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In June, 1940, German forces overran France. U.S. industrial mobilization became necessary when large British orders for military supplies were received. European events also aided the Roosevelt administration in passing a number of military appropriations bills. Although more money was becoming available for war production, U.S. industry was reluctant to exploit this market. Conditioned by the static economic situation of the Depression, many capitalists expected such conditions to return after the war.

On December 11, 1941, four days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the governments of Germany and Italy issued declarations of war against the United States of America. Although both the Germans and the Italians had pledged Japan their aid in the event of a conflict between Japan and the United States, their declarations cited President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s anti-Axis attitude and hostile U.S. actions as reasons for their decision to declare war. In response, Congress passed two joint resolutions affirming a state of war against Germany and Italy. With these events, the war in Europe and the war in the Far East merged to become World War II.

At the end of World War I (1914-1918), there was no longer a balance of power in Europe. Britain and France had been physically devastated and were close to financial bankruptcy; Germany had been defeated and disarmed; Russia, by then the Soviet Union, had been excluded as a result of the Russian Revolution (1917-1921) and the spread of Communism. The United States had withdrawn from European affairs, devoting its attention to the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific and leaving Britain and France as the only real powers in an unstable political and military system. France decided to strengthen its border defenses, known as the Maginot line, using the Treaty of Versailles (1919) to prevent the rearmament of Germany and entering into a series of security alliances. Great Britain, perceiving no serious threat, returned to the advancement of its imperial interests, relying upon its navy for defense. Although both Britain and France belonged to the League of Nations created at the end of World War I, neither saw this organization as a credible deterrent to war.