Peace Seekers and War Makers

1920-1941

Searching for Peace and Order in the 1920’s

• League of Nations remained weak and ineffectual due to U.S. not joining

• Still, the U.S. attempted to influence the League from a distance

Peace Groups

• National Council for Prevention of War• Women’s International League for Peace and

Freedom• Pointed to carnage of WWI and the benefits of

disarmament

Washington Naval Conference

• The United States, Japan, Britain, and France agreed to limit naval armaments

• Only applied to battleships and aircraft carriers

• Did not include cruisers, destroyers, or submarines

• Still, a step towards disarmament

Kellogg-Briand Act

• 62 nations signed the act in which they “condemn recourse to war for the solution of international controversies, and renounce it as an instrument of national policy”

Cordell Hull

• “we cannot have a peaceful world, until we rebuild the international economic structure”

• Americanization of world markets• United States took the lead

Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy

• Strengthen ties with Latin America • End interventionism (Pan-American

Conference)• Nullified Platt Amendment• Cardenas controversy in Mexico

Economic Diplomacy

• Recognition of the Soviet Union• Granted Philippines independence• Lowered Tariffs

Fascism and Aggressive Militarism

• The worldwide depression allowed for powerful dictators and militarists to rise to power in – Germany– Italy– Japan

Italy

• Benito Mussolini rose to power in 1922

• Invaded Ethiopia in 1935

• Fascism: idea people should glorify nation and race through aggressive show of force

Germany

• Adolf Hitler used depression and appeals to unemployed to gain control of legislature in 1933

• Also used extreme nationalism and anti-Semitic hatreds

Japan

• Militarist exploits to gain natural resources

• Oil, tin, and iron

American Isolationism

• Neutrality Acts of 1935– No arms shipments, Americans could not travel on

ships of belligerent nations• Neutrality Acts of 1936– No loans or credit to belligerents

• Neutrality Acts of 1937– Could not get involved in the Spanish Civil War

Appeasement

• Ethiopia: League of Nations only condemned Italy

• Rhineland: League did nothing while Hitler simply remilitarized the Rhineland

• China: War between Japan and China• Sudetenland: Munich Conference allowed

Hitler to his last territorial claim in Czechoslovakia

Nazi Germany Goes to War

• Sign a non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union

• Ribbentrop-Molotov Agreements

• Sets stage for the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939.

Preparedness

• The U.S. did prepare by increasing military and defense budgets

• Justified by protecting from possible invasion of the Western Hemisphere

Cash and Carry

• Congress repealed embargo and approved a cash and carry flow of goods across the Atlantic

Lend Lease Act (1940)

• Went into effect to help Great Britain• Part of Special Relationship• United States became an “Arsenal for

Democracy”

Atlantic Charter

• Meeting between Roosevelt and Winston Churchill in August 1941

• Set war aims of collective security, self-determination, economic cooperation, and freedom of the seas.

Issues with Japan

• U.S. stopped selling fuel and scrap metal to Japan

• Withheld valuable oil supplies from Japan• Japan responds with an attack on Pearl Harbor

December 7th, 1941.

Clash of Systems

• USA, Great Britain, France

• Liberal capitalist world order

• Freedom of trade• Freedom of investment

• Italy, Germany, Japan, USSR

• Dictators favored totalitarian or fascist systems of governmental and economic issues