Chapter 34 Terms and Definitions
- Good Neighbor Policy
Roosevelt's policy renouncing unilateral U.S. military intervention in Latin America, replacing decades of "Big Stick" interventionism.
- Platt Amendment
The 1901 restriction on Cuban sovereignty that subordinated Cuba to U.S. oversight; abrogated by Roosevelt in 1934.
- Benito Mussolini
Italy's Fascist dictator, who invaded Ethiopia in 1935 and later allied with Hitler in the Axis.
- Adolf Hitler
Leader of Nazi Germany from 1933, whose aggressive rearmament and expansion triggered World War II in Europe.
- Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis
The military alliance formed among Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan.
- Nye Committee
A Senate investigation alleging that arms manufacturers and bankers had helped draw the U.S. into World War I for profit, fueling 1930s isolationism.
- Neutrality Acts
A series of laws (1935–1937) banning arms sales and loans to nations at war, later loosened to allow "cash-and-carry" purchases.
- Appeasement
The British and French policy of making concessions to Hitler, notably at Munich, in hopes of avoiding another war.
- Munich Conference
The 1938 meeting at which Britain and France allowed Germany to annex the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia.
- Cash-and-Carry
A 1939 revision to the Neutrality Act allowing belligerents to buy American arms if they paid cash and transported goods themselves, favoring Britain and France.
- Winston Churchill
British Prime Minister who led his nation's defiant resistance to Nazi Germany after the fall of France in 1940.
- Destroyers-for-Bases Deal
A 1940 executive agreement trading fifty aging U.S. destroyers to Britain for the right to build American bases on British territory.
- Selective Training and Service Act
The first peacetime military draft in U.S. history, passed by Congress in 1940.
- Lend-Lease Act
A 1941 law authorizing the president to lend or lease war materiel to nations vital to U.S. defense, chiefly Britain and later the Soviet Union.
- Arsenal of Democracy
Roosevelt's phrase describing America's role in supplying Allied nations with weapons and equipment through Lend-Lease.
- Atlantic Charter
A 1941 joint statement of postwar principles issued by Roosevelt and Churchill, echoing Wilson's Fourteen Points.
- America First Committee
The leading isolationist organization opposing U.S. involvement in the European war before Pearl Harbor.
- Pearl Harbor
The U.S. naval base in Hawaii attacked by Japan on December 7, 1941, bringing America into World War II.
- "A date which will live in infamy"
Roosevelt's description of the Pearl Harbor attack in his address to Congress requesting a declaration of war.