Neutrality Acts of the 1930s
Neutrality Acts of the 1930s carried a blunt, almost mathematical logic. In October 1935, after Italy invaded Ethiopia, President Franklin Roosevelt invoked the law and blocked arms shipments to both countries at once. Italy was the aggressor. Ethiopia was fighting for its survival. Under the new law, neither one could buy American weapons. That evenhandedness was the whole point of the law, and in time, it became the whole problem too. Why would a nation write a law that could not tell an invader from a victim? What forces in Congress demanded it, and what did the law cost the countries the United States would later fight beside? This is the story of laws built across a decade to keep America out of the next European war. It's also the story of how those laws gave way to the war that pulled America in anyway.
H. C. Engelbrecht's 1934 book The Merchants of Death told readers that bankers and weapons manufacturers had steered the country into World War One for profit. Congressional hearings led by the Nye Committee ran from 1934 to 1936 and lent that theory an official stamp. Together, the book and the hearings convinced many Americans that entering a foreign war had been a mistake engineered for profit. That belief strengthened the isolationist and non-interventionist wings of Congress.
Four Republican senators pushed hardest for strict neutrality laws: William Edgar Borah, Arthur H. Vandenberg, Gerald P. Nye, and Robert M. La Follette Jr. Non-interventionism was not confined to their party, though. Democratic Representative Louis Ludlow repeatedly introduced an amendment between 1935 and 1940 that would have required a public referendum before Congress could declare war, except in cases of direct attack. It never passed, but it showed how far some lawmakers wanted to go.
Franklin Roosevelt and his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, opposed the Neutrality Acts. They worried the laws would tie the administration's hands in supporting friendly nations. Democrats held large majorities in both the House and Senate, yet enough of them, especially Southern Democrats, backed the Acts to guarantee passage. Roosevelt calculated that vetoing the bills would cost him Southern support and public goodwill just as he prepared to seek re-election in 1936. With considerable reluctance, he signed the Neutrality Acts into law. His own State Department had wanted the president to have the power to impose sanctions selectively, but Congress rejected that idea outright.
Congress passed the first Neutrality Act on the 31st of August 1935. It imposed a general embargo on trading arms and war materials with every party in a conflict. It also warned Americans that if they boarded a ship belonging to a country at war, they traveled at their own risk. Lawmakers set the act to expire after six months.
To enforce it, the State Department created the Office of Arms and Munitions Control, initially staffed by Joseph C. Green and Charles W. Yost. The office was renamed the Division of Controls when it expanded in 1939. In 1935, Roosevelt also paired the law with what he called a 'moral embargo,' urging Americans to avoid trade with belligerents even in goods the Act itself didn't reach.
Congress renewed the law in February with the Neutrality Act of 1936, extending the original provisions for another fourteen months and adding a ban on loans or credit to belligerents. The 1936 Act carved out two large exceptions. It didn't apply to civil wars like the one erupting in Spain, and it didn't cover ordinary civilian goods such as trucks and oil. American companies, including Texaco, Standard Oil, Ford, General Motors, and Studebaker, sold exactly those kinds of goods to Francisco Franco's Nationalists on credit. By 1939, Spain owed these and other firms more than $100,000,000.
Congress moved to close the Spain gap in January 1937, passing a joint resolution that outlawed the arms trade with Spain specifically. The Neutrality Act of 1937 passed that May. It folded in the earlier provisions permanently, this time with no expiration date, and extended the embargo to cover civil wars as well. It also barred American ships from carrying passengers or goods to belligerents, and it barred U.S. citizens from traveling aboard belligerent ships.
One further change, added at Roosevelt's request, would let the president open a narrow channel for arms sales after all.
Roosevelt's advisor Bernard Baruch devised the 'cash-and-carry' provision added to the 1937 Act as a concession to the president. Under it, the president could allow the sale of materials and supplies to belligerents in Europe. The only condition was that buyers arrange their own transport and pay immediately in cash.
Supporters argued that removing American ships and credit from the equation would keep the country out of the fighting. Roosevelt saw a further advantage. Only nations that controlled the seas could take advantage of the provision, and in a war with Germany, that meant France and Great Britain. Congress set the cash-and-carry clause to expire after two years.
The clause assumed future wars would look like the last one. A different kind of war was about to test that assumption, in Asia.
Japan invaded China in July 1937, igniting the Second Sino-Japanese War. Roosevelt, who supported China, chose not to invoke the Neutrality Acts because neither side had formally declared war.
That decision mattered enormously. China depended on imported arms, and only Japan could have made use of cash-and-carry. Invoking the law would have crippled China's ability to defend itself while leaving Japan largely unaffected. Isolationists in Congress were furious, arguing that Roosevelt was undermining the spirit of the law by refusing to apply it. Roosevelt did bar American ships from carrying arms to the belligerents, but he allowed British ships to carry American arms to China instead.
In October 1937, Roosevelt gave his Quarantine Speech, outlining a shift away from neutrality and toward what he called 'quarantining' aggressor nations. He followed it with a 'moral embargo' on aircraft exports to Japan.
Isolationists had lost this round, but the next crisis in Europe would reopen the fight over how far the president could bend the law.
