1. Wait what. What’s happening in Europe
Wait what? What’s happening in Europe? Man, I’m just trying to get this country out of a depression and ease tensions with Latin America and now something is happening in Europe and Asia?
During the 1930s, the United States was busy dealing with the Great Depression. The President (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) also focused on healing relations with Latin America after everything that happened as a result of the Spanish American War. Developments in Asia and Europe, however, quickly overshadowed events in Latin America.

2. The Rise of Dictators Benito Mussolini Adolf Hitler Josef Stalin
People outside of the U.S. who were affected by the Great Depression and suffered after WWI began to believe that democratic governments were too weak to solve their problems. They turned instead to dictators. By 1929, Josef Stalin was sole dictator of the Soviet Union. In Italy, Benito Mussolini turned his country into the first Fascist state. Mussolini ended freedom of the press and banned all political parties except his own. In Germany, an extreme nationalist, Adolf Hitler became the leader of a small group known as the National Socialist, or Nazi, Party (I’m sure you know all about this man!) And, lastly, in Japan, military leaders took control of the government and like the Nazis in Germany, preached racism.
Benito Mussolini
Adolf Hitler
Josef Stalin

3. Italy, Germany, and Japan each followed policies of ruthless aggression. In 1931, Japan attacked China. In 1935, Italy attacked Ethiopia. And, after brutally consolidating his rule in Germany, Adolf Hitler embarked on a mission to control the entire continent. In defiance of the Treaty of Versailles (the agreement made after WWI), Hitler began to rebuild troops into the Rhineland region of western Germany in Two years later, German armies occupied Austria. As Hitler predicated, the European democracies did noting to stop him.

4. He did what? That son of a gun!
As the 1930s progressed, Roosevelt became more and more alarmed at Hitler’s aggression as well as his growing campaign against Germany’s Jews, whom the Nazis stripped of citizenship and property and began to deport to concentration camps. Yet, to most Americans, the threat arising from Japanese and German aggression seemed very distant. Many Americans remained convinced that involvement in World War I had been a mistake.

5. Then, in 1939, Germany invaded Poland. What’s the big deal with Poland
Then, in 1939, Germany invaded Poland. What’s the big deal with Poland? Well, not only did Germany’s attack on Poland break a ”nonaggression pact” that was made between Hitler and Stalin (head of the Soviet Union), but it also caused Britain and France to declare war on Germany – having pledged to protect Poland against aggression. But Germany appeared unstoppable. Within a year, the Nazis had overrun Poland and much of Scandinavia, Belgium, and the Netherlands. On June 14, 1940, German troops occupied Paris. Hitler now dominated nearly all of Europe, as well as North Africa. In September 1940, Germany, Italy, and Japan created a military alliance known as the Axis.

6. Check #204 to Britain and France – Reason: Stop HITLER!
Roosevelt viewed Hitler as a mad gangster whose victories posed a direct threat to the U.S. But most American remained desperate to remain out of the conflict. During 1941, however, the U.S. became more and more closely allied with those fighting Germany and Japan. For much of 1940, Britain stood virtually alone in fighting Germany. Soon, Britain became bankrupt and could no longer pay for supplies. Roosevelt wanted to help Britain – declaring that America would be the “great arsenal (weapon) of democracy.” Five years earlier, however, U.S. lawmakers passed a series of Neutrality Acts banning, among a number of things, the sale of weapons to countries at war. Roosevelt wanted to help so he came up with an idea. In 1941, at Roosevelt’s urging, Congress passed the Lend-Lease Act, which authorized military aid so long as countries promised somehow to return it all after the war. As a result of this law, the United States funneled billions of dollars worth of weapons to Britain and China, as well as the Soviet Union, after Hitler invaded that country in June 1941.