In the years between the two world wars, United States foreign policy was identified with isolationism. It would take the Pearl Harbor attack of December 7, 1941 to convince even the staunchest Congressional leaders that isolationism should never again comprise American global relationships. During these decades, a militant Japan invaded first Manchuria and then China. In Europe, dictators consolidated power, expanding their borders through annexations and conquests. Would a more globally active and confrontational United States have prevented or mitigated these events?
Europe and America in the 1930s
Franklin D. Roosevelt inherited isolationism from the previous Republican administrations. As late as 1931, when Japan invaded Manchuria and Secretary of State Henry Stimson advocated a more critical response, President Hoover followed the policy of accommodation. Hoover was, of course, dealing with the growing effects of the 1929 stock market crash. Japan’s unchecked successes would lead to the 1937 “Rape of Nanking,” the often-called 'forgotten holocaust' in which hundreds of thousands of Chinese were murdered.
In the same year FDR was inaugurated for the first time, Adolf Hitler secured power in Germany, leading the National Socialists toward the creation of the Third Reich. During FDR’s second administration, beginning in 1937, Hitler’s initial goals were complete. Jews and others deemed undesirable by the Nazis had been deprived of all rights and in many cases property. The period of appeasement was about to begin which saw the demise of Austria and Czechoslovakia, and Jews were frantically trying to leave Europe, many turning to the United States, only to be denied entry.
Americans felt secure behind the two oceans. Congress and the states were dealing with the Great Depression. FDR’s first priorities involved the First and the Second New Deal, although he was not opposed to helping European democracies, notably Britain, particularly after the outbreak of war in September 1939. His relationship with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill would grow as bombs eventually fell on London and Britain clung to its last measure of strength.
Despite programs like Lend-Lease and the swap of naval destroyers for bases with Britain, isolationists in the Congress did not want to repeat the perceived mistakes that led to US entry into World War I in 1917. The Nye Committee report of 1936, while not indicting the Wilson administration, highlighted the Allied debt load to the United States, long part of speculation that American motives in 1917 were financially driven. Isolationists used the report to reinforce their views that Europe’s wars were not America's wars. Others, resurrecting the old debate over the League of Nations, pointed to the failure of that body in curbing Japan, Germany, and Mussolini’s foray into Africa.
Could a Critical Response have delayed the Second World War
Students of history love to explore the “what if” question, especially with the advantage of hindsight. In 1927 fifteen nations signed and ratified the idealistic Kellogg-Briand Pact that renounced war “as an instrument of national policy.” Both Italy and Japan were initial signatories. Like the later Munich Pact, agreements are only as good as the wherewithal to enforce them. The United States took no enforcement stance.
Should the US have embargoed oil to Japan sooner? Would pressure on France and Britain to confront Hitler’s reoccupation of the Rhineland have delayed the Third Reich or bought time to disassemble it? These “what if” questions can only be viewed through a prism of possible past mistakes in order to avoid similar future scenarios. Isolationism did not serve the United States well before 1941, and from that lesson the years after 1945 produced a globally aware and active nation determined to confront national and global security issues.
Sources:
Wayne S. Cole, Senator Gerald P. Nye and American Foreign Relations (Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1962).
Essays on American Foreign Policy, Margaret F. Morris and Sandra L. Myres, editors (Austin: The University of Texas Press, 1974).
Issues and Conflicts: Studies in Twentieth Century American Diplomacy, George L. Anderson, editor (New York: Greenwood Press, 1969).
Elting E. Morison, Turmoil and Tradition: A Study of the Life and Times of Henry L. Stimson (New York: History Book Club, 2003).
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