Charles Lindbergh, racist & Nazi sympathizer
codefy
When Lindbergh died in Hawaii did he consider the people there with
any more maturity than when he made his racist comments or did he just
consider them his coolies ?
If there's a Hell I'm sure Lindbergh is roasting there for his racism
& Nazi sympathies.
You have to wonder how Lindbergh's grandson deals with that nasty part
of the legend that he's living off of.
John O.
cod...@aol.com says...
--
John O.
There is no slack in light attack.
S. Sampson
Lindbergh's been dead longer than you've been alive. Only a red-neck
would equate pacifism with sympathism.
JDupre5762
>> Some American hero.
>>
>> When Lindbergh died in Hawaii did he consider the people there with
>> any more maturity than when he made his racist comments or did he just
>> consider them his coolies ?
Lindbergh died in what 1973? There had been a lot of change in Americans views
toward race by that time. I think above all Lindbergh was an American and
while he probably echoed the prevalent racial and isolationist views of the
1920's and 1930's in his heyday, ultimately he would be swayed by performance
and character. By the end of his life he could not have been ignorant of the
Tuskegee Airmen, Chappie James and Jesse Brown let alone Jackie Robinson. I
can't prove it but I dare say he would have rather forgotten any racist remarks
he might have made. Don't forget that after Pearl Harbor Lindbergh volunteered
for active duty and was denied several times by Roosevelt who harbored a grudge
over Lindbergh's comments on the superiority of the Luftwaffe in the late
1930's. A superiority that was as much Roosevelt's responsibility as it was
Hitler's.
Lindbergh's comments in those days were that the German's were so superior to
us and we were so hopelessly outclassed we could not possibly affect the
outcome of a modern war in Europe so why bother. He was right of course the US
Army was not even in the top ten in size in the world. Bulgaria had a larger
standing army. A single Luftflotte in 1940 had more aicraft than the entire US
Army Air Corps.
Lindbergh was guilty more of naivete' than Nazism. Lindbergh was taken in in
many ways by such ruses as the only handful of a bomber type being flown from
factory to factory and put back in the "production line" for him to examine all
over again.
John Dupre'
Gooneybird
"JDupre5762" <jdupr...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20030706081921...@mb-m24.aol.com...
> >"codefy" <cod...@aol.com> wrote
(Snip)
> .....Don't forget that after Pearl Harbor Lindbergh volunteered
> for active duty and was denied several times by Roosevelt who harbored a
grudge
> over Lindbergh's comments on the superiority of the Luftwaffe in the late
> 1930's. A superiority that was as much Roosevelt's responsibility as it was
> Hitler's.
Your biases are showing. Roosevelt took office in the middle of a roaring
depression and was elected not to build a war machine, but to resuscitate the
moribund economy. The public would not have tolerated a rebuilding and
expansion of our military while masses of Americans were still out of work.
> Lindbergh's comments in those days were that the German's were so superior to
> us and we were so hopelessly outclassed we could not possibly affect the
> outcome of a modern war in Europe so why bother. He was right of course.....
He was wrong of course. He had never envisioned that an "arsenal of democracy",
as Roosevelt called it, was even vaguely possible....one that could produce
50,000 warplanes in a year. He may have been right at the time he made that
statement, but he was clearly wrong in the final analysis.
> .....the US Army was not even in the top ten in size in the world. Bulgaria
had a larger
> standing army. A single Luftflotte in 1940 had more aicraft than the entire
US
> Army Air Corps.
>
> Lindbergh was guilty more of naivete' than Nazism. Lindbergh was taken in in
> many ways by such ruses as the only handful of a bomber type being flown from
> factory to factory and put back in the "production line" for him to examine
all
> over again.
At the time he was invited to Germany to be given the wining and dining and
propaganda tour, he went as a private citizen and allowed himself and his good
name to be used by the Nazi Government for their own purposes. He should have
been able to foresee that his involvement with them could not help but rub off
on him, but he went anyway, without our government's blessings. The tarnishing
of his name was the price he paid for his folly.
George Z.
>
> John Dupre'
James Linn
"S. Sampson" <nos...@cox.net> wrote in message
news:rMTNa.615867$vU3.5...@news1.central.cox.net...
Just watched A&E Biography on the man - he was more than sympathetic - he
admired Hitler. At one point he was going to move to Germany(1938), but
Kristallnacht disturbed him and his wife, so he never bought the house and
did move back to America.
I'd have to say that while he was a mechanical genius and great aviator, he
wasn't a great intellectual. He seems to have absorbed the views of some of
his friends and made them his own. While his views on eugenics and Jews were
and are abhorrent, I'm not sure they came from his heart either. He was
caught up in hero worship - of Hitler and others. And he seemed also to be
a contrarians - whatever Roosevelt said was bad. It cost him his Army Air
Corps Career.
And yes he was snowed by the Nazis about the power of the Luftwaffe - they
played him - and he delivered the message the Nazi's wanted -that the
Luftwaffe was invincible. Lindbergh passed the message on to Ambassador
Kennedy - who was more than ready to believe it, being anti British. More
discerning people in the state department took it with a grain of salt.
I'm sure someone here has read a decent biography of the man which covers
this stuff.
James Linn
Cecil Turner
front-line units (flight test and profiling P-38s that resulted in nearly double
operational range). Provides a bit of balance.
rgds,
KTF
George R. Gonzalez
"Cecil Turner" <turn...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:3F082E5D...@mindspring.com...
> >
> Make sure it also covers his work in the Pacific during WWII as a civilian
tech rep in
> front-line units (flight test and profiling P-38s that resulted in nearly
double
> operational range). Provides a bit of balance.
>
> rgds,
> KTF
I've always wondered about this..... I first read abot his range-enhancing
exploits in reader's Digest when I was about 13 yrs old, and it greatly
impressed me at the time.
Since then, I've picked up a few old airplane tech manuals, and at least in
the B-17, B-29, B-24, P-51 ones I've seen, they ALL have charts in the back
with all kinds of airspeed-vs-manifold pressure vs rpm vs range curves.
The B-24 manual IIRC even goes to great lengths explaining the right way to
lean out the engines, and several scary stories about the crews that never
made it back to base because they forgot to go to lean-running mode.
So did the P-38 go out to the pilots without any range vs airspeed vs rpm vs
mixture charts??
Or did the pilots ignore the charts, or what?
Methinks the Linberg story is a bit too neat to be totally correct.
Regards,
George
Cecil Turner
length. Apparently the settings normally used were fuel rich to avoid damaging the
engines (if they supplied the specifics I missed 'em). Lindbergh tested new profiles,
followed by a teardown inspection of the engines to look for damage (there wasn't any),
followed by charting same. Numerous interviews of pilots and mechanics who were there,
all gave glowing endorsements, and said he effectively doubled their range. Followed by
coverage of some long-range raids that were impossible before. It was convincing to me.
rgds,
KTF
Lawrence Dillard
news:SBWNa.18786$Ey6....@rwcrnsc52.ops.asp.att.net...
It may have been a combination of both. "You can tell a fighter pilot, but
you can't tell him very much" is an old saying. Proper understanding of
m.p. vs prop rpm vs airpeed vs range might have saved quite a few engines
and pilots' lives.
>
> Methinks the Linberg story is a bit too neat to be totally correct.
I second your apparent reservations on this matter. The idea of improving
range by appropriate engine manipulation was not at all new. Experienced
transport (including airliner) pilots had known prior to the onset of WWII
that the best economy in the use of fuel involved the cruise regimen.
By dint of trial and error, it became obvious to pilots that if while in
cruise, the a/c were trimmed properly (and due attention paid to this during
the flight), then best fuel economy, and hence the best range, was obtained
by using a combination of high manifold pressure, low prop rpm, and a lean
fuel mixture.
For the P-38, the pilot was supposed to use his drop tanks after takeoff and
forming up, and to employ a high enough manifold pressure as to assure a
swift spin-up to max turbosupercharger speed, in combination with low prop
rpm and auto-lean. The Allison featured a so-called "pent-roof" combustion
chamber, which was supposed to allow for both large power production and
efficient combustion with lean mixtures. When nearing the combat arena, the
P-38 pilot was supposed to switch to internal fuel, drop wing tanks, go from
auto-lean to rich mixture and increase prop rpms; given that the manifold
pressure already was high, the turbosupercharger would spin up to max speed
quickly under the circumstances, the pilot would quickly have max power to
utilize, and he would have the speedy acceleration to combat speed he
desired..
Apparently, many P-38 pilots had been operating under the assumption that a
rather different combination of manifold pressure and rpms (i.e., a somewhat
lower m.p. and higher rpm combination) would give them the fuel economy they
desired and yet allow for swift conversion to combat-ready status; however,
in most cases, the manifold pressure used proved to be too low to allow for
a quick spool-up of the turbosuperchargers (at the very time when more power
was needed Right Now), which was the limiting factor in power production,
and at the same time the prop rpms selected led to too many engine rpms
during cruise, damaging to fuel economy. So the pilot would find both that
he'd used a lot of precious fuel before the fight was on, and that too much
time was needed to accelerate to combat speeds.
Conversely, when a P-38 pilot operated at high m.p. and low prop rpm in lean
mixture, the steps he needed to take (auto-rich, increase prop rpms) would
give him the power and acceleration he wanted faster than if he operated his
engines otherwise, and he would also have burned less fuel prior to entering
combat.
As you note, the tables (if available) would have spelled all this out.
Alternatively, practically any transport pilot could have cleared up any
confusion in a few minutes (if a fighter pilot would have deigned to
listen).
>
>
> Regards,
>
>
> George
>
>
>
Chris Mark
celebrity, I suppose. Many more deserving intellectuals espoused isolationism,
though they are long-forgotten now.
Lindbergh's fate is, however, a reminder of how dangerous it can be to go
against the political tides.
Another, more significant and serious example of this is the poet Robinson
Jeffers, once vastly popular, but condemned to obscurity by his opposition to
US foreign policy. He could write about incest and bestiality and make the
cover of Time magazine, but once he wrote, in his poem "Pearl Harbor," such
lines as, ".... The men who have conspired and labored to embroil this republic
in the wreck of Europe have got their bargain--and a bushel more...." and
"....The war that we have carefully for years provoked Catches us unprepared,
amazed and indignant. Our warships are shot Like sitting ducks and our planes
like nest-birds, both our coasts ridiculously panicked, And our leaders make
orations...." he was professionally dead and his popularity crashed, never to
fully recover.
Like Lindbergh, he hovered around the edges of the culture after the war, a
figure from a past era whose continued presence seems to have made people
uncomfortable.
Jeffers was compared by Freeman Dyson to Einstein, not just because of his
political and social vision but also his desire to discover a broader, truer
sense of the universe and our place in it. Environmentalists like David Brower
were drawn to him, and scientists like Loren Eisley; great historians of
religion like Joseph Campbell and Huston Smith were avid students of Jeffers;
and the photographers Ansel Adams and Edward Weston rooted their understanding
of the sublime in nature, which they tried to capture in their art, in their
reading of Jeffers. Of Tor House, the home in Carmel that Jeffers built for his
strikingly beautiful wife Una with his own hands, stone by stone, incorporating
such things as a meteor fragment and a stone from Ossian's grave, Stewart
Brand, who wrote the classic "How Buildings Learn," said it was "the most
intelligent building per square inch ever built in America."
None of that mattered once Jeffers raised his voice against US foreign policy.
I don't expect A&E, that citadel of intellectualism, to ever run a story on
Robinson Jeffers, but he and Lindbergh seem to have had a lot in common, at
least in their political views (I believe Lindbergh was also a
proto-environmentalist like Jeffers). And they shared a common fate as losers
in a vastly important debate on the position the US should play in the world.
None of this is ancient history as the US is at a strikingly similar crossroads
as it redefines its place in the world post 9-11. In Lindbergh's time, the
opposition was a branch of the Republican party. This time the opposition is a
branch of the Democratic party. That's about all that has changed.
Chris Mark
Denyav
>crossroads
>as it redefines its place in the world post 9-11. In Lindbergh's time, the
>opposition was a branch of the Republican party. This time the opposition is
>a
>branch of the Democratic party.
Thats true but with a very important difference,today the Straussians in the
administration represent Global Military Power and the opposition represents
Global Financial Power.
Since the days of Athens and Sparta many pure military powers bowed to the more
sophisticated powers.
Maybe it explains the Now or Never mentality of many Straussians.
suckthis.com
Tiger
Don't take things out of context. Lindbergh was not any more
racist than anybody else in 1940's America. He thought the Germans had a
good air force and they gave him the red carpet treatment when he was
over there. He was a pro neutrality guy, but later flew some combat in
the Pacific in P38's ( unofficially got 2 kills). Your venom is really
off target here.
Tiger
James Linn wrote:
> "S. Sampson" <nos...@cox.net> wrote in message
> news:rMTNa.615867$vU3.5...@news1.central.cox.net...
> > "codefy" <cod...@aol.com> wrote
> > > Some American hero.
> > >
> > > When Lindbergh died in Hawaii did he consider the people there with
> > > any more maturity than when he made his racist comments or did he just
> > > consider them his coolies ?
> > >
> > > If there's a Hell I'm sure Lindbergh is roasting there for his racism
> > > & Nazi sympathies.
> > >
> > > You have to wonder how Lindbergh's grandson deals with that nasty part
> > > of the legend that he's living off of.
> >
> > Lindbergh's been dead longer than you've been alive. Only a red-neck
> > would equate pacifism with sympathism.
>
> Just watched A&E Biography on the man - he was more than sympathetic - he
> admired Hitler. At one point he was going to move to Germany(1938), but
> Kristallnacht disturbed him and his wife, so he never bought the house and
> did move back to America.
Some timetimes we all need a face slap to wake us up.
>
>
> I'd have to say that while he was a mechanical genius and great aviator, he
> wasn't a great intellectual. He seems to have absorbed the views of some of
> his friends and made them his own. While his views on eugenics and Jews were
> and are abhorrent, I'm not sure they came from his heart either. He was
> caught up in hero worship - of Hitler and others. And he seemed also to be
> a contrarians - whatever Roosevelt said was bad. It cost him his Army Air
> Corps Career.
Most folks of the time wouldn't shed a tear if you hung a black man from a tree
either. And Jews didn't have a large fan club either. Times change as does
morality. Hittler had fans here & in the UK. Some misguided folk still
are......
