Before the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, there was serious debate as to whether or not the United States
should take an active role in the conflicts in Europe and Asia. Many Americans were not eager to
enter into a fight that seemed like a repeat of the First World War. During that conflict, there
had been significant American casualties, but the lasting peace that Woodrow Wilson had promised
had clearly not come to pass. Many Americans felt that the current conflict would prove just as
futile in bringing about world peace. They took up an isolationist stance, feeling that it would
be better if the United States stayed away from the violence and destruction across the oceans
on focused on domestic matters.
On the other side of this debate were the
so-called interventionists. As democracy became increasingly threatened as the Nazis marched
across Europe and American interests in Asia were subverted to the will of the expanding
Japanese Empire, these people said it was time for the United States to take direct involvement.
They argued that isolationism in the face of Japanese and Nazi conquests would put the United
States in the increasingly vulnerable position of having to stand alone as the only free nation
in the world.
By 1940, there were some interventionists who argued that the
United States should go to war right away. They argued that sooner or later their hand would be
forced and it would be best to send a military force to Europe before the situation got too
dire.
Others took a more restrained approach. They argued that the country
could take a larger role in providing material and financial support to Great Britain, which by
the summer of 1940 stood alone against the Nazis. This is in fact what initially happened under
the Lend-Lease Act. Those supporting this middle-ground approach argued that by indirectly
helping Great Britain fight the Axis, they would be able to avoid direct military involvement on
the part of the United States.
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