Why was isolationism so popular in the 1930s

Canada, originally a set of small weak colonies, and Mexico, torn with internal dissent, have never been threats. Geography smiled further on the United States. Its rich resources and ever-increasing internal market have historically limited its economic dependence on the rest of the world.

Even after , when the U. And when you add to that two vast oceans on either side, America, unlike most other countries in the world, has had little to fear from foreign invaders for much of its history.

That has not prevented sudden panics from seizing Americans. In the Cold War after , the prospect of nuclear weapons delivered by long-range bombers or rockets finally brought an acute sense of vulnerability to Americans.

A Federal Civil Defense Administration poster. History, too, played its part in shaping U. On the isolationist side of the scales, the very act of rebellion by the 13 colonies was a turning away from the old, corrupt European powers. Our detached and distant situation invited and enables us to pursue a different course. In the early days of the Republic, the Redcoats fought to quell its rebellious colony. During the Civil War and again in the s there was talk of war between the United States and Britain.

A century later, as the Cold War raged, you could substitute Communists for Catholics: The fear was much the same, and helped to fuel isolationism.

Yet the United States has never been able to insulate itself completely against the rest of the world—and there were many Americans who did not want to do that. Among the founding fathers, even George Washington admitted that his country might occasionally need temporary military alliances.

American leaders were also obliged to pay some attention to their own neighborhood—if only to keep others out. When President Theodore Roosevelt issued his corollary in , it became the justification for a series of military interventions in and around the Caribbean to protect American interests.

Unless the situation changed quickly, the British would be cut off from their most important source of war materials. It would give the president the power to transfer weapons, ammunition, and any other war materials to any country whose defense he deemed vital to the national security of the United States. The materials would then be returned after the war or be replaced if they had been damaged or destroyed.

The fight over Lend-Lease was one of the most significant debates on a matter of foreign policy in U. The plan was opposed by a wide variety of isolationist organizations, most notably the America First Committee, a group that boasted more than , members in chapters scattered around the country. America First counted among its members many successful business owners, politicians, and celebrities, most notably the famous aviator Charles Lindbergh.

Lindbergh and other speakers traveled around the country denouncing Lend-Lease. This America First Rally flyer advertised a gathering in St. During the spring and summer, the debate over U. Navy vessels ever farther from shore.

Their fears seemed confirmed when, in September , a German submarine fired on the destroyer U. That autumn saw regular instances of hostile fire between U. Because most Americans were paying attention to affairs in Europe in , it came as a surprise that when the United States did enter the war, it did so by way of events in the Pacific. Since , Japanese forces had been waging an undeclared war in China; in , Tokyo concluded an alliance with Germany and Italy and began making threatening moves into Southeast Asia.

The Roosevelt administration sought to deter Japanese aggression through economic sanctions, culminating in July , when it effectively cut off all exports to Japan, including oil, to hamper the Japanese war machine.

On December 7, , Japanese forces launched attacks against multiple targets in Southeast Asia and the islands in the Pacific. To prevent the U. Pacific Fleet from interfering, a task force of Japanese aircraft carriers had traveled quietly across the Pacific and sent its planes to make a surprise raid at dawn against the U.

By the time they finished, four U. Some interventionists believed US military action was inevitable, but many others believed the United States could still avoid sending troops to fight on foreign soil, if only the Neutrality Acts could be relaxed to allow the federal government to send military equipment and supplies to Great Britain.

William Allen White, Chairman of an interventionist organization called the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, reassured his listeners that the point of helping Britain was to keep the United States out of the war. Public opinion polling was still in its infancy as World War II approached, but surveys suggested the force of events in Europe in had a powerful impact on American ideas about the war.

Soon after, however, France fell, and in August the German Luftwaffe began an all-out bombing campaign against Great Britain. The day after the attack, Congress declared war on Imperial Japan with only a single dissenting vote. Faced with these realities and incensed by the attack on Pearl Harbor, everyday Americans enthusiastically supported the war effort.

Isolation was no longer an option. Star Shirley Temple had a special relationship with the Hawaiian Islands. Although the United States took measures to avoid political and military conflicts across the oceans, it continued to expand economically and protect its interests in Latin America.

The leaders of the isolationist movement drew upon history to bolster their position. Nevertheless, the American experience in that war served to bolster the arguments of isolationists; they argued that marginal U.

Nye, a Republican from North Dakota, fed this belief by claiming that American bankers and arms manufacturers had pushed for U. The publication of the book Merchants of Death by H. Engelbrecht and F.

Butler both served to increase popular suspicions of wartime profiteering and influence public opinion in the direction of neutrality. Many Americans became determined not to be tricked by banks and industries into making such great sacrifices again. The reality of a worldwide economic depression and the need for increased attention to domestic problems only served to bolster the idea that the United States should isolate itself from troubling events in Europe.