Why did American public opinion move away from isolationism in 1940-41?
Upvote:0
By 1940 and 1941 a couple of important fireside chats (e.g. explanation of land-lease) by FDR and speeches by Winston Churchill (e.g. give us the tools) probably had made some impact. In any case, by December of 1941 Pearl Harbor was the key event which perhaps would have turned the tide under any circumstances (see also wars following 9/11).
Upvote:7
Americans turned away from isolationism as events brought the war "home" to Americans. The bombing of Pearl Harbor (followed by Hitler's declaration of war) were the last steps in removing the isolationism.
Until the fall of France, the war was seen as another "European" war, not a world war. Washington (and others) had warned against American entanglements in such wars. Germany seemed to be on the wrong end of the three-cornered fight with England and France that seemed sure (based on the World War I experience), to last a long time. This taught America that it could get in late in the war (if necessary).
When France fell, America started to wake up, because there was some chance that Germany could walk away with all the marbles. For instance, if the British fleet surrendered intact, it would be as powerful as the American fleet because of the 5-5-3 ratio of the Washington naval conference. And the combined fleets of Germany (35% of Britain's or 1.70), plus Japan (who had overbuilt her "3" would be a second fleet the equal of America's. Americans were somewhat relieved when Germany lost the Battle of Britain, and a chance for a monopoly of airpower in Europe.
During 1941, naval actions in the Atlantic reminded Americans of much the Monroe Doctrine had implicitly relied on the British Fleet. This included the sinking of the Bismarck, Germany's super-battleship in May. In the fall, a torpedo attack by a submarine on the American destroyer Greer, brought about President Roosevelt's "shoot on sight" order http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Greer_(DD-145) This was followed by the sinking of the destroyer Reuben James by German submarines, which escalated tensions further (The German navy undertook these actions against the express orders of Hitler.)
By the end of 1941, the American people had gotten "used" to the idea of their involvement in a war that had basically been forced upon them.
More post
- 📝 Why did the United States want to "make Europe prosperous once more" with the Marshall Plan?
- 📝 Did Ancient Romans use metal thimbles? What were they like?
- 📝 Incentive to ban women having more than one husband?
- 📝 What acts of violence happened during the Nazi German annexation of Austria in 1938?
- 📝 Why did Mao use political mobilization to prevent inefficiency and slack?
- 📝 How many Western Roman rump states were there?
- 📝 How popular was Mozart in France before WWII and after it?
- 📝 How quickly did the term "nuclear fission" spread?
- 📝 What do we know about the character of William Adelin, son of Henry I?
- 📝 Did Joseph Stalin kill anyone personally?
- 📝 How many troops died on D-day?
- 📝 What happened to UK national debt when the NHS was created?
- 📝 When did the Polovtsy convert to Islam?
- 📝 Who were the target audiences of this propaganda lithograph?
- 📝 Why did the the East-Pakistanis oppose Urdu as their national language while Indians accepted Hindi as theirs?
- 📝 How did the Egyptian engineers of the Third and Fourth Dynasty construct the Pyramids and Sphinx without modern science and mathematics?
- 📝 How did a few blacks and Indians attain good education during apartheid in Cape Town?
- 📝 Is there any support within the scholarly community for Cyrus Gordon's "Common Background of Greek and Hebrew Civilizations"?
- 📝 Did Hitler brag about or downplay his war experiences in WW I in appealing to 1932 voters?
- 📝 Education during World War 2
- 📝 Is this story about the Tsar's encounter with a sergeant true?
- 📝 Who is this, probably royal, teenager?
- 📝 Did Romans complain about sundials?
- 📝 What were officers' casualty rates among the major powers of WWII?
- 📝 Did the Iraqis really only use landlines during Desert Storm?
- 📝 Looking for the source of a quote on Nazi ideology
- 📝 The Battle of Britain
- 📝 Who discovered first that the Moon does not have its own light?
- 📝 What was Yugoslavia doing in the Angolan Civil War?
- 📝 Why did the USA ever test nukes on their own soil?
Source: stackoverflow.com
Search Posts
Related post
- 📝 Why did American public opinion move away from isolationism in 1940-41?
- 📝 In WWII, why did people not run away from executions?
- 📝 Why did Franklin D. Roosevelt confiscate gold from the American people during the Great Depression?
- 📝 Why did Native Americans die from European diseases while Europeans didn't catch serious diseases from the New World?
- 📝 Why did the Confederacy think they could win the American Civil War?
- 📝 Why did Canada not join the American Revolution?
- 📝 Why did Columbus cross the mid-Atlantic instead of exploring from Greenland?
- 📝 How did the American Civil War help the U.S economy recover from the Panic of 1857 given that civil wars are extremely destructive?
- 📝 Why did Meiji government consider switching from Japanese to English?
- 📝 Did Kim Jong-Il wrest away power (rather than inherit it) from Kim Il-Sung in a power struggle?
- 📝 Why did Jodrell Bank assist the Soviet Union to collect data from their spacecraft in the mid 1960's?
- 📝 Why did the southern states secede from the U.S.?
- 📝 Why did the Japanese withdraw from Siberia in 1922?
- 📝 Why did Canada, Australia and New Zealand separate from the UK?
- 📝 How and why did e.g. Chechnya differ in status from entities like Armenia?
- 📝 Why did the Native American city of Cahokia die out?
- 📝 Why wouldn't the South make salt from seawater during the American Civil War?
- 📝 Italian History from 1870-1913: Why did Italy have such a hard time becoming a "Great Power" like Germany?
- 📝 What were the factors that caused the world to move away from the Gold Standard in the 20th century?
- 📝 Why and how were east Brandenburg, Pomerania and Silesia taken away from Germany after WW2?
- 📝 Why did this anti-communist pamphlet, from the USA in the 1950s, include UNESCO among its targets?
- 📝 How and why did Polish rule over the Ukraine "downwardly deviate" from Lithuanian rule?
- 📝 Why did Japan not withdraw from China as its pacific front was crumbling and the threat of US invasion imminent?
- 📝 Why did the Union army favor a "western" route to approaching Richmond during the American Civil War
- 📝 Why did the British "Indian" army come disproportionately from particular regions?
- 📝 Why did Joseph Goebbels allow an all-Jewish Orchestra to exist and perform in Berlin from 1938 to 1941?
- 📝 Why did Central and South American nations participate in WWII?
- 📝 Why did Loyalists go to Canada during the American Revolution
- 📝 When did SHAEF / Eisenhower move HQ from London to France during WWII?
- 📝 Why did antique guns and swords from the Franco-Prussian War make part of the demilitarization program to which Germany was subjected?