The Reichstag Fire, Pearl Harbor, 9/11, and currently the Hamas attack on Israeli, have all been accused of being events that the respective Government knew about beforehand, but allowed to happen so they could take advantage of the aftermath to push through legislation or whip up the public in a frenzy that would be willing to support whatever the Government in power said.
I’m curious, has that every actually been proven? A government knew a terrorist or other foreign attack was going to happen, and deliberately did nothing because they wanted to take advantage of the aftermath? (This is separate from a false flag, where the Government actively takes part in the attack)
ISTM if it is not a false flag then it is hard to think of a case where a government has spotted an imminent attack and then intentionally let it happen. Pearl Harbor is a good example from your post. Even if president Roosevelt was willing to let an attack happen so the US would go to war would he willingly let the Pacific Fleet be sunk to let it happen? Helluva gamble.
The people in power generally do not want to be found to be lacking in protecting the country. If the government did not plan the attack (false flag) then I can’t imagine they’d learn of an attack and decide that’s actually fine with them because, by chance, it aligns with their goals. But, it’s a big world so never say never.
The closest thing I can think of is the bombing of Coventry in WWII. Supposedly, Churchill knew the attack was going to happen but did not tell the populace so the Germans would not learn that Great Britain was reading their email (so to speak). But, that was war and many say it didn’t happen that way anyway.
Well, there was that time the Prince of Florin allowed a band of Guilderian mercenaries to kidnap his fiancee so he would have an excuse to declare war on them.
It’s true. My grandpa from the old country read about to me when I was sick.
If it has ever happened, there may be little or nothing in the way of physical or documentary evidence.
More likely, whatever advance knowledge would have been ambiguous enough for the powers that be to be unsure as to its reliability (which turns out to be the case in a number of incidents in the UK). But to add to that intentional suppression of the information is a very big leap - who’d leave evidence of that for the archives?
Yeah, this is the closest thing I know of, where the Brits had broken the Germans’ code but couldn’t take full advantage of all the information gained without letting them know this.
Just to address one of the OP’s examples, there is plenty of evidence that the Reichstag fire was the act of a mentally disturbed sole perpetrator. When it happened the Nazis were opportunistically looking for just that sort of event to further their own narratives about enemy actors threatening German democracy, which only prompt and tough response by Hitler’s regime could defend. I think post-event exploitation of the situation would not fit what the OP wants.
(a good source - The Hitler Conspiracies, by Richard Evans, one of the major historians of 19th-20th C Germany)
You said it, man. It would take monumental secrecy by probably dozens, if not hundreds of people over years or decades to keep somehing like that shrouded. The risk of exposure would be enormous, as would the penalties. Hanlon’s razor and all that.
No. That doesn’t mean they weren’t aware of the possibility it could happen, but a preemptive attack based on the possibility, “we might get attacked some day”, isn’t politically acceptable to the world or even many of your own citizens.
In fact, now that I think of it, isn’t that why we fought the Vietnam war? “Gee, if Vietnam goes entirely communist, then all the other countries will become communist, and they will all be aggressive towards the United States, and then we may be in trouble, so let’s attack NOW.” Ah, wasn’t that “theory” called, “The domino effect”?
