The Treaty of Versailles was defeated in 1919 and 1920 by the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The United States did not join the League of Nations. For the next two decades, American foreign policy would attempt to expand American influence in the world without committing the United States to any long-term relationships with other nations.

Lodge was not an isolationist. He believed that the United States should be free from obligations to anyone else.

Christian civilization has a great moral asset. Nobody led us, nobody guided us, and nobody controlled us. I would not prevent America from joining other nations.

The most important effort was the Nazi-Soviet Washington Conference of 1921, an attempt nonaggression pact to prevent a destabilizing naval armaments Germany invades race among the United States, Britain, and Poland Japan.

Most of Hughes's terms were accepted by the conference. The Roosevelt reelected the Five-Power Pact of February 1922, which imposed limits for total naval tonnage and a deal ratio of armaments.

Japan would maintain 3 warships for every 5 tons of American and British warships.

In 1927, Harbor Aristide Briand asked the United States to join an alliance against Germany. Secretary of State Frank Kellogg proposed a treaty outlawing war as an instrument of national policy. The agreement was signed in Paris in August of 1928. Forty-eight other nations joined the Pact. There were no instruments of enforcement in it.

Ensuring that American overseas trade faced no obstacles was the first responsibility of diplomacy. The Allied powers of Europe had to repay $11 billion in loans to the United States after the war. Germany was trying to pay for the damage done by the Allies. The United States came up with a solution.

An agreement was reached between France, Britain, Germany, and the United States in 1924. The flow of funds was only able to continue because of the enormous debts the European nations were acquiring to American banks and corporations. The worldwide depression shattered the system in 1931 and the American economic involvement in Europe continued to expand.

The United States invested more in Latin America during the 1920s than in any other part of the world. American banks offered large loans to Latin American governments, just as in Europe, and as with the Europeans, the Latin Americans had difficulty earning the money to repay them in the face of the United States tariffs.

The world financial crisis produced a rise in nationalism in Europe and Japan.

It replaced some existing political leaders with governments that were committed to expansion. The beginning of a process that would lead to war was confronted by Herbert Hoover.

Hoover tried to repair the damage done by American policies in Latin America. He went on a goodwill tour through Latin America.

He did not intervene in the internal affairs of neighbor nations when he was in office. America would grant diplomatic recognition to any sitting government in the region without questioning the means it had used to get power. He repudiated the Monroe Doctrine when he refused to allow American intervention when several Latin American countries failed to pay their debts.

The administration had few successes in Europe. Hoover refused to cancel war debts to the United States because he didn't think it would produce financial stability. Several European nations went into default. Efforts to extend the 1921 limits on naval construction fell victim to French and British fears of German and Japanese militarism.

Mussolini's Fascist Party lived in almost complete isolation of the port cities, killing many Chinese sol from the world until the 19th century. The Japanese destruction of one of the world's great powers in World War I was one of the worst things to happen to Japan. Estimates range from 80,000 to ated severe economic problems for over 300,000 in an event that became Japanese, and as in other parts of the world. Highly nationalistic armed forces have an ence of their own. The Chinese government fled to the mountains.

The United States and a new empire in the Pacific emerged from the dreams of the Japanese military. The League of Nations protested in vain.

The nation was engaged in a civil war of its own between markets for its industries, as well as land of the so-called Kuomintang, a nationalist party for its agricultural needs, and the Chinese. They argued that the Communist Party would free Asia from its internal struggle and weaken China's exploitation by Europe and America.

There, in September 1931, a group of young, militant army officers seized to continue the war against China, whatever on a railway explosion to justify a military the sacrifice.

The League of Nations on the United States demanded that Japan evacuate Manchuria because of its growing dependence on steel and oil. The Japanese consolidated their control over the Roosevelt new territory after they ignored them in July 1941.

Japanese are buying American oil. Fuel to keep its war effort going was the culmination of more economy, and the war in China was the first blow of World War II. A decade of Japanese efforts to find oil beyond China was extended.

What were the objectives of the United States in Asia?

