Isolationism is a policy of nonparticipation in international economic
and political relations. It was practiced by the United States from the end
of the presidency of George Washington (1732–1799; served 1789–97)
through the first half of the twentieth century, though not steadily.
This policy of abstaining from foreign relations is what kept the
United States from entering into World War I (1914–18) until 1917.
Only reluctantly did President Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924; served
1913–21) seek Congress’s permission to enter the war. The U.S. economy had recently changed from mostly agricultural to mostly industrial,
and this shift made the nation partly dependent on international trade.
This new situation made it difficult for the United States to continue
with its isolationism.
Most Americans felt that World War I was Europe’s war, and the majority greatly resented the loss of American lives for a cause they could
not embrace. Although they supported their soldiers overseas during the
war, when it was over the United States returned to an isolationist attitude.
The nation focused on internal affairs rather than international relations throughout the 1920s. The next decade brought the Great
Depression (1929–41), and Americans were focused on daily survival.
As the decade closed and Germany’s Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler
(1889–1945) forced the beginning of World War II (1939–45),
President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945; served 1933–45) insisted
that the United States would remain neutral.
Despite this commitment to isolationism, it was Europe’s need for
American products and goods throughout the war that brought the
United States out of its economic misery. Many Americans believed that
staying out of the war would bring them both prosperity and peace, but
Roosevelt’s administration grew to favor intervention. The president’s
advisers warned him that isolationism would allow Germany to take
control of Europe and Japan to dominate Asia, which would close major
markets to American trade forever. When word of the atrocities of the
Holocaust reached Roosevelt, he decided that the combination of economic and moral issues warranted a break from isolationism. Still, it was
the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, that
shocked America out of its inaction and thrust it into World War II.