Roosevelt was unquestionably preparing for war with Hitler, which he thought inevitable. He understood the position that Britain was in, and did everything short of outright treason to put the US in place to wage that war despite the isolationist wing in Congress.
Pearl Harbor, though, did catch them by surprise. Almost all the prep was aimed at Europe, with little attention paid to the Pacific by comparison. Pearl Harbor is ridiculously far from Japan, around 4,000 miles or the distance from New York to Berlin. To attack Hawaii, the Japanese would have to sail far into the Pacific and launch planes to the limit of their reach. The military were sure they couldn’t do so undetected. Despite later claims, like the one cited by terentii, the actuality of knowledge of and therefore allowance of an attack still sits somewhere around CT status. And note that the IHR cite says specifically that the public - the subject of the OP’s question - were taken completely off guard.
The attack badly messed up Washington’s plans, but Hitler saved us. People forget that we didn’t declare war against Germany until after Hitler declared war on us. That allowed Roosevelt to pursue the two front war that developed. If Hitler had stayed neutral, Roosevelt would have been forced to move all the prep toward Asia, because it’s unlikely Congress would have declared war against a country that was neutral. Weirdly, therefore, the week of Dec 7 won the war by goading the public from isolationism to the full fury toward Germany and Japan that Roosevelt and Churchill could only have dreamed about a week earlier. That, by the way, is another stake in the heart of the Roosevelt knew about Japan theory. The logistics in the ramping up pre-war period was all aimed toward Europe. A devious Roosevelt would have pointed the prep toward Japan and not have all that work be left hanging if Hitler stayed out. He couldn’t know that Hitler would grease the skids for him. That’s always the problem with CT’s. They require people to act with unbelievable chess-move cunning and at the same time avoid all common sense.
Plus, remember, that the world was a much much bigger place then. It was only 1927 that Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic. (True, there had been earlier non-solo flights). The Pacific was immense compared to the Atlantic. The majority of Japanese targets were half a world away from the USA. Perhaps their thought was a combination of Argentine level of thinking (“Britain is too weak and disinterested to go to war over the Falklands”) and boastfulness - if we take out the main fleet, they’ll be gun-shy and not try to retake places half a world away, the country is very isolationist and not heavily colonial-minded.
From what I recall reading, Roosevelt and his minions were very active in trying to find any way they could to help the British - and the isolationist faction was what held them back. The Americans needed a good reason to jump into someone else’s fight. Even today, “there’s horrible atrocities going on over there” does not usually result in a full declaration of war.
We knew Imperial Japan was planning something, we knew their fleet had set sail (but perhaps on a wargame?, perhaps vs other Allied targets?). We also were pretty sure hostilities with Japan were impending. The actual date and place was unknown. The date was known as of the morning of the attack, but series of unfortunate errors had that message sent by telegraph, and was rcvd a few hours too late.
That does not mean that General Short and MacArthur had any business being caught with their pants down and their airplanes set up for a perfect attack. As Stimson said “General Short had been told the two essential facts: 1) a war with Japan is threatening, 2) hostile action by Japan is possible at any moment. Given these two facts, both of which were stated without equivocation in the message of Nov. 27, the outpost commander should be on the alert to make his fight … To cluster his airplanes in such groups and positions that in an emergency they could not take the air for several hours, and to keep his antiaircraft ammunition so stored that it could not be promptly and immediately available, and to use his best reconnaissance system, the radar, only for a very small fraction of the day and night, in my opinion betrayed a misconception of his real duty which was almost beyond belief. …”
One interesting thing- had Kimmel sortied and had his squadron caught on the high seas, the losses would have been far greater. The ships would not be recoverable, many more men would have been lost.
He was already engaging in that war; the US Navy was escorting British convoys as far as Iceland with orders to shoot on sight any Axis vessels encountered. Those were acts of war, albeit one that had not been formally declared. Congress also wasn’t really that isolationist; it hadn’t complained about FDR giving the Navy these orders, it had authorized the largest expansion of the US military in history and had authorized the first peacetime draft in US history.
“FDR knew of Pearl Harbor beforehand” sits as solidly in CT status as “the moon landings were faked”. I wouldn’t trust the IHR if it said that water was wet. For those unfamiliar with the Institute for Historical Review, it was founded by a member of the British National Front for the purpose of Holocaust denial. That the war started with an attack on Pearl Harbor came as a surprise, but that the war was coming caught no one in a position of power remotely by surprise. The US and Japan were spoiling for a fight, and neither side was moving from its negotiating position. Once the US placed an embargo on the sale of oil to Japan (the US was the world’s #1 producer and exporter of oil in 1941), war was inevitable. Japan could either leave China to get the US to open the tap again or go to war to take the oil it was being denied oil by force. To do neither would mean Japan’s economy was going to come to a crashing halt when the oil reserves ran out.
A great deal of the war preparations were directed at the Pacific; the Two-Ocean Navy Act passed on July 19, 1940 was the largest naval procurement bill in US history. The US wasn’t going to be using the 18 Essex-class fleet carriers, 7 battleships and 6 battlecruisers it authorized against Germany. Just to note on the issue of Congress being isolationist, the bill was passed by a vote of 316–0 with less than an hour’s debate.
No, but IF the Pacific fleet was sunk, Japan would have had time to complete their conquest of China and to consolidate their positions. By then, their control of Asia would be a fait accompli. At that point, some hoped the Americans would accept the inevitable, and accept some formal apology and some token compensation for their losses.
