Full transcript
0:01okay so when Franklin delar Roosevelt
0:05was elected president in
0:071932 there really two primary issues
0:12that he is most concerned with uh the
0:15first clearly is the Great Depression
0:17it's the number one issue it's the thing
0:19that he was elected on he has to find a
0:22way to get America's economy up and
0:25running again and restore people's faith
0:28in the American dream right but the
0:31second thing that FDR was concerned with
0:34when he took office was the growth of
0:36authoritarianism in Europe Bonito
0:39musolini had total control of Italy for
0:42over a decade at this point and was
0:44looking to expand his power to other
0:46parts of the uh of Europe most notably
0:51in the Iberian
0:52Peninsula um Hitler has Consolidated
0:57power that he's been acre in Germany
0:59since 199 that really speeds up between
1:021931 and
1:041933 so so FDR is is very concerned
1:07about these dictators who have come to
1:10power and it looks like they're
1:12beginning to expand their influence into
1:15other parts of Europe as the 30s move on
1:19and FDR understood this development as a
1:23danger uh to Europe and he understood it
1:26as a eventual problem for the United
1:29States you know FDR saw something like
1:32authoritarianism as a sort of virus that
1:35would spread and
1:37eventually uh hurt the US in a couple
1:42different ways one it would lead to
1:44megalomaniac leaders that would want to
1:46attack the United States and pull us
1:48into a conflict another thing was he
1:50understood these authoritarian leaders
1:53in Europe to be um anical uh to American
1:58Economic Opportunity uh in Europe so
2:01that's that's a problem for helping
2:03address the depression we need to create
2:04all the opportunity we can in other
2:07parts of the world so FDR is in great
2:10part an
2:12interventionist from the early days one
2:14because he sees
2:16authoritarianism as a danger to American
2:20values but also because he sees it as a
2:23threat to the bigger problem of helping
2:26repair the US economy so FDR send
2:30advisors abroad for talks he publicly he
2:34took a unilateral approach to just
2:36economic recovery and focusing on that
2:38domestic issue but privately he's
2:41collecting information he's keeping
2:43track of what's going on in Europe
2:45because he knows that sooner or later
2:46he's going to have to confront the
2:50growth of growth and power of people
2:53like Hitler people like Bonito musolini
2:55and of course in Japan the growing
2:57influence of military leaders like uh
3:01Tojo the catch of course is at the time
3:04isolationist sentiment has come to
3:06reassert itself as a popular idea in the
3:10United States Americans in general
3:14opposed interventionist attitudes
3:17because they believe that intervention
3:19was a handicap to economic recovery so
3:23America was doubling down on
3:25isolationism as a traditional strength
3:28in the early 1930s
3:30so what you're going to hear about today
3:33is that FDR worked over the course of
3:36the 30s to make intervention into
3:39something that would help resolve the
3:42economy and get it uh moving towards
3:45recovery while also taking care of the
3:48problem of
3:49authoritarianism in Europe so where I'm
3:52going to start in the next part of
3:55lecture is why Americans seemed to be so
4:00resold on the idea of isolationism in
4:02the early 30s when for the last three
4:05decades America hadn't really been an
4:07isolationist country