Difference between revisions of "Neutrality Act"

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-The '''Neutrality Act''' was an Act of Congress providing for the prohibition of the export of arms, ammunition, and implements of war to belligerent countries; the prohibition of the transportation of arms, ammunition, and implements of war by vessels of the United States for the use of belligerent states; for the registration and licensing of persons engaged in the business of manufacturing, exporting, or importing arms, ammunition, or implements of war; and restricting travel by American citizens on belligerent ships during war. <ref>[http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/interwar/neutralityact.htm "Neutrality Act" of August 31, 1935], 49 stat. 1081; 22 U.S.C. 441 note, U.S. Department of State, Publication 1983, ''Peace and War: United States Foreign Policy, 1931-1941'' (Washington, D.C.: U.S., Government Printing Office, 1943, pp. 265-271).</ref>
-==Background==
-At the White House on March 20, 1935, President [[Franklin Roosevelt]] told members of the [[Nye Committee]] that an Act should be prepared which would guarantee, in the event of a European war, the absolute neutrality of the American people. <ref>[http://www.rooseveltmyth.com/book/hbzfrm.htm ''The Roosevelt Myth''], John T. Flynn, Fox and Wilkes, 1948, Book 2, Ch. 6.</ref>  The Neutrality Act was introduced in the Senate and House and passed by very large majorities. It had a time limit of two years and at the expiration of the time limit it was passed again by enormous majorities in both houses.
-President Roosevelt promptly applied the law when Italian Premier [[Benito Mussolini]] invaded Ethiopia in October 1935. When the [[Spanish Civil War]] broke out in July of 1936 Roosevelt discovered the Neutrality Act did not apply to [[civil wars]], but only to wars between countries.  Roosevelt requested of Congress to have the law amended immediately to apply to civil war, which Congress did and Roosevelt promptly declared the Neutrality Act in force as to Spain.
-During the [[Presidential Election of 1936]] Roosevelt said "We shun political commitments which might entangle us in future wars; we avoid connection with the political activities of the League of Nations... the effective maintenance of American neutrality depends today as in the past on the wisdom and determination of whoever at the moment occupies the office of President of the United States and Secretary of State." <ref>Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Volume 5, pps. 285-292. (Random House).</ref>  And he warned that in the event of war abroad the [[United States]] would have to be on guard against arms manufacturers seeking "fool's gold," or war profits from arms trafficking, those who would find it hard to look beyond, "to realize the inevitable penalties, the inevitable day of reckoning that comes from a false prosperity." America could keep out of war, "if those who watch and desire have a sufficiently detailed understanding of international affairs to make certain that the small decisions of today do not lead toward war and if at the same time they possess the courage to say no to those who selfishly or unwisely would lead us into war." This is what was called [[isolationism]].
-==Cash and Carry law==
-The public debt in 1932 when FDR took office was $22 billion and largely was a heritage of [[World War I]].<ref>''The Roosevelt Myth'', John T. Flynn, Fox and Wilkes, 1948, [http://americandeception.com/index.php?action=downloadpdf&photo=/PDFsml_AD/The_Roosevelt_Myth-John_T_Flynn-1948-444pgs-POL.sml.pdf&id=276&PHPSESSID=03d3557b41f249f71349e6d730cc8498 pg. 129] pdf.</ref> Widespread public disillusionment felt that a handful of arms producers had benefited from the war while the nation had been left with a [[public debt]] in the form of credits which had been extended to foreign purchasers of arms.  [[Bernard Baruch]] described how the law functioned: "We will sell to any belligerent anything except lethal weapons, but the terms are 'cash on the barrel-head and come and get it."
-The original Neutrality was extended to expire on May 1, 1936. It was renewed with a "cash and carry" provision for two years. The basic feature, a prohibition on loans to belligerent governments remained intact.  The new act required that, if the president proclaimed the existence of a state of war between others nations, or a civil war that endangered the peace of the Untied States, the shipment of arms, ammunition, and implements of war, excluding raw materials, would be embargoed.
