The Lend-Lease Act: The Result of a Transformation in the American Mindset from Isolationism to Interventionism
The Second World War was the bloodiest conflict in history, with an estimate of over forty-five million dead (“BY THE NUMBERS”). Many consider that the entry of the United States of America into the war as a major turning point in the tide of the conflict. However, it is important to recognize that US’s engagement in the foreign conflict was not done without deliberation and without criticism. Many people in the United States, known as non-interventionist or isolationist, did not want to fight in Europe. The enrollment in the war was also not the result of a single event, a misconception for which Pearl Harbor holds a pedestal. Instead, the process for the United States to join World War II on the Allies’ side was a tedious one, one condemned by many, wherein the Lend Lease Act of 1941 was the hallmark for those pro-war and interventionist. The Lend Lease Act was, in effect, an outcome of the shift of popular motivations from the observed isolationism in the 1930s to interventionism...