That showed a complete misreading of the American people. Once a sneak attack came, there was absolutely no chance of anything less than total war, and Japan’s fate was sealed.
WWI had only ended 20 years earlier. While there were some people who expected an attack on the U.S. or more likely, a U.S. territory, the vast majority did not want to be involved in another bloodthirsty European war, or to be involved in a war over China, or any other Far East territory.
If we don’t bother them, they won’t bother us - was the more popular opinion. Until the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor changed most peoples opinions. Somebody was going to get their ass kicked.
Hitler decided a U.S./Japan war would be as good an excuse as any to declare war on the U.S. and unleash unlimited war on the U.S. for aiding Germany’s enemies.
Almost, Japan figured they could get enuf from the DEI, but the Dutch only offered them half of what they needed. And not Japan’s economy but it’s war machine, especially in China. Which I suppose would have a significant effect on it’s economy.
Well, it was a Two-Ocean Navy Act. So yes, Japan figured in, but so did Germany. Note that the Alaska CB wasnt considered a “battlecruiser” by the USN, just a really big cruiser.
And yes, that navy was passed also by the isolationists, who figured a big navy would mean the rest of the world would leave us alone.
Not quite, they were carefully calculated to be *just short *of acts of war. After all, a neutral has the right to protect it’s merchant vessels from attacks by submarines, no?
To be fair, a lot of those votes in favor were Congress seeing this as a huge jobs bill, as the country was still recovering from the Depression.
(And all those ships could always be sold/leased to our Allies to earn money.)
*“The bottom line, however, as has been pointed out before, is that the IJN could have sunk the entire US fleet available on December 1941 and still faced an overwhelming opponent by 1945.” *
The US was out of the Great Depression by June, 1940 and the bill, by far the largest naval appropriations bill in US history, passed unanimously in under an hour. The single bill alone increased the size of the US Navy, already one of the worlds largest, by at least 50%.
I meant Japan’s economy. If I had meant only Japan’s war machine I’d have said so; try running a modern at the time industrial economy in 1941 without any oil.
Read for context. I was responding to a comment that almost all of the preparation was aimed at Germany.
Yes, quite. You are, yet again, wrong. Please try to at least know what I’m talking about before trying to 'correct’ me. See Neutrality Patrols, Convoy escort, bolded parts mine:
HX and ON convoys were convoys of the UK’s merchant ships, and were being provided escort by US Navy warships with orders to shoot on sight at any Axis vessels encountered, which FDR had declared “entered the neutrality zone at their own risk”. Those are all acts of war; they are not by any stretch of the imagination acts calculated to be just short of war.
My mother graduated high school in 1939. Most of the kids in her class figured out what was coming before long. In 1940, she got secretarial training–at government expense. Then got a job at the old training airfield near her house that the government had reactivated.
One guy in her class was a fine musician. He had no intention of serving in some European trench, so he joined the Navy. And was assigned to the band on the Arizona…
My Father was in the 5th Army Air Corps, and also hated McArthur’s guts. The best her could explain to me when I was very young was that McArthur received replacements and didn’t send the guys they were to replace home.
No, Japan had some small oil of it’s own and imported more from Russia, Mexico and the DEI. This was sufficient for peacetime needs. Indeed, they had demanded more from the Dutch who counter-offered with half- which would have been more than enuf for peacetime needs. What they did not have was enough oil to continue the aggression in China and the needs of the IJN. In any case, had Imperial Japan stopped the aggression in China, the embargo would have been lifted.
"*President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared a region of the Atlantic, adjacent to the Americas as the Pan-American Security Zone. Within this zone, United States naval ships escorted convoys bound for Europe. In practice, this greatly aided the United Kingdom, which was largely dependent upon the Atlantic convoys.[1]
The Zone was one of a number of actions taken by the United States that ran counter to its formal state of neutrality. It was set up in October 1939 at US behest by the Declaration of Panama signed by the nations of North and South America. Within the Zone which extended between 300 and 1,000 nautical miles (560 and 1,850 km; 350 and 1,150 mi) offshore, the signatories would not tolerate belligerent acts.*
The Zone prohibited all * “belligerent acts”. In theory*, this would also protect German merchant ships from British subs. From your own cite “and ordered the U.S. Navy to attack any vessel threatening ships under American escort”. In practice, of course the Zone benefited the British. It was bogus, but legal.
This is why it was* theoretically* a neutral act- the USA was protecting any merchant ships inside that zone from belligerent acts. In practice, of course it was 100% biased. The theory is why it wasnt a act of war. Note that the only protest by the Nazis was the fact that the USA would broadcast- in clear- the location of any U-boot… but not British escorts.
And, can you stop with the personal remarks? This is GQ, not the PIT. Thanks.
A couple of things
2) FDR in the 1940 presidential election promised that “American boys would not be sent to fight in foreign wars”. Which did not preclude sending them to fight overseas if attacked. But it was worded to ease fears and get votes after Wendell Wilkie charged FDR was steering the country to war (an earlier charge by Wilkie that America was unprepared was refuted by FDR pointing out he had increased defense spending). Remember, after 1919 there were a lot of people who felt America was tricked by Great Britain and France as to who was winning and by bankers and arms dealers wanting to make money.
2) Lots of people in 1941 thought of the Japanese as being only able to produce cheap knock off goods, not capable of first rate equipment such as a Zero fighter plane. The Pearl Harbor attack was brilliantly conceived and executed. Strategically it was a mistake of grade A proportion but tactically quite dazzling.
3)
