Hitler Attacks Pearl Harbor: Why the United States Declared War on Germany 9781626370005

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HITLER ATTACKS PEARL HARBOR

HITLER ATTACKS PEARL HARBOR Why the United States Declared War on Germany

RICHARD F. HILL

b o u l d e r l o n d o n

Published in the United States of America in 2003 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 1800 30th Street, Boulder, Colorado 80301 www.rienner.com and in the United Kingdom by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. 3 Henrietta Street, Covent Garden, London WC2E 8LU © 2003 by Lynne Rienner Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hill, Richard F., 1955– Hitler attacks Pearl Harbor : why the United States declared war on Germany / Richard F. Hill. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-58826-126-3 (alk. paper) 1. United States—Foreign relations—Germany. 2. Germany—Foreign relations—United States. 3. World War, 1939–1945—Diplomatic history. 4. National socialism. 5. United States—Foreign relations—1933–1945. 6. National security—United States. I. Title. E183.8.G3 H55 2002 327.73043—dc21 2002021371 British Cataloguing in Publication Data A Cataloguing in Publication record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America

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The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984. 5

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Contents

Acknowledgments

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1 Introduction

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2 Beaten to the Punch: Hitler’s Declaration of War

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3 Actual Collaboration: German Guilt for Pearl Harbor

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4 A Responsible Source: Where Were the German Military Forces?

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5 War with the Axis: Europe Through the Backdoor

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6 Puppetmaster

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7 Hitler’s Fifth Column in Japan

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8 Hitler Threatens Japanese Dupes

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9 Nobody Knows: Better Safe Than Sorry

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10 Conclusion: Why Did the United States Declare War on Germany?

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Appendix: Public Opinion Polls Selected Bibliography Index About the Book

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Acknowledgments

I received a tremendous amount of support in the research and the writing of this book. First and foremost I have to give my profoundest thanks to the Department of History at Georgetown University, especially to the directors of graduate study, who generously provided me with a fellowship. I specifically want to thank James Collins, John Tutino, and David Painter. This project owes a double debt of gratitude to David Painter, as he so generously served as its mentor and editor. I also want to offer my thanks to Michael Kazin and Joseph McCartin, who read this work and provided me with their valuable comments. My most sincere thanks goes to Wayne Cole of the University of Maryland, who, although he has retired from this kind of exercise, nevertheless took the time to read an early draft and provide me with his valuable comments. My appreciation must also go to the many librarians and archivists who work at the National Archives and the Library of Congress in College Park, Maryland, and Washington, D.C. I also want to thank Lynne Rienner, Leanne Anderson, Shena Redmond, Jason Cook, and Liz Miles, whose patience and thoughtful comments helped shape the manuscript into an even better book. There are two others whose personal generosity made this project possible. I want to thank my mother, Pauline, and my wife, Maria, for their enduring patience and cheerful moral support.

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1 Introduction History is written by the victors. —Jawaharlal Nehru

The first casualty of war is truth. —Senator Hiram Johnson

This book seeks to explain why the United States decided to escalate from a limited to a total war against Germany in December 1941, which plunged the United States into World War II in Europe. The traditional postwar explanation has been that the United States declared war on Germany on December 11, 1941, as a reaction to that day’s German declaration of war on the United States.1 This virtually unanimous historiographical explanation argues, therefore, that the predominant reason the Roosevelt administration and Congress sent an American Expeditionary Force (AEF) to Europe was the provocations inherent in Hitler’s declaration of war.2 This traditional explanation has been supported by the fact that until December 11, the U.S. military had been officially confined to the Atlantic Ocean, but afterward it was officially ordered to prepare to invade Europe, and to conquer and occupy Germany. This study, however, challenges that traditional consensus by arguing that the German declaration was actually of little or no real importance in deciding U.S. foreign policy in December 1941. Rather, it was decided by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. That event convinced a majority of Americans to escalate to total war against Germany; most Americans believed that Germany was either an accomplice or the political master of Japan, thus making Hitler at least as guilty as Japan for the attack on Pearl Harbor. The attack on Pearl Harbor was the defining event for U.S. entrance into World War II, not only as it regarded the Pacific theater, but also the European theater.

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Introduction

U.S. military contingency plans may have existed prior to December 1941. Many historians have recognized that U.S. political and public support for total war with Germany simply did not exist prior to December 1941. But what no historian has recognized is that this galvanizing of U.S. public and political support did not materialize as a result of Hitler’s December 11 declaration of war, but rather came as a direct result of the events of December 7. The evidence is clear that the United States went to war with Germany for reasons far more compelling than the German declaration of war: a speech and a note.3 I argue that the political explanation is paramount in understanding the reason for this momentous U.S. decision to enter World War II. Therefore this book is based on evidence concerning the role of public political opinion, its perceptions of reality, and its importance in determining the policy implemented. Rather than retrace the steps of countless earlier historians and focus on the declassified records of the government, I focus on the public political discourse of the president, the Congress, and the press, and draw extensively on the speeches and statements of President Roosevelt, the Congressional Record, public opinion polls, and newspapers and magazines from across the nation.4 Contrary to the traditional historiography, which points to the German declaration of war on December 11 as the key factor behind the change in U.S. policy, this study reveals that President Roosevelt, most members of Congress, most Americans, and most of the press blamed Germany for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7. Had Hitler not declared war first, the evidence demonstrates that the United States would have declared war on Germany anyway, because of the strong and widespread belief in German culpability for Pearl Harbor. Indeed, this study is apparently the first to reveal that on December 12 the German government denied that it had declared war on the United States the day before. That this denial was acknowledged by the U.S. public and accepted as a virtual retraction of Hitler’s declaration of war is amply demonstrated by the sources cited by this study.5 In short, historians have ignored this evidence. While most have also been aware that Germany was actually not involved in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, they have ignored evidence that contemporaries believed this to be true, as they then based their actions on these mistaken but widespread beliefs. The traditional historiography does not adequately explain the events of December 1941, when U.S. policy changed from one of limited war with Germany to one of total war. The only adequate explanation of this change is to be found in the public political discourse of the president, the Congress, the polls, and the press. In addition to capturing the historical motives behind U.S. actions, this finding answers the question of how a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor could have brought the United States into war against Germany. The evidence indicates that the conventional consensus historiography has been wrong to emphasize both the balance of power in Europe and the

Introduction

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German declaration of war as being the primary reasons why the United States entered a total war against Germany. The contemporary evidence indicates that these two conventional explanations played no significant role in the decision by a majority of Americans and their political representatives in December 1941 to declare war on and invade Germany. The contemporary evidence does indicate, however, that the primary reason was actually a U.S. charge of conspiracy against Germany for the attack on Pearl Harbor. This charge is similar to many others voiced throughout U.S. history, with perhaps the most familiar analog being the Cold War charge against an international Communist conspiracy. In December 1941 the United States charged that Germany was guilty of complicity in an Axis conspiracy against the United States, which was said to have been made manifest at Pearl Harbor. This was the primary and most enduring U.S. charge against Germany during World War II, and it was emphasized by all of this study’s sources, including the public opinion polls as well as the most important source, the speeches of President Roosevelt. Ultimately, this study explains the origins of the permanent U.S. security commitment to Europe, which endured throughout the Cold War and beyond. The United States initiated its permanent military security commitment to Europe in December 1941. Until then, U.S. military policy toward Europe had been strictly confined to policing the Atlantic Ocean. U.S. policy was to deliver shipments of Lend-Lease materials to Britain and Russia, by means of convoys protected by the U.S. Navy and U.S. Army Air Force. Until December 1941, the United States had decidedly rejected expanding that military role to the continent of Europe. But the United States reversed its decision that month and did indeed expand its military commitment to the continent of Europe, and to a land war there. The overwhelming consensus of historians since World War II has been that the United States decided to declare war on Germany and invade Europe because Hitler declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941. That historiographical explanation, however, is wrong and is a concoction that originated only after 1945, when the captured Axis records revealed that the U.S. wartime rationale had been based on a misconception—the conspiracy charge. This book examines the predominant reasons given by U.S. contemporaries during World War II, especially at the outset of the total U.S. commitment in December 1941. The evidence from that period is both overwhelming and clear as to why the United States decided to go to war against Germany by invading Europe. It demonstrates that Hitler’s declaration of war was of virtually no importance to the U.S. decision. Rather, the most important reason was U.S. blame of Germany for the attack on Pearl Harbor. Immediately after that attack, a vast majority of Americans repeatedly charged that Germany was guilty because it was either an accomplice of Japan or the political master of Japan.

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U.S. political and public opinion on this issue can be understood by examining the speeches of President Roosevelt, the public opinion polls, the Congressional Record, and the national press. The most important indicator of public opinion was the speeches of Roosevelt, who, as historians have agreed, was exceptionally skilled in representing a majority of Americans regarding national policy and its rationale. Second, the national public opinion polls from this period all demonstrate that 64 to 68.5 percent of Americans, at the very least, agreed with Roosevelt’s policy rationale against Germany—its guilt for Pearl Harbor.6 Third, the Congressional Record demonstrates that a vast majority of U.S. political representatives also predominantly justified the U.S. escalation to total war against Germany in December 1941 because of Pearl Harbor. Last, a vast majority of the nation’s press both echoed and explained in detail the U.S. justification for war against Germany based on the attack of Pearl Harbor. The most historically and politically important segment of this national press lay in the Midwest, the region that had been most opposed to any conflict with Germany in the period before Pearl Harbor. Accordingly, this book pays particular attention to the midwestern press, whose views after Pearl Harbor were virtually identical to the views of the press in the rest of the United States. These four pillars of public opinion are the best way to understand what motivated U.S. foreign policy against Germany during and after December 1941. Public opinion was decisive because of the nature of the issue; indeed, foreign policy against Germany was the most important public issue at that time. Thus the methodology of this study is based on the documents that reveal public opinion, as well as declassified internal U.S. government documents, none of which contradicts the thesis of this study. The evidentiary examination of when and why the United States decided to declare war on and invade Germany begins in Chapter 2, which asks and answers the most obvious question: If it was indeed the attack on Pearl Harbor that persuaded the United States to declare war on Germany, then why did the United States wait until after Hitler declared war on the United States on December 11? The answer is that President Roosevelt was apparently waiting for Hitler’s expected declaration because it could only increase the number of votes in Congress for a U.S. declaration of war on Germany. But the most important point is that it was Pearl Harbor that caused an unprecedented majority of Americans to favor a declaration of war on Germany. Before Pearl Harbor, a vast majority of Americans had opposed such a declaration. But immediately after Pearl Harbor, all the evidence demonstrates that this opinion reversed itself, and for the first time a majority of Americans favored a declaration of war on Germany—after December 7 and before December 11. The evidence indicates that Roosevelt waited for the expected German declaration in order to expand his already unprecedented and substantial majority into an even larger supermajority or unanimity in favor of a declaration of war

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on Germany. By waiting for the largest majority possible, the president could ensure himself a freer hand in prosecuting the war. President Roosevelt and the entire nation were expectantly anticipating the German declaration of war on the United States in the days immediately following December 7. Beyond the public sources of such expectation, Roosevelt had secret U.S. military intelligence that confirmed the public expectation. Nevertheless, in the unlikely event that Hitler might have reversed his promise to Japan by declining to declare war on the United States, Roosevelt had strongly implied to his cabinet and to the nation immediately after December 7 that he was prepared to ask for a declaration of war on Germany, even if Germany would decline to declare war first. In the days between December 7 and December 11, Roosevelt was supported by a vast majority of the public and the Congress. Any German declaration of war made little difference to the United States. This was clearly and overwhelmingly demonstrated by the contemporary evidence both before and after December 7, as well as after December 12, when Germany essentially retracted its declaration of war. This forgotten event is discussed in Chapter 10. Chapter 3 examines President Roosevelt’s speeches, the most important indicator of the reasons that motivated U.S. policy and the public opinion that supported it. His speeches during the month following the attack on Pearl Harbor, or “Pearl Harbor month,” repeatedly relied on blaming Germany for Pearl Harbor. But in only one presidential message, that of December 11 itself, did he even mention Hitler’s declaration of war. By contrast, Roosevelt not only repeatedly told the nation that German guilt for Pearl Harbor was obvious from all the public sources of information, but he also implied that German guilt was confirmed by secret military intelligence. His only major messages to the nation during Pearl Harbor month were those of December 9, December 15, and January 6. His predominant theme of German guilt for Pearl Harbor was applauded and echoed across the United States by the overwhelming majority of congressional, polling, and press commentary. Most Americans not only reiterated President Roosevelt’s accusations of German complicity in the planning and funding of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but also accused German military forces of actually participating in the war in the Pacific. These accusations came from eyewitnesses on the ground and from highly respected diplomatic, military, and intelligence sources. Their expert knowledge and powers of deduction were afforded extensive coverage and great credibility by the U.S. press. This is why the reports of the Luftwaffe bombing of Pearl Harbor were believed by a substantial portion of Americans both throughout and even after World War II. But these beliefs were strongest during Pearl Harbor week and month, the period when the United States decided and enacted its policy toward Germany.

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Introduction

Chapter 4 continues the examination of the most compelling initial reasons why the United States blamed Germany for Pearl Harbor: the explanation of the major U.S. rationale for total war against Germany. The various reports of German air, land, and naval attacks in the Pacific became a hot news story during December 1941. When questioned by the press, the Roosevelt administration would not deny outright the possible or probable veracity of these reports. By rejecting an outright denial of these reports, the administration was actually tacitly encouraging, to a significant degree, the persistence of these reports. It would not deny these reports during Pearl Harbor month because, as it explained, it could not be absolutely certain of the whereabouts of German military forces, including the powerful German fleet. The official U.S. and British government postwar historians have revealed, however, that the Roosevelt administration actually did know more about the whereabouts of the German fleet in December 1941 than it was willing to publicly admit. These historians have drawn no conclusions, however, about how this might have affected the U.S. casus belli against Germany. The relative silence on the part of the Roosevelt administration allowed these rumors to persist for some time, thus increasing the belligerence of a majority of the U.S. public against Germany. The administration’s reticence to make any definitive claim regarding German military forces in the Pacific, however, stood in stark contrast to its main charges against Germany, namely German conspiratorial guilt in the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Pacific. These accusations constituted the predominant publicly stated motivation for the U.S. war against Germany. The most consistent, enduring, and thus strongest overall U.S. charge against Germany during World War II was that Germany had been a coconspirator with Japan. This charge, examined in Chapter 5, made Germany an accomplice and thus equally guilty with Japan for the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Pacific. Most Americans charged that Germany had been at least equally involved with Japan in the strategic planning and funding of the Pacific offensive. As President Roosevelt had charged, Axis strategy was global in execution and monolithic in conception. This theme was echoed and elaborated upon by a vast majority of the Congress and the press after Pearl Harbor, from all sections of the United States, including the former isolationists. Americans pointed to a variety of evidence to support this charge, much of which was based on the observations and deductions of military experts regarding Japanese and German battlefield tactics. One of the most important pieces of evidence pointed to by Americans was the Axis Tripartite Treaty, which had been signed in 1940. The U.S. government demonstrated the seriousness of its charge against the Axis monolithconspiracy when, beginning December 8, 1941, it began arresting not only Japanese, but also German and Italian aliens in the United States. This wartime charge of German conspiracy with Japan was, however, subsequently

Introduction

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rejected by most historians after the war. These are the same historians who emphasized the primary importance of Hitler’s declaration of war. The most serious U.S. charge against Germany that dominated Pearl Harbor month, and persisted to a diminished but still significant degree throughout World War II, was that Japan was a mere political satellite or puppet of Nazi Germany. This appraisal, the subject of Chapter 6, rendered Germany even more guilty than Japan, when Japanese actions, such as those at Pearl Harbor, were considered by most Americans. This puppetmaster thesis was the essence of the commentary provided by the Roosevelt administration, the Congress, and the national press from December 1941 through early 1942. All sections of the United States voiced this belief, including the former isolationists, and it was confirmed by all the national public opinion polls. Americans said that Hitler the puppetmaster had ordered Japan the puppet to attack Pearl Harbor for the purpose of diverting the United States away from Europe and toward the Pacific. Americans explained that Hitler had desperately needed such a U.S. diversion away from Europe because Germany had begun losing the war, at that time, in the three main theaters: Russia, North Africa, and the Atlantic. The response of the Roosevelt administration to Hitler’s “obvious” stratagem was the new U.S. policy of total war against Germany. The administration explained that this new policy was pragmatically predicated on the calculation that the conquest of Germany would automatically disable Japan, the satellite/puppet of Germany. This Germany-first U.S. policy was also justified on the moral grounds that Germany, as the puppetmaster of Japan, was actually more guilty than Japan for the attack on Pearl Harbor. A great deal of this U.S. belief in the German domination of Japan was conditioned by the racial assumptions that had informed centuries of European imperial domination of Asia. Both the racial assumptions and the puppetmaster thesis have been severely criticized by most postwar historians. But these are again the same historians who have chosen to forget that racial assumptions were what actually motivated the United States to enter total war against Germany. They chose, instead, to retroactively emphasize Hitler’s declaration of war. German domination of Japan was explained quite thoroughly in the U.S. press during December 1941. The explanation, examined in Chapter 7, was that Japan followed German orders because Japan was said to be completely dependent on German arms and expertise to run its war machine. U.S. commentators speculated that some German arms might be reaching Japan through holes in the British blockade. But most German arms were presumed to have reached Japan before Germany had invaded Russia. Since that time, Japan was said to be mostly dependent on German technology and expertise in order to manufacture arms in Japan. These German experts and technicians, who were said to control Japan from the inside, were yet another example of a German “Fifth Column” that the

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Introduction

United States had long feared was infiltrating and possibly controlling other governments around the globe. German Fifth Column experts were said to control the Japanese military, economy, and government. Indeed, the entire success of Japanese military operations was credited to Japan’s German overseers. The U.S. assessment of its new war in the Pacific was characterized essentially as a war between two empires, Germany and the United States, thus dismissing the significance of the Japanese colonial subordinate. This theoretical assessment prefigured a similar U.S. geopolitical/strategic calculation that would later be made during the Cold War against the Soviets and their satellites. Chapter 8 reveals that Americans, including President Roosevelt, also explained another way Germany controlled Japanese behavior, in addition to the German threat to withdraw its technological expertise from Japan. Germany was also said to pose an even more fearful threat to Japan, a military threat of invasion if Japan disobeyed German orders. Americans said that Germany could conceivably invade Japan once Germany had conquered all of Russia, and that Japan was fearful of this threat and thus had obeyed German orders to attack the United States. The German threat directed against Japan was compelling enough to convince most Americans that Germany was ultimately responsible for the consequence of that threat—the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Americans said that Japan had been intimidated by this German threat not only because Japan was a relatively weak power, but also because it had been duped by Hitler. Americans also said that Japan had taken the German threat seriously despite the contemporary fact that Germany was not winning its war against Russia, before, during, and for some time after December 1941. Americans could easily believe that Japan could be duped by a desperate Hitler, due to the stereotypical notions that Americans had long held about an ignorant, backward, and inferior Japan. The puppetmaster thesis had been the most important motivator of U.S. policy during Pearl Harbor month, the period when the United States decided to invade Europe. As Chapter 9 demonstrates, in early 1942 the puppetmaster thesis slowly began to recede in importance, due to the gradual U.S. recognition that Japan was evidently accomplishing many military victories without actually seeming to be overly or overtly reliant on Germany. Accordingly, by early spring 1942, most Americans seemed to fall back to the position that Germany had been at least an equal coconspirator with Japan, but not necessarily Japan’s puppetmaster. Yet after Pearl Harbor month Americans voiced much uncertainty about the actual nature of the relationship between Germany and Japan. But most U.S. press commentary after Pearl Harbor month had a tone of “better to be safe than sorry,” that it was safer to hold Germany guilty for Pearl Harbor, despite any uncertainty about the exact degree or even the nature of that guilt. At the end of Pearl Harbor month, Americans also devel-

Introduction

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oped another justification for war with Germany: the renewed U-boat offensive that was now coming closer to the Western Hemisphere. But this new U.S. casus belli against Germany was not only second chronologically, but also secondary in importance to the original and primary casus belli that the United States had developed during Pearl Harbor month. Historians have argued that both the puppetmaster thesis and the coconspirator thesis were so widely accepted by Americans after Pearl Harbor because these theses best explained the humiliating U.S. defeat at the hands of the Japanese, a nation that most Americans regarded as backward and inferior. In conclusion, Chapter 10 briefly examines some of the larger related issues of why the United States declared war on Germany. Ultimately, this book can be viewed as a supplement to the “revisionist” historiographical dissent regarding U.S. entry into World War II. The revisionist minority have argued that the United States entered the war in Europe in December 1941 via a “backdoor to war” in the Pacific. One major reason why the revisionist argument always lacked persuasive power to later generations was that it never explained how and why a U.S. war with Japan could have actually become a backdoor to war with Germany. This book explains how the backdoor process worked. Chapter 10 also challenges the historiographical consensus majority, who have argued that U.S. entry into World War II was primarily predicated upon internationalist and not nationalist motivations. The internationalist argument rests upon the primacy of Hitler’s declaration of war, and its implications in international law. It also rests upon an assessment of the international or European balance of power. However, the contemporary evidence overwhelmingly demonstrates that it was nationalist and not internationalist considerations that primarily motivated U.S. entry into World War II. The traditional internationalist explanation has emphasized Hitler’s declaration of war, which was essentially meaningless to the United States in December 1941. The other major traditional internationalist explanation has emphasized the European balance of power even though it had actually become, by November and December 1941, a virtually inconsequential motivator of U.S. policy and opinion. In fact, national considerations had always been the real primary motivator of U.S. policy and opinion ever since World War II had begun in 1939. This meant that the ultimate motivator for U.S. policy and opinion was the fear the German Luftwaffe might suddenly strike out across the Atlantic to bomb or invade the Western Hemisphere and the United States. This long-standing fear mushroomed after Pearl Harbor, and it had never depended upon an imbalance of power in Europe, as contemporaries repeatedly explained, in contrast to the arguments of the postwar historiographical consensus. Nevertheless, the European balance of power had been a major concern of the United States, even if it was never the primary or ultimate concern. This

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Introduction

anxiety began to diminish, however, in autumn 1941, when Germany began to lose the war in its three main theaters: Russia, North Africa, and the Atlantic. Most contemporary commentary pointed out that, beginning in autumn 1941, the previously victorious German military first began to suffer a slowdown in its advances, then its offensive became bogged down, and finally by November and December 1941 it was actually forced into retreat in its three theaters. The Germans did not resume offensives until spring 1942. But Germany never again began “winning” the war against its European enemies. The important point from the U.S. perspective is that, by November and December 1941, the European balance of power had ceased to be a major concern and motivator of U.S. policy and opinion. In fact, the major contemporary U.S. motivation for war against Germany was predicated upon the belief that it was Germany’s very defeats that had prompted its desperate ordering of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The other internationalist argument of the historiographical consensus, Hitler’s declaration of war, was also an inconsequential motivator of U.S. policy and opinion in December 1941. Chapter 10 presents only the essential reasons for this rebuttal, including the fact that Germany essentially retracted its declaration of war the day after it was issued. This subject, as well as the larger but related issues outside the immediate scope of this book, needs to be much more thoroughly examined and discussed.

Notes 1. This new U.S. policy of total war against Germany was outlined in President Roosevelt’s first major pronouncement on the subject of Germany after December 11, his January 6, 1942, State of the Union address. See New York Times, December 12, 1941, p. 1; Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 11, 1942 (New York: Random House, 1950); State of the Union address, January 6, 1942, pp. 39, 42. 2. For the argument that U.S. policy on and after December 11 was in retaliation to Hitler’s declaration of war on that day, see Thomas Bailey and Paul Ryan, Hitler vs. Roosevelt: The Undeclared Naval War (New York: Free Press, 1979), pp. 251, 261; Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932–1945 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), p. 506; Anthony Eden, The Reckoning: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden, Earl of Avalon (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), pp. 365–366; William Henry Chamberlin, America’s Second Crusade (Chicago: Regnery, 1950), p. 147; William Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 (New York: Published for the Council on Foreign Relations by Harper, 1953), pp. 940–941; Robert Divine, The Reluctant Belligerent: American Entry into World War II (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1965), p. 758; Saul Friedlander, Prelude to Downfall: Hitler and the United States, 1939–1941 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1967), p. 309; H. L. Trefousse, Germany and American Neutrality, 1939–1941 (New York: Bookman Associates, 1951), pp. 155–156; Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 312; Donald Drummond, The Passing of American Neutrality, 1937–41 (Ann Arbor: University of Michi-

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gan Press, 1955), p. 369; T. R. Fehrenbach, FDR’s Undeclared War, 1939–1941 (New York: David McKay, 1967), p. 324; James MacGregor Burns, Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970), pp. 174–175; Basil Rauch, Roosevelt: From Munich to Pearl Harbor—A Study in the Creation of a Foreign Policy (New York: Creative Age Press, 1950), p. 429; Arnold Offner, American Appeasement: United States Foreign Policy and Germany, 1933–1938 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969), pp. 203, 279; Arnold Offner, The Origins of the Second World War (New York: Praeger, 1975), p. 245; James Compton, The Swastika and the Eagle: Hitler, the United States, and the Origins of World War II (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), p. 260; Justus Doenecke and John Wiltz, From Isolation to War, 1931–1941, 2nd ed. (Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1991), pp. 176–177; William Kinsella, Leadership in Isolation: FDR and the Origins of the Second World War (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1979), p. 205; Richard Ketchum, The Borrowed Years, 1938–41 (New York: Random House, 1989), pp. 791–792; Waldo Heinrichs, Threshold of War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Entry into World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 220; Robert James Maddox, The United States and World War II (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), p. 98; Warren Kimball, Forged in War: Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War (New York: William Morrow, 1997), pp. 123–124; Joseph Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 1939–1941: The Partnership That Saved the West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), pp. 491–492; Sean Cashman, America, Roosevelt, and World War II (New York: New York University Press, 1989), p. 80; Russell Buchanan, The United States and World War II, vol. 1 (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), pp. 78, 441–442; Gary Hess, The United States at War, 1941–1945 (Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1986), pp. 23–24; Winston Churchill, The Grand Alliance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), p. 615; Martin Gilbert, The Second World War (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1989), p. 277; Richard Norton Smith, The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick, 1880–1955 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), p. 419; Alexander DeConde, ed., Isolation and Security: Ideas and Interests in Twentieth Century American Foreign Policy (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1957), p. 156; Ernest May, American Intervention, 1917 and 1941 (Washington, D.C.: Harvard University Press, Service Center for Teachers of History, 1960), pp. 11–12; Dexter Perkins, America and Two Wars (Boston: Little, Brown, 1944), p. 155; Allan Nevins and Louis Hacker, eds., The United States and Its Place in World Affairs, 1918–1943 (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1943), p. 517; Melvin Small, Was War Necessary? National Security and U.S. Entry into War (London: Sage, 1980), pp. 257–259; Alton Frye, Nazi Germany and the American Hemisphere, 1933–1941 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), p. 177; Warren Kimball, The Juggler: Franklin D. Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 13, 204; Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper and Bros., 1948), pp. 441–442; Warren Kimball, ed., Franklin D. Roosevelt and the World Crisis, 1937–1945 (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973), pp. xv, xvii, 58. Even though virtually all historians agree that December 11, 1941, was the date the United States officially decided to enter the European war, there is a minority historiographical interpretation that also argues that the Roosevelt administration actually decided to enter the European war before the provocations of December 1941. These “revisionists” are Charles Callan Tansill, Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy, 1933–1941 (Chicago: Regnery, 1952); Charles A. Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941: A Study in Appearances and Realities (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948); Harry Elmer Barnes, ed., Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Its Aftermath (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton, 1953); George Morgenstern, Pearl Har-

12

Introduction

bor: The Story of the Secret War (New York: Devin Adair, 1947); William Henry Chamberlin, America’s Second Crusade (Chicago: Regnery, 1950); Frederick C. Sanborn, Design for War: A Study of Secret Power Politics, 1937–1941 (New York: Devin Adair, 1951); Robert A. Theobald, The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor: The Washington Contribution to the Japanese Attack (New York: Devin Adair, 1954); Husband E. Kimmel, Admiral Kimmel’s Story (Chicago: Regnery, 1955); Anthony Kubek, How the Far East Was Lost: American Policy and the Creation of Communist China, 1941–1949 (Chicago: Regnery, 1963); Bruce M. Russett, No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of the United States Entry into World War II (New York: Harper and Row, 1972); Lloyd C. Gardner, The Economic Aspects of New Deal Diplomacy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964); Jonathan G. Utley, Going to War with Japan, 1939–1941 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984); Robert Freeman Smith, “American Foreign Relations, 1920–1942,” in Barton J. Bernstein, ed., Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History (New York: Pantheon Books, 1968). 3. The subject of why the German declaration of war was not the cause of the U.S. declaration is partially addressed in Chapter 10. Central to this discussion is the fact that on December 12, 1941, the German government essentially retracted its December 11 “declaration of war.” Any fuller examination will have to be addressed in a later study because the evidence is voluminous, complex, and overwhelming. Moreover, this negative argument is by definition a secondary explanation of the actual historical events, and must therefore be accorded a similar position in the overall explanation of the history of this period. 4. See the book’s Appendix for the public opinion polls. 5. See Chapter 10, and also Chapter 2. 6. See Chapters 2 and 6 for more on the polling data.

2 Beaten to the Punch: Hitler’s Declaration of War

On December 11, 1941, the United States declared war on Germany, and thus escalated its conflict with Hitler from the limited theater of the Atlantic into the policy of a full-scale invasion of the continents of Africa and Europe. The United States did not “formally” decide this new policy until December 11, immediately following the German declaration of war. However, the latter was actually only marginally the cause of the former, and after December 11 it became no cause at all, as the Germans retracted their declaration on December 12. But whatever the date that is examined, it is clear that the United States went to war with Germany for reasons far more compelling than a German declaration of war.1 Why did the United States decide to declare war against Germany during the second week of December 1941, Pearl Harbor week? Because the United States blamed Germany for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. A comprehensive reading of the nation’s political discourse during December 1941 reveals that after December 7 there was little question in the mind of most Americans that the United States was now going to declare war on Germany, as well as Japan. The only real question after December 7 was when, and no longer if, the United States would launch this radically new policy against Germany. Why then did the United States delay its formal declaration of war on Germany by four days until December 11? Americans ultimately answered this by explaining that they had been preoccupied by the shock, trauma, and alarm bound up with what they regarded as the most immediate danger, the initial strike arm of the Axis: the Japanese. In other words, U.S. foreign policy during Pearl Harbor week was explained afterward as essentially “first things first.”2 Before December 11, however, a somewhat different rationale was offered. Beginning December 8, this rationale nevertheless also grew out of 13

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Hitler Attacks Pearl Harbor

the concurrent transfixing reports on the events in the Pacific, and their purported connection to Germany. There arose a widespread and unprecedented anticipation in the U.S. press that the United States would now soon be declaring war on Germany, as well as Japan. Regarding the imminent U.S. declaration of war on Japan, the United Press (UP) reported on the morning of December 8 that “President Roosevelt will address a joint session of Congress at 12:30 p.m. today and may ask recognition that a state of war exists between the United States and Japan, and possibly with Germany and Italy.” The Omaha Morning World-Herald headlined with “FDR calls Congress. . . . May ask for war. . . . Press sees advisors; Declaration against Nazis and Italy hinted; Foes of Roosevelt swing to his support.” Those who were now former isolationists were, for the first time, echoing the policy of their now former foes, the interventionists.3 December 8 also witnessed the Detroit Free Press predict that “sunset today will probably see this country openly at war not only with Japan but with Germany and Italy as well.” The Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald momentarily expected a U.S. escalation and formal declaration of war against Germany. It concluded that “before dawn today, it was likely that the United States would be engaged in a formal war not only against Japan, but against her Axis allies—Germany and Italy—and the European satellites of the dictator powers.” Longtime isolationist newspapers like the Times-Herald, which had become interventionists after Pearl Harbor, not only expected an instant declaration of war on Germany on December 8, but also openly expressed the hope that the United States would do so. The now formerly isolationist Sacramento Union argued on December 8 that “we might just as well include Germany and Italy in the war declaration. In effect, we’ll be fighting them when battling the Japanese,” because in Japan “the army and navy are in control there and they are obeying the orders of Adolf Hitler and his Nazis.”4 The expectations and even hopes of these morning papers, however, were dashed that afternoon. The evening edition of the Indianapolis News on December 8 informed its readers that the president and Congress had legislated a “Declaration against Japan only.” In an unsuccessful attempt to clear up the confusion regarding U.S. policy toward Germany, the Chicago Tribune reported in its December 9 morning edition that “according to the White House the President is not considering a declaration of war on Germany and Italy. The United States is now engaged in an undeclared war with Germany and Italy but whether it becomes formalized appears to be up to Hitler, for the time being at least.” The addition of the temporizing caveat at the end of this statement rendered ambiguous who would declare war first.5 The ambiguity of administration “hints” did not prevent Washington, D.C.–based and nationally syndicated reporter-columnists Drew Pearson and Robert Allen from confidently predicting in a radio broadcast on December 8

Beaten to the Punch

15

that the United States would soon declare war on Germany. They were joined on December 9 by the Des Moines (Iowa) Register, which stated that it is only a matter of time before the American declaration that a state of war exists with Japan will be extended to Germany and Italy, informed quarters here [Washington, D.C.] believed Monday night [December 8]. . . . This wider implication of the war came in a White House statement which accused Germany of inspiring Japanese attacks upon American bases in a hope it would end the Lend-Lease program.

Virtually every U.S. newspaper had carried the December 8 White House statement asserting that “obviously Germany did all it could to push Japan into the war.” The White House then explained its delay in requesting a declaration of war on Germany as stemming from U.S. policy that was “to force Germany and Italy to act first.” Yet this kind of statement did virtually nothing to dispel the contrary and unprecedented expectations of the press that the United States might be the first to act.6 The ambiguity of White House statements suggests that President Roosevelt was actually hedging his bets. He was on the one hand implying that the United States would soon declare war on Germany because of Pearl Harbor, while on the other hand adding that the United States would wait for a German declaration. Although this may seem like a contradictory policy, it was not, because Roosevelt and most newspapers were quite certain Germany would soon declare war on the United States. If this expectation had eventually proven incorrect, however, the evidence suggests overwhelmingly that Roosevelt would have been able to revert to his other statements regarding Pearl Harbor in order to justify a U.S. declaration against Germany. And this is precisely what he did after Germany’s December 12 denial/retraction of its December 11 declaration.7 The U.S. press, between December 8 and 11, understood President Roosevelt’s policy to mean that the only question was when, not if, the United States would declare war on Germany, due to the unalterable and intolerable fact of Pearl Harbor. This was the interpretation of many opinion leaders the morning after Roosevelt’s radio broadcast to the nation on the evening of December 9. These opinion leaders included the all-important isolationist bloc in the country, the Midwest and West, where many had just been converted to interventionism. Thus on December 10 the formerly isolationist Sacramento Union stated that “President Roosevelt let the nation know last night, in not quite so many words, that the U.S. is as much at war with Germany and Italy as with Japan—and thus took a lot of the punch out of the big diplomatic question of whether we or the Axis partners would be the first to formalize our state of war.” That same day the Denver Post summarized Roosevelt’s December 9 speech, saying that “technically, this country is engaged

16

Hitler Attacks Pearl Harbor

in a war with Japan only. Actually, we are at war with Germany and Italy and the whole Axis gang just as certainly as if Congress had included them in the declaration of war voted Monday,” because, as the president had said, “Germany and Italy considered themselves at war with the United States.” The Post concluded by saying that “the President’s proclamation that ‘an invasion or predatory incursion is threatened upon the territory of the United States by Germany or Italy’ amounted to recognition of the existence of a state of war between these nations.”8 That U.S. policy toward Germany would now escalate as a result of Pearl Harbor was also obvious to nationally syndicated columnist Frank Kent. Writing in the Cincinnati Enquirer on December 10, he argued that though Mr. Roosevelt did not say so in his address to Congress, will any realistic man contend that the issue is merely between Japan and the United States? Too clearly, it is between the Axis powers and ourselves. Hitler is the real enemy and it is all one battle. We are in it now up to the hilt and to the end. . . . The President has made it clear that Germany was—and is—behind Japan in the war thrust upon us.

The tide of newspaper opinion was turning toward all-out war against Germany in the wake of Pearl Harbor. This was reflected not only in the statements of the White House and the press, but also in the Congress. On December 8, the Salt Lake Tribune headlined that Senator Abe Murdock (D–Utah) “denounces Japan, urges war on ‘whole Axis.’” The senator stated: “I am now willing and ready to vote for a declaration of war on the whole Axis—Japan, Germany and Italy.” That Senator Murdock was now willing to take such action indicated a complete policy reversal for the isolationist part of the country that he represented.9 Less stunning but equally notable was the opinion expressed on December 8 by longtime interventionist Senator Claude Pepper (D–Fla.). He and other congressional supporters of the administration had always vociferously opposed a unilateral declaration of war against Germany unless Germany first militarily attacked the United States. But now he too demanded a declaration of war on Germany, and was quoted to that effect without criticism by newspapers from the now formerly isolationist Midwest and West, yet another unprecedented phenomenon. Most newspapers ran his widely printed insistence that “we must . . . declare war not only on Japan but upon the whole Axis federation; for Hitler has unmistakably urged Japan to attack.” And as to the question of just whose opinion Pepper represented, the New York Times had stated on November 20 that it was Senator Pepper “who sometimes gives voice to administration views.”10 This escalation of belligerent attitudes in the Senate was mirrored in the House of Representatives. On December 11, after Germany had declared war and the Congress had reciprocated, Representative Oren Harris (D–Ark.) rec-

Beaten to the Punch

17

ollected that “in our declaration of war against Japan last Monday many of us felt then, as we do now, that Germany and Italy should have been included, because the attack of the Japanese was in actuality an attack by all of the Axis powers.” Such an attitude was not restricted to longtime interventionists. As the longtime isolationist Chicago Tribune noted on December 8, “men of all parties and groups, interventionists and non-interventionists, were going on record in favor of declaring war on Japan. Many were in favor also of declaring war on Germany on the ground that Hitler incited Japan to attack the United States.” By December 12, the Tribune commented on Germany’s declaration of war by concluding that “they may have only anticipated action in Congress, where there was a growing sentiment for dismissing the fiction that we were not at war and by appropriate action conceding that we were.”11 The Tribune meant that a majority of Americans believed that the United States and Germany had actually been at war since December 7. This idea was reiterated on December 12 by the Cincinnati Enquirer in its editorial on Germany’s declaration of war, titled “Confirming the Obvious”: It was clear to most Americans months ago that we were engaged in an undeclared war with Germany, on a limited basis. It was clear to virtually all Americans last Sunday that the treacherous Japanese attack involved us in all-out war with the entire Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis. Thursday morning Germany and Italy confirmed this by formal declarations of war. The unanimous and swift action of Congress was no more than a formal expression of the resolve, shared by all loyal Americans, to face the blunt facts.12

The “blunt facts” had shifted public opinion on this issue. In a December 8 survey of public opinion in Cleveland, via the “man-in-the-street” interview, the Cleveland Press highlighted one William Lang, who said, “I have a suspicion that the Japanese attack was dictated indirectly by Hitler, and therefore expect that within a month or two we’ll also declare war on Germany.” Guy Varner agreed, saying, “I should not be surprised if Congress also declares war on Germany.” On December 9, the “Inquiring Reporter” of the Detroit Free Press asked the public, “In light of Japan’s attack, do you believe that we should engage in an all-out war against all Axis members?” Hartley Rayshell replied, “Japan is so tied up with Germany and Italy that I don’t see how you can distinguish between them. . . . I think we ought to declare war on Germany and Italy just as we have against Japan.” Not all Detroiters agreed, but the Free Press represented public opinion as now relatively evenly divided, an unprecedented phenomenon. Mrs. Archibald Jackson echoed the now prevailing national attitude by concluding that “I don’t see how it would be possible to fight one end of the Axis and not the other.”13 The startling new development in political opinion was that the once heavily isolationist Midwest and West were now largely agreeing with the longtime interventionist South. On December 11 the Atlanta Journal reported

18

Hitler Attacks Pearl Harbor

that its man-in-the-street, salesman Henry Rambo, had remarked in regard to the German declaration of war that “we were already at war, but we should have beat them to it and declared first.”14 A thorough reading of U.S. political discourse between December 7 and December 11 reveals an overwhelming inclination to declare war on Germany, an unprecedented political and public attitude. Before Pearl Harbor, U.S. public opinion opposed a declaration of war on Germany by a margin that fluctuated between approximately 70 and 80 percent, as Wayne Cole, an authority on isolationism, has repeatedly noted. This number never dipped below 63 percent, according to the Gallup poll, but, as Time magazine reported, during the weeks before Pearl Harbor interventionist sentiment was actually on the decline.15 After December 7, and for the first time, the number of Americans in favor of a declaration of war against Germany outweighed those opposed. Only a hardcore isolationist minority now remained opposed to such a declaration between December 7 and December 11. The historic reverse in U.S. public opinion from a large majority opposing a declaration of war on Germany, to a large majority in favor of one after December 7, was reflected in the December 10 Gallup poll, which indicated that 90 percent of Americans now favored an immediate declaration of war on Germany. This poll, along with all the other evidence, contradicts the argument that it was the event of December 11, Hitler’s declaration against the United States, that galvanized most Americans into wanting to reciprocate.16 President Roosevelt delayed, however, in asking Congress for this declaration until December 11, even though he could have obtained the declaration after December 7. By delaying, Roosevelt apparently believed that he could obtain more than just a simple, though substantial, majority vote for a declaration of war on Germany. Roosevelt waited, evidently because he was convinced that the Germans were soon to issue a declaration of war on the United States, which would have the effect of expanding a U.S. and congressional majority into at least a supermajority in favor of a U.S. declaration of war on Germany. Roosevelt’s political calculation was undoubtedly that the larger the vote supporting his policy, the greater the support that policy would enjoy. The evidence to support this thesis is overwhelming, although it is essentially circumstantial. However, there is also some positive and direct evidence to support this thesis, namely the German denial/retraction on December 12 of its December 11 declaration, and the subsequent U.S. reaction to and comment upon these events.17 The circumstantial case is supported by the contemporary commentary that the U.S. delay in declaring war on Germany was predicated upon an imminently expected German declaration of war on the United States. The evidence is also overwhelming that Americans believed that a German declaration of war on the United States was indeed imminent in the days after Pearl

Beaten to the Punch

19

Harbor. American newspapers were full of such expectations, derived from a variety of diplomatic and political sources. President Roosevelt had an even more credible source for this expectation, secret U.S. military decrypted intelligence. As Robert Sherwood revealed in 1948, Roosevelt’s most interventionist cabinet member, Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, wanted the president, on the evening of December 7, to request a declaration of war on Germany. Sherwood relates that Roosevelt refused to do so. He wanted to wait for Hitler and Mussolini to declare war on the United States. He was aware that a cable from Berlin to Tokyo, on November 29, had been intercepted and decoded by “Magic”; this cable gave assurance to the Japanese that if they “became engaged in a war against the United States, Germany would of course join the war immediately.”18

Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes confirmed that during this December 7 cabinet meeting, President Roosevelt “had said to the Cabinet, and he repeated, that he expected Germany and Italy now to declare war against us and that this might happen before noon Monday.” Although the Roosevelt administration expected the imminent arrival of a German declaration of war on the United States, Secretary Stimson had expressed the view that the United States should not wait for it before declaring war on Germany.19 Secretary Stimson’s desire for a unilateral declaration of war on Germany had the backing of all of his top advisers in the War Department, which included “the Chiefs of the Arms of the Services.” Secretary Stimson said that in his conference with [U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George] Marshall, [Chairman of the National Emergency Committee for Selective Service] Grenville Clarke, [General Sherman] Miles, [Undersecretary of War Robert] Patterson, [Assistant Secretary of War John] McCloy, and their assistants, [Assistant Secretary for Air Robert] Lovett and General [Allen] Gullion, the Provost Marshal General. . . . We all thought that it was possible we should declare war on Germany at the same time with Japan, but that, of course, is an open question.20

Secretary Stimson proved to be the only cabinet member to press for a declaration of war on Germany on December 7. The other cabinet members were in agreement with the president that the United States should first wait for the imminently expected German declaration against the United States. However, most of these other cabinet members, like Secretary of State Cordell Hull, wanted President Roosevelt to at least “connect” Germany with Japan in his December 8 declaration of war on Japan. The purpose of such a measure would have presumably been to lay an immediate and thus more credible foundation for any further retributive measures against Germany.

