Interwar Foreign Policy in two minutes
- After rejecting the League, the United States pursued its own policy: the Washington Naval Conference (1921–1922) limited battleships, and the Dawes Plan (1924) used American loans to support German reparations.
- The Kellogg–Briand Pact (1928) renounced war as an instrument of national policy, but it had no enforcement; more than sixty nations signed it, and the Senate ratified it 85 to 1.
- Marines occupied Haiti from 1915 to 1934 and the Dominican Republic until 1924; Hoover and Roosevelt then turned to the Good Neighbor Policy, pledging nonintervention in Latin America.
- Japan seized Manchuria in 1931, drawing only the Stimson Doctrine of nonrecognition; Italy invaded Ethiopia in 1935, and when Japan invaded China in 1937, Roosevelt's Quarantine Speech drew isolationist protest.
- The Nye Committee blamed bankers and arms makers for 1917, and the Neutrality Acts of 1935–1937 banned arms sales and loans to nations at war, treating aggressor and victim alike.
- After Germany invaded Poland in 1939, cash and carry sales, the destroyers-for-bases deal (1940) and Lend-Lease (1941) aided Britain; Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 brought war.
- On the exam: Topic 7.11 tests continuity and change in isolationism and internationalism; compare the 1930s with Washington's neutrality and 1917, and look ahead to the Cold War.
Topic 7.11 key terms
- Instrument of national policy
The Pact's phrase for a nation choosing war to get what it wants, such as territory or influence. Kellogg's diplomatic notes said the Pact left every nation free to defend itself.
- Kellogg–Briand Pact (1928)
A 1928 treaty, also called the Pact of Paris, named for U.S. Secretary of State Frank Kellogg and French foreign minister Aristide Briand. Nations renounced war as an instrument of national policy. It had no way to enforce itself, and more than sixty nations eventually joined.
- Isolationism
Avoiding alliances and commitments that could pull the country into foreign wars. In the 1920s Americans still traded, lent and sent troops abroad.
- Five-Power Treaty (1922)
Set navy limits at the Washington Conference: battleship tonnage of 5 for the U.S., 5 for Britain, 3 for Japan, and less for France and Italy. A companion Four-Power Treaty covered the Pacific.
- Nine-Power Treaty (1922)
Nine nations, including the U.S., Britain and Japan, promised to respect China's borders and the Open Door: equal trade access to China. It had no way to enforce the promise.
- War debts and reparations
War debts: what the Allies owed the U.S. for wartime loans. Reparations: what Germany owed the Allies for war damage. Each side tied its payments to the other.
- Dawes Plan (1924)
A 1924 plan that let American loans to Germany pay reparations to Britain and France, who used the money to repay war debts to the U.S. It also lowered Germany's yearly payments.
- Good Neighbor Policy
Roosevelt’s policy of respecting Latin American nations’ independence, announced in 1933. The U.S. pledged not to intervene in their affairs, ended its occupations and repealed the Platt Amendment (1934).
- Pan-American conferences
Meetings of the United States and Latin American governments, held since 1889. At Montevideo in 1933 the delegates signed a pledge that no state may intervene in another’s affairs.
- Recognition of the USSR (1933)
In 1933 the U.S. finally opened diplomatic relations with the Soviet government, which it had refused to recognize since the 1917 revolution. Trade was a main hope.
- Reciprocal Trade Agreements (1934)
A 1934 law letting the president cut U.S. tariffs by up to 50 percent in deals with countries that cut theirs, to win back foreign markets during the Depression.
- Tydings–McDuffie Act (1934)
1934 law promising the Philippines independence in 1946, after a ten-year transition as a self-governing commonwealth.
- Stimson Doctrine
U.S. policy of refusing to recognize territory taken by force, announced in 1932 after Japan seized Manchuria. It carried no penalty.
- Fascism
Extreme nationalist, dictatorial movement that glorifies the nation and race through aggressive force. Mussolini led Italy's; Hitler, Germany's.
