233

c haPter 5

World War and the Growth

of Global Power

P

resident Roosevelt and Congress surely had their hands full trying to fix
the American economy in the 1930s. The crisis of that period was almost
certainly the worst economic depression in U.S. history and required massive
and intense efforts to stop the downturn and then create better conditions.
Along with those efforts, however, U.S. officials, from the White House on
down, had to confront global aggression in both Europe and Asia of a kind
that no one had seen before, which led to the greatest war in global history,
World War II. The war spanned 6 years, almost 4 of which involved the U.S.
as a combatant nation. It was fought on 2 continents, in dozens of countries,
and involved hundreds of millions of people, entire societies, and caused death
and devastation on a scale unthinkable before the war. It was arguably the
defining event of the 20th Century, if not modern times.

Power, Fascism, and Global Conflict Europe

To describe the events that led to World War II chronologically would pro-
duce a complicated timeline of numerous events that would seem to have
little connection. It makes more sense to look at the crises of the 1930s as
they unfolded in the 3 major geographic areas of concern: Europe, Asia, and
the United States. In Europe, Italy and especially Germany were trying to