20

Hitler Attacks Pearl Harbor

Roosevelt was more patient than his cabinet, deciding to focus only on Japan on December 8. Roosevelt agreed, however, to begin to “connect” Germany with Japan thereafter, and did so in his December 9 speech to the nation.21 Although the majority of the cabinet agreed with the president to delay a U.S. declaration of war on Germany until the receipt of the expected German declaration, Secretary Stimson’s and the War Department’s request on December 7 for an immediate declaration of war on Germany was a remarkable and unprecedented phenomenon. No cabinet officer or other members of the administration who on December 7 favored a declaration of war on Germany had ever advised the president to seek one before Pearl Harbor. Secretary Stimson probably would have supported a declaration of war on Germany before Pearl Harbor, but apparently refrained from officially advising the president to seek one because he was convinced that such a declaration would have been politically impossible to obtain. Indeed, he believed that the mere request of one by the administration would have been politically counterproductive.22 After Pearl Harbor, however, the evidence suggests that the now pro-declaration members of the Roosevelt administration believed the political situation had changed in the wake of Pearl Harbor. This was demonstrated by the predominant justification advanced by the administration for the new U.S. war on Germany throughout Pearl Harbor month—the binding association of Germany with Japan, not Germany’s declaration of war on the United States. This was the strategic and political atmosphere that President Roosevelt now apparently realized could be optimized by a short, tactical delay. The new strategic atmosphere, not the tactical delay, should be primarily emphasized as being the most important and decisive phenomenon during Pearl Harbor week. This new U.S. political momentum toward a declaration of war on Germany after December 7 has even been vaguely recognized by some historians, but they have failed to explore this unprecedented situation in depth. Richard Ketchum captures the vagueness of historians’ traditional recollection of this period through his speculation that the United States “might” not have declared war on Germany if Germany had not declared war first. This also seems to imply that the United States might have indeed done so absent a German declaration. Nathan Miller’s implication resounds at least as strongly. He says that “there was no certainty that, in their rage against Japan, the American people would also have demanded a declaration of war against Germany” if Germany had not declared first. If there was “no certainty,” does this imply that it was nevertheless possible, or even probable? But how could that have been, if a U.S. declaration was entirely dependent on receipt of a German declaration, as historians have long asserted? Gary Hess notes simply, “For a few days, however, it was unclear whether Pearl Harbor would lead to immediate war between the United States and Germany.”23 Yet historians since World War II have clearly argued that the U.S. declared war in response to the German declaration.

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A U.S. request for declaration of war has traditionally originated from the president. That President Roosevelt might employ the tactic of waiting a few days in order to turn a majority into a supermajority seems to be supported by historian Thomas Bailey. Bailey explains that, in foreign policy generally, political timing dictated presidential tactics as Roosevelt “played the waiting game” in order to maximize his public support. Thomas Parrish also characterized Roosevelt, the master politician, as “a believer in the pivotal importance of timing,” by which he would introduce a policy at the optimum “psychological moment.” Even if most of the U.S. public blamed Germany in large measure for Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt would have understood that U.S. public hostility toward Germany would be increased even further upon receipt of a German declaration of war against the United States. William Langer and S. Everett Gleason confirm that Roosevelt’s decision as to when to request a declaration was primarily founded upon the tides of public opinion.24 Robert Dallek argues that although Secretary Stimson wanted President Roosevelt to request a declaration of war against Germany on December 7, Roosevelt hesitated, giving as his reason that some “part of the American public” would resist because “some quarters” of the American public still saw a difference between Japan and Germany. Unfortunately, Dallek does not specify how large the “part” or the “quarters” actually were. Thomas Bailey notes that Roosevelt’s policy had been somewhat hindered throughout 1941 by the limited support of slim majorities in Congress. The extension of the Selective Service Act passed the House of Representatives by a margin of one vote in August 1941, and the revision of the Neutrality Act in November 1941 passed the House of Representatives by a margin of 212 to 194. As a result, Roosevelt had learned that the most effective foreign policies and military actions against Germany needed to be backed by a “whopping majority.” Sean Cashman paraphrases Dallek’s assessment by saying that Roosevelt’s legislative method sought to expand a simple majority into a “broad, stable consensus” to fight Germany.25 Even though it was evident that a substantial majority of the U.S. public and Congress favored a declaration against Germany for the first time in the wake of Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt, the experienced politician, realized that majorities were not always stable, and might not necessarily be defined as a broad consensus. Thus the watchword that had been most commonly utilized by interventionists throughout 1941 was the plea for a heretofore unrealized “unity” for U.S. policy, and not merely for a ruling majority. Even though Pearl Harbor directly caused the largest single leap from a small minority to a substantial majority in favor of a U.S. declaration against Germany, it was the German declaration that ultimately expanded that majority into a congressional unanimity for the U.S. declaration. Thomas Bailey does say that it was Hitler’s declaration that indeed completed this total U.S. unity.26

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Hitler Attacks Pearl Harbor

President Roosevelt evidently calculated after December 7 that he could silence virtually all of his longtime critics by simply waiting for the imminent German declaration of war. A thorough perusal of the U.S. news press between December 7 and December 11 reveals that the only remaining dissenters against a U.S. declaration of war on Germany were the hardcore, extreme isolationists, not the larger group of moderates who had opposed such a declaration before Pearl Harbor. During this four-day interim, only extreme isolationist groups like the America First Committee still largely opposed a U.S. declaration against Germany. Yet even this most prominent committee reflected the changed and unprecedented political atmosphere. After December 7 the America First Committee became, for the first time, somewhat uncertain, confused, or even divided over its Germany policy. All the sources detail some great uncertainty over the policy toward Germany after December 7, as compared to before, when America First was unambiguously against war with Germany. Moreover, while most historians state that the America First Committee did not fully support a U.S. declaration of war against Germany until December 11, there is other evidence that the committee’s division before that day was actually more pronounced than has been generally conceded. According to Harry Elmer Barnes, a majority of “the Directors of the America First Committee voted to disband on the Wednesday [December 10] after Pearl Harbor.” The unprecedented uncertainty, confusion, or division within the America First Committee after December 7 is emblematic of the real reason the U.S. public came to support a declaration of war on Germany.27 Between December 7 and December 11, only a few brave souls in Congress, like Senator Gerald Nye (R–N.D.), a prominent extreme isolationist, still overtly opposed a U.S. declaration against Germany. Senator Nye paid a heavy price for his stubbornness, a price exacted by the midwestern press. On December 8, syndicated columnist Ollie James wrote in the Cincinnati Enquirer that “Senator Nye doesn’t seem convinced yet. He still thinks the United States should have done nothing until Germany was ready to join Japan in a concerted attack upon us from both directions. If we’re in a pickle now, we’d have been in a pickle barrel then.”28 In contrast to Senator Nye’s inflexibility, Senator Burton Wheeler (D–Mont.), the perennial leader of the extreme isolationist bloc in Congress, issued only the most circumspect of statements opposing a U.S. declaration. In stark contrast to his long-standing vehement and vitriolic resistance to any U.S. intervention in the European war, Wheeler now confined himself to an uncharacteristically restrained utterance. On December 9, he was reported as saying that “he did not believe, ‘from the facts that are in my possession now,’ that the United States should immediately declare war on Germany and Italy.”29 The inclusion of the temporizing caveat, “immediately,” which now characterized Wheeler’s views, indicated a remarkable change in his position.

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Previous to Pearl Harbor, not only had Wheeler absolutely opposed any U.S. declaration of war on Germany, but he had also always opposed any U.S. involvement, such as Lend-Lease. Yet now Wheeler was announcing that he could actually be amenable to a declaration of war against Germany in the near future, but just not “immediately.” Senator Wheeler and his bloc had long opposed the Roosevelt administration’s entire Germany policy. But by December 9 his new position was strikingly similar to the ambiguous White House statements of the time. Wheeler’s new position on December 9 was a virtual restatement of one issued on December 8 by Senator Tom Connally (D–Tex.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and prominent supporter of the Roosevelt administration. On December 8, Connally explained “that the United States would not declare war immediately on Italy and Germany.”30 If Wheeler was now amenable to a declaration of war on Germany, but just not “immediately,” then what “facts,” as he put it, was he waiting on? Was Wheeler simply waiting for the “fact” of an intolerable German declaration of war? That seems highly unlikely given that, previous to Pearl Harbor, a large majority of Americans and their congressmen explicitly said they would not agree to declare war on and invade Germany simply in response to a German declaration of war. The majority on this issue comprised a coalition of isolationists and moderates, and is reflected in Cole’s 70–80 percent poll number. The pre–December 7 congressional pronouncements on this subject made it all the more remarkable that the U.S. declaration of war on Germany later passed unanimously and without debate.31 The pre–Pearl Harbor congressional pronouncements, therefore, further call into question the assertion that a U.S. declaration was entirely or even mostly dependent upon prior receipt of a German declaration of war. Prior to Pearl Harbor week, interventionist congressmen insisted on several occasions that they would not be stampeded into any greater warlike policy by a mere declaration from the mouth of Adolf Hitler. Interventionist congressmen were forced to make this promise in order to neutralize isolationist and moderate charges that U.S. Navy activity could provoke Germany to declare war on the United States. Interventionists needed to neutralize isolationist and moderate charges in order to garner enough support for their naval policies, particularly the revision of the Neutrality Act in early November 1941. During debate over this bill, Senator James Hughes (D–Del.) endorsed a Washington Post editorial that addressed the isolationist charge that increased U.S. Navy activity would “risk a declaration of war from Hitler.” Even if it did, the Post asked, what difference would that make to our situation? Not the slightest. Our own strength would not be taxed one whit more by a declaration of war by Hitler than it is at present by the undeclared conflict that Hitler has already thrust

24

Hitler Attacks Pearl Harbor

upon us. . . . And if there is no chance at present for any expeditionary force to come to grips with the Nazi legions, that lack of chance would not be improved by a Hitler declaration of war.

The Post argued that actions spoke louder than words and dismissed any augmented significance stemming from a scenario in which “Hitler at any time might declare as well as make war upon the United States.” Representative Charles Plumley (R–Vt.) added, “How absolutely ridiculous it is to insist that we must formally declare we are going to defend ourselves against a murderer who has been at war with us for months. . . . Why haggle about who should declare war when declarations of war are outmoded and made by nobody as such? Do we need to be told by Hitler that he is at war with us?” Senator Claude Pepper (D–Fla.) sought to calm those who were overly emotional about the specter of a German declaration of war by putting it into perspective. He said, “If any nation declares war against us on account of our action, that is its privilege. It is also our privilege to ignore such a declaration unless it should suit us to accept the challenge.”32 Before Pearl Harbor week, it was not the policy of either the interventionists or the isolationists that an escalation of U.S. participation in the war, including a U.S. declaration of war, would be the inevitable result of a German declaration of war. The consensus U.S. attitude was summarized by interventionist Representative Leroy Downs (D–Conn.), who said on October 16, 1941, that there would be no U.S. “declaration of war unless this Nation were invaded or attacked.” This was seconded on October 21 by Representative John Dingell (D–Mich.) and Senator Bennett C. Clark (D–Mo.), on December 8 by Representative John Sheridan (D–Pa.), and on December 10 by Representative Hamilton Fish (R–N.Y.). The leader of the congressional isolationist bloc, Senator Burton Wheeler (D–Mont.), could speak for all his colleagues (except, of course, for Representative Jeannette Rankin [R–Mont.]) when he said, on December 10, “I was against this country getting involved in war unless we were attacked.”33 It is therefore evident he needed to be persuaded that Germany had in “fact” done so before he would vote to declare war. All the evidence compels the conclusion that Wheeler’s new position depended on the outcome of the sudden speculation then erupting about whether German guilt for Pearl Harbor could be confirmed as “fact.” That it ultimately was believed as such, during Pearl Harbor week and month, is demonstrated in virtually every record of U.S. political discourse during that period. It was not only Congress that had insisted before December 11 that anything less than an Axis military attack, like an Axis declaration of war, would not elicit an escalated U.S. military response. This widespread pre–December 11 congressional policy concurred with President Roosevelt’s own policy. The only known instance in which Roosevelt directly answered the question of

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what would be the U.S. response to a possible German declaration or ultimatum was recorded on Roosevelt’s Oval Office tapes. Although he kept relatively quiet on this speculative issue in public, Roosevelt took care to leak his opinion, as early as October 4, 1940, to and through House Speaker Sam Rayburn (D–Tex.) and Floor Leader John McCormack (D–Mass.). Roosevelt mused that Hitler and Mussolini, and Japan, united, might—ah—feel that if they could stop American munitions from flowing to England—planes, guns, ships, airplanes, ammunition, and so forth, that they could lick England. Now, they might send us an ultimatum: “if you continue to send anything to England, we will regard that as an attack on us: (FDR emphasized this point by rapping on his desk) I’ll say: I’m terribly sorry, we don’t want any war with you. We have contracts, and under our neutrality laws any belligerent has a right to come and buy things in this country and take them away.” They’ll thereupon say: “Well, if after such and such a date you are continuing to ship munitions to England—and planes—we will regard you as a belligerent.” All right, what have we got to say to this? . . . I’ll say: “I’m terribly sorry. We don’t consider ourselves (FDR began to chuckle) a belligerent. We’re not going to declare war on you. If you regard us as a belligerent, we’re dreadfully sorry for you, because we don’t. Now, all we can say to you is that, of course, if you act on that assumption—that we’re a belligerent—and make any form of attack on us, we’re going to defend our own—we’re going to defend our own—and nothing further.”34

Historian Gerhard Weinberg paraphrased this by saying, Roosevelt explained to the Democratic leaders of the House that if Germany, Italy, or Japan threatened to declare war on the United States if it did not cease aiding Britain, he would reply that was their problem; the United States would not declare war on them. They could consider themselves belligerents if they wished, but the Americans would defend themselves only if others attacked them.35

President Roosevelt’s remarks in private during a policy discussion with his congressional leaders were wholly consistent with his long-standing publicly announced policy. In one of his most famous utterances, Roosevelt told the nation on October 23, 1940, “I repeat again that I stand on the Platform of our Party: ‘We will not participate in any foreign wars and we will not send our army, naval or air forces to fight in foreign lands outside of the Americas except in case of attack.’” This was not simply a partisan Democratic Party policy. Congressmen and commentators pointed out through December 1941 that both candidates in the 1940 presidential election had endorsed this policy. This policy became codified as that part of the 1940 Selective Service Act that forbade sending an American Expeditionary Force (AEF) outside the Western Hemisphere.36

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Historians, as well as contemporaries, have cited the centrality of President Roosevelt’s promise of no foreign war “except in case of attack” on the United States. Americans understood “attack” to mean an attack on U.S. territory, or perhaps somewhere nearby in the “Americas.” In November and December 1941, however, the U.S.-German conflict remained no closer than the Denmark Strait in the North Atlantic. Thomas Bailey concludes that after Roosevelt issued his “shoot on sight” order on September 11, 1941, “The president could not conceivably wring a declaration of war from Congress on the basis of American attacks or counterattacks” in the North Atlantic.37 There was one other circumstance in addition to a direct German attack upon the United States, however, that President Roosevelt had conceded could necessitate sending an AEF to Europe. This would be the defeat of Russia or Britain by Germany. Newsweek reported on this administration policy, and on Senator Claude Pepper, who among others often articulated these administration views in Congress. In November and December 1941, Newsweek also reflected the consensus press attitude in its optimism regarding the fortunes of Britain and Russia in their war against Germany. Newsweek also repeatedly made clear the administration’s policy that naval incidents would not provoke a U.S. declaration or AEF. Therefore, before Pearl Harbor week, U.S. policy was clear: the United States would declare war on Germany and send an AEF to Europe only if Germany attacked some part of the Americas, or if Russia or Britain were defeated. There is no evidence that there was any major political opinion in the United States before Pearl Harbor week that a German declaration would automatically trigger a U.S. declaration and AEF in response. Indeed, the evidence is all to the contrary.38 It was only after and because of Pearl Harbor, on December 7, that U.S. political leaders indicated that it was possible to attain a congressional majority for a declaration against Germany. Historian Thomas Bailey seems to implicitly admit this when he states that had it not been for Hitler’s declaration, isolationist senators would have blocked a U.S. declaration against Germany. By emphasizing isolationist “senators,” Bailey seems to imply that a minority filibuster could have defeated a declaration. Indeed, contemporary interventionists, as well as their sympathizers like Bailey, had always characterized congressional isolationists as an obstructionist minority. In 1941 the Senate required a two-thirds vote to defeat a filibuster. Therefore, Bailey may be implying that more than half, but less than two-thirds, of the Senate would now have favored a declaration of war against Germany, absent a German declaration against the United States. The evidence presented in this book demonstrates that a substantial majority was now in favor of a U.S. declaration against Germany immediately after December 7. The polling evidence even suggests that that majority rose above the two-thirds threshold. Whether those favoring a declaration against Germany after December 7 amounted to either a majority or a two-thirds supermajority, even a substan-

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tial minority isolationist bloc of less than one-third would still have been an unwelcome thorn in President Roosevelt’s side. Any congressional dissent and debate could have potentially jeopardized, to some extent, Roosevelt’s mobilization for total war. Perhaps this is what is meant by the chronically vague assertions of historians like T. R. Fehrenbach, who states that Roosevelt “would still have been faced with a serious quandary” were it not for Hitler’s declaration.39 Melvin Small is similarly vague regarding this critical question. In discussing the U.S. view of Germany between December 7 and December 11, Small concludes that, “of course, since they had still not attacked us, a good number of Americans would have opposed entry into the European war through the backdoor of Asia. . . . Clearly, had Germany been slipped into Roosevelt’s request for a declaration of war [on Japan on December 8], other Congressmen would have joined the lonely Congresswoman [Jeanette] Rankin in dissent” (Rankin abstained on December 11). Small refrains from specifying whether “a good number” of “other Congressmen” would have amounted to more than one-third or one-half of the Senate. Robert Dallek suggests that President Roosevelt desired no dissent whatsoever over a U.S. declaration against Germany. Dallek states that Roosevelt refused to declare war before Germany did because that would cause “debate in the United States.” Dallek also refrains from estimating how great a debate it might have been.40 These historians make it clear that President Roosevelt desired as little dissent as possible over his policy in general and a U.S. declaration against Germany in particular. It is also clear that Roosevelt believed that if Germany declared war first, this would go a long way to completing the national unity he sought. Roosevelt was also relatively certain after December 7 that a German declaration against the United States was imminent. What historians are annoyingly unclear about is whether Americans were actually more motivated to declare war on Germany due to the events of December 7 or the German declaration of December 11. Contemporaries in December 1941 were clearer regarding this question. On December 13, 1941, New York Times editorialist Anne O’Hare McCormick illustrated the relative weights of December 7 and December 11 by recalling the impact of Pearl Harbor. She said, “and when that vision was added to the German-Italian declaration of war on us, the revelation was complete. Nothing could so completely silence the last voice of opposition.” McCormick appears to literally say that it was the German declaration that chronologically completed the revelation, and that this completion did no more than persuade a very few remaining dissenters. McCormick’s conception and language concerning the relative weights of Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s declaration concurred with those of the formerly isolationist Sacramento Union, which on December 12 stated:

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Obviously, no one in the U.S. could have predicted last Friday that our Congress would vote UNANIMOUSLY a week later to go to war with Germany and Italy. But even two days ago, a war resolution against these two powers certainly would have faced considerable debate and a few “No” votes. Just as Japan brought instant unity to this country through her doubledealing attack Sunday, Hitler dispelled the last faint mist of confusion as to our overall objective through his declaration of war yesterday.41

The desire for total U.S. unity, as opposed to a majority that would have been tainted with “the last faint mist” of “a few ‘No’ votes,” was also evident on December 9, when Americans were expecting the momentary arrival of a German declaration of war on the United States. The Cincinnati Enquirer explained that President Roosevelt had not asked for a declaration of war on Germany the day before because “there might have been some argument.” Such debate would have detracted from “the greatest unanimity possible,” which the president desired in the war against an Axis that included the Japanese, who were “Hitler’s arm in Asia.” The Cincinnati Enquirer, and many others, saw Germany’s declaration against the United States as a “mere formality” equivalent to Germany simply adding insult to injury. This “mere formality” discussion echoed throughout U.S. public political discourse.42 That President Roosevelt would wait three days from December 8 to December 11 in order to squeeze out a few more votes for the purpose of turning a majority into a supermajority, or even a supermajority into a unanimity, was not an unusual tactic for the master politician. For example, the last major U.S. escalation of the war against Germany before the December 11 climax was the November 13 revision of the Neutrality Act in Congress. On November 5, Senator Lister Hill (D–Ala.), the Majority Whip, stated that Roosevelt already had a majority vote for revision, but was continuing negotiations with certain congressmen in order to increase the size of his majority.43 President Roosevelt sought to maximize majorities in order to minimize criticisms of his policy, as well as to preempt any future recriminations about his policy, if and when the going got rough. Roosevelt and most Americans remembered well the extended congressional debate that preceded the vote for a declaration of war against Germany in April 1917, as well as the extended recriminations afterward by those who had voted against that declaration. Roosevelt undoubtedly wished to avoid President Woodrow Wilson’s political fate.44 On December 12, the Chicago Tribune contrasted the extended congressional debate preceding the declaration vote in April 1917, with the complete absence of debate on December 11, 1941. This difference was also illustrated by the fact that after President Wilson requested a declaration of war on April 2, 1917, Congress debated until April 6 before agreeing. By contrast, when President Roosevelt requested a declaration of war on December 11, 1941, Congress voted for it about an hour later, without any debate. The Omaha

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Morning World-Herald recalled yet another contrast as it reminded readers on December 14 that the December 11 congressional vote was unanimous, as opposed to the April 1917 vote, which was 82–6 in the Senate, and 373–50 in the House. The 1917 congressional declaration also differed in that Congress had not waited for Germany to declare war first.45 Memories of the World War I debate had tainted the “Great Debate” between interventionists and isolationists in the entire period between World War I and Pearl Harbor. In 1941 the moderate majority continually expressed its preference for “unity” in the formulation of foreign policy. But if that proved not possible to achieve within a reasonable time frame, the moderates were also prepared to act on the political strength of mere majorities, as a number of congressional votes in late 1941 demonstrated. After December 7, virtually every statement uttered by interventionists and now former moderates implied that although a U.S. declaration of war against Nazi Germany could now be achieved for the first time, Congress would probably wait for the momentarily expected German declaration. The memories of World War I taught that it made good political sense to minimize dissent. This was the by now well-understood implication on December 8 when the Detroit Free Press reported that “Chairman Tom Connally of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee said Germany probably would declare war on the United States. He expressed the opinion, however, that the United States would not declare war immediately on Italy and Germany, but would let them make the declaration first under the terms of the Axis agreement.”46 That this important Roosevelt administration supporter would have to explain “that the United States would not declare war immediately on Italy and Germany” shows how much political attitudes and official policy had changed since Pearl Harbor. Before Pearl Harbor, every administration supporter had vehemently insisted that the United States would simply not declare war on Germany unless Germany militarily attacked some part of the Americas, or unless Britain or Russia were going down to defeat. Connally’s statement after Pearl Harbor reflected the universal and unprecedented U.S. expectation that the United States would soon, in any event, declare war on Germany. Connally’s statement also reflected the universal and unprecedented U.S. expectation that a German declaration of war against the United States would definitely follow in the wake of Pearl Harbor, a certainty held not only by the Roosevelt administration. That Americans expected an imminent German declaration after Pearl Harbor explains why the demand for a unilateral U.S. declaration against Germany was temporarily put on the back burner, and why there was no criticism of a possibly hesitant administration and Congress. Such was the case even though Americans were virtually unanimous in blaming Germany for Pearl Harbor immediately after December 7. Americans were now certain that the United States would soon declare war on Germany.

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The overwhelming majority of U.S. political opinion between December 8 and December 11 implicitly understood that the United States awaited only the imminently expected German declaration first in order to convert that last small margin of still hesitant Americans. As the New York Times’ Anne O’Hare McCormick said, the expected German declaration was needed only to “complete” the “revelation” that would “completely silence the last voice of opposition.”47 That Americans believed a German declaration of war to be imminent can be seen beginning December 8, when U.S. newspapers began daily reporting on the progress of the declaration of war against the United States being readied in Berlin. The popular U.S. expectation after Pearl Harbor that Germany would now declare war on the United States seems to have been first expressed by Tom Connally, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who said on December 8 that “Germany probably would declare war on the United States.” That same day newspapers like the Toledo Blade carried a UP story that was headlined “Nazis expected to declare war” on the United States. December 8 also saw the Washington Times-Herald report that “Germany and Italy are momentarily expected to give formal expression to their pledge to fight against the enemies of the Kingdom of the Rising Sun.” Such opinions were bolstered by stories carried in papers like the Des Moines Register, which reported that a “Tokio [sic] radio” broadcast on December 8 “said informed sources in Japan believed Germany would declare war on the United States within 24 hours.”48 It was not long before official U.S. confirmation of the expectation in these reports was publicly pronounced. On December 9, White House press secretary Stephen Early acknowledged the “European reports that Germany and Italy were contemplating a declaration of war against the United States,” the logical consequence of the Axis Tripartite Pact. That same day, Senators Robert Taft (R–Ohio) and Carter Glass (D–Va.), representing opposite ends of the foreign policy spectrum, both said that they expected Germany to declare war on the United States soon. These U.S. expectations were again bolstered by Japanese government statements to that effect. This source of information only reinforced the U.S. perspective that inextricably linked Germany with Pearl Harbor. As the New York Times reported on December 9, “the Japanese demand of an ‘eventual’ declaration of war by her partners” was but part of the “prior ‘deal suspected’” by the United States regarding the new Axis/Japanese offensive in the Pacific.49 On December 10, Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn (D–Tex.) announced that the Congress expected Germany to declare war on the United States, per the Axis treaty. The national wire services then reported, “foreign dispatches hinted that a German declaration against the United States was forthcoming.” The December 10 Associated Press (AP) headline on front pages across the country stated, “German action in the Japanese-American

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war—perhaps open intervention on Japan’s side or a formal declaration of war against the United States appeared imminent Tuesday night” (December 9). President Roosevelt’s radio speech on that night motivated the Chicago Tribune’s page-one headline the next morning stating that the president “predicts 2-front war.” This was supplemented by the further prediction that “a declaration of war on the United States by Germany is expected momentarily.”50 U.S. newspapers on December 10 had informed the public that Hitler’s Reichstag was now scheduled to meet for the probable purpose of declaring war on the United States. On the morning of December 11 the national wire services reported that the Reichstag session had been postponed in order to rework the declaration’s language. That morning, the New York Times headlined with “Hitler to address Reichstag today. Declaration of war expected.” The Times then elaborated, saying that “the German Reichstag will meet today to hear Adolf Hitler, and Italian official circles said that he would declare that the United States had dragged Germany and Italy into the war on Japan.”51 Immediately after the arrival of the German declaration at the U.S. State Department, its “political adviser,” James Dunn, offered the official, and essentially the national, reaction to it. Virtually all newspapers carried his comment on the German declaration that “the United States ‘had long expected Germany to carry out its threat against this hemisphere and the United States.’” Dunn added that the State Department had “fully anticipated” the Italian declaration of war as well. U.S. newspaper editorialists uniformly concurred that their predictions had been fulfilled. Their views were encapsulated by nationally syndicated columnist Dewitt Mackenzie, the “Wide World war analyst,” who said on December 12 that “the declaration of war against the United States by Germany and Italy, in alliance with Japan, was fully expected.” Numerous editorialists not only agreed that had they definitely “expected” Germany’s declaration, but also seconded Mackenzie’s assessment that it “doesn’t alter the position materially.”52 The Nebraska State Journal editorialized on December 13 regarding the fulfilled expectation, saying, “following Sunday’s attack by Japan, few developments could have caused less astonishment than Germany’s and Italy’s declarations of war on the United States.” The Nebraska State Journal then quoted President Roosevelt’s request for a declaration of war and agreed that he “was correct in describing the [German] action as ‘long known and long expected.’” The American people’s lack of surprise following the German declaration was to be expected especially after Pearl Harbor, explained the Washington Post, because “the American people saw this squeeze play coming” from the Axis partners.53 After December 7, a substantial and unprecedented majority of Americans had not only expected a German declaration, but had also been prepared for the first time to declare war unilaterally, if necessary, on Germany. This was over-

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whelmingly reflected in the pages of the U.S. press. And it was not only the U.S. press that realized which way the political winds were now blowing. Among those who realized it first and most directly were the Germans. Late in the day on December 7 the German chargé d’affaires in Washington, D.C., Hans Thomsen, cabled German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop in Berlin that the United States would now either declare war on or break off relations with Germany within twenty-four hours. In the days that followed, the essence of Thomsen’s warning was confirmed in the minds of most readers of the international wire services’ coverage of the new winds of U.S. political opinion. That the Germans now believed the United States was politically preparing to declare war on Germany is acknowledged by historians who have attempted to explain Hitler’s decision to declare war on the United States. Thomas Bailey, for example, argues that “the Fuhrer evidently did not want the United States to beat him to the punch by declaring war on Germany first.”54 These historians have all derived this assessment from the original draft of Ribbentrop’s December 11 telegram to Thomsen justifying the German declaration on the United States “on the grounds that ‘a great power does not let others declare war on it, it declares war itself.’” That same day Hitler publicly restated this Nazi philosophy that rejected waiting for enemies to take the initiative. In his declaration speech he again proclaimed, “It is necessary that we must never allow the enemy to strike first. . . . We will always strike first. . . . We will always deal the first blow.”55 Some historians have argued that Hitler’s desire to declare war first demonstrated his need for “prestige,” never to be humiliated by passively accepting the first blow, military or diplomatic. One of the first of these analysts, Curt Riess, elaborated that Hitler’s political calculation in seizing the initiative on December 11 was his not wanting to wait for a U.S. declaration of war on Germany, as had been done in 1917, to demonstrate to Germans that Germany was now stronger than it was in 1917. Riess’s 1942 explanation contained two implications that would have resonated with Americans that year: that Hitler’s December 11 speech was designed mostly for Axis propaganda, and that the United States was ready and willing to declare war on Germany before Hitler would declare war on the United States.56 Both the Germans and the Americans assumed that after December 7, the United States was now determined to declare war on Germany, but that Hitler could not allow the United States to act first. The U.S. understanding of the propaganda motives behind Hitler’s declaration of war on the United States also revealed the new U.S. determination to declare war on Germany after December 7. These post–December 7 motives of both the United States and Hitler were encapsulated by syndicated columnist Ollie James in his December 13 editorial in the Cincinnati Enquirer, which noted that “perhaps it was less of a blow to the German people, for instance, for the Nazi government to

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declare war upon us than to have the United States take the initiative against Germany as before,” in 1917. This assessment was in agreement with that of the formerly isolationist Sacramento Union, which on December 12 also noted that “Hitler doubtless had his own purpose in formalizing his war with the United States before he was ready to accompany the words with deeds— and before the U.S. struck first.”57 In his December 25 column in the New York Times, Hanson Baldwin concluded, “that Herr Hitler declared war upon this country first may seem an academic point to most of us after the tragedy of Pearl Harbor.” His implicit understanding of why the United States would have declared war first, if Hitler had not beaten the United States to the punch, accorded with the rationale of an unprecedented majority of Americans. They were united in their newly minted desire to declare war on and send an AEF to fight Germany after Pearl Harbor, due to the popular U.S. blame of Germany for that attack.58 After Hitler’s December 12 denial/retraction of his December 11 declaration, U.S. editorialists immediately offered a new reason why the United States had waited three days to declare war on Germany. They now explained that the United States had been completely preoccupied with managing the preliminary emergency in the days after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese danger to the western United States. This explanation characterized the Pacific as the wound that had to be bandaged first before apprehending the major criminal, Germany. As nationally venerated and syndicated columnist Mark Sullivan explained on December 13, “For a few days we were at war with one country—Japan. The time was hardly long enough for all our people to recognize what had to be” a world war between “two camps.” While Americans wanted Germany punished for Pearl Harbor, they had devoted their immediate attention after that attack to the beleaguered U.S. defenders in the Pacific. During this critical period, U.S. attention toward and revenge against Germany would have to wait, because Americans had been “too busy watching the spectacular Battle of the Pacific,” as the Washington Post put it on December 14.59 When an open wound was bleeding freely, as it was in the Pacific, the majority of Americans were not too worried about technical niceties such as formal declarations. They understood the difference between rhetorical declarations and the material realities of war. The Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald explained on December 13 why the United States did not beat Hitler to the punch on December 11: Declarations of war against the United States by Germany and Italy on Thursday came as an anti-climax. The sensational and spectacular event was the sudden attack by Japan on Sunday. Everywhere it was taken for granted that within a very short time formal, technical war with Germany and Italy would follow. There was speculation, though no uncertainty, as to the technical manner in which this would be brought about, but on that point there was no very intense interest.

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After Pearl Harbor, Americans were certain that the United States would now declare war on Germany, even though Americans had speculated whether that would occur before or after a German declaration against the United States. This question of declarations of war had become a relatively insignificant issue that was pointed out, most significantly, by those now former isolationists like the Sacramento Union, which on December 12 highlighted the relationship between a decisive act of war, and the mere declaration of it, by labeling Pearl Harbor as “the Hitler-inspired Japanese declaration of five days ago. Calm to the point of boredom was our government’s acceptance of the ‘fait accompli’ of war with Nazi Germany.” On December 15, the Union commented again on the inevitable anticlimax that had occurred on December 11, recalling that “that day also brought the final break between the U.S. and German and Italy, an event which by then seemed almost like a humdrum change of diplomatic notes.” By December 13, Americans had indeed proved their relative lack of interest in technical, formal declarations by their indifference to Germany’s December 12 denial that it had declared war on the United States.60 U.S. political opinion, which was expressed in the nation’s press, reached an unprecedented consensus after Pearl Harbor when a substantial majority decided for the first time that the United States must now declare war on, and attack and invade, Germany. Americans had been persuaded to delay this formal decision temporarily until the receipt of the expected German declaration, in order to expand a pro-declaration U.S. majority into a supermajority. This delay ultimately proved to have been unnecessarily cautious when it became apparent, after Germany’s December 12 denial/retraction of its December 11 declaration, that there arose no voices asking for a reconsideration of the U.S. declaration against Germany. This was because the fundamental U.S. justification for its new total war, and for its declaration, was based not on Hitler’s declaration, but on Germany’s guilt for Pearl Harbor. This justification campaign began December 8. Immediately after, and because of Pearl Harbor, the more outspoken supporters of the Roosevelt administration began to make unprecedented demands for a declaration of war against Germany. One was Senator Claude Pepper (D–Fla.), who was quoted nationally, without criticism, on December 8 as saying “we must . . . declare war not only upon Japan but upon the whole Axis federation; for Hitler has unmistakably urged Japan to attack.” On December 9, nationally syndicated columnist Dorothy Thompson’s editorial in the Cincinnati Enquirer was titled “Declaration of war necessary on Axis as logical reply to Japs [sic].” Thompson argued that for the United States the “best answer to Japan would be to bomb Berlin tomorrow morning.” By December 15 she was regretting that Hitler had beaten the United States to the punch: “It was clever of him to declare war first—it was not clever of us to allow him to do it. But events decide who is clever.”61

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Dorothy Thompson’s regret was fueled by the increasingly popular philosophy that rejected allowing the enemy to seize any initiative, diplomatic or military. She had made a similar case in her December 9 editorial, in which she argued that it was a mistake for the United States not to attack first. The mistake in waiting to be attacked first, she concluded, was proven at Pearl Harbor. Another nationally influential and longtime supporter of Roosevelt administration foreign policy, the New York Times, was by the morning of December 11 also beginning to tire of waiting for the expected German declaration to trigger the U.S. declaration. It suggested another way to secure the desired U.S. unity for a declaration of war: the United States should declare war on Germany in exchange for a Russian declaration of war on Japan.62 The justification campaign suggests that a substantial U.S. majority would have soon seen its way clear to declare war on Germany if Germany had not declared war on the United States. This can be seen in the unchanged U.S. policy after the German denial/retraction on December 12 of its December 11 declaration. If, however, Germany had chosen never to declare war, President Roosevelt could and would have easily secured a substantial majority to declare war first, by simply repeating the reasons that were then resounding everywhere. As a result, he would have simply been repeating the national political experience of April 1917. There is no reason to believe that he would have ultimately rejected following President Wilson’s example, because by 1941 Wilson’s foreign policy reputation was again ascendant, as was reflected in the polls in general, and in Roosevelt’s November 11 Armistice Day speech in particular.63 This speech validated and justified U.S. intervention in World War I by accusing Germany of intolerable aggression. After Pearl Harbor, virtually all Americans became convinced of the soundness of such an appraisal.

Notes 1. The evidence for the argument that Hitler’s declaration of war was of no real political consequence to U.S. policy comes from the following sources: Toledo Blade, December 11, 1941, p. 24; December 13, 1941, p. 4; December 15, 1941, p. 12; Nevada State Journal, December 12, 1941, p. 4; Washington Post, December 14, 1941, sec. 2, p. 1; Atlanta Journal, December 11, 1941, pp. 1, 18, 28; December 12, 1941, p. 16; Newsweek, January 5, 1942, pp. 20, 49; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 12, 1941, p. 12; Wyoming State Tribune, December 11, 1941, p. 4; Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald, December 12, 1941, p. 2; December 13, 1941, p. 4; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 10, 1941, p. 4; December 12, 1941, p. 4; New York Times, November 25, 1941, p. 8; December 10, 1941, p. 1; December 12, 1941, p. 5; Detroit Free Press, December 12, 1941, pp. 6, 22; December 14, 1941, p. 3; Chicago Tribune, December 9, 1941, p. 6; December 12, 1941, p. 18; December 13, 1941, pp. 7, 12; Eric Larrabee, Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), p. 37; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol.

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87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 17, 1941, p. A5644; Milwaukee Post, December 11, 1941, p. 6; Nebraska State Journal, December 13, 1941, p. 8; Salt Lake Tribune, December 12, 1941, p. 22; Des Moines (Iowa) Tribune, December 12, 1941, p. 22; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 9, 1941, p. 4; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 10, 1941, p. 6A; Newsweek, December 22, 1941, p. 29; Denver Post, December 10, 1941, p. 2; December 11, 1941, pp. 2, 5; Topeka (Kansas) Daily Capital, December 12, 1941, p. 4. 2. Toledo Blade, December 13, 1941, p. 4; Washington Post, December 14, 1941, sec. 2, p. 1. 3. Toledo Blade, December 13, 1941, p. 4; Nevada State Journal, December 8, 1941, p. 1; Omaha Morning World-Herald, December 8, 1941, p. 1. 4. Detroit Free Press, December 8, 1941, p. 1; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 8, 1941, p. 1; The Cleveland Press, December 8, 1941, p. 1; Sacramento Union, December 8, 1941, p. 2. 5. Indianapolis News, December 8, 1941, p. 1; Chicago Tribune, December 9, 1941, pp. 1, 6. 6. Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 8, 1941, p. 5; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 9, 1941, p. 1. 7. Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 11, 1942 (New York: Random House, 1950), State of the Union address, January 6, 1942, pp. 32–41. 8. This language is exactly the language used in a declaration of war. Sacramento Union, December 10, 1941, p. 1; Denver Post, December 10, 1941, p. 2; Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 10, 1941 (New York: Random House, 1950), December 11, 1941, p. 532. 9. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 10, 1941, p. 4; Salt Lake Tribune, December 8, 1941, p. 3. 10. Indianapolis News, December 9, 1941, p. 18; Omaha Morning World-Herald, December 8, 1941, p. 1; New York Times, November 20, 1941, p. 10. 11. Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 77th Congress, 1st sess., vol. 87, pt. 9 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 11, 1941, p. 9667; Chicago Tribune, December 8, 1941, p. 1; December 12, 1941, p. 18. 12. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 12, 1941, p. 6. 13. Cleveland Press, December 8, 1941, p. 6; Detroit Free Press, December 9, 1941, p. 7; New York Times, November 24, 1941, p. 16. 14. Atlanta Journal, December 11, 1941, p. 24. 15. Cole actually leans more toward the 80 percent figure. Although he notes that this majority vanished with Pearl Harbor, he does not explicitly explain how Pearl Harbor affected U.S. views toward Germany. See Wayne S. Cole, Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle Against American Intervention in World War II (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), pp. 8, 186–189; Wayne S. Cole, America First: The Battle Against Intervention, 1940–41 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953), pp. 60–61; Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932–1945 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), pp. 12, 364, 465; George Gallup, The Gallup Poll, Public Opinion, 1935–1971, vol. 1 (New York: Random House, 1972), pp. 263–311, 319, 321, 326, 346, 301, 295, 334; Hadley Cantril, ed., Public Opinion, 1935–46 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), pp. 1077–1078; Harwood Childs, ed., Public Opinion Quarterly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942), pp. 302, 311; Thomas Bailey, The Man in the Street: The Impact of American Public Opinion on Foreign Policy (New York: Macmillan, 1948), pp. 134–135, 86, 12; Time, December 22, 1941, p. 63.

