Isolationism In 1930s

Why was isolationism such a powerful rallying cry in the 1930s?

Isolationism is a broad foreign affair doctrine held by people who believe that their country should stay away from others nations’ political and economic affairs in order to be prosperous and to develop safely. To that extent, it, on the one hand, advocates non-military intervention in foreign countries to avoid human and material losses, and on the other hand, stands for Protectionism, to guarantee economic safety. In the United States of America, isolationism has historically proved to be very powerful, particularly in the post-First-World-War-era as “ American of both sexes, of all ages, religions, and political persuasions, from all ethnic groups and all regions, shared
Thus, on the aftermaths of a harsh and useless war, and in the middle of Depression and misery, isolationism seduced US people mainly because it would provide them with economic security and peace. In addition to that, there are other reasons that would explain why isolationism was such a powerful rallying cry in the 1930s, however minor they may be.

One of the main reasons behind the success of isolationism in the 1930s was Americans’ reluctance to engage in a foreign war, which essentially resulted from the bad memories of World War I. Indeed, as Historian David Kennedy says it “ No people came to believe more emphatically than the Americans that the Great War was an unalloyed tragedy, an unpardonably costly mistake never to be repeated”.3 America had suffered from World War I as more than 50 000 young men were killed in it.4 Moreover, their pain became much worst on the aftermaths on the war. First, because they reconsidered the horrible and deeply inhuman dimension of it,5 then, because they realised its uselessness. As a matter of fact, the treaty of Versailles of 1919, which mistreated Germany, disappointed US people, as they understood that the warmongering of
Indeed, in the early 1930s, when the Great Depression reached its peak, many had came to believe that their nation should withdraw from foreign affairs in order to focus more on its internal problems such as the economic crisis.16 This implied no more foreign military interventions, immigration, or even international economic alliances. As a matter of fact, Americans were considering that their economy needed to be closed from foreign markets in order to develop. To that extent, protectionist measures, such as the Smooth-Hawley Tariff that closed the U.S market to Japan17, abounded from 1929 trough 1934, protecting American endangered industries against foreign competition.18 As Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt said so, “our international trade relations, though vastly important, are in point of time and necessity secondary to the establishment of a sound national economy”19. In that sense, we may think that little American business owners, generally belonging to the middle class, supported isolationism, as it would allow them to keep their business alive. Furthermore, the government’s decision to withdraw from the previous monetary system of Gold Standard in order to devaluate the dollar, which would better support domestic recovery, caused the failure of the London Economic conference of 1933, which aim was to