The road to war

After World War I most Americans concluded that participating in international affairs
had been a mistake. They sought peace through isolation and throughout the 1920s
advocated a policy of disarmament and nonintervention. As a result, relations
with Latin-American nations improved substantially under Hoover, an anti-
imperialist. This enabled Roosevelt to establish what became known as the Good
Neighbor Policy, which repudiated altogether the right of intervention in Latin
America. By exercising restraint in the region as a whole and by withdrawing American
occupation forces from the Caribbean, Roosevelt increased the prestige of the United
States in Latin America to its highest level in memory.

As the European situation became more tense, the United States continued to hold to
its isolationist policy. Congress, with the approval of Roosevelt and Secretary of
State Cordell Hull, enacted a series of neutrality laws that legislated against the factors
that supposedly had taken the United States into World War I. As Italy prepared to
invade Ethiopia, Congress passed the Neutrality Act of 1935, embargoing shipment of
arms to either aggressor or victim. Stronger legislation followed the outbreak of
the Spanish Civil War in 1936, in effect penalizing the Spanish government, whose
fascist enemies were receiving strong support from Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler.

When Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 touched off World War II, Roosevelt
called Congress into special session to revise the Neutrality Act to allow belligerents (in
reality only Great Britain and France, both on the Allied side) to purchase munitions
on a cash-and-carry basis. With the fall of France to Germany in June 1940, Roosevelt,
with heavy public support, threw the resources of the United States behind the British.
He ordered the War and Navy departments to resupply British divisions that had
been rescued at Dunkirk minus their weaponry, and in September he agreed to
exchange 50 obsolescent destroyers for 99-year leases on eight British naval and air
bases in the Western Hemisphere.

The question of how much and what type of additional aid should be given to
the Allies became a major issue of the election of 1940, in which Roosevelt ran for
an unprecedented third term. Public opinion polls, a new influence upon decision
makers, showed that most Americans favoured Britain but still wished to stay out of
war. Roosevelt’s opponent, Wendell Willkie, capitalized on this and rose steadily in the
polls by attacking the president as a warmonger. An alarmed Roosevelt fought back,
going so far as to make what he knew was an empty promise. “Your boys,” he said just
before the election, “are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” In truth, both
candidates realized that U.S. intervention in the war might become essential, contrary
to their public statements. Roosevelt won a decisive victory.

Although in retrospect U.S. entry into World War II seems inevitable, in 1941 it was
still the subject of great debate. Isolationism was a great political force, and many
influential individuals were determined that U.S. aid policy stop short of war. In fact,
as late as August 12, 1941, the House of Representatives extended the Selective
Training and Service Act of 1940 by a vote of only 203 to 202. Despite isolationist
resistance, Roosevelt pushed cautiously forward. In late August the navy added British
and Allied ships to its Icelandic convoys. Its orders were to shoot German and Italian
warships on sight, thus making the United States an undeclared participant in
the Battle of the Atlantic. During October one U.S. destroyer was damaged by a
German U-boat and another was sunk. The United States now embarked on an
undeclared naval war against Germany, but Roosevelt refrained from asking for a
formal declaration of war. According to public opinion polls, a majority of Americans
still hoped to remain neutral.

The war question was soon resolved by events in the Pacific. As much as a distant
neutral could, the United States had been supporting China in its war against Japan,
yet it continued to sell Japan products and commodities essential to the Japanese war
effort. Then, in July 1940, the United States applied an embargo on the sale of aviation
gas, lubricants, and prime scrap metal to Japan. When Japanese armies invaded
French Indochina in September with the apparent purpose of establishing bases for an
attack on the East Indies, the United States struck back by embargoing all types of
scrap iron and steel and by extending a loan to China. Japan promptly retaliated by
signing a limited treaty of alliance, the Tripartite Pact, with Germany and Italy.
Roosevelt extended a much larger loan to China and in December embargoed iron
ore, pig iron, and a variety of other products.

Japan and the United States then entered into complex negotiations in the spring of
1941. Neither country would compromise on the China question, however, Japan
refusing to withdraw and the United States insisting upon it. Believing that Japan
intended to attack the East Indies, the United States stopped exporting oil to Japan at
the end of the summer. In effect an ultimatum, since Japan had limited oil stocks and
no alternative source of supply, the oil embargo confirmed Japan’s decision to
eliminate the U.S. Pacific Fleet and to conquer Southeast Asia, thereby becoming self-
sufficient in crude oil and other vital resources. By the end of November Roosevelt and
his military advisers knew (through intercepted Japanese messages) that a military
attack was likely; they expected it to be against the East Indies or the Philippines. To
their astonishment, on December 7 Japan directed its first blow against naval and air
installations in Hawaii. In a bold surprise attack, Japanese aircraft destroyed or
damaged 18 ships of war at Pearl Harbor, including the entire battleship force, and 347
planes. Total U.S. casualties amounted to 2,403 dead and 1,178 wounded.