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16. See Hadley Cantril, ed., Public Opinion, 1935–46 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), pp. 1172–1173, for the December 10 Gallup poll question, which asked, “Should President Roosevelt have asked Congress to declare war on Germany, as well as on Japan?”: yes—90%, no—7%. The 90% figure is notable, as such a high percentage almost never occurs in public opinion polls, on any subject. 17. Germany’s denial/retraction of its declaration of war is briefly discussed in Chapters 1 and 10. An examination of this subject, and the overall negative story—the substantive reason why the United States did not declare war on Germany, that is, the German declaration itself—must wait until this study first examines why President Roosevelt waited until December 11 to ask Congress for a declaration of war on Germany. 18. Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper and Bros., 1948), p. 441; Gordon Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), pp. 557–558. 19. The Diary of Harold Ickes, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Manuscript Reading Room, container 8, reels 4–5, p. 6111; Harold L. Ickes, The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes, vol. 3, The Lowering Clouds, 1939–1941 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955), December 7, 1941, p. 664. 20. The Diaries of Henry L. Stimson, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Manuscript Reading Room, vols. 35–40, reel 7, December 7, 1941, pp. 82–84. 21. William Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 (New York: Published for the Council on Foreign Relations by Harper, 1953), pp. 938–939. 22. The Diaries of Henry L. Stimson, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Manuscript Reading Room, vols. 35–40, reel 7, December 7, 1941, pp. 82–84; Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York: Harper and Bros., 1947), pp. 364–400. Stimson was clearly more belligerent than Roosevelt. For example, Stimson privately pushed for an escalation of the policy in the Atlantic, such as the escalation that came with convoying and the “shoot on sight” policy of September 1941, and with the November 1941 revision of the Neutrality Act (pp. 367, 370–373). In a memorandum to the president on July 3, 1941, Stimson argued that the only way U.S. policy objectives could be attained was by “American entry into the war,” which probably did refer to a U.S. declaration of war on Germany (pp. 372–375). He explains, however, that this was impossible to attain given public opposition, and therefore Stimson did not advise the president to seek such a declaration until December 7. 23. Richard Ketchum, The Borrowed Years, 1938–41 (New York: Random House, 1989), p. 792; Nathan Miller, The War at Sea: A Naval History of World War II (New York: Scribner, 1955), p. 208; Gary Hess, The United States at War, 1941–1945 (Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1986), p. 23. 24. Thomas Bailey and Paul Ryan, Hitler vs. Roosevelt: The Undeclared Naval War (New York: Free Press, 1979), p. 267; Thomas Parrish, Roosevelt and Marshall: Partners in Politics and War (New York: William Morrow, 1989), p. 177; William Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 (New York: Published for the Council on Foreign Relations by Harper, 1953), p. 940. 25. Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 312; Thomas Bailey and Paul Ryan, Hitler vs. Roosevelt: The Undeclared Naval War (New York: Free Press, 1979), p. 267; Sean Cashman, America, Roosevelt, and World War II (New York: New York University Press, 1989), p. 64. The revisions of the Selective Service Act and Neutrality Act were the two most famous examples of President Roosevelt’s slim majorities, as well as the two most famous and important congressional bills regard-

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ing the war in late 1941, before December. See Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York: Harper and Bros., 1947), p. 377; Bailey and Ryan, Hitler vs. Roosevelt, pp. 219–221. 26. Thomas Bailey and Paul Ryan, Hitler vs. Roosevelt: The Undeclared Naval War (New York: Free Press, 1979), p. 255. 27. Wayne S. Cole, America First: The Battle Against Intervention, 1940–41 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953), pp. 193–194; Wayne S. Cole, Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle Against American Intervention in World War II (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), pp. 209–210; James Schneider, Should America Go to War? The Debate over Foreign Policy in Chicago, 1939–1941 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), pp. 217–218; Harry Elmer Barnes, Pearl Harbor After a Quarter of a Century (New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1972), pp. 125–126. These sources explain that beginning on the evening of December 7, the America First Committee leadership seriously began to consider no longer opposing a U.S. war with Germany, as well as dissolving the committee. 28. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 8, 1941, p. 4; Wayne S. Cole, Senator Gerald P. Nye and American Foreign Relations (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1962), p. 199. 29. Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932–1945 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), pp. 504–505, 502; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 9, 1941, pp. 4, 11. 30. Detroit Free Press, December 8, 1941, pp. 8, 14; Cleveland Press, December 8, 1941, p. 1. 31. The congressional vote on December 11, 1941, was unanimous in the sense that no “nay” votes were cast. There was, however, one abstaining vote of “present” cast by Representative Jeanette Rankin (R–Mont.). In the Congressional Record, congressmen repeatedly referred to that day’s vote as having been “unanimous,” in contrast to the almost unanimous vote to declare war on Japan on December 8, 1941, in which there actually was one “nay” vote, it too being cast by Representative Rankin. 32. Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), November 7, 1941, p. A5047; November 12, 1941, pp. A5073, A5083; December 4, 1941, p. A5439; Washington Post, November 7, 1941, p. 10. 33. Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), October 16, 1941, p. A4699; October 21, 1941, p. A4766; December 8, 1941, p. A5560; New York Daily News, December 10, 1941, p. 10; Thomas Parrish, Roosevelt and Marshall: Partners in Politics and War (New York: William Morrow, 1989), pp. 180–181. 34. American Heritage, February/March 1982, pp. 16–18. 35. Gerhard Weinberg, Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 1872. 36. Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 9, 1940 (New York: Random House, 1950), p. 495; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 7, 1941, p. 14; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), November 12, 1941, p. A5083. The America First Committee did not allow President Roosevelt to forget his “except in case of attack” pledge as it reaffirmed its own position, which held that “in the absence of an attack on this country we should maintain peace.” In late October 1941 a suspicious America First Committee sought to test Roosevelt’s fidelity by daring him to ask Congress for a declaration of war on Germany. Roosevelt simply ignored the committee’s letter. In order to humble those isolationists who had dared to doubt the president’s word, Representative Homer Angell (R–Oreg.) argued

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on November 19, 1941, that despite all the German provocations to date, Roosevelt had indeed kept his party’s pledge of no declaration of a foreign war, except in case of attack upon the United States. Wayne S. Cole, America First: The Battle Against Intervention, 1940–41 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953), p. 192; Time, November 3, 1941, p. 15; Congressional Record: Appendix, November 19, 1941, p. A5207. 37. Thomas Bailey and Paul Ryan, Hitler vs. Roosevelt: The Undeclared Naval War (New York: Free Press, 1979), pp. 209, 182. See Chapter 1, endnote 2, and Chapter 10, endnote 1l, for the historiographical categories. 38. Newsweek, October 6, 1941, p. 9; October 27, 1941, p. 16; November 3, 1941, p. 9; November 24, 1941, pp. 25–26; December 1, 1941, p. 13; December 8, 1941, p. 13; New York Times, November 25, 1941, p. 8. 39. Thomas Bailey and Paul Ryan, Hitler vs. Roosevelt: The Undeclared Naval War (New York: Free Press, 1979), pp. 225–226; T. R. Fehrenbach, FDR’s Undeclared War, 1939–1941 (New York: David McKay, 1967), p. 324. 40. Melvin Small, Was War Necessary? National Security and U.S. Entry into War (London: Sage, 1980), p. 258; Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 312. 41. New York Times, December 13, 1941, p. 20; Sacramento Union, December 12, 1941, p. 4. 42. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 9, 1941, p. 4. See also endnote 1 of this chapter. 43. New York Times, November 5, 1941, p. 2. 44. Arthur Link, Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War, and Peace (Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1979); Thomas Bailey, Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace (New York: Macmillan, 1944); Ralph Stone, The Irreconcilables: The Fight Against the League of Nations (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970); William Widenor, Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an American Foreign Policy (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980); Arno Mayer, Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Counterrevolution at Versailles, 1918–19 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1967). 45. Chicago Tribune, December 12, 1941, p. 5; Omaha World-Herald, December 14, 1941, p. 14. 46. Detroit Free Press, December 8, 1941, p. 14. 47. New York Times, December 13, 1941, p. 20. 48. Detroit Free Press, December 8, 1941, p. 14; Washington Post, December 8, 1941, p. 1; Toledo Blade, December 8, 1941, p. 2; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 8, 1941, p. 2; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 8, 1941, p. 1; New York Times, December 8, 1941, p. 4. 49. New York Times, December 9, 1941, pp. 5, 16; Indianapolis News, December 9, 1941, p. 18; Atlanta Journal, December 9, 1941, pp. 9, 14; New York WorldTelegram, December 9, 1941, p. 8. 50. Toledo Blade, December 9, 1941, p. 1; December 10, 1941, p. 1; Cleveland Press, December 9, 1941, p. 1; New York Daily News, December 10, 1941, p. 8; New York World-Telegram, December 10, 1941, p. 9; Cleveland Press, December 10, 1941, p. 1; Milwaukee Post, December 10, 1941, p. 1; Salt Lake Tribune, December 10, 1941, p. 1; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 10, 1941, p. 1; Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald, December 10, 1941, p. 1; Chicago Tribune, December 10, 1941, p. 1. 51. Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 11, 1941, p. 1; Chicago Tribune, December 11, 1941, p. 1; Omaha Morning World-Herald, December 11, 1941, p. 1; New York Times, December 11, 1941, p. 1; Salt Lake Tribune, December 11, 1941, p. 1.

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52. Atlanta Journal, December 11, 1941, p. 14; Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald, December 12, 1941, p. 2; Chicago Tribune, December 12, 1941, pp. 4, 5; Nevada State Journal, December 12, 1941, p. 4. 53. Nebraska State Journal, December 13, 1941, p. 8; Washington Post, December 14, 1941, sec. 2, p. 1. 54. Thomas Bailey and Paul Ryan, Hitler vs. Roosevelt: The Undeclared Naval War (New York: Free Press, 1979), pp. 239–240; John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945 (New York: Random House, 1970), pp. 243–244; Gerhard Weinberg, Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 195. 55. H. L. Trefousse, Germany and American Neutrality, 1939–1941 (New York: Bookman Associates, 1951), p. 212; Michael Gannon, Operation Drumbeat: The Dramatic True Story of Germany’s First U-Boat Attacks Along the American Coast in World War II (New York: Harper and Row, 1990), p. 99; Gerhard Weinberg, World in the Balance: Behind the Scenes of World War II (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1981), p. 69; New York World-Telegram, December 11, 1941, p. 20; Milwaukee Post, December 11, 1941, p. 2; Indianapolis News, December 11, 1941, p. 1; New York Times, December 12, 1941, p. 4; John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945 (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 244. 56. John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945 (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 244; Curt Riess, The Self Betrayed: Glory and Doom of the German Generals (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1942), p. 295. 57. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 13, 1941, p. 4; Sacramento Union, December 12, 1941, p. 4. 58. New York Times, December 25, 1941, p. 7. 59. Toledo Blade, December 13, 1941, p. 4; Washington Post, December 14, 1941, sec. 2, p. 1. 60. Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald, December 13, 1941, p. 4; Sacramento Union, December 12, 1941, p. 4; December 15, 1941, p. 6. See Chapter 10 for more on the denial. 61. Omaha Morning World-Herald, December 8, 1941, p. 1; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 9, 1941, p. 4; December 15, 1941, p. 4. 62. New York Times, December 11, 1941, p. 26. 63. Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 10, 1941 (New York: Random House, 1950), November 11, 1941, pp. 485–487.

3 Actual Collaboration: German Guilt for Pearl Harbor

The speeches of President Roosevelt provide the single best indicator of the national political mood in the United States during the period surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbor. As historians, Roosevelt biographers, and the national public opinion polls all agree, Roosevelt’s public views were almost always intimately in tune with public opinion. This was especially true in the very sensitive and controversial realm of foreign policy. His caution not to stray too far from the thinking of the majority explains why he was apparently quite cautious before making any major foreign policy pronouncements. Accordingly, he made startlingly few formal foreign policy speeches in 1941, a year fraught with international crises. He made less than one formal foreign policy speech per month in late 1941, so each speech became imbued with tremendous significance. Because President Roosevelt’s major foreign policy pronouncements were in such short supply, the phrases in them were subject to infinite quotation and analysis by the press and the Congress. This was the case with his September 11 “shoot on sight” speech, his October 27 “Navy Day” speech, his December 9 “Win the War” speech, and his January 6, 1942, State of the Union address. Besides press conferences, where Roosevelt typically avoided addressing new or fundamental issues, these were his only major or lengthy public utterances on the subject of Germany surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbor. His December 11 request for a declaration of war was less than a page in length, too brief to elaborate in depth on the fundamental motives of U.S. policy. President Roosevelt’s most elucidating explanation of the U.S. case against Germany after Pearl Harbor came in his December 9 speech. Its themes were recapitulated in brief in his December 15 White Paper on Japan, and his January 6, 1942, State of the Union address. These three communications provide the sum total of the explanation offered by the president to the 41

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people for the new war against Germany in the post–Pearl Harbor period. His December 15 and January 6 explanations merely recapitulated the rationale of the December 9 speech, and not the December 11 request for a declaration of war. The latter was the only one of these documents that justified war against Germany based on Germany’s declaration of war on the United States. Indeed, the historian searches in vain in Roosevelt’s communications after December 11 for a reference to the German declaration of war as a justification for the new U.S. war against Germany. December 11 was merely the formal or legal beginning of the U.S. total war against Germany, while December 7 was the real or political beginning. President Roosevelt’s December 9 speech (and its recapitulations on December 15 and January 6) reveal the primary reasons why he led the United States into a total war against Germany. Moreover, his December 9 speech may also be viewed as his attempt to prepare the nation for a unilateral declaration of war against Germany in the possible event that the expected German declaration of war did not materialize. That is essentially what Roosevelt implied to Secretary of War Henry Stimson on the evening of December 7, when Stimson pleaded for a declaration of war to be issued simultaneously against Japan and Germany. Stimson recalled that “no one backed me in this, although when I got in a few words with the President at the close of the meeting and urged on him the importance of a declaration of war against Germany before the indignation of the people was over, he told me that he intended to present the whole matter two days later.”1 Here is yet another indication that Roosevelt was prepared to seek a unilateral declaration of war on Germany. Beginning immediately after Pearl Harbor, the consistent case made by President Roosevelt and the nation for a declaration of war against Germany, both before and after Hitler’s December 11 declaration and his December 12 denial/retraction, was German guilt for Pearl Harbor. On December 10, the New York Times, summarizing Roosevelt’s December 9 speech, reported that the situation in regard to Germany had dramatically changed. Roosevelt had “identified Germany and Italy as actually at war on the side of Japan, even if they had not made a formal declaration. Secretary of State [Cordell] Hull also noted that no formal declaration had been made by Germany, but he warned that further attacks might be expected” from Germany on the United States. The adjacent story on page one dealt with the alerts against German air raids on the eastern seaboard, a continuing story that exploded onto front pages beginning December 8.2 Midwest newspapers followed the same format. Next to a page-one story of air-raid alarms in New York, the Des Moines (Iowa) Register, on December 10, summarized President Roosevelt’s speech the previous night, noting that “Germany and Italy were given equal responsibility with Japan by the president for the state of war that now exists.” The Cincinnati Enquirer

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summed up his speech with a headline stating that Roosevelt “calls Nazis and Italians enemies.” On December 10, the Associated Press (AP) reported that Roosevelt’s speech asserted that the nation was now at war “with Germany and Italy as much the enemies of the United States as is Japan.”3 Virtually every U.S. newspaper printed all, or at least most, of the text of President Roosevelt’s speech in their December 10 editions. U.S. newspapers had done the same for all of his important speeches in order to satisfy a public hungry for the president’s infrequently issued and carefully chosen words. Roosevelt began the December 9 speech by tying the Germans to the Japanese actions via the Axis Tripartite Pact. He characterized the association by saying, “it is collaboration, actual collaboration, so well calculated that all the continents of the world, and all the oceans, are now considered by the Axis strategists as one gigantic battlefield.” Every argument in this speech rejected any strategic distinction between a Pacific and an Atlantic war for the United States. Roosevelt’s message was that now the United States was not at war merely with the Japanese, but rather with the Axis. He emphasized this dramatic turning point for the United States by saying, “We are now in this war. We are all in it—all the way.” “All the way” implied a total war not only against Japan, but also against the Axis.4 President Roosevelt conflated the Axis attacks in the Pacific and Europe by constantly veering back and forth in his speech between the subjects of Germany and Japan. His history of “the Axis Nations” emphasized “the fall of France,” which had caused the United States to fear “that the attack might reach us in all too short a time,” just as it now indeed had in Hawaii. The speech then continued to muddy any distinction between Germany and Japan by explaining that “the attack at Pearl Harbor can be repeated at any one of many points, points in both oceans and along both our coast lines and against all the rest of the hemisphere.” This was why the United States had to begin “fighting the Nazis and the war lords of Japan throughout the Americas and throughout the world.” Roosevelt continued in this vein by asserting that “there is no such thing as an impregnable defense against powerful aggressors who sneak up in the dark and strike without warning. We have learned that our ocean-girt hemisphere is not immune from severe attack—that we cannot measure our safety in terms of miles on any map any more.”5 Thus Roosevelt rejected the long-standing isolationist argument that Germany was militarily incapable of an effective attack upon the continental United States.6 Pearl Harbor had seemingly vindicated Roosevelt’s and the interventionists’ longstanding warning regarding Germany. Beyond arguing the new realities of German or Axis capabilities, President Roosevelt also emphasized their intentions, which could now be ascertained from their recent behavior. He reemphasized his assertion of “actual collaboration” between the Germans and Japanese in this latest Axis offensive:

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Your government knows that for weeks Germany has been telling Japan that if Japan did not attack the United States, Japan would not share in dividing the spoils with Germany when peace came. She was promised by Germany that if she came in she would receive the complete and perpetual control of the whole of the Pacific area—and that means not only the Far East, but also all of the islands in the Pacific, and also a stranglehold on the West coast of North, Central and South America. We know also that Germany and Japan are conducting their military and naval operations in accordance with a joint plan. That plan considers all peoples and all Nations which are not helping the Axis powers as common enemies of each and every one of the Axis powers. That is their simple and obvious grand strategy.7

President Roosevelt was obviously detailing more than mere reciprocal “actual collaboration” between German and Japanese equals. The disclosure that Germany was telling Japan what spoils it would and would not control in the Pacific resonated well with Americans who believed it was Germany that commanded the foreign policy of a subservient Japan. Beyond the mere reciprocal collaboration of equal partners, Roosevelt was declaring the “puppetmaster” argument that he and the nation would elaborate on in the days to come. In sum, however, Roosevelt’s December 9 speech encompassed both the “puppetmaster” and the “equal partner” theories of the German-Japanese Axis collaboration. President Roosevelt continued his speech conflating the German and Japanese militaries by explaining that an attack by one in one part of the world had the intent of diverting the Allies, thus enabling the other Axis partner to exploit that diversion and attack in its own part of the globe. Roosevelt reminded Americans that the inevitable result of such an Axis grand strategy was to be an attack on the United States via Latin America, a serious fear that interventionists had long warned against. Roosevelt reiterated that “a German attack against Algiers or Morocco opens the way to a German attack against South America, and the Canal.” The overall implication in this section of the speech was that the long-feared Axis attack on the United States from the Atlantic side had now actually come, unexpectedly, from the Pacific side. He was also implying the obverse, that the Axis attack on the Pacific side foreshadowed an attack from the Atlantic side.8 Military alliances were more important to Americans than was the rhetorical formality of a declaration of war. President Roosevelt concluded by saying: “Remember always that Germany and Italy, regardless of any formal declaration of war, consider themselves at war with the United States at this moment just as much as they consider themselves at war with Britain or Russia. And Germany puts all the other Republics of the Americas into the same category of enemies.” This last sentence reminded both North and South Americans of the long-held possibility that the direct German attack upon the

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United States could come from the south. But whether it came from the north or the south Atlantic, Roosevelt’s point was that whether it would come was hardly any longer a matter of speculation.9 The Axis had shown its capabilities and intentions at Pearl Harbor, and the war between the “Two Camps” was now enjoined, on a global scale, and therefore the United States was “now in this war . . . all the way.” President Roosevelt’s message affirmed the material reality of the war, despite any possible subsequent utterance of formal declarations of war. He had implied this by equating, for the first time, the strategic predicament of the United States with Britain and Russia, full belligerents against Germany. Roosevelt’s December 9 speech concluded by depicting the current global divide as a struggle of “good” versus “evil,” as well as listing all previous Axis aggressions, which were “all of one pattern.”10 As historian Norman Rich summarized it, “on December 9, two days after Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt announced that he considered Germany just as guilty as Japan for the bombing of Pearl Harbor and that a diversion of American forces from the Atlantic to the Pacific was not to be expected.”11 In the days following this speech, its various components were constantly quoted and affirmed by congressmen whose main concern was that Pearl Harbor had proven that the continental United States was now truly in danger of a German attack, especially since the Germans had collaborated with the Japanese. As Congress and the press repeated President Roosevelt’s December 9 assertions of collaboration to indict Germany for aggression against the United States, they also affirmed his puppetmaster thesis. For example, the Des Moines (Iowa) Register reported on December 10 that “Germany was described by the president as the power behind the throne in Japan, advising on military strategy.” The link between German responsibility for Japanese aggression, and its implication for the security of the continental United States, were elaborated by Senator Arthur Capper’s (R–Kans.) Topeka Daily Capital, which on December 11 agreed that the “President is right in laying upon Hitler the blame for the Japanese attacks without warning on the United States. The mechanized might which the Axis powers have been building for years now is unleashed against the Western Hemisphere.”12 That same day the Salt Lake Tribune further expanded President Roosevelt’s latest message. Specifically referring to Pearl Harbor, the Tribune editorialized that almost every citizen who had given the matter any consideration at all, felt that Nazi prodding had forced Tokyo to act without warning. . . . While intelligent, unbiased Americans almost unanimously held this opinion, the chief executive and commander-in-chief of the United States army and navy has had documentary evidence of the accuracy of such an appraisal. In his address Tuesday evening he verified the suspicions of his countrymen.

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The Tribune also quoted the pertinent sections of Roosevelt’s speech, such as the “actual collaboration . . . by the Axis strategists,” and his statement that Americans were now a “united people.”13 Such unity was undoubtedly true in regard to the message of President Roosevelt’s speech. Since that time, however, historians have expressed their dissent from the popular opinion expressed in that speech. Even such a supporter of Roosevelt’s foreign policy as historian Thomas Bailey has argued that Roosevelt’s December 9 assertion of “German pressure on Tokyo to attack the United States” was not true. Bailey asserts not only that Hitler had not even asked Japan to strike the United States, but also that he was surprised by the Pearl Harbor raid. This does not necessarily mean that Roosevelt knew his December 9 assertion was untrue. What he really thought or believed is a question that only he could answer.14 The larger political point, however, is that the president’s linkage of Germany with Japan regarding Pearl Harbor resonated well with an overwhelming majority of Americans. This Roosevelt undoubtedly knew, because he continued to emphasize such a linkage throughout December and January. This political technique of “guilt by association” was one that President Roosevelt had successfully employed for some time against various enemies, according to Wayne Cole. Cole points out that Roosevelt repeatedly branded his congressional isolationist opponents not merely as appeasers of Germany, but as actually being pro-German, pro-Nazi, and pro-Fascist. Cole argues that such accusations were untrue and prefigured the tactics of Senator Joseph McCarthy a decade later in that they unfairly tarnished patriotic isolationists. Nevertheless, Cole also argues that Roosevelt’s tactics of “guilt by association” were “increasingly effective” politically. The same was true of Roosevelt’s accusation of German guilt for Japanese crimes at Pearl Harbor.15 That Germany had committed aggression against the United States at Pearl Harbor was roundly affirmed by the press and Congress. The New York World-Telegram reported on December 10 that “the President’s warning that ‘Germany and Italy consider themselves at war with the United States at this moment’ brought from Congressmen the comment that it was a ‘realistic recognition’ of the fact.” The next day the Cincinnati Enquirer editorialized that President Roosevelt’s December 9 speech had been a “cogent” assessment of Pearl Harbor, a “sudden, unprovoked aggression, in accordance to a master joint plan formulated in Berlin and executed by the appropriate fascist military arm.” The Enquirer also agreed with Roosevelt that the “United States is actually, although informally at war with Germany” even in the absence of a “formal” declaration of war. The Enquirer concluded, almost in passing, that “Germany and Italy may recognize the realities officially by a war declaration against us” formalizing what was already an “all-out, total, world war” of Axis versus Allies. The Minneapolis Morning Tribune also

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agreed that “irrespective of any declarations, we are the enemies of Germany, Italy, and Japan.”16 On December 14, the syndicated “military commentator” of the Detroit Free Press, Royce Howes, painted an unequivocal picture of President Roosevelt’s December 9 speech: Thursday’s declarations were empty formalities. Certainly since last Sunday, when the Japanese glided down over Oahu’s mountain chain to rain bombs on Honolulu and Pearl Harbor, we have been openly at war with the whole Axis. If, even after Pearl Harbor, anyone held to the futile hope that we could conduct a private war with Japan he was disabused of that idea by President Roosevelt’s address to the Nation Tuesday night.17

Howes’s assessment was representative of the new national mood after December 7 to seek a total and unilaterally declared war against Germany. The new situation existed because it was impossible for the press and its readership to distinguish between Germany and Japan, especially after President Roosevelt’s speech. The Sioux Falls (South Dakota) Daily Argus-Leader also rallied to Roosevelt’s analysis when it editorialized on December 10 that profoundly significant was the president’s statement that Germany and Italy now consider themselves at war with the United States. This is obviously true. And in this realization lies a serious warning. Japan struck unexpectedly at Pearl Harbor. We must not permit Germany or Italy to catch us napping in the same manner.

The Argus-Leader also characterized the central message of Roosevelt’s December 9 speech as “profoundly significant.”18 President Roosevelt generally rationed his formal foreign policy addresses, thus increasing their impact and significance. He altered his usual pattern when he repeated his December 9 charges against Germany just one week later in a December 15 White Paper on the history of U.S.-Japanese relations. The New York Times reported that in this message to Congress, Roosevelt outlined the “‘step-by-step’ execution of the joint German-JapaneseItalian plan for world conquest.” The Times went on to agree with the president by essentially repeating his assertions verbatim. According to the Times, the president offered evidence to show that Japan, Germany and Italy arranged together to effect joint plans for world dominance, and mentioned how the three finally and openly concluded last year a treaty of alliance aimed at the United States. . . . Throughout the document, the president showed how . . . the three totalitarian countries “reached an understanding to time their acts of aggression to their common advantage—and to bring about the ultimate enslavement of the rest of the world.”19

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This New York Times paraphrase of the White Paper was like many that ran in the nation’s press. The similarity of the White Paper to President Roosevelt’s last major statement on the war, his December 9 speech, was noticed by the Cincinnati Enquirer, which pointed out that “the President again made it clear that the pattern of Japanese aggression has been integrated with the master pattern formulated in Berlin.” The White Paper on Japan frequently intertwined Germany into its text, but the key references numbered only two. Nevertheless, newspapers focused a magnifying lens upon them. According to the president, Germany, Italy, and Japan reached an understanding to time their acts of aggression to their common advantage—and to bring about the ultimate enslavement of the rest of the world. . . . As the forces of Germany, Italy, and Japan increasingly combined their efforts over these years, I was convinced that this combination would ultimately attack the United States and the Western Hemisphere—if it were successful in the other continents.

Roosevelt concluded that the Axis was an alliance “deliberately aimed at the United States.”20 President Roosevelt made no more formal pronouncements regarding Germany for the rest of December, even though the U.S. press continued to delve into the alleged conspiracy between Germany and Japan. Roosevelt’s next formal comment on Germany was his January 6, 1942, State of the Union speech. This comprehensive address touched on every aspect of the new total U.S. war effort against the Axis. In this unified statement of war policy toward Germany, Roosevelt reiterated the acts of Axis aggression he listed on December 9 and December 15; he made no mention of Germany’s declaration of war. Roosevelt argued that the Axis was a single entity and enemy, that Hitler was its ruler, and therefore that it was Hitler who was primarily guilty for the attack on Pearl Harbor. This coherent theme and rationale can be construed from several references within the State of the Union address. As regards the assertion that Germany was the master that commanded the Japanese puppet, President Roosevelt declared in his inimitable fashion that the “destruction of the material and spiritual centers of civilization is the purpose of Hitler and his Italian and Japanese chessmen.” The formerly isolationist Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald suggested that this was an assertion with which Congress wholeheartedly agreed. It reported that during Roosevelt’s State of the Union address to Congress, “only twice was there occasion for a short gust of laughter. The first came when the president referred to ‘Hitler and his Italian and Japanese chessmen.’” The Times-Herald characterized Roosevelt’s speech as “a fighting, fervent speech that evoked impressive demonstration of the unanimous support of Congress.” Therefore it is safe to assume that Congress also agreed with Roosevelt’s

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restatement of the puppetmaster allegation: “When Hitler organized his BerlinRome-Tokyo alliance, all these plans of conquest became a single plan.”21 Because Hitler was allegedly primarily responsible for the formation and existence of the Axis, he was also primarily responsible for its deeds. Therefore Hitler was at least as guilty as Japan for the attack on Pearl Harbor. President Roosevelt said as much when he stated that the U.S. “implements of war will give the Japanese and Nazis a little idea of just what they accomplished in the attack on Pearl Harbor.” The president enunciated what the overwhelming majority of Americans had believed since December 7, that it was “they,” Japan and Germany, who had attacked Pearl Harbor. By way of contrast, Roosevelt did not even bother to mention Germany’s December 11 declaration of war in either his December 15 or January 6 message. Germany’s declaration of war evidently never did motivate a substantial majority of Americans to attack and invade Germany. This became even clearer after Germany issued its December 12 denial/retraction. The United States had grievance against Germany not because of what it had said or declared, but because of what Americans believed it had done, with Japan, at Pearl Harbor.22 President Roosevelt’s rationale for total war against Germany was consistent and single-minded. His accusation that the crimes committed by Japan actually implicated Germany was the common refrain from the outset of virtually all leaders of public opinion in the United States. One of the most important was nationally syndicated columnist Walter Lippmann, who was quoted in Congress on December 9 by Representative Foster Stearns (R–N.H.): “We are not facing a feeble and contemptible little enemy on the distant shores of Asia, but the most carefully prepared, highly organized, and shrewdly directed combination which has ever set out to conquer the world.” The Axis was labeled a unitary military combination, a monolith with its power center in Berlin, which had now directly attacked U.S. territory. This monolith concept was described in various terms. For example, nationally syndicated columnist Dorothy Thompson on December 9 termed the Axis an “offensive alliance,” and characterized “Axis policy as one policy,” in that “the Axis is fighting one war.”23 Midwest newspapers also repeated the monolith concept before the advent of the German declaration. The Des Moines Register paraphrased President Roosevelt’s December 9 speech, which had conflated the Japanese and Germans into a single Axis, arguing on the morning of December 11 (before the German and U.S. declarations of war) that “the United States is at war with the most powerful military combination the world has ever known.” This “military combination” analysis remained consistent after the German declaration, as was exemplified by the Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald December 13 statement that the Axis was a “close combination of aggressive

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elements.” The sentiments of the formerly isolationist Midwest were also expressed in Congress by Senator Alexander Wiley (R–Wis.), who said on December 11 that Germany and Japan “are gearing their war machines together for our destruction. They have linked their war machines with the chains of bondage and destruction in a common war against United States.” Both before and after December 11, midwestern and western newspapers joined with the southern and northern newspapers in expressing belief in the unitary nature of Axis military activity. On the morning of December 11, the Detroit Free Press also paraphrased Roosevelt’s December 9 speech by stating that “the Axis act in concert on a worldwide scale.”24 Most Americans (as demonstrated by the polls and the press) believed that the Axis, Germany and Japan, constituted a military combination on at least one, and probably two levels. They were certain that the Axis was a military combination on the strategic level, that its members jointly planned their operations, and that they did so under Hitler’s direction. But Americans were also nearly as certain that the Axis, Germany and Japan, also constituted a military combination on the tactical or operational level. In addition to joint German-Japanese planning, many if not most Americans believed, during the week and month following Pearl Harbor, that the German military was actually executing joint military operations with the Japanese in the Pacific. It was not only the Japanese military that had bombed and shot at Americans in the Pacific, but many if not most U.S. newspapers were also “relatively” certain (given the “fog of war” and the secrecy of the movements of military units) that German military units had done likewise. While most Americans believed they had certainly long understood the political and strategic hierarchy of the Germans and Japanese, the actual geographic disposition of Germany and Axis military units during and around December 7 was a more recent and somewhat less ascertainable phenomenon. The war against the United States in the Pacific was a new situation that made Americans entirely reliant on a flurry of late-breaking news reports. The massive volume of these reports seemed to be enough for many if not most Americans to consider them virtually confirmed and therefore the truth. News reports of German military operations in the Pacific were heaviest in concentration during Pearl Harbor week, but were not retracted or really questioned throughout Pearl Harbor month. There is ample evidence, moreover, to believe that a substantial number of Americans believed them to some extent throughout World War II, because the volume and impact of these news assertions seemed to outweigh any contrary doubts, at least when measured in terms of comparative press reporting and commentary. The alleged German strategic or conspiratorial complicity with Japan in planning Pearl Harbor was enough to convince most Americans of German guilt for Pearl Harbor. When Americans added to this the relatively certain belief that German military units had actually participated in the bombing and strafing of the U.S. mili-

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tary in the Pacific, the American belief in German guilt was that much more broadened and deepened. Whatever the validity of the news reports alleging Luftwaffe bombing of Pearl Harbor, however, Americans thereafter could not be certain that the Germans had not indeed done so, once the rumor genie was out of the bottle. In fact, Americans did not and could not become certain that the Germans had not bombed Pearl Harbor until after World War II and the capture of Axis records. The crucial point is that the escalation to total war between the United States and Germany was decided during Pearl Harbor week and month. It was during this crucial period that many if not most Americans fervently believed in the veracity of reports alleging that Germany military units were indeed operating with the Japanese against the U.S. military in the Pacific. Press reports about German involvement began immediately on December 8 and continued to be published in the days that followed. These reports were not restricted to the press organs of the longtime interventionists. As historian Thurston Clarke has noted, “on December 8, the Chicago Tribune reported that many Congressmen believed German pilots had carried out the damaging blitzkrieg” on Pearl Harbor, “in planes marked with swastikas.” Also on December 8, the Cleveland Press carried a United Press (UP) story that President Roosevelt was “awaiting information on an unconfirmed report that some of the planes that blasted Hawaii bore German markings.” On December 9, the nation’s press ran an AP story on the “Japanese blitzkrieg on Pearl Harbor” by torpedo planes. The story reported that “these tactics impelled many legislators to express belief that German pilots had figured prominently in the air raids against Pearl Harbor and one authoritative source disclosed ‘reports’ that some of the planes involved had borne the Nazi swastika as well as the Japanese ‘rising sun’ emblem.” The subhead over this piece read, “Nazi swastika reported on planes.” Many newspapers running this story added that the congressmen who had expressed this appraisal were “well-informed legislators.” The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Walter F. George (D–Ga.), was paraphrased by the Atlanta Journal as saying on December 11 that “many of the diver-bombers” attacking Pearl Harbor may well have been both “German-made and German-manned.” Key congressmen could, of course, acquire access to this kind of military intelligence, a point that gave comments such as those by Senator George added weight.25 Most intelligence naturally originated in Hawaii, and some was even published. For example, according to Thurston Clarke: On December 9, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin ran a story headlined “Tall aviator of enemy downed, was he German?” and describing “the body of an aviator more than six feet tall . . . found in the wreckage of a Japanese plane”; adding that “reports from Hongkong quoted eyewitnesses as saying a German was the pilot of one of the 27 planes which raided Kowloon.”

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The next day, December 10, the New York World-Telegram summarized this unconfirmed report by saying that “rumors were afloat that some Germans had been shot down in Japanese planes.” It was not just German pilots who may have been implicated in the Pacific, but German aircraft too, as was implied by the headline of this report, “Japanese air force using Nazi equipment.” This combination of German pilots and planes was highlighted on December 11 and December 12 in both the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the San Antonio Express. These newspapers, notes historian Gordon Prange, exemplified the “newshawks [who] thought that Hitler might even have contributed planes and pilots to the attack” on Pearl Harbor.26 By December 15 the “evidence” was becoming even more compelling. Newspapers from the New York Times to the Chicago Tribune carried a story whose lead was “Stukas at Hawaii, eyewitness says. U.S. doctor, in a letter to sister, says Nazi pilots were shot down in original attack. . . . German Stuka bombers and Nazi pilots were shot down together with Japanese, by the defenders of Oahu in last Sunday’s sudden attack on that Hawaiian Island, according to an eyewitness account of the raid by Dr. Bernard Witlin, United States Health Services bacteriologist, stationed in Honolulu, in a letter to his sister, Mrs. Samuel Weisfeld” of Philadelphia.27 The ever evolving degree of detail was hardly needed to convince most Americans of what had been an implicit assumption ever since the attack on Pearl Harbor. In a December 9 speech in Congress, Representative James Van Zandt (R–Pa.) said, “thank God for Admiral Kimmel, General Short, and their courageous men who are in the front-line trench at this moment undergoing the devastating fire of the Japanese and other Axis partners” at Hawaii. By December 9, Americans were becoming relatively secure in this belief due to the abundant rumors and reports that had been circulating ever since December 7. This atmosphere had also pervaded the White House during President Roosevelt’s December 7 meeting with congressional leaders, when the president noted that “there is a rumor that two of the planes . . . were seen with swastikas on them. Now whether that is true or not, I don’t know.”28 Before the press began reporting that it was the German Luftwaffe that had probably bombed Pearl Harbor, this story had flourished within the U.S. military and up the chain of command to the commander in chief, President Roosevelt. According to historian Thurston Clarke, “the German-pilot rumor began with sailors claiming to see swastikas painted on planes flown by blond pilots. Civilians on the heights above Pearl Harbor also identified ‘German’ planes.” These “eyewitnesses” were all interviewed by U.S. Army Intelligence and their testimony was preserved in the “Hawaiian War Records Depository.” Beginning December 7, eyewitnesses swore that they saw “German Stukas,” and indeed that “the great majority of the planes observed were German.” One of these Hawaiian eyewitnesses concluded “that the attack was led by German pilots.”29

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In addition to the reports from U.S. Army Intelligence in Hawaii, President Roosevelt would be privy to yet another, seemingly equally credible, source of information on this issue. This source was Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, who told British foreign minister Anthony Eden on December 16 that Soviet military intelligence believed not only that Germany had given Japan 1,500 aircraft, but also that German pilots were flying for the Japanese air force. Stalin added that, so great was the proportion of German aircraft and pilots with the Japanese air force, it caused him to say, “I have come to the conclusion that it is not really a Japanese war.”30 This assessment, like virtually every other discussed at the highest levels, was also discussed in the newspapers. On December 13 the UP reported that “Nazi pilots flying warplanes made in Germany have been operating over China recently and may have participated in the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines last Sunday, Major General P. Kiang, chief of Chinese military mission in the United States, said today.” The cumulative effect of all these reports was expressed on December 14 by columnist Royce Howes, writing in the Detroit Free Press. He concluded that “until we have been in the war long enough to learn otherwise, it is a fair assumption that the German air force is giving direct help to the Japs [sic].” One of Howes’s reasons for this conclusion was similar to one of Stalin’s. They both noted that there had been no major German operations in Europe for quite some time. Therefore they both deduced that Germany must have been transferring its air force to Asia during autumn 1941.31 The documentary record of the public political discourse suggests that the U.S. belief that the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor was strongest during Pearl Harbor week, and for some time thereafter. After this period in December 1941, there was not nearly as great an overt discussion of the subject in the public record. This may have been due to its gradually receding credibility, the lack of confirmed evidence supporting the reports from Pearl Harbor week, or the diminution of subsequent news reports thereafter. If this latter inference is the case, then the diminution of this issue in the public record did not necessarily suggest its lack of credibility during World War II. Rather, it may have become an implicit and consequently unspoken assumption in the minds of Americans who had come to focus on newly emergent events in the war. Such a theory seems to be supported by the total lack of any retractions, as well as by some discussion in the editorial press at the end of Pearl Harbor month. This theory also seems to be supported by Gordon Prange, who says that “this idea—that the Germans masterminded Japanese foreign policy, strategy and tactics, and even contributed pilots to the Pearl Harbor striking force— arose almost immediately after the event and persisted for years.” Thurston Clarke’s book, Pearl Harbor Ghosts, is a metaphor for these and other false rumors, which never completely died out. Clarke says that these conspiracy

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theories “enjoyed the greatest popularity in the decade following the war.” The conspiracy theory accusing Germany of responsibility for the war in the Pacific, however, found its greatest currency during the war itself, and especially at its beginning in December 1941.32 Americans perceived Germany as guilty not only for Pearl Harbor, but also for the attacks on the Philippines. In contrast to Hawaii, where the fighting lasted but one day, despite the approximately 2,500 killed, the attacks on the Philippines lasted into 1943. Reports of Germany military units participating in attacks on the Philippines seem to have initially appeared in the U.S. press on December 10, when an AP story reported that “rumors were afloat that some Germans had been shot down in Japanese planes.” This unconfirmed report from Manila appeared under headlines that read, “‘Japanazis.’ Tokyo air force is equipped by Nazis”; “German equipment used in raid on Clark field”; and “Manila raid witness believes Nazis fly Japanese planes.” Some versions of this story elaborated that “reports that a German flyer had been captured after parachuting out of a burning plane could not be confirmed.” Time magazine reported on December 22 that in U.S. Army air combat in the Philippines, “a few Messerschmitts were sighted and some pilots reported whipping past white pilots in dogfights. On the ground, soldiers picked up many Japanese duds, found some marked ‘Frankfurt 1916.’ But there was no conclusive evidence that Nazis were fighting alongside the Japanese.”33 Although these reports were labeled unconfirmed, most Americans could understand that in the heat of battle and the fog of war, such confirmation could be considered a luxury. The sheer number and detail of such reports, moreover, inevitably accumulated in them a credibility all their own. A significant factor lending credibility to the reports from the Pacific was their sources. For example, the December 10 AP report came from “A United States Army spokesman” in Manila. This official source was then rendered all the more credible by the exposition of his specialized technical expertise. According to this U.S. Army spokesman, “the Japanese ground strafing tactics . . . indicated German tutelage if not actual German participation.” This apparently credible deduction was seconded even more strongly by Royal Arch Gunnison, foreign correspondent of the Washington (D.C.) Evening Star and the North American Newspaper Alliance. His December 10 piece was titled “Manila raid witness believes Nazis fly Japanese planes,” and was based on his interviews with U.S. Army spokesmen in the Philippines. In this piece, distributed by the AP, Gunnison concluded that “these Japanese planes were following a German flying and bombing strategy much too closely to be manned fully by only Japanese crews.”34 What the U.S. Army and its spokesmen were professing in public, they were likewise discussing in private. As Gordon Prange notes,

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in a talk which Major William P. Fisher, who was at Clark Field at the time [December 8], gave before some G-4 officers on March 20, 1942, a Colonel asked him, “Have you seen any indication of other than Japanese personnel? Yes. Germans,” replied Fisher. “I have seen one body that was apparently German—tall, blond, etc. You run into quite a few white men in their crews. Its hard to tell much about the men though after death as they are usually pretty badly smashed up and also we shot down some Japanese women pilots.” Whatever skepticism the idea of Japanese women combat pilots may have aroused, the rumor of white men among the Japanese attackers was taken seriously at high level. [U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George] Marshall telephoned “Pa” Watson at the White House on December 9 concerning a report from MacArthur and said, “Enemy airplanes have been handled with superior efficiency and there are some indications that his dive bombers are at least partially manned by white pilots.”35

Historian John Dower also notes that General Douglas MacArthur “refused to believe that the pilots could have been Japanese. He insisted they must have been white mercenaries,” and this meant Germans. Dower follows this up by recounting the official history of the British army, which states that the British garrison at Hong Kong “firmly believed . . . that Germans must be leading the sorties,” and that Stalin had also “placed Germans in Japan’s cockpits.” As to how long this perception lasted, Dower says that “in some quarters, disbelief that the Japanese could really muster the weapons of modern war persisted long after they had presumably proved their mettle.” As late as 1945, when the Japanese pinned down U.S. GIs on Okinawa, rumor had it that “German experts are directing artillery.”36 The belief that the Germans were launching a coordinated blitzkrieg attack all over the Pacific was based on eyewitness accounts and the deductions of military experts. This latter source of credibility was a very influential one and was afforded much newspaper ink. When experts like the U.S. Army spokesmen and their interlocutor, Royal Arch Gunnison, commented authoritatively on the mysterious fine points of aerial strategy and tactics, the layman had little recourse but to be impressed and persuaded. In addition to military and press experts, Americans had been informed on this technical subject by their professional specialists in Congress. The previously cited December 9 AP story, regarding the “Japanese blitzkrieg on Pearl Harbor” by torpedo planes, for example, reported that “these tactics impelled many legislators to express belief that German pilots had figured prominently in the air raids against Pearl Harbor.”37 To these presumably skilled observers it was the distinctiveness of such torpedo plane tactics in particular that ostensibly betrayed the presence of the Luftwaffe at Pearl Harbor. Such a logical deduction appeared perfectly obvious to William Hessler, writing in the Cincinnati Enquirer on December 14. He deduced that, “very probably, German fliers had a part in the four Pearl

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Harbor attacks. Japan gave no sign before Sunday of familiarity with torpedo planes: Either she kept her skill a secret or else her air force has been equipped and coached by Germans lately.” Hessler concluded that “for some time we may not know how much of the planning and execution of the attack in the Pacific must be traced to Germany.”38 The news of torpedo planes attacking Pearl Harbor arrived in U.S. newspapers beginning December 8. These aircraft were immediately and accurately described as being the deadliest weapon in that attack. This specific information, the presence of torpedo planes in Pearl Harbor, was based on eyewitness accounts. The conclusion that it was Luftwaffe torpedo planes that had attacked Pearl Harbor was based on a combination of eyewitness accounts and expert deductions. The many stories from the Pacific that were based on eyewitness accounts went virtually unchallenged, except for the tentative qualifier “unconfirmed.” Such eyewitness accounts were harder to challenge than were the expert deductions, because the latter was a game at which more people could play, compared to the smaller, more exclusive group of eyewitnesses.39 Because expert deductions could be open to challenge, there arose a small degree of skepticism as to their credibility, a degree greater than that accorded to the eyewitness accounts. The cumulative effect of this degree of skepticism could have been confusion, because the skeptical stories appeared in newspapers alongside reports that argued for a contrary conclusion. It seems, however, that the cumulative effect of this potential confusion was to ultimately end up tilting toward belief in a Luftwaffe presence in the Pacific, because the number of stories reporting this presence vastly outnumbered the number of stories that were skeptical of it. The only widely reported story that was skeptical of the stories of Luftwaffe torpedo planes attacking in the Pacific was an International News Service (INS) wire story that first broke on December 12. The article, headlined “Torpedo planes credited with sinking British battleships,” the battleships being the HMS Prince of Wales and the HMS Repulse, was filed by O. D. Gallagher, a correspondent for the London Daily Express and the INS, who had been aboard the Repulse. The article began by commenting on the “superb air attack by the Japanese, whose air force, up to this point, has always been regarded as an unknown quantity.” Gallagher continued by saying, “observers aboard the Repulse, who are veterans of many such battles said: ‘the Germans have never done anything like this, in the North Sea, the Atlantic, or anywhere else we’ve been.’” “This” referred to the combined and coordinated attack using two arms: high-altitude bombers at 17,000 feet, in combination with low-flying torpedo planes.40 Yet as interesting as skeptical stories like this were, they were countered and outnumbered by stories reporting on the real threat that the Luftwaffe’s torpedo planes had been and were posing in the Mediterranean.41 In contrast

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to the total void of information in the U.S. press on Japanese torpedo planes in the pre–Pearl Harbor period, Americans had repeatedly been told and shown pictures of the Luftwaffe’s Heinkel torpedo planes and their attacks on the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean in the pre–Pearl Harbor period. Such stories of these successful attacks were accompanied by stories reporting on the ominous similarity of German and Japanese tactics.42 In the light of hindsight, however, any similarity in German and Japanese torpedo plane tactics should not have automatically led to the conclusion that the Luftwaffe was actually operating in the Pacific. All the Great Powers observed and learned the new tactics of all the other Great Powers, and they could learn them without being a puppet of a tutor. Therefore, it seems that the U.S. perception in 1941 primarily rested upon the assumption that Japan could not be classified as a legitimate Great Power. Regardless of all these facts, an examination of the U.S. debate in December 1941 concerning the subject of torpedo plane tactics is ultimately instructive to understanding the basic issue: the contemporary U.S. reasoning that concluded that Germany had to be guilty of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Reports in the U.S. press of a formidable Luftwaffe torpedo plane capability continued into January 1942, as exemplified by reports from Time magazine and the New York Times on the real successes that were being achieved against the Royal Navy in the Mediterranean. In addition to countering the skeptics, the evidence demonstrates that a substantial number of Americans continued to believe in early 1942, if not throughout World War II, the stories that the Luftwaffe had indeed done battle in the Pacific. Whatever degree of confusion that there may have been regarding the specific reports about torpedo plane tactics, the number of stories overall during Pearl Harbor month alleging either a German torpedo plane presence in the Pacific, or their military competence in the Mediterranean, seems to have outgunned the skeptics.43 Furthermore, the stories reporting Luftwaffe attacks off Malaya could not help but indirectly add weight to the other reports that the Luftwaffe had also struck Pearl Harbor and the Philippines. The ongoing battle in the Philippines also gave rise to reports not only that German Luftwaffe officers were flying against U.S. targets in the Philippines, but also that German forces were fighting on the ground. And they were doing so, according to the U.S. press, well beyond Pearl Harbor week. On December 29, 1941, the Indianapolis News carried a UP report that German officers were leading tank formations in the Philippines. German officers were said to be posing as Americans in order to trick the Filipinos into dropping their guard so that the disguised Germans could then fire with impunity upon Filipino defenses.44 Reports that emphasized deception and secrecy helped to diminish the problem that they were “unconfirmed.” Confirmation could often be considered a luxury in wartime, especially since deception and secrecy often lay at

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the very heart of successful military operations. In addition to the covert observation detailed above, this same UP report offered even clearer “evidence” that German soldiers were fighting in the Philippines. As run by the Atlanta Journal, it was titled “Manila paper reports Nazi officers on Luzon,” and revealed that “a dispatch to the newspaper Herald said Monday [December 29] that German officers were reported to have been seen on the northern Luzon front.”45 The U.S. press carried reports of German military units operating not only in Hawaii, the Philippines, and China, but also in Malaya.46 Day by day, Americans were becoming more convinced not only that German military units were operating in the Pacific, but also that the repeated reports from Malaya strongly implied that the Luftwaffe had attacked Pearl Harbor. This was the implication of William Hessler’s December 14 editorial in the Cincinnati Enquirer, which stated that “finally, German pilots are reported flying some of the Japanese bomber craft over Malaya. Very probably, German fliers had a part in the four Pearl Harbor attacks.” Hessler’s inference could be deduced not only from the Malaya reports, but also by the observations of aerial tactics, especially by the telltale torpedo planes.47 Although most Americans might have been relatively or temporarily uncertain about the specific details involved, they were relatively certain in December 1941 that they knew enough to indict Germany for directly attacking in the Pacific. The U.S. press had made this case as it correlated the evidence and deductions concerning the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht in the Pacific. During Pearl Harbor week and month, Americans were reading a variety of reports that alleged German military aggression not only on the land and in the skies of the Pacific, but also on the ocean.

