Why didn't America immediately help France in World War 2?

Its becauae they literally did not want to get involved in another european war after world war 1 and the great depression, it would do nothing but hurt stability and sacrifice lives for a war they had no stakes in
Keep in mind the large majority of the population wanted to avoid war

>Alsatian
>1880’s

>no reason
>oil blockades aren’t a thing

They were helping France almost immediately; just not to the point of armed intervention. It started off with beneficial trade deals for arms, and had France lasted longer, almost certainly would have ramped up.

But there's a big step involved sending your men to kill and die in a foreign land, especially in a republic where you need public support behind a war to not get voted out of office in favor of someone who promises to end it.

>Halp halp, Germany is attacking, we need you guys, this guy is the biggest threat to civilization in history!

20 years later
>Alright, so I know it didn't go so well last time, but I have a favor to ask...

>commit Nanking, just one small example of a racially motivated war against another member of the international community
>USA refuses to continue supplying oil on the basis of war criminality
>WE WUZ JUSTIFIED N SHIEEEET

They needed the oil to continue the war, thus seized it from Americans in a quick war hopefully
Just explaining their rationale, not that it was moral

The USA lost 110,000 men in six months of the war. Now, that would've been considered a bad week for the French or British so it should be put in perspective, but then again to the Americans this European squabbling wasn't their problem. That's kind of the mindset you have to get into the understand the way the average American felt in the interwar period.

The effects of WW1 were felt on a personal level back home. 110,000 sons, husbands, brothers, cousins did not come back home. If you combine every American conflict since 1945 we are just now, in 2017, nearing that number cumulatively. There were a lot of soldiers who were maimed or rendered insane by the war too, that's harder to pin down exactly but for every one who died there were probably two who almost wish they did. All in only six months.

So even tough Americans suffered nowhere near as much as the French did (the French sacrifice in WW1 is truly staggering) the war still hit. Even if you or your family wasn't directly affected chances are you knew a family that was. Crippled veterans, widows and grieving mothers were not an uncommon sight.

So the USA was hesitant to get involved again, especially when it was clear Europe had not learned their lesson the way the United States had regarding intra-continental war with rapidly modernizing weapons.

Reasons for going to war and moral justification are certainly not synonymous

...

Because the US only ever swoop in when their profit is at stake.

I haven’t read a ton about the US stuff on a legal level, but I do volunteer a lot in an old folks home and have met quite a few vets/people lived in WW2. The thing you should understand is back then people didn’t know how bad the Nazis were, not like we do now.

Invading Poland or wherever else was considered a European squabble, and after WW1 losses the US didn’t want to get involved, and what’s more we were sorta busy with our own economic depression. Nazis weren’t even viewed as the baddies like now, certainly racist but in a time where lynching and stuff, they weren’t considered all that racist, especially since apparently lots of Germans in the US defended them (lots of oldies mentioned people would say ‘well we’re racist too as a response to claims of antisemitism). Nobody knew the holocaust was even a thing. So combining economic depression with scars left by WW1, plus isolationism and a strong “let Europe fix Europe” thing people just didn’t want to fight. Once we got in, though, people quickly found out all the horrible rumors and such were shockingly true

>it's another France and America have always been allies thread

Franco-American relations soured for much of the 19th Century because of the United States' refusal to join Revolutionary France in its war with Great Britain, refusal to repay its Revolutionary War debts (on the grounds that the French Republic was not the legitimate successor of the French Crown), the Quasi-War, Alien and Sedition Acts (were enacted in response to the Quasi-War), and French threats join the American Civil War on the side of the Confederacy.

It's still a pretty good relationship though. Most of that stuff was small and happened over a 150 years ago.

When it was obvious that France was in a desperate situation, the Prime Minister contacted Roosevelt and asked him to send "clouds of planes" and declare war on Germany.

Roosevelt replied [accurately] that the US didn't have "clouds of planes", that the President does not have authority to declare war, and that Congress would not do so unless Germany declared war on the US first.

In any case, in 1940 the US was barely equipped to defend itself, let alone whiteknight for anyone else.

wtf america? get your shit together.

I'd suggest reading Alistair Horne's "To Lose A Battle", and "Strange Defeat" by Marc Bloch. The combination gives a detailed account of the military, political and cultural factors behind the French defeat.

thanks i'm putting them on my to read list. although I kinda understand frances defeat. I'm just kinda bewildered by america's non caring attitude that a long standing ally sunk overnight.