>
>
> And yes he was snowed by the Nazis about the power of the Luftwaffe - they
> played him - and he delivered the message the Nazi's wanted -that the
> Luftwaffe was invincible. Lindbergh passed the message on to Ambassador
> Kennedy - who was more than ready to believe it, being anti British. More
> discerning people in the state department took it with a grain of salt.
>
> I'm sure someone here has read a decent biography of the man which covers
> this stuff.
>
> James Linn
Well till the Battle of Britan they were unbeaten.......
Tiger
"George R. Gonzalez" wrote:
The guys were a little too busy staying out of someone's gun sight to
experiment. Their training didn't push such things ether.
Tom Cervo
was denied several times by Roosevelt who harbored a grudge over Lindbergh's
comments on the superiority of the Luftwaffe in the late 1930's.
He tried to resume his Col.'s commission in the reserve. It's a little leaden
of him to insist on that; had he shown up at an enlistment office they would
have had to take him and he would have lasted about a week as a private;
national outcry would have insisted he take the role his talents suited him to.
> A superiority that was as much Roosevelt's responsibility as it was Hitler's.
I think you must mean Congress here.
> Lindbergh's comments in those days were that the German's were so superior to
us and we were so hopelessly outclassed we could not possibly affect the
outcome of a modern war in Europe so why bother.
Actually it was such comments to the British "Cliveden" set that confirmed
their appeasement policies. Lindbergh's comments about the prowess of German
bombers created visions of London in ruins, but in fact the bombers then in
service--the ones he had seen in Germany--had the range for Britain only
without a bombload. Now, if he was the aeronautical genius he was claimed to
be, he would have noticed this. Yet he reported otherwise. He was a dupe or a
co-conspirator.
> He was right of course the US Army was not even in the top ten in size in the
world. Bulgaria had a larger standing army. A single Luftflotte in 1940 had
more aicraft than the entire
>US Army Air Corps.
"Standing"? Try figure in the reserves and the National Guard into that--as
well as America's industrial capacity, the wonder of the world in 1940. As for
that Luftflotte, try figuring in the orders placed in 1940--more than the
Luftwaffe posessed.
>Lindbergh was taken in many ways by such ruses as the only handful of a bomber
type being flown from factory to factory and put back in the "production line"
for him to examine all
>over again.
Well, check out the big brain on Lindy. No wonder the AAF didn't want him back.
Can't see them tricking someone like Doolittle like this.
JDupre5762
>depression and was elected not to build a war machine, but to resuscitate the
>moribund economy. The public would not have tolerated a rebuilding and
>expansion of our military while
>masses of Americans were still out of work.
Why not? Thousands of Americans could have served and thousands more could
have been building the weapons and bases that were going to be needed. They
could have been working in the factories and shipyards that would have had us
better prepared for WW2. Roosevelt got it spectacularly wrong. 1937 was
probably the second worst year of the depression after 5 years of Roosevelt's
handling. The only thing that saved the economy was the increasing orders for
military goods from European countries that were a lot closer to the threat
than the U.S. During the 1930's the Navy was reduced to recommissioning WW1
era destroyers that had been laid up since 1919. The Army practiced with WW1
era tanks with logs in place of guns. A judicious military spending program
would have had a better effect on the economy than the CCC or WPA.
Roosevelt was a magnetic personality and a tremendously popular leader. The
substance of his war plan was right on and probably no other U.S. politician
would have gotten on as well with Churchill but he had as many flaws as
Lindbergh and his did more to prolong the war.
John Dupre'
The Enlightenment
"codefy" <cod...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:b3c960d1.03070...@posting.google.com...
The majority of US citizens shared Charles Linderghs views. They wanted to
avoid a war.
There is coverage of the affair, "Lindburghs Des Moines Speech" in this
article (70 page preface, the book is excellent):
http://www.csulb.edu/~kmacd/Preface.htm
They can't be called Anti-Semitic. When Lindburgh points out that some
Jewish groups want to get the US into war he was telling the simple truth
and he sympathizes with them.
Also remember there was no 'holocaust' at this time and no 'holocaust
industry' to raise consiciouncess of it. That didn't really exist till
1968. (I think a case can be made for arguing that without full blown US
and UK involvement there never would have been a holocaust; the Nazis wanted
to expell jews and break their social power in media, banking, finance,
proffesions and worked at re-settling them in Palestine on the basis of the
Balfur declaration or resettling in Madagascar etc. Highly assimilated jews
could survive in the German military eg the first officer of the Bismark was
jewish)
Roosevelt had to work very hard to get the US into war against Germany. US
destroyers escorting convoys were attacking German u-boats for almost 1 year
while the Germans did not fire back and the rare incidents when u-boats did
fire back were hyped as much as possible. By the time Pearl Harbour came
about Hitler did not have a choice as he was locked into treaties with the
Japanese.
The Case for Pearl Harbor Revisionism
http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/vol1no2/ss-pearlharbor.html
If you look at the state of the world today, the destruction of white people
in Europe, and the US Lindbergh was absolutely correct. Another war would
finnish the white race and it effectvely has. Some, like you (I suspect
you are jewish?), might consider that a good thing.
Bill Silvey
news:7u4Oa.3602$oN.1...@newsfeeds.bigpond.com
> Also remember there was no 'holocaust' at this time and no 'holocaust
> industry' to raise consiciouncess of it. That didn't really exist
> till 1968. (I think a case can be made for arguing that without
> full blown US and UK involvement there never would have been a
> holocaust; the Nazis wanted to expell jews and break their social
> power in media, banking, finance, proffesions and worked at
> re-settling them in Palestine on the basis of the Balfur declaration
> or resettling in Madagascar etc. Highly assimilated jews could
> survive in the German military eg the first officer of the Bismark
> was jewish)
This is either monumental ignorance or an apology for the some of the worst
monsters in history.
--
http://www.delversdungeon.dragonsfoot.org
Remove the X's in my email address to respond.
"Damn you Silvey, and your endless fortunes." - Stephen Weir
I hate furries.
Lawrence Dillard
> >> Some American hero.
> >>
> >> When Lindbergh died in Hawaii did he consider the people there with
> >> any more maturity than when he made his racist comments or did he just
> >> consider them his coolies ?
>
> Lindbergh died in what 1973? There had been a lot of change in Americans
views
> toward race by that time. I think above all Lindbergh was an American and
> while he probably echoed the prevalent racial and isolationist views of
the
> 1920's and 1930's in his heyday, ultimately he would be swayed by
performance
> and character.
Seems to me that the essence of a Great Man is to be able to see beyond
conventional wisdom and to examine persons and situations independently and
reach one's own conclusions and where possible, act on them. When it came to
race and to anti-Semitism, Mr. Lindbergh, although IIRC a minister's son,
seems not to have conducted such a self-examination. One wonders whether
Lindbergh ever was in touch with the so-called "average American" or whether
he could recognize and relate to views other than those fashionable in the
circles in which he habituated.
By the end of his life he could not have been ignorant of the
> Tuskegee Airmen, Chappie James and Jesse Brown let alone Jackie Robinson.
I
> can't prove it but I dare say he would have rather forgotten any racist
remarks
> he might have made. Don't forget that after Pearl Harbor Lindbergh
volunteered
> for active duty and was denied several times by Roosevelt who harbored a
grudge
> over Lindbergh's comments on the superiority of the Luftwaffe in the late
> 1930's. A superiority that was as much Roosevelt's responsibility as it
was
> Hitler's.
Actually, FDR desired to harness the charisma and persuasiveness which
Lindbergh possessed. Although FDR was certain, because of access to sources
of his own, independent of Lindbergh's, that Nazi Germany's aircraft
industry had not the prowess its propaganda claimed for it, and that the US
armaments industry, and especially the aircraft portion thereof, could be
resuscitated and could become strong enough in a rather short period of time
so as to be able to interpose effectively against any expansionist ambitions
held by the Axis, it is apparently not widely known that FDR, in the wake of
Lindbergh's German tour, offered the latter the position of US aircraft
acquisition czar, with wide delegation of authority in overseeing US R&D and
contracting; he wanted Lindbergh "on the team" instead of jeering from the
sidelines and counseling caution, if not defeatism. Lindbergh refused,
believing that FDR merely wanted to remove an irritating naysayer and
silence his independent voice of opposition.
Whereas FDR's attitude was "We'll show them!", Lindbergh's attitude
reflected a certain defeatism, "We'll never be able to match them, and let's
not waste our energies trying to" attitude, and he appeared to be ready to
accept a second-rate status for the US in world affairs, because intimidated
by a Nazi/Axis show of force.
As for his return to active duty, I submit that such a thing would have
opened a can of worms. Would Lindbergh have been able to submit to military
discipline? Would he have been able to contribute effectively in a system
where his word or opinion was not necessarily considered tantamount to
revelation?
It is well to remember that no nation, including the US, forced the Nazis to
re-arm in defiance of the WWI peace accords. FDR bore no responsibility for
the collapse of the world-wide economy, other than to try to bring the US
portion of it back to life.
> Lindbergh's comments in those days were that the German's were so superior
to
> us and we were so hopelessly outclassed we could not possibly affect the
> outcome of a modern war in Europe so why bother. He was right of course
the US
> Army was not even in the top ten in size in the world. Bulgaria had a
larger
> standing army. A single Luftflotte in 1940 had more aircraft than the
entire US
> Army Air Corps.
Again, a Great Man has to have matching vision. In this case, he seemed
determined to Think Small and seemed to lack an understanding of the latent
manufacturing potential of the US, which was still badly scarred by the
economic depression of the 1930's. As is well-known, once Gen Marshall's
system was in place, the US began producing trained divisions at such a pace
that, for example, WS Churchill initially could not comprehend how it was
being done. Lindbergh could not envision a dramatic increase in the number
of training a/c, pilots, transports, bombers, fighters, etc. which the US
proved to be capable of producing in relatively short order. Lindbergh also
appears to have missed out on the inter-allied information interchange which
kick-started US electronics and airframe development efforts.
Lindbergh was rightly called "Lucky Lindy" due to his successful solo
Atlantic crossing. However, the intense and universal celebrity (and wealth)
that became attached to him attendant thereto seems to have caused him, (as
well as many a person in other fields), to wrongly consider himself expert
at everything to which he turned his attention, and to believe that his
every opinion was sacrosanct. But Lindbergh was not a trained engineer, as
he demonstrated when the Nazis showed him around their alleged production
facilities, and was clueless in assessing the current and potential
industrial prowess of the US. Any of Gen Marshall's top staff could have
told him that the US would expand its army many-fold in a brief time, if
tasked to do so. Any of Adm Stark's top staff could have alerted him to the
swelling size and strength of the US Navy, similarly.
>
> Lindbergh was guilty more of naivete' than Nazism. Lindbergh was taken in
> many ways by such ruses as the only handful of a bomber type being flown
from
> factory to factory and put back in the "production line" for him to
examine all
> over again.
According to author "Ladislas Farago", intercepted German documents showed
that the Germans considered Lindbergh to be akin to one of their propaganda
agents who could be relied upon to cause their sentiments to become widely
heard in the US. They were especially impressed by Lindbergh's expressed
anti-Semitism.
SNIP
The Enlightenment
> "The Enlightenment" <bern...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
> news:7u4Oa.3602$oN.1...@newsfeeds.bigpond.com
> > Also remember there was no 'holocaust' at this time and no 'holocaust
> > industry' to raise consiciouncess of it. That didn't really exist
> > till 1968. (I think a case can be made for arguing that without
> > full blown US and UK involvement there never would have been a
> > holocaust; the Nazis wanted to expell jews and break their social
> > power in media, banking, finance, proffesions and worked at
> > re-settling them in Palestine on the basis of the Balfur declaration
> > or resettling in Madagascar etc. Highly assimilated jews could
> > survive in the German military eg the first officer of the Bismark
> > was jewish)
>
> This is either monumental ignorance or an apology for the some of the worst
> monsters in history.
Try and take apart my points one by one.
Gooneybird
"Bill Silvey" <bxsxixl...@cfl.rr.com> wrote in message
news:3V4Oa.37491$bK5.7...@twister.tampabay.rr.com...
> news:7u4Oa.3602$oN.1...@newsfeeds.bigpond.com
> > Also remember there was no 'holocaust' at this time and no 'holocaust
> > industry' to raise consiciouncess of it. That didn't really exist
> > till 1968. (I think a case can be made for arguing that without
> > full blown US and UK involvement there never would have been a
> > holocaust; the Nazis wanted to expell jews and break their social
> > power in media, banking, finance, proffesions and worked at
> > re-settling them in Palestine on the basis of the Balfur declaration
> > or resettling in Madagascar etc. Highly assimilated jews could
> > survive in the German military eg the first officer of the Bismark
> > was jewish)
>
> This is either monumental ignorance or an apology for the some of the worst
> monsters in history.
Sounds to me like some Ozzie revisionist trying to deny that the Holocaust
happened. Anyone old enough to remember seeing the newspaper pictures of
emaciated, stripe-clad corpses stacked up like cordwood taken at Dachau with
American troops standing around holding their noses so they wouldn't have to
smell the stench of death knows that it happened. His comment about the Nazis
wanting to expel Jews is not only laughable as well as wildly untrue, but
reflect his anti-Semitic biases and prejudices.....he capitalizes "Nazis", but
"jews" only rate a lower case. Just as a WAG, he's probably some pimply-faced
snotnose who wasn't even alive in those days, so how would he know about
anything like that? Probably read all about it in one of those off-the-wall
comic books.
George Z.
The Enlightenment
"Gooneybird" <Gooney...@charter.net.nospam> wrote in message
news:vgirfgg...@corp.supernews.com...
>
> "Bill Silvey" <bxsxixl...@cfl.rr.com> wrote in message
> news:3V4Oa.37491$bK5.7...@twister.tampabay.rr.com...
> > "The Enlightenment" <bern...@yahoo.com.au> wrote in message
> > news:7u4Oa.3602$oN.1...@newsfeeds.bigpond.com
> > > Also remember there was no 'holocaust' at this time and no 'holocaust
> > > industry' to raise consiciouncess of it. That didn't really exist
> > > till 1968. (I think a case can be made for arguing that without
> > > full blown US and UK involvement there never would have been a
> > > holocaust; the Nazis wanted to expell jews and break their social
> > > power in media, banking, finance, proffesions and worked at
> > > re-settling them in Palestine on the basis of the Balfur declaration
> > > or resettling in Madagascar etc. Highly assimilated jews could
> > > survive in the German military eg the first officer of the Bismark
> > > was jewish)
> >
> > This is either monumental ignorance or an apology for the some of the
worst
> > monsters in history.