Notes 1. William Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 (New York: Published for the Council on Foreign Relations by Harper, 1953), p. 938. 2. New York Times, December 10, 1941, p. 1. 3. Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 10, 1941, p. 1; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 10, 1941, p. 1; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 10, 1941, p. 1; San Francisco Examiner, December 10, 1941, p. 1; Sacramento Union, December 10, 1941, p. 1. 4. Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 10, 1941 (New York: Random House, 1950), December 9, 1941, p. 523. 5. Ibid., pp. 526, 528–529. 6. Ibid.; Joseph Gies, The Colonel of Chicago (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979), pp. 164–168; Wayne S. Cole, Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle Against American Intervention in World War II (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), pp. 88–94; Wayne S. Cole, America First: The Battle Against Intervention, 1940–41 (Madison:

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University of Wisconsin Press, 1953), pp. 95–98; Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932–1945 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), pp. 387–388, 278, 343, 279–288. 7. Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 10, 1941 (New York: Random House, 1950), December 9, 1941, p. 529. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., p. 530. 10. Ibid., pp. 530, 523. 11. Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 10, 1941, p. 6A; New York Times, December 10, 1941, p. 1; Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 10, 1941 (New York: Random House, 1950), pp. 522–530; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 10, 1941, p. 4; Norman Rich, Hitler’s War Aims, vol. 1 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), p. 245. 12. Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 12, 1941, pp. A5561–A5562, A5556; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 10, 1941, p. 1; Topeka (Kansas) Daily Capital, December 11, 1941, p. 6. 13. Salt Lake Tribune, December 11, 1941, p. 12. 14. Thomas Bailey and Paul Ryan, Hitler vs. Roosevelt: The Undeclared Naval War (New York: Free Press, 1979), p. 247. During the research of this study, no direct evidence was uncovered indicating that President Roosevelt’s private thoughts were at variance with his public statements. Some historians like Bailey, however, have concluded that the declassified intelligence did not necessarily substantiate Roosevelt’s public statements. See Chapter 6 for a brief discussion based on the conclusions of Gordon Prange, in his book At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), p. 558; as well as The Diaries of Henry L. Stimson, Library of Congress, Washington D.C., Manuscript Reading Room, vols. 35–40, reel 7, December 7, 1941, pp. 82–84. 15. Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932–1945 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), pp. 12–20, 315, 321–322, 431. 16. New York World-Telegram, December 10, 1941, p. 9; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 11, 1941, p. 4; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 10, 1941, p. 4. 17. Detroit Free Press, December 14, 1941, p. 3. 18. Sioux Falls (South Dakota) Daily Argus-Leader, December 10, 1941, p. 6. 19. Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 10, 1941 (New York: Random House, 1950), December 15, 1941, pp. 539, 542, 544–545; New York Times, December 16, 1941, pp. 1, 6. 20. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 17, 1941, p. 4; Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 10, 1941 (New York: Random House, 1950), December 15, 1941, pp. 539, 542, 544–545; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 16, 1941, p. A9. 21. Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, January 7, 1942, pp. 1, 6; Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 11, 1942 (New York: Random House, 1950), January 6, 1942, pp. 33–34, 36, 38. 22. Ibid. 23. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 9, 1941, p. 4; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 9, 1941, p. A5503. 24. Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 11, 1941, p. 3; Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald, December 13, 1941, p. 4; Congressional Record: Proceedings and

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Debates of the 77th Congress, 1st sess., vol. 87, pt. 9 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 11, 1941, p. 9654; Detroit Free Press, December 11, 1941, p. 6. 25. Thurston Clarke, Pearl Harbor Ghosts: A Journey to Hawaii, Then and Now (New York: William Morrow, 1991), pp. 225–226; Cleveland Press, December 8, 1941, p. 2; Denver Post, December 9, 1941, p. 15; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 9, 1941, p. 8; Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald, December 9, 1941, p. 1; Atlanta Journal, December 11, 1941, p. 29. 26. Thurston Clarke, Pearl Harbor Ghosts: A Journey to Hawaii, Then and Now (New York: William Morrow, 1991), p. 226; New York World-Telegram, December 10, 1941, p. 10; San Francisco Examiner, December 10, 1941, p. 9; Gordon Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), pp. 583–584. 27. New York Times, December 15, 1941, p. 4; Chicago Tribune, December 15, 1941, p. 3. 28. Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 9, 1941, p. A5504; Gordon Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: McGrawHill, 1981), pp. 557–558. 29. Thurston Clarke, Pearl Harbor Ghosts: A Journey to Hawaii, Then and Now (New York: William Morrow, 1991), p. 225. 30. Stalin was referring not merely to the Pacific, but also to the Chinese theater. Anthony Eden, The Reckoning: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden, Earl of Avon (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p. 339; John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945 (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 311. 31. Toledo Blade, December 13, 1941, p. 3; Detroit Free Press, December 14, 1941, p. 3. 32. Gordon Prange, Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History (New York: McGrawHill, 1986), p. 309; Thurston Clarke, Pearl Harbor Ghosts: A Journey to Hawaii, Then and Now (New York: William Morrow, 1991), pp. 235, 239, 227; New York Daily News, December 8, 1941, p. 2; Washington (D.C.) Evening Star, December 13, 1941, p. A12. Both Prange and Clarke debunk the Pearl Harbor conspiracy theories. 33. Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 10, 1941, p. 10; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 10, 1941, p. 2; Nebraska State Journal, December 10, 1941, p. 1; Washington (D.C.) Evening Star, December 10, 1941, p. B8; Time, December 22, 1941, p. 55. 34. Washington (D.C.) Evening Star, December 10, 1941, pp. B8, B17; Nebraska State Journal, December 10, 1941, p. 1; Omaha Morning World-Herald, December 10, 1941, p. 15. 35. Gordon Prange, Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History (New York: McGrawHill, 1986), p. 472. 36. John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986), pp. 105–106. 37. Denver Post, December 9, 1941, p. 15. 38. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 14, 1941, p. 15. 39. Washington Post, December 8, 1941, p. 6. 40. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 12, 1941, p. 11; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 12, 1941, p. 3; Washington Post, December, 14, 1941, sec. 2, p. 1. 41. On the skeptical stories, see Cincinnati Enquirer, December 12, 1941, p. 6; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 12, 1941, pp. 1, 3; New York Daily News, December 17, 1941, p. 22.

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42. Time, October 20, 1941, p. 27; Washington Post, November 2, 1941, p. 5; Minneapolis Star Journal, December 17, 1941, pp. 11, 14; December 18, 1941, p. 1; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 17, 1941, p. 8; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 17, 1941, p. 15. 43. Time, January 19, 1942, p. 23; New York Times, January 30, 1942, p. 5. 44. Indianapolis News, December 29, 1941, p. 4. 45. Atlanta Journal, December 29, 1941, p. 4. 46. New York Times, December 12, 1941, p. 11; New York World-Telegram, December 12, 1941, p. 10; St. Louis Post Dispatch, December 12, 1941, p. 8; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 12, 1941, p. 1; Montana Standard, December 12, 1941, p. 8; Idaho Daily Statesman, December 12, 1941, p. 1; Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald, December 12, 1941, p. 1; Salt Lake Tribune, December 12, 1941, p. 12; Nebraska State Journal, December 12, 1941, p. 1; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 12, 1941, p. 1; New York Daily News, December 11, 1941, p. M7; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 12, 1941, p. B5; Washington (D.C.) Evening Star, December 11, 1941, p. A13; Nebraska State Journal, December 13, 1941, p. 8. 47. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 14, 1941, sec. 2, p. 15; Cleveland Press, December 8, 1941, p. 4.

4 A Responsible Source: Where Were the German Military Forces? Beginning the week after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Americans were inundated with a profusion of reports not only of German air and land aggression in the Pacific, but also of German naval forces attacking in the Pacific. The most important and unifying commonality among these reports was the suggestion that German forces had struck Pearl Harbor. The reports from British Malaya were particularly numerous and enjoyed widespread circulation in the U.S. press. The reports of a German naval offensive near Malaya first appeared in embryonic form on December 8, 1941, and then garnered a degree of official validation by the evening of December 10. Therefore, when the full account of this story broke wide open over the United Press (UP) wire and onto the front pages of newspapers across the United States on the morning of December 11, its implications for, and influence upon, the congressional vote that afternoon cannot be overestimated. The account in the New York Times, written by James Reston and reprinted by many U.S. newspapers, was headlined “Tirpitz rumored in Malayan fight. . . . One report says Nazi airplane carrier participated in Pearl Harbor attack”: It was reported in diplomatic quarters but not officially confirmed tonight [December 10] that the new German battleship Tirpitz, sister ship of the Bismarck, was operating with the Japanese Navy in the Far East and took part in the sinking of the British capital ships Prince of Wales and Repulse. Coincidentally, another report also unconfirmed, indicated that at least one new German aircraft carrier cooperated with the Japanese in the attack on the main United States base in Pearl Harbor last Sunday.

The source of this story was “suspected” to be the British, although it was the “Australian government” that made the “official announcement.” The Japa63

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nese government had denied the story, but Reston assured his readers that his story was “merely a report to a responsible source.”1 The content of Reston’s widely distributed piece on December 11 had its rudimentary origins on December 8 in the Chicago Tribune, which relayed “disturbing reports that Japan’s naval forces had been augmented by two Nazi warships, the 35,000 ton Von Tirpitz and the 26,000 ton Gneisenau, which are reported to have escaped the British blockade to keep a rendezvous with the Jap [sic] fleet.” Reston’s December 11 elaboration broke this story wide open, as was reflected in its wide distribution. Although the New York Times ran with this story, it did allow its columnist on military affairs, Hanson Baldwin, to sound a small note of caution. Baldwin suggested, also on December 11, that “whether the Tirpitz is in the Far East, as suggested in some published reports, is open to question, since most recent reliable information—which is, however, about two weeks old—indicates that the Tirpitz is in the Baltic.”2 It was Reston’s story on page one, not Baldwin’s on page six, that received the prominence, the attention, and the lion’s share of newsprint on that day, not only in the New York Times but also in the rest of the U.S. press. Perhaps this editorial judgment was due to Baldwin’s own admission that information on the Tirpitz was two weeks old, enough time, perhaps, for it to dash to the Pacific. Yet even this would have been a closer call than just a twoweek semi-circumnavigation of the globe, since there was another constraint that might have impeded such a voyage. As the New York Times had headlined on November 7, “British hear of damage to Nazi battleship Tirpitz” from a Russian raid on Danzig, according to a report out of Stockholm.3 By the December 3 press conference of Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, the Tirpitz situation might now have been considered more ambiguous. Secretary Knox had responded to a question by stating that “there were no official advices about a German raider supposed to be operating in the Indian Ocean or the reported presence of the German battleship Tirpitz in Asiatic waters.” Such an ambiguous answer might have been interpreted in different ways, but Secretary Knox was obviously not denying the story. The “German raider” to which Secretary Knox referred was the Steiermark, an armed merchant ship whose attacks in the Pacific were being reported by the press. Secretary Knox’s lumping of the Steiermark with the battleship Tirpitz could not help but leave the inference that the credibility of reports about the former attached also to the latter.4 Secretary Knox’s answer apparently raised no alarm, and hence no questions about how the U.S. Navy, which had been closely cooperating with the Royal Navy for some time, could be unaware of a possible breakout of the giant Tirpitz. Secretary Knox was not saying where the Tirpitz was, despite the long-standing press and public interest in the whereabouts of the German fleet. Many press reports had kept readers well informed that it was the regu-

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lar duty of the Royal Navy, its Fleet Air Arm, and the Royal Air Force (RAF) to watch the German fleet for a possible breakout into the Atlantic. It was only after Pearl Harbor and the December 11 Tirpitz story that Secretary Knox’s ambiguity and indeed the whole continuing story of the reconnaissance of the German fleet took on a heightened urgency for the United States. This prompted the Associated Press (AP) and the New York WorldTelegram on December 12 to report again on the duty of the RAF to monitor and bomb the German fleet in its European lairs. It also reported that “the battleships Scharnhorst and Gneisenau are believed still immobilized at the French port of Brest.” Yet it was the Gneisenau that four days earlier had been reported by the Chicago Tribune as being with the Tirpitz in the Pacific. Such inconsistencies between reports out of the Pacific and those out of Europe were not even mentioned, much less examined in the crisis atmosphere in which the United States feared it was under attack by Germany. The tone of the U.S. press during Pearl Harbor week and month was reflected in an editorial titled “Rumor hysteria.” Although that piece referred to a myriad of other perceived threats, it described accurately the general tone of the times.5 After Pearl Harbor, many Americans feared that it may have been possible for the Tirpitz and other German ships to have given British reconnaissance the slip. This possibility and its implications as reported in the Reston piece were, during Pearl Harbor week, yet another major factor inciting Americans to war against Germany. The stories about the Tirpitz and other German ships combined with the other reports of German aggression in the Pacific to create a political critical mass that persuaded many Americans that it was better to be safe than sorry. The combined effect of these stories overwhelmed the details that might have undermined them, if the details had been examined. In the specific case of a Tirpitz-led fleet, for example, there seems to have been no discussion in the U.S. press that the most likely chance the Germans would have had for such an undetected breakout would have been with the aid of heavy cloud cover. Even so, Americans were not informed of the Allied countermeasures that could detect such a breakout, measures that were, of course, military secrets. Americans were simply informed by the AP on December 13 that “Britain has redoubled her watch on the German fleet to keep Hitler from taking advantage of U.S.-British preoccupation in the Pacific to loose raiding warships in the Atlantic.” Hence the RAF continued looking for the German fleet and the Tirpitz in order to bomb them, at German ports and naval bases like Wilhelmshaven and Emden.6 Americans were dependent on the British in determining the truth of the situation involving the Tirpitz and the German fleet, as well as for the Malaya reports. Yet the credibility of this source, including any possible ulterior motives, never seems to have been questioned in the U.S. press after the shock of Pearl Harbor. Most Americans simply feared and apparently believed the

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worst, for quite some time. This specific fear was also expressed on December 13 in the Salt Lake Tribune, which reported that “Britain keeps sharp watch on Nazi Navy. Anticipates attempt to send raider into North Atlantic,” and that “if the 35,000 ton German battleship Tirpitz slipped out,” the Royal Navy would have to hunt it down like the Bismarck. But no one, even in the formerly isolationist press, now emphasized that the earlier breakout by the Bismarck had been no secret. The Bismarck’s breakout had been immediately detected by the Royal Navy, which gave chase and sank it soon after.7 Perhaps it was the recovered memory, in due course, of that well-publicized breakout that caused the fears regarding the Tirpitz to have been largely confined to Pearl Harbor week. There seems to have been no further mention of the Tirpitz in the U.S. press until well after the new escalation, in mid-January 1942, of the long-dormant Battle of the Atlantic. At that time, revived U.S. fears about the German threat in the Atlantic were reflected on January 31, 1942, in the Indianapolis News, which said that “there has always been the fear that the battleship Von Tirpitz might get loose in the Atlantic.” In February 1942 the big event, the news of which was instantly flashed around the world, was the actual German naval breakout of the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and Prince Eugen from Brest to Germany, the famous “Channel Dash.” Its consequence, according to Time magazine, was that now Germany could assemble and concentrate a large fleet including the Tirpitz, Admiral Scheer, and Lutzow, and the two aircraft carriers, Graf Zeppelin and Deutschland, for a breakout into the Atlantic.8 The post–Pearl Harbor Tirpitz-led fleet episode illustrated the triumph in the United States of the war scare over not only skepticism, but also fact. First, the two German carriers were still under construction in German shipyards. Second, the two real German naval breakouts had both been detected by the Royal Navy and the world the instant they occurred. But the majority of Americans in February 1942 would not use this information to overturn their beliefs about German involvement in the Pacific war, beliefs that had been born during Pearl Harbor week, due to the legacy of other news reports from that crucial time. U.S. fears of German naval aggression in the Pacific during Pearl Harbor week had left a deep impact in their wake because they had been based on more than the Tirpitz alone. Although it projected the most sensational profile in the U.S. press, the Tirpitz was actually only one of several German warships reported to be fighting in the Pacific during Pearl Harbor week. German naval involvement in the Pacific was perceived as possible, even without the giant Tirpitz. As the Detroit Free Press reported on December 12: Naturally there is a strong possibility that German warships and planes, manned by Germans and flown by Germans, are participating in the Pacific campaign. In fact, the powerful Nazi battleship Tirpitz already is reported to

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have participated in the engagement that cost the British the Prince of Wales and the Repulse.

This story reported on the possibility of German warships (plural), in addition to the prominent Tirpitz. One of the possible candidates composing a German navy in the Pacific was the Gneisenau, which reports had put with the Tirpitz in the Pacific on December 8.9 During Pearl Harbor week, on December 11, the Des Moines (Iowa) Tribune feared not only that contingent, but also that the entire German navy might slip out to Asia, including submarines and the tankers to refuel them. U.S. fears of a German sneak attack in the Pacific were expressed on December 10 by columnist Frank Kent in the Cincinnati Enquirer, who wrote, “Hardly anyone doubts that in the end the hand of Germany will be openly raised against us in the Pacific.” Kent’s implication was that the German navy could already be secretly, though not “openly,” attacking the United States in the Pacific. On December 14, the New York Times sought to lend credence to the theory that German naval airpower was indeed now covertly operating in the Pacific: Reports from Hawaii that four-engine Japanese planes took part in the assault on Pearl Harbor have not been confirmed. If such craft were used, the assumption is they flew from land bases. Four-engine bombers are not launched from airplane carriers. Germany, however, has two catapult ships that launch four-engine planes, and there is a possibility that they may be in the Pacific. Back in 1938 these two German surface vessels, the Schwabenland and the Frieseland, catapulted three four-engine seventeen ton planes from their decks many times for survey flights between Europe and America.

By December 16, Edwin Gableman, writing in the Cincinnati Enquirer, offered his explanation of some of the issues raised in the New York Times. It was, in his opinion, virtually a certainty the four-motored bombers that appeared over Hawaii were German planes, and perhaps that they were actually flown by German crews. They were too big to take off from an aircraft carrier, and perhaps came from the Marshall Islands, mandated to Japan. The whole nature of the attack showed the Nazi technique. It is unlike any use of airplanes the Japanese have made against China. It showed that in the Pacific the United States is fighting German brains.10

In a war-scare environment such theoretical deductions went a long way in inflaming Americans against the Germans. Another such theoretical claim would have also heightened the fear of German aggression in the Pacific. On December 9, William Hessler, writing in the Cincinnati Enquirer, warned that “if Japan has any accretion of big ship strength from Germany as rumor holds,

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we are already outnumbered in capital ships in the Pacific. . . . The possibility exists.” It was a worrisome comparison, total Axis to U.S. Navy strength, but it said nothing of total Axis to Allied naval strength. This latter comparison, also made by interventionists both before and after Pearl Harbor, was always said to favor the Allies. This kind of oscillating opinion, however, was not uncommon in the war-scare atmosphere.11 It may not have been possible for post–Pearl Harbor paranoia regarding a German naval threat in the Pacific to have reached the proportions it did had Americans not been somewhat predisposed to it before Pearl Harbor: the inflated fear was built upon the grain of fact. Before Pearl Harbor, Americans had been kept informed of sporadic cases of an actual German “naval” presence and warfare in the Pacific. These were German cargo ships that had been armed for the purpose of running the Royal Navy blockade, but because they were armed and sometimes fired their guns, they were classified as “raiders” by the interventionist-minded. The month of November 1941 contained a representative sample of these stories, and because they preceded Pearl Harbor so closely, they probably had the most direct influence on American memories in the post–Pearl Harbor period.12 One such story was the case of the Odenwald, an armed German blockade runner that the U.S. Navy captured in the South Atlantic in early November, under the assertion of legal grounds that later proved to be somewhat questionable. The news of the Odenwald’s capture broke on November 17. It was yet another example of an armed merchant “raider” carrying cargoes, like rubber, from Japan to Germany. The next day, the newspapers broke another story of an “Axis” raider that had attacked a Yugoslav merchant ship off Ecuador, in the Pacific. The U.S. Navy then began hunting this raider somewhere near the Panama Canal Zone.13 The heightened concern of interventionists for German merchant raiders in the Pacific was reflected in the pre–Pearl Harbor political debate. On November 18 the leader of the congressional isolationist bloc, Senator Burton Wheeler (D.–Mont.), charged that “American naval vessels are joining with British ships in ‘aggressive actions’ in the Atlantic and Pacific.” The New York Times headlined that “Wheeler enters new charge of aggression” against the U.S. Navy. His latest evidence was a letter from a U.S. Navy sailor stating that warships of the U.S. Navy “look for German raiders operating in the South Pacific,” off Southeast Asia, Singapore, and from “Bombay to Byrdstown.” Interventionist senator Tom Connally (D–Tex.) defended these U.S. Navy hunts as being quite legal.14 The last of these incidents in the pre–Pearl Harbor period was the story of the Steiermark. On December 3 the New York Times reported in a page-six story that the Australian cruiser Sydney had done battle with a German raider near Sumatra. The Times reminded readers that this naval battlefield stretched from the Mediterranean, through Suez, to the Indian Ocean—the British imperial supply line. It also reminded readers of the many other sea battles

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that had taken place between Britain and Germany in both the Indian and Atlantic Oceans. The Times continued to follow this latest incident, reporting on December 4 that this battle, 300 miles west of Australia, took place between the HMAS Sydney and the Steiermark, a German raider that was disguised as a merchant ship and posing under the alias Kormoran.15 The post–Pearl Harbor rumors would spring from a fertile pre–Pearl Harbor seedbed planted in the last report on this story before the deluge.16 The December 7 morning edition of the New York Times, published before the 1 P.M. EST attack on Pearl Harbor, updated the latest news on the Steiermark affair. The latest rumor was that this disguised and armed German merchant raider had been aided by a German pocket battleship in the fight against the Sydney. After December 7 this story took on a greatly heightened significance for U.S. foreign policy. By December 11 the New York Times was reporting, under the alarming headline “Tirpitz in Malaya?” that although it was originally thought that the Steiermark sank the Sydney, Britain now “suspected” that the culprit actually was the powerful Tirpitz.17 Other newspapers replicated the suspicions of the New York Times, such as the Omaha Morning World-Herald in its December 11 story, titled “Hunt Tirpitz in Sea Battle. Rumor says Nazi ship aiding Japanese.” This unconfirmed story also included another report, also unconfirmed, [which] indicated at least one new German aircraft carrier cooperated with the Japanese in the attack on the main United States Pacific base in Pearl Harbor last Sunday. British officials have suspected the Tirpitz was loose ever since the sinking of the Australian cruiser Sydney, 300 miles west of Carnarvon, western Australia last month.

The World-Herald repeated the claim of the New York Times that this story had come from “a responsible source.”18 Because such reports could never be confirmed, the U.S. press was later forced to downgrade their status from probable to only possible.19 But some U.S. observers of the German-Japanese alliance, like the Des Moines (Iowa) Register, could separate the “possibility” of German military operations in the Pacific, from the “fact” of German technical aid to Japan, and still find Germany guilty of aggression against the United States on the latter count alone. Most Americans could not bring themselves to so clearly divide the two issues. The overwhelming sentiment among U.S. newspapers was that even if German military units had not indeed already assisted Japanese operations in the Pacific, they definitely soon would. This was seen as a certainty due to the perceived nature of the German-Japanese relationship as a German patron militarily protecting a Japanese client/puppet. Because the United States had either already been fighting German military units in the Pacific during Pearl Harbor week or soon would be, most Americans believed that the United

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States was now unavoidably fated to an all-out fight with Germany. This U.S. belief after Pearl Harbor was based on the relatively ingrained U.S. perception of the German-Japanese relationship. This U.S. perception expressed itself not only after Pearl Harbor, but before as well. By late November 1941, when U.S.-Japanese negotiations began to break down, interventionist press opinion, led as always by the New York Times, quoted sources who said that “Herr Hitler had given the Japanese Government assurances that, by February 1942, he would be in a position to give Japan full military aid in event of war with the United States.” This November 29 report was followed up on December 1 with the story that “some reports indicated that Germany had persuaded her Axis ally in the Far East that she could provide full-scale aid by next February, especially fighting planes and pilots, in the event of war between Japan and the United States.” By the next day, this solid prediction had mutated into the assurance that if the United States and Japan went to war, Germany would now “wait at least until spring” to aid Japan.20 The reports of Hitler’s promises in the pre–Pearl Harbor period were not forgotten afterward. Even the longtime isolationist Chicago Tribune worried on December 8 that “Japan has been promised German naval aid” in the Pacific in the event of a U.S.-Japanese war. By December 9 the AP wire was abuzz with the statement of Senator Guy Gillette (D–Iowa), encapsulated in the headline “Report Hitler pledged French fleet aid to Japs [sic]. Nazis promised active military help by February.” The senator had announced that Hitler would seize the French fleet by January, and send it to the aid of the Japanese by February, and added that he had known this since October, in addition to the fact that Japan would attack the United States in either December or February.21 By December 19, when the United States was still waiting for confirmation of German naval or air attacks in the Pacific, the Atlanta Journal still could not exclude the possibility that they either had happened or were about to happen. The Journal’s editors asked pointedly, “Where is Hitler’s air force?” Since it was now gone from Russia, maybe it had been sent to attack the Middle East, or to France to attack Spain, North Africa, the Atlantic, or Britain, “or, possibly, for direct aid to his yellow bandit ally in the Far East?”22 Yet, of those who asserted that if Germany had not already attacked the United States in the Pacific, then it soon would, none stopped to ponder a fundamental problem. If Germany had not indeed already attacked, then the United States had no casus belli against Germany on this count. The transition from the perception that Germany had already attacked in the Pacific to the prediction that it was about to do so was yet another manifestation in this period of the confusion of issues after Pearl Harbor week. The forecasters may have now been in the ascendant, but they were still traumatized in the wake of Pearl Harbor and by all the war hysteria, rumor-mongering, and wild speculation that it fomented.

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There was very little room during this period for the sort of calculation that New York Times military affairs columnist Hanson Baldwin had made before the attack. On the morning of December 7 he concluded that “at this juncture Japan cannot count on much help—directly or indirectly—from Germany . . . unless Germany won” its war. Curiously, after Pearl Harbor, Baldwin did not offer this calculation to his readership again. The reason for his and others’ reticence may have been explained by historian Martin Melosi, who studied the U.S. reaction of “shock” and “panic” to the attack on Pearl Harbor and concluded that Americans were inclined to believe the reports of Luftwaffe attacks on Pearl Harbor because “chauvinistic Americans found it inconceivable that diminutive Japan could emasculate the United States’ prized fortress of the Pacific with the intervention of factors other than meticulous strategy and effective tactics.” Melosi cites a number of public opinion polls to support his conclusion.23 There does not seem to be any post–World War II historian who believes that the Luftwaffe attacked Pearl Harbor. Very few even write of this December 1941 episode, except for those specialists on Pearl Harbor and the Pacific war, such as Gordon Prange and Thurston Clarke, who address the German bogey as a curious sidelight. There do not seem to be any historians who have even addressed the rumors of German naval attacks in the Pacific. To do so might give rise to disturbing questions about the difference between what the U.S. public was led to believe and what the U.S. government knew, for example, about the Tirpitz. The question of the Tirpitz’s whereabouts in December 1941 has actually been written about by historians, but only in relation to the Atlantic war, not in relation to the Pacific war. For example, the official historian of the Royal Navy, S. W. Roskill, states that British aircraft regularly flew reconnaissance and bombing missions over the European coastline in 1941 looking for German warships like the Tirpitz. Naval historians agree that December 1941 was no different, since both Britain and the United States continually feared the attempted breakout of the Tirpitz, or of the Admiral Scheer, or of the entire German surface fleet into the Atlantic. Is it possible that the Tirpitz could have slipped past British reconnaissance sometime before Pearl Harbor, and then slipped back sometime afterward? Could the Tirpitz have accomplished something even more difficult than what was done by its sister ship, the Bismarck, or what was done during the later Channel Dash? Both were instances of German warships temporarily breaching the Royal Navy and RAF blockade of the European coastline.24 Even though the Bismarck had soon been detected in the Atlantic and destroyed, some Americans feared the Tirpitz might be able to match and even surpass the achievement of the Bismarck. This was the perception even before Pearl Harbor. Historian Stanley Weintraub notes, for example, that the December 6 issue of Cavalcade, an English “leftist weekly,” asserted that the

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Tirpitz and the German fleet were already sailing to the Pacific. But the actual and secret fact, writes Weintraub, was that British Intelligence knew at this time that the Tirpitz was really “holed up in Norway.” The British knew this because Bletchley Park was reading the German “Enigma” reports and forwarding the information to the Royal Navy and the RAF, which were constantly trying to sink the Tirpitz. It may be that the Tirpitz was continually being moved to avoid those attacks. By the time of Pearl Harbor, it seems to have been moved from Norway to Kiel, which is where historian Michael Gannon puts it on December 6. Gannon adds that the German surface fleet was always restricted to European waters by both the British blockade and Hitler’s orders.25 This is where the Tirpitz and the German fleet were during Pearl Harbor week, but did the British really know that then? Weintraub suggests that they did, because of Bletchley’s “Ultra.” This conclusion seems to be confirmed by Winston Churchill, who in his memoirs writes that when he departed by sea for the United States on December 12, “the King George V was watching the Tirpitz” so that Churchill’s ship could travel in safety. It also appears that this information had been shared with the U.S. government by December 5 at the latest, when, as S. E. Morison, the official historian of the U.S. Navy, writes, Admiral Ernest King echoed the Royal Navy’s fear that the Tirpitz might yet break out into the Atlantic via the Denmark Strait.26 The U.S. government did not share any part of this information or its implications with the American people. While the press had been speculating furiously about attacks by the Tirpitz in the Pacific, the U.S. government did not come forward to share the latest information or conclusions, which Admiral King had received by December 5 at the latest. Such official secrecy also seems to have been practiced by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, who, when questioned at a December 3 press conference, responded ambiguously “to the effect that there had been no official advices about a German raider supposed to be operating in the Indian Ocean or the reported presence of the German battleship Tirpitz in Asiatic waters.” That Secretary Knox did not elaborate on this statement after Pearl Harbor and the Tirpitz scare may be partially traced to an assumption among the press corps that the whereabouts of the Tirpitz simply could not be confirmed at the time.27 The same kind of uncertainty also pervaded the even more significant rumor that the Luftwaffe had bombed Pearl Harbor. Nevertheless, the press could not restrain itself from asking Secretary Knox about that rumor at his December 15 press conference. In response to this question, he replied that “there was no real evidence that they [the Japanese] did ‘suicide bombing,’ that German pilots were among them or that they possessed, as rumor had said, a ‘super explosive.’” Gordon Prange’s newspaper survey quoted Secretary Knox as replying that “so far as known, ‘none was flown by Germans,’” referring to the aircraft that had attacked Pearl Harbor.28

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This is all the U.S. government said on the question. Yet this statement was not the absolutely conclusive assertion that could finally put to rest the profusion of reports indicting the Germans during Pearl Harbor week. Secretary Knox’s use of the phrase “no real evidence” actually implied to many that direct proof may have been lacking, if only for the present. This phrase did not address or reject indirect proof, such as the eyewitness accounts, upon which the unconfirmed but accusatory reports were built during Pearl Harbor week. Direct proof, or “real evidence,” seemed to have been considered an unrealistic luxury because it could only have come in the form of Luftwaffe aircraft or airmen shot down at Pearl Harbor or in the Pacific. Secretary Knox’s remarks therefore appear to display not only a subtle ambiguity, but also a real reticence to reject outright the rumors of Luftwaffe attacks on Pearl Harbor. Such an interpretation is bolstered by the manner in which the issue actually arose at his press conference. His comment that there was “no real evidence” of the Luftwaffe at Pearl Harbor came only in response to a question. He had had nothing to say on this subject in his prepared remarks, despite the prominence of the public speculation. The case for interpreting ambiguity in Knox’s remarks seems to be further bolstered by the subsequent editorial commentary on his press conference. This commentary on the issue at hand was essentially an interpretive duel between the interventionist majority and a few who still harbored some isolationist sentiment. Interventionist Edwin Gableman, writing in the Cincinnati Enquirer, said that “there was no evidence, according to Knox, that German fliers had assisted in the attack. . . . Obviously, the country should wait for official statements and confirmation of the results of naval and military actions.” Gableman represented those who were content to await the future detection of the “real evidence.” Such an attitude may also have reflected a Midwest that had been isolationist, but that had recently been swayed toward intervention and was now willing to address the issue fully, even if under the inclination to interpret Secretary Knox’s remarks as merely preliminary findings. Such judiciousness, however, seemed not to be necessary for many in the longtime interventionist South. The Atlanta Journal’s report on Secretary Knox’s press conference did not even mention his remarks about the issue of the German military at Pearl Harbor. The Journal apparently did not think it helpful to inform its readers that the secretary had announced that there was “no real evidence” of a direct German crime at Pearl Harbor. Yet the Journal had thought it helpful to report speculation alleging German military operations in the Pacific.29 These were the two ways by which the moderate and the extreme interventionists filtered Secretary Knox’s remarks. A third method of interpretation was practiced by the former extreme isolationists, who apparently resuscitated some of that sentiment after the tumult of Pearl Harbor week. The New York Daily News version of the secretary’s remarks stated that “no German planes or airmen took part in the attack Knox declared.” The Daily News then

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asserted that Knox had said that “the attack was 100% Japanese—there were no German planes or German airmen.” The Daily News edited Secretary Knox’s comments so that his use of the phrase “no evidence” related only to the subject of whether there had been Japanese suicide planes diving on U.S. ships at Pearl Harbor.30 This formerly extreme isolationist newspaper obviously twisted Secretary Knox’s words from their original qualified, if not ambiguous, composition into an absolutely conclusive absolution of Luftwaffe operational guilt at Pearl Harbor. The Daily News’s exercise in editing Secretary Knox’s remarks, however, seems to be no more blatantly polemical than was the Atlanta Journal’s. In the case of the Daily News, its apparent intent was to absolve the Germans of operational guilt at Pearl Harbor, while the Atlanta Journal’s intent was to increase it. The ultimate motive of the Daily News was to lessen U.S. belligerency toward Germany, while the Atlanta Journal’s motive was to increase it. The majority mood of the United States seemed to hold the middle ground and incline more toward the interpretation put forth by the Cincinnati Enquirer, that it was better to wait patiently for the “real evidence” to be discovered as the war in the Pacific progressed. This seemed to be the majority or national mood throughout Pearl Harbor month, since fewer of the wild speculations and accusations of Pearl Harbor week continued to appear in the press thereafter. The interpretation spun out by formerly extreme isolationist newspapers, like the New York Daily News, which had asserted Luftwaffe innocence at Pearl Harbor, also lapsed into a relative silence on this issue for the rest of Pearl Harbor month, supporting the national mood for patience. That “no real evidence” came to be discovered in this period could not help but bolster the contention of the former isolationists. There was little or no discussion in the press of this issue until the end of Pearl Harbor month, when the formerly isolationist Saturday Evening Post, in its January 24, 1942, issue, felt confident enough to attack not only the theory of Luftwaffe guilt at Pearl Harbor, but also the entire Axis monolith theory that the United States had been operating under during Pearl Harbor month. Regarding the specific component of Luftwaffe attacks against Pearl Harbor, the Post exclaimed: When the Japanese struck, we Americans had been so thoroughly oversold on the conception of an unbreakable Axis that we saw Germans behind every lamppost in the Pacific. We heard first that German aviators had been active at Pearl Harbor, and believed that report until our own Secretary of the Navy assured us that it wasn’t true. Then we heard that it was Germans who had sunk two British battleships off Malaya, and credited that report until an American eyewitness told us it was false. It required some time for us to be convinced that the war in the Pacific was predominantly a Japanese show.31

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As a formerly isolationist organ, the Post exaggerated the latest mood swing of the U.S. public. The Post was correct that the mood was becoming more skeptical of German operational guilt in the Pacific, but it was an overstatement to say that it had completely or significantly swung that way by late January 1942. Even though public opinion was becoming more skeptical, and would continue to shift in that direction throughout 1942, all the components of the theory of German operational guilt in the Pacific persisted to some significant degree throughout, and even beyond, World War II. The rising skeptical opinion, which had begun to grow after Pearl Harbor week and month, came to resemble the small and lonely isolationist voice that had existed even after December 7. One of the few examples of this view during Pearl Harbor week was the strikingly lonely editorial by nationally syndicated columnist and isolationist Paul Mallon that appeared on December 10. Mallon suggested that “the theory that they [the Japanese] might have been inspired by a desire to help Hitler is not forceful. Hitler is too far away to do the Japs either harm or good.”32 The fact that during December 1941, Germany was in no position to render much material or military aid to Japan was even recognized by some who had, nonetheless, become interventionists after December 7. On December 12 the Sioux Falls (South Dakota) Daily Argus-Leader admitted that “the German military is being taxed to the limit” in Russia, Libya, and the Atlantic. It also conceded that there was presently “no evidence of German airmen” in Malaya. Yet it editorialized that this may not have precluded Germany from pre-positioning some matériel in Japan, which, in addition to providing other forms of aid, was enough to find Germany guilty of aggression against the United States.33 Such semiskeptical murmurs from former isolationists were few and far between during Pearl Harbor week and month. The formerly isolationist Chicago Tribune and Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald might slip in an item on January 1, 1942, stating that “no German pilots have been shot down in the Japanese air service,” but this did not mean that they had absolved Germany on other counts of criminal complicity with Japan. As Pearl Harbor month drew to a close, both former isolationists and even longtime interventionists began to ask questions about the true nature of the German-Japanese military collaboration. An example of the former isolationists’ reconsideration was the January 24 Saturday Evening Post article.34 The reconsideration at the close of Pearl Harbor month ultimately questioned the validity of the entire U.S. assumption of an Axis monolith or alliance. But the questioning of this larger concept had grown out of the rising uncertainty regarding the smaller question—whether German military units really had been fighting alongside the Japanese in the Pacific. This conceptual progression during January 1942 even made its way onto the editorial

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page of the perennial interventionist standard-bearer, the New York Times. On January 10, one of its premier opinion makers, Anne O’Hare McCormick, for the first time acknowledged that as of yet, “there is no evidence that the Japanese are being aided by Germany. There is some ground for suspecting that the military clique in Tokyo, faithful imitators though they are of the Nazi technique, made the attack entirely on their own.”35 McCormick was referring to operational military aid as well as technical and economic aid, all of which were, and had been, inextricably linked in the American mind. The historic import of this editorial was that such a statement could have been made at all on the editorial page of the most prestigious interventionist newspaper, the New York Times. Although it took until January 10, 1942, to do so, it must be remembered that the entire McCormick editorial was only asking a question, not making a definitive claim; this editorial presented both sides of the argument, those who maintained that Germany was not aiding Japan, and those who still insisted that it was. It was historic, nonetheless, that the New York Times would even present both sides as equal contenders for the truth, because previously the Times had been certain that Japan was a material and military puppet of Germany. Now the Times was not so certain, as was exemplified by the tone of McCormick’s editorial—confusion over the truth. It should not be surprising that such confusion was rising at the end of Pearl Harbor month, given that the month had begun in a state of hyper-emotionalism. This was recognized at the time, although not in regard to the belief in German guilt for Pearl Harbor. Typical was the December 10 editorial of the Scripps-Howard newspaper chain warning that Americans were “head hunting for a scapegoat in the Pacific catastrophe,” meaning Fifth Columnists, derelict officials, and others. It also warned of “Nervous-Nellies . . . on a rumor jag . . . the hysterical” who were spreading “their heebie-jeebies.” On December 17 the Des Moines Tribune also editorialized against “rumor hysteria” over various kinds of supposed enemy advances.36 The most frightening and pervasive of these rumors was the imminent expectation of German air raids on the United States. Such fears and rumors, disseminated by the press, were validated by the contemporaneous statements of both members of Congress and the president. President Roosevelt had warned, for example, of German air raids on the United States in his speeches both before and after Pearl Harbor, and his post–Pearl Harbor speeches validated the other rumors of German guilt as well.37 It was not in the interest of the Roosevelt administration to dampen any of the alarming speculations that increased U.S. belligerency against Germany. Newsweek had reported on this political inclination of the Roosevelt administration before Pearl Harbor, when the president delivered his October 27, 1941, “Navy Day” speech. Newsweek columnist Ernest Lindley, who was a supporter of the administra-

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tion’s foreign policy, nevertheless concluded that Roosevelt’s tendency to “overstate” the German threat to the United States amounted to “scare mongering.” Lindley also reported on the response to this charge by the president’s political advisers, which was a frank admission explaining that “emotions” were more important than “logical argument alone.”38 After Pearl Harbor, and as 1942 progressed, many of the hysterical rumors of war involving Germany gradually subsided to some degree. Even though they eventually faded, the fact remains that they defined the week and the month in which the United States exploded into full belligerency against Germany.39 In addition to the belief in direct German military involvement in the Pacific war, there were other U.S. indictments of Germany that sustained the U.S. momentum toward total war, indictments that had also arisen during the initial explosion of Pearl Harbor week.

