Key Events and Policies of the 1930s-1940s U.S. History

London Economic Conference

A 66-nation economic conference organized to stabilize international currency rates.

Good Neighbor Policy

A departure from the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine; it stressed non-intervention in Latin America.

Rome-Berlin Axis

Alliance where Nazi Germany under Hitler and Fascist Italy under Mussolini joined together under a treaty.

Neutrality Acts of 1935, 1936, and 1937

Short-sighted laws passed to prevent American participation in a European war.

Abraham Lincoln Brigade

Idealistic American volunteers who fought in the Spanish Civil War to help Spanish republican forces against Franco's nationalist coup.

Quarantine Speech

A speech by FDR calling for 'positive endeavors' to 'quarantine' aggressive dictators, likely through economic embargoes.

Appeasement

Policy by Britain and France at the 1938 Munich Conference allowing Germany to take the Sudetenland to avoid war.

Hitler-Stalin Pact

Treaty signed on August 23, 1939, in which Germany and the Soviet Union agreed not to fight each other.

Neutrality Act of 1939 (Cash-Carry)

Stipulated that European democracies might buy American munitions, but only if they paid in cash and transported them in their own ships — a policy known as 'cash and carry.'

War Refugee Board

A U.S. agency formed to help rescue Jews from German-occupied territories and to provide relief to inmates of Nazi concentration camps.

Lend-Lease Bill

Based on the motto 'send guns, not sons,' this law abandoned former pretense of neutrality by allowing Americans to sell unlimited supplies of arms to any nation defending itself against the Axis powers.

Atlantic Charter

Meeting on a warship off the coast of Newfoundland in August 1941, FDR and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill signed this covenant outlining the future path toward disarmament, peace, and a permanent system of general security.

ABC-1 Agreement

An agreement between Britain and the U.S. developed at a conference in Washington, D.C. between Jan. 29-Mar. 27, 1941, that should the U.S. enter WWII, the two nations and their allies would coordinate military planning, making the priority 'defeating Germany first.'

Executive Order No. 9066

Signed by FDR stating that in certain military zones, groups of people were not allowed; this further fueled the relationship with U.S. and Japan, especially after Pearl Harbor.

War Production Board

Created in 1942 by executive order to direct all war production, including procuring and allocating raw materials to maximize the nation's war machine.

Office of Price Administration

Important wartime agency charged with regulating the consumer economy by rationing scarce supplies like automobiles, tires, fuel, nylon, and sugar, and by curbing inflation by setting ceilings on prices and rents.

National War Labor Board

Made by FDR to act as an arbitration tribunal and mediate disputes between labor and management that might have led to war stoppages and thereby undermined the war effort.

Smith-Connally Anti-Strike Act

Law allowing the federal government to seize and operate plants threatened by labor disputes.

WAC, WAVES, SPARS

Women's branches of the U.S. military during WWII.

Bracero Program

U.S.-Mexico agreement to recruit temporary Mexican agricultural workers during wartime labor shortages.

A. Philip Randolph

African American labor leader and civil rights activist.

Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC)

Created in 1941 to enforce anti-discrimination in defense industries.

Congress of Racial Equality (CORE)

Civil rights organization founded in 1942 promoting 'Double V' victory.

Battle of Midway

Naval battle near Midway Island, June 3-6, 1942.

Douglas MacArthur

U.S. commander in the Pacific; championed 'island hopping.'

Harry S. Truman

Vice president under FDR; became 33rd president in 1945.

D-Day

Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944.

Thomas Dewey

Republican challenger in 1944; NY governor and crime prosecutor.

VE Day

May 8, 1945—official end of war in Europe.

Potsdam Conference

July-August 1945 meeting of Truman, Stalin, Churchill/Attlee.

Manhattan Project

U.S. program to develop atomic bomb, started in 1942.

V-J Day

August 15, 1945—Japan's surrender.