In his 1974 book The Ultra Secret, Group Captain F. W. Winterbotham asserted that the British government had advance warning of the attack from Ultra; intercepted German radio messages encrypted with the Enigma cipher machine and decoded by British cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park. He further claimed that Winston Churchill ordered that no defensive measures should be taken to protect Coventry, lest the Germans suspect that their cipher had been broken.[22] Winterbotham was a key figure for Ultra and supervised the “Special Liaison Officers” who delivered Ultra material to field commanders.[4]: 155
Winterbotham’s claim has been rejected by other Ultra participants and by historians. They state that while Churchill was indeed aware that a major bombing raid would take place, no one knew what the target would be.[23][24]
A few days before the attack, Ultra had identified Mondschein Sonate (Moonlight Sonata) as a probable code for a planned group of attacks on three possible targets over several possible days. The targets had the code names Einheitpreis, Regenschirm and Korn. The day before the Coventry raid, a prisoner mentioned Regenschirm (umbrella), which was assumed to mean umbrella man (Neville Chamberlain) who was born in Birmingham, it would be bombed on 19/20 November. Einheitpreis (unit-price) was identified later, which was tied to sixpence at Woolworths, meaning Wolverhampton. Korn was unidentified at the time.[8]: 101 Peter Calvocoressi was head of the Air Section at Bletchley Park, which translated and analysed all deciphered Luftwaffe messages. He wrote “Ultra never mentioned Coventry. … Churchill, so far from pondering whether to save Coventry or safeguard Ultra, was under the impression that the raid was to be on London”.[25]
The scientist Reginald Victor Jones, who led the British side in the Battle of the Beams, wrote that “Enigma signals to the X-beam stations were not broken in time” and that he was unaware that Coventry was the intended target. The British were yet unaware that the Luftwaffe had moved from their pilots manually listening to the signals to an automatic narrow-band receiver on board, which caused jamming countermeasures to be ineffective. Jones also noted that Churchill returned to London that afternoon, which indicated that Churchill believed that London was the likely target for the raid.[26]
Since 1996, the Ultra decrypts for the period have been available in the UK National Archives.[27] Between 07:35 GMT on 10 November 1940 and 05:00 on 11 November, a German signal was deciphered and given the serial number CX/JQ/444, paragraph 4.[28] The message set out code words to be used by aircraft on an operation namedMondschein Sonat but did not give Coventry as the target or a date. It said that transmission of a figure 9 would denoteKORN and hindsight has recognised that to be the code name for Coventry. This was not known at the time even though PAULA had been identified as Paris and LOGE as London. KORN was used in two reports[29][non-primary source needed] from an aircraft taking part in a raid on Southampton on 30 November, two weeks after the Coventry Blitz. Another decrypt on 11 November or early on 12 November[30][non-primary source needed] gave navigational beam settings for Wolverhampton, Birmingham, and Coventry but no dates. There was a hiatus in Ultra decrypts from 01:15 GMT on 13 November until 02:40 on 15 November[31][non-primary source needed] by which time the raid was well underway: Churchill could not have acted on new Ultra intelligence on the afternoon or evening of the attack because there was none to give him. Intelligence from captured airmen and documents did not offer an unambiguous picture either.
I understood something similar applied to Pearl Harbor - that the Japanese code was broken and the intelligence people knew something was coming, but the risk of showing they’d broken the codes was too high. OTOH, as a counter to that, they did defend Midway a few months later based on intercepts.
IIRC, what codes had been broken at that time indicated that the Japanese were up to something, but no one knew exactly what or where. In hindsight, I think it’s possible to go back through the intelligence that we had and piece it all together, but at the time no one knew that Pearl Harbor was about to be attacked.
There was intelligence that Pearl was about to be attacked. There was also intelligence that the Japanese were going to launch an invasion onto the California beaches, or were going to invade Alaska and come down the coast. Most of the intelligence was just nonsense. Sorting through what is a real threat and what isn’t a real threat isn’t exactly an easy job. Combine this with the general secrecy around code breaking at the time, and the intelligence folks weren’t just going to throw out every wild theory that they had picked up. I believe the threat of an attack on the Philippines was considered to be the most credible at the time.
For his role, FDR was certain that sanctions would be enough to keep the Japanese contained in the Pacific in the long term. He didn’t think that they would attack, and most in Washington felt the same way. They were certain that the Japanese were going to be a thorn in their side for many years to come, but there was going to be a lot more politicking before anyone actually got to the stage of firing weapons.
A lot of compartmentalization of the military worked against us as well. What information we had wasn’t being shared very well by different branches of the military. Later investigations by the military blamed the lack of intelligence on compartmentalization, general incompetence, confirmation bias, and a complete lack of understanding of the Japanese culture and leadership.
