Full transcript
0:01hey everybody uh today we want to talk a
0:04little bit about the decade leading up
0:06to the Second World War uh and we want
0:10to talk about isolationist sentiment in
0:14the United States during the 1930s and
0:17we want to understand how America went
0:19from being an isolationist country to
0:22being an interventionist country and
0:24getting involved in the second world war
0:26so um just very briefly isolationism
0:30it's just a a word we use to describe uh
0:34the attitude that a nation should focus
0:38solely on domestic issues and stay out
0:41of Foreign Affairs as entirely as
0:45possible and that includes um not
0:47signing treaties with other countries uh
0:50not uh joining other countries in
0:53conflicts that uh don't initially
0:56include your country uh that that sort
0:59of thing
1:00uh and interventionist uh attitude is
1:04one that says a country needs to involve
1:07itself in world affairs uh because um
1:12you know signing treaties involving in
1:14in ourselves and these other conflicts
1:18is something that's necessary for
1:21advancing a nation's economic uh
1:24well-being or social well-being right um
1:27America was was famously and isol aist
1:30country at its Origins and remained that
1:33way really up through about the mid
1:361880s or 1890s you know so this period
1:39between the
1:401770s and mid
1:421880s the US was
1:45isolationist and that was seen as a
1:46strength because the country at that
1:48time quite frankly was just busy
1:52establishing its government establishing
1:54its economy establishing its people uh
1:57and then from the 1890s up through the
2:01late 1930s or excuse me the late
2:031920s the us became one more in tune
2:07with interventionist attitudes primarily
2:10because the United States realized for
2:12its economy to continue growing in
2:15creating opportunity at home it needed
2:19to be one that had
2:22influence in Latin America in the
2:25Caribbean in Asia South Pacific um it
2:29needed to become more imperialistic and
2:32that meant involving the United States
2:36in world
2:38affairs then in the 1930s isolationism
2:42made a sort of rampant comeback of sorts
2:45and I'll explain why that happened uh in
2:48a couple of minutes but one of the
2:51reasons why it's interesting to think
2:52about the us as an one focused on
2:55isolationism in the 1930s is because the
2:59belie belief that the US was
3:01isolationist and had always been
3:04isolationist very much shapes the way we
3:06think about the second world war why the
3:08US got involved and what it gained from
3:11that involvement you know traditionally
3:14what people tend to believe is that the
3:16United States didn't really see itself
3:19being involved in the second world war
3:21and that the attack on Pearl Harbor was
3:23a total surprise and thrust us into that
3:27that conflict and that uh victory in the
3:31second world war was because the US
3:35hadn't thought about intervention until
3:37Pro Harbor was a sort of natural miracle
3:41that had a lot to do with the
3:43specialness of America's economy uh and
3:47what I'm going to point out today is is
3:49that um FDR the president of the United
3:52States the 1930s in particular spent a
3:54lot of time thinking about how to move
3:57from an isolationist View a more
4:00interventionist view because he and a
4:02lot of his advisers believed it would be
4:05in America's best interest to be
4:07involved in that coming Conflict for a
4:10lot of different reasons and so that
4:13helps us
4:14understand why the US set the goals at
4:19set for the second world war and helps
4:21us understand a little bit about why the
4:25US emerges from the second world war in
4:28a position to be more involved in uh in
4:31world affairs so that's what we're going
4:33to be talking about today it's really
4:35quite helpful if you have already read
4:38chapter
4:3922 uh before hearing and taking notes on
4:42this lecture and also if you go back
4:44into chapter 21 there's some stuff late
4:46in that chapter for context that's
4:49useful as well