-On July 7, 1937 Japanese troops stationed in North China, under terms of the [[Boxer Protocol of 1900]], clashed with elements of the [[Kuomintang]] army near the Marco Polo Bridge, ten miles west of Beijing.  An all-out Japanese invasion of China followed.  By the end of the month, Beijing was occupied and the following month Shanghai was attacked.  The Neutrality Act required the president to implement its provisions when a state of war existed, but Roosevelt did not invoke the act.  Twenty-five members of the House signed a statement demanding the immediate application of the arms embargo in order to “stop the feeding of the war which means destruction of thousands of lives in the Orient and of war to all the world.”  FDR permitted American munitions to reach China via British ships destined for Hong Kong.  ''[[Time magazine]]'' speculated, "though in the long run Japan might need U. S. supplies more than China, the immediate effect of an embargo would be to the advantage of Japan, whose ships could still presumably conduct a "cash and carry" trade with the U. S."<ref>[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,930929-1,00.html Manslaughter in Shanghai], ''Time'' magazine, Aug. 30, 1937.</ref>
-In 1939 the U. S. supplied Japan with 59% of all war materials. The havoc wrought upon China by Japan using American made bombs dropped from American made airplanes was publicized as Japanese atrocities. (cf Porter Sargent, Bulletin #1 ''War Propaganda'', May 30, 1939).<ref>''Prodding Japan Into War'', Porter Sargent, Bulletin #95, December 30, 1940, [http://americandeception.com/index.php?action=downloadpdf&photo=/PDFsml_AD/Getting_Us_Into_War-Porter_Sargent-1941-640pgs-POL.sml.pdf&id=218&PHPSESSID=03d3557b41f249f71349e6d730cc8498 pgs. 525 - 544 pdf], pdf</ref><ref>[http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,930929-1,00.html Manslaughter in Shanghai], ''Time'' magazine, Aug. 30, 1937.</ref>
-''Time'' magazine referred to Thomas Lamont in its November 25, 1940 issue as a specialist on Japan. Years earlier Lamont visited Japan with [[Walter Lippmann]]. At the Academy of Political Science, Lamont responded to the question, "Should the U.S. tighten trade embargoes against Japan?" ''Time'' said "he pointed out inconsistencies and omissions in U.S. embargoes  that still permitted Japan to get war supplies."  The outcry against supplying Japan with the essentials for her aggressive war against China was met by an announcement from the [[Roosevelt Administration]] of 'embargoes' on the export of scrap and oil. Porter Sargent observed, "Subtle influences through the organizations of fund raising, public relations and communication by radio or print, make it possible to soft pedal the profit from arming Japan while promoting the use of armed force against her."<ref>''Prodding Japan Into War'', Porter Sargent, Bulletin #95, December 30, 1940, quoted in ''Getting Us into War'', Porter Sargent Publisher: P. Sargent, Boston, 1941, pg. 530.</ref> "Watertight as a fish-net" is how [[Owen Lattimore]], editor of ''Pacific Affairs'', characterized the embargo on November 9, 1940.  "The Royal Dutch-Shell group and a subsidiary of the Standard-Vacuum Oil Company will supply 7,000,000 barrels of oil to Japan over six months," a ''New York Times'' dispatch of October 17 reported. "Arrangements have been virtually concluded for Japan to get 40 per cent of her oil requirements for the next six months in the Dutch Indies." [[I. F. Stone]] reported on the State Department's handling of the embargo in the October 5, 1940 issue of ''[[The Nation]]'',