The Japanese had similar intelligence failures. They were certain that the U.S. wouldn’t have the resources to rebuild their fleet in time to be of any use, and they knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that the U.S. had no stomach for war and would negotiate some sort of peace that would cede all kinds of territories in the Pacific instead of suffering through a long and costly island hopping campaign. (Spoiler alert - we suffered through the long and costly island hopping campaign)
There’s enough of an element of truth to the story to fuel the conspiracy theorists. There was some intel that indicated an attack was eminent. There was some intel that the attack was going to happen at Pearl. A lot of this intel wasn’t shared, partly because the intelligence folks didn’t want everyone to know what codes had been broken (and partly because most of it was junk intel, but the conspiracy theorists tend to ignore that part of it). But the reality of it is that FDR was completely surprised by the attack. FDR knew that an attack was possible, and he knew that the Japanese had been building up their military, but FDR didn’t expect the attack at that time and at that place.
For 9/11, there were certainly warnings that Bush and Co. (probably mainly Cheney) chose to ignore. Perhaps because they assumed it was deep state and coming from Clinton appointees. So the phrase “government knows” is partly misleading. I mean there may be threats coming all the time that are mostly false.
It seems clear the record shows that the possibility of attacks on far flung bases by Imperial Japan was no great secret in the 1930s, there were magazine and newspaper articles alluding to this. As it turned out to be a surprise attack on a Sunday morning, while diplomats were doing their thing. Gentlemen, as you all well know, don’t read other’s gentleman’s mail.
I don’t think so, no administration could take the chance. It was long feared that planes would get hijacked and flown into government buildings. They knew the risk, they knew what to look for. I don’t think it’s possible to “let” something happen that heinous without clear risk of losing the plot.
Things had long since passed that point by December 1941; war was expected, considered imminent, and that it would be launched without any notice was considered extremely likely given Imperial Japan’s history of starting the war first and declaring war afterwards (Russo-Japanese War, Sino-Japanese War). The only thing that was a surprise was that Pearl Harbor was attacked, prior to Japan planning on opening the war with a carrier strike on Pearl Harbor both sides expected and planned that the war would start with a Japanese attack on the Philippines, and the US Pacific Fleet would cross the Pacific to relieve the Philippines (the US plan, War Plan Orange) or would be attritted on its way to the Philippines where the Japanese Navy would defeat it in a single decisive battle (the Japanese plan, Kantai Kessen, Decisive Battle Doctrine).
Multiple war warnings were issued by the US High Command in late November stating explicitly that a “surprise aggressive move” by Japan was both very likely and imminently expected.
ACTION: CinCAF, CinCPAC, Com 11, Com 12, Com 13, Com 15
INFO: Spenavo London Cinclant
242005
Chances of favorable outcome of negotiations with Japan very doubtful. This situation coupled with statements of Japanese Government and movements their naval and military forces indicate in our opinion that a surprise aggressive movement in any direction including attack on Philippines or Guam is a possibility. Chief of Staff has seen this dispatch concurs and requests action adees [addressees] to inform senior Army officers their areas. Utmost secrecy necessary in order not to complicate an already tense situation or precipitate Japanese action. Guam will be informed separately.
Copy to WPD, War Dept. and Op-12 but no other distribution.
War Warning Message from Chief of Naval Operations
Nov. 27, 1941
FROM: Chief of Naval Operations
ACTION: CinCAF, CinCPAC
INFO: Cinclant, Spenavo
272337
This dispatch is to be considered a war warning. Negotiations with Japan looking toward stabilization of conditions in the Pacific have ceased and an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days. The number and equipment of Japanese troops and the organization of naval task forces indicates an amphibious expedition against either the Philippines, Thai or Kra Peninsula or possibly Borneo. Execute an appropriate defensive deployment preparatory to carrying out the tasks assigned in WPL 46. Inform district and Army authorities. A similar warning is being sent by War Department.
