For Roosevelt, just as for most democratic politicians in Europe, ‘Munich’, the ‘Crystal Night’ of November 1938 and the German invasion of Czechoslovakia marked a psychological turning point.[246]  Now, the black storm clouds were visibly drawing near.

   On August 23, 1939 the stunned world got to know that Stalin and Hitler had just signed a non- aggression pact. The two confronting totalitarian ideologies that threatened Europe had joined forces. Nine days later, German forces attacked Poland, it was defeated in a Blitzkrieg and cut into a German and a Soviet occupa- tion zone. The British and French could no longer just sit and watch as Hitler (and Stalin) redrew the European map, after all the two nations had guaranteed the Polish borders that had now been violated. Britain and France issued declarations of war to Germany.[247]

   Although it was obvious who the aggressor was and what objectives he had and how his allies as well joined in destroying the world as Americans knew it, the split of the American public into ‘isolationists’ and ‘internationalists’ deepened. The former assembled in the ‘America First’ movement supported by influential businessmen and politicians and demanded to retreat into ‘fortress America’ from the safety of which to watch the tempest go by. The latter interpreted ‘national
security’ globally; if a war broke out anywhere on the globe where American interests were involved, this automatically endangered the United States’ security. This group pleaded for all democracies to join forces (just like the aggressors had) against totalitarianism. Notwithstanding all the ‘world lawlessness’, Isolationism still was the prevailing tendency in the U.S. Even after the invasion of Poland, 84% opposed employing the Navy or the Army against Hitler’s Reich.[248]
Why not just let the Europeans sort their stuff out themselves?

   But the internationalists had the advantage of knowing the president on their side. Roosevelt had acknowledged that the mere existence of American ‘isolation- ism’ was made possible by and largely depended on the British Royal Navy con- trolling the high seas of the Atlantic as the United States’ ‘first line of defense’. The era of ‘free security’ had finally ended with the development of airplanes and battle ships and aircraft carriers.[249]  He did not want to get involved in any war, but his main objective was to prevent a German victory over England and France, or the United States would really be ‘isolated’ in a stand-off against an aggressive dicta- tor. A dictator whose ideology and economic policies were diametrically opposed to American ideals of self-determination, human rights and free trade relations. In a world controlled by such powers, the United States would have to perish.[250]

   Roosevelt took immediate action. Already in 1939 , he had the Neutrality Acts partially restricted. Under the new provisions, short-term loans could be granted to belligerents (Britain and France, of course) and weapons and ammunition could be purchased on a ‘cash and carry basis’.
Jürgen Heideking examines Roosevelt’s position and concludes: „Anders als Wil- son, der sich lange um echte Neutralität bemüht hatte, steuerte Roosevelt ab Ende 1939 entschlossen und stetig in Richtung Krieg.“[251] (transl.: In contrast to Wilson, who had pursued actual neutrality until the end, Roosevelt steered firmly and con- stantly towards war since late 1939. -B.Wahler)

   A $4 billion bill passed through Congress for stocking up the U.S. arsenal. After France had surrendered to the German forces, Roosevelt’s terminology shifted to ‘all aid short of war’ that the United States was to provide to struggling Britain. To find a broader support for his policies, two Republicans were appointed secretary of war and secretary of the navy. And to back-up America’s interests with real power, the armed forces -at that time as large as Bulgaria’s because Americans
believed in ‘no standing army’- were to be enlarged.[252]  For this purpose, Con- gress passed the ‘Selective Service Act’ which over the next five years served to draft 15 million men and women.

   The mood of the American people had changed, in June 1940, 75% of Americans stated they wanted to do more to help Great Britain that suffered from German air raids. Many Americans now had come to the conclusion, that the United States were no fortress anymore but could be reached and hurt by modern weapons. Anyway, isolationist sentiments were still strong in the farming areas of the Mid- west and in places where Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans or German-Americans represented influential ethnic minorities. Thus Roosevelt had to remain under- cover with his plans to come to the help of Great Britain, if he wanted to avoid dis- cussion on this sensitive topic in the campaign and if he desired to win a third term [253]. Yet, he did talk of the difference between correct and false neutrality. The former prevented war and secured peace, whereas the latter existed when war has already broken out and endangered the stability, order and democracy of the na- tion. Roosevelt easily won the elections by a wide margin.

