Part I: Background: American Foreign Policy 1920-1941
Copyright © 2006, Henry J. Sage

Introduction

America’s participation in the first World War came relatively late, but by the time the war was over and President Wilson had participated in the writing of the Treaty of Versailles, the result of the war for America was that the nation was more connected with the rest of the world than it had ever been before. The American acquisition of Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippine Islands as an outcome of the Spanish-American War and President Roosevelt’s sponsoring of the Treaty of Portsmouth also contributed to America’s new international standing.

All that did not mean, however, that Americans were prepared to step to the front of the world stage and become involved in international issues as a matter of course.  Indeed, for reasons we shall discuss below, the United States to an extent turned its back on the rest of the world and retreated into something resembling its traditional 19th-century mode of isolationism.

United States Diplomacy in the 1920s: The Aftermath of the Great War

In the aftermath of the Great War, as American troops came home from Europe, the United States became permeated by a sense of disillusionment as people observed the turmoil continuing in Europe in the years following that terrible conflict. In 1921 Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes called for a naval conference in Washington to address the armaments race that many had seen as an underlying cause of the First World War, the first of many steps taken internationally to try to prevent the outbreak of more war.

The Washington Naval Conference convened in November 1921, and in the opening address Secretary Hughes gave a candid speech in which he declared that “the way to disarm is to disarm,” and that the time to begin was immediately. Thus he proposed a 10-year holiday in the construction of capital ships—battleships and heavy cruisers—and recommended the scrapping of additional ships. One British reporter claimed that Secretary Hughes had in 15 minutes “sunk more ships than all the admirals of the world have sunk over the centuries.”

Although Hughes’s proposals were welcomed by many peace advocates, traditional naval powers such as Great Britain were less than enthusiastic. Nevertheless, the pressure for disarmament was such that an agreement was finally reached which would limit the ratio of capital ship tonnage among the five major powers:

The Five-Power Naval Treaty was signed in February, 1922, and was to remain in effect until 1936. The treaty placed a limitation on the numbers and sizes of major warships, although it did not affect smaller vessels such as destroyers, submarines and cruisers, and it called for a construction “holiday” of ten years.

The conference also agreed on a four-power treaty in which Great Britain, the United States, Japan, and France agreed to respect each other's interests in the Pacific. Finally, a Nine Power Treaty endorsed the Open Door policy in China. Those who signed that agreement agreed to respect the “sovereignty, independence, and territorial and administrative integrity of China” and to uphold the principles of the Open Door.

The Washington Conference was a landmark event, and it was followed by other attempts to reduce armaments and control the forces that tended to lead to war. Further conferences were held at Geneva and London, but ultimately none of the agreements ever prevented anything significant. In 1927 with rumblings of discontent in Germany, France approached the United States with a proposal that the two nations enter into a defensive alliance, an obvious attempt to provide protection in advance in case of German retaliation. Secretary of State Kellogg, not wanting to become snarled in an alliance, suggested a wider pact that would “outlaw” war. The resulting Kellogg-Briand Pact was signed in 1928, though many realized that its goals were illusory, since its intent was indeed to make war illegal. One U.S. Senator claimed it was “not worth a postage stamp”; another called it “worthless but harmless.”

A similar agreement had arisen from a meeting in Locarno, Switzerland, in 1925 among representatives of Britain, France, Belgium, Italy, and Germany. Under the leadership of Gustav Stresemann, the German Foreign Minister, the meeting settled a number of security issues involving France, Belgium and Germany. Germany also signed agreements with its eastern neighbors, but just as important was the “Spirit of Locarno” that emerged, an indication that the major powers intended to try to settle future differences peaceably. Following the signing of the Locarno Pact, Germany was admitted to the League of Nations. Along with Friedrich Ebert, President of the German (Weimar) Republic, Stresemann showed great statesmanship, but unfortunately for Germany and the rest of the World, Hitler and the Nazis were on the rise in the 1920s.

GERMANY. (See also “The Rise of Nazi Germany”) The Weimar Republic was a courageous attempt at establishing democracy in Germany, but it was doomed because of structural weaknesses and economic disorders stemming from, among other things, the Versailles settlements. In 1924 Germany's international obligations totaled $132 billion gold marks, and the nation underwent a period of chaotic inflation that wrecked the economy. French troops occupied the Ruhr Valley in 1923 after the Germans defaulted on their obligations, and in response Germans practiced “passive resistance” in the form of sit-down strikes.

