allen chapter xii

8/3/2019 Allen Chapter XII

1/5

Allen Chapter XII (not the entire chapter)

I. Prior to 1930s. A. President Herbert Hoover made a series of proposals to quiet rising

international tensions.

B. In 1930 his administration extended the naval-limitations agreements of the early 1920s. In

C. 1931 he proposed a moratorium on international debt, while refusing tocancel those lingering World War I debts owed to the United States by theEuropean powers.

D. Further, Hoover pressed for an international agreement on arms limitation,E. but the World Disarmament Conference,

i. held in Switzerland in 1932,ii. failed to achieve its goals.iii. International economic and military pressures intensified.

F. Fueled by the global depression, political instability:i. Fascism in Italyii. Nazism in Germanyiii. State Socialism in the Soviet Unioniv. Militarism in Japan

II. Roosevelt. A. Roosevelt mixed foreign policyB. His administration took an isolationist stance at the World Economic

Conference in June 1933, when it refused to cooperate in the effort tostabilize world currencies.

C. In 1934, however, he took an internationalist stance in the U.S.-negotiatedReciprocal Trade Agreements on tariff reductions.

D. His vacillating policies reflected his political priorities: at the beginning of his administration domestic issues were more important than foreignpolicy.

III. Good Neighbors Policy. A. In December 1933 Sec. State Cordell Hull committed the United States to

a new policy toward Central and South America.i. Signing an international accord that declared, "No state has the

right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another,"ii. Hull initiated an agenda that was to characterize Roosevelt's

presidency.


2/5

iii. This "Good Neighbor Policy" put an end to the repeated U.S.military interventions in Latin America.

iv. Critics of the policy have argued, however, that it was asmokescreen for redoubled economic intervention and exploitation

of the region by the United States.IV. Isolationism real or mythical?

A. Isolationists felt that America ought not get involved in European wars andin other "entangling alliances."

B. They believed that it was not the role of the United States to be policemanto the world or to make over other nations in its own image.

C. Isolationism was not restricted to one end of the political spectrum,D. Conservatives, liberals, and radicals might be isolationist.

i. Indeed, in the early and mid 1930s most Americans were

isolationist.V. Roosevelt Researches out to Isolationists.

A. In first term Roosevelt worked closely with isolationist progressives suchas Senators:

i. Robert La Follette Jr. of Wisconsinii. Hiram Johnson of Californiaiii. George Norris of Nebraskaiv. Burton K. Wheeler of Montana

B. Other influential isolationists in the Senate included:

i. William E. Borah of Idahoii. Gerald P. Nye of North Dakotaiii. Henrik Shipstead of Minnesotaiv. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan

C. During his second term Roosevelt gradually broke with the isolationists asinternational tensions rose.

i. In October 1937 Roosevelt's famous quarantine speechwhichcalled for international cooperation in bringing unspecifiedeconomic and diplomatic pressure to bear on aggressor nationsirritated the isolationists.

ii. Beginning in 1937 they increasingly, and sometimes angrily, turnedagainst the president.

iii. After France fell to Germany in 1940, however, isolationists wereforced to rethink their position.

VI. The Nye Committee and Attempts to Remain Neutrality.


3/5

A. 19341936 discoveries of a Senate investigating committee headed bySenator Nye helped to fuel the nation's mood of isolationism.

i. Exposing war profiteering by banks and corporations during WorldWar I, the Nye committee investigation led many to conclude that

the interests of American banks and corporations had driven theUnited States into a war the nation should have avoided.

ii. Many isolationists believed that the Atlantic and Pacific Oceansafforded the United States sufficient protection from foreignaggression

iii. The Senate's refusal to allow the United States to join the WorldCourt in 1935 was another indication of the isolationist moodpervading the country.

B. Neutrality Act:

i. Fearful of being pulled into a war from which it would suffer but notbenefit, Congress passed three acts that declared Americanneutrality.

ii. In the event that a war broke out between other countries, theNeutrality Acts of 1935 and 1936 made it clear that the UnitedStates would not supply either side with weapons or ammunition.

