Isolation to Intervention

On September 1, 1939, the Second World War commenced in Europe when German troops invaded Poland. After the conquest of Poland and its division between Germany and the Soviet Union, Europe settled into the "Phony War." In the spring, Hitler unleashed a "blitzkrieg" ("lightening war") that swept through Denmark, Norway, Belgium, and the Netherlands. Taking advantage of the non-aggression pact, Soviet forces defeated Finland and occupied the Baltic States. Winston Churchill succeeded the discredited Neville Chamberlain as prime minister of Great Britain, but he could offer little help to the French who surrendered to Germany on June 22, 1940. The Germans occupied strategically significant portions of France, and Marshal Henri Pétain established a government at the southern city of Vichy that collaborated with the Nazis. This agreement prevented the French Navy from uniting with the British.

The United States strengthened hemispheric defenses with the Declaration of Panama, drafted in October 1939. All American states agreed to a "security zone" of between 300 and 1,000 miles extending off their coasts south of Canada, which had joined the war against Hitler. American naval vessels formed "neutrality patrols" to track and report the presence of German submarines in the security zone. President Roosevelt ordered the Navy to make their reports in "plain English" over the radio. In a stretch of its neutral status, the United States concluded a defense agreement with Canada that gave each nation the use of the other's naval facilities. The Act of Havana was unanimously approved at the Inter-American Conference, held in July 1940. It provided for the occupation of any European possession in the hemisphere endangered by an aggressor.

In November 1939, Congress passed yet another Neutrality Act, but for the first time belligerents were permitted to purchase arms and munitions on a cash-and-carry basis. This clearly benefited the British empire, with its large merchant marine and Royal Navy. President Roosevelt also began laying plans to aid the British more directly in their death-struggle with Hitler.

In September 1940, President Roosevelt took a bold step to improve the desperate military situation in Europe. In an executive decision that by-passed Congress, FDR swapped 50 aging naval destroyers in exchange for ninety-nine-year leases on eight British air and naval bases stretching from Newfoundland to British Guiana. The president justified his action as part of a "defense of the Western Hemisphere" program, and Americans generally favored the so-called Destroyer-Bases deal. Public opinion still opposed entering the war, but by now the majority of Americans favored direct aid to Britain.

Following an unprecedented third-term victory, during which he vowed not to send American boys "into any foreign wars," President Roosevelt called upon the United States to become the "Arsenal of Democracy." In his State of the Union address to Congress, in January 1941, he urged further support to those nations fighting tyranny and fascism. He looked forward to the time when the world would embrace the "four essential human freedoms"-freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. Four days later, implementing the Arsenal of Democracy concept, the "Lend-Lease" bill was introduced in Congress as "An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States."

Great Britain was no longer able to fulfill the cash-and-carry provision of the Neutrality Act, and Lend-Lease was designed to give the British the tools needed to keep fighting. It authorized the United States government "to sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, lend, or otherwise dispose of," military equipment to "any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States." Congress held public hearings, during which historian Charles A. Beard protested that passage of the Lend-Lease bill would drag the U.S. into the foreign conflict. With a reference to the New Deal's agricultural program, Democratic senator Burton K. Wheeler, a progressive from Montana, bluntly argued that after plowing under rows of crops to raise prices, Lend-Lease "will plow under every fourth American boy." Senator Robert Taft, a Republican from Ohio, more temperately observed that, "lending war equipment is a good deal like lending chewing gum. You don't want it back."

After months of heated debate, Congress passed the Lend-Lease bill, and Roosevelt signed it into law on March 11, 1941. It was, essentially, an unofficial declaration of war by the United States against Germany. Eventually, more than 50 billion dollars of military aid was sent to nations fighting the Axis Powers. When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in June, Lend-Lease was extended to Stalin's government. In the meantime, the public debate continued in America over the nation's proper role in the Second World War.

In August 1941, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met for the first time aboard a ship in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland. The two democratic leaders agreed that Hitler had made a grave military mistake in attacking the Soviet Union, and they drew up eight "common principles" to guide the post-war world. The result of their talks was the Atlantic Charter, a truly remarkable document considering the fact that the United States was nominally a neutral nation.

The Atlantic Charter was a visionary mixture of idealistic and pragmatic goals. Roosevelt and Churchill pledged their nations did not seek territorial aggrandizement; acknowledged the right of self-government for all peoples; and called for freedom of the seas, international economic cooperation, and the disarmament of aggressor nations. Churchill expressed some misgivings about the effect these goals would have on the British empire, and Roosevelt chose not to include a specific reference to a new international organization to maintain world peace. The president had learned the lessons taught by Woodrow Wilson during his fight over the League of Nations. Both leaders, however, were united in their common war aims. In September, it was announced that 15 nations, including the Soviet Union, had endorsed the principles of the Atlantic Charter. The groundwork was laid for the post-war world, but the Axis Powers were far from defeated.