The National Socialist Party in Germany was growing more powerful. Republic, the nation's government since the end of World War I, had been largely blamed for a ruinous inflation. The leader of the Nazis, Adolf Hitler, took power in 1933. He was a pathological anti-Semite.

A major crisis in Asia was alarming to the Hoover administration. Berlin acted as if they were equal. Japan's military leaders staged a coup in Tokyo in 1931. The region was conquered by them by the end of the year. Secretary of State Henry Stimson warned the Japanese but they did not listen. In the early 20th century, Japan launched an attack on China, killing thousands of people.

Franklin Roosevelt's administration faced two challenges when it entered office in 1933. It had to deal with the worst economic crisis in the nation's history, as well as the effects of a decaying international structure.

Roosevelt broke with the policies of his predecessor on economic relations with Europe. The gold standard and the question of war debts were the only things that could help the American economy recover. The World Economic Conference was to be held in London in June 1933 to attempt to resolve these issues. Roosevelt was convinced that the gold value of the dollar had to be allowed to fall in order for American goods to compete in world markets. The conference ended quickly.

Roosevelt abandoned the commitments of the Hoover administration to settle the issue of war debts through international agreement. In 1934, he signed a bill prohibiting American banks from making loans to nations that were in default on their debts. The old system of debt payments was ended by the legislation because of the increase in American loans. War-debt payments from every nation stopped within a few months.

The American government did not officially recognize the government of the Soviet Union after 1917. A growing number of influential Americans were urging a change in policy because the Soviet Union appeared to be a possible source of trade. Stalin wanted American cooperation in containing Japan. The United States and the Soviet Union opened formal diplomatic relations in 1933. Relations with the Soviet Union soured quickly. The United States was disappointed that American trade failed to establish a foothold in Russia. The United States and the Soviet Union were distrustful by the end of 1934.

With the international system of the 1920s now beyond repair, the United States faced a choice between more active efforts to stabilizing the world or more energetic attempts to leave it. The League of Nations was not able to stop Japanese aggression in Asia. The American role in World War I was argued to have been caused by Wall Street. An investigation by a Senate committee chaired by Senator Gerald Nye of North Dakota claimed to have produced evidence of profiteering and tax evasion by many corporations during the war, and it suggested that bankers had pressured Wilson to intervene in the war so as to protect their loans abroad.

Roosevelt hoped for a small American role in maintaining world peace. He proposed a treaty to make the United States a member of the World Court in 1935. The Senate voted down the agreement due to popular opposition.

Mussolini's Italy was preparing to invade Ethiopia in the summer of 1935. American legislators tried to prevent the United States from being dragged into a new European war because they were afraid of the invasion. The protection of neutral rights was not an excuse for American intervention in war, according to isolationists. The so-called cash-and-carry policy was established by a 1937 law, which allowed warring nations to purchase nonmilitary goods from the United States only by paying cash and shipping their purchases themselves.

In response to the civil war in Spain, isolationist sentiment was strong again. Franco was supported by both Hitler and Mussolini. The United States government joined with Britain and France to offer no assistance to either side after Americans traveled to Spain to aid the republican cause.

In the summer of 1937, Japan intensified its assault on Manchuria and attacked China's five northern provinces. Roosevelt warned in a speech in Chicago in 1937 that Japanese and other invaders should be "quarantined" by the international community to prevent the spread of war. He was vague about what aQuarantine would mean. Roosevelt drew back after the public response to the speech was hostile. The Roosevelt administration was so reluctant to antagonize the isolationists that they eagerly seized on Japanese claims that the bombing had been an accident.

The area that had been off-limits to German troops since World War I was rearmed by Hitler in 1936. In America and most of Europe, there was no more than a murmur of opposition.

Hitler dreamed of annexing the western side of Czechoslovakia, which is now occupied by Germany. The Sudetenland was a part of Czechoslovakia in which many ethnic Germans lived. Czechoslovakia was prepared to fight to stop Hitler, but needed help from other nations. The United States was willing to pay almost any price to end the crisis peacefully. On September 29, Hitler met with the leaders of France and Great Britain in an effort to resolve the crisis. In return for Hitler's promise to expand no further, the French and British agreed to accept the German demands. The policy was a failure. The remaining areas of Czechoslovakia were occupied by Hitler in March 1939. He began making threats against Poland in April.

