We're bringing back this EOI series with bit of a different format. And in this section we are going to be
talking about neutrality the neutrality act passed by Congress as WWII erupted in
Europe and Asia, as well as the policy of isolationism. And following WWI
America was basically alarmed by international conflicts over the course
erupting in the nineteen thirties and the American people really did not want
to get involved. In fact they cited the 1928 Kellogg Briand Pact which
basically outlawed war. 62 countries got together and signed this document. They said we're not
going to use war as an instrument of national policy. Of course the problem
with the Kellog-Briand Pact was that it in no way no way at all
state how they were going to evforce it. So americans are going to continue
clinging to isolationism as WWII starts to erupt. And in fact the decade
prior to the 1930s there were all kinds of books published in
America during the Great Depression basically arguing that the United States
had been dragged into WWI
by greedy bankers and arms dealers. Of course, anytime there is a conflict those
two groups of people are going to make a lot of money, but we're really not getting into
that here. Let's just say Congress put together a congressional committee
chaired by North Dakota senator Gerald Nye. They held hearings
looking into this, investigating how and why we probably got involved and how much
money arms dealers
and bankers made. Some of these hearings fueled this controversy because they
laid out and said, look, this is how much these bankers and
manufacturers made during ww1 and they refered to them as merchants of death. They were like, do you
really want your sons sent into another war and fighting and and dying
for these bankers and arms dealers to make a huge profit? So Americans are
determined to avoid this war at all costs.
In fact this seeped into every layer of American society, I mean even the Girl
Scouts of America, you know, the now the cookie sellers of today the cookie seller empire, even
day changed the color of their uniforms from kakhi to green in order to appear
less militaristic. I don't know how green is less militaristic,
khakis I guess you're talking about the way the Nazis dressed over there in
Germany. Now this American sentiment is obviously going to influence FDR's
foreign policy. When he first took office in 1933 he was very very comfortable
reaching out to the world in various ways. He officially recognized the Soviet
Union in 1933. He set up an embassy in the Soviet Union, we started exchanging
ambassadors at least I should say, I don't know that we had a full-scale embassy over there, but we had
representatives visiting the government in Moscow. He adopted or I
should say continued this whole policy that Coolidge and Hoover had set up in Latin America.
He pulled the troops out that we still had stationed in Latin America he
lowered a lot of trade barriers and he wanted to reduce tariffs drastically,
like cut them in half. But as the situation and Asia first and then Europe
really started heating up in the late mid to late nineteen thirties Congress
started passing these neutrality acts. Now the first two
outlawed arms sells or giving loans to any country at war. After the Spanish Civil
War broke out they extended the ban to any country that was engaged in a civil
war. So, this created a problem because Britain, France, and the United States did not
want to get involved with what was going on in Spain, they were basically fighting
a civil war between Francisco Franco who wanted to turn the country fascist and a
more democratic army. You know, the forces opposing Franco. Those guys got no help.
Hitler and Mussolini gave a great deal of aid, in fact Hitler used his Air Force, this was
like a test run for the Luftwaffe, to go and basically see how much damage they could
cause. Eventually this neutrality is going to start breaking down and it was
about impossible for Roosevelt to stay neutral. And because Japan
had not formally declared war on China when they invaded Manchuria in 1937, FDR
tried to say, hey you know those two countries aren't officially at war, so we
need to send arms and supplies to China. Of course he spoke out very strongly about this,
he even gave a speech known as the Quarantine Speech, where he said we really need to
get these aggressive nations
and put them in check, and of course the American newspapers just went nuts,
accusing the president of leading the nation into war and that's why the
United States of America is really not gonna do anything to stop Italy or
Nazi Germany. The League of Nations is supposed to be in charge of keeping this
stuff in check as well. They're not gonna have any luck with it either either so
there, you know, goes the whole ball game.