The Isolationists
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In the years leading up to and after the first Great War, America was acknowledged as a world power. Although we had only fought in World War I for two years (Woodrow Wilson declared war on Germany April 2, 1917), we were still one of the major world powers represented in the peace talks at Versailles. President Woodrow Wilson joins Prime Minister David Lloyd George of Great Britain, Prime Minister George Clemenceau of France and Prime Minister Vittorio Orlando of Italy to discuss peace conditions in the World War I aftermath. War casualties totaled over 17 million men, yet. America only lost 114,000. When looking at our casualties, compared with the deaths of soldiers in other nations, the numbers just don’t add up. In all, Russia lost the most men, but they still were excluded from the peace talks, along with Germany and Austria-Hungary. America takes up only 6.7% of the deaths in the war, but we are 25% of the nations represented in treaty talks.
This all goes to show that America’s position in the world would become very important in the years to come. What the world needed now was a firm stance from one of its top nations in what was needed to be done. Instead, our nation is divided and in the end, decides to stay out of all foreign affairs.
After our unsatisfactory victory in World War I, the majority of America was isolationist. Yet, even before our involvement in World War I, Americans had became wary of our involvement in world affairs. We enjoyed the financial gain and sideline viewing of the war, but in the end, did not want to participate. A popular song of the time, “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier”, written by lyricist Alfred Bryan and composer Al Piantadosi was first heard in 1915. The chorus of the song goes,
“I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier,
I brought him up to be my pride and joy,
Who dares to put a musket on his shoulder,
To shoot some other mother’s darling boy?
Let nations arbitrate their future troubles,
It’s time to lay the sword and gun away,
There’d be no war today,
If mothers all would say,
I didn’t raise my boy to be a soldier.”
Formal US involvement in the war would not begin until April 4, 1917, when Congress voted 82 for, 16 against to declare war against Germany. After that, popular opinion swerved against President Woodrow Wilson. Many Americans felt betrayed by somebody who won with the slogan “He kept us out of war” only a year before in 1916.
Jane Addams wrote about the president in 1922: “He used one phrase which I had heard Colonel House use so recently that it still stuck firmly in my memory. The phrase was to the effect that, as head of a nation participating in the war, the President of the United States would have a seat at the Peace Table, but that if he remained the representative of a neutral country he could at best only "call through a crack in the door." The appeal he made was, in substance, that the foreign policy which we so extravagantly admired could have a chance if he were there to push and to defend them, but not otherwise. It was as if his heart's desire spoke through his words and dictated his view of the situation. But I found my mind challenging his whole theory of leadership. Was it a result of my bitter disappointment that I hotly and no doubt unfairly asked myself whether any man had the right to rate his moral leadership so high that he could consider the sacrifice of the lives of thousands of his young countrymen a necessity?” The next election ended in a landslide Republican victory (see picture below) for Warren G. Harding, a Republican.
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He promised “normalcy” for all, something that many Americans embraced after the hard years in World War I Wilson left them with. The general consensus at the time was that getting involved in world affairs was a big mistake and could only trigger another European war. All presidents after Wilson kept to the policy, mostly, until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941.
In all, the policy lasted for 23 years. In those years, the rise of the totalitarian states became evident in the nations of Japan, Germany and Italy, yet America chose to turn a blind eye and avoid the crisis even when it threatened the common good of the world. In an Advanced Infantry course in a ROTC Manual published in 1937, the author writes, “Based on our expenditures in the second year of the World War the direct cost of another similar war, of three years duration, might easily average two millions of dollars per hour or, in round numbers, fifty billions of dollars…Even our great wealth could not stand more than one such war in fifty years. Yet in the past war has been forced upon us twice as often as that.” This handbook for soldiers, whose job in life is to fight in wars for their country, actually discourages entering into another war. This just goes to show how isolationist our country had become. A survey conducted by TIME magazine at this time also showed “that only 44% believed the US would be drawn into the war” The Neutrality Act, passed in the same year, supported that public opinion. The act first started as the Pittman and McReynolds Neutrality Resolutions in Congress. Ideas for this kind of neutrality act were first brought up during the Spanish Civil War. At the time, Americans provided a lot of aid in the form of weapons and other war supplies to the Cuban rebels. If the Pittman and McReynolds Acts were already in place in Congress, no supplies would be able to reach the rebels, unless the President first admits that this kind of international war exists. As the American Journal of International Law describes it, “The Pittman and McReynolds Neutrality Resolutions of 1937, designed as more permanent legislation, while automatically imposing an arms embargo when the President finds and proclaims the fact that an international war exists, authorizes the President to impose such an embargo in civil wars, only when he considers that they have reached “a magnitude or [are] being conducted under such conditions” that the export of arms, ammunition and implements of a war would, in his opinion, “threaten or endanger the peace of the United States”. In less than two weeks, the Pittman Bill is successfully signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on August 31, 1935. In the law journal quoted above, the Pittman Bill was written as a permanent act, yet there is a six month expiration date attached to the bill. In the 1936 14 month extension of the Pittman and McReynolds bill passed in 1935, the conditions are even looser. American republics are exempt from the act itself and although loans are banned, short-term credits are allowed. These neutrality acts soon became not about maintaining neutrality in all fronts, but maintaining it politically, but still gaining financially. Many Americans spoke up about this general trend, especially when the world really became at war for the second time in 1939.
