Franklin Roosevelt attempted to walk a thin line between
involvement in the War and aiding the allies. He succeeded for a time, but ultimately,
the U.S. was drawn into the war, at least partially because of Roosevelt's
policies.
The British Navy had long served to protect
America from attack from the Atlantic; but at this point the British navy was stretched
thin. At the request of Winston Churchill, Roosevelt agreed to sell 50 "overaged"
American destroyers to Britain in exchange for 99-year leases on military bases in the
British Empire. He claimed it was for the protection of the Western Hemisphere, saying
that his action was
the most important action in the reinforcement of
our national defense that has been taken since the Louisiana
Purchase.
At the same time,
in June, 1940, Roosevelt authorized the creation of the National Defense Research
Committee, which secretly studied the possibility of creating an Atomic Bomb. This after
he received a letter from Albert Einstein suggesting that the Germans might succeed in
doing so first.
The "lend lease" program was a means of
aiding Britain but also a means of circumventing the Johnson Debt Default Act, which
prohibited foreign aid to any country which had defaulted on its World War I debts to
the U.S. Britain had done so, and Roosevelt used the lend lease program as a way to get
around the prohibition. Senator Burton Wheeler opposed the lend lease program and in a
sarcastic reference to the old AAA program commented:
The Lend Lease program is the New Deal’s triple A
foreign policy; it will plow under every fourth American
boy.
Finally, in August,
1941, Roosevelt met with Churchill off the coast of Newfoundland and they jointly issued
the Atlantic Charter, which called for freedom of the seas, self determination for all
people, economic cooperation and equal access to raw materials. A strange agreement for
a President who insisted that he and his country were neutral.
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