Financially, militarily, and ideologically, the United States had aligned itself with Britain, and Roosevelt expected that the nation would soon be formally at war. After passage of the Lend-Lease Act, American and British military planners agreed that defeating Germany would become the top priority if the United States entered the war. In August 1941, Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill met in Newfoundland, where they signed the Atlantic Charter, a lofty statement of war aims that included principles of freedom of the seas, self-determination, free trade, and “freedom from fear and want”—ideals that laid the groundwork for the establishment of a postwar United Nations. At the same meeting, Roosevelt promised Churchill that the United States would protect British convoys in the North Atlantic as far as Iceland while the nation waited for a confrontation with Germany that would rally the American public in support of war. The president got what he wanted. After several attacks on American ships by German submarines in September and October, the president persuaded Congress to repeal the neutrality legislation of the 1930s and allow American ships to sail across the Atlantic to supply Great Britain. By December, the nation was close to open war with Germany.
The event that finally prompted the United States to enter the war, however, occurred not in the Atlantic but in the Pacific Ocean. For nearly a decade, U.S. relations with Japan had deteriorated over the issue of China’s independence. American Christian missionaries had established their presence in China, and since the turn of the twentieth century the U.S. government had promoted the Open Door policy to protect its access to Chinese markets. The United States did little to challenge the Japanese invasion and occupation of Manchuria in 1931, but after Japanese armed forces moved farther into China in 1937, Roosevelt took action. The president skirted the Neutrality Acts by refusing to declare war, but he did supply arms to China. When a bombing raid by Japanese planes inadvertently sank the U.S. gunboat Panay in the Yangtze River and killed two sailors, Japan apologized, thereby temporarily reducing tensions between the two countries.
Yet relations between Japan and the United States did not substantially improve. In 1940 the Japanese government signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, which created a mutual defense agreement among the Axis powers. That same year, Japanese troops invaded northern Indochina, and Roosevelt responded by embargoing sales of aviation fuel and scrap metal, products that Japan needed for war. This embargo did not deter the Japanese; in July, they occupied the remainder of Indochina to gain access to the region’s natural resources. The Roosevelt administration retaliated by freezing Japanese assets and cutting off all trade with Japan. The two countries maneuvered to the edge of war.
On the quiet Sunday morning of December 7, 1941, Japan attacked the U.S. Pacific Fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii. This surprise air and naval assault killed more than 2,400 Americans and damaged eight battleships, three cruisers, three destroyers, and nearly two hundred airplanes. The bombing raid abruptly ended isolationism and rallied the American public behind President Roosevelt, who pronounced December 7 “a date which will live in infamy.” The next day, Congress overwhelmingly voted to go to war with Japan, and on December 11 Germany and Italy declared war on the United States in response. In little more than a year after his reelection pledge to keep the country out of war, Roosevelt sent American men to fight overseas.
See Documents 23.1 and 23.2 for two perspectives on the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
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How did American public opinion shape Roosevelt’s foreign policy in the years preceding U.S. entry into World War II? |
What events in Europe and the Pacific ultimately brought the United States into World War II? |