American Involvement in WWII

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neutrality act passed the senate by seventy-nine votes to two in 1935. On August 31, Roosevelt signed it into law. In 1936 the law was renewed, and in 1937 a "comprehensive and permanent" neutrality act was passed (Overy 259).

The desire to avoid "foreign entanglements" of all kinds had been an American foreign policy for more than a century. A very real "geographical Isolation" permitted the United States to "fill up the empty lands of North America free from the threat of foreign conflict"(Churchill 563). Even if Roosevelt had wanted to do more in this European crisis (which he did not), there was a factor too often ignored by critics of American policy-American military weakness. When asked to evaluate how many troops were available if and when the United States would get involved, the army could only gather a mere one hundred thousand, when the French, Russian and Japanese armies numbered in millions. Its weapons dated from the first World War and were no match compared ...

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revealed that ninety-four per cent of the citizens did not want the united states to enter the war. The shock of World War one had still not left ,and entering a new war, they felt, would be foolish. In the early stages of the war American Ambassador to London was quoted saying "It's the end of the world, the end of everything" ( Overy 261).

As Richard Overy notes in The Road To War, this growing "estrangement" from Europe was not mere selfishness. They were the values expressed by secretary of state, Cordel Hull: "a primary interest in peace with justice, in economic well-being with stability, and conditions of order under the law". These were principles here on which most Americans ...

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