- Nye Committee
Senate inquiry (1934–36) led by Gerald Nye that blamed arms makers and bankers for pulling the U.S. into World War I.
- Neutrality Acts
1935–37 laws banning arms sales and loans to nations at war, meant to keep the U.S. out of another European war.
- Spanish Civil War
1936–39 war in which General Franco, backed by Hitler and Mussolini, overthrew Spain's elected Republic. The U.S. stayed neutral.
- Quarantine speech (1937)
Roosevelt's Chicago speech urging peace-loving nations to isolate aggressors the way a community isolates a contagion. He named no country and no plan. Isolationists attacked it, and he dropped the idea.
- Ludlow Amendment
A proposed constitutional amendment (1937–38) requiring a national vote before Congress could declare war, except after an invasion. On January 10, 1938, the House voted 209–188 not to take it up.
- Appeasement
Giving in to an aggressor's demands to avoid war. At Munich in 1938, Britain and France let Hitler annex the Sudetenland, and Hitler occupied the rest of Czechoslovakia six months later.
- Sudetenland
The border region of Czechoslovakia where many people spoke German. Hitler took it after the Munich Agreement of September 1938. Czechoslovakia was not invited to the talks.
- Cash and carry
The 1939 neutrality rule letting warring nations buy U.S. arms if they paid up front and carried them home in their own ships. It was technically neutral but strongly favored Britain and France.
- Blitzkrieg
German for "lightning war": tanks and warplanes striking together, fast enough to break an army before it can regroup. Germany used it to overrun Poland in 1939 and France in 1940.
- Destroyers-for-bases deal
September 1940: the United States gave Britain 50 old Navy destroyers. Britain gave the United States 99-year leases on bases from Newfoundland to British Guiana. Roosevelt did it by executive agreement, with no vote in Congress.
- Selective Training and Service Act (1940)
The first peacetime draft in U.S. history, signed September 16, 1940. Men aged 21 to 35 registered, and a lottery decided who served a year of training.
- America First Committee
Founded in September 1940, it argued the United States should build up its own defense and stay out of Europe's war. It fought aid to Britain that it feared would lead to war.
- Third term
No president had won a third term. George Washington set the two-term custom when he stepped down in 1796, and the 22nd Amendment made it law in 1951.
- Arsenal of democracy
Roosevelt's phrase (December 29, 1940) for a United States that would not fight but would build and ship the planes, ships and tanks that Britain and others needed to keep resisting Germany and its partners.
- Four Freedoms
Roosevelt's January 1941 statement of what the fight against the Axis was for: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want and freedom from fear. It gave aid to Britain a purpose beyond staying out of trouble.
- Lend-Lease Act (1941)
Law signed March 11, 1941 that let the President lend or lease war supplies to any country whose defense he said mattered to U.S. security. It ended 'cash and carry' and made America the Allies' supplier before it entered the war.
- Atlantic Charter
Joint statement of war aims by Roosevelt and Churchill, released August 14, 1941, before the U.S. entered the war: self-determination, free trade, no territorial gains, freedom of the seas. A declaration of principles, not a treaty.
- Charles Lindbergh
Aviator who became the best-known voice of the America First Committee and argued against aiding Britain. His September 1941 Des Moines speech blamed the British, Jewish Americans and the Roosevelt administration for pushing the country toward war, and leaders of both parties condemned it.
- Axis powers
Germany, Italy and Japan, allied by the Tripartite Pact of September 1940. Each promised to help the others if the United States attacked one of them.
- Oil embargo (1941)
After Japan occupied southern Indochina, the United States froze Japanese assets and stopped selling Japan oil. Japan's leaders saw two ways out: leave China, or seize the oil fields of Southeast Asia.
- Hull note (November 26, 1941)
Secretary of State Cordell Hull's last proposal to Japan. Among its terms: Japan must withdraw its forces from China and Indochina. Japan's leaders had already sent their fleet to sea.