Notes 1. New York Times, December 11, 1941, pp. 1, 10; Chicago Tribune, December 8, 1941, p. 3; Milwaukee Post, December 10, 1941, p. 1; Omaha Morning World-Herald, December 11, 1941, p. 10; Detroit Free Press, December 11, 1941, p. 1; New York Daily News, December 11, 1941, p. 4; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 11, 1941, p. A5; Des Moines (Iowa) Tribune, December 11, 1941, p. 18. 2. Chicago Tribune, December 8, 1941, p. 3; New York Times, December 11, 1941, p. 6. 3. New York Times, November 7, 1941, p. 2. 4. New York Times, December 4, 1941, pp. 1, 3. 5. New York World-Telegram, December 12, 1941, p. 35; Denver Post, December 12, 1941, p. 1; Chicago Tribune, December 8, 1941, p. 3; Des Moines (Iowa) Tribune, December 17, 1941, p. 10. 6. Fuehrer Conferences on Naval Affairs, 1939–1945 (London: Greenhill Books, 1990), pp. 237–238; New York Daily News, December 13, 1941, p. 15; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 13, 1941, p. 3. 7. Salt Lake Tribune, December 13, 1941, p. 4. 8. Indianapolis News, January 31, 1942, p. 7; Time, February 23, 1942, p. 27. 9. Detroit Free Press, December 12, 1941, p. 22; Chicago Tribune, December 8, 1941, p. 3. 10. Des Moines (Iowa) Tribune, December 11, 1941, p. 18; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 10, 1941, p. 4; New York Times, December 14, 1941, p. 10E; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 16, 1941, p. 4. 11. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 9, 1941, p. 4. 12. Newsweek, September 29, 1941, p. 10; November 3, 1941, p. 24; Fuehrer Conferences on Naval Affairs, 1939–1945 (London: Greenhill Books, 1990), pp. 238–239; Karl Doenitz, Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1959), p. 493. 13. Newsweek, December 1, 1941, p. 13; New York Times, November 17, 1941, p. 1; November 18, 1941, p. 1. 14. New York Times, November 18, 1941, pp. 2, 3.

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15. New York Times, December 3, 1941, p. 6; December 4, 1941, p. 13; December 6, 1941, p. 4; December 7, 1941, p. E1. 16. Toledo Blade, December 9, 1941, p. 1; Omaha Morning World-Herald, December 10, 1941, p. 14; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 10, 1941, p. 1; Atlanta Journal, December 9, 1941, p. 1; Time, February 23, 1942, p. 27. 17. New York Times, December 7, 1941, p. 2E; December 11, 1941, p. 10. 18. Omaha Morning World-Herald, December 11, 1941, p. 10. 19. Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 14, 1941, p. 20A; New York Times, December 14, 1941, p. 8E; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 12, 1941, p. 12. 20. New York Times, November 29, 1941, p. 3; December 1, 1941, p. 1; December 2, 1941, p. 5. 21. Chicago Tribune, December 8, 1941, p. 3; Atlanta Journal, December 9, 1941, p. 9; New York World-Telegram, December 9, 1941, p. 8. 22. Atlanta Journal, December 19, 1941, p. 46. 23. New York Times, December 7, 1941, p. 4E; Martin Melosi, The Shadow of Pearl Harbor: Political Controversy over the Surprise Attack, 1941–1946 (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1977), pp. 4, 5. 24. S. W. Roskill, The War at Sea, 1939–1945, vol. 1 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationer’s Office, 1954), p. 494; Clay Blair, Hitler’s U-Boat War (New York: Random House, 1996), pp. 443–445; Michael Gannon, Operation Drumbeat: The Dramatic True Story of Germany’s First U-Boat Attacks Along the American Coast in World War II (New York: Harper and Row, 1990), p. 437. 25. New York Times, December 7, 1941, p. 2E; Stanley Weintraub, Long Day’s Journey into War: December 7, 1941 (New York: Dutton, 1991), p. 57; Michael Gannon, Operation Drumbeat: The Dramatic True Story of Germany’s First U-Boat Attacks Along the American Coast in World War II (New York: Harper and Row, 1990), p. 95. 26. Winston Churchill, The Grand Alliance (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), p. 625; S. E. Morison, The Battle of the Atlantic, vol. 1 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1947), p. 81. 27. New York Times, December 4, 1941, p. 1. 28. New York Times, December 16, 1941, pp. 1, 7; Gordon Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), pp. 588, 785. 29. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 17, 1941, p. 8; Sacramento Union, December 16, 1941, p. 2; Atlanta Journal, December 11, 1941, p. 29; December 16, 1941, p. 7. 30. New York Daily News, December 16, 1941, p. 3. 31. Saturday Evening Post, January 24, 1942, p. 54. 32. Montana Standard, December 10, 1941, p. 4. 33. Sioux Falls (South Dakota) Daily Argus-Leader, December 12, 1941, p. 6; December 13, 1941, p. 1. 34. Chicago Tribune, January 1, 1942, p. 14; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, January 1, 1942, p. 2. 35. New York Times, January 10, 1942, p. 14. 36. New York World-Telegram, December 10, 1941, pp. 27, 28; Des Moines (Iowa) Tribune, December 17, 1941, p. 10. This subject, the variety of fearsome rumors that pervaded the press during Pearl Harbor month, could compose a study all its own. 37. See Chapter 3 for a fuller discussion of President Roosevelt’s speeches. 38. Newsweek, November 10, 1941, p. 21. 39. Although the U.S. casus belli against Germany would begin to fade in 1942, other casus belli would replace it to sustain the momentum of the United States toward

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total war with Germany. One, the German U-boat campaign off U.S. coasts, did not begin until mid-January 1942, which is why this event is not discussed until Chapter 10. But even the U.S. perception in 1942 of that episode was itself not immune from the hyper-emotionalism and apparent irrationality exhibited during Pearl Harbor week and month.

5 War with the Axis: Europe Through the Backdoor

The U.S. explosion into full belligerency against Germany in December 1941 was the result of a U.S. belief that Germany was guilty of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The most important and enduring U.S. wartime charge against Germany was one that accused Germany of being a conspiratorial accessory to the Japanese attacks in the Pacific. Most contemporary Americans believed that Germany was at least equally guilty with Japan of plotting the Japanese military offensive. This indictment of conspiracy seems to have been the most widespread and significant U.S. casus belli against Germany, as it endured throughout the war.1 That the U.S. considered Germany to be at least equally guilty with Japan for the aggression in the Pacific was made quite clear by President Roosevelt in his December 9, 1941, speech, as well as in his followup speeches of December 15 and January 6. His key December 9 speech rang with such memorable phrases as the “actual collaboration” by the global “Axis strategists” who were executing the “joint plan” of a “grand strategy.”2 President Roosevelt’s December 9 speech not only contained memorable phrases, but it also reflected popular phrases and views. Already by December 8, newspapers like the Cleveland Press had foreshadowed Roosevelt’s phrase-making when it condemned “the Axis worldwide strategical plan” of the Germans, Italians, and Japanese. The next morning this theme was repeated in syndicated columnist William Hessler’s assessment of “the Japanese attack as an integrated element of the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo coalition’s world-wide strategic plan.” Nationally syndicated columnist Dorothy Thompson saw it the same way, describing “Axis policy as one policy,” and referring to an Axis “grand strategy.”3 This theme was echoed on the floor of Congress during the December 9 session, prior to President Roosevelt’s speech that evening. Representative Wilburn Cartwright (D–Okla.) announced that the crime at Pearl Harbor had been directed by a “small group of treacherous and cunning rulers in Ger81

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many, Italy and Japan, who together, set the time and plotted the strategy.” Although the United States had been abuzz with this conspiracy theory ever since December 7, Roosevelt’s December 9 speech put the official seal on the popular consciousness. The conspiracy accusation of that speech was endorsed the next day in Congress by Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley (D–Ky.), who quoted it on the floor.4 Nor was it only longtime interventionists like Barkley who believed in the German-Japanese conspiracy. Former isolationist Representative Clare Hoffman (R–Mich.) said on December 11 that “beyond question, Japan’s unprovoked attack is due to the diplomacy of Hitler,” who planned to draw the United States away from aiding Britain. This theme was further advanced by syndicated columnists in the Midwest like Boake Carter, who on December 12 repeated the charge that the attack on Pearl Harbor was “part of an overall world-wide, grand strategy on the part of the Axis alliance.” The next day the Des Moines (Iowa) Tribune still spoke knowingly about the “Axis program, it is part of a worldwide strategic plan, we may be sure of that.”5 By December 12 the Milwaukee Post could assert that “the hand of Hitler was easily discernible in the Japanese assault” on Pearl Harbor. In order to demonstrate the general validity of this conclusion, some editors resorted to the man-in-the-street interview. On December 12, the Des Moines Tribune quoted Mrs. Tyle Huisman as saying, “I think that Germany is behind them [Japan]—perhaps I shouldn’t say so, but I think it.” Ralph Dirks conflated “both Japs [sic] and Nazis, for they are both in it together already. I think Hitler put the Japs up to the attack.”6 Neither the public, nor the press, nor the Congress wavered in their conviction, and indeed this view grew stronger as time passed. On December 15, Representative James Wright (D–Pa.), on the floor of Congress, continued to blame the Pearl Harbor attack on the “Japanese warlords, planning with the perfidious, vulpine dictator of Germany.” On December 17, Representative Winder Harris (D–Va.) explained “the world wide program of the Axis powers” by saying that “Japan would never have launched this attack except in concert with the Axis plans. It would never have struck if it had not been acting as the partner of Adolf Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. It would never have struck unless it believed that it could further the German and Italian war plans.”7 Public opinion grew more certain of this every day as more details about the alleged joint German-Japanese plan were pieced together in the U.S. press. On December 13, Constantine Brown reported in the Washington (D.C.) Evening Star that “war against the United States was decided on early in November. Hitler had pledged himself to aid Japan after February 1, 1942.” By December 24, Ray Tucker could further divulge in the Wyoming Star Tribune that “Adolph Hitler’s active part in timing the Japanese attack on the United States is revealed in detail in memos placed in the hands of Senators

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and passed on to the State Department, the War Department and the White House. . . . On November 16 there was sent to the White House a report of conversations between Berlin and Tokyo,” to the effect that Hitler wanted Japan to strike in February 1942, when “he would be in a stronger position to give all-out aid to the Mikado” after Russia was defeated. But Japan needed to move sooner because of the U.S. embargo, and so Hitler approved it. It was ultimately approved, however, because “Hitler decided he needed a diversion to offset reverses in Russia and North Africa.”8 This Tribune disclosure repeated a connection that had become common soon after Pearl Harbor. On December 13, the Nebraska State Journal also connected the fact that “German troops are retreating on all fronts” to the other “part of the Axis grand strategy revolving around Japan’s attack on the United States.” The popular U.S. belief in the conspiracy between Germany and Japan hardly faded during World War II. It continued to be touted in publications like nationally syndicated columnist Ernest Lindley’s 1942 book How War Came, which claimed that the attack on Pearl Harbor was the result of a “bargain by which Nippon opened a Pacific front on behalf of the Axis.”9 Americans had been convinced ever since December 8 that Germany and Japan had conspired together in the strategic planning of the Pearl Harbor attack and had sought to substantiate that charge by pointing to the particular circumstances then occurring. On December 8 the Cleveland Press ran the headline “Japs timed blow to coincide with German thrust at Suez.” It also noted that this “Axis worldwide strategical plan” had actually been thwarted by the British, who had attacked first in Libya, thus preempting the planned German offensive there. This specific charge, that the Germans and Japanese had strategically planned to coordinate the timing of their global pincer thrusts in December 1941, was repeated nearly every day in the press after December 7. It was the essence of President Roosevelt’s December 9 and follow-up speeches, and was espoused by interventionists and former isolationists alike.10 The U.S. indictment of joint planning was leveled at Germany and Japan beyond Pearl Harbor month. On January 21, 1942, the New York Times confidently asserted that the Japanese had “struck in concert with Berlin” at Pearl Harbor. The Times updated this charge by linking together new aggressions by the Axis partners. Pointing to the German U-boat offensive off the U.S. coast, which was only one week old, Hanson Baldwin, the cautious military analyst for the Times, argued that the Germans “have struck now to assist Japan.”11 Belief in the joint planning conspiracy was a U.S. consensus throughout World War II. It was a belief that never had to bear the degree of questioning suffered by the other two indictments—of German military operations in the Pacific, and the puppetmaster theory. The indictment of German-Japanese joint planning conspiracy did not suffer its first major blow until 1945. Before that date, it was continually endorsed, for example in John MacCormac’s 1943 book This Time for Keeps, which repeated the U.S. war justification

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against Germany, the U.S. belief that the Axis jointly planned “grand strategy.” Thus Americans had long feared and “known” that “a Japanese invasion of the west coast would be timed to coincide with a German invasion” of the United States from Britain, Iceland, and Greenland, “or from Brazil through the Caribbean.”12 Belief in the guilt of German participation in joint Axis strategic global planning was supported by scrutiny of global Axis tactics. As President Roosevelt explained on December 9, it was the Axis method to attack in one part of the globe, in order to divert the Allies from another part. Roosevelt’s general assessment was a repeat of a specific assessment made earlier that day by nationally syndicated columnist Dorothy Thompson, who explained the tactical details of this Axis “grand strategy” wherein the Japanese “business is to hold us off while Germany mops up Russia and the Middle East,” thus enabling Germany to then conquer Britain and the United States. On December 12 syndicated columnist Edgar Ansel Mowrer explained that the attack on Pearl Harbor was an Axis diversion specifically intended to allow Germany to seize Dakar. This West African port was the long-feared staging area for the invasion of Brazil, and ultimately the United States.13 The U.S. understanding of these tactical details supported the more general strategic theory that the true meaning of the attack on Pearl Harbor was as a mere preliminary feint for the real main thrust, which would come from the Atlantic side and Germany. Moreover, joint German-Japanese planning for the Pacific was seen as intended mostly to benefit German aggression against the continental United States. The theorized tactical support for this general strategic understanding continued to be promoted, as was exemplified by an extraordinarily long letter to the editor in the Atlanta Journal on December 30, 1941. An obvious editorial endorsement, the letter expressed the still imminent fear of German air raids, and its writer justified this fear by testifying, “I believe the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was a plot by Germany and Japan to decoy the British and American battleships and planes to the Philippine Islands and the China Sea.”14 Many Americans believed not only that the attack on Pearl Harbor was manufactured by Germany, but also that it signaled the imminence of an even larger attack by Germany, probably on the continental United States. The nation’s newspapers began to say so immediately after Pearl Harbor was hit. On December 8 a New York Times headline read, “Reports here say Nazis plan vast offensive linked with war in Pacific.” So great was the expectation on December 8 that Germany and Japan were now mounting twin pincer drives on the United States from both the east and west, that even extreme isolationists conceded the possibility for the first time. This was the upshot of a Cincinnati Enquirer criticism of Senator Gerald Nye, who, even though now believing the pincers to be possible, still argued that “the United States should have

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done nothing until Germany was ready to join Japan in a concerted attack upon us from both directions.”15 Few Americans were now as amenable as Nye to hold their fire until after Germany had actually and openly joined Japan in attacking the continental United States. Most Americans wanted no more Pearl Harbors, but they now expected Germany to attempt one. This was the message of a New York World-Telegram story on December 9, which reported that “at 1:34 p.m. a police broadcast said: ‘Enemy aircraft expected over New York in 10 minutes.’ . . . Then came a statement from Secretary of State [Cordell] Hull that the people of the country should be on the alert for an attack by German forces to help the Japanese.”16 On December 13 the Nebraska State Journal elaborated on the old theoretical fear of invasion in light of the new circumstances, speculating that Germany’s “progressive withdrawal from Russia still may free Nazi forces for use elsewhere in conjunction with Japan’s offensive on us.” The Journal pinpointed this “elsewhere” when it asserted that Germany was now poised for a “final all-out attack on England while the United States is occupied in the Orient, for a powerful thrust through west Africa to South America or beyond to American bases in the Caribbean and the Panama Canal, for attacks on America’s east coast itself.” Raymond Moley repeated this scenario in the December 22 issue of Newsweek, warning that “in line with what is obviously a coordinated Axis plan, Germany or Japan or both, simultaneously, can aim smashing blows,” most worryingly “at the Panama Canal and at our own Pacific and Atlantic coasts.” This remained the great U.S. strategic perception and fear. On January 5, 1942, Time magazine outlined again the “Axis double pincers” strategy of Germany and Japan. The Axis pincers would first close off Russia and China, then reverse toward Britain and the United States.17 The attack on Pearl Harbor convinced Americans of the validity of the German-Japanese strategic conspiracy, but they had been prepared even before December 7 for such an eventuality when U.S.-Japanese negotiations began to falter in late 1941. Both the New York Times and Senator George Norris (R–Nebr.) had asserted before Pearl Harbor that the Germans and Japanese would perpetrate, or indeed already were perpetrating, a “squeeze play” on the United States, simultaneous thrusts from the Pacific and Atlantic. On October 30, Representative Harry McGregor (R–Ohio) on the floor of Congress quoted the Washington (D.C.) Daily News, which charged that “Hitler and the Japanese have been plotting—to get us caught in a two-ocean war.”18 Americans increasingly believed this conspiracy to be fact in the days leading up to December 1941, since the conspiracy theory had been promoted for at least a year by the more interventionist minded. Secretary of State Cordell Hull claimed that Germany and Japan had been officially “united” ever since the Axis Tripartite Pact of September 1940. On November 24,

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1941, Hull reasserted that the two Axis allies, Hitler and Tojo, were “planning every imaginable step,” and that they had “jointly executed ‘a policy of world aggression.’” Before Pearl Harbor, isolationists and many moderates had largely refrained from promoting this conspiracy theory, because doing so would have inflamed U.S. belligerency against Germany. After Pearl Harbor the theory exploded into general acceptance, being first pushed by the longtime interventionists and then accepted by the rest.19 These Americans argued that Germany had jointly planned strategy with Japan, a specific German crime of conspiracy against the United States. An early post–Pearl Harbor example of this argument was Dorothy Thompson’s December 9 column. It was also a demonstration that the criminal conspiracy went by many names, one of which was chosen by the longtime extreme interventionist in her assertion that “Japan entered this war in collusion with Germany.” The next day, after President Roosevelt’s radio speech, a new word for the conspiracy or collusion rose to the fore: the “collaboration” of Germany and Japan, which the Cincinnati Enquirer now agreed was “evident.” The Enquirer’s columnist, Frank Kent, also agreed that in the president’s speech, Roosevelt “has made it clear that Germany was—and is—behind Japan in the war thrust upon us.” By December 12 the Omaha Morning World-Herald concurred that Germany and Japan did indeed “scheme together.”20 The accusations of collusion and collaboration were seconded by longtime interventionist Carl Vinson (D–Ga.), chairman of the House of Representatives Naval Affairs Committee, in his December 14 judgment that Germany and Japan were “conspirators.” The next day, Senator Harry Truman (D–Mo.) quoted Senator Scott Lucas (D–Ill.), both former moderates now turned interventionists, in saying that the attack on Pearl Harbor had been perpetrated by “Japan and its sinister co criminal, Hitler,” for which “not only Japan but Hitler and Mussolini must atone.” Hence, after Pearl Harbor longtime interventionists, as well as the former moderates and isolationists, now found themselves in agreement over the nature of Germany’s crime against the United States. Naturally, it was the longtime interventionists who would sustain the loudest and longest drumbeats intoning Germany’s crime against the United States. The Atlanta Journal thus repeated the indictment on January 5, 1942, in commemorating “the ‘day of infamy,’ when Japan, in agreement with Germany, attacked Pearl Harbor.”21 The longtime interventionists were the foremost accusers after Pearl Harbor, as they had been before. On November 16, 1941, the New York Times pointed out to the isolationist skeptics that “Japan and Germany are in cahoots.” After Pearl Harbor, however, there were few isolationist skeptics left, and some then even changed their minds retroactively about what they had rejected before Pearl Harbor. This was exemplified by the Chicago Tribune’s December 16, 1941, report on the just released White Paper of President Roosevelt. The Tribune paraphrased without contradiction Roosevelt’s

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assertion that Japan had “connived” with Hitler in July to put Japanese troops into French Indochina. After Pearl Harbor, Americans believed that they could not justifiably escalate to full belligerency against Germany unless they could inextricably tie Germany to Japan. And if this linkage was to be strengthened into its most credible package, it had to be established not only in the circumstances surrounding Pearl Harbor, but also retroactively with earlier events.22 Another method was employed to solidify the linkage between the two nations over time beyond that of the conspiracy, a meeting of two minds in agreement on a single plan. An even stronger linkage could and needed to be established, since the concepts of conspiracy, collusion, and collaboration still implied two separate entities, no matter how cooperative they might be. Therefore, a new language arose to bridge this gap, to weld the seam between the two so strongly that “they” became an “it,” a single, fused entity. The idea of two separate but united coconspirators was therefore often superceded by the idea of oneness, a monolith. This concept completely tainted Germany with the actions of Japan. It was also the reason that after December 1941, Americans spoke mainly of a war against the “Axis,” not against Germany and Japan.23 The monolith interpretation became increasingly widespread. In a December 24 column, Walter Lippmann again explained that it was Pearl Harbor that had caused the United States to go to war against the “Axis.” In addition to longtime interventionists like Lippmann, former isolationists now echoed the Axis monolith theme. On December 27, the Chicago Tribune depicted the three main Axis partners as a single entity in a cartoon of a threeheaded dog with the heads of Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo, reflecting the imagery of the New York Times that, two weeks earlier, had described the Axis as “the triple-headed enemy.” During December, Americans became quite familiar with the three-in-one imagery and the crime that they/it had committed. On December 20, Representative Frank Buck (D–Calif.) quoted the December 13 Stockton (California) Daily Evening Record, which charged that “the trio of bloody racketeers have struck like thieves in the night” at Pearl Harbor.24 Equally common was a two-in-one imagery that conflated the only criminals that really mattered, Germany and Japan. Perhaps the most expressive and effective means that conveyed this complex concept was the use of symbolic imagery, the political cartoon. A master of this genre was Herblock. Beginning one week after Pearl Harbor, various newspapers around the Midwest and the nation ran his anti-Axis cartoons. The most distinctive feature of many of these cartoons was an image that was but an adjunct to the central message in each cartoon. The cartoons contained an image of Hitler wearing what at first glance looked like his standard Nazi party armband. Upon closer inspection, however, the armband was actually an amalgam of the Nazi and

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Japanese war flag. Instead of the red ball at the center of the spreading Japanese sunrays, Herblock substituted the swastika on the white ball from the Nazi flag. This symbolic synthesis was but an adjunct to each of the cartoons’ central message. Herblock was not overtly trying to sell this German-Japanese synthesis as the central message of each particular cartoon. Rather, in its place as an adjunct, it suggests that the synthesis was already a common assumption. These Herblock cartoons ran for several days beginning one week after Pearl Harbor, at which point Herblock moved on to new material, but the synthetic armband did make at least one encore in a new cartoon on January 9, 1942. Herblock’s synthetic armband was an original, but it may have been inspired by yet another cartoon image that had been nationally published beginning December 8. This cartoon image depicted a Japanese soldier wearing a standard Nazi armband. One variant was an obviously Japanese rattlesnake, with exaggerated “Asian” eyes. The snake was covered in swastikas.25 All these artistic expressions in political cartoons were meant to depict a monolithic Axis reality that was understood, but that could not be photographed or actually seen in real life. Yet a curious thing did happen that seemed to bring these artistic renderings to life, and thus reconfirmed the apparent oneness of Germany and Japan. On January 10, 1942, the New York Times ran the headline “Swastikas seen on Nippon fliers. Airmen wore them on brown shirts in Hawaii attack, woman witness says. Blue overalls worn. Attackers opened them to show red Nazi symbol.” According to the article: Blue-garbed Japanese airmen sporting brown shirts with red swastikas, manned some of the planes that swooped down on Pearl Harbor on December 7, according to an eyewitness who has just returned to New York. The eyewitness [was] Mrs. Roy Shanabarger, the wife of a Navy man. . . . Mrs. Shanabarger revealed that the invading planes flew so low over Honolulu itself that their crews were clearly visible from the ground. “I myself,” she said “saw some airmen who had opened the tops of their over-all one-piece blue suits, in that way exposing the brown shirts underneath. There were swastikas on those shirts.” The over-all uniforms she described as being a greenish blue, a color so distinctive that “civilians were told not to wear any blue clothes.” Mrs. Shanabarger reported that numbers of the Japanese aviators were wearing the insignias of American educational institutions—the McKinley High School and the University of Hawaii.

This deadly serious article also reported that Mrs. Shanabarger had suffered a concussion from a Japanese bomb. Most Americans would hardly have been startled by Mrs. Shanabarger’s testimony, owing to the long-running preparation by the media and government in conflating a German-Japanese synthesis. In fact, the Minneapolis Morning Tribune had coined a name for this

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amalgamation on December 10: they called the German-Japanese aviators “Japanazis.”26 The Tribune was convinced that Germany and Japan had conspired to bomb Pearl Harbor. Beginning December 8, it and other newspapers promoted yet another popular and long-running alternate name for the conspiracy, the “Axis partnership.”27 This was exactly the same explanation given by one congressman after another on the floor of the House of Representatives on December 11. In explaining their just-cast vote for a declaration of war against Germany, they all described Germany as Japan’s “partner,” or as Japan’s “guilty partner” or “Axis partner in crime,” referring, of course, to Pearl Harbor. The congressional mood on December 11 was as it had been on December 8. On both dates the speeches of various senators had equally indicted both Axis “partners.” Congress continued to use this language throughout Pearl Harbor month, as was exemplified on January 8, 1942, by former isolationist Senator Elbert Thomas (D–Utah), who vowed revenge on Japan and its “Axis partners.”28 Longtime interventionists had viewed Germany and Japan as partners even before Pearl Harbor. For example, on November 12, 1941, the New York Times reported that “Senator Lister Hill [D] of Alabama, the Majority Whip, said that ‘if Japan moves, she moves as the partner of Hitler.’” The next day another interventionist, Representative Louis Capozzoli (D–N.Y.), also charged that Japan “has become an Axis partner.” Time magazine concurred at this time that Japan was Germany’s “Axis partner.” On December 1, Anne O’Hare McCormick of the New York Times repeated that Japan “is a partner of Germany,” a fact that was now important because of the faltering U.S.-Japanese negotiations. This situation suggested to her that “everything begins to pop at once because the time has come when all the battles coincide and become a single battle.” She was of the same mind two weeks later when calling the Axis “partners in the plunderbund.”29 By late 1941, the faltering U.S.-Japanese negotiations caused interventionist-minded Americans to single out the Axis partnership for criticism ever more vociferously. These Americans justified their assessment by pointing to the Axis Tripartite Pact, which Japan had joined in September 1940. In November 1941, Time magazine observed the anniversary of this pact by reiterating the charge that Japan was an “Axis partner.” On November 30, as the U.S.-Japanese crisis was climaxing, the New York Times characterized the September 1940 Tripartite Pact by saying, “that seemed to make the empire of the Rising Sun a partner in the Hitler scheme.”30 The United States went to war against Germany after Pearl Harbor because the United States blamed Germany for being the Axis “partner” of Japan, which therefore made Germany equally guilty for the Pacific attacks. This decisive U.S. perception, during Pearl Harbor week and beyond, was the

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result of a yearlong progression. Americans saw the Axis partnership as having been legally codified by the Axis or Tripartite Pact, signed by Germany, Japan, and Italy in September 1940. The Tripartite Pact was the starting point for U.S. fears about Japanese-German cooperation. U.S. fears about this relationship grew more acute as U.S.-Japanese negotiations began to falter in late 1941. This progression was perceived by the New York Times, which stated on November 21 that “the closest liaison now exists between the Japanese Foreign Office and the Germans.” During this critical period the Times would preview that other synonym for the conspiracy, the one that President Roosevelt would nationally popularize on December 9. Throughout mid-November the Times branded the Japanese as “collaborators of Hitlerism.”31 Before Pearl Harbor, a significant proportion of U.S. hostility toward Japan was generated by its diplomatic association with Germany. By contrast, after Pearl Harbor, Americans would repeat, but reverse, the polarity of their associational animus, tarring Germany for Japanese crimes, rather than tarring Japan with German crimes. Speaking on the floor of Congress on December 12, and quoting the December 9 Buffalo Evening News, Representative Alfred Beiter (D–N.Y.) thought the situation was best described as being one in which “Hitler’s ally in the Pacific suddenly bombed a sleeping American city,” Honolulu.32 After Pearl Harbor, not only did the longtime interventionists impute guilt by alliance, but so did the now former isolationists. For example, on December 11, Senator Alexander Wiley (R–Wis.) explained to the chamber that the true meaning of Germany’s declaration of war was as a mere update of an older, but more significant document, the Tripartite Pact. He therefore concluded that, “according to the terms of the Tripartite treaty between Japan, Germany, and Italy, these three brigands are thus affirming their unity in the 4-day old far-eastern war.” Hence it was really the mature and ongoing alliance that had substantially incriminated Germany, not the infant declaration. Americans recognized this perceived reality immediately after Pearl Harbor, and most did not need to wait for a German declaration to remind them of it.33 After Pearl Harbor, most Americans perceived Japan more as “Hitler’s ally” than as a sovereign state. These Americans now elevated the significance of such treaties of alliance over the sovereignty of states in order to justify the newly escalated war against Germany. This was “obvious” to the Cincinnati Enquirer, as it summarized the recent changes on December 12 by saying, “it was clear to most Americans months ago that we were engaged in an undeclared war with Germany, on a limited basis. It was clear to virtually all Americans last Sunday that the treacherous Japanese attack involved us in an allout war with the entire Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis. Thursday morning Germany and Italy confirmed this for us by formal declarations of war.” “Virtu-

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ally all Americans” continued to think this way throughout Pearl Harbor month and beyond. Their newspapers would thus continue to refer to Germany as a “Japanese ally.”34 It was not the solitary and novel German declaration that had substantially provoked the United States, but rather the long-standing and ongoing U.S. perception of a German-Japanese alliance. Newspapers displayed a long chain of evidence to justify this perception, one strand of which was the German declaration of war itself, whose provocative value was greatly increased by its inclusion of a reaffirmed declaration of Axis solidarity with Japan. Americans could also point to any number of such statements by the Germans and Japanese to enable them to lump the two together into a single guilty party. For example, after Pearl Harbor the German government finally yielded by December 9 to a torrent of reporters’ questions on the status of the German-Japanese relationship. Its response, carried by the Associated Press (AP), was, “one authorized spokesman said, ‘suffice it to say that Japan and we are Allies.’” On December 17, U.S. newspapers carried the latest speech by Japanese premier Hideki Tojo, in which he reaffirmed the Axis alliance. On January 16, 1942, Axis spokesmen would again reaffirm their solidarity by coining the slogan “Roberto,” an acronym for the Rome-Berlin-Tokyo Axis.35 The Roosevelt administration could publicly pounce on Hitler’s comments regarding the United States on December 11 as the latest example of this ongoing German guilt by association.36 In addition to Hitler’s declaration of war on the United States, December 11 was the occasion in Berlin for the signing of yet another pact with Japan. The United States would not and could not politically generate or sustain a total war against Germany stemming from a single rhetorical instance. Rather, Germany’s long-term association with Japan was the ongoing provocation against the United States. This process had been chronicled by the New York Times through the latest instance before Pearl Harbor, the notorious resigning by Japan of the Anti-Comintern Pact in Berlin on November 24. This process was chronicled yet again by the Times on January 23, 1942, when it noted that “the military convention signed in Berlin January 18 by Germany, Japan and Italy naturally flows from the formal treaty of alliance put in force on the day Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States, December 11.”37 Americans took note of this process of Axis diplomatic relations. In a column written on December 6 but not published until December 8, Walter Lippmann referred to “Hitler’s Asiatic ally, Japan.” Lippmann laid out the history of this ongoing provocative alliance in a December 15 column in which he stated that the German-Japanese alliance began in 1936 with their Anti-Comintern Pact. He stated further that the 1940 Tripartite Pact reinforced this ongoing alliance.38

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President Roosevelt’s White Paper on Japan was also issued on December 15. The president’s take on the ongoing provocative association was summarized by the New York Times, which reported that the President stated that Japan openly entered a league of Fascism against the free world under the pretext of signing the Anti-Comintern Pact in 1936. He offered evidence to show that Japan, Germany and Italy arranged together to time their blows against free nations in the best manner to effect joint plans for world dominance, and mentioned how the three finally and openly concluded last year “a treaty of alliance aimed at the United States. . . .” Throughout the document, the President showed how . . . the three totalitarian countries “reached an understanding to time their acts of aggression to their common advantage—and to bring about the ultimate enslavement of the rest of the world.” In this connection, he made an open charge, which had been broadly hinted before, that in July 1941, the Japanese and Hitler connived to force the Vichy Government to allow Japanese troops into Indochina.39

Most Americans now saw that “Hitler’s infected and corroding finger,” to paraphrase Winston Churchill, was and had been everywhere. This perception of such a long-standing and widespread conspiracy was held by a majority of Americans after Pearl Harbor, as it had been by interventionists before. The latter, like New York Times columnist Anne O’Hare McCormick on December 6, had drawn yet another inference in the form of a prediction regarding Hitler’s global conspiracy. Referring to the war on the Russian front, she concluded that “Hitler’s eastern campaign reaches a crucial turn. . . . Hitler’s need to create an immediate diversion churns to the boiling point the crisis in the Pacific.” Because of “Hitler’s need,” McCormick then predicted that his Japanese “ally” might now invade Russia. McCormick’s “evidence” supporting this conclusion was the recent movement of Russia’s Siberian army to its German front, which had thus created an exposed and vulnerable invitation to a Japanese invasion.40 The most profound U.S. fears, however, were not of a German-Japanese conspiracy against Russia or Indochina, but against the United States itself. This fear increased as 1941 progressed and U.S.-Japanese negotiations faltered. Many interventionists expressed their fear of the two-sided conspiracy well before the U.S.-Japanese crisis climaxed in late 1941. From mid-1941 on, for example, Time magazine repeatedly forecast that if the United States and Germany went to war, this would automatically result in a Japanese attack upon the United States because, ever since the September 1940 Tripartite Pact, Japan had been Germany’s “ally” and “partner.”41 The U.S. fear of Japanese collusion with Germany became so fervent from mid-1941 on that it composed half of all U.S. problems with Japan. As the U.S. press constantly reminded readers during this period, Secretary of State Hull had essentially made only two demands on Japan—that it withdraw

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from large sections of China and Indochina, and that it withdraw from the Axis. Although these two U.S. demands were usually presented together as coequal twins, sometimes they were presented for individual analysis, such as in a November 16 New York Times headline, “The United States looks with strong disfavor on Japan’s position as a member of the Axis.”42 This preoccupation with international treaties of alliance increasingly caused interventionists to view everything through that preset geopolitical prism. It was then a small step from this mindset to the perception of German guilt by association for the attack on Pearl Harbor. Americans had by then become accustomed to thinking in terms of, and assigning responsibility to, treaties of alliance. The nation’s foremost geopolitical pundit, Walter Lippmann, expressed this prevailing mentality on December 9 when he said, “this is not a separate little war in the Pacific between Japan and the United States. This is a world war. . . . This war must be fought from the very beginning to the end, not as an isolationist’s isolated war with Japan, but as a war of our coalition against the Axis coalition.” Representative Foster Stearns (R–N.H.) read this entire column into the Congressional Record.43 Another popular observer of world politics, columnist Mark Sullivan, explained the new geopolitics in his headline on December 11, “World in two camps.”44 The new focus on alliances meant that the actions of one state in one of the camps were inextricably bound up with and imputed to the others in that camp. In other words, U.S. foreign policy became solidified into a doctrine of guilt by association. This had been explained on December 8 by the Minneapolis Morning Tribune, which quoted Senator Joseph Ball (R–Minn.) saying that “the United States is at war with Japan, but let us recognize that means we are also at war with Germany and Italy and that the main show is still in the Atlantic.” The Tribune asserted that now “a state of war exists between the United States and the Axis powers. Whether this is to be recognized officially by Congress is only a matter of form. The war came with lightning rapidity Sunday.”45 Americans did not pause to reflect upon the possible question of philosophical coherence during this period of war fever after Pearl Harbor, nor did they pause to ponder the coherence or justice that underlay the accusation of Germany’s guilt by association with Japan. Americans had regarded Germany to be guilty because of its relations with Japan, which consisted of German strategic cooperation and material aid. If it was this kind of relationship that now justified an all-out U.S. attack upon Germany, did this also mean to Americans in 1941 that Japan had been justified in attacking the United States in the wake of months of U.S. Lend-Lease to China? The same question could have been asked about the European war, but Americans did not inquire about such issues during the traumas of Pearl Harbor month or during World War II. The ideology of guilt by association that had fully arrived in the United States immediately after Pearl Harbor was not limited to the statements of

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explanation by politicians and pundits. Beginning December 8, the U.S. government also began to act to implement the ideology of collective guilt. Although the United States did not immediately act on this front by declaring war on Germany on December 8, there is positive evidence that on December 8 the U.S. government actually began to execute an aspect of the new policy that assigned collective guilt for Pearl Harbor. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began to arrest Japanese aliens beginning December 7. On December 8, it began arresting German and Italian aliens. President Roosevelt’s executive order authorizing these roundups, published December 9, proclaimed, “I, Franklin D. Roosevelt as President of the United States and as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, do hereby make public proclamation to all whom it may concern that an invasion or predatory incursion is threatened upon the territory of the United States by Germany.”46 On December 10 the Denver Post analyzed President Roosevelt’s December 9 proclamation, as well as his speech of the same day. In addition to the Post’s interpretation of the speech as a presidential articulation of how the Axis and the United States were now at war, it asserted that “the President’s proclamation that ‘an invasion or predatory incursion is threatened upon the territory of the United States by Germany and Italy’ amounted to the recognition of the existence of a state of war between these nations.” This language was the very language that the United States used in its December 8 and December 11 declarations of war. The Post added that the proclamation “was a necessary precaution as it set the stage for a nationwide roundup of Nazi Fifth Columnists.” The Chicago Tribune reported that the new policy empowered the FBI to arrest any “alien enemies” whom it “considered dangerous.”47 Pearl Harbor had persuaded the U.S. government that it was now at war with Japan, and so it began arresting suspected Japanese Fifth Columnists on December 7. This same consideration had persuaded the U.S. government on December 8 to begin arresting suspected German and Italian Fifth Columnists. The executive branch of the government had evidently decided, by December 8, that the United States was now at war with Germany, and demonstrated this new policy by implementing the priority measures that it considered to be most immediately necessary for waging this war and safeguarding national security. The FBI arrests of suspected German “enemy aliens” were reported by the AP and carried in the December 9 morning papers. On December 10 the press reported that, as of December 9, the FBI had arrested 400 Germans and Italians. On December 11 the Cincinnati Enquirer reported that, as of December 10, the FBI had arrested 1,291 Japanese, 865 Germans, and 147 Italians. On December 14 the Enquirer summarized the weeklong policy in which “Enemy aliens considered dangerous by the Federal Bureau of Investigation were arrested, the roundup of Germans and Italians began before those coun-

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tries declared war. . . . Enemy aliens’ business enterprises and bank funds were taken charge of by the Treasury.”48 The U.S. government treated Germans as severely as it had the Japanese under the theory of collective guilt due to the perception that both parties had been involved in a criminal conspiracy to assault Pearl Harbor. Americans did not say that this alleged conspiracy was restricted merely to consultations between Axis military strategists and diplomats. The U.S. press went further and detailed an even more material collusion between the two conspirators. As such disclosures offered ever greater details, the nature of the relationship between the two began to incline away from the more general picture of two coequal actors. As this picture sharpened its focus, it revealed a pairing more akin to a patron-client relationship. Germany was usually given a primary position in the conspiracy as the instigator. Americans never gave Japan the primary position in the conspiracy. In explaining how the conspiracy functioned, the U.S. press uniformly and regularly alleged that Germany had “induced” Japan to launch its attack on Pearl Harbor. Such an inducement was composed of German material aid to Japan. According to the Minneapolis Star Journal, Hitler “must have promised them powerful support.” The concept that Germany must have “induced” Japan also went by other synonyms, such as the allegation that Germany had “goaded” Japan to attack Pearl Harbor. Whatever synonym was used, Americans continued to believe in the concept throughout Pearl Harbor month and beyond. On January 24, 1942, the Indianapolis News quoted New York mayor and federal Office of Civilian Defense director Fiorello LaGuardia as still insisting that Hitler “induced Japan” to attack Pearl Harbor.49 Ever since Pearl Harbor week, analysts had gone to great lengths to estimate the reason why, and the method by which, Germany had induced Japan to attack Pearl Harbor. Syndicated columnist Royce Howes’s explanation of this in the Detroit Free Press brought together several of the threads already discussed. On December 14 his estimate was that perhaps Hitler wished to lessen his Russian effort to enable the sending of reinforcements to Japan. Until we have been in the war long enough to learn otherwise, it is a fair assumption that the German air force is giving direct help to the Japanese. On the word of many competent observers, Japan’s air force is not a first class one in point of equipment quality. In this connection it is worth noting that some time has passed since any air operations on the usual German scale have been heard from anywhere in Europe. A major shift of German air equipment and personnel to the Orient may have been in progress all fall. It is more pleasant, naturally, to think that the Germans are indeed breaking down before the Russians and perhaps they are. Arguing for this case, it is plausible to contend that Japan, a sure loser in the long run, was induced to precipitate a Pacific war in the hope that it would take a killing pressure off Germany. Relieving one hard pressed sector by attacking the enemy on another front is standard strategy.50

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Most Americans had long believed that Japan was indeed susceptible to such inducement, specifically because it was lowly and poor, and particularly in need of foreign aid. Americans had been informed during the period leading up to December 7, the period of the many months-long and exhausting U.S.-Japanese negotiations, that both the United States and Germany were competing to court the favor of Japan via inducements. This extended negotiating process climaxed in the week before Pearl Harbor. On December 1, the New York Times reported that the United States, Britain, and Russia were “inducing Japan to abandon the Axis.” This same article also reported that “usually reliable sources report that Germany, facing a crisis in Europe because of the long Russian campaign, is employing every means to induce Japan to fight the United States,” in order to divert the United States from Europe. On December 4, the Times concluded that Japanese poverty, resulting from its war in China, and from the Allied embargo, should make Japan concede to U.S. demands. The Times also reported on this same editorial page that the Japanese were under “unbelievable pressure from Berlin. Various forms of bribery are included.”51 These were only the latest reports of such German overtures to Japan, but they were the reports that would be freshest in the memory of Americans after Pearl Harbor. Americans had long been aware of these German overtures, and President Roosevelt had been observing since at least January 1941 that Germany was “urging” Japan to attack the United States in order to divert it from Europe. On November 7, Senator Joseph Ball (R–Minn.) would recap the long-standing “frequent and undenied efforts of Nazi emissaries to persuade Japan to go to war against the United States in the Pacific [which] gave us new proof that the United States and the Americas are not exempt from Hitler’s plan for world domination.”52 The U.S. fear of German influence on Japan took a quantum leap with the accession of General Hideki Tojo to the premiership in October 1941. In a cover story on this new Japanese prime minister, Time magazine reported that the new development was significant because “Japan’s military extremists, recently egged on by their Nazi friends,” were now in power. Time concluded that, while Japan had made many enemies, “Japan’s best friend, Adolf Hitler, was not only far away, but kept urging Japan to stick its neck within reach of the allied sword.”53 Despite the indictment, the tenor of this conclusion was that the Japanese ally did not necessarily mortally threaten the United States; rather it was aggressive, and hence unacceptably provocative. The article also foreshadowed a fundamental American feeling about the entire Axis threat during Pearl Harbor month, and for some weeks before as well. This prevailing feeling was no longer a mortal fear of Axis world domination, but rather the anticipation of aggressive raids from weakened but desperate rogue states. By the time of Pearl Harbor, Americans well understood Germany’s weakened and desperate condition, which was why Hitler’s declaration of war on the United

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States, far from being a fearful “aggression,” was viewed more as a curiosity. On December 12, for example, the now formerly isolationist Sacramento Union tried to explain why Hitler, for the first time, had declared war before he attacked. It surmised that “the best guess in this country is that he simply didn’t have the power to put over a crippling initial blow,” and that “the manner in which Adolf Hitler declared war, however, was not the only admission of weakness contained in his bitter tirade to the Reichstag.”54 In early November 1941 a measure of Germany’s emerging desperation had been revealed by Senator Tom Connally (D–Tex.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, immediately after the USS Reuben James incident. Connally interpreted Hitler’s accusation that the Reuben James was the aggressor to be an indication that Hitler was attempting to use this accusation in the service of “encouraging” Japan to comply with the Tripartite defense treaty, and thus retaliate against the United States. Americans were thus preparing themselves before Pearl Harbor for the idea that a desperate Hitler would incite Japan into assaulting the United States. Walter Lippmann predicted at this time that Germany would indeed eventually persuade Japan to invoke the Axis pact, by persuading Japan that it was the United States that had attacked Germany, which would then require a Japanese retaliation.55 Predictions that Hitler would induce the Japanese to attack the United States were seemingly vindicated by the Pearl Harbor raid. In his December 9 speech, President Roosevelt divulged that the U.S. government “knew” that Germany had induced Japan to strike by offering Japan the “spoils” of the entire Pacific rim. That virtually all Americans now agreed with the president’s assessment can be gleaned from newspapers in the former isolationist belt, such as the Montana Standard and the Idaho Daily Statesman.56 By the end of Pearl Harbor week, the Cincinnati Enquirer elaborated further detail about the familiar motives behind yet another German inducement that had bought a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor: Japan’s Pacific campaign is a phase of a larger Axis onslaught, an element in Hitler’s worldwide strategy of conquest. Japan made war at Hitler’s insistence, and was paid off by German and Italian declarations of war on the United States soon after. Hitler admitted failure in Russia, called off the drive for Moscow, conceded probable Axis defeat in Libya, and broadened his program to fight America. This betrays a profound shift of war plans at Berlin.