>
> Sounds to me like some Ozzie revisionist trying to deny that the Holocaust
> happened.
I didn't say that, you did. Now why did you say that? Becuase you want to
attack me not my points and you do so by applying the ready made sticker of
holocuast denier and all that comes with it?
The tactic of a raving coward.
Holocuast Denier is the pejorative term for holocaust revisionist.
Incidently deathes in Ausschwitz have fallen from 4 million to a plausible
figure of between 500,000 - 800,000. That is official and the result of the
release of ex soviet archives. Still a very substantial number.
Now does that upset you?
Now I did not even dispute numbers, I merely pointed out that the Germans
tried expulsion first and why they tried it. I also pointed out that some
Jews served with the German armed forces throughout the war, sometimes at
high rank.
I did this to point out that from the point of view of americans in the 1939
there were no major attrocities for Ameicans or Charles Lindburgh to focus
on.
People did know that millions could die however if a full blown war occured.
> Anyone old enough to remember seeing the newspaper pictures of
> emaciated, stripe-clad corpses stacked up like cordwood taken at Dachau
with
> American troops standing around holding their noses so they wouldn't have
to
> smell the stench of death knows that it happened.
> His comment about the Nazis
> wanting to expel Jews is not only laughable as well as wildly untrue,
What percentage of German Jews escaped or were expelled? You will find
that the majority did.
Were there restellements in Palestine?
Were the Poles and Germans expelling each others jews to each other?
Did Poland invade czecholovakia just after Germany did?
It seems you are reacting emotionally.
> but
> reflect his anti-Semitic biases and prejudices.....he capitalizes "Nazis",
but
> "jews" only rate a lower case.
Very trite
> Just as a WAG, he's probably some pimply-faced
> snotnose who wasn't even alive in those days, so how would he know about
> anything like that? Probably read all about it in one of those
off-the-wall
> comic books.
I'm not interested in your froting rabid name calling. It is clear however
that you are violently attached to a particular opinion, this is why you
are angry. The world is not as it should be. You view is not confirmed!
>
> George Z.
Now read my points and if I made an incorrect statement then point it out.
I simply do not believe in the orthodoxy. WW2 could have been avoided and
less people would have died, including I think jews.
I will not conduct debate with you further.
Ed Gein
news:20030706212549...@mb-m07.aol.com:
> Why not? Thousands of Americans could have served and thousands
> more could have been building the weapons and bases that were
> going to be needed. They could have been working in the factories
> and shipyards that would have had us better prepared for WW2.
Um, no. You're wrong.
Let's pretend that in 1935 Ford's Dearborn plant was assembling
tanks instead of Model A coupes. First of all, these will be
1930s era tanks, obsolete within five years. Second, where is
the money to pay for these tanks coming from? It's a depression,
and tax revenues are in the toilet. Furthermore, you've got to
pay for people to man these tanks, people to maintain them, shells
to arm them, and transporters to move them to the front, all at
wages below the prevailing minimum at the time.
But with the plant churning out those Model A coupes, you're
employing people at Ford, at Goodyear, at the subcontractors,
at the oil companies, all without a single dime spent by the
Federal government. Instead, these employees are making a
decent living, paying taxes and, when the time came, buying
bonds to support the building of a modern armed force.
War is a revenue sink, not a revenue source. As my EC101
prof liked to say, "War is shitty economics".
> Roosevelt got it spectacularly wrong.
Thank God. Had the US tried to build the so-called "Arsenal
of Democracy" before 1940, the USAAC would have entered the
war with 10,000 P-26 Peashooters.
Even the Italians with their CR.42s would have busted a gut
laughing.
Your fiend,
Ed
vincent p. norris
merely point out that the following remark is mistaken :
> Second, where is the money to pay for these tanks coming from? It's a depression,
>and tax revenues are in the toilet.
Economists have understood since the mid-30s that the SOLUTION to
depression is for government expenditures to EXCEED tax revenues.
That creates employment, and thus income, and is the way out of the
depression.
Indeed, it was the spending on military build-up that brought the
economy out of the Great Depression of the 1930s.
(This is not to deny the role of other measures, such as monetary
policy, in combatting depression.)
vince norris
Lawrence Dillard
"Lawrence Dillard" <lawr...@gbronline.com> wrote in message news:...
> "JDupre5762" <jdupr...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:20030706081921...@mb-m24.aol.com...
> > >"codefy" <cod...@aol.com> wrote
> > >> Some American hero.
> > >>
> > >> When Lindbergh died in Hawaii did he consider the people there with
just
The Enlightenment
> I don't want to take sides in the main issue being disputed here, but
> merely point out that the following remark is mistaken :
>
> > Second, where is the money to pay for these tanks coming from? It's a depression,
> >and tax revenues are in the toilet.
>
> Economists have understood since the mid-30s that the SOLUTION to
> depression is for government expenditures to EXCEED tax revenues.
But only by a small amount and only when needed. Consistant increases
of the money supply (often driven by fanatic welfare-stateism,
pork-barrelling of electorates are as bad and far more common as the
consistant under expenditure that occured in the depression.
>
> That creates employment, and thus income, and is the way out of the
> depression.
Over protectionism was also an element.
>
> Indeed, it was the spending on military build-up that brought the
> economy out of the Great Depression of the 1930s.
I think this is somewhat of a myth with some truth. There are better
ways to galvanise an economy. To an extent the WW2 economies were all
command economies with elements of market theory.
>
> (This is not to deny the role of other measures, such as monetary
> policy, in combatting depression.)
You are talking about monetary policy.
>
> vince norris
vincent p. norris
Enlightenment) wrote:
>vincent p. norris <vp...@psu.edu> wrote in message news:<hhkugvg619d1tfvm5...@4ax.com>...
>> I don't want to take sides in the main issue being disputed here, but
>> merely point out that the following remark is mistaken :
>>
>> > Second, where is the money to pay for these tanks coming from? It's a depression,
>> >and tax revenues are in the toilet.
>>
>> Economists have understood since the mid-30s that the SOLUTION to
>> depression is for government expenditures to EXCEED tax revenues.
>
>But only by a small amount and only when needed.
OF COURSE only when needed! But by definition, it is needed during a
depression! And a "small amount," sometimes known as "pump priming,"
may be insufficient, as we learned from experience.
>> Indeed, it was the spending on military build-up that brought the
>> economy out of the Great Depression of the 1930s.
>
>I think this is somewhat of a myth with some truth.
You're free to think whatever you please, but damn few mainstream
economists, if any, would agree with you.
>You are talking about monetary policy.
Negative! I was talking about FISCAL policy. See any economics
textbook on the topics of fiscal policy and monetary policy
vince norris
Joseph Cutler
Recognize that even in this position he was still commenting that
"What we are doing to the Japs in the Pacific is the same as what the
Germans are doing to the Jews".
Certainly some sickening moral relativism.
The Enlightenment
"Joseph Cutler" <cut...@wlu.edu> wrote in message
news:85f0247b.03072...@posting.google.com...
A fine man, and honourable and courageous man who achieved more than you
will ever dream of.
A man who put together the finance and funding of an aircraft that for the
first time crossed an ocean non stop.
He rushed to fight for his country in WW1 and was courageous enough to speak
plainly to try and keep the interests of his people foremost by keeping his
nation out of another stupid bloody war fought on behalf of elites in other
nations, ethnic interests not those of the USA and those that would usurp
and misuse this nation.
http://theoccidentalquarterly.com/vol1no2/ss-pearlharbor.html
The Case for Pearl Harbor Revisionism
Stephen J. Sniegoski
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
The prevalent view of World War II is that of the "good war"--a Manichaean
conflict between good and evil. And a fundamental part of the "good war"
thesis has to do with the entrance of the U.S. into the war as a result of
the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. According to this view, the cause of
the war stemmed from the malign effort by Japan, run by aggressive
militarists, to conquer the Far East and the Western Pacific, which was part
of the overall Axis goal of global conquest. Japan's imperialistic quest
was clearly immoral and severely threatened vital American interests,
requiring American opposition. Since American territory stood in the way of
Japanese territorial designs, the Japanese launched their sneak attack on
Pearl Harbor. Although the Roosevelt administration had been aware of
Japanese aggressive goals, the attack on Pearl Harbor caught it completely
by surprise. To the extent that any Americans were responsible for the
debacle at Pearl Harbor, establishment historians, echoing the Roosevelt
administration, blamed the military commanders in Hawaii for being
unprepared. A basic assumption of the mainstream position is that given the
Japanese bent to conquest, war with the U.S. was inevitable. As mainstream
historians Gordon W. Prange, Donald M. Goldstein and Katherine V. Dillon put
it: "nothing in the available evidence . . . indicates that they [the
Japanese] ever planned to move one inch out of their appointed path,
whatever the U. S. did about it."1 There was nothing the U. S. could do to
avert war short of sacrificing vital security interests and the essence of
international morality.
A small group of revisionist investigators have disputed this orthodox
interpretation at almost every turn. Revisionists argue that, instead of
following an aggressive plan of conquest, Japanese moves were fundamentally
defensive efforts to protect vital Japanese interests. And instead of
seeing the U. S. simply reacting to Japanese aggression, as the orthodox
version would have it, the revisionists see the U. S. goading the
Japanese--by aiding China (with whom Japan was at war), military expansion,
quasi-secret alliances, and economic warfare--to take belligerent actions.
Finally, some revisionists go so far as to claim that Roosevelt had
foreknowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor but refused to alert the
military commanders in order to have a casus belli to galvanize the American
people for war. These revisionists see the effort as part of Roosevelt's
effort to bring the U. S. into war with Germany--the so-called
"back-door-to-war" thesis.
Revisionism began before the end of World War II and reflected the views of
the non-interventionists who had opposed American entry into the war.
Prominent figures in the revisionist camp include Charles Beard, Harry Elmer
Barnes, George Morgenstern and Charles C. Tansill in the 1940s and 1950s;
James J. Martin and Percy Greaves in the 1960s and 1970s; and more recently
John Toland and Robert B. Stinnett. And some writers have accepted parts of
the revisionist position but rejected others. The idea that American
foreign policy provoked the Japanese into more belligerent actions, for
example, has gained more adherents than the view that President Roosevelt
intentionally allowed the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor. This essay,
however, will not present a historiographical discussion of the revisionist
literature bringing out the similarities and differences of the various
revisionist authors' writings. This has been done elsewhere, most notably
by Frank Paul Mintz in his Revisionism and the Origins of Pearl Harbor.2
This essay will try to elucidate the major revisionist themes and to show
their validity. In short, this essay hopes to provide what its title
proclaims: "The Case for Pearl Harbor Revisionism."
The Causes of Japanese Expansionism
Revisionists have focused on the underlying causes of Japanese expansionism
in an effort to counter the mainstream view of the nefarious nature of
Japanese policy. As Frank Paul Mintz writes:
The revisionists demonstrated--and quite compellingly in some cases--that it
makes for a poor historical interpretation to condemn Japan without coming
to grips with the strategic, demographic, and economic problems which were
at the root of Japan's--not to mention any nation's--imperialism.3
Revisionists emphasize that the Japanese had vital economic and security
interests in China. Lacking in natural resources, Japan had especially
depended upon foreign markets. Thus, access to China became absolutely
essential to Japan's economic well-being when, with the onset of the Great
Depression, most industrialized countries established nearly insurmountable
trade barriers.4 Instead of being an aggressor, Japan had been essentially
satisfied with the status quo in China at the start of the 1930s, but as the
decade progressed, the forces of Chinese communism and nationalisn
threatened Japenese interests in China. "It seemed to Tokyo," Charles C.
Tansill wrote, "that Japanese interests in North China were about to be
crushed between the millstones of Chinese nationalism and Russian
Bolshevism."5
The revisionists portray the Japanese interests in China as similar to
American interests in Latin America. As Anthony Kubek writes:
The U.S. had its danger zone in the Caribbean and since the era of Thomas
Jefferson, every effort had been to strengthen the American position and to
keep foreign nations from establishing naval and military bases which would
threaten American security. So Japan regarded Manchuria. Japan followed
this natural policy and attempted to practice it with reference to the lands
that bordered upon the China Sea. Korea, Manchuria, and Inner Mongolia were
essential pillars of her defense structure.6
While the establishment interpretation emphasizes that the Japanese
incursion into China was a violation of Chinese territorial integrity, the
revisionists point out that the U. S. was highly selective in applying this
standard. During the inter-war period, the Soviet Union had converted Outer
Mongolia into a satellite and secured de facto control over Sinkiang, yet
the State Department never protested Moscow's violations of Chinese
sovereignty. And Japanese actions in China were, in part, taken as
defensive measures against the growing threat of Soviet Communism. Looking
beyond the moral and legal aspects, revisionists maintain that Japanese
interests in China did not portend further aggression into Southeast Asia or
threaten vital American interests. Rather, American actions-- aid to China,
military expansion, and economic sanctions--purportedly intended to deter
Japanese aggression actually served to induce such aggression into Southeast
Asia and ultimately led to the Japanese attack on American territory. This
is not to say that there were not extremist, militarist elements in Japan
who sought military conquest. But in the immediate pre-Pearl Harbor period,
the Japanese government was run by more moderate elements who sought to
maintain peace with the U. S. and who were undermined by American
intransigence. As Bruce Russett writes:
This analysis is meant to establish an important proposition: that the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and for that matter on Southeast Asia, is
not evidence of any unlimited expansionist policy or capability by the
Japanese government. It was the consequence only of a much less ambitious
goal, centering on an unwillingness to surrender the position that the
Japanese had fought for years to establish in China. When that refusal met
an equal American determination that Japan should give up many of her gains
in China, the result was war. Japanese expansion into Southeast Asia
originated less in strength than in weakness; it was predominantly
instrumental to the China campaign, not a reach for another slice of global
salami. Of course, there were Japanese political and military leaders with
wider ambitions, but they were not predominant in policy-making.7
Anti-Japanese Provocations
In the two years prior to Pearl Harbor, the U.S. took a number of hostile
actions against the Japanese. While the orthodox version portrays this as
an effort to deter Japanese aggression, revisionists see this as a
deliberate means of provoking war. Robert B. Stinnett, a recent revisionist,
goes so far as to claim that the ways to goad the Japanese into war were
explicitly spelled out in an "eight action memo" by Lt. Commander Arthur H.
