President Roosevelt moved cautiously in the face of increased tensions in Europe and Asia. He was alarmed by the rise of fascist and totalitarian states but recognized that the vast majority of Americans opposed intervention. In a speech delivered to a Chicago audience on October 5, 1937, he urged a "quarantine" of aggressor nations to isolate "the epidemic of international lawlessness." Initial reaction to the "Quarantine Speech" was generally favorable, but opponents of the speech were not muted. The Chicago Tribune, a leading isolationist newspaper, charged that Roosevelt was stirring up "war fright" among the American people. The Wall Street Journal admonished the president to "stop foreign meddling" because the nation wanted peace. Several isolationist congressmen threatened impeachment proceedings. Roosevelt's intentions in calling for a "quarantine" are open to interpretation. Nonetheless, he soon retreated from any implication that he was calling for even moral or economic pressure against the aggressors.
Several factors precluded American intervention in Europe or China during these years; including the economic imperatives of the Great Depression, the state of American military preparedness, and public sentiment. Old-line isolationists joined with pacifists in urging that the United States remain apart from the various conflicts. In a visceral reaction to the slaughter of the First World War, a large portion of the American intellectual community philosophically embraced pacifism. Princeton University students, also motivated by the instincts of self-preservation, founded the "Veterans of Future Wars," and with grim humor insisted on thousand dollar bonuses before marching off to foreign battlefields.
In May 1937, Neville Chamberlain became prime minister of Great Britain and attempted to limit the territorial expansion by Hitler through a foreign policy known as "appeasement." Chamberlain argued that the Fuhrer initially was reacting to unfair provisions of the Versailles Treaty, and the prime minister appeared willing to acquiesce to the inclusion of ethnic Germans into the Third Reich. Chamberlain was hopeful that once "Herr Hitler" was rightfully appeased, Germany would join the western democracies in halting the spread of communism. With the general support of the British people, who joined most Americans in opposing military action against the Axis Powers, Chamberlain offered only ineffectual diplomatic protests when Germany absorbed Austria.
After the Anschluss, Hitler focused his acquisitive intentions toward the German-speaking minority in the Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia. As the Fuhrer blustered, the Prague government indicated a willingness to put its well-trained army in the field and counted on the military support of its allies, France and the Soviet Union. Deluded that they could appease Hitler, Chamberlain joined French premier Edouard Daladier in pressuring the Czechs to resolve the crisis peacefully. In an effort to settle the crisis, Hitler met with Chamberlain and Daladier at Munich in late September 1938. Mussolini was also present, but the Czechs were not invited.
The outcome of the Munich Conference was what Hitler demanded. The Sudetenland was incorporated into the Third Reich, and Chamberlain returned to London to announce "peace for our time." Hitler solemnly pledged that the Sudetenland was his "last territorial claim." Portentously, however, Josef Stalin had not received an invitation to Munich and he was convinced—with good reason—that Britain and France planned to deflect further German expansion eastward against the Soviet Union. Although not directly involved in the negotiations, President Roosevelt congratulated Chamberlain for preserving the peace and held out the hope that a final settlement had been reached in Europe.
Six months later, Hitler gave graphic testimony to the worthlessness of his promises, when Germany absorbed the remainder of Czechoslovakia. He also pressured Poland for the port city of Danzig and a strip of land linking Germany with East Prussia. The Polish leaders refused these demands, and Britain and France gave assurances that they would honor their defense commitments to Poland. In April, Italian troops moved into Albania, and the western democracies pledged to defend Romania and Greece.
At this juncture, President Roosevelt sent a remarkable message to Hitler and Mussolini, urging them to guarantee that for ten years they would not attack any of 31 specified nations. This was most certainly a naïve and presumptuous request, although it scarcely merited the scathingly insulting response that Hitler publicly presented to the Reichstag. In a two-hour address laced with sarcasm, the Fuhrer evoked laughter from the admiring legislators by reeling off the names of the 31 countries and denying any aggressive intentions against them.
Well-placed Soviet fears of isolation drove Stalin in the spring of 1939 to seek military pacts with Britain and France, as well as Poland, Romania, and the Baltic states. Not a single nation, however, agreed to an alliance with the Soviet Union. On August 23, German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Russian Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov stunned the world by signing a mutual non-aggression pact. Hitler and Stalin promised to remain neutral if either became involved in war. Secretly, they agreed to carve up the Baltic States and Poland "in the event of a territorial and political transformation."