Those who remain hide from one another so as to not share their desperation. It has been years since you invited anyone over for Sunday dinner. Breaking away from your thoughts, you look down at your paper and see the headline about the war in Europe.
The image below is of German troops marching through Warsaw. Staring at the photo, you realize the Poles in the background are blurry, their faces mostly obscured and hidden. But still, despite the lack of detail, you can sense a sadness, a defeatedness, in their eyes. It fills you with unease. From the kitchen, a crescendo of white-noise roars and pulls your eyes up. Caroline has turned the radio on, and she is tuning rapidly. Within seconds, the voice of President Franklin D.
Roosevelt blankets the air. He says,. Passionately though we may desire detachment, we are forced to realize that every word that comes through the air, every ship that sails the sea, every battle that is fought does affect the American future. He is a fearmonger and has his sights on war. He absolutely needs to be stopped, but he is far away from American soil. The countries closest to him, the ones he actually threatened, such as France and Great Britain — Hitler is their problem.
How could he possibly affect me? Finding consistent work. Paying the bills. Feeding your wife and three sons. For most Americans living in and America, the war in Europe was troubling, but the real danger lurked in the Pacific as the Japanese sought to exert their influence in waters and lands claimed by the United States.
Yet, in , with the war in full swing all across the globe, the United States remained officially neutral, as it had done for most of its history and as it had tried but failed to do during World War I. The Depression was still raging in many parts of the country, meaning poverty and hunger for large chunks of the population.
A costly, and deadly, overseas war was not a priority. Mobilization began when the United States declared war on Japan on December 8, , one day after the attacks on Pearl Harbor. Because the attack happened without a declaration of war and without explicit warning, the attack on Pearl Harbor was later judged in the Tokyo Trials to be a war crime. Roosevelt, exceptional authority when negotiating deals with nations at war with Nazi Germany and its allies.
Essentially, it allowed President Franklin D. This power made it possible for the United States to give large quantities of military supplies to Great Britain at very reasonable terms. President Roosevelt saw the benefit of this program not only as a way to help a powerful ally but also as a way to jumpstart the struggling economy in the United States, which had been suffering from the Great Depression brought on by the Stock Market Crash.
Over the next few years, Congress would extend Lend-Lease to even more countries. This shows that the United States was far from neutral, no matter its official status. Answering this question can be complicated if you want it to be. World War II was a catastrophic clash of global power, driven primarily by a small group of powerful elites, but played out on the ground by regular working-class people whose motivations were as diverse as they were. A great many were forced, some signed up, and a number of them fought for reasons we may never understand.
In total, 1. Every American was motivated differently, but the vast majority, if asked, would have named one of a few reasons for why they supported the war and even chose to risk their life to fight in it. Larger historical forces eventually brought the United States to the brink of World War II, but the direct and immediate cause that led it to officially entering the war was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
This blindside assault came in the early morning of December 7, when Japanese Imperial bombers flew over the Hawaiin naval base and dumped their payloads full of destruction and death. They killed 2, Americans, wounding 1, more; sunk four battleships, damaged two others, and wrecked countless other ships and planes stationed at the base. The vast majority of the U. At the time of the attack, nine civilian aircraft were flying in the vicinity of Pearl Harbor. Of these, three were shot down.
Nagumo, however, decided to withdraw as he did not have enough resources to pull off a third wave of attack. The tragedy of the Pearl Harbor attack, along with its treacherous nature, infuriated the American public — which had been growing increasingly skeptical of Japan due to its expansion in the Pacific throughout As a result, after the attacks, America was nearly in complete agreement about seeking vengeance through war.
In Congress, the feeling was equally as strong. Just one person from both houses, a woman named Jeanette Rankin, voted against it. Once back in Washington, she was the sole dissenter in an even more popular vote on war, claiming President Roosevelt wanted the conflict to promote his business interests and also that her pacifist views prevented her from supporting the idea. She was ridiculed for this position and accused of being an enemy sympathizer.