In 1940, the active duty strength of the US Army was 175,000, smaller than the Romanian Army. Later that year Roosevelt mobilized the reserves, and Congress instituted conscription.

hahaha are you for real?

They couldn't even Pancho Villa from raiding American towns on the border

>You know how well Alsatian, Occitaine, Breton, Basque, Catalan etc. fared in 1800's metropolitain France?
In the 1800's I don't know but nowadays they fare pretty well. I mean, there's not that much dead dialects that have expensive road signs all over the land. Not to mention even more expensive useless "cultural" schools. At the expense of the evil FRENCH taxpayer of course.

Many of the founding fathers, namely Washington, were strongly against the idea of having permanent alliances with anyone so that more or less influenced US foreign policy until the creation of NATO; also why US didn't join the League of Nations.

Again, after WWI the American people did not want to be involved with European affairs after 1919 and wanted to keep to themselves

But theres a handful of countries Americans now that america would feel obligated to help. France is one. Maybe Britain, Australia, and Israel. Hell, France is the only country I would voluntarily help.

Any NATO nation that pulls an Article 9 we have to help

Do you have any authority to the contrary?

Prior to WWII, the US was not a "global superpower", nor did it aspire to be one.

>looking for a more detailed response than "they didn't want to."
Well that was literally their reason for not joining the war until Pearl Harbor. They had an isolationist policy and the American public at the time didn't want to see the country thrown in to another world war and that they should stay out of European affairs. It's one of the reasons FDR got re-elected. He said he'd stay out of the war.

Reference:

warfarehistorynetwork.com/daily/wwii/expanding-the-size-of-the-u-s-military-in-world-war-ii/

whats article 9?

Could the US Army even provide assistance in such a short time?

No, there was no army in 1939. See

We should have helped by bombing shittian to oblivion

Shit I meant article 5, the collective defense treaty

Name one entity in history that did not followed this pattern

France and the other Anglo countries seem to be the only countries that Americans consistently care about.

>That's different since Iraq hadn't attacked America. Yet the outrage was pretty high.
>But yet the US let France get blitzkrieged and defeated without so much as even threatening Germany. How did that happen?

>France declares war on Germany for attacking Poland
>Does nothing for 6 months
>Suddenly gets its shit pushed in
>woooooow america why didn't you help?

1) France was the one who declared war
2) French foreign policy at the time was to ally primarily with with the UK, not the US
3) US foreign policy at the time was to not get involved in foreign wars
4) The phony war lowered everyone's guards, France didn't request aid nor did the US give anything because nobody was doing much of anything
5) France got its shit pushed in in 6 weeks which isn't enough time to do anything, the UK is just a channel away and even they were caught off guard

1) France wasn't really our ally for a long time. They were our ally briefly post revolutionary war and then the USA avoided alliances with European powers till world war when and even then it wasn't exactly allies but more of "war partners".
2) Just becuase a country has a high opinion of another country doesn't mean it will declare to defend them. Wars are pricy in men and resources so you want it to be worth your wild. Most countries are hoping to gain something when they go to war.They don't just declare war becuase they want to or feel like it. It has to be in their self interest.
3) The American public really didn't want war. Woodrow Wilson advertised ww1 as the war to end all wars and the American people supported him. After the sacrifice for "the war to end all wars" tensions began to highten in Europe suggesting there will be another European war. Many Americans thought "hey we just died in some stupid European conflict so there wouldn't Be any more wars and now, I feel lied to and we should just leave the Europeans to do their stupid little wars".

I have a semi decent analogy for America
"You America are in high school and you see your old elementary school best friend who you still nod to in the halls starting to fight with some other kid. There's always been tension at your school and the fight starting to get really messy and you accidentally punched you. You get pissed join the fight on your " friends" thinking once we kick his ass so hard there won't be any more fights at school. So you kick his ass and end up getting a pretty nasty black eye but your happy becuase you think there will be no more fighting . One week later you see your " friend" and that kid fighting again. You think to yourself "fuck that let them fight that's what they do"

France pissed off America leaders during the treaty talks that ended WWI. In some circles France was blamed for making it were Germany could not repay its post war loans ( from US banks). A lot of French and UK business defaulted on US debts during the interwar period and that did not make business leader like either of those two nations.

The biggest reason however is that US returned to a isolationist policy after a messy intervention in the Russian civil war.

>Why didn't a Democracy overrule the staunch anti-interventionist attitude of 90% of its voters for the sake of a country that had fucked them over 20 years prior which arguably was a significant factor in the rise of the aggressor now invading them