- Pearl Harbor
The U.S. Pacific Fleet's base on Oahu, Hawaii. On December 7, 1941, Japanese carrier planes attacked it and nearby Army and Navy airfields. The attack ended the long argument over whether the United States would stay out of the war.
- Declaration of war
A formal act of Congress, the branch the Constitution gives the power to declare war. Congress passed the declaration against Japan on December 8, 1941, and Roosevelt signed it that afternoon.
- Internationalism
The view that the United States should work with other nations, through alliances and organizations, to keep the peace and protect its interests. It is the opposite of isolationism, and it is the last pair of terms on the dials.
- Unilateral foreign policy
A nation acting on its own, without allies or binding commitments to others. After 1920 the United States refused the League of Nations and peacetime alliances, yet it still lent money, signed treaties and sent troops abroad on its own terms.
- Nuremberg trials
Trials of Nazi leaders before an international tribunal at Nuremberg, Germany, in 1945 and 1946. The judges ruled that planning and waging aggressive war was a crime under international law, and cited the Kellogg–Briand Pact.
Transcript
Quotes are from the historical record and name their source. Lines marked Dramatized are reconstructions.
If You Want Peace
August 27, 1928
Key terms: Instrument of national policy, Kellogg–Briand Pact (1928)
Paris Monday, August 27, 1928
Fifteen nations have sent delegates to the French foreign ministry. Today, in the Clock Room, they will outlaw war.
Article One: they condemn war and renounce it “as an instrument of national policy.” Article Two: every dispute will be settled peacefully. No article says what happens if they aren't.
All fifteen will sign with one gold pen, a gift to Kellogg from Le Havre. Its Latin motto: if you want peace, prepare for peace. The old Roman proverb says: prepare for war.
In time, more than sixty nations signed. Thirteen years later, the United States was at war with Germany, Italy and Japan. All three had signed in this room.
Americans wanted a peaceful world. Could they have one without joining it?
The Way to Disarm
1920–1929
Key terms: Isolationism, Five-Power Treaty (1922), Nine-Power Treaty (1922), War debts and reparations, Dawes Plan (1924)
In 1920 the Senate refused to join the League of Nations. Americans wanted peace without promising to fight for anyone.
In November 1921, nine nations met in Washington.
Charles Evans Hughes
The world looks to this conference to relieve humanity of the crushing burden created by competition in armament.
Then he read out the battleships each navy should scrap. By name.
The final treaty fixed battleship strength: five for America, five for Britain, three for Japan.
Japan wanted more than three. American codebreakers read its cables and knew it would settle.
The treaty let navies turn some doomed hulls into aircraft carriers. Japan chose Akagi and Kaga. Remember those names.
Keep score on three dials. Alone or with others. Hands off or on. Promises or none.
The Allies owed America over ten billion dollars. Germany owed the Allies reparations it couldn't pay.
In 1924 the banker Charles Dawes drew a circle. American banks lent to Germany. Germany paid Britain and France. They paid America. The same dollars went round and round.
It worked until 1929, when the loans stopped. Only Finland ever paid its war debt in full.
Next Door
1915–1938
Key terms: Good Neighbor Policy, Pan-American conferences, Recognition of the USSR (1933), Reciprocal Trade Agreements (1934), Tydings–McDuffie Act (1934)
Close to home, Americans didn’t stay out of anything. Marines occupied Haiti and the Dominican Republic.
Marines landed in Haiti in 1915 and stayed nineteen years. They ran its customs and its treasury.
They forced Haitian men to build roads without pay, under an old law called the corvée.
Thousands fought back. In 1919 Marines killed their leader, Charlemagne Péralte, and spread a photograph of his body. It made him a martyr.
In 1920 the NAACP sent James Weldon Johnson to investigate.
James Weldon Johnson
…some three thousand Haitian men, women, and children have been shot down by American rifles and machine guns…
His explanation began with a New York bank that held Haiti’s treasury.