McCollum, head of the Far East Section at the Office of Naval Intelligence,
which was dated October 7, 1940. President Roosevelt adopted McCollum's
proposals. "Throughout 1941 . . .," Stinnett writes, "provoking Japan into
an overt act of war was the principal policy that guided FDR's actions
toward Japan."8 These anti-Japanese provocative actions would fall into
three categories: aid to China; military aggressiveness that included
military agreements with the British and Dutch; and economic sanctions
against the Japan.
Aid to China
It should be pointed out that the U.S. had, since the turn of the century,
provided vocal support for the territorial integrity of China, with emphasis
on the "Open Door" that rejected economic spheres of interest by foreign
countries. And American military strategists had long envisioned a future
war with Japan. However, it was not until the Roosevelt administration that
vocal support turned into action. By 1940, the U.S. was providing
substantial support for China, which had been at war with Japan since 1937.
During that year, the U. S. loaned China $125 million.9 In 1941, the U.S.
extended Lend-Lease to China, which enabled China to receive American war
materials without involving payment. The U.S. government covertly sponsored
an American-manned air force for China--General Claire Chennault's American
Volunteer Group or the "Flying Tigers." Although officially "volunteers,"
they were actually closely connected to the American military.10 Under the
law of neutrality as traditionally understood, a neutral state is obliged to
treat the belligerents with strict impartiality, which means abstaining from
providing any of them military support. Obviously, the U.S. was not acting
as a "neutral" in the Japanese-Chinese conflict and, by the current
"harboring terrorists"standard invoked by the U.S. in Afghanistan, provided
justification for the Japanese to make war on it.
The effect of American aid to China was to stiffen Chinese resistance, thus
precluding any type of peaceful settlement favorable to the Japanese. The
Japanese actually looked to the U.S. to mediate the war in China and thus
help to extricate them from an exhausting stalemate. As non-revisionist
historian Jonathan G. Utley observes:
They [U.S. government officials] could have ended the fighting by fashioning
a compromise settlement, but they saw no future in that. It was better to
let the fighting continue to its inevitable conclusion, a military debacle
that would drag down the Japanese militarists.11
It was Japan's inability to terminate the war with China successfully that
motivated its military expansion elsewhere.
Secret Commitments
In the first part of 1941, joint military staff conferences took place
between the Americans, British, Canadians, and the Dutch to develop plans
for global war against the Axis, although the U.S. was not yet a
belligerent. Of greatest importance for the Pacific theater was a meeting
in Singapore in April 1941 between the Americans, British, and Dutch. Out
of this meeting came the ADB (sometimes called ABCD because of the Canadian
involvement in the other meetings) agreement, which committed the conferees
to joint action to fight Japan if Japanese forces crossed a geographic line
that approximated the northerly extremity of the Dutch East Indies. War
would result if Japan invaded British or Dutch territories in Southern Asia
or moved into neutral Thailand. In essence, Roosevelt had committed the
U.S. to war even if American territory were not attacked. And he had
committed the U.S. to war even if the Japanese did not fire the first shot.
Prange, Goldstein, and Dillon try to argue that the ADB agreement did not
actually commit the U.S. to make war but only "outlined the military
strategy to be followed if the U.S. joined the conflict."12 This
interpretation, however, ignores the fact that central to the ADB agreement
was the criterion for joining the conflict--the Japanese crossing of a
particular geographical line. Even one of the early defenders of the
Roosevelt administration, Herbert Feis, acknowledged this significance in
his history: "Had not the Japanese struck at Pearl Harbor and the
Philippines, this line would have become the boundary between war and
peace."13
Though America's commitment to the ADB agreement was only verbal, the
British and Dutch took it as a solid commitment, and the U.S. armed forces
drew up a war plan in harmony with it, which became known as WPL 46. When
the Japanese actually crossed the critical geographic line in December 1941,
the Dutch invoked the ADB and were expecting help from the U.S. Navy in
repelling the Japanese.. Obviously, the Dutch believed the U.S. would back
them up, since they would hardly dare to face the mighty Japanese military
by themselves.14
That the U.S. was preparing military opposition to an armed Japanese advance
southward is illustrated by actions as well as words. For this was the
whole purpose of American buildup of air power in the Philippines, discussed
in the next section. Certainly, the message conveyed to the British and
Dutch as well as the Japanese was that the U.S. would go to war even if its
territory were not attacked.
According to the U.S. Constitution, of course, the U.S. could not just make
war because of the President's military commitment. Only Congress has the
power to declare war. Roosevelt needed an armed incident with Japan so as to
have the public support to comply with his commitment to war. (Roosevelt did
promise "armed support" to the British prior to a declaration of war.15)
Without such an incident, a declaration of war to counter a Japanese armed
advance southward would have been politically difficult, if not impossible.
That is why Pearl Harbor was a godsend from Roosevelt's standpoint.
Historian Robert Smith Thompson shows that the military action planned by
the Americans, British, and Dutch went beyond simply a defensive effort to
stop a Japanese aggressive move southward. They actually planned to go on
the offensive. Thompson writes:
First, the ABD powers intended to confine Japan 'as nearly as possible to
the defense of her main islands.' Second, they proposed to 'cut Japan off
from all sea communications with China and the outside world by intensive
action in the air and waters around Japan, and to destroy by air attack her
war industries.
Two months before the Pearl Harbor attack, that is, the U.S. of America was
party to a secret international agreement to firebomb Japan.16
Military Build-Up and Provocations
In order to carry out its anti-Japanese policy, the United States was
building up its military strength in the Far East. In 1940, President
Roosevelt had ordered the move of the Pacific Fleet from its permanent base
in San Diego, California to Pearl Harbor. By the fall of 1941, however, the
development of a B-17 bomber force in the Philippines had been given
precedence over the fleet as the key means of combating Japan. Its purpose
could be construed as offensive as well as a deterrent since the U.S. was
planning to bomb Japanese cities. A secret memo General MacArthur received
in September 1941 underscored the offensive purposes that American forces
would undertake. It read
commence operation as soon as possible, concentrating on propaganda,
terrorism, and sabotage of Japanese communications and military
installations . . . Assassination of individual Japanese should also be
considered. Prepare to defeat Japan without suffering grievous loss
ourselves. . . We must base mobile forces as near to Japan as is
practicable. . . To the west there is China where air bases are already
being prepared and stocked. . . . to the south there is Luzon in the
Philippine Islands, within easy air range of Hainan, Formosa, and Canton,
and extreme range of southern Japan. . . Development of further air bases is
proceeding.17
Earlier, Roosevelt had gone so far as to deploy American warships within or
adjacent to Japanese territorial waters. Roosevelt called these "pop-up"
cruises, saying, "I just want them to keep popping up here and there and
keep the Japs guessing. I don't mind losing one or two cruisers, but do not
take a chance on losing five or six." Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, commander o
f the Pacific Fleet, opposed this provocation, saying: "It is ill-advised
and will result in war if we make this move." Between March and July 1941,
Roosevelt sent naval task groups into Japanese waters on three different
occasions. Japan protested but fired no shots.18
Economic Sanctions
America took a number of measures to punish Japan economically. In July
1939, the United States announced that it would end its trade treaty with
Japan in January 1940. In October 1940, the U.S. banned the export of
scrap iron thus impeding the Japanese production of weapons-grade steel. In
July 1941, when Japanese forces moved into southern French Indo-China
(having already occupied the northern part in 1940), Roosevelt announced his
most drastic measure: the freezing of all Japanese assets in the U.S..
This deprived the Japanese of the means to purchase American goods, the most
critical of which was oil.19 The British and Dutch governments followed
suit. Japan had to import all of its oil from foreign countries--most
coming from the U.S.--because neither Japan nor Japanese-controlled
territory in China produced oil. Without oil, the life blood of the
mechanized Japanese army, Japan would be unable to continue its war in
China. The U.S. (and the British and Dutch) made it clear to the Japanese
that the oil embargo would be relaxed only in exchange for an end to
Japanese involvement in China. The New York Times referred to Roosevelt's
action in its July 27 issue as "the most drastic blow short of war."20
Mainstream historians have interepreted American cooperation with the
British and Dutch as well as the military build-up in the Far East as simply
deterrents against further Japanese expansion. Nonetheless, it is easy to
understand how the Japanese perceived these developments as a threat to
their own security. Such a view seemed to be confirmed by the assets
freeze, which implied a move beyond a simple defensive containment of
Japan, indicating rather an effort to roll back Japan's existing gains in
China.
All factions of the Japanese government--moderates as well as
extremists--saw the complete abandonment of China as unacceptable. Japan
had expended too much blood and treasure simply to pull out. Abandoning
China would destroy Japan's status as a great power and would cause dire
economic harm. But without oil, Japan would ultimately be militarily
threatened in its own backyard by the Anglo-American alliance. Moreover, it
was not the Japanese war machine alone that was affected. For in addition
to freezing assets, the U.S. government had closed the Panama Canal to
Japanese shipping. As a result of these economic sanctions, along with the
decline in trade stemming from the Russo-German war, Japanese imports fell
by 75 percent, and the civilian economy spiraled downward, with serious food
shortages.21 The Japanese Foreign Minister, Shigenori Togo, vigorously
protested to American Ambassador Joseph Grew that "Economic pressure of this
character is capable of menacing national existence to a greater degree than
the direct use of force."22
To save the domestic economy and to be able to continue prosecuting the war
in China, Japan required oil and other natural resources--tin, rubber,
quinine, rice-- that could only be obtained by seizing Thailand, British
Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies. These areas would have to be attacked
soon before the Japanese Navy's fuel supplies ran low and before the
Anglo-American alliance had developed a powerful military force in the Far
East. Of course, Japanese armed movement into these areas would
automatically lead to conflict with the ADB powers. "In the last estimate,"
revisionist George Morgenstern averred, "Japan was confronted with the
option of striking out for a rich new empire or abandoning its conquests and
resigning itself to the future of a third-rate nation."23
Significantly, the U.S. government had enacted the economic sanctions with a
clear realization that this could lead to war. Admiral Richmond Kelly
Turner, Navy chief of war plans, had prepared a report for President
Roosevelt on the probable consequences of imposing an oil embargo on Japan,
which read:
It is generally believed that shutting off the American supply of petroleum
will lead promptly to an invasion of the Netherlands East Indies. . . . An
embargo on exports will have an immediate severe psychological reaction in
Japan against the U.S.. It is almost certain to intensify the determination
of those now in power to continue their present course. Furthermore, it
seems certain that, if Japan should then take military measures against the
British and Dutch, she would also include military action against the
Philippines, which would immediately involve us in a Pacific war.24
Provoking Japan into Attacking the U.S.
To think that American forces in the Far East, with their small number of
American B-17 bombers and weak British and Dutch allies, could actually
stand up to the powerful Japanese war machine in late 1941 was to engage in
wishful thinking in the extreme. But when such military developments reached
the ears of the security conscious Japanese, they could easily serve as an
inducement to launch a preemptive strike on American forces in the Pacific.
Japanese leaders had for some time thought that the United States would make
war on Japan if it made an armed advance southward toward British and Dutch
territory, even if such territories were not actually attacked. For example,
on December 3, 1941, the Japanese embassy in Washington cabled Tokyo:
"Judging from indications, we feel that some joint military action between
Great Britain and the U.S., with or without a declaration of war, is a
definite certainty in the event of an occupation of Thailand."25
Considerable information on the buildup of American air power in the Far
East and its threat to Japan could be easily gleaned from the public media.
For example, the U.S. News of October 31, 1941 carried a two-page relief map
of the globe with Japan at the center. Arrows were drawn from American bases
to Japan with flying times of American bombers. Time magazine of November
21, 1941 carried a story about the builder of the new B-24 bomber, Reuben
Harris, and said that these new bombers were already being transported to
the Dutch East Indies. The headline of an article by noted columnist
Arthur Krock in the November 19, 1941 New York Times read: "New Air Power
Gives [Philippine] Islands Offensive Strength Changing Strategy in
Pacific."26
On November 15, 1941, General George Marshall held a secret press briefing
for representatives from the major media--the New York Times, New York
Herald Tribune, Time, Newsweek, the Associated Press, United Press, and
International News Service. Pledging the group to secrecy, Marshall asserted
that "We are preparing an offensive war against Japan." Marshall said that
war would probably begin during the first ten days of December and then he
went on to delineate a bombing scenario of the Japanese home islands. If
this military information were intended to be secret, it is odd that
Marshall would mention it to the press at all. Robert Smith Thompson infers
that this reflected President Roosevelt's aim to pass this information on to
the Japanese indirectly. "Acting as Roosevelt's representative," Thompson
opines, "General Marshall spoke to the press, quite likely in the full
knowledge that somebody would leak his remarks."27 This exaggerated
depiction of American air power that could hit Japanese cities certainly
would have the effect of inducing the Japanese to gamble on striking the
first blow against the U.S. while there was still time.
Japan's Decision for War
The Japanese viewed the American arms to China, the military build-up, and
the apparent military alliance between the ABD powers as constituting the
Anglo-American "encirclement" of Japan. As Bruce Russett writes: "The
freezing of assets on July 26, 1941, was seen as the final link in their
bondage."28 Japan's aim was to become a powerful, industrial nation that
would not be dominated by outside powers as the Far East had been treated by
the European colonial powers. But the Japanese saw this goal as being
frustrated by the United States, which, in conjunction with European
colonial powers, seemed bent on making Japan a weak, third-rate country,
like other Asian nations. To the Japanese this was unbearable. There was
nothing abnormal about this response. It should be emphasized that since
the time of the Monroe Doctrine the U.S. has sought to have its way in the
Western hemisphere, unhindered by the interference of European powers. It
would seem to be an empirical fact of world affairs that only weak countries
allow themselves to be dictated to by outside powers within their own
geographical region.
According to Japanese calculations, the U.S. would go to war against them if
they made a military advance toward British or Dutch territory. In November
1941, the Japanese envoys in the U.S. were even reporting to Tokyo that the
U.S. might soon militarily occupy the Dutch East Indies as it had earlier
occupied Iceland and Dutch Guiana.29 All of this meant that if Japan wanted
to acquire the necessary resources of Southeast Asia and break out of the
ever-tightening Anglo-American "encirclement," it would have to strike a
blow against American power quickly. As Robert Smith Thompson asserts:
"With American economic sanctions in place and with American B-17s en route
to the Pacific, Japan had only one choice. Japan had to strike--and strike
first."30 The Japanese saw America's Pacific Fleet stationed at Pearl Harbor
as a significant threat to their military designs in Southeast Asia. "The
implication was clear," Thompson concludes, "Japan's only salvation lay in
taking out the U.S. Pacific fleet, wherever it lay."31
The Japanese military leadership recognized the much greater military
potential of the U.S. and opted for war only because there seemed to be no
other alternative. Its aims against the U.S. were limited: to destroy
existing U.S. offensive capabilities in the Pacific by tactical surprise.