-:"Within the department, over the objections of a more farsighted minority, the experts made a joke of the discourses by protecting the profits accruing to American business from the aggressions we were so nobly denouncing."  The trade "treaty expired in January of [1940], but it was not until July that an 'embargo' on oil and scrap was announced . . . . The details were left to the State Department experts. When the regulations were promulgated it was found that the only scrap 'embargoed'" was one little used of the 75 varieties of iron and steel scrap, and "the only petroleum 'embargoed' was aviation gas". Stone continued, "the 'embargo' itself was only a system of licensing. It is now revealed that few if any licenses were denied under these regulations . . . . The Japanese, with about a year's supply on hand, do not need our scrap as much as they did, and the scrap industry, with a defense boom in the offing, does not need Japanese orders . The big steel companies cannot oppose an embargo on scrap by claiming that we have an over-supply of steel and at the same time ask for a higher price for steel on the ground of a shortage . . . . Both big steel and the scrap industry have accepted the embargo with a curious equanimity. This may be the result of a new sense of patriotism or it may be something else." <ref>I.F. Stone, ''The Nation'', October 5, 1940.</ref>
-==Second Sino-Japanese War==
-In 1937, when Japan invaded the Chinese mainland in the [[Second Sino-Japanese War]], the United States economy had relapsed into a depression and Roosevelt refused to apply the Neutrality Act but rather permitted arms shipments to China and Japan from United States arms manufacturers. The Neutrality Act did not require a declaration of war by an aggressor; it merely required the fact of war. The United States was the [[Nationalist Chinese]] government's only source of defense materials, while at the same time the United States was shipping six times as much to Japan as to China. The [[New Deal]] social programs needed the arms trafficking with Japan to keep people from becoming unemployed.  As one commentator observed, President Roosevelt defied the mandatory provisions of the Neutrality Act because his administration required that at this moment America needed some of that "fool's gold" from Japan.
-In December 1937 an American gunboat, the ''Panay'', was bombed in the Yangtze River in China in the heart of the Sino-Japanese war area. Japan immediately apologized and agreed to pay full damages and to punish the guilty officers. Critics have observed, had the President taken care that the laws be faithfully executed under the Neutrality Act,  the ''Panay'' would not have been protecting American oil tankers delivering oil in the midst of two warring armies in China.  The purpose of the Neutrality Act was to avoid precisely an incident of this nature.
-==Molotov-Ribbentrop pact==
-After the signing of [[Molotov-Ribbentrop pact]] in what was called the Communazi alliance, [[Communist Party of the United States of America|American Communists]] denounced President Roosevelt for proposing that the Neutrality Act's embargo provisions be repealed to aid the countries that were fighting Hitler. <ref>''The Soviet World of American Communism'', Harvey Klehr, John Earl Haynes & Kyrill M. Anderson, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995, pg. 75.</ref>
-Two weeks after [[World War II]] started, Roosevelt called Congress into extraordinary session to repeal the arms embargo provisions of the Neutrality Law and thus permit the sale of war materiel to England and France on a "cash and carry" basis, that is to say, the United States Treasury would not finance the purchase of U.S. produced arms to foreign powers.  A Roper poll taken in September, 1939 showed a total of 2.5% public support for entering the war on the
-side of England, France and Poland, 8.9% support for remaining neutral but supplying England, France and Poland with materials and food and refuse to ship anything to Germany, and the by the largest margin of any choice 37.5% support for remaining neutral but allowing arms sales to anyone on a cash and carry basis. <ref>''Roosevelt and Hopkins : An Intimate History'', Robert E. Sherwood, New York Harper and Brothers, 1948, [http://americandeception.com/index.php?action=downloadpdf&photo=/PDFsml_AD/Roosevelt_and_Hopkins-An_Intimate_History-Robert_E_Sherwood-1948-1034pgs-GOV-POL.sml.pdf&id=252&PHPSESSID=03d3557b41f249f71349e6d730cc8498 pg. 143, 146] pdf.</ref>
-==References==
-<references/>
-[[Category:history]]

Difference between revisions of "Neutrality Act"

Revision as of 03:11, September 13, 2007

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