ABSTRACT
The election of 1936 represented the apogee of the New Deal. During 1937 and 1938, the nation's economic recovery slid off track as industrial production, after a partial recovery, declined and unemployment worsened. Conservative southern Democrats became disenchanted with the New Deal legislation that increased the power of labor and decreased the strength of southern planters. During the 1938 midterm elections, the Republicans picked up seats in both houses of Congress. The results represented the first significant GOP gains since the onset of the Great Depression, and were all the more impressive in view of the pounding the party had taken just two years earlier. Meanwhile, the president was forced to look toward foreign policy
In September 1939, World War II broke out in Europe. In the United States, isolationist sentiment was at flood tide. Although Roosevelt adhered to a policy of official U.S. neutrality, his administration-and most Americans-clearly favored the Allied nations, and Roosevelt provided economic and military aid to the Allies, circumventing restrictions imposed by neutrality acts passed during the mid-1930s.