Charles Lindbergh, famous aviator, said, “We have by no means escaped the foreign entanglements and favoritisms that Washington warned us against when he passed the guidance of our nation's destiny to the hands of future generations. We have participated deeply in the intrigues of Europe, and not always in an open "democratic" way. There are still interests in this country and abroad who will do their utmost to draw us into the war.” Notice the last sentence in the quote. Among the many interests he might have meant in the speech, business is most definitely one of them, and he is justified. In the 1936 Spanish conflict, on August 10, Glenn Martin Co. sought the sale of 8 bombers to the Spanish Nationalist government. On Dec. 28, the US government actually granted an export license to Robert Cuse to sell aviation parts to the Spanish rebels. One year later, a similar incident involving China and Japan also occurred. On August 29, 1937, the US freighter Wichita sailed from Baltimore with 19 planes for China after Japan declared a blockade of the China coast. United States immediately tried to put a stop to it. On September 13, Maritime Commission chairman Joseph Kennedy ordered the Wichita to be detained in San Pedro, but the planes continued on to Hong Kong. Roosevelt also declared that no government ships would run arms to Japan and China, but supplies continued to flock toward the Asian area, especially thorough England. On July 1, 1938, Joseph Green, head of National Munitions Control Board, announced that he would only issue licenses for aircrafts that do not bomb civilians in other nations. By that time, it was already too late. 9 million dollars’ worth of aircrafts had already been transported to Japan. Although our business interests are continuously tied up with war, public opinion is still not in favor of it. Polls show that 73% of Americans are still in favor of keeping a mandatory arms embargo that same year. So what happened? How did we get involved in World War II in the end? If we just look at the data presented above, it’s pretty obvious. Our continuous business interests with nation already in war soon threatened our own livelihood and forced us to go to war. The passing of the Lend-Lease Act is especially momentous.
When Franklin D. Roosevelt gave his reasons for wanting to pass this act, his reasons were all of that to help the Allied Powers and not the Axis Powers. He spoke out vehemently about the rise of fascism and the Nazi Party in Germany, “Never before since Jamestown and Plymouth Rock has our American civilization been in such danger as now…The Nazi masters of Germany have made it clear that they intend not only to dominate all life and thought in their own country, but also to enslave the whole of Europe, and then to use the resources of Europe to dominate the rest of the world…In other words, the Axis not merely admits but the Axis proclaims that there can be no ultimate peace between their philosophy of government and our philosophy of government.” He encouraged the nation to see his reasoning and help the poor British people to keep on standing so the Nazis won’t reach America: “If Great Britain goes down, the Axis powers will control the continents of Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia , and the high seas -- and they will be in a position to bring enormous military and naval resources against this hemisphere. It is no exaggeration to say that all of us, in all the Americas, would be living at the point of a gun -- a gun loaded with explosive bullets, economic as well as military… We have furnished the British great material support and we will furnish far more in the future.” If our national leader is already biased, can we seriously expect our nation to not. Political cartoons of the time also pushed popular opinion toward wanting a war. An example is shown below:
And, since we did, why did we not have a firmer stance in the world to help prevent another war from happening? Many historians argue that Wilson’s greatest mistake in his presidency was not getting the League of Nations signed by the United States. Some even called it one of the biggest mistakes in American history. So, why were we able to trust Roosevelt, and not Wilson? In the World War II aftermath, the United Nations was formed. The basic concept is the same as the League of Nations formed over 20 years ago. The United States, especially advocated the formation of the UN. This sealed our fate of interventionism in the world, something that should have been embraced at the time of the League of Nations. Instead many tragic and horrible events occurred around the world.
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