On December 8, 1941, Congress with only one dissenting vote declared war against
Japan. Three days later Germany and Italy declared war against the United States; and
Congress, voting unanimously, reciprocated. As a result of the attack on Pearl Harbor,
the previously divided nation entered into the global struggle with virtual unanimity.

The United States at war

Although isolationism died at Pearl Harbor, its legacy of unpreparedness lived on.
Anticipating war, Roosevelt and his advisers had been able to develop and execute
some plans for military expansion, but public opinion prohibited large-scale
appropriations for armament and defense. Thus, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, the
United States had some 2,200,000 men under arms, but most were ill-trained and
poorly equipped. Barely a handful of army divisions even approached a state of
readiness. The Army Air Corps possessed only 1,100 combat planes, many of which
were outdated. The navy was better prepared, but it was too small to fight a two-ocean
war and had barely been able to provide enough ships for convoy duty in the North
Atlantic. Eventually more than 15,000,000 men and women would serve in the armed
forces, but not until 1943 would the United States be strong enough to undertake large-
scale offensive operations

War production
Roosevelt had begun establishing mobilization agencies in 1939, but none had
sufficient power or authority to bring order out of the chaos generated as industry
converted to war production. He therefore created the War Production Board in
January 1942 to coordinate mobilization, and in 1943 an Office of War
Mobilization was established to supervise the host of defense agencies that had sprung
up in Washington, D.C. Gradually, a priorities system was devised to supply defense
plants with raw materials; a synthetic rubber industry was developed from scratch;
rationing conserved scarce resources; and the Office of Price Administration kept
inflation under control.

After initial snarls and never-ending disputes, by the beginning of 1944

production was reaching astronomical totals—double those of all the enemy
countries combined. Hailed at the time as a production miracle, this increase
was about equal to what the country would have produced in peacetime,
assuming full employment. War production might have risen even higher if
regulation of civilian consumption and industry had been stricter.

Social consequences of the war

Despite the vast number of men and women in uniform, civilian employment rose from
46,000,000 in 1940 to more than 53,000,000 in 1945. The pool of unemployed men
dried up in 1943, and further employment increases consisted of women, minorities,
and over- or underage males. These were not enough to meet all needs, and by the end
of the year a manpower shortage had developed.

One result of this shortage was that Blacks made significant social and economic
progress. Although the armed forces continued to practice segregation, as did Red
Cross blood banks, Roosevelt, under pressure from Blacks, who were outraged by the
refusal of defense industries to integrate their labour forces, signed Executive Order
8802 on June 25, 1941. It prohibited racial discrimination in job training programs
and by defense contractors and established a Fair Employment Practices Committee to
insure compliance. By the end of 1944 nearly 2,000,000 Blacks were at work in defense
industries. As Black contributions to the military and industry increased, so did their
demands for equality. This sometimes led to racial hostilities, as on June 20, 1943,
when mobs of whites invaded the Black section of Detroit. Nevertheless, the gains
offset the losses. Lynching virtually died out, several states outlawed discriminatory
voting practices, and others adopted fair employment laws.

Full employment also resulted in raised income levels, which, through a mixture
of price and wage controls, were kept ahead of inflation. Despite both this increase in
income and a no-strike pledge given by trade union leaders after Pearl Harbor, there
were numerous labour actions. Workers resented wage ceilings because much of their
increased income went to pay taxes and was earned by working overtime rather than
through higher hourly rates. In consequence, there were almost 15,000 labour
stoppages during the war at a cost of some 36,000,000 man-days. Strikes were greatly
resented, particularly by the armed forces, but their effects were more symbolic than
harmful. The time lost amounted to only one-ninth of 1 percent of all hours worked.

Because Pearl Harbor had united the nation, few people were prosecuted for disloyalty
or sedition, unlike during World War I. The one glaring exception to this policy was the
scandalous treatment of Japanese and Americans of Japanese descent. In 1942, on the
basis of groundless racial fears and suspicions, virtually the entire Japanese-American
population of the West Coast, amounting to 110,000 persons, was rounded up and
imprisoned in “relocation” centres, which the inmates regarded as concentration
camps. The Japanese-Americans lost their liberty, and in most cases their property as
well, despite the fact that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which had already
arrested those individuals it considered security risks, had verified their loyalty.