Gerald P. Nye, the isolationist guy, was a Republican senator from North Dakota. An impassioned speaker, he was known to repeatedly pound the table to make his point, often with the result of bloodied knuckles.

We're not even kidding.

Nye came to prominence in late 1934 as head of the Senate Munitions Committee. The purpose of the committee was to investigate the influence that weapons manufacturers might have had in America's decision to enter World War I.

There was a strong popular belief that World War I had been an unnecessarily costly war. Many wanted answers for how and why America really got involved…and if it was truly an ethical decision, or one driven by greed.

Senator Nye wasn't convinced that the United States should have interfered in World War I at all. In fact, he was staunchly against American intervention in foreign conflicts altogether. A huge supporter of isolationism, Nye's political motivations led to the enactment of the Neutrality Acts of the 1930s.

Far from being neutral themselves, the Neutrality Acts established a set of legal limitations on U.S. foreign policy. The first of the Neutrality Acts, passed in 1935, forbade any U.S. citizen (including the president) from supplying materials such as weapons, technology, and even food to any party involved in a foreign conflict. The Neutrality Acts of 1936, 1937, and 1939 basically elaborated on this theme of non-interventionism, which made FDR's attempts to help nations like Great Britain especially tricky.

Despite their initial popularity, the Neutrality Acts were fairly short-lived. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States was officially at war, and the Neutrality Acts were repealed.