Spenavo inform British. Continental districts Guam, Samoa directed take appropriate measures against sabotage.
Copy to WPD, War Dept.
Army Alert Sent by Chief of Naval Operations:
Nov. 28, 1941
FROM: Chief of Naval Operations
ACTION: Com Pnncf, Com Psncf
INFO: Cincpac Com Pncf
28----
Refer to my 272338. Army has sent following to commander western defense command.
Negotiations with Japan appear to be terminated to all practical purposes with only the barest possibilities that the Japanese Government might come back and offer to continue. Japanese future action unpredictable but hostile action possible at any moment. If hostilities cannot repeat not be avoided the United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act. This policy should not repeat not be construed as restricting you to a course of action that might jeopardize your defense. Prior to hostile Japanese action you are directed to undertake such reconnaissance and other measures as you deem necessary but these measure should be carried out so as not repeat not to alarm civil population or disclose intent. Report measures taken. A separate message in being sent to G-2, Ninth Corps Area re subversive activities in the United States. Should hostilities occur you will carry out the tasks assigned in Rainbow five so far as they pertain to Japan. Limit dissemination of this highly secret information to minimum essential officers. Unquote. WPL 52 is not applicable to Pacific area and will not be placed in effect in that area except as now in force in southeast Pacific sub area and Panama naval coastal frontier. Undertake no offensive action until Japan has committed an overt act. Be prepared to carry out tasks assigned in WPL-46, so far as they apply to Japan in case hostilities occur.
Just to head off another Pearl Harbor myth at the pass, the 14-part message which was supposed to be delivered at the same time that bombs were falling on Pearl Harbor but was delivered late due to delays in decoding was not a declaration of war or even a breaking off of diplomatic relations. All it said in a very longwinded manner was that Japan “consider[s] that it is impossible to reach an agreement through further negotiations” which had already been at an impasse for quite some time.
We were frantically reading their communications at the time. Just not in real time. It took days to translate the coded messages into English and then transmit them up the line to the top brass.
And it was more than a decade since MI-8, America’s code breakers, had been shut down. We were deeply back in the business, but of course not a fraction of the extent we would be after Pearl Harbor.
“Gentlemen don’t read each other’s mail.” These words, attributed to Secretary of State Henry Stimson, reportedly were associated with the closure in the late 1920s of MI-8 …
The first real use of those lines “appears to have been a panel discussion held on January 12, 1962” at the Center for Cryptologic History between Frank Rowlett and Abraham Sinkov. Rowlett had been talking about MI-8.
[Mr. Rowlett] And the story goes that Mr. Stimson became furious
that we would involve ourselves in such a nefarious undertaking; ‘it’s
dishonorable and all that, and therefore we ought to quit this business.’
[Dr. Sinkov] A gentleman doesn’t read somebody else’s mail.
[Mr. Rowlett] And he felt very strongly about it, although I must say that I saw Mr. Stimson about six months before Pearl Harbor when he came down to look at the cryptanalytic effort. He was then Secretary of War, and his attitude was anything but ‘it was dishonorable.’
Similarly, in the summer before the 9/11 attacks, US President George W Bush received a daily briefing entitled “Bin Laden determined to strike in U.S.”. It doesn’t mean that the government knew when and where the attack was coming.
Someone who ignored the example of the Zimmerman telegram? Why sometimes you want to read the other guy’s mail… Note the assumption too “the other guys” were gentlemen.
When the U.S. Congress declared war on Japan, it had NOT been publicized that this was a defeat with thousands of our sailors and soldiers dead and two battleships destroyed. If the U.S. had taken prudent steps, based on timely warning, to shoot down Japanese planes, and minimize damage by relocating ships, it still would have been the day of infamy, and the vote to declare war would have been exactly the same. So “take advantage” could not be an issue there.
