The Great Depression in United States History Read Free Page B

communists, liberals, and capitalists. The few Americans who read Mein Kampf dismissed it as the work of a lunatic. Germans, however, increasingly rallied behind him. Ten years after Hitler’s failed overthrow attempt, he became chancellor of Germany.
    Hitler built up Germany’s military forces. In 1936, he sent troops into the Rhineland, a demilitarized area of western Germany. This action violated the Versailles Treaty, which Germany had signed at the end of World War I. Britain, France, and the United States, the major allied nations who had defeated Germany in World War I, did nothing to stop him.
    The German dictator was not alone in his militarism. Benito Mussolini, Italy’s dictator, sent troops to take over the African nation of Ethiopia. Ethiopian leader Haile Selaisse pleaded with the League of Nations, an international peacekeeping organization, for help. The League did nothing.
    In 1931, Japan invaded the northeastern Chinese province of Manchuria. It set up the state of Manchukuo, a government that most other nations did not consider valid. By 1937, Japan had invaded Nanking and had slaughtered one hundred thousand Chinese. The Allies did not try to stop this aggression.
    A grisly civil war engulfed Spain in 1936. Rebel forces backed by Germany and Italy, and led by Francisco Franco, moved to topple the liberal government. Among major nations only the Soviet Union openly supported the liberals. However, volunteers from around the world, including American writer Ernest Hemingway, came to their aid. These international soldiers often were great in idealism, but poor in military skills.
    The Germans used Spain as a testing ground for their newest weapons. They ruthlessly destroyed Spanish towns and villages. In 1939, Spain fell to Franco’s Fascists.
    Britain and France did not fight the conquerors. Instead, the Allies cooperated with them. In 1938, Hitler demanded the Sudetenland, the western section of what is now the Czech Republic.
    Representatives of Britain, France, Italy, and Germany (but not Czechoslovakia) met in Munich, Germany, to discuss the region’s fate. When the conference ended, the Germans had gained the province without firing a shot. Hitler falsely claimed that he wanted no more territory. British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain displayed the Munich Treaty and declared that he had achieved “peace in our time.” 1
    In the United States, Franklin Roosevelt saw the world events unfolding. He was burdened by the Depression at home, yet Roosevelt was preparing for what appeared to be inevitable world conflict.
“A Neutral Nation”
    Many Americans in the 1930s sought to keep America out of world conflicts. They included aviation hero Charles Lindbergh, labor leader John L. Lewis, and architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Business magnate Joseph Kennedy, father of the future Democratic president, opposed American involvement in a European war. So did Republicans Robert Taft and Arthur Vandenberg.
    So, apparently, did Franklin Roosevelt. “I hate war,” the president said in 1936. “I shall pass unnumbered hours, thinking and planning how war may be kept from this nation.” 2
    Congress, like the president, appeared to favor neutrality. Laws banned United States ships from war zones and forbade citizens from traveling on belligerent ships. In 1937, Congress instituted a “cash and carry” policy. Foreign belligerent nations could purchase vital products such as oil, steel, or rubber—if they paid in cash and carried them off in their own ships.
    Roosevelt, however, saw the dangers of noninvolvement. He asked Congress for increased funds for national defense. Congress refused. He tried to get Congress to rewrite the Neutrality Act after the king and queen of England visited the United States in the summer of 1939. Congress declined to change the act.
    While Congress refrained from acting, other countries moved. Germany and Russia signed a five-year nonaggression pact in August 1939. The