America's European Policy: Pre-1939 Years

The Eve of the Second World War : International Relations in Summer, 1939

Abstract

There is no evidence to show that the United States played any important role in the outbreak of the Second European War in 1939. There has been a hot controversy raged on the question of the “role”, however, in the United States between orthodox historians (conventionalists) and revisionists, just like the similar controversy over the problem of Japan's Pearl Harbor Attack or that of the Yalta agreements. The point in dispute is how to interpret the two faces of American foreign policy toward Europe in the critical years. From one point of view we see the following: (1) Franklin D. Roosevelt endeavored to revise the Neutrality Act in order to make possible America's arms-sale to Britain and France, (2) The United States itself began its rearmaments, especially in the mass production of war-aircrafts along with its new military plans called “Rainbow Plan” against the Axis Powers, (3) Roosevelt criticized Britain's appeasement policy and encouraged the Polish Government to take its own decisive attitude. On the other hand is the following; (1) Roosevelt's foreign policy had been conditioned by the people's strong sentiments of isolationism which had rejected the revision of the Neutrality Act, (2) Roosevelt had a plan to call an international conference to accomodate the European conflicts.
The purpose of this paper is (1) to review the controversy in the early stage of post-World War II and the Cold War years, and (2) to comment on the new interpretations prevailing in the post-Vietnam War years. We acknowledge that there are two schools of interpretation on the question mentioned above. One school interprets that Roosevelt had successfully reconciled his country's global missions and his people's sentiments of isolationism. The other school insists that the United States had been endeavoring consistently to promote the formation of a world-wide free economic system including Nazi-Germany and militalistic Japan, too, after World War I. But we esteem that these two are fundamentally new revisions of former orthodox and revisionist theories.