An Official End to Neutrality

            By the time Hitler controlled most of Central Europe, America realized that neutrality simply would not be an option.  There was a fear that if Germany controlled Britain, it would gain an enormous amount of manufacturing power.  This would be an extreme threat to the safety and sovereignty of the United States.  In September 1940, a conscription law was passed.  Hence began a “peacetime” draft.              

            In November 1938, the Kristallnacht began in Germany.  This marked the beginning of the Holocaust, as thirty thousand Jews were sent to concentration camps.  An estimated 11 million people were murdered in the Holocaust, 6 million of whom were Jewish.  Gypsies, homosexuals, social misfits, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Nazi political enemies and many others who did not fit Hitler’s idea of the “Aryan race” were also murdered in the Holocaust. 

            During 1942, Roosevelt began the War Refugee Board, which mainly focused on rescuing Hungarian Jews from deportation to Auschwitz, a German concentration camp.  The United States in all saved about 150,000 German and Austrian Jews.

            In August 1940, Hitler began attacking Britain by air.  The strong English air force caused him to delay his planned invasion.  Back in the United States, people started taking sides.  Propaganda groups such as the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies (the name explains it all) promoted, well, aiding the allies.  They would gain support for the issue by saying we were doing everything we could to protect ourselves, with out actually going to war.  Hence arrives the “short of war” strategy.  On the other side were the isolationists, equally equipped with ambitious propaganda groups such as the America First Committee, which fervently preached to avoid being dragged into war.  One of the isolationists’ biggest supporters was Charles Lindbergh, who ironically had bridged the Americas with Europe ten years earlier.  So, by this point, a few were still preaching neutrality, but their support was thinning.

            Roosevelt triumphed in the election of 1940, becoming the first president to ever win for three terms.  He ran promising not to send American men into the war – a promise that would come back to haunt him.  Roosevelt started off his third term with the Lend Lease Bill, which allowed the United States to provide weapons to democracies fighting against Germany.  And thus, neutrality was shattered.  There were no doubt still supporters of the idea, but a neutral America could no longer be a reality.  We would end up sending more than $50 billion worth of fighting supplies and equipment to Europe.  It was also helpful in ramping up production so the United States would be ready when it actually decided to join the war.

            In June 1941, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, and reached Moscow.  This instigated Roosevelt and Churchill to write the Atlantic Charter, which was eight points that summarized the sort of democratic world that would be emplaced at the end of the war. (Obviously, this required the democracies win).  In it was support for self-determination and a new, better League of Nations.

            As far as actual fighting goes, America was not yet in a war with Germany, but this was tested when Germans attacked the Greer, US military ship.  Roosevelt then pushed for a “shoot-on-sight” policy for American vessels that see German ships.  By 1941, the point the Neutrality Acts were officially annulled – Roosevelt appeared to be truly preparing for war.

            Regarding problems in the East, when Roosevelt refused to end his embargo on Japan, the Nazi allied country decided to bomb Pearl Harbor.  The United States government was expecting some sort of attack, just not something as radical as an attack on Hawaii.  The offensive managed to badly damage the US naval fleet there, but not completely destroy it.  Japan’s plan was to attack the United States with a strong offensive, and then build up its own defensive lines in the Pacific.  It would buy this time while the United States was preparing for war.  America did declare war Japan, and neutrality became a thing of the past.  By this point, any outspoken isolationist would be condemned by fellow Americans. 

            I hope this give a thorough summary of the end of neutrality.  Here’s a question to ponder:  Should the United States have ended neutrality earlier, or was it good that it waited?  On one hand, we waited while Germany murdered innocent people in Europe.  Yet, on the other, we didn't want to send American men to risk their lives fighting in Europe.