Analysis: President Roosevelt's Speech Recommending Revision of the Neutrality Law
In September 1939, President Franklin D. Roosevelt urged a reevaluation of the United States' Neutrality Laws in light of escalating global conflicts. With the rise of aggressive powers in Europe and Asia, he argued that the existing Neutrality Acts failed to differentiate between aggressors and victims, inadvertently aiding the former. Roosevelt believed that these laws constrained the U.S. from effectively responding to international emergencies and supporting its allies, which included nations threatened by leaders like Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. He delivered a speech to Congress advocating for the repeal of these laws, proposing that aligning with established international law would better equip the U.S. to promote peace and stability. The context of Roosevelt’s address reflects a historical moment where nations were redefining their roles in global affairs, especially following the lessons learned from World War I. As the world edged closer to another war, Roosevelt maintained that an engaged and legally grounded approach would enhance the U.S. contribution to international peace, rather than isolationist policies that could lead to greater conflict. The speech signified a critical pivot in American foreign policy, emphasizing the responsibility of the U.S. to support democratic nations and maintain global stability.
Analysis: President Roosevelt's Speech Recommending Revision of the Neutrality Law
Date: September 21, 1939
Authors: Franklin D. Roosevelt
Genre: speech
Summary Overview
In September 1939, the rising threat against American allies in Europe and China prompted President Franklin D. Roosevelt to rethink the perceived benefits of the Neutrality Acts of the early to mid-1930s. Roosevelt concluded that the language contained in the acts failed to distinguish between the aggressors and the victims of aggression in situations like the developing conflict. Such vagueness, he argued, gave a passive form of aid to aggressors such as Germany's Adolf Hitler, Italy's Benito Mussolini, and Japan's Hirohito. Roosevelt, therefore, delivered a message to a joint session of Congress in which he called for the Neutrality Acts to be repealed in favor of the much clearer tenets of international law. Such a move, he argued, would better position the United States and others to address the threats at hand and promote peace in the European and Pacific theaters of conflict.
Defining Moment
In 1919, the Treaty of Versailles brought an end to what was then considered the “war to end all wars,” although it was to be only the first of two world wars in the twentieth century. The Versailles Treaty included strong punitive measures against Germany, considered to be the main aggressor of World War I. Over a decade later, Germans, weary from the heavy financial and political burdens placed on their nation by the treaty, sought change in the form of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist, or Nazi, regime. After assuming power, Hitler began instituting social policies designed to restore national pride, but that would eventually lead to the Holocaust—a mass extermination program that ultimately claimed the lives of an estimated six million Jews—and he moved to acquire territory outside Germany in order to accommodate the growing German population.
Hitler's Nazi regime was not the only threat facing the world community during the 1930s. In 1936, civil war erupted in Spain, bringing to power fascist dictator Francisco Franco, whose rise was supported by Nazi Germany and Italy's ruling National Fascist Party. Meanwhile, Italian forces, directed by head of government and Fascist Party leader Benito Mussolini, invaded and occupied Ethiopia. In 1937, Japanese forces invaded the Chinese region of Manchuria, setting up a puppet regime and beginning an advance toward Beijing, where Chinese president Chiang Kai-shek, a close trading ally of the United States, clung to power despite an internal Communist insurrection.
With virtually the whole of the Eastern Hemisphere dominated by the specter of war, nations looked to one another for alliances, partnerships, and aid. However, in Washington, DC, leaders were still studying how the United States had been drawn into World War I and how they could keep the nation out of a future conflict. The Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry, headed by Republican senator Gerald Nye and more commonly called the Senate Munitions Committee or the Nye Committee, convened in 1934 to conduct an eighteen-month investigation into the US arms trade during World War I. The committee concluded that the weapons trade and forms of financial aid, intended to support American allies in the conflict without using American soldiers, had ultimately caused the United States to become a German target, thus drawing the nation into the war. These findings led to the passage of the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s, a series of measures that placed an embargo on supplying American money and supplies to any belligerent in an international conflict.
By the late 1930s, many leaders, Roosevelt included, had started to question the viability of the Neutrality Acts. Experts at the time argued that had the United States been allowed to support the Republican faction during the Spanish Civil War, the Republicans might have triumphed and thus been able to help repel Hitler's expansionism. Others decried the lack of consistency in the laws: Roosevelt was able to voice his support for Chiang against Japan because no declaration of war had been issued in that conflict, but he could not support the sovereign nations that Hitler and Mussolini invaded. Roosevelt felt handcuffed by the law and began advocating for changes to its language. With the balance of power shifting rapidly in Europe and East Asia, he saw the need to press for a counterweight against Germany's increasing power.
Meanwhile, in September 1939, Nazi forces invaded Poland. Great Britain, France, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada all responded by declaring war on Germany. On September 21, Roosevelt took to the podium at a joint session of Congress with the goal of convincing the Senate and the House of Representatives to repeal the Neutrality Acts.
