Impact of Foreign Policy: 1939-2004 The Impact of Foreign Policy, 1939-2004 Throu

Before World War II, the general thrust of American policy and thought was isolationist. The period of imperialism around the turn of the 20th century, and even the relatively brief American involvement in World War I, did little to change this. In 1939, however, a great-power war again broke out in Europe, and at once the possibility that the US would become involved became a major public concern. Conservatives tended to be isolationists, regarding it not America's concern, while some accused British and Jewish interests of seeking to draw the US into war.

Pearl Harbor ended the debate, and the US totally mobilized for war, with profound effects on American culture. War production ended the lingering Depression, while movement of people as soldiers and war workers eroded local and regional social isolation. Large numbers of African-Americans, for example, left the rural South and were exposed to a life free of legal segregation. The war also left t

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s and 1970s. However, major seeds for this development were planted during World War II, as national mobilization for war shook up established patterns and institutions, opening up new possibilities and producing new demands. The 1920s had been in many respects a period of racial and social reaction in the United States. The Ku Klux Klan reached a height of influence. Restrictive immigration laws reinforced the racial heirarchies of the Jim Crow era. Though women had gained the right to vote, this achievement took the momentum out of the women's movement. Though the Depression and the New Deal weakened many forces of reaction, the sheer breadth and depth of economic turmoil drew attention away from minorities and other already-marginalized groups. The novel The Grapes of Wrath, for example, dealt with the poverty and mistreatment of white "Okies," not minorities. World War II, however, brought a national economic mobilization that dwarfed the efforts of the New Deal. The need for war production (and thus job opportunities as war workers) drew African-Americans out of the rural South to take jobs in Northern factories, while large numbers of women also went to work as war workers, celebrated in wartime propaganda as Ro
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