Today we talked the United States' position on the developing conflict with Germany that eventually lead up to WWII. The US declared themselves neutral as conflict starting happening and so had to follow the Neutrality Acts, meaning that they couldn't trade with anyone in war. Even though the US was "neutral" roosevelt wrote a letter to Hitler and Mussolini asking them to stop taking over so many countries. This did nothing to stop them. Afterwards, Roosevelt asked for money for defensive measures to be made, but he was limited on how he could help the allies because the neutrality acts restricted trade. In addition there wasn't enough support from the people to join the war. This changed slightly when Germany invaded Poland. Congress amended the neutrality acts by saying that other countries in war could trade with the US if they paid in cash and came to America. This wasn't very helpful though because it was hard for them to come all the way there. Finally when France fell to Germany, Roosevelt made more anti-neutrality actions. Congress passed a National Defense Tax Bill which raised 49 billion dollars for the war effort. Then the US directly traded with Britain, breaking the neutrality acts, and also made a draft. 16 million men were registered in the draft and Roosevelt started talking about war strategies.
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