Explain the rise of fascism and totalitarian dictators, the policy of appeasement, and the move of the United States from isolationism toward involvement before Pearl Harbor (Tennessee Academic Standards for Social Studies, United States History and Geography, US.28).

What this topic is asking

Standard US.28 asks how the world slid toward World War II and why the United States at first stayed out. For the EOC that means understanding the rise of fascism and totalitarian dictators, the failed policy of appeasement, the weakness of the League of Nations, and American isolationism (the Neutrality Acts) before the country began aiding the Allies and was finally drawn in.

The aftermath that bred dictators

Two disasters set the stage. The Treaty of Versailles had left Germany humiliated, blamed, and burdened with reparations, breeding resentment. Then the Great Depression spread worldwide, bringing mass unemployment and despair. In this climate, dictators who promised to restore order, jobs, and national pride won power.

The dictators and their aggression

The key aggressive regimes were:

• Germany: Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, preaching extreme nationalism, racism (especially antisemitism), and revenge for Versailles; Hitler rearmed Germany and began seizing territory.
• Italy: Benito Mussolini and the fascists; Italy invaded Ethiopia.
• Japan: a militarist government that invaded Manchuria and then China, seeking an empire in Asia and the Pacific.
• Soviet Union: Joseph Stalin's communist dictatorship (totalitarian, though it would later join the Allies against Hitler).

Germany, Italy, and Japan formed the Axis alliance.

Appeasement and the failure of the League

Britain and France, exhausted and afraid of another war, tried appeasement.

American isolationism

After the disillusionment of World War I, most Americans wanted to stay out of foreign wars. This isolationism shaped policy in the 1930s:

• Congress passed a series of Neutrality Acts that banned selling arms or lending money to nations at war, to avoid being pulled in as in 1917.
• Public opinion strongly opposed entering another European war.

From neutrality toward the Allies

As the Axis advanced and France fell to Germany in 1940, leaving Britain fighting nearly alone, American opinion began to shift. President Franklin Roosevelt moved the country from strict neutrality toward helping the Allies without fighting:

• The Lend-Lease Act (1941) let the United States send war supplies to Britain (and later the Soviet Union), making America the "arsenal of democracy."
• The United States tightened economic pressure on Japan (an oil embargo), raising tensions in the Pacific.

This drift set the stage for the attack on Pearl Harbor (see American entry and mobilization).

Try this

Q1. Define appeasement and give the example most associated with it. [2]

• Cue. Giving in to a dictator's demands to avoid war; letting Hitler take the Sudetenland at the 1938 Munich Conference.

Q2. Explain American isolationism in the 1930s and name one way it was expressed. [2]

• Cue. A desire to stay out of foreign wars after World War I; expressed in the Neutrality Acts banning arms sales and loans to warring nations.