When Germany invaded Poland, Britain and France declared war on Germany. T

Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1 and, Britain and France’s declaration of war startled Americans. The nation erupted in debate. Roosevelt called Congress into special session, and on September 21 he spoke for remaining neutral but for amending the Neutrality Act in order to aid the "non-aggressive belligerents." The sale of newspapers soared. Isolationism and analogies with World War I were losing ground. Most Americans now saw Hitler as a great danger to the world. Crowds overflowed at the galleries of the Senate and House of Representatives. Congress was changing with the change in public opinion. On October 27, after much debate, the Senate voted 63 to 30 to amend provisions in the Neutrality Act, and the House of Representatives voted its approval a few days later.
   Joining those opposed to the amendment of the Neutrality Act was the U.S. Communist Party. Before the Hitler- Stalin pact in August, they had favored changing the Neutrality Act. Now they joined the pacifists and others railing against U.S. involvement in Europe’s war—while many were leaving the Party, unable to stomach the sudden switch in attitude toward fascism. The Party sponsored newspaper, the Daily Worker, editorialized that the people of the world wanted peace, and the Daily Worker was suggesting that atrocities by Germany’ s National Socialists were no worse than British atrocities in India.
   In the spring of 1940, while Hitler’s armies took Norway and rumbled through Denmark, Holland and France, Churchill was complaining in private that the United States was giving Britain too little help, and isolationists in the U.S. were continuing their campaign against involvement abroad.
   Americans were surprised by Hitler’s move westward, especially against peaceful Norway. Americans became concerned that German forces would now move into Greenland—territory of Denmark and near the United States. In responding to Hitler’s new invasions, Roosevelt spoke of America’s anger. And, on the day that Holland quit fighting, he again denounced isolationism.
   Charles Lindbergh was leading the movement to stay out of the war, and he countered Roosevelt, declaring that the United States must stop the "hysterical chatter of calamity and invasion." The United States, he said, cannot be invaded. He spoke of the danger of the U.S. becoming involved in the war in Europe because "powerful interests in America" wanted it. "They represent a small minority of the people," he said: "but they control much of the machinery of influence and propaganda."
   By now, Congress was more concerned with military readiness. In June, Roosevelt signed bills that allowed construction for the Navy and an expanded air corps. Roosevelt chose to send some World War I weapons to Britain, to help Britain’s Home Guard and to replace a fraction of the artillery Britain’s army had lost on the continent--his first shipment leaving the United States on June 24.
   In July, 1940, the Battle of Britain began. In the United States an aroused public rushed to buy flags. "God Bless America" began being sung at sporting events, school meetings and at gatherings for bingo. In September, Roosevelt delivered 50 destroyers to Britain in exchange for bases at eight points on the Atlantic coast, from Newfoundland to British Guiana.
   Concerned about the prospect for war, Congress passed the Selective Service and Training Act, and Roosevelt signed the bill into law, establishing the first peacetime military service draft in the United States. In late October the U.S. began drafting men into the military. And from Congress the U.S. Navy won authorization to double the number of their combat ships, and the production of planes for the Army Air Corps was being readied.
Charles Lindbergh, continued his campaigning against intervention, using his popularity as a national hero and drawing on his expertise in aviation and as a world traveler. Speaking at Yale in October, Lindbergh claimed that the United States could fight a successful war against Japan but only if it stayed neutral concerning Europe. But if the United States became involved in another war, he said, "life as we know it today would be a thing of the past." If the United States defeated Germany, he said, it would result in "the downfall of all European civilization, and the establishment of conditions in our own country far worse even than those in Germany today."