What Factors Influenced the Development of Roosevelt’s Policy Towards Britain Between May 1940 and December 1941?

Whilst these unofficial convoy duties antagonised the Germans neither Roosevelt nor Hitler at that point wished to go to war openly. Hitler made the mistake of assuming that Britain was no longer capable of defeating Germany. Churchill in his meetings with Roosevelt and letters to him stressed that Germany was a far greater threat to Britain the United States than Italy or Japan. Churchill thought that is was sensible that Britain and the United States should recognise their common values and beliefs, the reasons why Britain was in the Second World War and the motivation for the United States in ensuring that Britain survived fighting alone. Churchill was very influential in the drafting of the Atlantic Charter that set out the Anglo-American vision for the post-war world. Churchill enjoyed the conferences with Roosevelt and used them to gain further assistance from the Roosevelt administration. Roosevelt afforded Churchill much respect and hospitality and as much assistance as it was possible to give Britain. The Atlantic Charter gave the emerging Anglo-American alliance its strategic and ideological basis. Their first conference off Newfoundland aboard the battleship Prince of Wales during August 1941 meant that Roosevelt had committed the United States to a formal alliance with Britain. Such an alliance at some point would formally involve entering a war in which she actively supported Britain and since June 1941 the Soviet Union.

Lend-Lease was recognition of the United States industrial and economic power that allowed it an unrivalled production capacity. Britain on the other hand had a declining economy; the cost of the First World War and the consequences of the Great Depression had reduced its wealth. British armaments production and shipbuilding capacity had declined markedly during the inter-war years. Lend-Lease provided Britain with the ships and aircraft to maintain the North Atlantic convoys and allow equipment and men from the United States to reach Europe and North Africa whilst keeping the Soviet Union supplied (Kennedy, 1976, p.303). Lend-Lease had been vital in shoring up the British war front once Britain could no longer afford supplies from the United State. It allowed the relationship between Britain and the United States to be tightened whilst unofficially keeping the United States out the war. Lend-Lease amply demonstrated the generosity of the American government and the confidence that Roosevelt had in final victory to the tune of $30 billion between 1941 and 1945.

Roosevelt had been impressed by the way the outnumbered Royal Navy had seized the initiative from the Italians after the Taranto raid in November 1940. Similarly the way in which the British Army had defeated the numerically superior Italian Army in North Africa impressed him. Roosevelt was impressed by the British intelligence’s ability to predict the next steps of the Germans and Italians, an impression that Churchill was careful to foster.