Changes

[[File: FDR in 1933.jpg |thumbnail|left|300px|President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933]]__NOTOC__

By the mid-1930s, events in Europe and Asia indicated that a new world war might soon erupt and the U.S. Congress took action to enforce U.S. neutrality. On August 31, 1935, Congress passed the first Neutrality Act prohibiting the export of “arms, ammunition, and implements of war” from the United States to foreign nations at war and requiring arms manufacturers in the United States to apply for an export license. American citizens traveling in war zones were also advised that they did so at their own risk. [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XFM74LF/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B06XFM74LF&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=70e68c7b371e6ca9c543fe99d864a1f4 President Franklin D. Roosevelt] originally opposed the legislation but relented in the face of strong Congressional and public opinion. On February 29, 1936, Congress renewed the Act until May of 1937 and prohibited Americans from extending any loans to belligerent nations.

[[File:SpanishCivilWar.jpg|thumbnail|left|300px|Republican soldiers talking to journalists (including Ernest Hemingway whose back is to the camera) in 1937.]]

The outbreak of the [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/014303765X/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=014303765X&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=3b4a78d1db09f00817ca91a21523c1d1 Spanish Civil War] in 1936 and the rising tide of fascism in Europe increased support for extending and expanding the Neutrality Act of 1937. Under this law, U.S.citizens were forbidden from traveling on belligerent ships, and American merchant ships were prevented from transporting arms to belligerents even if those arms were produced outside of the United States. The Act gave the President the authority to bar all belligerent ships from U.S. waters, and to extend the export embargo to any additional “articles or materials.” Finally, civil wars would also fall under the terms of the Act.

The Neutrality Act of 1937 did contain one important concession to Roosevelt: belligerent nations were allowed, at the discretion of the President, to acquire any items except arms from the United States, so long as they immediately paid for such items and carried them on non-American ships—the so-called “cash-and-carry” provision. Since vital raw materials such as oil were not considered “implements of war,” the “cash-and-carry” clause would be quite valuable to whatever nation could make use of it. Roosevelt had engineered its inclusion as a deliberate way to assist Great Britain and France in any war against the Axis Powers since he realized that they were the only countries that had both the hard currency and ships to make use of “cash-and-carry.” Unlike the rest of the Act, which was permanent, this provision was set to expire after two years.

====The Neutrality Act of 1939 permitted the sale of arms on a cash-and-carry basis====

Following [https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674034597/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=0674034597&linkCode=as2&tag=dailyh0c-20&linkId=b2aef87358554e373485d6d8a250e17e Germany’s occupation of Czechoslovakia] in March of 1939, Roosevelt suffered a humiliating defeat when Congress rebuffed his attempt to renew “cash-and-carry” and expand it to include arms sales. President Roosevelt persisted and as war spread in Europe, his chances of expanding “cash-and-carry” increased. After a fierce debate in Congress, in November of 1939, a final Neutrality Act passed. This Act lifted the arms embargo and put all trade with belligerent nations under the terms of “cash-and-carry.” The ban on loans remained in effect, and American ships were barred from transporting goods to belligerent ports.

====Conclusion====

Overall, the Neutrality Acts represented a compromise whereby the United States Government accommodated the isolationist sentiment of the American public, but still retained some ability to interact with the world. In the end, the terms of the Neutrality Acts became irrelevant once the United States joined the Allies in the fight against Germany and Japan in December 1941.

* Republished from [https://history.state.gov/| Office of the Historian, United States Department of State]