There was opposition in the United State against intervention in World War II. The war was too far removed from America’s national interests to justify intervention. There was little popular domestic support for intervention in a war in Europe that involved its most powerful industrialized nations. There were many first generation immigrants in the U.S. who were from most of the nations involved, particularly Germany, Great Britain, France, and Italy. American entry into World War II would cause a major conflict of national loyalties for those immigrants coming from nations with whom the US would be at war, specifically Germans and Italians. Eventually, the US entered WWII during President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration. The U.S. Congress …show more content…
The editorial cartoon in Document H provides a useful illustration of this point (see Document H). As Uncle Sam, the federal government, pours more public money into the machinery of war the main beneficiary would be economic recovery. According to Document B spending on military hardware and in the industrial sectors that produced weapons led to substantially higher prices, a sharp upturn in the stock markets, and greatly reduced unemployment (Document G). Public anxiety and fear in Western Europe and in the U.S. were fed by the prospect of yet another World War. Whether intended or not, this led to another measure supported by Democrats and Republicans that addressed one of the crises of a depression. The implementation of a selective service act in 1940 before the U.S. had declared war on Japan and Germany would conscript many males into the military. This would reduce unemployment. The country was on the path to economic recovery (Document …show more content…
still required persuasive principles and values to give their support to increased military spending. First, militarization would create jobs. It would put tens of thousands of unemployed workers back to work as the worst depression in history continued to deepen. Men would be conscripted into the military. All of this would be done under the banner of national security and the defense of democratic values, freedom, and the free world (Document E). The United States required a moral authority to justify militarization and intervention in a war that was not being fought on American soil. That moral authority was granted by the nation’s political leadership to defend democratic values globally, not just in the U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt claimed that the defense of “freedom and democratic values” now depended on U.S. leadership (Document