Early in 1939, after Nazi Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, Roosevelt asked Congress to renew the lapsed cash-and-carry provision. Congress rebuffed him, and the mandatory arms embargo stayed in place.
Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, and Britain and France declared war in response. Roosevelt invoked the Neutrality Act but warned Congress that it might end up giving passive aid to an aggressor nation.
Congress split sharply over what to do next. Republican Senator Gerald Nye wanted to broaden the embargo rather than loosen it, and isolationists Arthur Vandenberg and Hiram Johnson vowed to fight Roosevelt's plan 'from hell to breakfast.' One unnamed 'outstanding Republican leader' who favored helping nations under attack told broadcaster H. V. Kaltenborn that the embargo was pointless anyway. A neutral country like Italy, he said, could simply buy American arms and resell its own weapons to Germany, while U.S. companies could dodge the law by moving factories to Canada.
Roosevelt won the fight. On the 4th of November 1939, he signed the Neutrality Act of 1939. It let the U.S. sell arms to Britain and France on a cash-and-carry basis, effectively ending the arms embargo. The new law repealed the 1935 and 1937 Acts. It barred American citizens and ships from presidentially designated war zones. It also put the National Munitions Control Board, created back in 1935, in charge of licensing every arms import and export.
Cash-and-carry had reopened the door to Britain and France. Washington's next moves would open that door much further.
The Destroyers-for-Bases deal of September 1940 marked the real end of neutrality policy. The United States transferred 50 Navy destroyers to the Royal Navy in exchange for land rights on British possessions.
The Lend-Lease Act followed in March 1941. It let the United States sell, lend, or give war materials outright to nations Roosevelt wanted to support, including Britain, France, and China.
German submarines and American ships clashed repeatedly in the Atlantic through 1941. On the 11th of September 1941, Roosevelt announced a new order. He had directed the Navy to attack German and Italian warships in waters the U.S. deemed necessary for its defense. The order effectively declared naval war on both countries.
On the 31st of October, a U.S. destroyer was sunk while dropping depth charges on German U-boats. Congress responded by repealing many of the remaining Neutrality Act provisions on the 17th of November 1941. Merchant vessels could now be armed and carry cargo to any belligerent nation.
On the 4th of December 1941, U.S. newspapers published Rainbow Five, a leaked plan detailing American war strategy. On the 8th of December 1941, the United States formally declared war on Japan. The declaration followed the attack on Pearl Harbor and Japan's own declaration of war the day before. Germany and Italy declared war on the United States on the 11th of December 1941, and the U.S. responded the same day.
Within days, the United States that had insisted on staying neutral through four separate laws was formally at war with Japan, Germany, and Italy.
One piece of the Neutrality Acts outlived all the others. The 1939 Act had made trading arms without a license a federal crime, and that ban remains in force today.
In 1948, three men, Charles Winters, Al Schwimmer, and Herman Greenspun, were convicted under that provision. They had smuggled B-17 Flying Fortress bombers from Florida to the newly formed state of Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Winters was sentenced to eighteen months in prison and fined $5,000. Schwimmer and Greenspun were each fined $10,000, and Schwimmer additionally lost his voting rights and veteran benefits.
All three eventually received presidential pardons. Greenspun was pardoned by John F. Kennedy in 1961, Schwimmer was pardoned by Bill Clinton in 2001, and Winters was pardoned by George W. Bush in 2008.
Common questions
What were the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s?
The Neutrality Acts of the 1930s were a series of laws passed by the US Congress in 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1939 in response to the wars leading up to World War II. They aimed to keep the United States from becoming entangled in foreign conflicts again after World War I.
When did the US Congress pass the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s?
Congress passed the first Neutrality Act on the 31st of August 1935, followed by further acts in February 1936, May 1937, and on the 4th of November 1939. Most of these provisions were repealed in 1941 in the face of the Lend-Lease Act.
Why did Congress pass the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s?
Congress passed the Neutrality Acts amid rising isolationism after World War I, fueled by the Nye Committee hearings of 1934-1936 and H. C. Engelbrecht's 1934 book The Merchants of Death. Many Americans had come to believe bankers and the arms industry had pushed the country into World War I for profit.
What was the cash-and-carry provision in the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s?
Cash-and-carry, devised by Bernard Baruch and added to the Neutrality Act of 1937, let the president allow arms sales to belligerents in Europe if buyers arranged their own transport and paid in cash. Roosevelt believed it would favor Britain and France, since they controlled the seas.
How did the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s treat the Spanish Civil War?
The Neutrality Act of 1936 did not cover civil wars like the one in Spain or civilian goods like trucks and oil, letting companies such as Texaco, Standard Oil, Ford, General Motors, and Studebaker sell to Francisco Franco's Nationalists on credit. By 1939, Spain owed these firms more than $100,000,000, before a January 1937 resolution and the Neutrality Act of 1937 closed the loophole.
Who was convicted under the Neutrality Act for smuggling planes to Israel?
Charles Winters, Al Schwimmer, and Herman Greenspun were convicted in 1948 under the 1939 Neutrality Act's licensing provision after smuggling B-17 Flying Fortress bombers from Florida to Israel during the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. Winters received an 18-month prison sentence and a $5,000 fine, while Schwimmer and Greenspun were each fined $10,000.
All sources
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