Thus the consensus analysis was that Hitler’s instigation and inducement of Japan’s offensive was motivated by German weakness, failure, and desperation. The Montana Standard agreed on December 13 that Japan, “in its newest project of aggression has the assistance of Germany and Italy,” because Hitler’s and Mussolini’s hopes for “Japan are to pull their chestnuts out of the fire.”57

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Syndicated columnist DeWitt MacKenzie explained the same day how a desperately losing Germany had been able to deceive the Japanese. The Minneapolis Star Journal headlined MacKenzie’s column with, “Japs declared pulled into war by phony Hitlerian horse deal.” MacKenzie wrote that Hitler had bamboozled the Japanese and “pushed them into the war by persuading them that he was sure winner.” Hitler may have fooled the Japanese about his martial fortunes, but a more realistic appraisal of Germany’s situation in Russia “leads London military commentators to believe the Nazis may be headed for catastrophe.” Therefore, MacKenzie concluded that Japan would have been smarter if it had “waited a week longer,” before it made mortal enemies of Russia’s allies, Britain and the United States. It was also evident to New York Times columnist Anne O’Hare McCormick on December 10 that “the Nazis are stalled in Russia,” which probably explained why “the Japanese and their backers,” the Germans, were “‘blitzing’ America.”58 After Pearl Harbor, as before, Americans believed that Germany’s diplomacy toward Japan had been fueled by German desperation. Americans may have still understood this afterward, but this perception of German desperation and weakness in no way detracted from the post–Pearl Harbor desire to punish Germany severely for its part in the conspiracy and attack. Even before the outrage of Pearl Harbor, some moderates seemed to have been coming to the view that the mixture of Germany’s military failures and its furious diplomatic overtures to Japan was actually a rather pathetic and contemptible spectacle. It did remain true, however, that before Pearl Harbor a large segment of the more interventionist minded continued to express the fear that Germany would actually succeed in manufacturing an offensive alliance with the Japanese against the United States. By November 1941, at the very latest, a growing segment of moderates apparently were simultaneously beginning to view German diplomacy in Japan as a possible struggle just to maintain a defensive Axis alliance against the enemies it was already fighting. This complex trend before Pearl Harbor represented an overall U.S. political opinion that was divided and still progressing toward a perception of Japanese collaboration with Germany. The certainty and intolerance Americans displayed toward this collaboration after Pearl Harbor was more tempered in the pre–Pearl Harbor period. Americans were not as wholly certain about the degree of Japanese collaboration with Germany before Pearl Harbor as they came to be after. The complexity of U.S. attitudes before Pearl Harbor was demonstrated by a variety of reports, some of which accused Japan of chronic collaboration, and some of which would not. Likewise, some reports and editorials were fearful of German strength, while some highlighted German weakness. This division of U.S. opinion may have represented a political division between different factions of Americans, or it may have even represented an ambivalent or confused attitude on the part of individuals and institutions.

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In the months and weeks before Pearl Harbor, Americans were ambivalent, confused, or divided about the crucial questions of the degree of Japanese collaboration with Germany, and the capability of Germany to induce a significant collaboration.59 For the New York Times, however, a general understanding of Japan’s position began to unify toward pessimism by the end of November 1941. A few days after Japan signed the new Anti-Comintern Pact in Berlin, the mood of the New York Times turned pessimistic as U.S.-Japanese negotiations broke down. This latest U.S. perception at the end of November, that the Germans had induced Japan into a conspiracy against the United States, carried over into and after Pearl Harbor. Americans then justified the U.S. war against Germany on the grounds of that conspiracy. This U.S. justification persisted throughout World War II.60 After the war, however, historians began to rethink the conspiracy proposition, and to revise their explanations of why the United States had fought Germany. As historian Bernd Martin puts it, after 1945 “most historians forgot” the Allied wartime concern with the Axis pact of Germany and Japan, and discarded the conspiracy interpretation. Sean Cashman, for example, asserts that “there certainly was no grand Axis design. Despite Anglo-American fears, neither Germany nor Japan contemplated joining forces across the wide expanses of the Middle East.” Cashman concludes that Germany and Japan “had no coordinated strategy.” Warren Kimball summarized the post–World War II historiographical trend away from the Axis conspiracy theory, noting that “although the Roosevelt Administration saw Germany and Japan as a joint threat, particularly after the Tripartite Pact of September 1940, between Germany, Japan, and Italy, historians have steadily moved in the direction of viewing the two conflicts [the European and Asian wars] as only accidentally and incidentally connected.”61 One of the first historians to research the German-Japanese relationship was Johanna Meskill. In her 1966 study Hitler and Japan: The Hollow Alliance, she argues that despite the U.S. perception of this alliance as a “conspiracy,” it was more often than not an “incompatible” and “ineffective” relationship. Historian Abraham Ben-Zvi reviewed Meskill’s work along with the work of others such as Robert Jervis, Akira Iriye, George Kennan, and Paul Schroeder, and reached the same conclusion. Ben-Zvi’s primary sources for his conclusion included U.S. Ambassador to Japan Joseph Grew and U.S. Army Intelligence Chief Sherman Miles, who stressed the “disunity” of the “strained Japanese-German relations.” Despite this intelligence, Secretaries Henry Stimson, Cordell Hull, and Henry Morgenthau continued to “ignore the changes, fluctuations and shifting dynamics,” and insisted only on seeing German-Japanese “unity.” Historian Edward Von der Porten argues that the extent of “German cooperation with the Japanese remained limited to the

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maintenance of high-ranking liaison officers at each other’s headquarters.” But the official contemporary U.S. view was the one espoused by the leading cabinet secretaries in the Roosevelt administration.62 This official U.S. portrayal of Axis unity and coordination persisted throughout World War II until “the testimony of General George Marshall, in his final report as Chief of Staff (1945) that the Axis lacked any coordinated scheme for world domination,” according to historian Alton Frye. This report to Congress by General Marshall on September 1, 1945, was the first in which he even discussed the subject of Axis coordination. General Marshall concluded in his report: “Nor is there any evidence of close strategic coordination between Germany and Japan. . . . In the absence of any evidence so far to the contrary, it is believed that Japan also acted unilaterally and not in accordance with a unified strategic plan. . . . The Axis, as a matter of fact, existed on paper only.” British foreign minister Anthony Eden admitted in his memoirs that Hitler’s “loyalty” to Japan existed only on the “unique occasion” of December 11, 1941.63 In December 1941 the United States went to war against Germany primarily because the United States blamed Germany for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. This view was based on the perception that Germany had orchestrated a strategically coordinated conspiracy that became manifest with the December Pacific offensive. Therefore the Germans were guilty of the latter because they had been immersed in the former. Despite the historiographical trend, some historians have continued to brand Germany with some guilt for Pearl Harbor, by attempting to outflank General Marshall’s testimony. Historian James Compton, for example, employs a fine distinction that does not literally contradict General Marshall, but nonetheless still imputes a kind of guilt to Germany for Pearl Harbor. He quotes the judgment of the postwar International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, which found that Germany gave “encouragement” to Japan in its war against the United States. Compton elaborates by also asserting that Germany was “pressing,” or “stressing,” or “urging,” or “advocating” that the Japanese adopt a policy of “provoking America into the war.” Compton thus concludes that Germany was a “party” to Pearl Harbor in that, “finally, the Japanese were given a blank check regarding a Japanese-American war and assured of the fullest German support even in the event of a Japanese attack.”64 Other historians have countered Compton’s depiction by employing even finer distinctions. H. L. Trefousse, for example, addresses the Compton thesis that had been put forward by Ambassador Grew, that Germany had been “enticing” Japan to attack the United States. Trefousse disputes this interpretation by asserting that Germany specifically wanted Japan to attack Britain and/or Russia. According to Trefousse, Hitler “hoped that America would remain on the sidelines, and urged Japan to attack Singapore with this consideration in mind.” Trefousse concedes that Hitler also “made it quite clear

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that he would immediately support his Far Eastern ally should Washington take a vigorous stand against Japanese expansion.” Trefousse’s assessment of Hitler’s preference, however, was that “he still favored bypassing America.” Trefousse concludes that, “in reality, the Germans had much less influence on Tokyo than is generally supposed.” This effectively concurs with the conclusion of William Langer and S. Everett Gleason, who discuss the contemporary consensus theory of German influence over Japan and conclude that “this theory was true only to the extent that Ribbentrop had egged the Japanese on, not to the extent that the Japanese had paid much attention to the desires of their Allies.”65 Saul Friedlander essentially agrees with this assessment. He relates the episode in late October 1941 when German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop wanted the Japanese to send a “threatening note” to the United States. Friedlander concludes, however, that “all his [Ribbentrop’s] exhortations [to the Japanese] seem to have been in vain.” Friedlander agrees with most historians, who say that Germany agreed to support a Japanese war against the United States and that, if the Japanese chose such a war, Germany also agreed in late November 1941 to “aid” Japan and not to sign a separate peace. Therefore, Friedlander is unwilling to exculpate Germany entirely from the Pearl Harbor raid. He also casts doubt upon Italian foreign minister Count Ciano’s characterization of Germany’s involvement in any Japanese war against the United States as being a rather reluctant one. Friedlander’s summation of Germany’s specific guilt for Pearl Harbor is that “Berlin was clearly conscious of the way things were developing and was prepared to face the consequences.”66 This kind of “second-degree” guilt, a German passive acceptance of a Japanese attack on the United States, was very different from the assessment made by Americans in December 1941. They had found a much more activist Germany to be at least equally guilty. The degree of German collusion agreed upon by a consensus of postwar historians is but a shadow of the allegation made by Americans in December 1941. As Trefousse concluded, “Though it has time and again been asserted that Germany pushed Japan into war, all the available evidence shows that the exact opposite was true. Japan did the pushing.” Trefousse’s specific depiction of the relationship concludes that “Ribbentrop in late November no longer opposed American entry into the conflict.” Geoffrey Perrett’s conclusion is that “Germany had sought to avoid war with the United States, but its Japanese ally had made the decision for it.”67 Despite some relatively minor discrepancies, all of these historians have agreed to a large extent on the nature of the German-Japanese relationship in 1941. Their depiction of German participation in the “conspiracy” against the United States is of a degree that is at most passive and minor. Accordingly, none of these historians have justified the U.S. war against Germany after

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December 1941 on the grounds of German ties to Japanese aggression. Rather, they have justified the war on the grounds of Hitler’s declaration of war in particular, and on an unremittingly aggressive German expansion in general. Thus the motives stressed by historians are essentially contrary to the motives Americans enunciated in December 1941, and the historians’ assessment of the degree of the German role in the formulation of Japanese foreign policy is directly contrary to the assessment made by Americans in late 1941.68 The U.S. perception of German influence over Japan in late 1941 was complex, or more accurately, changeable over time. After December 7, virtually all Americans became convinced that Germany had played a major hand in Japanese aggression. Before December 7, however, many Americans had questioned this belief, as they retained a guarded optimism over the course of U.S.-Japanese negotiations. The month of November 1941 manifested a complex U.S. perception regarding this question. In November, some Americans believed Germany was inducing or controlling Japanese foreign policy, while some thought that Japan may have been acting independently. By the end of November, U.S. attitudes began to fluctuate yet again, toward a consensus that it was Germany that was inducing or deciding Japan’s foreign policy. This U.S. fluctuation away from an ambivalent optimism began after the convening of the Anti-Comintern Pact signatories in Berlin on November 25, when the New York Times reported that this convention was designed to persuade Japan not to leave the Axis. The previous optimistic tone of news reports regarding Japanese independence from the Axis began to turn sour on November 28, when the New York Times broke the news that the result of the Anti-Comintern meeting in Berlin was that now Japan “had reaffirmed her Axis membership.” The Times reported that the “frantic German efforts to break down the negotiations” between the United States and Japan had borne fruit and had been announced in “Ribbentrop’s speech extolling the AntiComintern Pact and suggesting closer collaboration between Germany and Japan.” The next day the Times made the further disclosure of German military aid promised to Japan by February 1942.69 Thus the new tone began to ascend for just over a week before December 7. Americans were hardening their belief that Germany had captured or recaptured Japanese foreign policy decisionmaking. Americans, therefore, had had enough time to gravitate toward this belief before being stunned into a total acceptance of it after December 7. This continued to be the consensus American mindset for at least the crucial period of Pearl Harbor month, the period when the basic U.S. policy for the entire war was decided.70 It was not until after this crucial period that the first questions began to be raised about the validity of that belief. A representative example of one of the first cracks in the previously solid belief system can be found in the February 16, 1942, issue of Newsweek, which reported that “there is some foun-

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dation for the belief that the Japanese attack on the United States was not launched in perfect harmony with the Germans,” because “Berlin gave every evidence of desire to keep Washington out the struggle.” Yet Newsweek could not be certain about this, simply because Germany stood to benefit from the U.S. diversion toward the Pacific, and thus away from the Atlantic. Americans may have become a little less certain on this question after Pearl Harbor month, but they continued to assume that it was at least probably true for the rest of the war.71

Notes 1. This was a powerful indictment of Germany’s war guilt as it pertained to the United States. After 1945, however, historians became less persuaded about a German role in the conspiracy to attack Pearl Harbor, and other U.S. possessions in the Pacific. As a result, historians then downgraded or dropped altogether this indictment against Germany, and instead chose to emphasize Hitler’s declaration of war. Therefore the historiographical treatment of any “Axis conspiracy” is rather meager, and essentially immaterial and irrelevant in the traditional historiographical discussion of German war guilt pertaining to the United States. 2. Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 10, 1941, p. 6A. As discussed in Chapter 3, the president’s speeches were the most important signpost of U.S. public opinion. 3. Cleveland Press, December 8, 1941, p. 19; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 9, 1941, p. 4. 4. Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 9, 1941, p. A5497; December 10, 1941, p. A5509. 5. Ibid., December 11, 1941, p. A5582; Indianapolis News, December 12, 1941, p. 7; Des Moines (Iowa) Tribune, December 13, 1941, p. 4; San Francisco Examiner, December 10, 1941, p. 13. 6. Milwaukee Post, December 9, 1941, p. 6; December 12, 1941, p. 6; Des Moines (Iowa) Tribune, December 12, 1941, p. 11; Sioux Falls (South Dakota) Daily Argus-Leader, December 10, 1941, p. 2. 7. Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 15, 1941, p. A5575; December 17, 1941, p. A5640. 8. Washington (D.C.) Evening Star, December 13, 1941, p. A9; Wyoming Star Tribune, December 24, 1941, p. 4. 9. Nebraska State Journal, December 13, 1941, p. 8; Forrest Davis and Ernest Lindley, How War Came: An American White Paper, from the Fall of France to Pearl Harbor (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942), p. 312. 10. Cleveland Press, December 8, 1941, p. 19; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 31, 1941, p. 1. 11. New York Times, January 21, 1942, pp. 16, 4. 12. John MacCormac, This Time for Keeps (New York: Viking, 1943), pp. 114–115. 13. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 9, 1941, p. 4; Des Moines (Iowa) Tribune, December 12, 1941, p. 17.

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14. Atlanta Journal, December 30, 1941, p. 12. 15. New York Times, December 8, 1941, p. 17; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 8, 1941, p. 4. 16. New York World-Telegram, December 9, 1941, p. 2. 17. Nebraska State Journal, December 13, 1941, p. 8; Newsweek, December 22, 1941, p. 68; Time, January 5, 1942, p. 18. 18. New York Times, November 30, 1941, p. E1; Geoffrey Perrett, Days of Sadness, Years of Triumph: The American People, 1939–1945 (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1973), p. 192; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), October 30, 1941, p. A4929. 19. Abraham Ben-Zvi, Prelude to Pearl Harbor: A Study of American Images Toward Japan, 1940–41 (New York: Vintage Press, 1979), pp. 111–112. 20. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 9, 1941, p. 4; December 10, 1941, p. 4; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 12, 1941, p. 10; Omaha Morning World-Herald, December 12, 1941, p. 28; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 12, 1941, p. 10. 21. Atlanta Journal, December 14, 1941, p. 9B; January 5, 1942, p. 12; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 16, 1941, p. A5593. 22. New York Times, November 16, 1941, p. 21; Chicago Tribune, December 16, 1941, p. 14. 23. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 9, 1941, p. 4; December 10, 1941, p. 4; Idaho Daily Statesman, December 10, 1941, p. 5. 24. Atlanta Journal, December 24, 1941, p. 10; Chicago Tribune, December 27, 1941, p. 7; New York Times, December 14, 1941, p. 8E; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 20, 1941, p. A5677. 25. Atlanta Journal, December 17, 1941, p. 22; January 9, 1942, p. 18; Wyoming State Tribune, December 18, 1941, p. 4; December 15, 1941, p. 4; December 15, 1941, p. 4; New York World-Telegram, December 8, 1941, p. 18; December 9, 1941, p. 32; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 11, 1941, p. 4; Newsweek, December 15, 1941, p. 22. 26. New York Times, January 10, 1942, p. 3; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 10, 1941, p. 10. 27. Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 8, 1941, p. 4; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 9, 1941, p. 14; New York Daily News, December 10, 1941, p. 3; New York Times, December 12, 1941, p. 1. 28. Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 77th Congress, 1st sess., vol. 87, pt. 9 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 11, 1941, pp. 9667–9669, 9671–9672; December 8, 1941, pp. 9510, 9513; Indianapolis News, January 8, 1942, p. 4. 29. New York Times, November 12, 1941, p. 8; December 1, 1941, p. 18; December 17, 1941, p. 26; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), November 13, 1941, p. A5116; Time, November 10, 1941, p. 29. 30. Time, November 10, 1941, p. 29; New York Times, November 30, 1941, p. E1. 31. New York Times, November 11, 1941, p. 22; November 17, 1941, p. 7; November 21, 1941, p. 5. 32. Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 12, 1941, p. A5559. 33. Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 77th Congress, 1st sess., vol. 87, pt. 9 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941),

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December 11, 1941, p. 9654; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 8, 1941, p. A; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 9, 1941, p. 9; New York World-Telegram, December 9, 1941, p. 25. 34. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 12, 1941, p. 6; New York Times, January 3, 1942, p. 3; Topeka (Kansas) Daily Capital, December 15, 1941, p. 4; Toledo Blade, December 15, 1941, p. 12; Chicago Tribune, December 12, 1941, p. 18. 35. Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 9, 1941, p. 2; New York Times, December 17, 1941, p. 11; January 16, 1942, p. 6. 36. December 11 was certainly the most politically sensational of all these instances, due to its timing. Substantially, however, it was very much like the rest, and it was the perceived substance with which Americans were preoccupied. Hitler’s specific comments on December 11 regarding the United States were little more than a repetition of his long-standing charges of U.S. aggression against Germany, as well as Japan. A textual analysis and comparison of Hitler’s December 11 comments with his previous comments would be appropriate to a thorough discussion of why Hitler’s December 11 declaration of war was not a significant casus belli. 37. New York Times, November 25, 1941, p. 1; November 28, 1941, pp. 4, 22; December 12, 1941, p. 4; January 23, 1942, p. 4. 38. Atlanta Journal, December 8, 1941, p. 4; December 16, 1941, p. 19; Toledo Blade, December 15, 1941, p. 12. 39. New York Times, December 16, 1941, p. 1; Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 10, 1941 (New York: Random House, 1950), December 15, 1941, p. 543. 40. New York Times, December 6, 1941, p. 16. Despite the existence of a SovietJapanese nonaggression pact signed in April 1941, most Americans placed little value in it due to Hitler’s violation of such pacts. It is therefore ironic that most Americans would then place a high value on the integrity of the German-Japanese pact. 41. Time, June 2, 1941, p. 27; August 18, 1941, p. 22; October 6, 1941, p. 34. 42. New York Times, November 16, 1941, p. 27; November 30, 1941, p. E1; Newsweek, December 1, 1941, p. 19. 43. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 9, 1941, p. 4; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 9, 1941, p. A5503. 44. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 9, 1941, p. 4; Minneapolis Star Journal, December 12, 1941, p. 34; December 16, 1941, p. 10; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 11, 1941, p. 8. 45. Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 7, 1941, p. 10; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 8, 1941, p. 2; Nebraska State Journal, December 13, 1941, p. 8. 46. New York World-Telegram, December 8, 1941, p. 4; December 9, 1941, p. 4; Denver Post, December 9, 1941, p. 1. 47. Denver Post, December 10, 1941, p. 2; Chicago Tribune, December 10, 1941, p. 20. 48. New York World-Telegram, December 9, 1941, p. 4; Atlanta Journal, December 9, 1941, p. 1; Denver Post, December 9, 1941, p. 3; Chicago Tribune, December 9, 1941, p. 1; Cleveland Press, December 9, 1941, p. 1; New York Times, December 9, 1941, pp. 40, 7; December 11, 1941, p. 24; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 10, 1941, p. 9; New York Daily News, December 10, 1941, p. 44; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 10, 1941, p. 1; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 11, 1941, p. 1; December 14, 1941, p. 15. 49. Minneapolis Star Journal, December 12, 1941, p. 10; Detroit Free Press, December 11, 1941, p. 6; Omaha Morning World-Herald, December 12, 1941, p. 28; Indianapolis News, January 24, 1942, p. 7.

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50. Detroit Free Press, December 14, 1941, p. 3. 51. New York Times, December 1, 1941, p. 8; December 4, 1941, p. 24. 52. Frederick Sanborn, Design for War (New York: Devin-Adair, 1951), pp. 243–244; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), November 7, 1941, p. A5029. 53. Time, November 3, 1941, pp. 23–24. 54. Sacramento Union, December 12, 1941, p. 4. 55. Newsweek, November 10, 1941, p. 20; Los Angeles Times, November 5, 1941, pt. 2, p. 4. 56. Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 10, 1941, p. 4; Montana Standard, December 14, 1941, p. 14; Idaho Daily Statesman, December 14, 1941, p. 5. 57. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 14, 1941, sec. 2, p. 15; Montana Standard, December 13, 1941, p. 4. 58. Minneapolis Star Journal, December 13, 1941, p. 2; New York Times, December 10, 1941, p. 24. 59. New York Times, November 2, 1941, pp. E5, 12; November 4, 1941, p. 6; November 9, 1941, p. E5; November 10, 1941, p. 3; November 11, 1941, p. 22; November 16, 1941, pp. E3, 27; November 23, 1941, pp. 19, E5; November 25, 1941, p. 1. 60. New York Times, November 25, 1941, p. 1; November 28, 1941, p. 4; November 29, 1941, p. 1; November 30, 1941, pp. 16, 25, 32, E1, 4E; December 1, 1941, pp. 1, 8; December 2, 1941, p. 8; December 5, 1941, p. 22; Allan Nevins and Louis Hacker, eds., The United States and Its Place in World Affairs, 1918–1943 (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1943), pp. 530–531. 61. Bernd Martin, Japan and Germany in the Modern World (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1995), p. 243; Sean Cashman, America, Roosevelt, and World War II (New York: New York University Press, 1989), p. 88; Warren Kimball, ed., Franklin D. Roosevelt and the World Crisis, 1937–1945 (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973), p. xvii. 62. Johanna Meskill, Hitler and Japan: The Hollow Alliance (New York: Atherton Press, 1966), pp. 3, 4, 25, 47; Abraham Ben-Zvi, Prelude to Pearl Harbor: A Study of American Images Toward Japan, 1940–41 (New York: Vintage Press, 1979), pp. 116–122; Edward P. Von der Porten, The German Navy in World War II (New York: Galahad Books, 1969), p. 118. 63. Alton Frye, Nazi Germany and the American Hemisphere, 1933–1941 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), p. 3; The War Reports of General of the Army George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff, General of the Army H. H. Arnold, Commanding General, Army Air Forces [and] Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander in Chief, United States Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1947), pp. 141–142, 144, 148; Anthony Eden, The Reckoning: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden, Earl of Avon (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p. 366. 64. James Compton, The Swastika and the Eagle: Hitler, the United States, and the Origins of World War II (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), pp. 238–239. See Chapter 9 of this study for more on the judgment at Nuremberg. 65. H. L. Trefousse, Germany and American Neutrality, 1939–1941 (New York: Bookman Associates, 1951), pp. 161–163; William Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 (New York: Published for the Council on Foreign Relations by Harper, 1953), p. 939. 66. Saul Friedlander, Prelude to Downfall: Hitler and the United States, 1939–1941 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1967), pp. 304, 306–307. 67. H. L. Trefousse, Germany and American Neutrality, 1939–1941 (New York: Bookman Associates, 1951), p. 153; Geoffrey Perret, Days of Sadness, Years of Tri-

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umph: The American People, 1939–1945 (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1973), p. 207. 68. This gap between the historians and contemporary Americans in 1941 is actually wider than demonstrated here, as will be shown in the next chapters. 69. New York Times, November 25, 1941, p. 1; November 28, 1941, p. 4; November 29, 1941, p. 1. 70. New York Times, November 30, 1941, pp. 16, 25, 32, E1, 4E; December 1, 1941, pp. 1, 8; December 2, 1941, p. 8; December 5, 1941, p. 22. 71. Newsweek, February 16, 1942, p. 18. See Chapter 9 for a fuller discussion on changing U.S. perceptions of the nature of the German-Japanese relationship, as well as other questions of historiography.

6 Puppetmaster

Americans overwhelmingly conflated the actions of Japan and Germany in December 1941, so that the crimes of one resulted in the guilt of the other. A great deal of U.S. rhetoric during Pearl Harbor month and beyond characterized Germany and Japan as equal partners in a conspiracy, and hence equally guilty for Pearl Harbor. This tone shifted as Americans delved deeper into the details that constructed the Axis conspiratorial partnership; Germany was assigned the role of instigator, and thus a primary or perhaps unique position within the partnership. But despite these role differences, most Americans could assign equal guilt to both Germany and Japan for Pearl Harbor. The U.S. argument that underlay the charge against two coequal partners was, on closer inspection, a consciously superficial indictment, a sort of rhetorical shorthand, which most Americans seemed to understand. The rhetoric regarding the “partnership” actually implied to most Americans not a partnership of two equals, but rather a relationship of a German senior partner and a Japanese junior partner. It was an arrangement wherein the senior was the master, and the junior was the indentured servant, even though both may have benefited from the overall organization. It is impossible to understand fully the partnership theory as contemporaries did unless one simultaneously understands the puppetmaster theory that was asserted with equal if not greater force during Pearl Harbor month.1 The puppetmaster relationship was perceived by most Americans as a partnership in the same way that they might have perceived the relationship between an employer and an employee, in which the greater proportion of power and responsibility was seen to flow only in one direction. Within the widely understood analogy, the employee’s reputation might be somewhat besmirched by the crimes of the employer. But this tarnishing in no way compared to the more serious legal liability incurred by the employer for the infractions of the employee. In this way, the American sense of justice could 109

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not expect Japan to bear much guilt for Germany’s crimes. Americans would insist, however, that the German patron bear the maximum guilt for the crimes of its servant-puppet, Japan. This was essentially the consensus view held by most Americans after Pearl Harbor, who had prepared themselves by increasingly adopting this view before Pearl Harbor as well.2 A few historians have noted the U.S. puppetmaster perception, but have addressed it only peripherally. In his study of German-Japanese relations in the twentieth century, for example, Bernd Martin makes the passing observation that on December 8, 1941, the United States believed the Japanese to be the puppets of the German “wirepullers behind the scenes.” Martin also notes that “most historians forgot” this after 1945. James Schneider’s study of Chicago newspapers during the period of 1939–1941 notes that these papers, in the heart of the isolationist belt, would continually “portray Japan as an Oriental adjunct to Germany.” Most Americans held this view because the Japanese military seemed weaker than the German military. This U.S. military perception of Japan has also been noted by historian Nathan Miller, who cites an article in the extreme interventionist New York magazine PM, published after Pearl Harbor, titled “How we can lick Japan in 60 days.”3 The perceptions that Americans had about Japanese military power, or lack of it, in relation to the United States and to Germany, were strong perceptions, because Americans had held them for long before December 1941. This study concentrates on U.S. perceptions during the crucial and decisive period of December 1941, but there is enough evidence to date their origin much earlier. One widely respected observer of the Japanese-German power hierarchy was General Douglas MacArthur. According to William Manchester, MacArthur stated in 1940 that “Germany . . . had instructed Japan not to stir up any more trouble in the Pacific.” Not only did General MacArthur believe that Japan took orders from Germany, but so did Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. In October 1941, Secretary Knox restated a U.S. foreign policy that sought the defeat of “Hitler and his satellites in Italy and Japan.” Newsweek added that all cabinet officers had to clear their speeches with the president.4 On November 4, Chester Rowell’s column in the San Francisco Chronicle predicted that Japan would not attack the East Indies because “it is Hitler who is pulling the strings for war by Japan on America and Russia,” meaning that Japan would only attack Siberia, because that was Hitler’s desire. Rowell explained that Germany had acquired this power because “in Japan, Hitler is using bribery, intimidation and cajolery.” Rowell then predicted that Japan’s subservient status might sink even lower when and if Hitler chose to make Japan into “another Italy.” Rowell concluded that if Japan started any Pacific wars, “it will be because Hitler starts them.” What the press and President Roosevelt’s generals and cabinet secretaries were saying publicly, they were saying privately as well. Secretary of War Henry Stimson’s diary entry for

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November 25, 1941, quoted Secretary of State Cordell Hull saying, “Japan was in alliance with Hitler and was carrying out his policy of world aggression.” The obvious point was that this Japanese policy was actually “his policy,” and not necessarily its own.5 The New York Times concurred with this assessment of the power relationship between Germany and Japan in a November 28 article titled “America and Japan,” which declared that “the decisive battle of our times will be fought with Hitler, and not with one of his satellites.” The Times repeated its assessment in a November 30 article on the Axis pact meeting in Berlin titled “Dance of the Marionettes,” which explained that all states in the Axis were puppets of Germany, even the most powerful members. According to the Times, “Italy and Japan would be helpless if it were not for the actual or potential support of the German army. The only free agent in the Axis group is Germany—or rather the Nazi regime in Germany.” The next day New York Times columnist Anne O’Hare McCormick offered her portrayal of this U.S. perception of a Japan that had lost its sovereign independence over its foreign policy. She concluded, “it is therefore impossible to consider Japanese aggression apart from the Axis pattern of aggression. It is impossible for us even to confer with Japan alone, for behind Japan stands Germany, forever prodding and prompting.”6 These opinions came mostly from the interventionist side of the aisle, and it was the interventionists who would have been most inclined to blame Germany for Japan’s obstructionism in the now faltering U.S.-Japanese negotiations. This is not to say that isolationists disagreed with the puppetmaster assessment. On December 4, isolationist thinking was demonstrated when Senator John Danaher (R–Conn.) quoted Senator George Aiken (R–Vt.) on the Senate floor. Danaher repeated Secretary Knox’s October statement regarding “Hitler and his satellites in Italy and Japan” without contradiction or criticism, in a Senate speech that was otherwise loaded with criticism of the president’s policy toward Germany. Opposition to the policy apparently did not mean that one also was required to doubt interventionist assertions that Germany was acquiring an Asian colonial empire, with Japan as the jewel in its crown, but “isolationist” dissenters generally preferred to oppose Axis expansion in Asia rather than in Europe.7 Such an imperial notion regarding Asia was extended even further on December 5 by the New York Times in a report on ongoing German efforts to mediate the Japanese-Chinese war and alleged German successes in manipulating both of the antagonists. The result of such manipulations, the United States feared, was that along with Japan, China might now also “possibly enter the German orbit.” The last expression by the New York Times of its increasingly certain opinion of Japanese dependence on Germany in the pre–Pearl Harbor period came on the morning of December 7, before the attack. In a political cartoon, the Times graphically portrayed its conviction

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that Japanese power would collapse without German support. It depicted a Japanese propped up by a chair shaped like a swastika.8 Later that day, immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, preexisting U.S. perceptions about the German control of Japanese foreign policy took a quantum leap toward becoming the basis of the new U.S. policy toward Germany. As always, this process was initiated by the more interventionist minded, and then accepted by the more moderate minded. On the evening of December 7, the cabinet met at the White House and debated whether to ask

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for a declaration of war on Germany as well as on Japan. Speaking for the interventionist minority, Secretary Stimson argued for the first time that “we know from the interceptions and other evidence that Germany had pushed Japan into this and that Germany was the real actor, and I advocated the view that we should ask for a declaration of war against Germany also.” After the cabinet voted against this proposal, President Roosevelt consoled Secretary Stimson by assuring him “that he intended to present the whole matter two days later.”9 Roosevelt did just this in his December 9 speech. President Roosevelt, the canny politician, was probably cautious enough to want to wait two days to see which way the political winds were blowing before proceeding toward such a precipitous measure as a declaration of war on Germany. He did not have to wait long. On December 8, just after Congress had convened to hear his request for a declaration of war on Japan, it also began to discuss the subject of Germany. Although the House of Representatives was comparatively more preoccupied with the subject of Japan, Representative Charles Plumley (R–Vt.) did find time to say that “the coup of yesterday was Hitler inspired, and in it he cooperated.”10 It was in the Senate that the larger picture of the Axis conspiracy was more thoroughly analyzed. In a presentation of how all the various Chicago newspapers now proclaimed their national unity, Senator Scott Lucas (D–Ill.) submitted a Chicago Daily News editorial as an exposition of the long-held contention that Germany did indeed control Japan. Lucas stated, “as the Daily News has for months been explaining: that Hitler’s plans, in conjunction with Japan’s included—at his own chosen moment, under the Tokyo-Berlin-Rome alliance—a blitz attack on the United States.” Senator Lucas then quoted the Chicago Times, which spoke of “a mad military clique in Tokyo that has made this war against us on orders of a madder military clique in Berlin.” As a result of these orders, “a lunatic Japan, under the lash of a lunatic Germany, has commenced hostilities against the United States and Great Britain.”11 Senator Styles Bridges (R–N.H.) also brought in a slew of newspaper articles to help make his points. Quoting from the Washington (D.C.) Daily News and concurring with the conception of a long-term Axis conspiracy headed by Germany, he asserted, “Hitler is attacking, indeed, but through the Japanese as he has long tried to do.” He then read from the New York Herald Tribune, which argued that “if the ambitions of the Tokyo militarists brought the issues of the Pacific to a bloody climax, they did so in closest cooperation with their allies, the militarists of Berlin. But one war is being fought in the world today, and in the most accurate sense, Hitler is the master of the totalitarian group.” This conception of the Axis hierarchy was seconded by the Chicago Sun, which Senator Bridges quoted as saying, “we have been struck by the Weltschlange, the world serpent, its head in Germany, and its tail in Japan. It was Hitler who brought this war upon us, luring the Japanese with promises of aid and loot.”12

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Concurrent with the senatorial quotations from the December 8 newspapers, other statements also appeared in the press that day, statements that had been given the previous day by various point men of the Roosevelt administration. Prominent among these were the widely quoted remarks of Fiorello LaGuardia, mayor of New York and director of the Federal Office of Civilian Defense, who said that the Japanese attack “was the direct result of Nazi master-minding” and that, moreover, “anyone familiar with world affairs . . . knew that ‘Nazi thugs and gangsters’ were directing Japanese policy.” LaGuardia was not the only Roosevelt administration point man to make the December 8 newspapers. As the Chicago Tribune headlined, “Defense Official asserts Berlin directed attack. . . . A charge that the Japanese assault upon Hawaii and the Philippines was ‘directed primarily from Berlin,’ came tonight from Donald M. Nelson, Director of the Supply, Priorities and Allocations Board,” who spoke on MBS Radio. Nelson concluded that Pearl Harbor “is in reality an attack upon us by the Axis powers.”13 As of December 7, elements of the Roosevelt administration began to cross the line from moderate to extreme interventionism. Their charges of German responsibility for Pearl Harbor now put them substantially in league with the longtime extreme interventionists, such as the Fight for Freedom Committee, which had long demanded a declaration of war on Germany. The New York Times reported the committee’s analysis in a December 8 headline that read, “Japanese attack charged to Hitler.” Other previous moderate interventionists now also unreservedly followed the heretofore extreme line that was providing the rationale for a declaration of war on Germany. The Washington Post’s Barnet Nover explained on December 8 that “Japan today is acting as Hitler’s puppets; in running amok the Japanese militarists are obeying the promptings of Nazi wirepullers.”14 Unreserved condemnation of Germany on the East Coast was now being echoed all over the Midwest. That same day the Indianapolis News headlined with “Hitler pulls the strings. He uses Nippon Army as catspaw to thwart Japan peace elements.” It went on to headline that “Hitler—not just Japan— has attacked the United States” because “Japan [is] under the influence of Hitler.” The News also reported on local opinion as expressed by Kenneth Ogle, the head of the Indiana Committee for National Defense, quoting him in a headline to the effect of “Japs [sic] termed Nazi puppets.”15 Western newspapers had also largely come to the fundamental justification for total war against Germany being espoused by the extreme interventionists. On December 8, the Wyoming State Tribune said, regarding Pearl Harbor, “It may be the Nipponese have done this thing on their own initiative, but ipso facto they come under the overlordship of the German Fuehrer as part of his fighting machine. The lines are clearly drawn, it’s a world-wide battle to the finish between the Axis and the Allies, and the United States is one of the Allies.” The Tribune then quoted Esther Anderson, a Republican state

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superintendent of public instruction, “who added that she felt the Japanese attack was a ‘German war’ and that the time had come to wage a complete war against the Axis powers.” The Tribune then editorialized on the state of affairs that now found “America ‘blitzkrieged’ [by] the Japanese tools of the beasts of Berlin.”16 The analyses of December 7–8 were repeated on virtually every day of Pearl Harbor month, in every section of the previously divided nation. On December 9, the now former isolationist Senator Arthur Capper (R–Kans.) exclaimed that the people of Kansas “believe this attack was inspired by Hitler.” That same day, the now formerly isolationist Seattle Post-Intelligencer asserted in its headline, “Hitler behind Jap strategy.” Representative William Colmer (D–Miss.) then took the logical next step by saying, “I wonder if it would not have been more appropriate to have declared war against Germany, the instigator of this cowardly, dastardly attack upon our Nation than to declare war upon Japan alone.”17 Despite the general consensus over German guilt for Pearl Harbor, it was the longtime interventionists who remained on the cutting edge of both analysis and policy prescriptions. Although the formerly isolationist sections of the United States now echoed the longtime interventionists, it was the latter who offered the lengthiest and most detailed reports and editorials. For example, on December 9 the New York Times headlined with “Ex-aide of Goebbels calls Japan ‘Stooge’; Nazis dictated attack, says Miss Knaust.” The story disclosed that “using Japan as a ‘stooge,’ Germany declared war on the United States Sunday, Elizabeth Knaust, former archivist for Propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels from 1933 to 1937, declared yesterday.” Speaking in the United States, she said that the Anti-Comintern Pact gave Germany “the right to tell Japan when and whom to attack.” In return, Japan would receive Asia, and “part of our western coast.” The Times went on to report that Miss Knaust had been “one of seven employees of the Nazi Propaganda Ministry permitted access to confidential files” before she left Germany in 1938. This report dovetailed well with another story that day in the Times titled “Prior ‘Deal’ Suspected” between Germany and Japan regarding Pearl Harbor.18 The central message of the Times report was echoed by the Cincinnati Enquirer the same day in William Hessler’s column when he said that Japan was “a stooge of Nazi Germany.” The Enquirer’s editors agreed by calling Japan “Hitler’s arm in Asia.” The “stooge” concept or label was second only in popularity to the “puppet” label. Other midwestern newspapers now regularly designated Japan to be one or the other. Also on December 9, the Indianapolis News editorialized that Japan was “now revealed as the puppet of Hitler,” and the Minneapolis Morning Tribune editorialized on the subject of Japan by saying that “these perfidious puppets of Hitler are playing but a secondary part in the Nazi strategy.” The Tribune’s idea was graphically portrayed the next day in a Toledo Blade cartoon. The deceitful Japanese puppet

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was depicted as a duck decoy luring in the U.S. eagle, all for the benefit of the Nazi hunter hidden in the duck blind. This idea that Japan was knowingly acting as Germany’s bait-puppet was alluded to that day by the Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald, which editorialized that “a German victory would mean domination of the affairs of the world from Berlin”; therefore Japan must understand that “her ‘imperial’ government would be merely Hitler’s agent.”19 Japan was portrayed as Germany’s witting accomplice because of the strategic expertise that Japan allegedly lacked and that only Germany could provide. This point was made the next day, December 11, by the Toledo Blade, which repeated the “reports that Japanese planes participating in the initial bombing of Hawaii were plotted by Germans. The Nazi High Command also is credited with plotting the Japanese strategy in the Pacific.” The Blade depicted this hierarchical relationship in yet another memorable cartoon in which Japan was a cobra in a basket and Hitler was the “snakecharmer” who said “Nice work, pet,” in regard to the Japanese attacks on the Royal Navy and the United States. The Blade also ran Mark Sullivan’s nationally syndicated column, which charged that “Japan’s attack” was “part of Axis policy, Hitler policy,” since it was Hitler who was “inciting Japan.” That same day the Omaha Morning World-Herald printed a letter to the editor that was a succinct synopsis of the post–Pearl Harbor U.S. consensus; it pointed out that “Germany is our major enemy and the puppet master of the Japanese war party.”20 Southern newspapers were making the same charges on December 11. The Atlanta Journal blamed Hitler and Mussolini for “the treacherous attack by their Japanese underling, which they instigated as the outrider to their own assault.” The Journal’s Ralph Smith then wrote a column based on his interviews with Senator Walter F. George (D–Ga.), former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, and Representative Carl Vinson (D–Ga.), which was headlined “Senator George convinced Germans directed attack” on Hawaii. The column reported that although documentary and photographic proof necessarily is lacking, none in Washington doubts that the Japanese warships and bombing planes were directed by Germans, if, in fact many of the diver-bombers were not Germanmade and German-manned. Carl Vinson, Chairman of the Naval Committee of the House and thoroughly conversant with Nazi methods, is confident that the attacking planes and ships were Japanese in name only. Senator George is equally sure that the Japanese naval and air forces have been made over during the past months by German artisans and experts. “It is significant, in fact, that since Hitler lessened his air attacks on England the Germans have displayed on the Russian front no air force comparable in numbers to those withdrawn for the Battle of Britain,” said Senator George. “Obviously, many of these planes have been overhauled and flown to Japan. I am further informed, and am prepared to believe, that many of the Japanese warships have been

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remade by the Germans, and there can be no question that the attack was arranged and engineered, as to time, by the Germans.”

