“Its like when France decided in one day to surrender to the Germans after a month of hard fighting.
Call it crossing the line from ally to merely a neutral.”
An ally?
No. France was not an ally of the United States in 1940.
Why?
Because the AMERICANS chose to be neutral.
The AMERICANS chose to not get involved when Hitler rearmed the Rhineland, occupied Czechoslovakia, and invaded Poland.
The BRITISH and the CANADIANS were allies of the French, but the AMERICANS were not allies of France, and they were not enemies of Hitler either. They were neutral. They were even neutral when Hitler devastated London.
Only after the Japanese attacked America and Hitler declared war on the United States did the United States then, and only then, become part of the Western Alliance. Before that, the United States was as useless as Brazil in defending the world from either Naziism OR Communism.
The “Western Alliance” was Britain and France. France fell, Britain was pummelled, America didn’t do anything.
Only when the Axis touched America proper did the Americans do anything, for their own reasons. They BECAME allies because they were attacked. Before they were attacked, they were not enemies of Hitler. France and Britain stood up to Hitler. France lost. Britain was pummelled. But they fought.
America let Europe go to Hell, and was never going to intervene at all, but for the fact that Hitler and Tojo attacked the US.
America crossed the line from being a mere neutral to being a useful part of the Western Alliance after Pearl Harbor. Before that, America was not a participant in the war against Hitler, and didn’t care less.
All true, the American public and leadership had very little interest in getting involved in Europe or the world before Pearl Harbor. Some of it was a renewed isolationism growing after WWI, but it is interesting to look at the large segments of the public that had come to support intervention in WWI and then ended up deeply disillusioned in what happened with our “allies” in the Versailles treaty, etc. Respect for France and Britain fell sharply here, for a variety of reasons, and then there was the nonsense of the “Kellogg-Briand” Pact in 1928, making a lot of naive people think that war could simply be renounced and forgotten about.
One can certainly blame Americans in the 1920s and 1930s for retreating from world affairs, but there are a lot of things the leadership of France and Britain did (or failed to do) to keep the USA as an ally and partner in that period. Sure, part of it was that the US Senate declined to ratify the League of Nations treaty, but the moment WWI was ended both France and Britain treated the USA increasingly as unwanted interlopers — you can blame Americans for some things in that period, but there was little real partnership or friendship or effort at alliance from Europe either — they were happy to have American loans and troops when convenient, and then happy to sneer at and condescend to Americans who decided they no longer had any use for Europe.
Let’s all hope no more of that pattern is repeated now.....
To the British, not to the US. And of course France didn't really go "neutral", but a combination of occupied country and nominal alley to Hitler.
Only after the Japanese attacked America and Hitler declared war on the United States did the United States then, and only then, become part of the Western Alliance. Before that, the United States was as useless as Brazil in defending the world from either Naziism OR Communism.
I wasn't aware that Brazil had provided supplies, ships for example, disguised as "Lend Lease", nor that Brazillians were joining the RCAF and RAF in significant numbers.
Just as in England and France, there was a great deal of "Never Again" sentiment in America after WW-I. Misdirected in all those countries, into pacifisim, rather than the "Never Again" attitude of the Jews/Israelis following WW-II. Any of the three, France, UK or US, or any combination of them, could have stopped Hitler cold when he broke the treaty of Versailles and re-militarized the Rhineland. None of us did. All of us paid a heavy price for not doing so.