The Japanese military leadership hoped only to give its forces time to
occupy the islands of the Southwest Pacific, to extract the raw materials of
those islands, and to turn the region into a virtually impregnable line of
defense, which could frustrate an American counteroffensive.32
Japan's Willingness to Negotiate
Japanese war planners emphasized that the attack would have to take place
soon because oil supplies were running out. Although Japan was preparing
for war, however, it still sought a last minute peace with the United
States. In short, war would be the instrument of last resort if Japan were
unable to restore trade with the U.S. by diplomatic means. It sent its
major diplomats to Washington in an effort to achieve peace. In August
1941, Prime Minister Prince Konoye even offered to come to meet President
Roosevelt in Washington for negotiations. As Morgenstern writes: "The
American diplomatic representatives in Tokyo noted that, almost until the
very end, Konoye and the moderate elements were willing to go to almost any
lengths to bring off the meeting and avert war."33 Roosevelt rejected
Konoye's offer. As a result of its failure to achieve a diplomatic
solution, Konoye's moderate government fell from power in October and was
replaced by a more militant group headed by General Hideki Tojo. Although
this indicated a step toward war, Japan still sought to negotiate with the
U.S.. Among its offers, Japan was willing to promise the U.S. that it would
pull out of southern Indo-China and not join Germany in an offensive war.
In return, Japan expected the U.S. to restore trade, to encourage the
Chinese government to negotiate with Japan, and to stop backing China
militarily once the negotiations had begun. The U.S. refused to accept the
Japanese offer.34
Modus Vivendi
Japan was still seeking a diplomatic solution in November while it prepared
to attack. American intelligence had broken the Japanese diplomatic code,
and thus the American leadership was aware that if no diplomatic solution
were reached, Japan would then go to war. However, the only conciliatory
move the Roosevelt administration ever considered making was a "modus
vivendi," which would have been a temporary truce, sought by American
military leaders, to avoid war until America had built up its military
strength in the Far East. The modus vivendi would have entailed mutual
American and Japanese pledges against aggressive moves in the Pacific. Japan
would withdraw from southern Indo-China and limit its troops in the north.
In return the United States would supply Japan with limited supplies of oil
and other materials.
The U.S. government ultimately rejected the modus vivendi on November 26 and
instead offered Secretary of State Cordell Hull's "10 point proposal."
This virtual ultimatum told Japan to withdraw all military and police forces
from China and Indo-China and that it must not support any government in
China other than the Nationalist government under Chiang. Japan regarded
the message as an insult and completely unacceptable. Japan regarded a
sphere of influence in China as absolutely essential to its national
security, and it had expended much blood and wealth to attain this
objective. To accede to the American proposal would be tantamount to
surrender. The American proposal essentially cemented Japan's decision to
initiate war and strike Pearl Harbor.
A brief aside here regarding the rejection of the modus vivendi.
Revisionists, such as Anthony Kubek in How the Far East Was Lost, have
pointed out that pro-Communists in the U.S. government, most importantly
Harry Dexter White, pushed for the elimination of the modus vivendi in order
to enhance the security interests of the Soviet Union. The Soviet aim was
to guarantee war between Japan and the West in order to prevent a Japanese
attack on the Soviet Far East. This Communist role has been confirmed by
recent revelations from the Verona files by Herb Romerstein and John Earl
Haynes.35 Most revisionists, however, would maintain that Roosevelt did not
require the push from Soviet spies to induce his movement toward war.
"Despite all this volume of evidence of communist pressure in the Far East
for war between the U.S. and Japan," wrote Harry Elmer Barnes,
I remain unconvinced that it exerted any decisive influence upon Roosevelt,
who, after all, determined American policy toward Japan. Roosevelt had made
up his mind with regard to war with Japan on the basis of his own attitudes
and wishes, aided and abetted by Stimson, and he did not need any persuasion
or support from the Communists, however much he may have welcomed their
aggressive propaganda.36
American Motives
On the surface, it would seem that the United States pursued a policy that
led to war in order to preserve the territorial integrity of China over
which it was unwilling to make any compromise with Japan that could preserve
the peace. As historian Basil Rauch wrote in defense of the Roosevelt
administration's uncompromising policy:
No one but an absolute pacifist would argue that the danger of war is a
greater evil than violation of principle. . . . The isolationist believes
that appeasement of Japan without China's consent violated no principle
worth a risk of war. The internationalist must believe that the principle
did justify a risk of war.37
However, the preservation of Chinese territorial integrity, which did not
seem to involve American security, appears an odd reason for which to go to
war. Moreover, it should be pointed out that the professed American concern
for Chinese territorial integrity was highly selective. After entering the
war, the U.S. did very little to help China, focusing instead on fighting
Germany. Also, the U.S. government had never criticized the Soviet Union
for its violations of Chinese territorial integrity--detaching Outer
Mongolia in the 1920s (making it a satellite) and gaining control of
Sinkiang province in the 1930s. And in 1945, Roosevelt explicitly violated
Chinese territory in the Far East protocol of the Yalta Accord by giving the
Soviet Union rights to the ports of Darien and Port Arthur and control of
the railways in Manchuria. As historian Anthony Kubek incisively points
out:
The Soviet Union had no more right to hold these ports and railways in
Manchuria than did Japan. . . . Roosevelt gave to Stalin at Yalta effective
control of the same territory over which the U.S. had gone to war with
Japan.38
It should be emphasized that in contrast to Japan, which actually controlled
Chinese territory, the Soviet Union did not already occupy these
territories. Rather, Roosevelt seemingly held Chinese sovereignty in such
low regard that he thought he had the right to dispose of this Chinese
territory in order to bribe Stalin into making war on Japan.39
Back Door to War
But if China was not the real issue, what was America's motive for war?
Roosevelt, like all interventionists, believed Japan was part of an Axis
plot to dominate the world, which would threaten American security and
values. But once the war began the Roosevelt administration put most of its
effort into fighting Germany, which it had planned to do before Pearl
Harbor. Because of this emphasis on Germany, revisionists see Roosevelt's
effort to provoke war with Japan as an indirect way of getting the country
into war with Germany--the back-door-to-war thesis.
Roosevelt had to take such an indirect approach to war with Germany because
a direct approach was not politically feasible. Throughout 1941, Roosevelt
believed it was essential for the United States to enter the war against
Germany, but he recognized that the majority of the American people opposed
such a war even as late as the fall of 1941. Thus, Roosevelt had to rely on
deceptive means to edge the country into war. To placate public sentiment,
Roosevelt, in his 1940 reelection campaign, had pledged that he would keep
the country out of war. Roosevelt publicly preached that his
aid-short-of-war policies--such as Lend-Lease, the destroyers-for-bases
deal, de facto naval convoys of British ships--were intended to keep the
U.S. out of war. However, such clearly unneutral acts would inevitably lead
to incidents with Germany.
Despite America's unneutral provocations, Hitler sought peace with the U.S.
because he wanted to concentrate on the war with the Soviet Union. Thus, he
ordered German submarine commanders to avoid incidents with American ships.
Incidents, however, were inevitable. In an apparent effort to generate war
fever, Roosevelt deliberately distorted two naval incidents in Fall of
1941--involving the U.S.S Greer and the U.S.S Kearney--claiming that the
Germans had fired on innocent American vessels.40 In reality, the German
submarines were responding to American provocations. Roosevelt also
promoted other falsehoods in the hopes of stoking the fires of war, which
included the claim that the U.S. government had come into the possession of
a "secret Nazi map" of South and Central America showing how that continent
would be organized under Nazi rule. Also, Roosevelt said he had a Nazi
German document that detailed a plan to abolish all religions and liquidate
all clergy and create an "International Nazi Church." Needless to say, the
alleged map and document were not made public then or since.41
By the end of November 1941, an undeclared naval war existed in the Atlantic
as American ships were following a "shoot-on-sight" policy. Roosevelt
had the power to do almost everything to aid Great Britain and the Soviet
Union--including transporting arms and, for the British, convoying
troops--except to send in American land and air forces to fight Germany
directly. But despite the impact of events and the pro-war propaganda,
fully eighty percent of the American public still opposed a declaration of
war. And Congress was still staunchly opposed to war. And America's
belligerent actions could not provoke Germany into a serious incident that
could generate American support for full-scale war. Thus, Roosevelt would
have to enter war through the back door. That Roosevelt made use of
falsehoods and deception regarding the European War made it understandable
that he would rely on the same deceptive tactics to become involved in war
with Japan.
Revisionists contend that entrance into war with Japan would facilitate
American war with Germany. Although many revisionist critics fail to see
the connection because the Axis alliance did not require German entrance
into an offensive war initiated by Japan, people at the time saw an
inextricable link between war with Japan and war with Germany. As Secretary
of Interior Harold Ickes, one of the more strident and committed
interventionists in the Administration, confided to his diary:
For a long time I have believed that our best entrance into the war would be
by way of Japan. . . . And, of course, if we go to war against Japan, it
will inevitably lead to war against Germany.42
In his December 9, 1941 radio address, President Roosevelt accused Germany
of being closely involved in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. According
to Roosevelt, "We know that Germany and Japan are conducting their military
and naval operations with a joint plan." Roosevelt alleged that "Germany has
been telling Japan that if Japan would attack the U.S. Japan would share the
spoils when peace came."43 With the American public outraged about the
underhanded "surprise" attack on Pearl Harbor, it would not have been
difficult to direct that anger at Germany, especially with the inevitability
of additional incidents in the Atlantic. And given the likelihood of
all-out war with the U.S., Hitler quite reasonably declared war on the U.S.
on December 11, in order to gain the good will of the Japanese government,
who, he hoped, might reciprocate by making war on the Soviet Union. As
Thomas Fleming writes in his The New Dealers' War, Roosevelt was "trying to
bait Hitler into declaring war, or, failing that, persuade the American
people to support an American declaration of war on the two European fascist
powers."44
Move Toward War
It should be emphasized that the United States took a hard-line approach to
Japan even though it was aware that such an approach would cause Japan to
make war. U.S. military intelligence had broken the Japanese top diplomatic
code and was reading Japanese diplomatic communications. Besides the actual
code-breakers, only a few top-level people in the Roosevelt administration
had access to this information. Through Japan's diplomatic messages, it was
apparent that Japan would take military action to grab the necessary
resources, if a favorable diplomatic solution were not achieved. How much
more the U.S. knew about Japanese war plans is debated among historians.
Even among revisionists, some would hold that at least as late as the first
days of December 1941, Roosevelt was not certain that the Japanese would
directly attack American territory.
All of this put Roosevelt in a bind because of his secret commitment to the
British and Dutch that the U.S. would make war against Japan if it moved
southward. The problem was whether the American people would be willing to
support a war against the Japanese to preserve British and Dutch colonial
possessions or (even less likely) to help the British prevent the Japanese
occupation of Thailand. which was part of the ADB military plan
Harry Elmer Barnes wrote that the secret military arrangements with the
British and the Dutch "hung like a sword of Damocles over Roosevelt's head"
as the Japanese moved toward a war.
It exposed him to the most dangerous dilemma of his political career: to
start a war without an attack on American forces or territory, or refusing
to follow up the implementation of ABCD and Rainbow 5 [the military plan
based on the agreement] by Britain or the Dutch. The latter [decision]
would lead to serious controversy and quarrels among the prospective powers,
with the disgruntled powers leaking Roosevelt's complicity in the plan and
exposing his mendacity.45
In the early days of December, Roosevelt assured the nervous British that
the U.S. would honor its commitment to fight the Japanese if they moved
southward. As the British historian John Costello writes, British documents
can leave no doubt that Roosevelt by the eve of Japan's attack on Pearl
Harbor had given a number of clear, carefully worded assurances of U.S.
'armed support' of Britain in advance of delivering his intended appeal to
Congress.46
Roosevelt's monumental problem was how to get Japan to attack the U.S. in
some way in order to solidify the American public behind war. As Secretary
of War Henry Stimson wrote in his diary of November 25, 1941: "The question
was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot
without allowing too much danger to ourselves."47 The wording here is
critical and is usually glossed over by defenders of orthodoxy. Stimson's
writing definitely implies that the U.S. would not simply passively await a
possible attack by Japanese but would actively "manuever" Japanese into
attacking U.S.. Roosevelt thus sought to create an incident in which the
U.S. would be attacked by the Japanese. It is here that certain apparent
differences among revisionists appear. If, as many revisionists have
claimed, Roosevelt had foreknowledge of the impending Japanese attack on
Pearl Harbor, why would he see any reason to create an incident, rather than
simply await the attack? It would thus seem that as of the beginning of
December, Roosevelt either was not certain that the Japanese war plan
included an attack on American territory, or else he sought a less
destructive incident in order to save the Pacific Fleet.
Three Small Ships
Roosevelt's planned incident consisted of sending "three small vessels" on
an alleged reconnaissance mission. He personally authorized this mission in
a December 1 message to Admiral Thomas Hart, head of the Asiatic Fleet at
Manila. Roosevelt specified that each ship was to be manned by Filipino
sailors and commanded by an American naval officer. Furthermore, each
vessel was to be armed with cannon so as to give it the minimum requirements
of an American "man of war." The three little ships were directed to sail
into the path of a Japanese naval task force that Washington knew was then
steaming southward for an invasion of Southeast Asia.48
It was highly unusual for a President to be giving such a detailed order for
a lower level military function. Moreover, as Thomas Fleming writes, "such
a voyage might have made sense in the eighteenth or nineteenth century," but
was rather absurd in an age when airplanes had infinitely greater
reconnaissance capability.49 And the only radio available for one of the
ships could only receive messages, not transmit them. Moreover, Admiral
Hart was already carrying out the necessary reconnaissance by air and was
reporting the results to Washington. From the outset Hart seemed to
recognize the real sacrificial "fishbait" purpose of the alleged
reconnaissance mission.50
Roosevelt's apparent intention of sending the little ships was to have them
blown out of the water, thus providing an incident for war.51 Equipped with
cannon, the ships could be presented as far more significant than they
actually were. The incident could be reported as American warships destroyed
by the Japanese. And the killing of a Filipino crew would engender war fever
in the Philippines, where there was strong resistance to getting involved in
war with Japan.52
However, the attack on the little ships never took place. Only one ship,
the Isabel could be equipped in short order. Admiral Hart, apparently
wanting to preserve the ship, gave it instructions that were far less
provocative than Roosevelt had ordered. As a result, the Isabel was able to
avoid Japanese fire. A second ship, the Lanakai, was just about to leave
Manila Harbor on December 7 when the attack on Pearl Harbor was announced,
and a third ship had not yet been selected. In short, the Pearl Harbor
attack precluded the need for Roosevelt to create an incident. However,
had the American ships been attacked by the Japanese, Harry Elmer Barnes
believed that Pearl Harbor could have been saved.
