America provided weapons to both sides of the World War II?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jeff S
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Jeff S

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My friend told me that America before the intensification of World War II America was providing arms and weapons to both sides of the war, to both the axis and the allied powers. I cannot find any articles stating such a case so I am thinking she is dead wrong. Who is right me or my friend ?
 
I have trouble finding hard data on this too. Americans generally gave weapons to it's allies Britain and France, and later the Soviet Union as the war intensified. The U.S did actively trade with Nazi Germany before the war, but I don't think weapons were a large part of this.

It should be noted that before the U.S got directly involved in the war, many if not most Americans weren't sure which side they were on. Much of America was anti-communist, and so was Hitler and the other fascist nations of Europe. Hitler was fighting Stalin and Americans loathed Stalin. Americans may not have been very fond of fascism, but it seemed more compatible with capitalism than communism. The U.S was more against communism. Truth be told, anti-fascist sentiments weren't especially strong in the U.S during the 1920s and 1930s, except on the far left(in fact, since all communists were opposed to fascism, people who were very opposed to fascism were sometimes suspected of being communists).

Many Americans were also distrustful of Jews, although American antisemitism always paled in comparison to European antisemitism. The U.S was still a very racist country during the 40s and 50s, so Hitler's racism wasn't exactly totally out of the ordinary to most Americans back then.
 
i was 16 when war ended and i never heard of us selling weapons to axis powers. we were part of the allies. i remember the embargo of japan which in part started the war with japan. 3 days after the attack on pearl harbor germany declared war on us. the axis powers were Italy---Germany and Japan
 
World War I we traded with both sides, in World War II we were actually predisposed towards the allied powers. We allowed allied nations to buy weapons from us on a cash and carry basis, than we started Lend and Lease.

Our policy towards the axis ment embargo on Japan and to my knowledge we were not trading weapons to the axis.
 
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