By 1939 foreign policy was overshadowing domestic policy. From the beginning of his presidency, Roosevelt had been deeply involved in foreign-policy questions. Although he refused to support international currency stabilization at the London Economic Conference in 1933, by 1936 he had stabilized the dollar and concluded stabilization agreements with Great Britain and France. Roosevelt extended American recognition to the government of the Soviet Union, launched the Good Neighbor Policy to improve U.S. relations with Latin America, and backed reciprocal agreements to lower trade barriers between the U.S. and other countries.

Congress, however, was dominated by isolationists who believed that American entry into World War I had been mistaken and who were determined to prevent the United States from being drawn into another European war. Beginning with the Neutrality Act of 1935, Congress passed a series of laws designed to minimize American involvement with belligerent nations. Roosevelt accepted the neutrality laws but at the same time warned Americans of the danger of remaining isolated from a world increasingly menaced by the dictatorial regimes in Germany, Italy, and Japan. Speaking in Chicago in October 1937, he proposed that peace-loving nations make concerted efforts to quarantine aggressors. Although he seemed to mean nothing more drastic than breaking off diplomatic relations, the proposal created such alarm throughout the country that he quickly backed away from even this modest level of international involvement. Then, in December, the Japanese sank an American gunboat, the USS Panay, on the Yangtze River in China. Most Americans feared that the attack would lead to war, and they were pleased when Roosevelt accepted Japan’s apologies.

When World War II broke out in Europe in September 1939, Roosevelt called Congress into special session to revise the neutrality acts to permit belligerents—i.e., Britain and France—to buy American arms on a “cash-and-carry” basis; over the objections of isolationists, the cash-and-carry policy was enacted. When France fell to the Germans in the spring and early summer of 1940, and Britain was left alone to face the Nazi war machine, Roosevelt convinced Congress to intensify defense preparations and to support Britain with “all aid short of war.” In the fall of that year Roosevelt sent 50 older destroyers to Britain, which feared an imminent German invasion, in exchange for eight naval bases.

Attack on Pearl Harbor

Yet it was in the Pacific rather than the Atlantic that war came to the United States. When Japan joined the Axis powers of Germany and Italy, Roosevelt began to restrict exports to Japan of supplies essential to making war. Throughout 1941, Japan negotiated with the United States, seeking restoration of trade in those supplies, particularly petroleum products. When the negotiations failed to produce agreement, Japanese military leaders began to plan an attack on the United States. According to one school of thought, this was exactly what Roosevelt wanted, for, by backing Japan into a corner and forcing it to make war on the United States, the president could then enter the European war in defense of Britain—the so-called “back door to war” theory. This controversial hypothesis continues to be debated today. (See Sidebar: Pearl Harbor and the “Back Door to War” Theory.)

By the end of November, Roosevelt knew that an attack was imminent (the United States had broken the Japanese code), but he was uncertain where it would take place. To his great surprise, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, destroying or damaging nearly the entire U.S. Pacific fleet and hundreds of airplanes and killing about 2,500 military personnel and civilians. On December 8, at Roosevelt’s request, Congress declared war on Japan; on December 11 Germany and Italy declared war on the United States.

At a press conference in December 1943, Roosevelt asserted that “Dr. New Deal” had been replaced by “Dr. Win the War.” The many New Deal agencies designed to provide employment during the Great Depression rapidly disappeared as war mobilization created more jobs than there were people to fill them. Full economic recovery, which had resisted Roosevelt’s efforts throughout the 1930s, suddenly came about as a consequence of massive government spending on war production in the early 1940s.