1. World War II: The Causes of US Entry

2. Isolation & Neutrality
US wanted to focus on coming out of the Great Depression
Senate investigation of US entry into WWI
Encouraged by financiers & armament makers
US could be secure despite the events going on in Europe
Protected by an ocean

3. Isolation & Neutrality
Neutrality Acts of 1935 & 1936
USA would withhold weapons and loans of money from all nations at war and that U.S. citizens who traveled on ships belonging to nations at war did so at their own risk.
FDR promised to keep US out of WWII

4. Isolation & Neutrality

5. “Cash and Carry” Neutrality Act of 1937
If belligerents in WWII wanted to trade with US…
Had to pay cash for non-military goods
Carry the goods from US back to Europe on their own ships
Why would FDR allow this in 1937?

6. Lend-Lease Act Roosevelt finds a way around the neutrality acts
Lend-Lease Act states that US can sell or loan war materials to “any country whose defense the President deems vital to the defense of the United States.”
FDR proclaims that the U.S. would become the “arsenal of democracy.”

7. Lend-Lease Act
“If your neighbor’s house is on fire, you don’t sell him a hose. You lend it to him and take it back after the fire is out.”

10. Pearl Harbor Japan makes Tripartite Pact with Italy & Germany
If a country not involved in the war attacks one of the three, then the others would come to that country’s aid
US takes stern stance against Japanese imperialism after being lax for years
Froze Japanese assets in USA
No longer sold resource deprived Japan oil

11. Pearl Harbor
December 7, 1941, Japanese war planes attacked the U.S. Navy fleet at Pearl Harbor.
2,403 died and 1,178 wounded
On December 8, 1941 FDR makes his “a date which will live in infamy” speech. He asks Congress to declare war on Japan.
Unanimous vote in Senate and vote in House.
Three days later Germany and Italy declare war on US, honoring the Tripartite Pact they had signed with Japan
With the U.S. now in the war, Winston Churchill remarked, “Hitler’s fate was sealed. Mussolini’s fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder…I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.”

12. Pearl Harbor

16. Pearl Harbor Did the US Government know? If so, when?
If so, why not prevent the attack?