   Now, he finally found time to respond to an urgent request for help from British prime minister Winston Churchill. In the ‘destroyers for bases’-deal, Britain was able to stock up its armed forces.
In return for 50 World War I destroyers, it would exchange naval bases in the Ca- ribbean and on the Pacific Coast to the Americans.[254]  During the election cam- paign FDR had declared that he had no intention of sending young Americans into ‘foreign wars’, but at the moment he encouraged the nation to become the ‘great arsenal of democracy“. In his New Year Address of 1941, Roosevelt presented the public with a renewed ‘American Mission’ to the world, to bring her the Four Freedoms: freedom of opinion and of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from misery and freedom from fear.[255]

   As the country was being transformed into ‘the great arsenal of democracy’, and (side-effect or on purpose?) enjoyed economic growth again, it had to be ensured, that nations that where in need for the relief this arsenal promised would have access to the U.S.’ weapons. Roosevelt came up with the ‘Lend-Lease’ Act. It can be imagined like normal weapons’ sales without payment being made. To avoid an accumulation of war debts on Britain (after all, they were also fighting for Ame- rica’s fate), the weapons and other material needed by Great Britain were in a sense lent or leased to it and were to be returned after a conclusion of the war. Now, their industrial potential was coupled and stood jointly against the German forces. Some months later, the scientific potential of Britain and the United States would be pooled as well in the top-secret Manhattan Project, set up to develop nuclear wea- pons that might some day turn the tide of the war.[256]

   Next, Roosevelt extended an U.S. security zone to Greenland and the Azores and had troops stationed in Iceland to secure the shipping of the crucial war material to Britain. Without consulting Congress or letting the nation know what he did, the president ordered the U.S. Navy to help the British fleet in fighting off and destroy- ing the German submarines that infested the Atlantic.[257]

   On June 22, 1941 Hitler and Stalin again stunned the world. German forces inva- ded the Soviet Union, their non-aggression pact was no longer worth the paper it was written on. The United States were taken by surprise. In the official statement that followed with considerable delay, the U.S. declared that, notwithstanding Stalin’s human rights violations, all forces that fought National-Socialism would be assisted. Churchill soon recognized that this new campaign of the Wehrmacht could bind immense German forces and draw attention from fighting Britain. Despite
his harsh anti-bolshevism, he thus insisted on all-out support for the Soviet Union. Roosevelt agreed and extended ‘Lend-Lease’ to the Soviet Union which over the next four years alone received $12 billion in military aid. A new ally had joined the fight - only what sort of ally?[258]

   U.S. public opinion was by now firmly behind the president’s massive support for Great Britain. Hollywood, the mirror of popular culture, started shooting films that glorified the deeds of American soldiers in World War I, soon, everything from Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck to Charlie Chaplin (The Great Dictator), Gary Cooper and Humphrey Bogart (Casablanca!) was into propaganda movies. From a debate on the question of entering the war at all,  the debate’s center had shifted to the question of entering the war fighting for what objectives? This debate was led by Henry Luce, the influential and patriotic publisher of Life, Time and Fortune magazines, who devised a concept that was published in a series of editorials cal- led The American Century. He depicted the United States as the only nation capable of efficiently stating just war aims. U.S. leadership was to be at the front of progress, creating a post-war vital international economy with as little trade bar- riers as possible and establishing a moral order upon which the nations’ relations would be based. The global environment would have to be made suitable for American democracy: market-economy and free trade throughout the world, U.S. values as universal points of reference. Once more there was the demand to Ame- ricanize the world to reach the highest form of ‘civilization’ on a global scale. Now it lay upon every individual American, Luce concluded, to help create the best he can a great American Century.[259]

