1. World War II: The Causes of US Entry

2. Reasons America Ignores Nazi Aggression in the 1930s
US wanted to focus on coming out of the Great Depression
US could be secure despite the events going on in Europe
Protected by an ocean
Like most of our allies in Europe, the policy of appeasement was the attitude toward Hitler and other totalitarian dictators

3. Isolation & Neutrality
Neutrality Acts of 1935 & 1936
USA would withhold weapons and loans of money from all nations at war and that U.S. citizens who traveled on ships belonging to nations at war did so at their own risk.
FDR promised to keep the US, isolationist

4. Isolationism & Neutrality

5. “Cash and Carry” Neutrality Act of 1937
If countries in WWII wanted to trade with US…
Had to pay cash for non-military goods
Carry the goods from US back to Europe on their own ships
Why would FDR move to this policy by 1937?

6. Lend-Lease Act Roosevelt finds a way around the neutrality acts
Lend-Lease Act states that US can sell or loan war materials to “any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States.”
FDR proclaims that the U.S. would become the “arsenal of democracy.”

7. Lend-Lease Act
“If your neighbor’s house is on fire, you don’t sell him a hose. You lend it to him and take it back after the fire is out.”

9. Alliances Formed Japan makes Tripartite Pact with Italy & Germany
If a country not involved in the war attacks one of the three, then the others would come to that country’s aid
Known as the Axis Powers
Winston Churchill (GB), France and the United States form the Allied Powers in the Atlantic Charter meeting (includes Russia)

10. September 1st, 1939
Hitler invades Poland, violating an “Nonaggression Pact” with the Soviet Union to not expand further East.
This is the start date of World War 2.
America remains isolationist…until…

12. Pearl Harbor
December 7, 1941, Japanese war planes attacked the U.S. Navy fleet at Pearl Harbor.
2,403 died and 1,178 wounded
On December 8, 1941 FDR makes his “a date which will live in infamy” speech. He asks Congress to declare war on Japan.
Unanimous vote in Senate and vote in House.
With the U.S. now in the war, Winston Churchill remarked, “Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder…I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.”