Which answer best explains why the United States initially followed a policy of appeasement toward Germany?
1 Answer
The United States did not have a policy of appeasement towards Germany (or any of other Axis nations); the US public was, however, strongly interested in neutrality.
Explanation:
In the 1930s, as Hitler remilitarized Germany, the Italians conquered Ethiopia and the Japanese invaded China, the US public remained opposed to getting involved in war. This was due in part to:
1) The popular feeling about the cost and expense of WW-1 and a widespread myth (encouraged by the Left) that the war had only benefitted the wealthy and privileged.
2) A distrust, cultivated in the Irish community, of anything to do with the UK; while the German and Italian communities had little taste for any government policies directed against their countries of origin.
3) A sense of isolation and of moral superiority, that these were problems for other people, far from home.
Notwithstanding these broad opinions, Roosevelt had a good sense of what was coming. While the US was officially neutral from September 1939, Roosevelt compromised that neutrality on several occasions in 1939 and 1940 while starting to gear up the defence budget, naval construction, and aviation factories. Then he started 'Lend-Lease' and the open sale of arms to the Allies.
The Left, at first eager to confront Hitler, reversed its course when Germany and the USSR signed a treaty in 1939 to carve up Poland. They reversed their course towards the war yet again once the USSR was invaded in 1941. Many in the Right protested Roosevelt's shifts in Neutrality through the 'America First' committees -- which vanished a few days after the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941.
