Few periods in history have been as crucial as the years 1939-41, particularly the interval between Germany's invasion of Poland and the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor. Contemporaries realized that at stake was nothing less than the course the world would take for decades to come. During this time, Western Europe was subjected to a German occupation that gave every indication of becoming permanent, the Soviet Union stood in mortal danger, and Japan appeared to be poised for lasting domination of all Asia. Under the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the United States was moving ever closer to an undeclared naval war against Germany and economic confrontation with Japan.

This essay focuses on current trends in the historiography of this period, with particular attention to U.S. policy between 1 September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, and 7 December 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. Several articles have covered the literature up to this point. This article takes as its launching pad one of these, Gerald K. Haines's “Roads to War: United States Foreign Policy, 1931-1941,” published in 1981. Of necessity it occasionally refers to works published earlier. In order to harmonize this essay with Michael Barnhart's subsequent essay on the origins of the war in Asia, discussion is limited to works covering U.S. policies vis-a-vis Europe.

To understand the significance of current research, one must begin the story much earlier. Originally, the historiography of American foreign policy concerning these years was characterized by bitter polemics. At issue was President Roosevelt himself: FDR's critics were “revisionists,” his defenders “court historians.” Although much of the attack on FDR centered on his supposed complicity in the Pearl Harbor attack, his critics connected his European policy to the crisis with Japan. Harry Eimer Barnes, for example, claimed that “Roosevelt lied us into war, from the destroyer-bases deal of September 1940, to Secretary Hull's ultimatum of November 26,1941.” Basil Rauch, in discussing American policy in the fall of 1941, replied to such accusations, writing that “the last thing Roosevelt wanted to do was to ‘provoke’ war.” The polemics surrounding Roosevelt spilled over to attacks on the historians themselves. The pro-administration historian Samuel Eliot Morison savaged FDR critic Charles A. Beard in an essay pointedly subtitled “History through a Beard.”