Author Biography
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born in Hyde Park, New York, on January 30, 1882. He graduated from Harvard College in 1903 and began studying law at Columbia University. Although he did not finish his law degree, Roosevelt passed the bar exam in New York and practiced law before being elected a state senator in 1910. Because of his strong leadership and organizational skills, he was appointed assistant secretary of the Navy by President Woodrow Wilson, a post he held from 1913 until 1920.
In 1921, Roosevelt was diagnosed with polio, a crippling disease that limited his mobility. Nevertheless, he was elected governor of New York in 1928 and reelected in 1930. In 1932, Roosevelt was elected president of the United States. As a presidential term limit was not instituted until 1951, he was subsequently reelected three times, making him the longest-serving president in US history. During his four terms in office, Roosevelt oversaw the country's recovery from the Great Depression and its military participation during most of World War II. He died in office on April 12, 1945, after suffering a stroke while on vacation in Georgia.
Document Analysis
In his speech, President Roosevelt endorses the United States' record in attempting to bring about peaceful, rather than military, resolutions to interstate conflicts. He argues that with the exception of World War I, the United States has been consistent in its efforts to promote peace through the process of international law and not allow itself to be drawn into the wars of other nations. The various versions of the Neutrality Act, however, created a convoluted and problematic policy that forced the United States to deviate from this sound, legal approach. Because of this unintended effect, Roosevelt is calling on Congress to repeal the embargo imposed by the Neutrality Acts.
Roosevelt first reminds Congress that since World War I, the United States has shown great discretion and care not to involve itself in the affairs of other countries. Such a policy has been difficult to maintain, he says, in light of the fact that so many other governments have been building up their respective militaries and using them to resolve their differences with other nations. Roosevelt points out that the US government has worked diligently to prevent the growing war in Europe through diplomatic means; now that the nation has failed to avert that war, he argues that it is incumbent upon the United States to do everything in its power to avoid being pulled into the war as a combatant.
Roosevelt admits that he initially endorsed the Neutrality Act; however, like the Embargo Act of 1807 and the Non-Intercourse Act of 1809, enacted in response to the Napoleonic Wars of the early nineteenth century, the Neutrality Act ultimately only limits the United States' ability to assess and intercede in international conflicts. Roosevelt argues that the United States has long proven its ability to help promote world peace while still avoiding entering into conflict through the system of international law, the purpose of which has always been to avoid war.
In order to alleviate concerns that repealing the Neutrality Acts would inevitably draw the United States into the ongoing war, Roosevelt assures Congress that it is his “deep and unalterable conviction… that by the repeal of the embargo the United States will more probably remain at peace than if the law remains as it stands today.” He states that it is the opinion of the US government that “the age-old and time-honored doctrine of international law,” bolstered by some “positive safeguards,” would be a more effective means of avoiding war than a single nation's embargo that may itself lead to international incidents and will ultimately limit that nation's own ability to respond to the belligerent actions of others.
Roosevelt concludes by saying that war is upon the world, not caused by or directly involving the United States but still affecting it, as it does all of civilization. The United States and its surrounding countries are “joint heirs of European culture,” having been born of European heritage, and thus it is the United States' responsibility to “[help] maintain in the Western world a citadel wherein that civilization may be kept alive.” While lifting the embargo imposed by the Neutrality Acts would certainly benefit the country's European allies in the current conflict, it is important to repeal the acts not just for short-term benefit but so that “the peace, the integrity, and the safety of the Americas”—and thus, by extension, the world—can “be kept firm and serene” over the long term.
Bibliography and Additional Reading
“Biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt.” Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum. Natl. Archives and Records Administration, n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
Burns, James MacGregor, and Susan Dunn. The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America. New York: Grove, 2001. Print.
Crawford, Kenneth G. “Goodby Neutrality.” Nation 15 Apr. 1939: 423–24. Print.
Freidel, Frank, and Hugh Sidey. “Franklin D. Roosevelt.” WhiteHouse.gov. White House, n.d. Web. 21 Oct. 2014.
“Merchants of Death.” 200 Notable Days: Senate Stories, 1787 to 2002. Comp. Richard A. Baker. Washington: GPO, 2006. 141. Print.
O'Connor, Jerome M. “Roosevelt's Ghost Ships.” World War II Feb. 2003: 34–40. Print.
Taliaferro, Jeffrey W. “Strategy of Innocence or Provocation? The Roosevelt Administration's Road to World War II.” The Challenge of Grand Strategy: The Great Powers and the Broken Balance between the World Wars. Ed. Jeffrey N. Taliaferro, Norrin M. Ripsman, and Steven E. Lobell. New York: Cambridge UP, 2012. 193–223. Print.