Change And Stability In World War Two.
The period between 1939-1946 proved to be a pivotal era of the countries dominance in the world today. Wars raging from both the East and West of the coasts as well as racial and economic tensions over that period laid the foundations of what is now a world superpower. "America has been trained" for the harshness and rigors of a brutal society. President Roosevelt and President Truman were the men to lead this nation into the next frontier. What is now to be the deadliest weapon was used over that period of time, this I feel has single handily changed the prospective and doings of other countries. America has set the standard to what I like to call the "rumble in the jungle.".
America has tried to achieve an open world economy for over a century. From the attempts to keep the open door policy in China to Article VII of the Lend-Lease act, free trade has been seen as central to American security. The United States, in 1939, forced Great Britain to begin to move away from its imperial economic system. Cordell Hull, then Secretary of State, was extremely tough with Great Britain on this point. He used Article VII of the Lend-Lease, which demanded that Britain not create any more colonial economic systems after the war. Churchill fought this measure bitterly, realizing that it would mean the effective end of the British Empire, as well as meaning that Great Britain would no longer be able to compete economically with the United States. However, Churchill did eventually agree to it, realizing that without the help of the United States, he would lose much more than Great Britain's colonies. It was the adoption of the Marshall Plan that allowed Western Europe to make its quick economic recovery from the ashes of World War II. The seeds of the massive expansion of the military-industrial complex of the early fifties are also to be found in the post war recovery.