There can be little doubt that the Cockleship plan of December 1st was
designed to get the indispensable attack by a method which would precede the
Pearl Harbor attack, avert the latter, and save the Pacific Fleet and
American lives.53
This, of course, reflects the revisionist belief that Roosevelt knew in
advance of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
Pearl Harbor Conspiracy
That Roosevelt had foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack and had
deliberately withheld information is the most controversial, and perhaps
best known, of the revisionist arguments. The argument runs that Washington
intentionally kept the military commanders in Hawaii in the dark about the
impending Japanese attack. This would ensure that no countermeasures were
undertaken that might cause the Japanese to call it off. It would also
preclude the possibility of the American military commanders launching a
preemptive attack on the Japanese fleet, which could have muddied the
Japanese culpability needed to forge a united American public in favor of
war.
"Purple" Code
There is ample evidence of warnings of an impending Japanese attack being
sent to American government authorities. For many years, this argument
centered around the American breaking of the top Japanese diplomatic code.
It was discussed at the Army and Navy Pearl Harbor hearings in 1944 and the
1945-46 congressional hearings. The United States military had broken the
top Japanese diplomatic code, which was called "Purple, " with a
specially-constructed code-breaking machine, also called "Purple." The
deciphered texts were referred to as "Magic." Only a few top-level people
in the Roosevelt administration had access to this information. The
military commanders at Pearl Harbor were not provided with a "Purple"
code-breaking machine. And although they were given some intelligence
information based on "Purple," they were denied the most crucial information
that pointed to war. By late November 1941, code intercepts read in
Washington indicated that Japan was about to make war and break relations
with the U.S.. The deciphered diplomatic messages did not specify Pearl
Harbor as the target, but, given that top Washington officials recognized
the imminence of war, it is odd why they did not order a full military
alert for Hawaii in order to play it safe. The actual code-breakers such as
Captain Laurance F. Safford, head of the Communications Security Section of
Naval Communications, assumed that such a warning had been given.
"War Warning"
Defenders of the administration would claim that Washington had provided
adequate warning to the Pearl Harbor commanders of a possible attack and
that the latter had failed to take sufficient defensive preparations. This
view was embodied in the 1942 Roberts Commission investigation on Pearl
Harbor and, in a milder form, in the 1946 Majority Report of the Joint
Congressional Committee on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack.
Pearl Harbor investigator Henry Clausen, who in 1944-1945 had investigated
the background of the attack at the behest of Secretary of War Stimson, goes
to great lengths in his Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement (published in 1992) to
try to show that even if the military leaders in Hawaii had simply read the
newspapers they should have prepared for a possible Japanese attack.54 In
Henry Stimson's final statement to the Joint Congressional Committee on the
Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, which was drafted by Clausen, he
asserted that even without a warning from Washington, General Walter C.
Short, who was responsible for the defense of Hawaii,
should have been on the alert. If he did not know that the relations
between Japan and the U.S. were strained and broken at any time, he must
have been the only man in Hawaii who did not know it, for the radio and
newspapers were blazoning these facts daily . . . . And if he did not know
that the Japanese were likely to strike without warning, he could have read
his history of Japan or known the lessons taught in the Army schools in
respect to such matters.55
This defense of the Roosevelt administration is filled with obvious
contradictions. If the commanders in Hawaii are to be blamed for failing to
anticipate an attack on Pearl Harbor, how can the defenders of the Roosevelt
administration likewise claim that there was no reason for Washington to
realize that the Japanese would target Pearl Harbor? And if the likelihood
of a Japanese attack should have been realized by simply keeping abreast of
public news reports, how could Roosevelt make so much of the idea of a
"surprise attack"--the major theme of his famous "Day of Infamy" speech?
It is hard to see how the Hawaii commanders were culpable. The most crucial
alleged warnings from Washington were those of November 27, in which the
phrase "war warning" was actually used. However, these warnings were
totally lacking in clarity. The message to General Short was characterized
by the Army Pearl Harbor Board (which investigated the Pearl Harbor attack
in 1944) as a "Do-or-don't" message because of its ambiguities and
contradictions.56 The message referred to possible Japanese hostile actions
with the breaking of diplomatic relations and authorized Short to take any
measures he thought necessary as long as those actions did not "alarm" the
general populace or "disclose intent." Moreover, Short was required to
allow the Japanese to commit the first "overt act." These restrictions
essentially ruled out any effective defensive preparations. General Short
interpreted this message as a call to counter sabotage, which required doing
such things as bunching airplanes wing tip to wing tip, thus making them
sitting ducks for a bombing attack. Short informed Washington of the steps
he was taking, and no corrections were forthcoming. In fact, subsequent
warnings from Washington regarding subversion and sabotage convinced Short
of the appropriateness of his actions.57
Admiral Stark's message to Kimmel referred to possible Japanese advances in
the Far East but said nothing about any possible attack on Hawaii. As the
1944 Naval Court of Inquiry asserted, the so-called "war warning" message
sent to Kimmel "directed attention away from Pearl Harbor rather than toward
it."58 Furthermore, in November, Navy officials declared the north Pacific
Ocean a "vacant sea" and ordered all United States and allied shipping out
of this area. This, of course, was the region over which the Japanese task
force would travel. Two weeks before the Pearl Harbor attack, Kimmel
actually dispatched a portion of the fleet to the sea north of Hawaii for
surveillance purposes but he received an order from Washington to bring his
ships back to Oahu. In essence, it would seem that information from
Washington served to hinder if not prevent the commanders in Hawaii from
taking the proper steps to protect their forces.59
To reemphasize, the defenders of the Roosevelt administration want to have
it both ways: that Washington had no reason to believe that the Japanese
would attack Pearl Harbor and that the commanders in Hawaii were derelict
for not realizing that Hawaii might be attacked. But having access to the
decoded intercepts obviously meant that Washington possessed more
information on Japanese intentions than did Hawaii. And if the preparations
by the military commanders in Hawaii were deficient, there would seem to be
no justifiable reason why Washington did not put Hawaii on a full alert.
Washington ordered such a full alert in June 1940 when the likelihood of war
had been infinitely less.60
Winds Signals
Another controversial issue regarding the diplomatic code involved the
so-called "winds signals." On November 19th, the Japanese announced in their
J-19 diplomatic code (a lower level code than "Purple," which United States
was able to decode) the setting up of a so-called "Winds System," by which
Japanese diplomatic officials and consulates could learn of Tokyo's war
intentions in non-coded form (that is, after their code books had been
destroyed) in a regular weather forecast broadcast from Tokyo. The key
phrase "East Wind Rain" would mean the breaking of diplomatic relations
(and probable war) with the U.S.. The code destruction orders went out on
the first and second of December. On December 4, American intelligence
picked up the "East Wind Rain" message. This was the so-called "winds
execute" message. That American monitors received this message was accepted
in the Army and Navy hearings on Pearl Harbor in 1944. However, at the time
of the Congressional hearings of 1945-46 a major coverup took place.
Authorities claimed that no "winds execute" message had ever been received.
And it was true that no messages were around--they had been apparently
destroyed. And a number of witnesses who had previously claimed to have
seen the message were pressured into recanting. Captain Laurance F.
Safford, however, despite intense pressure to change his story, continued to
maintain that the "winds execute" message had been intercepted, decoded,
and widely distributed.61
Crucial confirming evidence for the receipt of "Winds" message was a 1977
interview with Ralph T. Briggs, conducted by the Naval Security Group and
declassified by the National Security Agency in March 1980. Briggs said in
this interview that he was the one who had intercepted the crucial message,
while on duty as chief watch supervisor at the Naval Communication Station
at Cheltenham, Maryland. Briggs further stated that he was ordered by his
superior officer in 1946 not to testify about the matter to the joint
Congressional Committee and to cease any contact with Captain Laurance
Safford.62 In addition, both of the Japanese assistant naval attachés posted
at the Washington embassy in 1941 have verified that the message was
transmitted on December 4th, exactly as Safford said.63 Defenders of the
administration claim that even if this message had been intercepted, it did
not really tell anything not already known--that diplomatic relations were
to be broken.64 But if the government would go to such great lengths to
cover-up this allegedly harmless evidence, one would expect cover-ups and
lies about much more important matters.
The Last 24 Hours
Finally, there is the question as to what leading officials in Washington
were doing in the last 24 hours before the Pearl Harbor attack. Early in
the morning of December 6 (Washington time), American intelligence
intercepted the so-called "pilot" message, which announced that Japan's
response to America's November 26 ultimatum was forthcoming. It would come
in 14 parts. The first 13 parts were intercepted and decoded by the early
hours of the evening of December 6th, and copies were passed on to the
President and to the military and naval chiefs. The harsh language
recounting the alleged wrongs done by the United States to Japan clearly
pointed to a break in relations. As soon as Franklin D. Roosevelt read the
13 parts, he reportedly told Harry Hopkins that "This means war."65
On Sunday morning, the final 14th part of the message was picked up and
decoded. It stated that diplomatic relations with the U.S. were terminated.
Ominously, the time of 1:00 P.M. at which the Japanese ambassador was
instructed to deliver the entire message to Secretary Hull was recognized by
the cryptographers as corresponding with a sunrise attack on Pearl Harbor.
A number of intelligence officers urged that a warning to be sent to Pearl
Harbor. But General George Marshall, who had to authorize the warning, could
not be found. Allegedly he was out horseback riding. No warning was sent to
Pearl Harbor until it was too late.66
The various investigations of the Pearl Harbor attack--by the Army, the
Navy, and the Congress--brought out numerous discrepancies in the testimony
regarding these last hours, which revisionists have focused upon. Leading
figures could not recall where they were at the time. Lesser military
figures altered their testimonies to make them fit in with what their
superiors wanted. Revisionists see this as part of a conspiracy purposively
to withhold critical information from the Pearl Harbor commanders and later
to cover-up this operation. As John Toland writes:
What novelist could persuade a reader to accept the incredible activity
during those two days by America's military and civilian leaders? Was it to
be believed that the heads of the Army and Navy could not be located on the
night before Pearl Harbor? Or that they would later testify over and over
that they couldn't remember where they were? Was it plausible that the
Chief of Naval Operations, after finally being reminded that he talked to
Roosevelt on the telephone that night, could not recall if they had
discussed the thirteen-part message. Was it possible to imagine a President
who remarked, 'This means war,' after reading the message, not instantly
summoning to the White House his Army and Navy commanders as well as his
Secretaries of War and Navy? One of Knox's close friends, James G.
Stahlman, wrote Admiral Kemp Tolley in 1973 that Knox told him that he,
Stimson, Marshall, Stark and Harry Hopkins had spent most of the night of
December 6 at the White House with the President: All were waiting for what
they knew was coming: an attack on Pearl Harbor.67
While establishment historians admit that the Purple intercepts provided the
evidence that Japan would make war, they make much of the fact that nothing
in the deciphered Japanese diplomatic messages explicitly pinpointed Pearl
Harbor as the target. But at that time lower echelon people did perceive
that possibility. And the Naval Court of Inquiry, which investigated Pearl
Harbor in 1944, maintained:
In the early forenoon of December 7, Washington time, the War and Navy
Departments had information which appeared to indicate that a break in
diplomatic relations was imminent and, by inference and deduction, that an
attack in the Hawaiian area could be expected soon.68
And what was the rationale for not warning Pearl Harbor even if it were not
assumed to be a definite target? Washington had put Hawaii on a full alert
in June 1940 with much less justification. It would seem that if Japan were
on the verge of war with the U.S., a clear warning to Pearl Harbor would
have been expected. And the fact of the matter is that there was a
considerable amount of additional information beyond the diplomatic messages
that pointed to an attack on Pearl Harbor. A convergence of evidence should
have been noted.
Bomb Plot Message
One very important piece of intelligent information pointing to an attack on
Pearl Harbor was the so-called "bomb plot message." This consisted of
requests from the Japanese government in Tokyo to the Japanese
consul-general in Honolulu, Nagoa Kita. One group of messages, beginning in
September 1941, divided Pearl Harbor into a grid and directed the Japanese
consul in Hawaii to report to Tokyo the locations and number of ships. The
Japanese consul's reports were made throughout the fall of 1941 and decoded
in Washington. (Washington was also keeping close surveillance on the
leading Japanese spy, cover name Tadashi Morimura, who was engaging in this
espionage.) This information was popularly referred to as the "bomb plot"
messages since a grid is the classic method of planning a bombing attack.
There was no need to know exact ship positions unless the purpose was to
attack them. None of this information was passed on to the commanders in
Hawaii.69
Those who have sought to minimize the significance of these "bomb plot"
messages have contended that Japanese spies made inquiries at other leading
American naval bases; but no such detailed or comprehensive reports,
containing as they did grids and coordinates, were demanded of Japanese
officials and spies at any other American base in the world. That alone
indicated that Hawaii was a special target.
