In this article (forwarded to me by a paleoconservative friend), Srdja Trifkovic argues that FDR crafted US policy and tactical deployments to provoke and fail to prepare for a Japanese attack that would bring the United States into WWII.
Trifkovic main evidence for the claim of intentional provocation is a series of memos and statements pointing to the desirability of a Japanese act of war which would allow the US to enter both fronts. Most of these statements opine that the oil embargo and other tactics might lead to this desired Japanese attack.
The claim that FDR knew of the attack is well-trod ground. And I believe the consensus is that while there were various bits of intelligence suggesting an attack, no one had pieced it together. Trifkovic argues not that the existence of this intelligence proves FDR’s intent, but that FDR’s failure to share this information, and indeed his misleading of Navy Commanders, demonstrates his motives. Trifkovic’s main evidence is a conversation, as described by Historian John Toland, in which FDR acknowledged to the Secretary of the Navy that he knows where the Japanese fleet is, but then tells him not to share this information because he wasn’t certain enough. He also cites a number of other circumstantial details, including the late-November removal of both US aircraft carriers from Pearl Harbor, which meant removing significant air defense.
I find the first claim more persuasive than the second. If the goal was a Japanese attack, why leave the Navy unprepared? Wouldn’t the Japanese attack either way? But I do find myself persuaded that FDR probably wanted some act of Japanese aggression, even if he didn’t know what it would be, or where.
If I recall correctly, Bill Clinton had Bin Laden on a list of people to hunt down and kill but that the action to do this got delayed and it didn’t happen before President Bush came in, and ultimately the whole thing was lost in the cracks.
But at the same time, there were probably lots of bad guys that either of these two presidents were aware of and did deal with in a timely manner. Likely there’s lots of bad people who we might know the location of, but aren’t 100% certain of their badness or what they know or other such things. Some of these the President might act on, others not. Some of those will have been good choices, others bad.
Stuff slips through the cracks.
So personally I wouldn’t say that telling someone to wait and see if better intel comes in is the same thing as saying, “Let’s just sit as we are and see if they make their move.” Probably it really means, “let’s wait for better intel.”
I don’t think I’ve ever heard of anyone coming forth saying, “I was there begging and pleading with Roosevelt to warn the men.” And certainly there would have been men who knew more about the situation than FDR, since following the Japanese was probably all they did every day. And really that’s what you would expect if there really had been information of that clarity.
I mean I haven’t read the interview with the Secretary of the Navy, so if that guy is saying that he was crying and pleading then yeah I’m sold, but your description doesn’t seem to indicate that.
Sage Rat, I think we agree on the credibility of the second claim. But what about the first? Are you convinced that FDR wanted to provoke a Japanese attack?
Possibly, but it’s likely that he expected something small or not against America directly that would give him the chance to go for it. The Nazis didn’t start right off marching on Paris after all. First they went for the low hanging fruit, Austria, Sudetenland, and Checkoslovakia.
While you might be able to predict that your enemy might try something first, you aren’t always going to guess that he’s going to jump in with a massacre-ambush. As Cecil notes, there were plenty of American allies to attack. There was no need to expect that America itself would be hit.
Some people favour the conspiracy theory of history and some people prefter the cock up theory.
In the conspiracy theory of history, the world is populated by scheming geniuses who artfully manoveur chess pices over the globe, battling wits with shadowy foes using their complete knowledge of world events to complete thier cunning plans.
In the cock up theory of history, ordinary people, with incomplete knowledge of what’s going on, bumble around trying to do thier best. They often fail.
Mr. Trifkovic is obviously from the first camp. I subscribe to the cock up theory.
Take the American carriers. They were both sent out from Pearl Harbour in late November. To Trifkovic, this was a cunning plan to reduce fighter cover over Hawaii. It’s possible he’s correct, but consider the other possibilities
There were 60 or 70 shore based fighter aircaft at Pearl Harbour. They were no match for the 300+ Japanese aircraft. Would another 50 aircraft have faired better?
The carriers were sent away because they were an important asset that couldn’t be lost (note that this is completely opposite reasoning to that above). No one (especially politicians) was sure of the value of aircaft carriers in 1941. Even if the carriers had been sunk, the Navy would have gone to war using mostly submarines. The final outcome of the war probably have been radically diffferent.
We know what happened at Pearl Harbour, but we can’t cherry pick the reasons that led up to it. And it looks to me that’s exactly what Mr. Trifkovic is doing. It’s entirely possible that the conversation he described took place, but United States Foreign and Military policy wasn’r decided by a five minute chat in a corridor.
On conspiracy theories briefly, I agree with Tapioca Dextrin, I think some people are simply much more comfortable believing that the powerful men who run the planet are super-intelligent evil geniuses who plot and scheme elaborate conspiracy theories. In truth the world leaders are just men, of various mixed backgrounds, educations, and intellect. They work on imperfect knowledge, receive imperfect advice (although usually the best advice available) and have limited ability to predict the effects their decisions will have.
What I do believe is this:
FDR wanted into WWII badly. He wanted to strike at Hitler and contain the Japanese, he knew that these expansive, aggressive powers were a threat to the global balance of power and even a threat to the core ideals he himself and America held.
FDR knew that after the general public backlash concerning American involvement in WWI, it was going to be exceedingly difficult to convince America to enter into WWII without some sort of major provocation. FDR also knew that if he tried to take the country into a war in spite of this, he would not be reelected and the alternative Republican (and many Democrat) politicians were quite isolationist in their rhetoric.
