American Neutrality?

The United States and Britain 1939-41

AP Modern European History

America First!

Following the First World War, the

U.S. Senate failed to ratify the
League of Nations treaty.
Watching the rise of fascism in
Germany, Congress repeatedly
held FDR to strict neutrality.

Neutrality Acts: 1935, 1936, 1937

When the President proclaimed the existence of a

foreign war, certain restrictions would automatically
go into effect:
Prohibited sales of arms to belligerent nations.
Prohibited loans and credits to belligerent nations.
Forbade Americans to travel on vessels of nations at war [in
contrast to WW I].

Non-military goods must be purchased on a cash-and-carry

basis pay when goods are picked up.

Banned involvement in the Spanish Civil War.

This limited the options of the President in a crisis.

America in the 1930s declined to build up its forces!

1939 Neutrality Act

In response to Germanys invasion of Poland.

FDR persuades Congress in special session to allow the
US to aid European democracies in a limited way:
The US could sell weapons to the European democracies on a
cash-and-carry basis.

FDR was authorized to proclaim danger zones which US ships

and citizens could not enter.

Results of the 1939 Neutrality Act:

Aggressors could not send ships to buy US munitions.
The US economy improved as European demands for war
goods helped bring the country out of the
1937-38 recession.

America becomes the Arsenal of Democracy.

Lend-Lease Act, December 17, 1940

President Roosevelts Press Conference:
...Now, what I am trying to do is to eliminate the dollar sign. That is something brand new in the thoughts of
practically everybody in this room, I thinkget rid of the silly, foolish old dollar sign. Well, let me give you an
illustration: Suppose my neighbor's home catches fire, and I have a length of garden hose four or five hundred
feet away. If he can take my garden hose and connect it up with his hydrant, I may help him to put out his fire.
Now, what do I do? I don't say to him before that operation, "Neighbor, my garden hose cost me $15; you have to
pay me $15 for it." What is the transaction that goes on? I don't want $15I want my garden hose back after the
fire is over. All right. If it goes through the fire all right, intact, without any damage to it, he gives it back to me and
thanks me very much for the use of it. But suppose it gets smashed up holes in itduring the fire; we don't
have to have too much formality about it, but I say to him, "I was glad to lend you that hose; I see I can't use it any
more, it's all smashed up." He says, "How many feet of it were there?" I tell him, "There were 150 feet of it." He
says, "All right, I will replace it." Now, if I get a nice garden hose back, I am in pretty good shape.

Lend-Lease Act (1941)

Great Britain.........................$31 billion
Soviet Union...........................$11 billion
France......................................$ 3 billion
China.......................................$1.5 billion
Other European.................$500 million
South America...................$400 million
The amount totaled: $48,601,365,000

Lend-Lease in Action

This photograph taken in the summer of

1941 shows Churchill inspecting an
American M-3 tank. Even though the U.S.
was desperately trying to build up its
military forces throughout 1941, Roosevelt
decided to give the British models of the
United States' most advanced weapons.

In this photograph, shot in December 1941, British children,

evacuated from London's East End, are receiving a meal made from
American dehydrated vegetables, provided under the Lend Lease
program.

Baby Betty Rothwell loves her

orange juice. She was very thin and
ailing until lend-lease concentrated
orange juice arrived in England for
special distribution to children,
nursing mothers and invalids.