Senator George then predicted in detail that Germany would now follow up Pearl Harbor by bombing the East Coast of the United States. He concluded that the “successful [Axis] enterprise in the Pacific—and, I repeat, the Germans maneuvered the coup—may embolden them to make a foray on the Atlantic seaboard.”21 This analysis by this longtime interventionist and administration insider was recapitulated the next day, December 12, by syndicated columnist Boake Carter in the Milwaukee Sentinel. Carter theorized that “if Japan’s attack were part of a gigantic worldwide plan of strategy of the Axis directed from Berlin,” then the United States would be in real danger because Germany could now execute a “lightning turn through France, Spain and cross over into Morocco” in order to effect the “occupation of Dakar.” A secret German deal with Vichy, Carter said, would enable such a scenario, a longtime U.S. nightmare because it would be the precursor to an invasion of the Western Hemisphere. The nightmare would now be becoming reality if the premise were indeed true—that Japan had struck in the west in order to divert the United States away from the main blow now coming in the east from Japan’s puppetmaster, Germany. Because this main blow had long been expected to come via Dakar and Brazil, the southeastern United States had been solidly interventionist for some time, and was still highly sensitive to any Axis activity. Accordingly, Representative Hale Boggs (D–La.) incorporated the premise into his call for action against the long-feared nemesis by asserting on December 12 “we cannot defeat Japan without defeating Japan’s Axis leader, Germany.”22 Longtime interventionist fears and warnings of a German invasion could now be vindicated based on the premise that Germany dictated Japan’s foreign policy. Republican opinion leaders echoed the fundamental analysis of the administration and the longtime interventionists. Nationally syndicated columnist Westbrook Pegler stated on December 13 that “Japan, with ten years of almost continuous experience in war, struck the United States at Hitler’s bidding.” That same day the Wall Street Journal similarly affirmed its solidarity against “Tokio’s Nazis [sic] master in Russia and North Africa.” This premise was now being accepted not only by longtime interventionists in the South, but also by now former isolationists in the rest of the country. On December 12 the Nevada State Journal charged, “Japan’s murderous assault on Sunday, which was inspired and directed by the Hitler war machine, was Hitler’s blitzkrieg carried out by Japanese military puppets.” One famous now former isolationist was British journalist Freda Utley, whose changed position was also based on the consensus premise. Writing in the December 14 Milwaukee Sentinel, Utley argued that “Japan . . . is now forced to fight against

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the democracies for the benefit of Germany” because the comparatively stronger Germany “is pushing Japan in after she had for so long stood shivering on the brink of war with the United States and the British Empire.”23 Most former isolationists were now in agreement with longtime interventionists, as was demonstrated when the former quoted the latter without criticism. For example, a story published on the editorial page of the Chicago Tribune on December 12 and reprinted in other midwestern newspapers discussed a recent case involving Federal Judge William C. Coleman in Baltimore, who had begun to deny citizenship to Germans and Italians after December 7. The judge had done so because “he was doing his part toward lessening the peril of invasion,” which might have been aided by these potential Fifth Columnists. “‘Japan is not merely an avowed ally of Germany and Italy,’ he said. ‘It is apparent, even to a little child, that Japan is only a puppet of these countries. We are, in effect, at war with those countries.’ This was said several days ago.” The Tribune then ran a cartoon that confirmed the Axis hierarchy in a not too subtle manner. The cartoon depicted Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo all dancing together, the figures of Mussolini and Tojo being short, but that of Hitler being tall, the obvious leader of the dance.24 That it was “apparent, even to a little child,” that Japan was a German puppet seemed to mean that the welter of circumstantial evidence far outweighed the lack of direct proof that Hitler had issued a direct order to “his” Japanese soldiers. This kind of apparent presumption seemed to be captured in a cartoon carried in several newspapers on December 14, showing a picture of a skinny arm labeled “Japan” holding a bloody dagger. But this Japanese arm was being held in turn by a beefy, hairy arm over the caption “Whose dagger?” This question was answered that same day by other cartoons that had no doubts about the weight of the circumstantial evidence. The Nebraska State Journal’s contribution depicted Hitler directing Japan to strike the United States, over the caption “when madmen lead the blind.” That day’s New York Times cartoons displayed the most unambiguous assertion of the thesis. One was of a giant Hitler shaking hands with a midget Japan. Another showed a Nazi panzer dragging Tojo by a rope around his neck.25 The rationale of the New York Times for a war against Germany was again echoed by now former isolationists. Published on December 14, but written before December 11, syndicated columnist Oswald Garrison Villard’s column charged that “Japan’s Great Crime” against the United States had followed the example of “their German masters.” The next day, December 15, the Toledo Blade carried DeWitt MacKenzie’s characterization of “Hitler, as overlord of the Axis.” The Blade seconded this assessment in Harry Kirtland’s column, which made the accusation that “not Japan alone, but the centralized directing organization of all the Axis gang, is hurling at America.” That same day, syndicated columnist Boake Carter, writing in newspapers like the Milwaukee Sentinel and the San Francisco Examiner, was by now content to simply refer

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to Japan as one of “these satellites of Hitler.” This term was another of the popular labels, and was used the same day by Newsweek, which reported that “our top strategists . . . regard Nazi Germany still as the most formidable enemy—our real opposite number, with the Japanese as their most important satellite.”26 A similar characterization was also reported on December 15 without criticism by the now formerly isolationist New York Daily News. It quoted for-

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mer ambassador to Russia Joseph Davies, who was “calling Japan Nazi ‘Germany’s puppet,’” in a speech at Boston. During Pearl Harbor week and month, there was no dividing line between press and political opinion in the United States because all spoke the same opinion on this subject. It resounded on this day in Congress as well. Representative Emanuel Celler (D–N.Y.) quoted his own radio speech given three days before, in which he had asserted that the attack on Pearl Harbor had been “made by Nippon’s guns, but directed by Nazi fiendishness.” Again that same day, Senator Prentiss Brown (D–Mich.) quoted a spokesman for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) who had said on December 10 that the union wanted “victory over Nazi Germany and its jackal, fascist Japan.”27 Former isolationists like the Chicago Tribune were now also asserting that there existed an Axis hierarchy, which justified the new U.S. war against Germany. On December 19 the Tribune’s editors summarized the Axis hierarchy, the Axis conspiracy, and the Axis threat, all in a brief scene. The editors saw through “Hitler and Mussolini who like to hide behind a kimono,” and added that those three had better understand that “there is [sic] some folks that we don’t intend to have over here and that’s Hitler and Mussolini and that Jap butler they’ve just hired.”28 Most Americans agreed with the New York Times headline “Germany is held as main threat to U.S.” This was based on the latest Gallup poll published December 23, but taken during the period December 11–19. This national poll found that 64 percent of Americans thought Germany the greater threat, while 15 percent said Japan was. The Times pointed out that “voters who singled out Germany as the greater threat gave two main reasons—that Germany is the ‘core,’ the ‘driving force’ of the Axis, while Japan is the ‘puppet,’ and that Germany’s aims are world-wide.” The poll concluded by stating that attitudes were “fairly uniform” across the United States.29 An example of this national consensus was seen in the December 26 Wyoming State Tribune, which editorialized that “Germany controls Japan almost as much as she controls big France and little Finland. Hitler sent his ablest diplomats to Tokyo. They forced Japan into war.” For quite some time U.S. opinion had condemned both Vichy and Finland as being German puppets based on the popular “World in Two Camps” theory that if a nation was not actively at war with Germany, or was hostile to one of the Allies, then it was Germany’s puppet.30 The U.S. consensus was again expressed on December 31 in an Indianapolis News cartoon that depicted Hitler as the organ grinder holding a leash tied to the dancing Japanese monkey, which in turn held a blood-stained dagger. The picture also showed an infant Mussolini perched atop the hurdygurdy box. The caption quoted Winston Churchill’s December 31 statement at Ottawa saying, “I see little hope for Italy to drop out of the war soon, because the organ grinder has the monkey too firmly by the collar.” Although the exact

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reference may appear a little confusing at first, the issue would not have been confusing to contemporaries who viewed both Italy and Japan as either the dancing monkeys or the infantile puppets of Hitler.31 The next major assertion of this puppetmaster thesis came one week later from President Roosevelt in his January 6 State of the Union address. In this major restatement of the puppetmaster allegation, Roosevelt referred to “Hitler and his Italian and Japanese chessmen,” to which the Congress laughingly roared its approval. This particular puppetmaster metaphor had been publicly vetted long before by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, which on December 13 had asserted that “the Japanese checkermen begin to move with Hitler playing the game.” In his January address, Roosevelt recapitulated other popular themes by singling out the führer in the charge that “Hitler organized his Berlin-Rome-Tokyo alliance.” Thus Roosevelt had charged Hitler with specific responsibility for organizing “his” Axis alliance, and that “they” had attacked Pearl Harbor. This was how New York Times reviewed the speech the next day on its editorial page. The Times said President Roosevelt’s State of the Union address promised that now “the Yanks will be coming” to Britain in order to strike at Hitler in the form of an American Expeditionary Force (AEF) invasion of Europe. The Times then said that “the argument that caused the change was no American argument: it was concocted in Berlin and delivered on December 7 at Pearl Harbor.” This relatively restrained description of Roosevelt’s puppetmaster theme was the counterpart to the more colorful analyses by the more extreme interventionists. For example, the next day in his nationally syndicated column, Sergeant Alvin York condemned “Hitler and his yellow echoes,” the Japanese.32 Sergeant York was echoing a Roosevelt administration puppetmaster doctrine that was still determining U.S. policy by mid-January 1942. Newsweek disclosed this by means of a leak on background from the Washington Conference of the Allies, whose members had decided to pursue a Germany-first strategy because Germany was the dominant Axis partner. On January 12 this leak was made official when the Associated Press (AP) and the nation’s press reported a statement by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox, who had just said that “Hitler made Japan his ‘useful utensil’ just as he did Italy.” Knox’s purpose was to emphasize that U.S. strategy should be Germany-first, not Japan-first. According to Knox, “it is Hitler we must destroy, that done, the whole Axis fabric will collapse. The finishing off of Hitler’s satellite will be easy by contrast. . . . We know who our great enemy is. The enemy who, before all others must be defeated first. It is not Japan, it is not Italy. It is Hitler.”33 It fell to Secretary Knox to push publicly for the Germany-first strategy because by mid-January there had begun some rumblings among the former isolationists that U.S. strategy should be Japan-first. In order for the Roosevelt

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administration to push for the Germany-first strategy, the reason Germany deserved the greater emphasis had to be reiterated. The most politically persuasive way to accomplish this was by continuing to assign greater guilt to the puppetmaster than to the puppet. Conversely, for the Japan-first camp to sell its policy to a majority it would have to reject the puppetmaster thesis. The Japan-first camp could not do this and were therefore hoist on their own petard in regard to their policy preference. Their dilemma was exemplified on January 19 by the editors of the Chicago Tribune, who were again forced to admit that “the war won’t be over until Hitler and his Italian and Japanese stooges surrender unconditionally.”34 Such former isolationists could never have been convinced by mere unsupported presidential assertions of German puppetmastery alone. The Roosevelt administration, however, apparently did not feel the need to support its puppetmaster allegations with detailed evidence because this had been amply supplied by the press. And during Pearl Harbor month the press was full of a variety of colorful and metaphorical devices that defined a German domination of Japan. This U.S. perception of Germany as the head and heart of the Axis may have also been helped along by Hitler’s own delusions of grandeur, as he had been chronically “viewing himself as the senior partner in the Axis,” according to historian Clay Blair.35 The Germany-first strategy adopted by the Allies at the Washington Conference in January 1942, and then explained by Secretary Knox, had in fact been the Roosevelt administration’s policy preference before Pearl Harbor.36 The New York Times reported the day after President Roosevelt’s December 9 speech on his “belief that Germany is the principal enemy and threat to this country,” as well as of “the desire of the Administration to emphasize to the people that there is only one war going on in the world and that the Germans are the enemy that must be defeated.” Pearl Harbor had not altered the administration’s long-standing policy that Germany was still the number-one enemy of the United States, as nationally syndicated columnist Ernest Lindley reported on December 13. This threat perception and the policy it fostered were the result of the U.S. understanding of the Axis power hierarchy. The U.S. government adopted the Germany-first strategy because Germany was perceived as the greatest threat to the United States, because it was the strongest and therefore the dominant member of an Axis that had already attacked U.S. territory.37 Most Americans perceived Germany as dominant within the Axis because it was the strongest member of the Axis. These Americans also postulated that Germany used its relatively greater wealth and power to bribe and intimidate its weaker Axis associates. Through this combination of corruption and force, Americans believed that Germany had not only molded the present Axis, but was also continually seeking to expand it to the other, weaker areas of the globe.

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The U.S. fear of the German puppetmaster had never been limited to just Europe or Japan, and President Roosevelt had been warning about it for years. By January 1941, Roosevelt was warning that a German military conquest of Latin America would be preceded by, and was being preceded by, the infiltration of German Fifth Columnists. The president repeated this warning at various times throughout the year; in July he created a U.S. agency to combat Nazi propaganda in Latin America, which threatened to pull Latin America into the German orbit. Perhaps Roosevelt’s most famous warning in the pre–Pearl Harbor period came in his October 27, 1941, “Navy Day” speech, when he again warned of Hitler’s plan to make “vassal states” or “puppet states” of Latin America. Such puppets were created by the Fifth Columnists who would employ the bribery and the threats needed to bend the puppet to Germany’s will.38 Most Americans argued that the German puppetmaster had employed the familiar Fifth Column technique to cause his Japanese puppet to attack Pearl Harbor. Americans identified this German Fifth Column inside Japan as being composed of the German technicians, and their equipment, who had increased Japanese military capabilities.39 Therefore, Americans asserted not just that Germany was the master of the Japanese puppet, but also and by extension that Germany had indeed wielded this power to cause Japan to attack the United States. The words Americans commonly used in this regard were that Germany “incited” or “pushed” Japan to act. This perception swept the United States immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor and was officially endorsed by President Roosevelt on the evening of December 8. The next morning every newspaper in the United States reported on the statement of the White House: “‘Obviously, Germany did all it could to push Japan into the war,’ the White House said. ‘It was the German hope that if the United States and Japan could be pushed into war that such a conflict would put an end to the Lend-Lease program.’”40 The Roosevelt administration relied on “Magic” decrypts to support this conclusion, with Secretary Stimson noting in his diary that “we know from the interceptions and other evidence that Germany had pushed Japan into this.” Yet even such a defender of President Roosevelt as Gordon Prange has concluded, upon his examination of the decryption evidence, that Magic did not in fact demonstrate that “Berlin called the tune for Tokyo.” Nevertheless, Prange does concede that it was a U.S. “propensity to underestimate Japan,” and blame the Pearl Harbor “Blitzkrieg” on Germany, mainly because it was “successful.”41 President Roosevelt implicitly referred to secret government information regarding this subject in his December 9 speech. But Americans would not need secret intelligence in order to assent enthusiastically to the fundamental strategic perception. Already by the morning of December 8 newspa-

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pers like the Nevada State Journal were paving the way by declaring that “the President knew he was dealing with an irresponsible, power-mad group in Japan, controlled by Hitler and subject to Nazi pressure.” Americans would not need Secretary Stimson’s Magic “interceptions” when they could rely on these mounds of “other evidence” that had been accumulating for some time. This period could be dated from at least September 1940 and the signing of the Axis Tripartite Pact, although Americans increasingly dated it from the time U.S.-Japanese negotiations began to falter in late 1941. On November 2 the Los Angeles Times ran the headline “Nazis goad Japan into Pacific crisis.”42 By the morning of December 8 this was even more apparent to the Cincinnati Enquirer when it declared that “Behind Japan’s ruthless and lawless action we can discern the evil hand of Adolf Hitler, who has been trying for more than a year to shove the Japanese into conflict with America.” The technique by which this was accomplished was obvious to the Enquirer’s William Hessler, who explained that “Japanese leaders, we cannot doubt, were bludgeoned in to the suicidal attack on the ABCD [America, Britain, China, Dutch] Powers by the threats and promises of Nazi Germany.” This carrot-and-stick technique of the puppetmaster was also recognized on December 8 by Congressman John Hunter (D–Ohio), whom the Toledo Blade reported as saying that “Japan is not alone. She was encouraged and coerced by the other Axis powers. ‘In fact, we are now at war with Germany and Italy, as well as with Japan.’” These analysts believed that they clearly saw a situation in which Germany had employed a combination of coercion and bribery on Japan.43 Many long-term isolationists now agreed with the interventionists.44 On the morning of December 8, the Chicago Tribune stated that in Congress, “men of all parties, interventionists and non-interventionists, were going on record in favor of declaring war on Japan. Many were in favor also of declaring war on Germany on the ground that Hitler incited Japan to attack the United States.” The Tribune reported that Tom Connally (D–Tex.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was now suggesting that the United States might declare war on Germany. By December 10 the Tribune could elaborate on this developing story in its uncritical summary of President Roosevelt’s speech the previous evening, which said that “the president pictured Germany as goading Japan to attack the United States on penalty of not sharing the spoils of war, including a stranglehold on the Pacific Coast of the Americas.” This same language was echoed the same day by the Salt Lake Tribune, which headlined that Roosevelt “Says Nazis goaded Tokyo,” and two days later by the Omaha Morning World-Herald, which accused that Germany had “goaded Japan.” The Minneapolis Morning Tribune headlined the December 9 speech with “President accused Nazis of pushing Japan into the conflict.” The Seattle Post-Intelligencer carried the AP report of the presi-

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dent’s speech, which stated that “repeatedly, and with great emphasis, he spoke of Japan’s relationship with Germany. The latter he accused of pushing Japan into the war.”45 On December 12 the Wyoming State Tribune redefined this perception yet again in one of Herblock’s syndicated cartoons, which explained that Hitler “pulls” the Axis into his schemes. This cartoon, in which Hitler wears the Herblock Japanazi armband, also explains Hitler’s strategic reasons. Thus Hitler’s Axis attack on Pearl Harbor was motivated by the Axis failures in China, Britain, and Russia, where his victory was being “postponed.” Herblock predicted that Hitler’s attack on the United States would also ultimately fail. This cartoon is a snapshot of the complex U.S. perception of an Axis master Hitler whose aggressions had become those of the failing and desperate rogue state. It is a depiction of the written description offered by the formerly isolationist Sacramento Union on December 16, which explained the failure-induced aggression by arguing that “the Japanese, at Hitler’s command, have come into the war to engage the United States while Hitler rebuilds his eastern front.”46 The puppetmaster interpretation could oscillate between the concepts of German coercion and persuasion of Japan.47 But it was most strengthened by emphasizing German coercion, since German persuasion could, by comparison, only lessen Germany’s degree of guilt in the conspiracy. The puppetmaster argument itself also had to be advanced over any rendition of an equal-ally argument in order to implicate Germany to the fullest as something more than simply an accomplice. But there was a logical problem inherent in the puppetmaster thesis. If Germany was to be blamed as the coercive puppetmaster, then the puppet Japan must have necessarily been its unwilling victim. Thus, the more guilt that adhered to Germany as the premier aggressor, the less guilt remained to adhere to Japan. The question of guilt and logic could cause some American confusion, such as that witnessed in Frank Kent’s December 17 editorial syndicated throughout the Midwest and West. He stated that Hitler “pushed the Japs into their attack—and they did not need much pushing.” Neither Kent nor seemingly anyone else during that tumultuous Pearl Harbor month reasoned that the more Japan had been willing to act, the less Germany would have needed to push it, thus reducing Germany’s degree of complicit culpability. But Americans like Kent wanted to assign maximum or total blame to both Germany and Japan for Pearl Harbor, even though they were logically prevented from doing so within the possibilities of puppetmaster theory. Yet this thesis was the strongest indictment the United States had against Germany during Pearl Harbor month.48 If Americans wished to argue the puppetmaster thesis at all, they could never neglect to emphasize German coercion, since persuasion smacked too much of a deal between equals. The Nevada State Journal was still following

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the coercive requirements of the puppetmaster thesis on December 19 when it charged that Hitler had “planned the present war in the Pacific” and then ordered it. According to the Journal, “Reports are to the effect that Germany, Italy and Japan are now conferring on war strategy with both Japan and Italy probably ready to take further orders from Hitler.” Hence the complex impli-

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cation seems to be that the German military master coercively issued orders, but to a menial apparently ready and willing to take them.49 Many of these stories of the concepts of coercion and persuasion seem so commingled or conflated that it is often difficult to infer precisely whether Americans primarily believed that Hitler had ordered Japan to act against its will, or whether Americans believed that Japan indeed had any will, mind, or power of its own. Such was the case with a December 19 editorial in which the Indianapolis News reasserted that Hitler had “ordered the Japanese” attack, just as he had ordered the similarly ill-fated attacks on Britain and Russia. The News thus concluded that “Hitler erred a third time when he unleashed the Japanese extremists and set them out on their present suicide course. . . . Tokyo militarists were simply asinine dupes.” In this way the Japanese were perceived and reduced by Americans to the mere “running dogs” of Hitlerism, to paraphrase another popular propaganda slogan of the twentieth century.50 Thus it was not so much that Germany had “forced” Japan to act against its will, or even consonant with its will, as much as Japan seemed to have had no will at all of its own. As the Atlanta Journal concluded on December 21, “Japan got that way—madly and murderously warlike through German instigation of its military and naval frenzy.” According to John Dower, this U.S. perception of Japan was based on a racism that considered the Japanese to be “subhuman” in that the Japanese race was “a cross between the human being and the ape.” Dower concludes that such perceptions were at the root of many Americans’ “long-standing assumption that the Japanese were too unimaginative and servile to plan and execute such a stunning military maneuver on their own. Germany, it was widely and erroneously believed, must have put them up to this,” the attack on Pearl Harbor.51 Dower notes that “in a public opinion poll conducted three days after Pearl Harbor, asking why Japan attacked the United States, 48% of the Americans surveyed responded that Japan was ‘urged by Germany’ to do this. Two months later in February 1942, an even larger number (68.5%) agreed that Japan’s attack ‘was part of German strategy.’” The December 10 poll was a Gallup poll, and the statistic it cited rapidly expanded. This was reflected by the Gallup poll of December 11–19, which suggested that 64 percent of Americans believed Germany to be the “driving force” behind the Japanese “puppet.”52 The December 10 poll also contains political statistics that may reveal an even more subtle or tacit assent to the puppetmaster thesis. In addition to the 48 percent who said that “Japan was ‘urged by Germany’ to do this,” 12 percent responded with “don’t know” as to why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, and 6 percent gave “miscellaneous” reasons. The poll was divided between those who blamed either Germany or Japan for Pearl Harbor, so the “miscellaneous” category may have held no disagreement with the German puppetmaster thesis. The 12 percent “don’t know” response may also not have indi-

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cated an inclination to reject the German puppetmaster thesis, or at least may have indicated a willingness to trust in President Roosevelt’s arguments and leadership implicitly. Such a deduction seems credible in light of other polling data showing that for months after Pearl Harbor President Roosevelt’s policies commanded support averaging approximately 80 percent. The data also show that during spring 1942 approximately 50 percent of the respondents did not understand why the United States was at war, though by late 1942 this percentage began to decline. Regardless, a large percentage of Americans during spring 1942 supported Roosevelt’s policies without professing to know why. This may be evidence of an implicit faith in the arguments and leadership of President Roosevelt.53 Such respondents may also have been the mute but tacit supporters of the puppetmaster thesis in the December 10 Gallup poll. Such a silent segment could have been the capstone on a majority rationale during a Pearl Harbor month when no other reason was substantially and publicly offered for driving the United States into a total war against Germany. The questions asked by the polls dealt only with the puppetmaster thesis. None of the polls even mentioned Germany’s declaration of war on the United States.54 A majority of Americans either believed, or did not reject, the argument that the German master controlled the Japanese puppet’s behavior. This deduction seems to comport well with the statistics in the Gallup poll of December 11–19. This deduction also seems to be confirmed by Thomas Bailey’s 1948 study of U.S. public opinion and foreign policy, which concludes that approximately 60 percent of Americans “commonly believed that the deranged house painter [Hitler] had ordered the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor.” Even this statistic may be somewhat conservative, owing to Bailey’s postwar and retroactive ascription of this wartime belief only to less educated Americans, or as he puts it, “The Man in the Street.”55 Such a class analysis might be confirmed by John Merriman, who quotes the playwright Arthur Miller, who “noticed that the men with whom he worked at the Brooklyn Navy Yard had ‘no comprehension of what Nazism meant—we were fighting Germany because she had allied herself with the Japanese who had attacked us at Pearl Harbor.’” Yet the endorsers of the puppetmaster thesis ran the gamut from spokesmen for labor unions, such as the CIO, to high political luminaries of both parties.56

Notes 1. Although all Axis members were considered equally guilty for the crimes at Pearl Harbor and were punished accordingly, this collectively equal punishment had not been dispensed before Pearl Harbor. The United States had not treated or punished Germany and Japan equally before Pearl Harbor because Americans fundamentally did not view them as substantially equal partners, a justification that most Americans

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understood. The United States had punished Germany more severely than it had Japan during the pre–Pearl Harbor period because Americans had been more inclined to perceive Germany as the master, and Japan as the puppet. 2. The most well-known example of the unequal U.S. perception and treatment of Germany and Japan before Pearl Harbor is the fact that during 1941 the United States negotiated with Japan but refused to negotiate with Germany. For a comparison of Germany and Japan on the subject of U.S. negotiations, see Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932–1945 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), pp. 342–343; Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 10, 1941 (New York: Random House, 1950), pp. 368–369; H. L. Trefousse, Germany and American Neutrality, 1939–1941 (New York: Bookman Associates, 1951), pp. 135–136; William Henry Chamberlin, America’s Second Crusade (Chicago: Regnery, 1950), pp. 156, 164; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 16, 1941, p. A9. Similarly, the United States had not meted out an equal punishment to Japan as it had to Germany for similar crimes before Pearl Harbor. See Rosenman, Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 10, 1941, December 15, 1941, pp. 543–544; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 16, 1941, p. A9; Chamberlin, America’s Second Crusade, p. 150. The U.S. diplomatic discrepancy before Pearl Harbor mirrored a similar discrepancy in U.S. military policy that was implemented toward Germany and Japan, between the Roosevelt administration’s orders to the Eagle Squadrons in the European theater and those to the Flying Tigers in the Chinese theater (on the Eagle Squadrons, see Philip Caine, Eagles of the RAF: The World War II Eagle Squadrons [Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1991]). See Wesley Craven and James Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), pp. 486–489; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 21, 1941, p. A5; Chicago Tribune, December 1, 1941, p. 2. In sum, U.S. policy was founded less on the Axis partnership theory than on the puppetmaster theory. 3. Bernd Martin, Japan and Germany in the Modern World (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1995), p. 260; James Schneider, Should America Go to War? The Debate over Foreign Policy in Chicago, 1939–1941 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), p. 151; Nathan Miller, The War at Sea: A Naval History of World War II (New York: Scribner, 1995), p. 209. 4. William Manchester, American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880–1964 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1978), p. 186; Newsweek, October 13, 1941, p. 19. 5. San Francisco Chronicle, November 4, 1941, p. 12; Richard Current, Secretary Stimson: A Study in Statecraft (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1954), p. 156; The Diaries of Henry L. Stimson, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Manuscript Reading Room, vols. 35–40, reel 7, November 25, 1941. 6. New York Times, November 28, 1941, p. 22; November 30, 1941, pp. 8E, E1; December 1, 1941, p. 18. 7. Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 4, 1941, p. A5437. 8. New York Times, December 5, 1941, p. 4; December 7, 1941, p. E7. 9. Henry Stimson, quoted in William Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 (New York: Published for the Council on Foreign Relations by Harper, 1953), p. 938; The Diaries of Henry L. Stimson, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Manuscript Reading Room, vols. 35–40, reel 7, December 7, 1941; Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 10, 1941 (New York: Random House, 1950), December 9, 1941, p. 522. 10. Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 77th Congress, 1st sess., vol. 87, pt. 9 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941),

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December 8, 1941, p. 9524. See Chapter 2 for discussion of President Roosevelt’s political style. 11. Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 77th Congress, 1st sess., vol. 87, pt. 9 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 8, 1941, p. 9513. 12. Ibid., pp. 9511, 9509. 13. New York Times, December 8, 1941, pp. 3, 4; Salt Lake Tribune, December 10, 1941, p. 4; New York Daily News, December 8, 1941, p. 4; Chicago Tribune, December 8, 1941, p. 4; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 8, 1941, p. 12. 14. New York Times, December 8, 1941, p. 6; Washington Post, December 8, 1941, p. 13. 15. Indianapolis News, December 8, 1941, pp. 7, 14. 16. Wyoming State Tribune, December 8, 1941, pp. 1, 2, 4. 17. Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 77th Congress, 1st sess., vol. 87, pt. 9 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 9, 1941, pp. 9539, 9578; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 9, 1941, p. 9. 18. New York Times, December 9, 1941, p. 43. 19. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 9, 1941, p. 4; Indianapolis News, December 9, 1941, p. 6; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 9, 1941, p. 4; Toledo Blade, December 10, 1941, p. 22; Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald, December 10, 1941, p. 4. 20. Toledo Blade, December 11, 1941, pp. 1, 24; Omaha Morning World-Herald, December 11, 1941, p. 12. 21. Atlanta Journal, December 11, 1941, pp. 28, 29. 22. Milwaukee Sentinel, December 12, 1941, p. 20; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 12, 1941, pp. A5563–5564. 23. Toledo Blade, December 13, 1941, p. 5; Wall Street Journal, December 13, 1941, p. 2; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 15, 1941, p. 9; Nevada State Journal, December 12, 1941, p. 4; Milwaukee Sentinel, December 14, 1941, p. C13. 24. Chicago Tribune, December 12, 1941, p. 18; Salt Lake Tribune, December 14, 1941, p. 22. 25. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 14, 1941, p. 15 (reprint from the Philadelphia Bulletin); Nebraska State Journal, December 14, 1941, p. B8; New York Times, December 14, 1941, pp. E5, 6E. 26. New York Times, December 14, 1941, pt. 5, p. 2; Toledo Blade, December 15, 1941, p. 12; Milwaukee Sentinel, December 15, 1941, p. 14; San Francisco Examiner, December 16, 1941, p. 11; Newsweek, December 15, 1941, p. 17. 27. New York Daily News, December 15, 1941, p. 3; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 10, 1941, p. A5570. 28. Chicago Tribune, December 19, 1941, p. 18; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 16, 1941, p. 9; Omaha Morning World-Herald, December 17, 1941, p. 16; Atlanta Journal, December 23, 1941, p. 18. 29. New York Times, December 23, 1941, p. 4; George Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–1971, vol. 1 (New York: Random House, 1972), pp. 319, 321, 326, 346, 301, 295, 334. This poll’s results conform to all the other polling data examined in this study. For more on polls, see the book’s Appendix. 30. Wyoming State Tribune, December 26, 1941, p. 4. 31. Indianapolis News, December 31, 1941, p. 7. 32. Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, January 7, 1942, p. 6; Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 11, 1942 (New

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York: Random House, 1950), January 6, 1942, pp. 33, 35, 37 (see Chapter 3 for more on Roosevelt’s January 6, 1942, State of the Union address); Chicago Tribune, January 7, 1942, p. 3; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 13, 1941, p. 6; New York Times, January 7, 1942, p. 20; Atlanta Journal, January 8, 1942, p. 1. 33. Newsweek, January 12, 1942, p. 7; New York Times, January 13, 1942, p. 20; Time, January 26, 1942, p. 18; Atlanta Journal, January 12, 1942, p. 8; Indianapolis News, January 12, 1942, p. 4. 34. Chicago Tribune, January 19, 1942, p. 10. 35. Indianapolis News, December 8, 1942, p. 7; Newsweek, October 27, 1941, p. 25; New York Times, November 1, 1941, p. 14; November 9, 1941, p. E5; November 13, 1941, p. 4; December 5, 1941, p. 22; December 9, 1941, p. E9; January 11, 1942, p. E3; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 10, 1941, p. 12; December 12, 1941, p. 10; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 9, 1941, p. 4; December 11, 1941, p. 4; Sioux Falls (South Dakota) Daily Argus-Leader, December 11, 1941, p. 6; Omaha Morning WorldHerald, December 13, 1941, p. 12; December 17, 1941, p. 16; Detroit Free Press, December 12, 1941, p. 6; Salt Lake Tribune, December 14, 1941, p. 8C; Toledo Blade, December 13, 1941, p. 3; Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald, December 12, 1941, p. 2; Clay Blair, Hitler’s U-Boat War (New York: Random House, 1996), p. 435. 36. Herbert Feis, The Road to Pearl Harbor: The Coming of the War Between the United States and Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950); Paul Schroeder, The Axis Alliance and Japanese-American Relations, 1941 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1958); George Kennan, American Diplomacy, 1900–1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951); John Wiltz, From Isolation to War, 1931–1941 (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1968); Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); Thomas Bailey and Paul Ryan, Hitler vs. Roosevelt: The Undeclared Naval War (New York: Free Press, 1979). 37. New York Times, December 10, 1941, p. 7; January 13, 1942, p. 18; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 13, 1941, p. 4. Administration policy reflected public opinion as distilled in a Gallup poll of December 11–19, in which a vast majority of Americans said that Germany was a “greater threat” than Japan. See the book’s Appendix; George Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–1971, vol. 1 (New York: Random House, 1972), pp. 319, 321, 326, 346, 301, 295, 334. 38. Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 9, 1940 (New York: Random House, 1950), January 6, 1941, pp. 665–669; vol. 10, 1941, July 30, 1941, p. 297; October 27, 1941, p. 438; Alton Frye, Nazi Germany and the American Hemisphere, 1933–1941 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967); James Compton, The Swastika and the Eagle: Hitler, the United States, and the Origins of World War II (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967). 39. This German Fifth Column inside Japan is the subject of Chapter 7. 40. Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 9, 1941, p. 1; New York Times, December 9, 1941, p. 1; New York World-Telegram, December 9, 1941, p. 1; Montana Standard, December 10, 1941, p. 1; Nevada State Journal, December 9, 1941, p. 1; Omaha Morning World-Herald, December 9, 1941, p. 2; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 9, 1941, p. 1; Toledo Blade, December 9, 1941, p. 1; Topeka (Kansas) Daily Capital, December 9, 1941, p. 1; Milwaukee Sentinel, December 9, 1941, p. 3; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 9, 1941, p. 1; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 9, 1941, p. 2. 41. Gordon Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), p. 558; The Diaries of Henry L. Stimson, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Manuscript Reading Room, vols. 35–40, reel 7, December 7, 1941, pp. 82–84.

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42. Nevada State Journal, December 8, 1941, p. 4; Los Angeles Times, November 2, 1941, p. 6. 43. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 8, 1941, p. 4; Toledo Blade, December 8, 1941, p. 8. 44. Topeka (Kansas) Daily Capital, December 10, 1941, p. 4; Milwaukee Sentinel, December 10, 1941, p. 14; San Francisco Examiner, December 11, 1941, p. 13; Toledo Blade, December 11, 1941, p. 24; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 11, 1941, p. 8; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 11, 1941, p. 4; New York Times, December 12, 1941, p. 24; Salt Lake Tribune, December 12, 1941, p. 20. 45. Chicago Tribune, December 8, 1941, p. 1; December 10, 1941, p. 1; Salt Lake Tribune, December 10, 1941, p. 6; Omaha Morning World-Herald, December 12, 1941, p. 28; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 10, 1941, p. 1; Seattle PostIntelligencer, December 10, 1941, p. 1. 46. Wyoming State Tribune, December 15, 1941, p. 4; Sacramento Union, December 16, 1941, p. 2. See Chapter 5 for a discussion of the weakened and desperate rogue state. 47. Minneapolis Star Journal, December 13, 1941, p. 2; Milwaukee Sentinel, December 14, 1941, p. C13; Denver Post, December 13, 1941, p. 2. 48. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 17, 1941, p. 4; Wyoming State Tribune, December 18, 1941, p. 4. 49. Nevada State Journal, December 19, 1941, p. 4. 50. Indianapolis News, December 19, 1941, p. 6. 51. Atlanta Journal, December 21, 1941, p. 2A; John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986), p. 71. 52. John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986), p. 324; New York Times, December 23, 1941, p. 1. 53. Hadley Cantril, ed., Public Opinion, 1935–46 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), pp. 1077–1078; George Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–1971, vol. 1 (New York: Random House, 1972), pp. 319, 321, 326, 346, 301, 295, 334; Harwood Childs, ed., Public Opinion Quarterly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942), pp. 302, 311. See also the book’s Appendix. 54. There is nothing in Harwood Childs, ed., Public Opinion Quarterly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942) on the German declaration. But according to p. 311 of the February 1942 poll, 68.5 percent said Pearl Harbor is “part of German strategy”; 0.6 percent gave “Other” reasons and 7.2 percent said “Don’t know.” Hadley Cantril, ed., Public Opinion, 1935–46 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951) offers the same datum of 68.5 percent, and similarly offers nothing on the German declaration. Likewise there is nothing in George Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–1971, vol. 1 (New York: Random House, 1972) regarding the German declaration. 55. Thomas Bailey, The Man in the Street: The Impact of American Public Opinion on Foreign Policy (New York: Macmillan, 1948), pp. 134–135, 86, 12. 56. John Merriman, A History of Modern Europe: From the French Revolution to the Present, vol. 2 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1996), p. 1256; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 10, 1941, p. A5570.

7 Hitler’s Fifth Column in Japan

The United States declared and commenced a total war on Germany in December 1941 because most Americans held Germany responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor. This belief that Germany held and manipulated the reins of power in Japan was as widely discussed in the U.S. press as was the puppetmaster allegation itself. The techniques of control most often mentioned were bribery and coercion, the proverbial carrot and stick. The complex contemporary commentary suggests that philosophical distinctions between these two were minuscule or irrelevant. The two were practically one and the same in the eyes of most Americans, because the carrot was the German arms and technical experts believed to be absolutely crucial to the Japanese war effort. The implication was simple and obvious to most U.S. observers. If Germany threatened to withdraw the carrot, it would have the effect of a stick on a Japanese military already and inextricably committed to a dangerous war in China. In such a way, Germany could presumably coerce or force Japan to act, even against its will, simply by threatening to withdraw the military aid essential to Japan’s imperial security. Thus what had begun as the corruption of bribery—military aid—had become coercion wielded by the puppetmaster. The U.S. press provided the informational premise of the puppetmaster thesis. This had intensified as U.S.-Japanese negotiations faltered in late 1941, as was exemplified by the November 30 New York Times conclusion that “Italy and Japan would be helpless if it were not for the actual or potential support of the German Army. The only free agent in the Axis group is Germany—or rather the Nazi regime in Germany.” This was why the Times in its headline labeled the non-German Axis to be “Marionettes.” The “potential support” was confirmed as “actual” on December 10 by the Associated Press (AP) headline “Japanese air force using Nazi equipment.”1

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After Pearl Harbor, Americans overwhelmingly believed that Japan was dependent not only on German equipment, but also on German expertise to improve and possibly even operate the equipment. As Senator Walter F. George (D–Ga.), the former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, had stated on December 11, “many of the diver-bombers” that had attacked Pearl Harbor had been “German-made and German-manned.” The Atlanta Journal further reported that “Senator George is equally sure that the Japanese naval and air forces have been made over during the past months by German artisans and experts.” As this study has already revealed, Senator George also said that “obviously, many of these planes have been overhauled and flown to Japan. I am further informed, and am prepared to believe, that many of the Japanese warships have been remade by the Germans.” The Journal also noted that “Carl Vinson [D–Ga.], chairman of the Naval Committee of the House and thoroughly conversant with Nazi methods, is confident that the attacking planes and ships were Japanese in name only.”2 Congress was becoming ever more convinced of a close connection between the Japanese military and the German equipment it was using. This connection, and the ever increasing strategic threat it posed to the continental United States, was disclosed, also on December 11, by nationally syndicated columnists Drew Pearson and Robert Allen when they reported that one clue as to how carefully the Japanese and Nazis prepared for the attack on the U.S. was unearthed by the Congressional Committee which investigated aviation conditions in South America. They discovered six Messerschmitt planes recently were flown into Colombia by Japanese pilots. The planes and pilots later disappeared, but it is well known that Colombia is dotted with German “fincas,” or plantations, many of them not too far distant from the Panama Canal. The plantations are isolated establishments, where no outsider can ascertain exactly what goes on. The Congressional Committee also learned that the Japanese had secretly stored [bombs in Colombia]. Another revealing clue was the report that Japanese and Nazi agents had established 12 secret airbases in the Colombian jungles in connection with German plantations.

This report was headlined “Secret South American Bases.” This kind of “evidence” reported by a congressional committee, which had included former isolationists like Representative Everett Dirksen (R–Ill.), augmented other reports and was enough to convince other former isolationists.3 One, the Sacramento Union, argued on December 12 that German technocratic control over Japan was the very reason for the current Japanese threat to the continental United States: “Little doubt exists that Japanese planes, guided by the keen military intelligence of German advisors, are operating off the coast from strategically placed carriers.” Another former isolationist who had been converted to interventionism against Germany after Pearl Harbor was Repre-

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sentative Harry McGregor (R–Ohio). On December 12, McGregor quoted a hometown newspaper in advising the Congress: Let us not be deluded. This is not a war with Japan alone. It is a war with every one of the Axis. Does anyone suppose that Japan would attack a nation as rich and powerful as the United States without assurances of help? Indeed not. The Japs [sic] are too smart for that. Undoubtedly Hitler has told Japan that he can soon win, provided America’s assistance to the Allies is stemmed. Thus, he wants a diversion in the Pacific—and the Japs have agreed to provide that diversion in return for a share of the loot in the anticipated Axis victory. There is only one war in the world today—the Axis against the Allied Powers. Let there be no mistake about that.

McGregor’s argument for a Germany complicit with Japan was, of course, dependent upon his assumption of German “help” for Japan. The Sacramento Union was in agreement on this day as it asserted that “when Japan declared war on the United States she counted the assistance of Germany.”4 A most powerful kind of help during wartime was arms and the necessary technicians to accompany them. This was the substance of a December 12 editorial in the Des Moines (Iowa) Register, which maintained that it was essentially irrelevant whether or not the German military was actually fighting in the Pacific, even though this was currently a point of some speculation. What mattered, argued the Register, were the facts, as Americans believed them to be: the Japanese depended on German-built planes and on the many German technicians and German pilot-trainers, as well as on German help in the “general planning” of Japanese strategy. The Register concluded: It is obvious that Nazi Germany struck at us when the Japanese bombers struck, whether there was a single Nazi in a pilot’s seat or a bombing compartment or not. Figuratively speaking, the little mustache of Adolf Schickelgruber was right there under the nose of every Japanese bomber. And, insofar as Nazi skill and training, or even thinly disguised participation can make the Japanese more formidable, we can be certain that it will be present. Such formalities as declaring war make no difference at all to this. The declarations that have come, therefore leave us quite unmoved.5

This view was acknowledged, even if grudgingly, by even the now former arch-isolationists like the Chicago Tribune, which on December 12 characterized Hitler as the leader of the Axis in a cartoon, and also agreed that “the declaration of war against the United States by Hitler and Mussolini was in effect the confirmation of a reality.”6 The Tribune’s tone in assenting to the new total and declared U.S. war against Germany seemed to be, however, somewhat grudging, or perhaps even restrained. A subtle qualification may even be detected in a story on page six,

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which asserted that at Manila, Japanese “bombers appear to be copies of German Focke-Wulf or Heinkel heavy bombers.” Such an assertion could be interpreted as a subtle dissent in that, while the Tribune certainly agreed with interventionists who argued that Japan had depended upon German technological expertise, the word “copies” implied that Japan had only been partially dependent on Germany, only for the technology, and not for the aircraft themselves. This might imply in turn that Japan could have undertaken its attack with industrial skills already learned from the Germans, which could then have left the Germans with no further technological leverage over the Japanese, save only for future technological improvements. This supposed lack of German leverage could have substantially unraveled the puppetmaster thesis.7 Such a subtle but surgical swipe by the most notorious former arch-isolationist could not, and was not, allowed to remain unanswered for long. Within five days of the Chicago Tribune’s insinuation, the nation’s press exploded with news that contradicted the December 12 “copies” report. The international scoop was provided by the AP in its December 17 story headlined “Japs using Nazi planes over Malaya,” which reported that although the world had previously known that Japan itself had manufactured copies of Messerschmitts, now it could be reported, for the first time, that the Messerschmitts the Japanese were using were actually manufactured in Germany. The AP broke this story under the dateline London, and had reported the source to be the British Air Ministry or, as it was labeled in other versions, the Royal Air Force (RAF). As noted in Chapter 3, Stalin had reportedly informed British foreign minister Anthony Eden on December 16 that Germany had given Japan 1,500 German planes, and that German pilots were flying for the Japanese air force.8 Despite the minor controversy over copies versus imports, this philosophical distinction, like others before it, ultimately made little difference to the puppetmaster perception. On December 26 an Atlanta Journal report from the Wide World Wire Service, which found Japanese air “strength surprising,” explained that “some of their planes were German Messerschmitts—perhaps made in Japan under Nazi supervision.” Even the Chicago Tribune was becoming accustomed to calling a portion of the Japanese air force “German Messerschmitts.” To many if not most Americans, these aircraft had to be labeled “German” in order to explain the continued victorious march of the Japanese across the Pacific. To most Americans these aircraft, being built and maintained in Japan, “perhaps” by key German technicians, were consequently just as German as if they had been built in Germany.9 This was the implication of a report one week later featured by the Chicago Tribune and its formerly isolationist associated newspapers. On January 1, 1942, they still seemed to harbor questions about whether Japan had actually been able to import these German aircraft “through loopholes in the British blockade.” The Tribune noted that “how Japan obtained these air-

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planes from Germany is one of the principal mysteries of the war.” The Tribune and the U.S. military doubted that Russia would have ever permitted their passage due to the chronic Russian fear of Japan, despite the RussoGerman detente before June 1941. The Tribune simply could not unravel the mystery and was left to conclude that Japan had manufactured German copies, but had also somehow mysteriously received imports. The Tribune’s summation of Germany’s guilt was that the skill with which Japanese pilots operate German planes and bomb sights, however, indicates that German experts have been training them for at least a year. No German torpedo planes have been used by the Japanese. Their own planes in this category, although considered obsolescent by American and British standards, have been very effective. The planes of German manufacture in use by the Japanese are bombers, dive bombers and Messerschmitt fighters.