Both Britain and France promised the Polish government that they would come to its aid in case of an invasion, but they failed to get the Soviet Union into a mutual defense agreement. Stalin decided that he could not expect protection from the West even though he had not been invited to the conference. He signed a pact with Hitler in August 1939, freeing the Germans from the danger of a two-front war. On September 1, 1939, Hitler launched a full-scale invasion of Poland after staging an incident on the Polish border to allow him to claim that Germany had been attacked. Two days later, Britain and France declared war on Germany. World War II began in Europe.

Britain, France, and the other Allied nations were favored by both he and the majority of the American people. The United States was asked how much they would do to help.

Roosevelt believed that the United States should make armaments available to the Allied armies to counter the military advantage the Germans had. In September 1939, he asked Congress to revise the Neutrality Acts and lift the arms embargo against any nation engaged in war. The prohi bition on American ships entering war zones was maintained by Congress. The 1939 law allowed for the purchase of arms on the same basis as the earlier Neutrality Acts.

After the German armies quickly subdued Poland, the war in Europe settled into a quiet lull that lasted through the winter and spring.

Mussolini invaded France from the south as Hitler was attacking from the north. Nazi troops marched into Paris after France fell.

On the evening of October 30, 1938, about it glistens like black leather. 6 million Americans were listening.

The CBS beginning of an alien invasion of earth and the network was described by the panicky announcer. A few minutes into the show, an appearance of Martians armed with "death announcement interrupted some dance music rays" to destroy the planet.

At least forty people, including six broadcasting from Times Square, lie dead in a field east of New York City before the town of Grover's Mill fell.

The audience and another were reminded. During the broadcast of the "War of the Worlds" in 1938, Wells on the Air is shown.

The enor claimers were unintentionally exploited by the "War of the either did not hear or did not notice the dis Worlds". By the end of the hour, according to the power of radio, there were as many as a million Americans who believed the end of the world was imminent.

For many people in New York and New Jersey, the thousands of broadcasts they received over the radio made them their principal, even if they had to drive to the hills or the source of information about the outside countryside. People ran from their world in Newark.

Good radio stations are desperate for information. "I bye everybody, and remember, please, for never hugged my radio so closely as I did the next day or so, the terrible lesson you night," one woman later explained. I learned a lot tonight. The lesson of show was the focus of a lot of criticism for what many Americans believed had been a power of the medium of broadcasting.

Why did the broadcast of "War of the Worlds" cause so much panic?

They were easy prey to fears of another kind of invasion because of the possibility of war.

Would an audience react with panic and hysteria to a broadcast of catastrophes?

The ambassador to London, Joseph P. Kennedy, argued that any aid to the English was a waste of time. The president wanted war materials to be made available to Britain.

Roosevelt circumvented the cash-and-carry provisions of the Neutrality Acts by giving England fifty American destroyers in return for the right to build American bases on British territory in the Caribbean. The British were able to buy new airplanes from the American military because he returned to the factories that manufactured them.

A major shift in American public opinion allowed Roosevelt to take such steps. According to opinion polls, more than 66 percent of the public believed that Germany posed a direct threat to the United States. Congress was willing to allow more American assistance to the Allies. The first peacetime military draft in American history was inaugurated in September by the Burke-Wadsworth Act.

The debate over American policy toward the war was joined by Burton Wheeler. A large amount of the Republican Party supported the lobby. During the summer and fall of 1940, the debate was complicated by a presidential campaign.

The biggest political question of 1940 was if Franklin Roosevelt would run for a third term. The president did not say what he wanted. He made it impossible for any rival Democrat to establish a claim to the nomination by refusing to withdraw from the contest. He let it be known before the DNC that he would accept a draft from his party. The Democrats quickly renominated him and even reluctantly swallowed his choice for vice president: Agriculture Secretary Henry A. Wallace, a man too liberal and controversial for the taste of many party leaders.

