Mobilizing for War

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The time had come, Roosevelt announced, for the prescriptions of “Dr. New Deal” to be replaced by the stronger medicines of “Dr. Win-the-War.” Military and civilian leaders rushed to secure the nation against possible attacks, causing Americans with Japanese ancestry to be stigmatized and sent to internment camps. Roosevelt and his advisers lost no time enlisting millions of Americans in the armed forces to bring the isolationist-era military to fighting strength for a two-front war. The war emergency also required economic mobilization unparalleled in the nation’s history. As Dr. Win-the-War, Roosevelt set aside the New Deal goal of reform and plunged headlong into transforming the American economy into the world’s greatest military machine, thereby achieving full employment and economic recovery, goals that had eluded the New Deal.

The Road to War: The United States and World War II

1931 Japan invades Manchuria.
1933 Franklin D. Roosevelt becomes U.S. president. Adolf Hitler becomes German chancellor.
1935–1937 Congress passes series of neutrality acts to protect United States from involvement in world conflicts.
1936 March. Nazi troops invade Rhineland, violating Treaty of Versailles.
July. Civil war breaks out in Spain.
Mussolini’s fascist Italian regime conquers Ethiopia.
November. Roosevelt reelected president.
1937 December. Japanese troops capture Nanjing, China.
1938 Hitler annexes Austria.
September 29. Hitler accepts offer of “appeasement” in Munich from British prime minister Neville Chamberlain.
1939 March. Hitler invades Czechoslovakia.
August. Hitler and Stalin sign Nazi-Soviet nonaggression pact.
September 1. Germany invades Poland, beginning World War II. United States and Britain conclude cash-and-carry agreement for arms sales.
1940 Spring. German blitzkrieg smashes through Denmark, Norway, Belgium, Luxembourg, Netherlands, and northern France.
Japan signs Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy.
May–June. German armies flank Maginot Line. British and French evacuated from Dunkirk. France surrenders to Germany.
Summer/Fall. Germany conducts bombing campaign against England.
November. Roosevelt wins third term as president. Royal Air Force wins Battle of Britain.
1941 March. Congress approves Lend-Lease Act, making arms available to Britain.
June 22. Hitler invades Soviet Union.
August. Roosevelt and Churchill issue Atlantic Charter.
October. Militarists led by Hideki Tojo take over Japan.
December 7. Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor. United States declares war on Japan.
December 11. Germany and Italy declare war on United States.