America’s involvement in World War Two
Uploaded by Admin on Dec 13, 1999
When war broke out , there was no way the world could possibly know the severity of this guerre. Fortunately one country saw and understood that Germany and its allies would have to be stopped. America’s Involvement in World War two not only contributed in the eventual downfall of the insane Adolph Hitler and his Third Reich, but also came at the precise time and moment. Had the united states entered the war any earlier the consequences might have been worse.
Over the years it has been an often heated and debated issue on whether the united states could have entered the war sooner and thus have saved many lives. To try to understand this we must look both at the people’s and government’s point of view.
Just after war broke out in Europe, President Roosevelt hurriedly called his cabinet and military advisors together. There it was agreed that the United states stay neutral in these affairs. One of the reasons given was that unless America was directly threatened they had no reason to be involved. This reason was a valid one because it was the American policy to stay neutral in any affairs not having to with them unless American soil was threatened directly. Thus the provisional 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 to the new artillery that Germany and its allies had. "American soldiers were more at home with the horse than with the tank" (Overy 273). The air...