Willkie was an appealing figure and a vigorous campaigner, and he evoked more public enthusiasm than any Republican candidate in decades. Roosevelt won by a large margin. He received 55 percent of the popular vote, and he won 449 electoral votes to Willkie's 82.

Roosevelt made changes to the American role in the war in the last months of 1940. The cash and carry requirements imposed by the Neutrality Acts made Great Britain bankrupt. Britain promised to return weap ons when the war was over, so America could send weap ons to England on the basis of that. The bill was enacted by a wide margin.

Shipping lanes in the Atlantic were extremely dangerous because of attacks by German submarines. The British navy was losing ships more quickly than it could replace them and it was difficult to transport materials across the Atlantic from America. The western Atlantic was a neutral zone and the responsibility of the American nations was argued by Roosevelt. By July 1941, American ships were patrolling the ocean.

Germany didn't challenge the American actions at first. The situation had changed by September 1941. The Soviet Union was invaded by Nazi forces. Roosevelt persuaded Congress to grant lend-lease privileges to the Soviets when they did not surrender.

The American navy was protecting the flow of goods to Europe and the American industry was helping Hitler's enemies. The Nazi submarine campaign against American vessels began in September.

Since no future peace can be maintained in the United Kingdom if land, sea or air weaponry are met together, it is right to continue to employ nations which know certain common principles in the threaten, or may threaten, aggression out national policies of their respective nations.

Congress voted to allow the United States to arm its merchant vessels and sail all the way into hostile ports. A statement of shared goals known as the Atlantic Charter was issued recently by Roosevelt.

Japan was extending its empire in the Pacific. The Tripartite Pact was signed by the Japanese in September of 1940 with Germany and Italy, although the European powers never developed a very strong relationship with Japan. The capital of Vietnam, a colony of France, was seized by Japanese troops in July 1941. The United States broke Japanese codes, and when Tokyo failed to respond to Roosevelt's stern warnings, the president froze all Japanese assets in the United States.

Tokyo had a choice. The moderate prime minister was replaced by the leader of the war party, General Hideki Tojo, in October.

The State Department gave up on a peaceful settlement by late November. Japanese messages that were deciphered by American intelligence made it clear that a Japanese attack was imminent. Washington didn't know where the attack would take place. Most officials believed that the Japanese would not move first against American territory, but against British or Dutch possessions to the south. A combination of confusion, miscalculation, and underestimation of the Japanese military caused the government to overlook indications that Japan intended a direct attack on American forces.

At 7:55 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941, a wave of Japanese bombers attacked the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, part of a coordinated pattern of attacks against American and British holdings in Asia. The second wave came an hour later.

More than 2,400 soldiers and sailors died in the line of duty. Light losses were suffered by the Japanese.

No American aircraft carriers were at Pearl Harbor when the American forces were greatly diminished in the Pacific. The raid on Hawaii united the American people.

Germany and Italy declared war on the United States three days later, while Congress reciprocated without a vote.

After World War I, American foreign policy attempted something that proved impossible. Americans wanted to be a major power in the world.

They wanted to extend the nation's trade around the globe. They were determined to influence other nations in ways that would benefit America. The United States did not want to limit its own freedom of action. It wouldn't join the League of Nations. It wouldn't join the World Court. It wouldn't form alliances with other nations.

The United States would eventually be pushed into greater engagement with other nations. The economic disarray that the Great Depression created around the globe, the rise of totalitarian regimes, the expansionist ambitions of powerful new leaders, all worked to destroy the uneasy stability of the post-World War I international system. America's foreign policy was unable to change the course of events.

The American people were slowly pushed into a greater involvement in international affairs by Franklin Roosevelt. He tried to get the United States to take a stronger stand against dictatorship. After war broke out in Europe, a powerful isolationist movement helped stymie him. Public opinion shifted to support of the Allies and against the Germans, Italians, and Japan.

The nation began to mobilize for war, even to engage in naval combat with German forces in the Atlantic. The greatest and most terrible conflict in human history began when the Japanese attacked the American base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941.