I can't get into the War in HOI3!

[HMS Empire Broadsword]

I'm new to HOI3 and games of its nature. Basically, I jumped right into playing as America. Everything seems to be going fine, except:

It's now September 1942. So far I am not involved in the war.

Russia is getting completely trounced by the Germans, who are way past Moscow, they are approximately halfway through the Soviet Union. The Russians are 95% close to surrendering.

I desperately want to declare War on the Axis. Every moment I delay Germany grows stronger, Russia wont be able to stay alive for much longer. I dont see how I can win the war without Russian help, and an enlarged Germany.

I have everything set for war, I have four Armies in two Army Groups ready for Europe on the East Coast, all I have to do is give the Mobilization order. I have about 500,000 men booked for Europe (will be more when I mobilize) with plenty of Armoured Divisions, air support, and a whole Airbourne Corps. I also have the transports nescessary to ship them across the Pond. I even have Strategic Bombers ready.

For Japan I have two Armies and a Corps in one Army Group, mostly comprised of US Marines (19 Marine Divisions) plus a Corps of regular Infantry, also with air support, Strategic Bombers and transports.
And I have been buisily making Carriers and Escort Carriers, I believ I now have around 15 Carriers and Escort Carriers in all, with more on the way, plus escorts, battleships, destroyers, cruisers, and subs.

My tech is also coming along fine. I have researched the Medium Tank techs to a point that my Medium Tank is now the M47 Patton, which I believe was only introduced at the very end of the war, so I'm definately suprerior to the Axis at least in tanks, also probably in Infantry techs.

In short, I believe I am definately ready for World War II. Every moment I delay means Germany and the Axis will get stronger, and there is only so much preparing I can do, but I can't go to war, becuase my bloody neutrality is too High. What should I do? If I delay any longer, the Russians will be finished?

Also, if and when I finally do get into combat, not having any experience at fighting a campaign with a HOI game, should I leave the direction of my Corps to the AI?

Any help for this newbie would be much appreciated, thanks.

[Town Watch]

The way the neutrality works in HoI3, practically speaking you have to lower it from the beginning of the scenario unless you started from summer 1941 or already from the war years. For the greater part of the peace years you have that isolationist minister (vice president John N. Garner) who you cannot replace manually so you must first get 10 domestic spies and set their mission to lower neutrality. Then at some point in the peace years you can get a silent lawyer minister who makes the neutrality go down faster. Then there are the destroyers for bases, and lend-lease events which lower neutrality. Germany's threat will be low from the US point of view because they're across the pond, Japan's threat on the other hand is more serious for the US. You can check the threat impact from the diplomacy tab, and click USA. The threat goes down at like -0.03 per day at max speed when you get the silent lawyer so it does take quite a while to get into the war.

Threat basically pushes countries towards the triangles edges, so best case scenario would be for Britain, the leader of the Allies to influence the US (or you can align towards them), for US to send spies to Germany to increase German threat, and US domestic spies to lower neutrality and counterespionage if Axis spies are heavily infiltrating you, (if you see a hugely popular German American Bund you should sent J. Edgar Hoover to work, and put a minister with a bonus to democratic party support.

Then again if you want to just get into A WAR, you should raise Canada's threat with spies and lower your neutrality until you can declare war and annex them. But as to your current game, I suppose you could put some cheat codes in the console. I haven't used any of these but quick googling yielded "noneutrality" without to quotation marks.

[HMS Empire Broadsword]

Thanks town watch. If I dont want to wait for my neutrality to get down, can I just invade, say, a Japanses island without declaring war, and will that get me into the war and lower my neutrality?