Military intelligence officials realized the significance of the "bomb plot"
messages. They were specially marked so their significance could not be
missed. The FBI also was following these espionage activities at Pearl
Harbor and sending the information to the White House. Roosevelt would have
been aware of these activities both through information from naval
intelligence and from the FBI.70 President Roosevelt's personal involvement
in this issue was especially demonstrated in his October 1941 meeting with
David Sarnoff, president of RCA. Roosevelt arranged to have Sarnoff provide
copies of the cables between Tokyo and the Honolulu consulate, which were
sent through RCA's Honolulu office, to the Office to Naval Intelligence.71
The most crucial message from the Honolulu consulate was sent to Tokyo on
December 3rd. It informed Tokyo that the Japanese spies had set up a system
of codes confirming the movement of various American warships through the
use of signals in windows at Lanikai Beach, which could be spotted by
off-shore Japanese "fishing" boats and submarines. This vital information
could then be passed on to the Japanese carrier task force. The signal
system would operate through December 6th. Thus, the messages revealed the
time of the planned attack.72
None of the information of the bomb plot messages was provided to the Hawaii
military commanders. The Director of Naval Intelligence, Captain Alan Kirk,
was replaced in October 1941, because he insisted on warning Hawaii.73 It
is also noteworthy that the Roosevelt administration allowed such flagrant
spying at Pearl Harbor, going against the requests of J. Edgar Hoover to
arrest or deport the spies.74
Naval Codes
It has been acknowledged in establishment circles that if the United States
government had broken the Japanese naval codes, it would have been aware of
the impending attack on Pearl Harbor.75 Claims have been made that the
British and the Dutch had broken the Japanese naval codes. The most
prominent individual who has made such a claim is Eric Nave, an Australian
officer attached to the Royal Navy, who was one of the actual
code-breakers.76 But mainstream historians have doubted these allegations
and have held that American intelligence had not yet broken the Japanese
naval codes, especially the leading Japanese naval code, generally called
JN-25. In contrast, Robert B. Stinnett contends that American code-breakers
were able to read the Japanese naval codes. (Stinnett uses different
terminology for the codes, claiming that the name "JN-25" was not in use
until after the Pearl Harbor attack.)77 Stinnett writes:
Testimony given to various Pearl Harbor investigations suggests that the
navy codes were not solved until Spring 1942. The author's research proves
otherwise. Their solution emerged in the early fall of 1940.78
According to Stinnett, American code-breakers were reading the Japanese
coded naval communications, called the "Kaigun Ango," the most important of
the codes being the 5-Num (naval operations), SM (naval movement), S
(merchant marine), and Yobidashi Fugo (radio call sign) codes.. The
intercepted messages made it clear that Pearl Harbor would be attacked on
December 7, 1941. Stinnett continues:
A sixty-year coverup has hidden American and Allied success in obtaining the
solutions to the Kaigun Ango prior to Pearl Harbor. American naval officers
hid key code documents from congressional investigators. Naval intelligence
records, deceptively altered, were placed in the U.S. Navy's cryptology
files to hide the cryptographic success.79
Stinnett points out that much of this information is still classified or
blacked out in those documents available the public.80 However, he was able
to locate some documents that explicitly show that the naval codes were
broken, and he had this confirmed by interviews with surviving
code-breakers.81
Proponents of the mainstream position categorically reject Stinnett's
contention that American code-breakers were reading Japanese naval codes. In
a recent article, Stephen Budiansky writes that the U.S. was unable to read
JN-25 or any other high level naval code prior to Pearl Harbor, in part
because the Japanese kept changing the code books. By the time the American
code-breakers made some headway in breaking a code, the code would be
changed to the extent that the code-breakers would have to start over again.
It was only after Pearl Harbor that successful decoding took place. All of
this is brought out, Budiansky intones, in recently released documents in
the National Archives, which provide month-by-month reports on the
code-breaking progress of the Navy cryptanalytic office in Washington (known
as OP-20-GY) during the entire 1940-1941 period. These monthly reports
include the progress of navy decryption units in the Pacific. Budiansky
writes:
The monthly reports filed by OP-20-G confirm that at the time of the Pearl
Harbor attack, not a single JN-25 message from the previous 12 months had
been read. . . . The reports also confirm only two other Japanese naval code
systems being examined seriously before Pearl Harbor, and neither was
yielding any results, either."82
Budiansky implies that unwary researchers sometimes do not realize that
information intercepted in 1941 was not decoded read until 1945-1946.
Tracking the Fleet
But even if American intelligence had been unable to read the Japanese naval
code, Stinnett provides additional information that American monitors had
actually tracked the Japanese Pearl Harbor task force by means of radio
direction finding techniques. American stations could intercept radio
transmissions that enabled trained operators to pinpoint the location of the
sender even if the message were indecipherable. The mainstream position has
long been that no radio transmissions from the Japanese task force were
intercepted after it had begun its movement toward Hawaii. And Japanese
naval officials have testified that the fleet was under orders to maintain
radio silence.83 Stinnett, however, points out that the order for radio
silence from Admiral Yamamoto allowed radio communication in an extreme
emergency.
Radio intercepts obtained by U.S. Navy monitoring stations disclosed that
the broadcasts continued after the order was issued. Instead of radio
silence there was substantial, continuous radio traffic from the Japanese
naval ministry, foreign ministry, and warships.84
John Toland had earlier made the claim that the Pearl Harbor task force had
been tracked, though with less hard evidence. He wrote that a Dutch naval
attaché in Washington, Johan Ranneft, received information at the Office of
Naval Intelligence indicating that the Americans knew a Japanese task force
was heading toward Hawaii. Ranneft revealed this information in his
diary.85 Also, an American steamship, the Lurline, had picked up the
Japanese task force's radio traffic and reported it to the FBI. Finally,
Toland cited a seaman in the intelligence office of the 12th Naval District
headquarters in San Francisco who had intercepted the Japanese radio traffic
and used it to plot the location of the task force as it headed eastward
toward Hawaii. This information was supposedly sent on to the White House.
Toland initially referred to this individual as "Seaman Z," who was later
identified as Robert D. Ogg.86 What Stinnett provides is documentary
evidence to complement and give credence to these eyewitness accounts.
How do these findings mesh with the Japanese claims of radio silence? In
essence, Stinnett maintains that ships in the Japanese fleet only engaged in
limited radio communication. Radio communication was necessary in order to
regroup the task force after a storm had scattered ships beyond visual
signaling range. The Japanese were under the impression that low-power
frequencies would travel only a few miles and thus be secure from enemy
interception. However, a solar storm caused the radio transmissions to
travel vast distances, allowing for interception by American listening
posts.87 Furthermore, Stinnett maintains that American monitors were able
to determine the location of the Japanese fleet from transmissions to it
from shore-based stations in Japan. This involved analysis of the changing
radio frequencies. As the distances increased between the ships and the
shore transmitters, the radio frequencies, by necessity, changed. Stinnett
asserts: "A first day communications intelligence student, aware that Radio
Tokyo and Radio Ominato were transmitting to warships could approximate--if
not pinpoint--the position of the vessels." 88
If, as Stinnett claims, the United States had actually tracked the Japanese
task force while knowing that Japan was on the verge of war, it would
provide conclusive proof that high American officials were aware of the
impending attack. And one might add, why would the U.S. government make the
onerous effort to keep tabs on the movement of the Japanese fleet and then
not make use of this crucial information? The only counter argument is that
Stinnett is completely wrong about the documentary evidence--that no
tracking had taken place. And it would seem that Stinnett would be so
radically wrong on this issue that it could only be the result of fraud on
his part, not simply error.
It should be added that unlike other revisionists Stinnett's argument posits
a very large conspiracy that stretched beyond Washington. (In contrast,
Barnes, by the 1960s, had limited to conspiracy to Roosevelt and
Marshall.)89 Stinnett goes so far as to maintain that Joseph J. Rochefort,
the commander of the cryptographic center at Pearl Harbor, and Edwin Layton,
the Pacific Fleet's chief security officer, were aware of the approaching
Japanese fleet and refrained from warning Kimmel. This tends to stretch
credulity. However, Stinnett does cite documentary evidence, which, though
ridiculed by proponents of the mainstream position, has not been directly
refuted.90
Revisionist Mark Willey puts forth an argument that would keep Hawaiian
Intelligence out of the loop. Willey points out that it requires two
bearings to determine the location of radio transmissions, while Hawaii had
only one. He claims that Hawaii was deliberately sent false cross-bearings
that precluded accurate tracking.91
Popov's Warning
In addition to the American code-breaking, revisionists have cited a number
of other warnings of the impending attack on Pearl Harbor that were provided
to the United States government. One of the most intriguing came from Dusko
Popov, a Serb who worked as a double agent for both Germany and Britain.
Popov's true sympathies, however, were with the Allies. Popov was also a
notorious playboy, who was code-named "Tricycle" because of his proclivity
for bedding two women simultaneously. It is reputed that Popov was Ian
Fleming's model for James Bond.92
In the summer of 1941, Germany sent Popov to the U.S. to establish an
espionage cadre. Popov's instructions were contained in an questionnaire
miniaturized to microdots, which could only be read by a microscope. The
instructions asked Popov and his subordinates to obtain information about
American war material production and, more ominously, called for a detailed
study of Pearl Harbor and its nearby airfields. Popov learned from a German
spy that the Japanese needed this information for their planned attack on
Pearl Harbor before the end of 1941. Popov made this information known to
his British handlers, and the British had him provide this information to
the FBI when he came to America in August 1941.93
It has been argued that the FBI did not trust Popov's information and the
microdots, and did no0t fully transmit it to the White House. One
explanation is that the prudish J. Edgar Hoover gave little credibility to
Popov's information because of his distaste for his playboy lifestyle.94
However, documents the FBI released in 1983 show that it assigned
considerable importance to Popov's information and that this information was
passed on to high ranking officers in Army and Naval intelligence. In Frank
Paul Mintz's analysis of the FBI material on Popov, he found that much of
the information had been blackened out, so it would be impossible to know
that the important parts were not transmitted to the military intelligence
and the White House.95 As Mintz concludes:
It passes credibility to assume that the microdot questionnaire remained
effectively dead to the world in 1941. English intelligence knew about it;
the FBI knew; and so did the intelligence services of U.S. armed forces.
Most likely both Churchill and Roosevelt became familiar with the full
contents of Popov's microdots during the last quarter of the year.96
Other Warnings
On the January 27, 1941, Dr. Ricardo Shreiber, the Peruvian envoy in Tokyo,
told Max Bishop, third secretary of the United States embassy, that he had
just learned from his intelligence sources that there was a Japanese war
plan involving a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. After being presented to
Ambassador Joseph Grew, this information was sent to the State Department,
where it was read by Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Naval Intelligence.
Arthur McCollum of Naval Intelligence, Roosevelt's close confidante
according to Stinnett, sent a cable on this issue to Kimmel, with the
analysis that "The Division of Naval Intelligence places no credence in
these rumors" and that "no move against Pearl Harbor appears imminent or
planned for the foreseeable future."97 In contrast to the reaction of Naval
Intelligence, Ambassador Grew was much impressed by the information. As he
wrote in his diary:
There is a lot of talk around town to the effect that the Japanese, in case
of a break with the U.S., are planning to go all out in a surprise mass
attack on Pearl Harbor. I rather guess that the boys in Hawaii are not
precisely asleep.98
The American ambassador was not the only source from Japan providing
warnings of the impending attack. Early in the fall of 1941, Kilsoo Haan, a
Korean agent-lobbyist in Washington, told Eric Severeid of CBS that the
Korean sources in Korea and Japan had proof that the Japanese were going to
attack Pearl Harbor before Christmas. In late October, Haan finally
convinced Senator Guy Gillette of Iowa that the Japanese were planning to
attack Pearl Harbor. Gillette alerted the State Department, Army and Navy
Intelligence, and President Roosevelt personally. Stanley K. Hornbeck, then
the number three-man at the State Department and an intimate of Henry
Stimson, wrote a memorandum to Secretary of State Hull stating that Haan's
Pearl Harbor warning should be taken seriously.99
In early December 1941, the Dutch Army in Java succeeded in decoding a
dispatch from Tokyo to its Bangkok embassy, referring to planned Japanese
attacks on the Philippines and Hawaii. The Dutch passed the information on
to Brigadier General Elliot Thorpe, the U.S. military observer. Thorpe found
this information so disturbing that he sent Washington a total of four
warnings, the last one going to General Marshall's intelligence chief.
Thorpe's message was acknowledged and he was ordered to send no further
messages concerning the matter. The Dutch also had their Washington military
attaché, Colonel F. G. L. Weijerman, personally warn General Marshall.100.
Dr. Hans Thomsen, the German charge d'affaires in Washington, who was
anti-Nazi, told Colonel William J. Donovan, American intelligence chief (and
later head of the OSS), that the Germans intended to attack Pearl Harbor.
This information was put into a memorandum. It is hard to believe that
Donovan would not have brought this to Roosevelt's attention since he
conferred with him several times in November and early December 1941.101
According to Congressman Martin Dies, his House Un-American Activities
Committee's investigation into Japanese intelligence activities in 1941 had
uncovered a map and other documents providing "precise information of the
proposed attack" on Pearl Harbor. When Dies informed Secretary of State
Hull, he was told to keep quiet on the matter because of "extremely
delicate" relations between Japan and the U.S.. Dies claimed that
representatives from the State Department and the Army and Navy inspected
the map.102
Revelations of Knowledge About the Attack
>Revisionists also cite a number of revelations that officials of the United
States government, including Roosevelt, had prior knowledge of the Pearl
Harbor attack. In his November 15, 1941, secret press briefing, Marshall
told his audience that the U.S. had information derived from encrypted
Japanese messages that war between the U.S. and Japan would break out during
the first ten days of December. Although Marshall apparently did not
specifically mention Pearl Harbor, his reference to the cracked codes
implied that American intelligence would have been aware of the location of
the impending attack.103
Colonel Carleton Ketchum substantiates J. Edgar Hoover's claim that
Roosevelt knew of the Japanese plans to attack Pearl Harbor. According to
Ketchum, at the behest of Congressmen George Bender of Ohio, he attended a
private meeting of a select group of congressmen and government officials in
Washington in early 1942 at which J. Edgar Hoover referred to various
warnings of the attack on Pearl Harbor that he had passed on to FDR.
