In the years after World War I Americans quickly concluded that the nation’s participation
in that war had been a disastrous mistake, one which should never be repeated again.
During the 1920s and 1930s, therefore, American politicians pursued a number of
strategies aimed at preventing war. At first the major players in this effort were American
peace societies, many of which were part of larger international movements. Their agenda
called for large-scale disarmament and an international treaty to abolish war. Their efforts
bore fruit, as 1922 saw the signing of a major agreement among the great powers to reduce
their numbers of battleships. Six years later most of the world’s nations signed the
Kellogg-Briand Pact, in which the signatories pledged never again to go to war with one
another.
However, events in the early- to mid-1930s led many Americans to believe that such
agreements were insufficient. After all, they did not deter Japan from occupying
Manchuria in 1931, nor four years later did they stop the German government from
authorizing a huge new arms buildup, or Italy from invading Ethiopia. The U.S. Congress
responded by passing the Neutrality Acts, a series of laws banning arms sales and loans to
countries at war, in the hope that this would remove any potential reason that the United
States might have for entering a European conflict. When in 1939 war did break out
between Germany on the one hand, and Britain and France on the other, President Franklin
D. Roosevelt dutifully invoked the Neutrality Acts. However, he believed that this was a
