As in World War I, the United States was trying to distance itself from events in Europe (and in the Pacific). The country was not yet ready to participate in another war, but it did not want to just let Fascist dictatorships take control of the whole of Europe, either. The Lend-Lease Act did, essentially, end U.S. neutrality by agreeing to let England borrow weapons in the early 1940s, but American troops would not be committed until after Pearl Harbor late in 1941.