Hoover also said that Roosevelt had received information on the impending
attack from other sources. Hoover was allegedly told by Roosevelt to keep
quiet on that matter. Ketchum said that before Hoover spoke, the group was
reminded of their usual pledge of secrecy (confidential matters were
supposedly often discussed before the group), but that Ketchum believed that
since the release of Toland's Infamy in 1982, which discussed similar
matters, he was freed of his pledge of secrecy. Ketchum had referred to this
meeting and the talk on Pearl Harbor in general terms in his 1976
autobiography, in which he stated that he still observed his pledge of
silence on the specifics of what was discussed. It was this earlier
reference that helps to give Ketchum's later statement regarding Hoover's
actual message some credibility.104
In an oral history, John A. Burns, a governor of Hawaii, said that while he
was a police officer on the Honolulu force, an FBI agent informed him in
early December 1941 of the impending attack on Pearl Harbor. Other witnesses
identified the agent as Robert Shivers.105
Joseph Leib's Account
One of the most fascinating revelations comes from Joe Leib, a newspaper
reporter who had formerly held posts in the Roosevelt administration. Leib
claimed that his friend, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, confided to him on
November 29, 1941 that President Roosevelt knew that the Japanese were going
to attack Pearl Harbor within a few days, and that the President was going
to let this happen as a way to get the country into war. Hull was strongly
opposed to this scheme. He turned over to Leib a document containing a
transcript of Japanese radio intercepts which allegedly concerned the Pearl
Harbor plan. While making Leib promise never to reveal his source, Hull
urged him to take the story to the press. Leib took the story to the United
Press bureau, which it refused to run it. Although Leib did manage to get a
version of it placed onto United Press's foreign cable, only one newspaper
took it, the Honolulu Advertiser, which created a front-page banner headline
in its Sunday, November 30 issue: "Japanese May Strike Over Weekend."106
Roosevelt and the Red Cross
A recent Pearl Harbor investigator, Daryl S. Borgquist, contends that Don C.
Smith, who directed War Services for the Red Cross before WWII, was told by
Roosevelt in November 1941 to prepare secretly for an impending Japanese
attack on Hawaii. This story came to light in a 1995 letter from Smith's
daughter, Helen C. Hamman, to President Clinton dealing with the issue of
the culpability of Admiral Kimmel and General Short, which was then being
reconsidered by the U.S. government. Roosevelt, Ms. Hamman wrote, told her
father that he was to keep this effort secret from the military personnel on
Hawaii. Roosevelt said that "the American people would never agree to enter
the war in Europe unless they were attack [sic] within their own borders."
Borquist was able to confirm the basics of Hamman's story--the Red Cross did
quietly send large quantities of medical supplies and experienced medical
personnel to Hawaii shortly before Dec. 7, 1941.107
Conclusion
How is one to evaluate the various parts of the revisionist position? The
evidence would seem to be clear that Roosevelt provoked the Japanese to
attack the United States. It is apparent that the U.S. could have taken
alternative policies aimed at the preservation of peace. And given the
threat the U.S. posed to Japan in its very own geographical region, it was
quite understandable that Japan would strike at the U.S.. Moreover,
American government officials clearly recognized that the American policies
would push Japan into belligerency. Furthermore, it seems clear that
Roosevelt desired a Japanese attack on an American territory or ship in
order to galvanize public support behind a declaration of war that would
enable him to honor his commitments in the ADB agreement.
Nevertheless, some qualifications are necessary. It is not as apparent, or
necessary for the revisionist thesis, that Roosevelt was following some
rigid plan to achieve war with Japan going back to the first part of 1940,
as some hard revisionists such as Stinnett maintain. It is quite
conceivable that at times Roosevelt considered maintaining peace with the
Japanese so as to focus on the European war. Moreover, it does not seem to
have been in Roosevelt's character to have a perfectly consistent
policy--certainly this was the case in his domestic policy. As revisionist
Frederic Sanborn opines:
Therefore it may be true that there was a complex ambivalence, not
thoroughly thought out, in Mr. Roosevelt's attitude toward the expedience of
peace or war with Japan. It is quite possible that he did not fully commit
himself to the latter choice until late in November 1941. By his own express
declarations we know that he deliberately temporized. Temporizing is
sometimes merely a way to postpone making a decision, but it may also be a
method of awaiting a favorable opportunity to put into effect a decision
already made.108
That Roosevelt had foreknowledge of a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
requires some qualifications. It is likely that not all failures to see the
impending attack on Pearl Harbor were the result of conspiracy. As Harry
Elmer Barnes realized, part of the reason for the failure of official
Washington to alert Hawaii was its fixation on Japanese troop movements in
the Southeast East Asia because of the implications this had on the ADB
agreement.109
Also as late as the first days of December, there seems to have been extreme
nervousness among Roosevelt and his inner circle that the Japanese might
avoid attacking American territory. Certainly, the British government
seemed to be of this opinion in its effort to get assurances from the U.S.
that it would honor its commitment to fight the Japanese when they moved
southward.110 And, of course, why would Roosevelt try to arrange an
incident with the three little ships if he knew the Japanese would attack
Pearl Harbor? Perhaps, Roosevelt was aware of the possibility of the attack
on Pearl Harbor but lacked certitude. Then again, as Harry Elmer Barnes
implied, perhaps Roosevelt sought to save the fleet by getting the U.S. into
the war earlier through an incident involving the little ships.
But while Roosevelt might not have been certain of the Pearl Harbor attack,
it would seem that he was at least aware of its likelihood. There is just
too much converging evidence to conclude otherwise--that the attack on Pearl
Harbor took Roosevelt completely by surprise. Perhaps, some of this evidence
can be questioned, but it is hard to question all of it. Even before the
new information provided by Stinnett became known, Frank Paul Mintz
concluded that "the 'argument from saturation' is the most persuasive one in
behalf of the contention that Washington was forewarned."111 If the
information provided by Stinnett is accurate--that the U.S. actually was
reading the Japanese naval codes and was tracking the task force as it moved
toward Hawaii--it would by itself be sufficient to prove the revisionist
case.
Of course, a number of arguments (some mutually exclusive) have been used to
criticize the overall revisionist position. (Earlier in this essay,
criticisms of specific revisionist points have been noted and countered.)
One of the mildest deals with the idea that while the agencies of the U.S.
collected information that would show that Pearl Harbor was a target, such
information was not in Roosevelt's hands. However, Roosevelt was actively
involved in American foreign policy decision-making, so it would seem hard
to believe that he would be uninformed regarding intelligence issues. And
as discussed earlier in this essay, Stinnett points out that Roosevelt was
given access to, and was interested in, specific intelligence information
regarding Pearl Harbor.
A more fundamental criticism of the revisionist position relies on an
argument made by Roberta Wohlstetter in Pearl Harbor: Warning and
Decisions112 that claims that American intelligence was so overwhelmed with
information, which she refers to as "noise," that it could not make an
accurate evaluation. Wohlstetter acknowledges that in hindsight one could
see that information pointed to a Japanese attack, but that before the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor it was impossible to select out the valid
information, which was "imbedded in an atmosphere of 'noise.'"113 However,
it is hard to see how this could be an insurmountable problem for
intelligence gatherers. Being able to select the wheat from the chaff is
their fundamental function. "Noise" would exist in any intelligence
situation. It is not apparent that the situation American intelligence
faced in 1941 was vastly more complicated than what is normally the case.
Prange, Goldstein, and Dillon write that in a "thorough search of more than
thirty years, including all publications released up to May 1, 1981 we have
not discovered one document or one word of sworn testimony that
substantiates the revisionist position on Roosevelt and Pearl Harbor."114
One wonders what the authors mean here. Certainly, there is evidence for
the revisionist case.. If Goldstein and Dillon115 use the term
"substantiate" to mean something like absolute proof, it must be admitted
that no one document, to date, absolutely proves the revisionist case. But
then again a single document rarely "proves" any historical argument. It is
numerous pieces of evidence that point to one conclusion. Michael Shermer
makes use of this "convergence of evidence" argument to prove that the
Holocaust happened and for historical proof in general.116 It would
certainly seem to be applicable to Pearl Harbor. And this argument meshes
with Mintz's "argument from saturation."
Another criticism of the revisionist position is the rejection of the
possibility of a successful conspiracy. Prange, Goldstein, and Dillon assume
that such a conspiracy would have had to have encompassed a large number of
individuals.
To accept the revisionist position, one must assume that almost every one of
those individuals, from the President on down, was a traitor. Somewhere
along the line someone would have recalled his solemn oath to defend the
U.S. against all enemies, foreign and domestic, and have blown the
whistle.117
But there is no need to assume a massive conspiracy because its actions were
extremely limited--the conspirators simply refrained from sending necessary
information to Hawaii. And there is no reason to assume that the members of
Roosevelt's inner circle would ever publicly confess to this operation
because instead of regarding their action as traitorous, they undoubtedly
believed that they were acting for the good of the country.
Other arguments against the revisionist thesis make assumptions about
Roosevelt's character--that he was too humanitarian to sacrifice American
lives. Dillon and Goldstein, for example, write that "nothing in his
history suggests that this man could plot to sink American ships and kill
thousands of American soldiers and sailors."118
But, as demonstrated by his efforts to get into the war, Roosevelt, like
many other leaders considered great, was not squeamish about the loss of
lives to achieve a higher good. And contrary to the Goldstein and Dillon
scenario, revisionists do not accuse Roosevelt of actively plotting to kill
Americans. He simply allowed the attack to take place. Moreover, as pointed
out earlier, Roosevelt could have reasonably expected the damage to have
been much less than it was. According to the conventional wisdom of the
day, the battleships in Pearl Harbor were virtually invulnerable to air
attack and the harbor was too shallow for torpedoes to be effective.119
A related argument assumes that allowing the fleet to be destroyed was just
too much of a risk for Roosevelt to have taken. But leaders considered
"great" have been known for taking risks--think of Napoleon, or Alexander
the Great. And the American risk was actually not that great considering
what Roosevelt thought to be the alternative if the U.S. did not enter the
war--Axis domination of the world that would imperil the U.S.. Moreover,
because of the anti-war stance of the American public, Roosevelt
realistically believed that only an overt attack on the U.S. could generate
the necessary public support for war. Thus, from Roosevelt's point of view,
only an attack on the U.S. would enable to U.S. to take the necessary
step--i.e., war--for its survival. Any risk would be worth it--somewhat
like the risk a terminal cancer patient takes in having a serious, even
experimental operation, in order to stave off an otherwise unavoidable
death. But again there was no reason for Roosevelt to regard the risk to be
of any great magnitude--certainly the security of continental U.S. was not
endangered. Moreover, as pointed out earlier, Roosevelt could have
reasonably expected the damage to have been much less than it was. And
Japan was not perceived as an all-powerful foe. Once the Allies, which
included the Soviet Union, had taken care of the greatest
danger--Germany--it could reasonably be assumed that they could easily
defeat Japan.
Henry Stimson revealed in his diary that the White House proponents of war
could see the positive results of the Pearl Harbor attack from the very
outset:
When the news first came that Japan had attacked us my first feeling was of
relief that the indecision was over and that a crisis had come in a way
which would unite all our people. This continued to be my dominant feeling
in spite of the news of catastrophes which quickly developed. For I feel
that this country united has practically nothing to fear; while the apathy
and divisions stirred up by unpatriotic men had been hitherto very
discouraging.120
Finally, many mainstream historians, instead of writing with any type of
detachment, have closely identified with World War II as the "good war," and
are automatically hostile to any ideas that might tarnish this image. This
is quite apparent in Prange, Goldstein, and Dillon, who refer to the Allies
as the "free world" even when Stalinist Russia is included. Ultimately,
Prange, Goldstein, and Dillon view the revisionists as not simply producing
erroneous history but as posing a deliberate threat to human freedom.
Prange, Goldstein, and Dillon write:
We would not devote so much space to it [the revisionist interpretation]
except for two frightening aspects. First, such disregard for the laws of
evidence undermines the structure of Occidental justice, so laboriously
erected over the centuries. If contemporary documents and sworn testimony
can be disregarded in favor of unsupported charges and personal venom, no
citizen is safe. . . . It also recalls uncomfortably the notion so
widespread among the Germans after World War I, and such a favorite thesis
with Hitler, that Germany did not really suffer military defeat, but had
been stabbed in the back by politicians on the home front.121
Thus, Prange, Goldstein, and Dillon connect Pearl Harbor revisionism with
Nazism. The emotionalism evident in such thinking can easily distort their
writing. In short, they judge the revisionist account by much higher
standards of proof than are conventionally applied to historical events.
It can be wondered what could possibly constitute proof of the revisionist
argument that could satisfy adherents of the establishment position. It
should be noted that in rejecting the revisionist thesis mainstream
historians are quite willing to abandon establishment arguments fervently
held in the past. For example, John Prados, a proponent of the mainstream
position, actually accepts Stinnett's contention that the Japanese fleet
approaching Hawaii did not maintain radio silence and that American
intelligence monitored its radio transmissions. Now the radio silence
argument had been a bulwark of the mainstream position to explain why the
Japanese task force could reach Pearl Harbor undetected. The fact that the
mainstream historians might have been completely wrong on this crucial
point, however, does not cause Prados to consider the idea that the
revisionists might be right in their overall view. Rather, Prados goes on
to chastise Stinnett for
attributing every failure to a nefarious 'plan,' giving no attention to the
ambitions of certain Navy officers who wanted to dominate all intelligence,
operations and communications services to the fleet . . . . and their plan
was not a conspiracy to get the U.S. into World War II.122
But what evidence would be necessary to prove the revisionist thesis? It
appears that for some establishment thinkers no type of evidence would
provide sufficient proof. Certainly, Prados' argument allows for a
pre-emptive rejection of revisionism even if the revisionist contention that
American intelligence could read the Japanese naval codes would be accepted
as true.
As revisionist James J. Martin aptly points out:
There are never enough data to enable one to prove an unpopular historical
thesis. An establishment, having anchored its lines, predictably vilifies a
rival and subjects those involved to ridicule and ultimately to personal
detraction and traducement which goes far beyond that. This ad hominem
denigration is expected to transfer to their intellectual product. And no
matter what the latter put on the record, the former insist that it is not
enough 'proof,' regardless of how flimsy or unconvincing was the 'proof'
used to create the establishment position.123
Pre-conceived ideas generally control historical observations. Historians,
especially those who make their living in academic circles, must necessarily
work within the paradigmatic confines of the prevailing orthodoxy,
especially where taboo topics are involved. The heretic must labor on the
scholarly fringes, with little or no financial backing and no major avenues
for dissemination. Perhaps this would be considered a tautology, but it is
likely that the revisionist account of Pearl Harbor and the origins of the
war with Japan can never receive a fair hearing in mainstream circles until
the presentation of World War II as the "good war" is no longer of great
instrumental value to the reigning establishment.124 Obviously, the "good
war" scenario still serves a vital purpose as America, victorious over the
mighty Taliban, marches forward to make the world safe from "terrorism."
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Stephen J. Sniegoski holds a Ph.D. in American diplomatic history and is the
author of several historical articles.
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Endnotes
Sigvaldi Eggertsson
> A man who put together the finance and funding of an aircraft that for the
> first time crossed an ocean non stop.
Lindbergh was the 97th to cross the Atlantic ocean.