FDR did everything he could short of actually going to open war to hurt the Japanese and the Germans. In particular by refusing to sell oil to Japan he knew he was depriving them of an essential resource that their war machine needed. In every sense of the word FDR was doing things that a reasonable person might expect to provoke a declaration of war.
FDR probably suspected that if he successfully provoked Japan or Germany into war that there was going to be a surprise attack involved. I think he had no idea that it was going to hit a major naval base and result in so many lost lives. FDR did not want Pearl Harbor to happen.
Would something short of Pearl Harbor have had the necessary effect? Obviously an attack on an ally, or on our interests, was insufficient. I wonder if it required the loss of American military men to change the national sentiment.
In my opinion, no. My 1941 the war in Europe had been raging yet there was still a strong resistance in the US to enter the fray. Our allies had been piss pounded for years yet that alone was not enough to declare war. Without a direct attack upon the US or her military, it is doubtful that FDR would have been able to join the effort.
Think about this. How exactly would Roosevelt have known the location of the Japanese fleet? Was he breaking codes in his office after hours? Running his own Tokyo spy ring?
No, the only way Roosevelt would have had this information is if he had received it from military intelligence. So how could he have kept a secret from the Navy when it was the Navy that told him the secret?
Because “the Navy” isn’t one body with a single mind. I agree that if he learned this from Navy intelligence (and he may have learned it from some other intelligence branch, for all I know), then he couldn’t have kept it from the officers of Naval intelligence who were already aware and those who passed it up in the chain of command. But he could have kept it from everyone else, right?
I have a problem with this part - if the carriers had been left in port, they would have been taken out just like the rest of the ships. I don’t think a carrier could provide air defense against a surprise attack any more than the planes on the runways of the ground airfields did; I would expect a carrier would be much easier to disable than an airbase with multiple large runways.
I think Sage Rat and Martin Hyde have it. FDR wanted into WWII. And, he had to expect that the Japanese would lash out at all of our containment and embargo efforts (though, perhaps there was also a hint of idealism that the embargo would cause Japan to rethink its policies, much like modern embargoes against Iraq, Iran, NK, Cuba, etc.). Any reasonable person would see that outcome as likely. But an attack on our fleet in Hawaii? That’s pretty audacious. I don’t think anyone really saw it coming, and what piecemeal intel was coming in was likely lost in the noise and, frankly, may not even have been believed. A more modest stroke would have been expected at first.
Actually the carriers were sent away delivering combat aircraft to forward bases in preparation for a possible Japanese attack. The exact sort of thing a president bent on allowing us to get ambushed would NOT have done.
Also, this whole line of argument is ignoring the fact that there WAS a warning. Pearl Harbor received the “this is a war warning” message before the attack just like everyone else in the US Pacific forces. It’s not Roosevelt’s or Nimitz’s fault that the search aircraft and fighter CAP stayed grounded.
Look up the Battle of Shiloh some time. It is characteristic of American policy to assume the staus quo won’t change suddenly – Americans are often surprised, or at least unprepared, to one degree or another by other countries’ aggression. Frankly this wasn’t a secret – during the period in question, both the Japanese and the Germans (Look up Operation Drumbeat, an American defeat with worse losses than Pearl Harbor) assumed Americans could be caught napping and poorly prepared, and they were right.
They were, however, terribly wrong about how the Americans would subsequently respond.
Sure. An attack on the Philippines. American war plans, in fact, predicted the Japanese would invade and lay siege to the Philippines and the US surface fleet would fight its way across the Pacific like the cavalry coming to the rescue. The US had fought a long insurgency in the Philippines and felt a strong emotional attachment to the place; MacArthur would have done the same “I will return!” shtick with or without Pearl – in fact, it would have been even more dramatic if the attack on the Philippines had been the main thing in the national mindset.
The government had been slow to reinforce the Philippines, and there’s some grounds to think that the bases and troops there were left vulnerable – were, in effect, dangled in front of the Japanese as a “tripwire” in exactly the way conspiracy theories assume Pearl Harbor was.
The fly in the ointment of conspiracy theorists is that the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl did not require us to be caught napping in order to provoke the American public. Assuming that the the powers that be actually knew Pearl was going to be attacked, having the Navy sortie, ready for battle, and duke it out with the Japanese on December 7th would have resulted in every bit as much outrage – it would still be, after all, an “unprovoked” surprise attack. There would still be severe losses. But we would have given a better account of ourselves and started the war off on better footing.
Think about it – would Americans be angrier about September 11, 2001, if the firefighters had all been at a convention in Vegas and missed the action? Nope. The firefighters going in and doing-and-dying was probably even more tragically stirring than just seeing helpless civilians getting hit. Same would be true of a Pearl where we’d fought back.
So the whole “intentionally withheld so we’d be caught flatfooted” argument doesn’t make any sense, objectively.
Was there really an attachment to the Philippines in popular sentiment sufficient to turn public opinion so quickly? Greater than the sympathy for Great Britain?
Indeed. To quote my OP, “If the goal was a Japanese attack, why leave the Navy unprepared? Wouldn’t the Japanese attack either way?”
FDR was Assistant Secretary of the Navy for eight years during Wilson’s administration. He absolutely LOVED the navy. No way does he deliberately allow Japan to destroy our Pacific Fleet so as to have an excuse to enter WWII.
But there were about 20,000 US troops in the Philippines already. If our OWN troops had been attacked there (rather than just the Brits, whom we liked, but weren’t our boys), I think it would have had the same effect.
Don’t aircraft carriers need to be moving to provide enough additional windspeed to get planes in the air? Having the carriers in port would just have made things worse.