The carnage and cost that comes with war no longer mattered, and neutrality, which was the preferred approach just two years earlier, ceased to be an option. Throughout the war, Pearl Harbor was frequently used in American propaganda. The nation had been attacked in its own territory, and someone had to pay. Those who stood in the way were cast aside, and the United States prepared to exact its revenge.
These promises unceremoniously devolved into fascism, allowing for the formation of one of the most brutal regimes in history: the Nazis. He cared solely about conquest and domination, and he was unconcerned about the cost. His actions spoke of his view that human life and basic decency meant nothing.
Clearly, the rise of such an evil across the pond was troubling to most Americans, and ignoring what was happening became a moral impossibility. Then, in , France fell to the Nazis in a matter of weeks. The political collapse of such a powerful nation in such a short period of time shook the world and made everyone wake up to the severity of the threat posed by Hitler. As a result, public support for the war grew throughout and This idea that the United States was going to war in Europe to stop Hitler and fascism from spreading and threatening the American way of life was a powerful motivator and helped make the war a popular thing in the early s.
Either way, due to their neutrality, they were able in supplying their goods to various countries, including Axis and the Allied. But suddenly what happened that they broke the neutrality and entered into great destruction. Including 21 ship damages, more than people died in that two hours sudden attack. Because just an hour before, diplomats between these two countries were talking over solving the disputes in the Pacific ocean.
Hence, the sudden attack almost shocked the entire United States. Many experts also consider this incident as the main reason for the defeat of Central power. As per the treaty, these three nations came to an agreement that they would have to declare war on that country, which declares war against one of those members. On the same particular day, the USA also had to declare war on Germany and Italy, even though they had no big conflicts against each other.
Even in and , their exports were 75 times greater than the years before]. Actually, many United States experts believed that their country was incumbent over the British Empire winning the war against Axis forces. So, helping the Britishers would be a better choice for Americans rather than staying neutral.
Either way, the United States and the United Kingdom were both democratic nations. From this side, the US had already some sympathy for Britain. This one is not a primary cause, but it also has a lot of importance. The United States of America is a country that has fought some huge battles to protect democracy and human rights Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. In their history, two of the major battles were the Revolutionary war of independence and the Civil War.
In these great wars, thousands and lakhs of people gave up their lives only to protect two things; one was democracy and the other was human rights. America knew very well that if Axis power wins in World War 2, then they would end up all the democratic systems from the world. In following this philosophy, the Japanese attacked and occupied the southern region of Manchuria in the fall of The purpose of this attack was to give Japan a territory rich in raw materials on the mainland.
The only problem was that Manchuria was already under the control of China and was an area of strategic importance to the USSR.
Although the United States distrusted the USSR because of the recent communist takeover, the two nations maintained relatively sociable relations at the time. Irritated that the Japanese had moved into their backyard, the USSR began to strongly criticize the Japanese and began to posture militarily in the northern Manchuria region. Due to the United States' relatively amicable relations with both the USSR and China, it too began to publicly criticize the Japanese for their increasing aggression.
The United States cautioned Japan against further aggressive actions by threatening to cut off shipments of raw materials to the nation. This was an especially risky situation for Japan, its only source of oil and metal came from the United States, while their primary source of rubber came from the British territories in Malaya.
Therefore, it would seem that the nation would have to tread lightly to avoid angering the West. Or would it? In a surprising act of defiance, Japan promptly separated from the League of Nations, which was the precursor to the United Nations.
Tensions continued to mount in the region for several years until when Japan entered full-scale military combat with the economically depressed nation of China. In the fall of , Japan met with Nazi Germany and fascist-controlled Italy to create an alliance known as the Tripartite Pact. Japanese, German, and Italian leaders celebrate the signing of the Tripartite Pact.