C. The Neutrality Act of 1937:i. moved the nation further in the direction of isolation and asserted a

"cash-and-carry" policy by which warring countries could purchase

weapons but not ammunition in cash only and that those suppliescould be shipped from American ports only in the bottoms of thebelligerents.

ii. When the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, the United Statesremained on the sidelines.

iii. When tensions rose in Asia as a result of Japan's expansionistforeign policy, Roosevelt's quarantine speech, in which he called for expansionist nations to be contained, was ill received.

iv. When, on 12 December 1937, Japanese airplanes sank the Panay ,a U.S. gunboat navigating the Yangtze River in China, Americanswere ready to forgive the incident after a formal Japanese apology.

VII. Japan and Open Door in China. A. Background

i. In 1899 and 1900 Secretary of State John Hay had unilaterallyasserted the "Open Door policy" to Asia.


4/5

ii. It was, he declared, the right of all countries to equal tradingopportunities in China.

iii. Two decades later, in 1922, the Open Door was made internationallaw in the Nine Power Treaty.

iv. In 1931, after Japan occupied the region of China known asManchuria in direct defiance of the Open Door Policy, tensions ranhigh between Washington and Tokyo.

B. President Hoover's secretary of state, Henry L. Stimson, viewed theJapanese invasion and takeover of Manchuria as a challenge to U.S.foreign policy in the East.

i. The Stimson Doctrine of January 1932 called for the United Statesto refuse recognition of the Japanese puppet government inManchuria.

C. Roosevelt becomes president:i. His secretary of state, Cordell Hull, sent occasional notes of

protest to Japan, but the severity of such criticism was mitigated bythe fact that Japan was an important trading partner with the UnitedStates.

ii. In 1937, when war erupted between Japan and China, Rooseveltwas inhibited by broad national sentiments of isolationism andacted cautiously, hoping that Japan would agree to withdraw itstroops.

iii. By 1939 Roosevelt recognized the need for firmer action.iv. He canceled the 1911 U.S. trade agreement with Japan, and when

the Japanese signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy inSeptember 1940, President Roosevelt initiated a partial embargoagainst Tokyo. Thus, it was that the Japanese challenge to theOpen Door Policy became a major cause of the disagreementbetween the United States and Japan that exploded with thebombing of Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941.

VIII. To War or not to War. A. By end of the 1930s:

i. U.S. stood by as Hitler began his expansionist push eastward.ii. Congress and the president reasserted American neutrality as

Hitler moved troops into the Rhineland in 1936, marched on Austriain March 1938, and seized the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakiathe following September, Hitler violated the Munich Accord, invaded


5/5

Czechoslovakia in March 1939, and signed a nonaggression pactwith Stalin later that year.

iii. As German soldiers invaded Poland, the United States remainedon the sidelines, As World War II began, Roosevelt declared, "This

nation will remain a neutral nation," but he called for a revision of the Neutrality Acts to allow the United States to sell England and its

Allies weapons and ammunition. Skeptically, Congress allowedthem to purchase the arms on a cash-and-carry basis.

IX. Depression and War. A. European orders for war goods:

i. sparked a phenomenal economic boom that brought the UnitedStates out of the Depression for good.

B. It is profitable to be neutral

i. So long as America stayed out of the war, it seemed, both peaceand prosperity were possible.

C. Not neutral for long: why not?i. Members of the Roosevelt administration, however, leaned toward

American intervention in the European conflict.ii. Economists within the administration warned that German success

in Europe and Japanese victory in Asia would irrevocably closehuge markets for American goods.

iii. Unless the United States intervened in these conflicts, they argued,

America's economic future would be worse than the GreatDepression. These arguments combined with war atrocities on thepart of Germany and Japan, convinced Roosevelt and hisadministration that the United States must set isolationism asideand take an active hand in the European and Asian wars.

iv. Ever the political leader, Roosevelt devoted himself to convincinghis countrymen to enter the greatest military conflagration in worldhistory.

v. While the 1930s ended with the disappearance of the GreatDepression, peace, too, was fading away.

allen chapter xii

Documents