American foreign policy 1939 to 1941, including the revision of the Neutrality Acts, Lend-Lease, the Atlantic Charter, and undeclared naval war in the Atlantic

What this dot point is asking

NESA expects you to give an integrated account of how the United States moved from neutrality towards intervention between the outbreak of war in Europe and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Strong answers integrate the political and military pressures (fall of France, Battle of Britain, Operation Barbarossa), the executive measures (destroyer-for-bases, Lend-Lease, the Atlantic Charter, naval escort), the politics (1940 election, America First, Lindbergh), and the constitutional shift toward presidential foreign policy power.

The answer

September 1939: still neutral

Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939; Britain and France declared war on 3 September. Roosevelt issued a Proclamation of Neutrality (5 September 1939) but, unlike Wilson in 1914, did not call on Americans to be neutral in thought.

A Gallup poll on 6 September 1939 found 84 per cent of Americans wanted Britain and France to win and 2 per cent wanted Germany to. But 96 per cent did not want US entry. The challenge for Roosevelt was to align policy with popular preference (Allied victory) against popular constraint (no troops).

The Neutrality Act of 4 November 1939

Roosevelt summoned a special session of Congress on 21 September 1939 and asked for repeal of the arms embargo. After a six-week debate, the Neutrality Act of 4 November 1939 repealed the arms embargo and required all trade with belligerents (including arms) on a "cash and carry" basis: foreign buyers had to pay in cash and transport in their own ships.

The shift favoured Britain and France, who controlled the Atlantic. American arms began flowing to Britain (and through Britain to Canada and the Empire). Aircraft (P-40s, Hudsons, Catalinas), tanks, and small arms were the main goods.

The fall of France and the panic of June 1940

The phoney war ended in April 1940 with the German invasion of Denmark and Norway. The invasion of the Low Countries and France followed on 10 May 1940. France surrendered on 22 June 1940.

The fall of France ended the assumption underpinning American policy. Roosevelt's commencement address at the University of Virginia on 10 June 1940 (the day Italy joined the war) declared that "the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor" and called for "the speed of a five-fold increase" in American military production.

The Naval Expansion Act (14 June 1940), the Two-Ocean Navy Act (19 July 1940, authorising a fleet expansion of 70 per cent), and the Selective Training and Service Act (16 September 1940, the first peacetime draft in American history) followed. Defence spending rose from around 2 billion dollars in 1940 to 26 billion in 1941.

The Destroyer-for-Bases Agreement

Britain's escort destroyer force was being sunk faster than it could be replaced. Churchill pressed Roosevelt for American destroyers from May 1940.

The Destroyer-for-Bases Agreement (2 September 1940) transferred 50 over-age First World War US destroyers to Britain in exchange for 99-year leases on British bases in Newfoundland, Bermuda, the Bahamas, Jamaica, St. Lucia, Trinidad, Antigua, and British Guiana. Roosevelt used Attorney General Robert Jackson's opinion that the President had the authority to act by executive agreement without Senate approval. The deal foreshadowed Lend-Lease.

The 1940 election

Roosevelt sought an unprecedented third term. The Democratic National Convention nominated him on the first ballot on 17 July 1940. The Republican National Convention had nominated the businessman Wendell Willkie of Indiana, an internationalist who supported aid to Britain.

Both candidates pledged to keep American troops out of foreign wars (Roosevelt's Boston speech, 30 October 1940: "Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars"). The election (5 November 1940) returned Roosevelt 449 to 82 electoral votes and 54.7 to 44.8 per cent of the popular vote.

The result locked in Roosevelt's foreign policy and freed him to escalate after January 1941.

Lend-Lease

Britain ran out of dollars and gold by December 1940. Churchill's "give us the tools and we will finish the job" speech (9 February 1941) framed the request. Roosevelt's "garden hose" press conference (17 December 1940) framed the response: when your neighbour's house is on fire, you do not haggle over the hose.

The Lend-Lease Act (H.R. 1776, "An Act to promote the defense of the United States", 11 March 1941) authorised the President to "sell, transfer title to, exchange, lease, or lend" defence articles to "any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States". The vote was 60 to 31 in the Senate and 317 to 71 in the House.

