Neutrality Acts: Definition

To involve America in World War Two, FDR had to overcome two major obstacles: American public opinion and a consistent body of neutrality legislation. By the 1930s, 70 percent of Americans polled said that U.S. involvement in World War I had been a mistake. When war broke out again in 1939, Americans were determined to stay out of the affairs of its quarrelsome neighbors across the Atlantic. They were also legally bound by the Neutrality Acts, a series of laws passed in the 1930s that would limit U.S. involvement in foreign wars. They passed in 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1939.

Neutrality Acts: Definition

FDR’s other problem was the pesky neutrality laws from the 1930s that were designed to prevent the United States from being lured into war, and which especially sought to avoid the circumstances that had led to U.S. entry into World War I. Thus, for example, Americans on belligerent ships were at first told that they traveled at their own risk, and neutrality legislation later in the 1930s prohibited such travel altogether. The neutrality legislation also prevented the United States from selling weapons to countries at war. America could sell other goods to belligerents, but only on a cash-and-carry basis and transported in the recipient country’s ships. America’s ships could not venture into war zones to conduct wartime trade.

FDR sought to change the part of the neutrality legislation that stopped the United States from selling weapons to nations at war. As of 1939, therefore, it became legal for a belligerent (Britain, in this case) to acquire weapons from the United States on a cash-and-carry basis. The prohibition on the lending of money to belligerents was preserved, and the requirement that the equipment be transported in the belligerent’s own ships meant that American ships would not be exposed to danger.