Interwar FOREIGN POLICY (between WWI & WWII) [APUSH Review Unit 7 Topic 11] Period 7: 1898-1945

Well hey there and welcome back  to Heimler’s History. We’ve been going through Unit 7 of the AP U.S.  History Curriculum and in this video we’re going to look at American foreign  policy between both world wars. So if you’re ready to get them brain cows milked with  semi-isolationist fervor, then let’s get to it. So let’s focus this effort with our  learning objective, and it’s this: Explain the similarities and differences in attitudes  about the nation’s proper role in the world. SO after the

end of World War I, American  foreign policy largely slid into isolationism. This just means that Americans had had their  fill of European entanglement in the Great War and we just needed some me time for a  while. And the fact that Americans wanted that on the whole is evidenced by their  choice of president in 1920, Warren G. Harding who ran on the campaign promise of a  “return to normalcy,” saying, “America's present need is not heroics, but healing; not nostrums,  but normalcy; not revolu

tion, but restoration; ...not submergence in internationality,  but sustainment in triumphant nationality.” Now, let me illustrate the outcome of this desire  for isolationism in terms of foreign policy. First was the increase of tariffs, which,  again, are taxes on imported goods. In 1922 the Fordney-McCumber Act raised tariffs  dramatically, and then in 1930 Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley Tariff which  drove them up even more. Now remember, when a protective tariff like this is enacted,  it

makes foreign goods more expensive, and thus people are more likely to buy  domestically made goods. The flipside is that international trade decreases.  Remember: we just needed some me time. Another example of isolationist foreign policy was  the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Essentially this was just a pact signed among 63 nations, the United States  included, which tried to make war illegal, or at least to renounce war in principle. [the future]  Aw, that’s cute. However, the pact was negotiated and

signed outside the authority of the League of  Nations and so it was impossible to enforce and thus it was basically useless. So here again we  see America using foreign policy in order to keep themselves clear of international entanglements,  in this case, another international war. But beginning in the 1930s, U.S. isolationism  became harder and harder to maintain. Many Americans were concerned about the rise of fascist  and totalitarian governments in Europe. In Italy, Benito Mussolini was th

e face of the rising  Fascist party. IN Germany, Adolf Hitler took control in the name of the Nazi Party. Japan too  hopped on the militaristic authoritarian train, and all of these dictatorial governments  became aggressors in their respective spheres, and that made AMericans a little twitchy,  but not twitchy enough to get involved. Americans watched as Japan invaded  Manchuria in 1931. Then they watched Germany occupy the Rhineland  in 1936, then Austria in 1937, then Czechoslovakia in 1938.

They watched  as Italy took over Ethiopia in 1936. And all these developments troubled Americans,  but to our isolationist tendencies, we stuck. And all of these aggressive actions came to a  head in September of 1939 when Hitler invaded Poland and World War II officially began. But  still many American policy makers argued for neutrality. Isolationists pointed out that over  100,000 Americans had lost their lives the last time we got involved in a European War, namely,  World War I, and still t

he world was not safe for democracy as Woodrow Wilson had promised. Adding  evidence to the isolationist case was the Senate’s Nye Committee which presented unflattering  evidence that certain American corporations had made a metric buttload of profit off of America’s  involvement in World War I. And that suggested that perhaps the pursuit of profits from these  companies had led us into war in the first place. On the other side of the debate were the  interventionists who argued that it was foo

lish to isolate ourselves from the developments  in Europe. The idea of isolationism stretched all the way back to the presidency of George  Washington, and one of the main arguments for isolation was the Atlantic Ocean. It’s so big,  so far removed from Europe, we have a buffer. But interventionists argued that the bigness of the  Atlantic Ocean as a buffer was no longer arguable in the age of submarines and airplanes. Europeans  could bring this war to the American shores in a matter of days.

They argued that if Britain  was defeated, there would be nothing stopping Hitler and the rest of his authoritarian  cronies from bringing the war to America. And here’s where we get to president  Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attitude toward the war. We could call him an intervening  isolationist. He was deeply sympathetic to Britain’s cause and thought that U.S.  involvement in the war was proper, but he didn’t have the support of the largely  isolationist American public. So he led America to get i

nvolved in the war without appearing  to get involved in the war. Let me explain. Roosevelt began gradually giving aid to the  Allies, most notably, Great Britain. First was the Cash and Carry program. Under this  program, Roosevelt persuaded Congress to pass a looser Neutrality Act that allowed any  belligerent in the war to purchase armaments from the U.S. as long as they paid cash and  used their own ships to transport them. And since Britain effectively controlled the seas,  this policy was

actually there to aid Britain. Then at the point when Britain was  running dangerously low on cash to continue these payments, Roosevelt  and British prime minister Winston Churchill worked out the Destroyers  for Bases program. Under this deal, the U.S. exchanged American destroyers for  land rights on various British possessions. And then finally in 1941 came the Lend-Lease Act  which allowed Britain to obtain the arms they needed from the U.S. on credit. So technically,  the United States was

neutral in all of this, but nobody was fooled when it came  to where America’s loyalties lay: clearly they were on the side of  Britain and the Allied Powers. But every hope of continued isolationism was  destroyed on the morning of December 7th, 1941. On that morning, Japanese planes flew  over the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii and unleashed terrible destruction on it. When  the smoke had cleared and the fires had died, over 2400 Americans had died in the attack.  That evening Roosevelt ad

dressed Congress and asked for a declaration of war  against Japan. And upon granting it, Hitler declared war on America,  and now America was in it, baby. Alright thanks for watching. There are more  videos on Unit 7 right here, and if you need help getting an A in your class and a five  on your exam in May then click right here me the signal to keep making them, well that’s  what the subscribe button is for. Heimler out.