When World War II broke out, there was no way the world could possibly know the severity of it. Fortunately one country saw and understood that Germany and its allies needed to be stopped. America's involvement in World War II not only contributed to the eventual downfall of Adolph Hitler and his Third Reich, but also came at the precise time.
Had the United States entered the war any earlier the consequences might have been worse. Over the years, people have debated on whether America could have entered World War II earlier, thus saving many lives. To try to understand this, one must look both at the people and government's point of view. Just after war broke out in Europe, President Roosevelt hurriedly called his cabinet and military advisors together. There it was agreed that the United States stay neutral in these affairs. One of the reasons given was that unless America was directly threatened they had no reason to be involved. This reason was a valid one because it was the American policy to stay neutral in any affairs not having to with them unless American soil was threatened directly. The provisional neutrality act passed the senate by seventy-nine votes to two in 1935. On August 31, Roosevelt signed it into law. In 1936 the law was renewed, and in 1937 a "comprehensive and permanent" neutrality act was passed. The desire to avoid "foreign entanglements" of all kinds had been an American foreign policy for more than a century.
Even if Roosevelt had wanted to do more in this European crisis (which he did not), there was a factor too often ignored by critics of American policy, which was American military weakness. When asked to evaluate how many troops were available if and when the United States would get involved, the army could only gather a mere one hundred thousand, while the French, Russian and Japanese armies numbered in millions. Its weapons dated from World War I and were no match compared to the new artillery that Germany and its allies had.
