ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how leaders spoke about the Good Neighbor and the coordination of World War II efforts as something new, but the documents raise questions about what changed and why. The Good Neighbor explained United States responses to the Mexican oil nationalization of 1938. Even more significant than Herbert Hoover's desire to change policy, the 1929 stock market crash and the Great Depression forced a shift in the United States approach. The worldwide Great Depression had a substantial impact throughout the hemisphere, and by the mid-1930s leaders throughout the region began to focus on the implications of Nazi Germany's expansionism. Both issues led the United States to seek Latin American cooperation and minimize conflicts. Latin American leaders, in turn, almost universally came to believe that it was important to back the United States as World War II started, which altered political life in their own nations.