That summer, reporters quoted the Democrats’ candidate for vice president bragging he’d written Haiti’s constitution himself. He later denied it. His name was Franklin Roosevelt.
Then the policy turned. Hoover began bringing the Marines home. Roosevelt promised a good-neighbor policy, and his diplomats signed a pledge against intervention.
In July 1934 Roosevelt sailed to Haiti to say the Marines were leaving. They were gone that August.
Hands off. Mostly.
In Nicaragua the Marines left behind a National Guard. Its chief, Anastasio Somoza, had the rebel Augusto Sandino killed and took power. His family ruled until 1979.
Worth a Postage Stamp
1929–1936
Key terms: Stimson Doctrine, Fascism, Nye Committee, Neutrality Acts, Spanish Civil War
Senator Carter Glass had a price in mind.
Back to the pen. The Senate ratified the Pact, eighty-five to one.
Sen. Carter Glass
I am not willing that anybody in Virginia shall think that I am simple enough to suppose that it is worth a postage stamp…
He voted yes. The next bill authorized fifteen new cruisers.
The first test came in 1931. Japanese officers blew up their own railway in Manchuria, blamed China, and seized the region.
Secretary of State Henry Stimson sent a note: America would not recognize the conquest. The League condemned Japan. That was the penalty. Japan walked out.
Hitler took power in Germany in 1933. In 1935 Mussolini's Italy invaded Ethiopia.
At home, Senator Gerald Nye's committee asked why America had fought in 1917. Its answer: bankers and arms makers. A best-seller called them merchants of death.
At Princeton, students founded the Veterans of Future Wars and demanded their war bonus in advance. Sixty thousand students joined.
Congress wrote the lesson into law. The Neutrality Acts banned arms sales and loans to nations at war. They treated invader and invaded alike. They were built to stop 1917 from happening again.
In Spain, about 2,800 Americans volunteered to fight Franco and his fascist allies. Their government stayed neutral.
Quarantine
1937–1939
Key terms: Quarantine speech (1937), Ludlow Amendment, Appeasement, Sudetenland, Cash and carry
October 1937. With Japan at war in China, Roosevelt tried an idea in Chicago.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
When an epidemic of physical disease starts to spread, the community approves and joins in a quarantine of the patients…
Isolationist papers and congressmen attacked it. Roosevelt backed away.
In December, Japanese planes sank the U.S. gunboat Panay in China. Japan apologized. Washington accepted.
The next day, Japan took Nanjing and killed tens of thousands of prisoners and civilians. Chinese estimates run to 300,000.
At Munich in 1938, Britain and France let Hitler take part of Czechoslovakia to avoid war.
Austria in March 1938. The Sudetenland in September.
In November, Nazis burned synagogues and wrecked Jewish homes and shops across Germany.
Ninety-four percent of Americans told Gallup they disapproved of Germany's treatment of Jews. Seventy-two percent said no to admitting more Jewish exiles.
In June 1939 the liner St. Louis carried 937 passengers, mostly Jewish refugees, within sight of Miami. Cuba turned them away. So did the United States. Of the 620 sent back to Europe, 254 were later murdered in the Holocaust.
Hitler had taken the rest of Czechoslovakia in March. On September 1, 1939, he invaded Poland.
Britain and France declared war. That night, Roosevelt went on the radio.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
This nation will remain a neutral nation, but I cannot ask that every American remain neutral in thought as well.
In November, Congress allowed arms sales again: cash and carry.
Pay up front and haul it home yourself. Only Britain and France had the cash and the ships.
Main Street
1940
Key terms: Blitzkrieg, Destroyers-for-bases deal, Selective Training and Service Act (1940), America First Committee, Third term
In the spring of 1940, Germany took Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands and Belgium. France fell in six weeks. Britain stood alone.
By September, German bombers were over London every night. Americans heard it live.
Edward R. Murrow
This is London.
Roosevelt traded Britain fifty old destroyers for bases in the Americas, without asking Congress.
