and thirty wounded. Tokyo hastened to make apologies and pay a proper indemnity.
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Rhineland invasion, 1935
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He brazenly marched into the demilitarized German Rhineland while France and Britain looked on in an agony of indecision.
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Holocaust
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Hitler undertook to persecute and then exterminate the Jewish population in the areas under his control. In the end he wiped out about 6 million innocent victims.
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Austrian annexation, 1938
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Suddenly, in March 1938, Hitler bloodlessly occupied German-Speaking Austria, his birthplace. The democratic powers, wringing their hands in despair prayed that this was his last grab too satisfy his passion for conquest.
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Sudetenland, 1938
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Hitler could not stop. He began to make bullying demands for the German-inhabited Sudetenland of neighboring Czechoslovakia. The leaders of Britain and France, eager to appease Hitler, sought frantically to bring the dispute to the conference table. President Roosevelt, also deeply alarmed, kept the wires hot with personal messages to both Hitler and Mussolini urging a peaceful settlement.
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Munich Conference, 1938
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The Western European democracies, badly unprepared for war, betrayed Czechoslovakia to Germany when they consented to the shearing away of Sudetenland. They hoped—and these hopes were shared by the American people—that the concessions at the conference table would slake Hitler’s thirst for power and bring “peace in our time.” Indeed Hitler had publicly promised that Sudetenland is “the last territorial claim I have to make in Europe.”
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Appeasement
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it was symbolized by the ugly word Munich, and turned out to be merely surrender on the installment plan. It was like giving a cannibal a finger in the hope of saving an arm. In March, scarcely six months later, Hitler erased the rest of Czechoslovakia from the map, contrary to his vows. The democratic world was once again stunned.
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Hitler-Stalin Non-Aggression Treaty, 1939
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The British and French had been negotiating with Moscow to secure a mutual defense treaty but the Soviet Union astounded the world by signing a nonaggression pact with Hitler. It meant that the Nazi German leader now had a green light to make war on Poland and the Western democracies, without fearing a stab in the back from the Soviet Union—his Communist arch-foe. Consternation struck those wishful thinkers in Western Europe who had fondly hoped that Hitler might be egged upon Stalin so that the twin menaces would bleed each other to death.
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“Cash and Carry” Neutrality Act, 1939
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It provided that henceforth the European democracies might buy American war materials, but only on a “cash and carry basis.” This meant that they would have to transport the munitions in their own ships, after paying for them in cash. America would thus avoid loans, war debts, and the torpedoing if American arms-carriers.
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Phony War
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The months following the collapse of Poland, while France and Britain marked time, were known as the “phony war.” Inaction during this anxious period was relieved by the Soviets, who wantonly attacked neighboring Finland in an effort to secure strategic buffer territory.
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Invasion of France, 1940
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An abrupt end to the phony war came in April 1940 when Hitler, again without warning, overran his weaker neighbors Denmark and Norway, Hardly pausing for breath, he attacked Netherlands and Belgium then attacked France, By late June, France was forced to surrender, but not until Mussolini had pounced on its rear for a jackal’s share of the loot.
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Winston Churchill comes to power
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German invasions providentially brought forth an inspired leader in Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the bulldog-jawed orator who nerved his people to fight off the fearful air bombings of their cities.
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Battle of Britain, 1940
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For months, the Battle of Britain raged in the air over the British Isles. The Royal Air Force’s tenacious defense of its native islands eventually led Hitler to postpone his planned invasion of Britain indefinitely.
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Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies
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Supporters of aid to Britain formed propaganda groups, the most potent of which was the CDAAA. Its argument was double-barreled. To interventionists, it could appeal for direct succor to the British by such slogans as “Britain is Fighting Our Fight.” To the isolationists, it could appeal for assistance to the democracies by “All Methods Short of War,” so that the terrible conflict would be kept in faraway Europe.
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The America First Committee (Lindbergh)
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The isolationists, determined to avoid American bloodshed at all costs, organized the America First Committee and proclaimed, “England Will Fight to the Last American.” They contended that America should concentrate what strength it had to defend its own shores, lest a victorious Hitler, after crushing Britain, plot a transoceanic assault. Their basic philosophy was “The Yanks Are Not Coming,” and their most effective speechmaker was the famed aviator Colonel Charles A. Lindbergh, who, ironically, had narrowed the Atlantic in 1927.
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Destroyer deal, 1940
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On September 2, 1940, Roosevelt agreed to transfer to Great Britain fifty old-model, four funnel destroyers left over from World War I. In return the British promised to hand over to the US eight valuable defensive base sites, stretching from Newfoundland to South America. These strategically located outposts were to remain under the Stars and Stripes for 90 years.
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Wendell Willkie, 1940
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Philadelphia convention was swept off its feet by a colorful latecomer, Willkie, a German-descended son of Hoosier Indiana. This dynamic lawyer had until recently been a Democrat and the head of a huge public utilities corporation. A complete novice in politics, he had rocketed from political nothingness in a few short weeks. His great appeal lay in his personality, for he was magnetic, transparently trustful, and honest in a homespun, Linconesque way. He was thought to be the only candidate who could possibly beat Roosevelt. Willkie hit hard at Rooseveltian “dictatorship” and the third term when he was campaigning. His promises were very similar to Roosevelt’s.
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Lend-Lease Act, 1941
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“An Act Further to Promote the Defense of the United States.” – Sprung on the country after the election was safely over, it was praised by the administration as a device that would keep the nation out of the war rather than drag it in. The underlying concept was “Send guns, not sons” or “Billions, not bodies.” America would be the arsenal of democracy. It would send a limitless supply of arms to the victims of aggression, who in turn would finish the job and keep the war on their side of the Atlantic. Lend-lease was heatedly debated throughout the land and in Congress. Isolationists and anti-Roosevelt Republicans were the main opposition.
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Hitler invades USSR, 1941
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On June 22, 1941, Hitler launched a devastating attack on his Soviet neighbor. This timely assault was an incredible stroke of good fortune for the democratic world—or so it seemed at the time. The two fiends could now slit each other’s throats on the icy steppes of Russia. Or they would if the Soviets did not quickly collapse, as many military experts predicted.
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Atlantic Charter
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With the surrender of the Soviet Union still a dread possibility, the drama-charged Atlantic Conference was held in August 1941. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, with cigar embedded in his cherubic face, secretly met with Roosevelt on a warship off the foggy coast of Newfoundland. This was the first of a series of history-making conferences between the two statesmen for the discussion of common problems, including the menace of Japan in the Far East. The most memorable offspring was the eight-point Atlantic Charter. It was formally accepted by Roosevelt and Churchill and endorsed by the Soviet Union later that year. Suggestive of Wilson’s 14 points, the new covenant outlined the aspirations of the democracies for a better world at the war’s end.
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Greer, Kearney, and Reuben James, 1941
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Greer – It was trailing a German U-boat and was attacked by the U-boat, without damage to either side. Roosevelt then proclaimed a shoot-on-sight policy.
Kearny- The escorting destroyer engaged in a battle with U-boats, lost eleven men when it was crippled but was not sent to the bottom Reuben James- was torpedoed and sunk off southwestern Iceland, with the loss of more than a hundred officers and enlisted men. |
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Japanese embargo, 1940
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Late in 1940, Washington finally imposed the first of its embargoes on Japan-bound supplies. This blow was followed by a freezing gof Japnese assets in the US and a cessation of all shipments of gasoline and other sinews of war in mid 1941.
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