   Obviously, the president and Henry Luce enjoyed quite the same ideas of what the United States should fight the war for. In August 1941, Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met on a ship off the Newfoundland coast where they discussed issues of military and economic cooperation and negotiated about the fundaments of the post-war world. In the so called ‘Atlantic Charter’ the both leaders declared those to be the right of self-determination, free choice for every nation what their govern- ment should be, a peace without the germ of revenge and renewed hatred, the
Four Freedoms as universal rights of mankind,[260]  a system of collective security, disarmament, international economic cooperation and the freedom of the seas. On the last two points, Churchill had agreed only reluctantly as they bore a threat of disintegration of the British Empire; but if it was not for the Americans, Britain might soon vanish from the map.[261]

   Roosevelt was eager to go out and stop the Japanese and especially the German drive for regional hegemony. „Everything has to be done to force an ‘incident’ that could lead to war,“[262]  he privately disclosed this determination to Churchill. American cruisers in convoys with British weapons transports and the patrolling of the mid-Atlantic were not in accordance with the state of non-belligerency defined by international law, but Roosevelt had to get the nation into war if his concerns about American national security and the continuous successes of the Axis in Europe and Asia were to be relieved.[263]

   But contrary to Roosevelt’s belief, the incident would not take place in the Atlan- tic. The Japanese could not win any decisive victory over Chiang’s troops in China and the costs of this ‘Chinese incident’ had increased to $5 million a day. For this money and the resources that kept its armies going, Japan had to rely on Britain, the Netherlands and particularly the United State, powers that were highly critical of Japan’s invasion of China. Roosevelt had only recently put an embargo on oil and metal going to Japan. To free itself of this dependence, Japan would have to
turn south, to Malaysia, Indochina to Borneo where mineral resources lured. As a liberal government in Tokyo had now been replaced by the outright imperialist Tojo administration, a Russo- Japanese non-aggression pact had given Japan free hand to operate in Southeast Asia. They knew very well,  expansion into that region would almost certainly bring the Americans into the war, but not attacking in July 1941 after the Americans had already frozen Japanese accounts over Tokyo’s invasion of Indochina, would either mean kowtowing to Washington’s will or immediately giving up the ‘Chinese incident’. In both cases, Japan was to detect the foreign influence as making it lose its face. No Japanese government would ever do anything that would threaten to make it lose the nation’s face; instead Japan would dare to attack the Southeast Asian European possessions and risk war with the United States, a power with an industrial potential at least seven times its own. [264]  But to improve its odds, the island nation would attack Pearl Harbor, on Hawaii, the home port to America’s Pacific fleet.

   U.S. intelligence had meanwhile come to know that Japan was preparing to strike against a U.S. base somewhere in the Pacific. For reasons of propinquity, bases in Southeast Asia and on the Philippines were considered most likely. But no-one thought it possible that the ‘Japs’ could attack as far away as Hawaii. But that was the direction, the Japanese fleet was moving to; somewhere in the mid-Pacific, the Americans suddenly lost track of these ships. The aircraft-carrier at anchor in Hawaii at that time were ordered out to sea - just in case. On December 7, 1941 in
the early morning the Japanese suddenly re-appeared, on the sky over Pearl Har- bor. They sank three major battleships and some smaller vessels together with the destruction of a great part of the base. 2,400 servicemen died. On the next day, Roosevelt addressed Congress asking for a declaration of war to Japan. Hitler ‘liberated’ Roosevelt from the necessity to have the U.S. take the first step and also declare war to Germany; by December 11, 1941, the United States was at war in Europe and in Asia.[265]
 
 

Under President Roosevelt, the pendulum of the United States’ foreign policy had swung the full range from extreme isolation to intervention in the most destructive of all wars. Suffering from the slump of the Great Depression and its psychological effects on the nation’s self-perception, the American people had proven a strong desire for actual isolation - retreating from the world in every conceivable way. Yet the president had soon come to acknowledge that - also and especially in the eco- nomic interest of the country - isolation could not be successfully pursued in a world whose interdependence the global scale of the depression had only helped to spotlight. If the nation did not want to have the undesirable position of merely being acted upon, it would have to audibly and courageously state its views and ideals to the world and work in concert with those who were committed to them as well. Roosevelt had the country realize that to preserve peace, it would have to wage war against those who wanted to destroy peace. He had prevented America’s power from fading away, but could he possibly restore world power and world peace?