Congress passed the first peacetime draft in American history. On October 16, more than sixteen million men registered.
America First said: arm, defend this hemisphere and stay out. A Kansas editor's committee said: help Britain now, or face Hitler alone later.
Roosevelt ran for a third term. His Republican opponent, Wendell Willkie of Indiana, also backed aid to Britain.
George Gallup's interviewers were asking Americans what they wanted. Roosevelt read the answers.
Most Americans wanted Britain to win. Most would vote to stay out. That was the country Roosevelt had to lead.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.
November 5, 1940 Election Day
Six days later he became the first president to win a third term.
The Garden Hose
December 1940–October 1941
Key terms: Arsenal of democracy, Four Freedoms, Lend-Lease Act (1941), Atlantic Charter, Charles Lindbergh
By December, Britain was running out of cash.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Suppose my neighbor's home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose four or five hundred feet away.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
I don't want $15 — I want my garden hose back after the fire is over.
December 29, 1940. At 9:30 p.m., Roosevelt went on the radio. In London it was 2:30 in the morning, and the City was still burning.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
We must be the great arsenal of democracy.
In January he named what it was for: four freedoms.
The bill to lend Britain whatever it needed was numbered H.R. 1776.
Sen. Robert A. Taft
Lending war equipment is a good deal like lending chewing gum. You don't want it back.
In August, Roosevelt met Churchill off Newfoundland. Their Atlantic Charter promised self-determination, free trade and no conquests. Nobody ever signed it.
A U-boat fired at the destroyer Greer and missed. She had been trailing it for hours. Roosevelt left that out, and told the Navy to shoot on sight.
America First's case was serious: this was Europe's war, and aid would drag America in again. That night in Des Moines, Charles Lindbergh said this.
Charles A. Lindbergh
The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration.
Leaders of both parties condemned it.
On October 31, a U-boat sank the destroyer Reuben James. About a hundred American sailors died.
The United States was already fighting an undeclared war at sea.
Sunday
July–December 7, 1941
Key terms: Axis powers, Oil embargo (1941), Hull note (November 26, 1941), Pearl Harbor
Japan had joined Germany and Italy as an Axis power. In July 1941, it moved into southern Indochina. Roosevelt froze Japan's money and cut off its oil. The United States had supplied most of Japan's oil.
Japan's leaders kept negotiating and preparing for war. On November 26, Secretary of State Cordell Hull demanded that Japan leave China. Six Japanese carriers had already sailed for Hawaii. Two were the Akagi and the Kaga.
At 7:02 on Sunday morning, two soldiers at Oahu's Opana radar station saw the biggest blip they had ever seen. The officer on duty told them not to worry.
At 7:33, General Marshall's last warning reached Honolulu. It had come by commercial telegram. A messenger took it on his usual rounds.
On the Nevada, the band formed up to play the anthem at eight.
The Nevada's band finished the anthem while planes strafed the deck. In under two hours, the attack sank or damaged every battleship in the harbor and killed 2,403 Americans.
1,177 of them died on the Arizona.
In 1941 the Navy signed up Black sailors only as messmen. That morning he carried wounded men to safety, then fired an anti-aircraft machine gun he had never been trained to use.
Signed
December 7–11, 1941 · coda
Key terms: Declaration of war, Internationalism, Unilateral foreign policy, Nuremberg trials
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Yesterday, December 7th, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
Within the hour, Congress voted for war: 82 to 0 in the Senate, 388 to 1 in the House. The one no was Jeannette Rankin of Montana. She had voted against war in 1917 too.
At 4:10 that afternoon, Roosevelt signed. On December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States. America First voted to dissolve the same day.
So was America isolationist between the wars? It lent billions abroad, sent Marines next door and signed treaties that promised talk, never troops. What it refused was a promise to fight for anyone else.
The pact Senator Glass mocked is still in force. It never stopped a war. In 1946, judges at Nuremberg cited it to convict Nazi leaders of starting one.