The United States responded by beginning to funnel money and equipment to the embattled Chinese. This aid, covered under the Lend-Lease Act, was a tool used by the United States to provide aid to friends and allies without having to directly become involved in the conflict. This move further agitated the Japanese and began to turn an already very uneasy relationship into an outright hostile one. Although the Japanese had angered the West and isolated itself from the world, the nation continued its aggressive tactics.
In line with this militaristic movement, the nation then attempted a takeover of French Indo-China. This led to Japan devising the plan to attack Pearl Harbor and cripple the U.
Pacific fleet. Interestingly, the United States was slow to respond to Japan militarily. Instead, President Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill devised a strategy to vanquish the European threat before fully concentrating on defeating Japan; this became known as the Europe First or Germany First strategy.
Although Japan was a serious threat, the Allied leaders determined that they could be contained to the Pacific region; after all, the Japanese were bogged down with the war in China.
Therefore in a surprising twist, the United States went from being attacked by the Japanese to attacking the Axis powers in Europe in only a matter of days. This has led some to speculate that President Roosevelt somehow orchestrated or welcomed the attack on Pearl Harbor as a way to allow the United States to slip into the war in Europe. Much like it had done in WWI, Germany eventually lifted its ban on unrestricted submarine warfare and began attacking merchant ships that were accompanying British vessels in the Atlantic Ocean.
As the United States had begun giving more and more resources to their French and British allies, the English navy would help protect American ships that were transporting supplies. This greatly angered Germany, who knew that the United States was using its neutrality as an advantage to help their British allies. Eventually, Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare and began attacking merchant ships and U. Nazi party leader Adolf Hitler saw the United States as a weak yet overbearing nation that consistently meddled in the affairs of other nations.
Hitler saw the USA as an ideological enemy, racially mixed and therefore inferior. With the threat from the USSR vanquished he would then be free to finish off Britain with little interference from the Americans. According to reports, he was utterly devastated when Germany was defeated. So much in fact, that he never fully recovered from the embarrassment. In turn, he began to blame Jews, Communism, and Western meddling for the despair that had befallen Germany. Determined to see the nation restored to her previous glory, Hitler soon joined a growing movement called the National Socialist German Workers Party or Nazi Party.
The party came to see the Treaty of Versailles, the agreement that ended World War I, as responsible for the destruction of German pride and success. The treaty was designed in such a matter that Germany would be punished severely for its role in World War I, yet it should be lenient enough to allow Germany to resist the communist movement that was underway in the USSR. Under the agreement, Germany was allowed to possess no submarines, no military aircraft, and only a few naval vessels.
The nation was also forbidden to once again unite with Austria, or create any more secret treaties. And to top it off, Germany had to make reparation payments to the nations that it had attacked. President Woodrow Wilson had little interest in harshly punishing Germany. Instead, he championed the aim of creating a treaty that would allow Europe to handle any future conflicts without the help of the United States. This mentality began to permeate the United States and culminated in the creation of the Neutrality Acts in the s.
In essence, the Neutrality Acts tied the hands of the United States to help its allies by refusing to sell resources or loaning cash to any war combatants. However, the Neutrality Acts did have some shortcomings which allowed many American businesses to continue supplying resources to whomever they pleased. Nevertheless, as far as the United States government was concerned the country was to keep the sole focus on itself and remain isolationist.
While the Treaty of Versailles had been developed to remain somewhat lenient, Germans saw it as anything but. Instead, it was viewed as a punishment that was meant to embarrass Germany that was sucking the lifeblood from their nation. The loss of vital industrial territory would be a severe blow to any attempts by Germany to rebuild her economy.
Coal from the Saar and Upper Silesia, in particular, was a vital economic loss. Combined with the financial penalties linked to reparations, it seemed clear to Germany that the Allies wanted nothing else but to bankrupt her.
This sentiment proved to be true as Germany's unemployment rate and inflation began to paralyze the nation's economy. The United States tried to step in and help by introducing the Young Plan in However, this arrangement soured when the United States entered the Great Depression later that same year.
The economic instability in the United States created a massive wave of financial collapse around the world, including Germany.
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