America's interest in the German situation resulted from the fact that the allies owed large sums of money to the United States from loans made during the war, and it was clear that if Germany could not indemnify the allies, they would not be in a position to repay the United States.  President Coolidge understood that dilemma and his policies led to the Dawes Plan—the U.S. guaranteed that it would loan Germany money and help them reorganize their finances. In 1929 further problems arose and President Hoover approved the Young Plan, which reduced German debts and set up an international bank for collection. But by the 1930s with the world depression affecting everyone, all debts were eventually defaulted or cancelled.

The Good Neighbor Policy. The U.S. had a history of intervention in Latin America going back to the time of Andrew Jackson in Florida, when it still belonged to Spain. By the 1920s Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt and many others slowly began to recognize the basic unfairness of America’s Latin American policy. Both Harding and Coolidge had to deal with growing "Yankee-phobia" south of the border. President Hoover rejected Wilson’s interventionist policies and went on a goodwill tour after the 1928 election. The gradual removal of all American occupying forces began and was completed by 1934. The United States also renounced its right to intervene in Cuban affairs by terminating the Platt Amendment. Many problem areas still existed, and the U.S. had difficult issues to resolve with various individual nations, but the Good Neighbor policy improved relations enormously, so that by World War II the Western Hemisphere was reasonably unified, even though the United States was still seen as the “colossus of the North.”

In 1936 President Franklin Roosevelt attended the Buenos Aires Inter-American Conference. FDR’s address to the delegates was well received—he called himself a “traveling salesman for peace” and preached “mutual safety.” The Lima Declaration of 1938 reinforced inter-American solidarity.

America in the 1930's: The Triumph of Isolationism
A “gloomy, pessimistic, negative pacifism”

During the crisis years of 1931-1939 Americans found themselves in the depths of the Great Depression and did not want to think of further war, so the country retreated into a deeper position of isolationism. Americans saw themselves as “innocent bystanders” in world affairs and began to feel as trouble arose in Europe that America’s participation in the First World War may have been a waste. In 1933 the U.S. finally recognized the Soviet government and established formal relations with the USSR—primarily for business reasons. By 1936, as  Hitler was beginning to menace Europe, Americans wanted to stay out of it, but how? Secretary of State Henry Stimson claimed, “The only sure way to stay out of war is to prevent it.” But how was the United States, which had refused even to joint the League of Nations and had reduced its armaments to a dangerously low level, supposed to accomplish that?

The Nye Committee Hearings. In 1934 Senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota began a series of hearings that tried to show that munitions makers had made “huge” profits during World War I and were therefore somehow responsible for America’s involvement in the conflict. They were called the “Merchants of Death.” Although the results of the Nye Committee investigation were inconclusive, the isolationists won the day and several Neutrality Acts were the result. The Committee concluded that American freedom of the seas doctrine had become unreasonable because of the submarine. Neutrals, they concluded, should keep out of war zones.

The Neutrality Acts: As the hearings went forward, the isolationists were in control. Reading the political winds, FDR asked the Nye Committee to prepare legislation.

Further neutrality acts were passed in 1936 and 1937, and the net result of those laws was to handcuff the United States, even if it had a legitimate desire to assist nations that were victims of international aggression. President Roosevelt made no attempt to block this legislation, but refused to invoke the laws when Japan invaded China, thereby allowing China to buy arms from the United States.

The Lure of Pacifism

Looking back at World War I as a meaningless effort, many Americans sought security in pacifism as well as in legal neutrality. They wanted a way to ensure that the United States would not be drawn into another European conflict. Most Americans suspected that they had been duped by the politicians, munitions makers and bankers into going to war in 1917 and resolved never again to fight a meaningless war. Romantic notions of pacifism were not exclusive to the United States: in Great Britain college students pledged that they would never again fight in any kind of war. (Many of those same young men would die during World War II.)

A gradual breakdown of attempts at international cooperation developed as militaristic nations asserted their will with no regard for consequences or for maintaining the peace—conquest and revenge were their motives. The concept of collective security was, in effect, the same idea as the old “Concert of Europe,” but a toothless League of Nations brought nothing but head-in-the-sand optimism, not action. Aggressor nations ignored the League.

Reasons for isolationism: