Neutrality Acts

David G. Delaney

Between 1935 and 1939 Congress passed four neutrality acts to limit America's involvement in foreign conflicts. The political debate surrounding the neutrality acts reflected the evolving view of America's role in the world. Public opinion was shifting away from isolationism toward interventionism and collective security and the belief that America's best defense lay in cooperative efforts with other nations and international organizations. The acts also signify a power shift from the legislative to the executive branch in international affairs. Whereas Congress previously controlled the details of foreign policy programs, the acts increasingly granted the presidency and executive agencies leeway to implement new laws.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Neutrality Act of 1935 (P.L. 74-76, 49 Stat. 1081) into law on August 31. The act banned all arms and ammunition shipments to belligerent nations and placed America's armaments industry under federal control for six months. Following Italy's invasion of Ethiopia on October 3, 1935, Roosevelt declared the United States neutral and invoked the act to place a blanket ban on all weapons shipments to both countries and to prohibit Americans from traveling on ships registered in either nation.

The policy of American neutrality was ineffective in shaping the outcome of that conflict. Also, it disfavored Ethiopia because the act did not prohibit the significant trade in raw materials that Americans conducted with Italy. The State Department drafted broader neutrality legislation to address this imbalance, giving the president authority to implement embargoes selectively. Such authority would better reflect the administration's position toward warring countries. However, congressional isolationists rejected the measure as giving the president too much control over American trade. In the Neutrality Act of 1936, Congress simply extended the 1935 act by fourteen months and added a provision to prohibit private loans to belligerents.

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE IN THE 1937 ACT

The Neutrality Act of 1937 made the 1936 act permanent and included the basic provisions of its predecessors:

Whenever the President, or the Congress by concurrent resolution, shall find that there exists a state of war between foreign states, and that it is necessary to promote the security or preserve the peace of the United States or to protect the lives of citizens of the United States, the President shall issue a proclamation naming the states involved.... It shall thereafter be unlawful for any American vessel to carry any passengers or any article or materials to any state named in such proclamation ... [and] it shall be unlawful for any person to export, or attempt to export, from the United States to any other state, any arms, ammunition, or implements of war....

But the 1937 act also added a two-year "cash-and-carry" provision permitting Americans to trade with belligerents who paid cash and transported the goods on non-U.S. vessels following a declaration of neutrality:

It shall thereafter be unlawful to export or transport, or attempt to export or transport, or cause to be exported or transported, from the United States to any state named in such proclamation, any articles or materials (except copyrighted articles or materials) until all right, title, and interest therein shall have been transferred to some foreign government, agency, institution, association, partnership, corporation, or national.

Cash-and-carry gave the president the authority he had sought in 1935 to declare limited rather than blanket embargoes. The plan permitted the president to tailor the U.S. approach to the circumstances of unique conflicts and perhaps better reflect America's interests. However, critics noted that cash-and-carry would unequally benefit nations like Japan, England, and France, capable of paying cash and protecting their ships with strong navies.

THE SHIFT AWAY FROM NEUTRALITY

In response to the Sino-Japanese War of August 1937, Roosevelt avoided the issue of cash-and-carry altogether by not invoking the Neutrality Act. U.S. trade would therefore continue unrestrained with China and Japan. This decision and the president's Quarantine Speech on October 5, 1937, are perhaps the earliest outward signs that the Roosevelt administration viewed neutrality legislation as unrealistic, ineffective prescriptions for America's involvement in closely inter-connected issues of international politics, trade, and law. If anything, neutrality legislation had encouraged Germany and Italy to pursue their political interests knowing that the United States would likely not act to stop them.

In March 1939, after Germany marched into Czechoslovakia, Roosevelt sought to revise or eliminate neutrality legislation. In response to Germany's September 1, 1939, invasion of Poland, the president declared neutrality under the 1937 act but lobbied Congress to repeal the mandatory arms embargo. Over continued isolationist opposition from Senators William E. Borah, Arthur H. Vandendurg, Gerald P. Nye, and Robert M. La Follette, Jr., the Neutrality Act of 1939 gave the president this authority and laid the groundwork for the future Lend-Lease Act.

The neutrality acts had failed to achieve their primary goal of keeping the United States out of war, but they evolved into less restrictive measures that authorized the executive branch to respond to rapidly changing global events. Following World War II, Congress largely rejected the isolationism that had spawned neutrality legislation. The United States would thereafter play a leading role in international organizations like the United Nations and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the nation's foreign and defense policy would embrace an international outlook.

See also: Lend-Lease Act.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Divine, Robert A. The Reluctant Belligerent: American Entry into World War II, 2d ed. New York: Knopf, 1979.

Excerpt from Franklin D. Roosevelt's "Quarantine Speech," October 5, 1937

Without a declaration of war and without warning or justification of any kind, civilians, including vast numbers of women and children, are being ruthlessly murdered with bombs from the air. In times of so-called peace, ships are being attacked and sunk by submarines without cause or notice. Nations are fomenting and taking sides in civil war fare in nations that have never done them any harm. Nations claiming freedom for themselves deny it to others.

Innocent peoples, innocent nations are being cruelly sacrificed to a greed for power and supremacy which is devoid of all sense of justice and humane considerations. To paraphrase a recent author, "perhaps we foresee a time when men, exultant in the technique of homicide, will rage so hotly over the world that every precious thing will be in danger, every book, every picture, every harmony, every treasure garnered through two millenniums, the small, the delicate, the defenseless—all will be lost or wrecked or utterly destroyed."

If those things come to pass in other parts of the world, let no one imagine that America will escape, that America may expect mercy, that this Western hemisphere will not be attacked and that it will continue tranquilly and peacefully to carry on the ethics and the arts of civilization....

If those days are not to come to pass—if we are to have a world in which we can breathe freely and live in amity with out fear—then the peace-loving nations must make a con certed effort to uphold laws and principles on which alone peace can rest secure.

Neutrality Acts. Neutrality Acts have been considered by Congress at various times to keep the United States aloof from actual or imminent European wars.When in 1793 France declared war on Britain, the newly appointed French minister to the United States, “Citizen” Edmond Genêt, began to recruit American volunteers and sought to stimulate the revolt of British and Spanish colonists in Canada and Louisiana. In response, Congress in June 1794 passed its first neutrality law, confirming President George Washington's “Rules Governing Belligerents,” which prohibited the arming of belligerent vessels within American ports and military recruitment by belligerent powers within U.S. borders.

A different kind of legislation became an issue when World War I broke out. On 11 February 1916, in an effort to crack the British blockade, Germany announced that it would attack enemy merchant ships, endangering citizens of neutral states who might be traveling on such vessels. President Woodrow Wilson believed that travel by neutrals was a neutral right, but some in Congress wanted to ensure America's continued neutrality in the war by eliminating the possibility of provocation. In mid‐February 1916, Representative Jeff McLemore (Dem.‐Tex.) introduced a resolution requesting the president to warn Americans not to travel on armed belligerent vessels, and Senator Thomas P. Gore (Dem.‐Okla.) introduced a resolution denying passports—and protection—to Americans seeking passage on such ships. Under pressure from President Wilson, Congress early in March tabled both resolutions.

In the aftermath of World War I, when many Americans became convinced that the United States had entered the conflict because of the Wilson administration's pro‐Allied partisanship, Congress enacted various neutrality bills. The Johnson Act of 1934, not technically a neutrality act, prohibited private loans to any government in default of obligations to the U.S. government. In August 1935, in its first general neutrality act, Congress legislated that an arms embargo would become mandatory once the president declared that a war existed between two or more foreign powers. The bill also authorized the president to proclaim that Americans traveling on belligerents' ships did so at their own risk.

In a second neutrality bill enacted in February 1936, Congress extended the existing law by fourteen months while adding a prohibition on loans to belligerents. In 1937, Congress, by overwhelming majorities in both houses, reacted to the Spanish Civil War by enacting a nondiscriminatory embargo designed to minimize U.S. involvement on either side.

In May 1937, Congress passed a third neutrality bill. It retained bans on arms sales, loans, credit, and travel on belligerent ships whenever the president found a foreign or civil war endangering the United States. In addition, the 1937 act banned the arming of all merchant ships trading with belligerents. It gave the president discretionary authority to put the sale of nonembargoed goods on a “cash‐and‐carry” basis, requiring belligerents to pay at the time of purchase and to transport the goods on their own ships. The act also gave the president discretionary authority to prohibit armed belligerent ships from using American ports.

The neutrality laws of the 1930s proved short‐lived. In November 1939, two months after World War II began, Congress repealed the arms embargo. By December 1941, when the United States entered the war, it was already convoying munitions to Britain, making most neutrality legislation a dead letter.
See also Early Republic, Era of the; Foreign Relations: U.S. Relations with Europe; Isolationism; Neutrality; Peace Movements.

Bibliography

Robert A. Divine , The Illusion of Neutrality, 1962.
Arthur S. Link , Wilson, vol. 4, Confusion and Crises, 1915–1916, 1964.

Justus D. Doenecke

Neutrality Acts, passed by the US Congress during the 1930s as an expression of American isolationism (see America First Committee). The first two ( 1935, 1936) were temporary, but the third, passed in May 1937, was intended to be permanent. It stated that if any war broke out that threatened US security (as deemed by the president) an arms embargo would be automatically brought into force and any loans or credits to a belligerent would be for bidden. The Act also banned US nationals from travelling as passengers on ships belonging to a belligerent, prohibited the arming of US merchant ships, and included a cash- and-carry provision, which required belligerents wanting non-contraband goods to purchase them for cash and to transport them in foreign ships.

During the first half of 1939 Roosevelt tried, without success, to have the Act amended and when war erupted in Europe that September he issued the proclamation of neutrality that the Act required. But he also summoned Congress for a special session to discuss repealing parts of the Act, and on 4 November a new one was passed. To help France and the UK this allowed the purchase of arms on a cash- and-carry basis—a blow to American isolationists—but continued to forbid loans to belligerents. It initially forbade US ships from entering war zones (as defined by the president), or from transporting arms, ammunition, or implements of war to a belligerent, but an amendment later in November allowed armed US merchant ships to sail through the war zone to the UK.

Roosevelt circumvented the Act at least twice: in May 1940 he suggested aircraft be flown to the USA's northern border, which were then pulled across the border into Canada (see also Atlantic Ferry Organization), and in September 1940 he approved the destroyers-for-bases agreement. Following the loss of personnel aboard the destroyer Kearny in October 1941, key sections of the Act were repealed.

Neutrality Act law passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt in Aug., 1935. It was designed to keep the United States out of a possible European war by banning shipment of war materiel to belligerents at the discretion of the President and by forbidding U.S. citizens from traveling on belligerent vessels except at their own risk. The demand for this legislation arose from the conviction of many Americans that U.S. entry into World War I had been a mistake. This conviction was strengthened by the well-publicized investigations by a Senate committee headed by Gerald P. Nye of American war loans to the Allies. The Neutrality Act was amended (Feb., 1936) to prohibit the granting of loans to belligerents, and later (Jan. and May, 1937) neutrality was extended to cover civil wars, a step inspired by the Spanish civil war. In Nov., 1939, the act was revised in favor of supplying warring nations on the "cash-and-carry" principle; but U.S. vessels were excluded from combat zones, and U.S. citizens were forbidden from sailing on belligerent vessels. These provisions were lifted by amendment in Nov., 1941, after the lend-lease policy had been established. The act was thus practically out of operation even before American neutrality ended with Pearl Harbor.

Neutrality Acts (USA) A series of Acts passed at the height of isolationism, amidst fears that the desire for profits from the arms industry might fuel direct or indirect participation in war. They followed a Senate Committee chaired by Gerald P. Nye in 1934, which revealed the high profits among arms manufacturers during World War I, though it exonerated former President Wilson personally from any profit motive for entering the war. The Acts which passed through Congress 1935–9 prohibited loans or credits to belligerents and placed embargoes on direct or indirect shipments of arms or munitions, making no distinction between aggressor and victim nations. The Acts of 1935 and 1936 both affected US policy on the Abyssinian (Ethiopian) War. Similarly, two Acts in 1937 limited the US response to the Spanish and Chinese civil wars. The Act of 1939 repealed arms embargoes and authorized ‘cash and carry’ exports to any belligerent power, but continued to forbid US ships to carry ‘belligerent cargo’. During 1940 President Roosevelt fought for repeal of the Acts on the grounds that they encouraged aggression by the Axis Powers and endangered US security. They were replaced by the Lend- Lease Act of March 1941.

Neutrality Acts a series of acts passed in 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1939 to limit U.S. involvement in possible future wars and that was created in response to the belief that U.S. involvement in World War I resulted from loans and trade with the Allies. The 1935 act banned the shipment of war materials to belligerents and forbade U.S. citizens to travel on belligerent vessels. The 1936 act banned loans to belligerents. The 1937 act extended these provisions to civil wars and allowed the president to restrict nonmunitions sales to a “cash-and-carry” basis. The 1939 act banned U.S. ships from carrying goods or passengers to belligerent ports but allowed U.S. sales of munitions on a “cash-and carry” basis. The Lend-Lease Act of 1941 diminished the laws, and they were repealed on November 13, 1941.