Around 50 billion dollars in aid was provided across the war (worth around 900 billion in 2026 dollars):

• Britain: 31.4 billion.
• USSR (after Hitler's invasion on 22 June 1941): around 11 billion.
• Free France, China, and others: the remainder.

Lend-Lease made the United States the "arsenal of democracy" (Roosevelt's fireside chat, 29 December 1940) without formally entering the war. Critics including Senator Burton Wheeler of Montana called it "the New Deal's triple-A foreign policy: it will plough under every fourth American boy".

Operation Barbarossa and the extension to the USSR

Germany invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. Roosevelt extended Lend-Lease to the USSR on 7 November 1941 after Harry Hopkins's mission to Moscow (July 1941). Around 17.5 million tons of supplies were sent through the Persian Corridor, the Pacific route, and the Arctic convoys.

The Atlantic Charter

Roosevelt met Churchill secretly aboard USS Augusta and HMS Prince of Wales off Argentia, Newfoundland, from 9 to 12 August 1941. The Atlantic Charter (issued 14 August 1941) was a joint declaration of eight principles:

• No territorial aggrandisement.
• No territorial changes without the consent of the peoples concerned.
• The right of peoples to choose their form of government.
• Equal access to trade and raw materials.
• International economic cooperation and social security.
• Freedom from fear and want.
• Freedom of the seas.
• Disarmament of aggressor states pending wider international security.

The Charter was the basis of the Declaration by United Nations (1 January 1942) and the eventual UN Charter (1945). It articulated American war aims before the United States was at war.

The undeclared Atlantic war

US Navy escorts began protecting British convoys west of Iceland in April 1941. American forces occupied Greenland (April 1941) and Iceland (7 July 1941, replacing British troops).

Three naval incidents pushed the United States and Germany toward open war:

• USS Greer was attacked by U-652 on 4 September 1941. Roosevelt's fireside chat (11 September 1941) declared "shoot on sight" for German submarines in American defensive waters.
• USS Kearny was torpedoed by U-568 on 17 October 1941; 11 dead.
• USS Reuben James was sunk by U-552 on 31 October 1941; 115 dead, the first American warship lost in the war.

The Neutrality Act was revised on 17 November 1941 to allow armed merchant ships into combat zones. Hitler, focused on the Eastern Front, ordered restraint until he could declare war on his own terms.

The America First Committee

The principal isolationist coalition was the America First Committee (founded 4 September 1940 at Yale Law School). At its peak it had around 800,000 members and 450 chapters. Its prominent spokesmen included Charles Lindbergh, Senator Burton Wheeler, businessman Robert E. Wood (Sears), and historian Charles Beard.

Lindbergh's Des Moines speech on 11 September 1941 charged that "the three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt Administration". The speech was widely seen as anti-Semitic and damaged America First. The Committee disbanded on 11 December 1941, four days after Pearl Harbor.

Historiography

Robert Dallek (Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1979) is the standard.

Warren Kimball (The Most Unsordid Act, 1969) is the standard on Lend-Lease.

Theodore Wilson (The First Summit, 1969) is the standard on the Atlantic Charter.

Wayne Cole (America First, 1953) is the standard on the isolationist coalition.

David Reynolds (From Munich to Pearl Harbor, 2001) is the standard British view of the road to war.

Lynne Olson (Those Angry Days, 2013) is the standard popular history of the 1940 to 1941 debate.

Common exam traps

Forgetting that the destroyer-for-bases deal was an executive agreement, not a treaty. It set the constitutional precedent for Lend-Lease.

Treating Lindbergh as a fringe figure. He drew crowds of around 25,000 and had real influence.

Forgetting the order of the Neutrality Acts. 1935, 1936, 1937, 4 November 1939, 17 November 1941.

In one sentence

Between September 1939 and December 1941 Roosevelt moved the United States from formal neutrality to undeclared war, through the Neutrality Act of 4 November 1939 (cash and carry), the destroyer-for-bases deal of 2 September 1940, the third-term victory of 5 November 1940 (449 to 82 electoral votes), the Lend-Lease Act of 11 March 1941, the Atlantic Charter of 14 August 1941, the Atlantic naval war (USS Greer 4 September, USS Reuben James 31 October), and the constraint of the America First Committee and Charles Lindbergh, leaving the United States economically and naval engaged against the Axis but still without a declaration of war on the eve of Pearl Harbor.