Where Culture Met Policy U.S. Foreign Policy Toward Europe During World War II

The National Socialist Party sanctioned violence and discrimination against Jews; its adherents were soon known, with contempt, as Nazis. Germany rearmed and instituted a peacetime draft, in clear violation of the Treaty of Versailles. The Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of August 1939 was a signal to the world that Hitler was preparing for war, and eager to avoid fighting it simultaneously on few fronts. The League of Nations was a particular concern for many Americans. Between 1919 and 1920, the Senate voted three times on whether to ratify the Treaty of Versailles and thereby join the League of Nations. The power of anti-League of Nations sentiments had political consequences. In March 1934, Fortune, the United States’ preeminent business magazine, made a splash with an article titled “Arms and the Men.” In the spring of 1934, the Senate approved an investigation into the role of the munitions industry in World War I, under the chairmanship of Senator Gerald Nye.