The Tribune then disclosed that the Japanese were also copying the design of aircraft made in the United States and England. Even here German guilt was manifest, because “American authorities believe German technicians were responsible for greatly improving the quality and Japanese production.”10 Most Americans explained Japan’s victories by virtue of its technicians, training, and weaponry provided by Germany. Americans continued to make this connection one week later, on January 9, when it was reported that the Japanese were flying Dornier bombers against Wake Island. That same day, Sergeant Alvin York’s column expressed the conclusions of many when he said, “we know that whatever Japan does comes from higher up the fork. Trace the dirty water back to the head and you’ll find Hitler’s Germany bubbling.”11 As the tumultuous Pearl Harbor month ended, however, some doubts began to surface about the puppetmaster thesis as cracks appeared in its foundation, namely, the extent of Nazi aid to Japan. After weeks of investigation and perhaps reflection, the Chicago Tribune chose to run an AP report of January 21, 1942, that appeared under the ostensibly pro-puppetmaster headline “Japanese arms show influence of German help.” A subtle skepticism could again be found in the article itself, which reported that Japan’s weapons and tactics “betray the influence of German military instructors and advisors imported before the First World War.” Nevertheless, the report still demonstrated the ambivalence held by some Americans toward a German culpability for Japanese actions when it stated that “Japan has imported 85% of her arms,” because industry in Japan itself was so weak.12 After Pearl Harbor month, the gradual emergence of such ambivalent reports and commentary makes it difficult to determine when, or even if, a majority of Americans began to doubt the puppetmaster thesis during World War II. An implicit question for Americans would have hinged on the loyal-

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ties of those key German technicians inside Japan. If they were taking orders from Berlin, then Germany must be guilty of controlling Japanese aggression despite the effectiveness of the Allied blockade. Therefore the U.S. casus belli during Pearl Harbor month, and for some time beyond, ultimately depended on U.S. perceptions of this German Fifth Column inside Japan, and the relative weight of its influence there. Many Americans had long been concerned about this kind of German influence in other countries, but especially in Japan. This concern had reached the boiling point in the wake of Pearl Harbor as a way to explain that humiliating Japanese victory, but it had long been present in American minds, being constantly reinforced by the press. One of the latest examples of this before the attack, one that most Americans could then easily recall afterward, occurred on November 30. Otto Tolischus, New York Times correspondent in Japan, reported on “the German Fifth Column” in Japan. This report was an update of a continuing story that had been reported for months, having been increasingly exposed by investigations like that of Newsweek. Under its September 22 headline, “Nazis in Japan,” Newsweek had reported that “numerous Nazi ‘experts’ occupying key positions in Japan usually keep well under cover,” but “many times recently, correspondents have discovered telltale German constructions in Tokyo’s official news releases.” As the investigation proceeded, Time magazine could report on October 13 that the Japanese army is backed by a powerful German Fifth Column, 3000 strong, giving friendly 24-hour service. Headquartered in Tokyo’s Imperial Hotel and the German embassy, hundreds of German technicians swarm through Japan’s war industries, advise Ministries of War, Navy, Finance. Gestapo agents teach refinements in police and counter-espionage technique to the Home Ministry. German propaganda floods Japan with war documentaries and lavishly illustrated “culture” magazines. German money has taught two important Japanese newspapers (the Army’s Kokumin Shinbun and Hochi Shinbun) to sing the Axis tune. Under Herman Goring’s friend, Helmuth Wohlthat, German experts teach Japan tricks of totalitarian finance. Germany wants Japan to throw its weight into the world struggle: against the Allies at Singapore, in Siberia, or both.13

It was therefore made quite clear well before December 1941 that the purpose of the highly influential German Fifth Column inside Japan was to further the interests of the German government, and that the German Fifth Column was obviously taking its orders from Berlin. This was a story with puppetmaster implications that interventionists like Time had long believed. The only question was whether the more isolationist parts of the United States would be persuaded to fully adopt the Fifth Column premise to the puppetmaster thesis, a question that seemed to be reflected in the Cincinnati Enquirer’s December 9 headline, “Goering aid [sic] at Tokyo?” This International News Service (INS) story reported on the possible presence

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of this key Luftwaffe general in Tokyo to advise the Japanese air force. This same kind of midwestern questioning was also reflected in another Enquirer headline that day regarding the other issue, “Nazi fliers in Pacific?” Longtime interventionists were feeling no need to question these issues, since they had long had no doubts about the German Fifth Columnists. This was the message of the Senate Majority Whip Lister Hill (D–Ala.) on December 9 as he quoted the December 2 New York Herald Tribune, stating that “Nazi experts in Tokyo and their representatives in Bangkok are at the elbows of the Japanese strategists.”14 After Pearl Harbor, it became much easier for isolationists to become interventionists. The Sacramento Union could assert on December 8 that Japan had “acted under the very great pressure of the minions of Adolf Hitler.” The vigor of such assertions did much to resolve the questions being asked in the Midwest. The most influential was President Roosevelt’s December 9 speech, with which the Cincinnati Enquirer would agree in a number of ways on December 11, including its fundamental accusation against “the Japanese and their German technical advisers.” On December 12 the Sacramento Union cited the military clause in the Tripartite Pact to emphatically explain how German overlords could issue orders to Japan’s military, and to argue that “odds are that Germany will enforce the clause in the same way she has enforced it in Italy—by sending technicians and Gestapo agents to Japan in sufficient numbers to virtually take the country over.” On December 14 the Cincinnati Enquirer demonstrated its certainty regarding this puppetmaster premise in William Hessler’s column, which declared that “the Japanese fleet and air force were and are now the instruments of Axis policy, planned and supervised in Berlin.” This was the answer to the Midwest’s question posed in Hessler’s subheadline, “Whose plan?” He elaborated: For some time we may not know how much of the planning and execution of the attack in the Pacific must be traced to Germany. We do know, first, that scores of German naval technicians have been in Tokyo for many months, and not for the climate. We know, further, that the whole pattern of the Japanese assault corresponds more closely to the German military tradition than the Japanese. In addition, we can see that the Pacific conflict is— in its historic function—a colossal diversion meant to weaken American aid to Russia and Britain. . . . Japan gave no sign before Sunday of familiarity with torpedo planes: Either she kept her skill a secret or else her air force has been equipped and coached by Germans lately.15

In a December 14 editorial under the headline “Nazi Fifth Column achieves masterpiece in persuading Japan to attack U.S.,” the Salt Lake Tribune explained that the German Fifth Columnists in Japan headed by the German ambassador, General Eugen Ott, applied “pressure” on Japan via the leverage of his technical experts, who had taught Japan the ways of blitzkrieg,

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and had thus “convinced” Japan to attack the United States. The puppetmaster premise also concurred with Newsweek’s long-held understanding of the situation. It reported on December 15 that in “analyzing Japan’s opening war strategy, U.S. military experts early this week saw clearly the expert hand of the German General Staff. . . . It has long been known in Washington and has been revealed here (February 24, June 16, September 22), that Nazi experts were working in key places in the Japanese government.” Moreover, the Germans “oversee construction of a submarine base in . . . Japanese controlled islands. Other Nazis in Japan have included police, propaganda, transportation, and economic experts. All of these have played a large part in planning, organizing, and preparing Japan for full-scale war against the other Pacific powers.”16 On December 16, U.S. newspapers ran the latest AP report, which some headlined “Nazi agents behind moves of Japan army.” It revealed the continuing story of “Key Nazi agents taking an increasing part in the direction and correlation of Japanese and German total war efforts.” The Chicago Tribune’s version of this headline proclaimed that “key Nazi agents guide Japanese in war moves.” The AP added that among the many German aides dispensing economic and military advice to Japan was the German ambassador, General Ott, who the AP reported had “helped the training of Japanese forces.” The Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald spotlighted Ott in its headline of this story that would “Find key Nazi agent in back of all Japanese war moves.” It added that not only had the Germans “trained Jap forces,” but that German technical experts were also to be found in Japan’s government, administration, and bureaucracy. So dominant were these Germans in the Japanese government that some Japanese had begun to resent their presence, resulting in fistfights.17 This AP report was most comprehensive and most pointed in the New York Times. Headlined “Hawaii ‘blitz’ laid to Nazi advisers. Strategy session at Shanghai said to have approved plan one week before event. Ott called key figure. Reich’s Tokyo envoy guides intrigue through hundreds of underlings in Orient,” the article repeated the AP’s assertion that “behind Japan’s every military move in the past weeks of war and preparation for war has been the hardly hidden hand of key Nazi agents taking an increasing part in directing the correlation of Japanese and German total war efforts.” The Japanese were said to have copied the German/Nazi methods taught by those Fifth Columnists. It also charged that “General Ott and his high-powered propaganda aides call the tune for most of the Tokyo newspapers.” This Nazi propaganda machine in Japan was apparently provided with “ample plans and funds.” Germany was also said to have such influence in Japan that a “Nazi economic expert . . . is shaping plans to reorganize the post-war economy of the Orient.” This Times version also conceded that “despite or perhaps because of their

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growing close association, there is little love lost between the Germans and Japanese as individuals.”18 Despite any such incidental frictions, Americans continued to focus on what they saw as the main trend of German-Japanese relations. On December 31, many newspapers carried a new report “distributed by King Features Syndicate, Inc.” that was written by James Young, “Famous Far East correspondent and author of ‘Behind the Rising Sun.’” As it ran in the Atlanta Journal, the article stated that the reorganization of the Japanese navy and air force had been aided by “Nazi General von Niessel, a former Goering adjutant.” The consequence was that “Japan, under total Nazi domination since a year ago, naturally moved as any puppet under obligation. Tokyo is as free as Vichy and Rome,” which meant, of course, that it was not free when Germany came to “demand Japan move against America.”19 The next day the Journal continued this report, which identified the combination of “Japanese Nazified military fanatics” and German “pressure” that had resulted in Pearl Harbor. The sources for this report seemed credible, because “competent observers arriving from Japan have emphasized the danger of the Nazi plot, German intrigue in Tokyo and the Teutonic operations of Hitler’s Japanese Gestapo agents. It has been no secret.” This infestation was thorough, because “for a year . . . the Japanese Government was in the hands of the Nazi-dominated army,” to say nothing of “the Nazi oil machine in Japan.” German control of Japan was complete, with “the emperor being surrounded by military madmen and cliques, all German trained.”20 Three days later, the Atlanta Journal’s magazine, the American Weekly Magazine, “Greatest circulation in the World,” carried an article headlined “What the Japs may have learned from the Nazis,” who were “their German masters.” The article covered the subject of what “the little brown men of the Pacific” had been instructed to do by “their schoolmaster, Adolf Hitler.” It was not just the traditionally interventionist press that was still running these stories into the new year; so too was the formerly isolationist press. Newspapers like the Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, the San Francisco Examiner, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer also carried the January 4 American Weekly Magazine.21 Both the Times-Herald and the Journal also carried the nationally syndicated reports of Pierre Huss, who had just returned to the United States after an eight-year assignment as chief INS correspondent in Berlin. The TimesHerald’s January 1 version of the report explained how Hitler had been “correlating German and Japanese efforts in the Far East itself” through General Ott, who had “helped train Japanese troops,” and who also had the “job of swinging Japan against America.” Huss also verified previous reports that Helmuth Wohlthat, a protégé of Hjalmar Schacht, had been the one to “shape into line the economic ‘new order’ of the Pacific.” Thus “Hitler’s machinery

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operating against America and the British Empire in the Far East” had been implemented by the “Scores of Nazi agents filtered into the Far East.” Yet the curious thing about this reporting was that, as before, there also appeared in these formerly isolationist newspapers subtle and confused kinks in the puppetmaster premise. That same day the Times-Herald ran a United Press (UP) story and headlined it “New weapons used by foe in Pearl Harbor attack. Twoman submarine, aerial shell, kept secret even from Germans.”22 Such confused but incidental wrinkles, however, do not seem to have seriously wounded the prevailing puppetmaster premise, at least during Pearl Harbor month. This prevailing premise of German Fifth Column control was still achieving currency in the Midwest in the new year. The Indianapolis News ran a January 1 AP report that some Japanese “planes were German Messerschmitts—perhaps made in Japan under Nazi supervision.” The News continued in this vein, by reporting an AP story on January 27 headlined “Two Jap ‘Stukas’ are shot down in Philippines.” In its editorial that day, which commented on the subject of Japanese atrocities and torture in the Philippines, the News blamed “a Japanese military clique that rules the country under German influence.”23 Such reports and the allegations they contained continued even after the tumultuous Pearl Harbor month, but they would gradually recede in both frequency and intensity. Near the end of Pearl Harbor month, New York Times columnist Anne O’Hare McCormick became one of the first prominent longtime interventionists to begin asking questions about the validity of the puppetmaster thesis. But it would be difficult for her and others to reject it outright when, on February 9, 1942, she recalled the Luftwaffe’s dominating superiority over the Japanese air force. Such dominance, when coupled with the still persisting “shock” of Pearl Harbor, continued to lead Americans to believe that the only rational explanation of that event was indeed German domination. Americans may even have been aided in this belief after Pearl Harbor month and into 1942 by the explanations of the German Propaganda Ministry itself. German propaganda broadcasts regularly claimed that Japan was dependent upon German technology and science, which in turn allowed Germany, and the Nazi regime, to claim partial credit and responsibility for Japanese victories. In 1942 it was German propaganda minister Josef Goebbels’s strategy to present each Japanese victory as a British defeat and, by extension, a German victory.24 The propaganda war on both sides may have been at its most effective when it emphasized short political slogans or sound bites, brevity being the soul of wit. The U.S. press regularly presented that kind of view of the German Fifth Column in Japan, and in the process distilled the complex U.S. casus belli against Germany down to the brief idea of Hitler and his minions as the colonial schoolmasters of the Japanese pupil.25

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The puppetmaster thesis and its Fifth Columnist premise were kept alive throughout World War II by various propagandists, including many highly respected intellectuals such as historians Allan Nevins and Louis Hacker. In their 1943 book The United States and Its Place in World Affairs, they reiterated the German criminal conspiracy against the United States, the puppetmaster premise of Fifth Columnist guilt. They repeated the charge that “1500 Nazi engineers, industrial experts, military and naval officers, and other technicians were in Japan helping to make plans for the blow delivered at Pearl Harbor and the campaigns that followed.” In this way many if not most Americans always blamed Germany throughout the war, to some extent, for Pearl Harbor.26 Such U.S. perceptions during World War II have been examined by historian John Dower, who focused on racial assumptions. A personalized rendition of this U.S. perception of Japan was also alluded to by the Detroit Free Press on December 16 when it predicted that the Germans may eventually conquer the Japanese outright, even though the Japanese were, for the time being, “their little brown chums.” This assumption of a superior-inferior relationship within the Axis hierarchy also gave rise to a headline that day in the Free Press, and other newspapers on the AP wire, that read: “Every move of Japs guided by Nazis.” Such a headline was easy for most Americans to believe, owing to their perception that the Japanese were vulnerable to instruction and control by their German colonial schoolmaster. The Free Press concluded that the current world war was primarily between the major empires, so that the current war in the Pacific was really only between the United States and Hitler’s Germany. It was now merely a continuation of an ongoing struggle there since 1884, when the United States and “Bismarck” had almost gone to war over Samoa. The Free Press summed up its rather personalized rendition of this current two-sided struggle by saying that “there’s no divided allegiance now. You side with the seamen who died defending their country, or you side with Hitler.”27 This kind of tight and personalized focus on an indispensable Hitler, or on the relatively small but similarly indispensable Fifth Column he controlled, was a typical propaganda technique of the day.28 After all, Hitler had singled out “Roosevelt” in his December 11 declaration-of-war speech for specific and personal blame as “the main culprit of this war.” Hitler was also prone to lay special blame upon his own analogue to the minority of Fifth Columnist culprits. Hence, Hitler also charged President Roosevelt’s allies, the “international Jews,” the “Jewish-capitalist,” and the “millionaire circles around him,” with special guilt for starting World War II.29 Such a scapegoating propaganda perspective was common to congressmen and senators from across the United States, who were now in agreement with the longtime extreme interventionist Representative Vito Marcantonio (American Labor Party, N.Y.) on the issue of the ultimate guilty tutor.30 On

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December 11, Marcantonio also described the Axis attack on Pearl Harbor as being “in conformity with the concerted plans developed in their international headquarters at Berlin.” Interventionists were certain of what former isolationists were now willing to concede was more than likely. This could be observed in the Washington Times-Herald publication of Captain Lowell Limpus’s nationally syndicated column of December 14, which argued that “Japan pulled a fine mess of Hitler’s chestnuts out of the fire last week . . . as she launched a treacherous attack on the United States and thereby enabled the German leader to distract public attention from his defeats in Russia and Libya. If Hitler planned it that way, the time was exceptionally well chosen.” There seemed to be but little choice for Americans to deduce this, according to historian Thurston Clarke, who recalls that the Japanese were also considered incapable of planning a successful operation, and the December 15 edition of Newsweek carried an article by retired Admiral William Pratt titled “Jap Onslaught: a Blend of Treachery and Skill,” asserting that “the military strategy back of Japan’s attack is fairly clear. Undoubtedly it had its birth in Berlin, for it bears all the earmarks of the Nazi methods of operation.”31

This overall connection was the assumption underlying another report in the December 15 edition of Newsweek, which quoted Senator Tom Connally (D–Tex.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, summing up the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as “the Nazis put them up to it.” This view continued to be echoed by his fellow senators and congressmen, as well as by the press throughout Pearl Harbor month. This simple and focused drumbeat continued to directly connect Germany, its ruling Nazi Party, and ultimately the evil genius Hitler with Pearl Harbor. It seemed the obvious deduction that Hitler’s trademark brand of blitzkrieg warfare had been transmitted to his Fifth Column inside Japan, and then to the Japanese military itself.32 The personalized indictment of Hitler as the primary and ultimate culprit of Pearl Harbor received a reinvigoration when the nation’s newspapers began running a new series by INS reporter Pierre Huss. Even formerly isolationist newspapers like the Washington Times-Herald published Huss’s sensational revelations beginning December 23, which were headlined “Hitler began hatching Jap attack plot against U.S. early in summer, says Huss. Germany reinforced military, economic fronts for U.S. entry.” Huss was not the only widely read reporter continuing to print new stories promoting this thesis in late December. A new Pearson and Allen report on December 27 that the United States now had to divert arms from Europe toward Asia concluded that “it was probably Hitler’s realization of this fact that precipitated the Japanese attack” on Pearl Harbor. Despite the prominence of Pearson and Allen’s column, it was the publication of the new Huss series in late December that

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pumped the major new and supposedly factual blood into the puppetmaster thesis directly connecting Hitler the tutor with Pearl Harbor.33 Huss was the chief Berlin correspondent for the INS, and had been one of the few Americans to have interviewed Hitler. Huss recalled the Hitler interview by saying, “I got a fleeting glimpse deep into his heart on that day early in November 1941, if not into his mind and the secret plan in his pocket for Japan’s attack on us as the first step of desperate vengeance and expression of that very fear I discovered.” The Atlanta Journal began publication of the series on December 29. Huss’s compelling story continued the next day. Referring again to the November 1941 interview, he wrote, “at that moment the master of Naziland had in his pocket the zero hour he had fixed for Japan’s attack on us and the subsequent declaration of war against America on the part of the Axis. . . . Hitler plotted to throw Japan into the war against the United States with ‘sneak-blitz’ attacks on outlying American Pacific possessions.”34 On December 31 the Atlanta Journal recapped the series thus far in the headline “Hitler used Japanese as ‘secret weapon.’ Huss asserts Nazi chief plotted sneak attacks on Pearl Harbor.” In the article, Huss detailed that Hitler, Ribbentrop, and Japanese ambassador Oshima “hatch[ed] out in long and weary sessions the exact details of the plot against America.” Moreover, Huss claimed that “knowing the ways and methods of Hitler after all these years, I could easily imagine the process and procedure arrived at in weaving to perfection Hitler’s two-fold move against the United States.” Huss first revealed that the rumors about a rift between the Axis over the previous six months were merely propaganda meant to deceive the Allies. Huss then said, “I can imagine” how the plot was hatched: Hitler’s pencil drew a circle around the spot identified as Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. He drew similar circles around tiny dots of the Midway, Wake Island and Guam, denoting the Philippines with a cross for occupation by Japan. My guess is that the Dutch East Indies, Singapore and Australia were treated similarly. Each and every pencil mark called for action at a given moment by the Japanese fleet and air force. The consultations over details with the German General Staff and the Japanese military must have been long and lengthy, guided always by the Hitler plan. I left that place with the feeling that something was in the air.35

The certainty expressed by reporters like Huss would go a long way to keeping the more moderate observers, like Anne O’Hare McCormick of the New York Times, on the puppetmaster bandwagon. On December 31, McCormick wrote that “Herr von Ribbentrop broke his sullen silence the other day to affirm that Japan was brought into the Axis to keep America out of the conflict,” but she added that it was Herr Hitler who had confounded that intent when he “prompted” the attack on Pearl Harbor in order to catch the

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United States “off guard.” Many Americans continued to ride the puppetmaster bandwagon beyond Pearl Harbor month, especially in those areas of the United States that had been more inclined toward intervention. This ride could literally be observed in a June 1942 war-bond drive in New York City, a parade for which included a float depicting Pearl Harbor, described by Thurston Clarke as displaying “a Japanese general, urged on by Hitler.”36 Such solidly certain perceptions and rhetoric would be necessary if President Roosevelt hoped to build an equally solid and lasting political coalition to sustain the new total war to victory. Therefore the leaders of the new war policy favored these more pointed and comprehensive justifications, and could not afford to indulge in the rhetoric that had merely assumed a probable German guilt, rather than a certain one. In addition, the leaders of the new war coalition offered another justification, or augmentation, of the puppetmaster thesis. This last variation may have been the most forceful American explanation to argue that Japan had acted as a mere fearful puppet under the lash of the German master.

Notes 1. New York Times, November 30, 1941, pp. 8E, E1; New York World-Telegram, December 10, 1941, p. 10; Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald, December 10, 1941, p. 1. 2. Atlanta Journal, December 11, 1941, p. 29. 3. Atlanta Journal, December 10, 1941, p. 29; Nevada State Journal, December 11, 1941, p. 4; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 12, 1941, p. 11; Sacramento Union, December 12, 1941, p. 4. 4. Sacramento Union, December 10, 1941, p. 1; December 12, 1941, p. 1; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 12, 1941, p. A5566. 5. Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 12, 1941, p. 12. 6. Chicago Tribune, December 12, 1941, p. 18. 7. Ibid., p. 6. 8. Atlanta Journal, December 17, 1941, p. 11; Wyoming State Tribune, December 17, 1941, p. 1; New York World-Telegram, December 17, 1941, p. 4; Chicago Tribune, December 18, 1941, p. 3; New York Times, December 18, 1941, p. 6; John Toland, The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945 (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 248; Anthony Eden, The Reckoning: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden, Earl of Avon (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965), p. 339. 9. Atlanta Journal, December 26, 1941, p. 26; Chicago Tribune, December 24, 1941, p. 4. 10. Chicago Tribune, January 1, 1942, pp. 2, 14. 11. Atlanta Journal, January 9, 1942, pp. 1, 2. 12. Chicago Tribune, January 21, 1942, p. 2. 13. New York Times, November 30, 1941, p. 25; Newsweek, September 22, 1941, p. 10; Time, October 13, 1941, p. 27.

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14. Cincinnati Enquirer, December 9, 1941, pp. 5, 10; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 9, 1941, p. A5481. 15. Sacramento Union, December 8, 1941, p. 4; December 12, 1941, p. 4; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 11, 1941, p. 4; December 14, 1941, p. 15. 16. Salt Lake Tribune, December 14, 1941, p. 18; Newsweek, December 15, 1941, p. 11. 17. Omaha Morning World-Herald, December 16, 1941, p. 11; Chicago Tribune, December 16, 1941, p. 6; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 16, 1941, p. 7; Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald, December 16, 1941, pp. 1, 9. 18. New York Times, December 16, 1941, p. 9. 19. Atlanta Journal, December 31, 1941, p. 12. 20. Atlanta Journal, January 1, 1942, p. 24. 21. Atlanta Journal, January 4, 1942, American Weekly Magazine, p. 10; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, January 4, 1942, American Weekly Magazine, p. 10. 22. Atlanta Journal, December 31, 1941, p. 2; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, January 1, 1942, pp. 2, 4. 23. Indianapolis News, January 1, 1942, p. 13; January 27, 1942, pp. 2, 6. 24. New York Times, February 8, 1942, p. 19; February 9, 1942, p. 14; Ernst Kris and Hans Speier, German Radio Propaganda: A Report on Home Broadcasts During the War (London: Oxford University Press, 1944), pp. 266–270. 25. Topeka (Kansas) Daily Capital, December 8, 1941, p. 3; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 10, 1941, p. 1; Nebraska State Journal, December 10, 1941, p. 1; New York Times, March 9, 1941, p. E9; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 10, 1941, p. 18; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 8, 1941, p. 5; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 12, 1941, p. A5547. 26. Allan Nevins and Louis Hacker, The United States and Its Place in World Affairs, 1918–1943 (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1943), p. 530. This U.S. analytical perspective and indictment was powerful enough during World War II to have also survived and thrived into the postwar period. This survival, however, curiously did not come so much in the form of a continued U.S. historical emphasis on the wartime German Fifth Column threat to the world. Rather, the wartime fear became the model for the U.S. Cold War fear of Soviet Communist infiltration and subversion of various governments in the rest of the world. In this regard, as in so many others, the U.S. experience of World War II became the model for U.S. policy during the Cold War. 27. Detroit Free Press, December 16, 1941, pp. 6, 8; Indianapolis News, December 16, 1941, p. 11; John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986). 28. New York Times, December 14, 1941, p. 8E; January 17, 1942, p. 3; Wyoming State Tribune, December 16, 1941, p. 4; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 17, 1941, p. A5635; Indianapolis News, December 19, 1941, pp. 6, 7; December 27, 1941, p. 7; January 12, 1942, p. 4; Atlanta Journal, December 9, 1941, pp. 9, 16–17; December 28, 1941, p. 10; New York World-Telegram, December 8, 1941, p. 18; December 9, 1941, pp. 1, 25; December 10, 1941, p. 28; Salt Lake Tribune, December 9, 1941, p. 1; Cleveland Press, December 9, 1941, p. 17; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 8, 1941, p. 4; Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 10, 1941 (New York: Random House, 1950), December 9, 1941, pp. 523, 526, 530; New York Daily News, December 10, 1941, p. 30.

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29. New York Times, December 12, 1941, p. 4; Gordon Prange, Hitler’s Words (Washington, D.C.: American Council on Public Affairs, 1944), pp. 367–371, 375. 30. Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 11, 1941, pp. A5582, A5722; December 12, 1941, p. A5549. 31. Ibid., December 11, 1941, p. A5544; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 14, 1941, p. E2; Thurston Clarke, Pearl Harbor Ghosts: A Journey to Hawaii, Then and Now (New York: William Morrow, 1991), p. 226; Newsweek, December 15, 1941, p. 26. 32. Newsweek, December 15, 1941, p. 18; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 15, 1941, p. A5588; Indianapolis News, December 15, 1941, p. 3; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 8, 1941, p. 5; Nebraska State Journal, December 11, 1941, pp. 4, 14; December 17, 1941, p. 8; Time, August 18, 1941, p. 21; December 22, 1941, p. 15; New York Times, December 20, 1941, p. 18; Denver Post, December 8, 1941, p. 2; December 14, 1941, p. 1; Toledo Blade, December 9, 1941, p. 16; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 11, 1941, p. 4; Sioux Falls (South Dakota) Daily Argus-Leader, December 12, 1941, p. 6; Milwaukee Post, December 12, 1941, p. 6; Wyoming State Tribune, December 15, 1941, p. 11; Indianapolis News, December 13, 1941, p. 6; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 17, 1941, p. 4. 33. Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 23, 1941, p. C8; Atlanta Journal, December 27, 1941, p. 4. 34. Atlanta Journal, December 29, 1941, pp. 1, 9; December 30, 1941, p. 2. 35. Atlanta Journal, December 31, 1941, p. 2; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 30, 1941, pp. 1, 6; December 31, 1941, p. 1; January 1, 1942, p. 1. 36. New York Times, December 31, 1941, p. 16; January 8, 1942, p. 20; January 10, 1942, p. 14; Thurston Clarke, Pearl Harbor Ghosts: A Journey to Hawaii, Then and Now (New York: William Morrow, 1991), p. 226.

8 Hitler Threatens Japanese Dupes

When the United States launched its new policy of total war on Germany in December 1941, Americans offered several compelling arguments for it. One especially forceful argument offered by interventionists was that Germany used the threat of military force to control Japan. Sometimes this argument that Germany had forced Japan to attack the United States was presented overtly, at other times more subtly. On some occasions the word “force” simply meant economic extortion, such as the German threat to withhold crucial military aid from the Japanese. At other times, however, the word “force” meant that the Japanese were supposed to be fearful of an eventual and outright German military invasion, if they did not obey German orders. It was this brand of force that would ultimately enable many if not most Americans in December 1941 to find Germany clearly guilty of the crime at Pearl Harbor. Such sweeping guilt then warranted the U.S. response, total war on Germany. Many Americans simply made the unelaborated accusation that Germany had “forced” Japan to attack Pearl Harbor. For example, on December 11, 1941, the Salt Lake Tribune said that “almost every citizen who had given the matter any consideration at all, felt that Nazi prodding had forced Tokyo to act.” Americans had been accustomed to such an unelaborated notion since before Pearl Harbor. On November 2, 1941, for example, the Los Angeles Times had asserted that Hitler harbored the “idea of forcing Japan into the conflict” against the United States. On November 13, Representative George Bender (R–Ohio) had said in Congress that “the German government may bring pressure to bear upon its Axis ally, Japan, to force Japanese aggression against American interests in the Far East.” So too Americans became accustomed after Pearl Harbor to such synonyms as “coerced,” “dictated,” “ordered,” “shove,” and “bludgeoned.”1 The most famous example of these euphemistic insinuations, President Roosevelt’s December 9 speech, offered an elaboration, even though it was 149

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limited to the loaded implications in the single sentence: “Your Government knows that for weeks Germany has been telling Japan that if Japan did not attack the United States, Japan would not share in dividing the spoils with Germany when peace came.” This may have been the extent of Roosevelt’s elaboration, but news-savvy Americans could extract extensive meaning from each of its ideas. They could understand that Germany could do more than simply withhold military aid in the present. Roosevelt’s implication that Germany could prevent Japan from permanently conquering and occupying its “spoils,” Pacific rim territories, “when peace came,” was the key idea that fed the inference, because it implied an ever more forceful German power over Japan in the future, after the Axis had made its conquests and the time had come for “dividing the spoils.”2 President Roosevelt’s implication was that if Japan managed to wage victorious war, it would not be able to continue or even to hold its conquests once Germany had conquered its own enemies and its attention was no longer distracted away from a disobedient Japan. Roosevelt seemed to be implying that Japan believed and feared that when the German-led Axis was victorious, the German military would be in a geostrategic position either to prevent further Japanese expansion in the Pacific or even to oust Japan from its conquered spoils. Roosevelt’s conjuring of such a vision reinforced the puppetmaster thesis of German power over Japan by replaying the long-held U.S. fear of German global conquest. But since Germany was actually now on the retreat in its present theaters of war in December 1941, Roosevelt emphasized the puppetmaster thesis rather than the rapidly decaying U.S. fear of German global conquest. President Roosevelt’s replay of this now outdated fear, however, was obviously predicated upon the U.S. perception in December 1941 that Japan did not understand that the German empire was contracting, and no longer expanding globally. It was easy for Americans to believe that Japan was misperceiving the current situation, because of their own misperceptions of Japan. Americans in December 1941 could believe that inferior and ignorant Japanese would be bamboozled by, and fall prey to, threats by Germany that it would conquer Japan after it had conquered the rest of the world, should Japan disobey Germany. One leg of the puppetmaster thesis had always rested on the argument that Hitler had deceitfully persuaded, or hoodwinked, the Japanese. This perception was aided by another common U.S. perception that was itself predicated upon U.S. ethnocentrism, as described by historian John Dower. The U.S. perception that Japan was bamboozled by Hitler was expressed in DeWitt MacKenzie’s editorial under the Minneapolis Star Journal’s December 13 headline “Japs declared pulled into war by phony Hitlerian horse deal.” The editorial simultaneously explained that Japan had struck Pearl Harbor because Hitler “pushed them into the war by persuading them

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that he was a sure winner.” Another example that encapsulated these U.S. perceptions was the December 19, 1941, judgment of the Indianapolis News, which pronounced that the “Tokyo militarists were simply asinine dupes” of Hitler, who had “unleashed the Japanese extremists and set them out on their present suicide course.”3 In regard to the more specific U.S. perception that Japan feared being conquered by Germany, Americans had developed this belief as a result of the many months of news stories that had portrayed a paranoid Japan as being an eventual target and victim of continuing German global aggression and expansion. This U.S. perception of the eventual German military threat to Japan usually envisioned a scenario that stipulated that after Germany had conquered Russia all the way to Siberia, Japan could and would be the next logical victim of Germany’s insatiable aggression and expansion. Therefore, President Roosevelt had insinuated on December 9 that Japan believed that it would guarantee its own doom if it did not appease Germany by attacking the United States. Americans could believe such a scenario because they had been primed for months by its continual restatement in the press. Such stories would have begun to seem credible to Americans after the German invasion of Russia on June 22, 1941. On July 7, Newsweek’s regular columnist Admiral William Pratt reported that the German invasion of Russia had aroused the fear in Japan of the Luftwaffe in Siberia because the Luftwaffe was more powerful than the Japanese air force. Pratt also reported that Germany was demanding that Japan attack the United States. This combination of reports caused Pratt to conclude that although Japan was now independent, a German conquest of Russia and Siberia could reduce Japan to the status of “another Italy in the orient.” On July 14, Pratt predicted that “a German overflow into Russia as far as Siberia would” bring about a German threat not only to Japan, but also to China, Alaska, and the continental United States. The threat Pratt saw was that “Japan would be encircled by Nazi power” and that “Japan and China would be well within the grip of the Nazi war machine.”4 Newsweek’s prediction was seconded by the New York Times on July 10 as it also concluded that when Hitler conquered Russia, Japan would become “eventually subservient” to Hitler. The New York Times repeated this on July 12, when it predicted that if Hitler won the war, the Japanese would become Hitler’s “vassals.” Despite the confidence of these predictions, there was yet another report in the New York Times on July 11 under the headline “Nazi press Japan to attack Siberia.” Even the New York Times was apparently not fully clear on how formidable the threat from Germany alone was to Siberia. Yet the apparent contradictions in U.S. analyses were not reconciled or explained.5 Many Americans may not even have been that aware of such a confusion simply because of their all-consuming fear of Hitler. None of the nationally

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prominent journals of opinion feared Hitler more than did Time magazine. On July 7, 1941, Time announced that there was now a “grave possibility Germany’s hegemony would extend to the continent of Asia.” Time was predicting that if Germany conquered Russia, Germany would then be able to control China, resulting in the “possible German support of China against Japan, the ultimate possibility that Japan would be reduced to puppetry similar to Italy’s.” Time concluded that “if Germany takes western Russia, Japan may have to invade Siberia in self-defense.” The more one feared Hitler, the more one was not cognizant of other conceptual contradictions that accompanied this fear. For example, like the New York Times, Time magazine was already and simultaneously reporting by July 14 that a predatory Germany was actually trying to woo Japan to aid Germany by attacking Russia in Siberia. Time repeated these reports of the unsuccessful German suit on July 21 and August 4, wherein Japan was concentrating in southern Indochina in defiance of Hitler’s wishes for Japan to move against Russia. On August 18, Time swung back to the opposite pole, stating that “the Japanese were working on a timetable set by Adolf Hitler.” Both kinds of reports can be found within Time for the rest of the year.6 Despite the presence of such conceptual contradictions permeating the perception of the interventionists on this issue, it does seem that their dominant concept was their fear of a Hitler who posed an eventual German strategic threat to Japan. This dominant trend may have even solidified somewhat as autumn 1941 saw further German advances into Russia, not to mention the stagnation in U.S.-Japanese negotiations. By October, Senate Majority Leader Alben Barkley (D–Ky.) was speculating that because Hitler “may well” defeat Russia, Hitler would then “proceed with the enslavement of Asia and Africa. Italy is said to be Hitler’s ally, but Italy is in reality his vassal. That is what Japan will become if his tentacles reach across Asia.” This theory also predicted that if Germany conquered Britain, South America would be the next domino to fall, an outcome not overlooked by Barkley.7 The Senate Majority Leader was declaiming the same threat perception being put forward by the extreme interventionists, which was demonstrated the next day, October 10, by Representative Vito Marcantonio (American Labor Party, N.Y.). Marcantonio made explicit what Barkley had only implied, that a Hitler-dominated Japan would itself then become a strategic threat to the continental United States. Marcantonio said that “a Nazi-conquered Russia brings Nazi-ism and a Nazi army, with a Nazi dominated Japanese Navy, to our very shores.” Marcantonio pointed out that a German conquest of Russia would threaten the United States not only via a subsequent conquest of Japan, but also more directly via a German invasion of Alaska. Marcantonio repeated his warnings on October 16 and even more clearly specified that if Hitler conquered Russia it would put him in Alaska and in charge of Japan, just as he was now in control of Italy. Marcantonio conceded

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that although Japan might now be independent, it would not be so if Hitler conquered Russia.8 Marcantonio’s explicit warning that a German conquest of Japan would in turn threaten the United States was the only element in this analysis that became a matter of debate with the isolationists. By dismissing any strategic threat to the United States of a German-conquered Japan, isolationists were therefore conceding that a German conquest of Japan was indeed possible. Such a deliberate concession put these isolationists in the position, after December 7, of having long recognized that Japan may have been intimidated by Germany all along, an intimidation that would have had a profound impact on Japanese policy. This deliberate and calculated concession by the isolationists before December 7 was exemplified and espoused during the October congressional debate by the outspoken Representative Jeannette Rankin (R–Mont.). On October 17, the day after Marcantonio’s spirited repetition of his warning about the German threat to the United States from the west via a German conquest of Japan, Rankin rebutted his prediction that this scenario would then pose a threat to the United States. She vigorously denied that such a German thrust toward Japan through Russia also meant an ultimate German threat to the United States from that direction. On the contrary, she argued, such a German thrust would actually mitigate any German threat to the United States, because it would have the welcome effect of entangling German forces in another new war, thus diverting them away from the United States. Rankin agreed that such a German thrust would result in a war between Germany and Japan in Siberia, but she did not fear such an eventuality, because in such a war Japan would be sustained by aid from the United States, which was the whole point of the ongoing U.S.-Japanese negotiations. It was the U.S. hope that these negotiations would not only split Japan away from the Axis, but also turn Japan against Germany. Rankin phrased her argument as more than a mere rebuttal of the outspoken Marcantonio, whom she specifically ignored. Rather, Rankin’s argument and rebuttal were directed against the analysis and predictions of the Roosevelt administration, which she specifically named. By focusing the debate on the ramifications for U.S. security alone, however, Rankin had willingly conceded that a German thrust toward, and therefore a threat to, Japan was indeed a real possibility. By conceding this part of the argument, isolationists like Rankin had conceded what would become a fundamental assumption in determining the puppetmaster theory and its generation of U.S. policy toward Germany after December 7, that a German military threat to Japan had indeed been long feared by both the United States and Japan, and that it had obviously had a profound effect on Japan’s foreign policy. In the pre–Pearl Harbor period, this concession by the isolationists was a major tenet in their analysis and argument that rejected any fear of a German threat to the United

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States. By conceding the German threat to Japan, the congressional isolationist strategy was to persuade Americans that German forces would then be diverted away from the Western Hemisphere through entanglement in Asia.9 To this end, Rankin also agreed with interventionists that Japan also feared that Germany wanted back its pre–World War I colonies in Asia. Rankin’s argument was further supported by isolationist Representative Fred Crawford (R–Mich.), who on October 21 stated that Germany now posed a strategic threat to Japan in both Siberia and Southeast Asia. The German threat via Siberia was palpable because of the existence of the trans-Siberian railroad. Similarly, the Berlin-to-Baghdad railroad effectively connected Germany to southern Asia. Crawford charged that Japan feared that Germany wanted the return of its pre–World War I colonies in Asia, in addition to the strategically vital Kra Isthmus in Thailand. Crawford also agreed that Japan feared both Germany and the United States, as evidenced by the ongoing U.S.-Japanese negotiations. On October 30, Crawford told the Congress of the Japanese fear of Germany by reiterating that Germany wanted the return to its pre–World War I colonies now held by Japan. Thus, isolationists like Crawford were pleased to report that Germany was being diverted away from the West, and toward the East. Crawford concluded that the German intent and threat toward Japan were being demonstrated because “the German advance eastward to the Pacific is going forward inexorably.”10 Newsweek further elaborated on a German strategic threat to Japan on October 27, reporting that Germany was using its “Chinese puppet, Wang Ching-wei, urging him to stand up to the Japanese. It’s apparently another method of bringing pressure on Japan” in order to force Japan to submit to Germany’s demand that it attack Russia. The German strategic threat to Japan was obvious, Newsweek argued, because “in case of a Soviet collapse, the Japanese would have to move swiftly to beat the Germans into Vladivostok.” For these and many other reasons Newsweek concluded that the Japanese were being “goaded on by their Axis partner to play the role of cats-paw” against the Allies and the United States. Yet this same issue of Newsweek also predicted that the “odds are” that Germany would eventually bog down in Russia as Japan had in China. Such a conceptual contradiction undermining the entire German threat perception toward Japan does not seem to have been recognized by Newsweek, much less addressed or examined. It was this potent mixture of apparent irrationality and paranoia in the pre–Pearl Harbor period that would explode in its full fury afterward.11 The pre–Pearl Harbor U.S. perception of the German threat to Japan was continually repeated in Congress. On November 5, Senator Claude Pepper (D.–Fla.) stated that Japan and Italy continued to be “a little scared of Germany.” Pepper had long been one of the interventionist South’s most prominent spokesmen. This U.S. perception of the German threat to Japan was also expressed by a leading organ of opinion in the Far West, the Los Angeles

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Times, which on November 6 noted the common belief that Japan was a paper tiger. But more importantly, the Times also believed that Germany thought so too. On November 13, nationally syndicated columnist Walter Lippmann wrote about the consequence, that Japan was fearful of a German conquest of the British and Dutch East Indies.12 The pre–Pearl Harbor evidence demonstrates that many if not most Americans believed that Germany was a strategic threat to Japan, and they believed that Japan believed it too. This assumption had been conceded by both isolationists and interventionists as common tactics in the service of opposing political strategies. The Atlantic Monthly reiterated and summarized the interventionist assumptions and strategy in November 1941. It still feared that Germany and Japan would jointly conquer all of the Eastern Hemisphere, and that this would be followed by a German conquest of the Japanese empire and all of the Eastern Hemisphere. This would be only the precursor to a subsequent German conquest of the Western Hemisphere as well, a German global conquest.13 In the days before Pearl Harbor, the scenario that Japan would eventually be threatened and conquered by its erstwhile ally, Germany, was repeatedly urged on Americans and on the Japanese, via the media of diplomacy and the press. This message was again publicly disseminated on November 30 over the United Press (UP) wire, this time by Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty, A. V. Alexander. The New York Times headline read, “Briton calls Italy example to Japan. Alexander warns Tokyo not to expect any other fate if she follows Hitler.” According to Alexander, “Japan can expect nothing from Adolf Hitler except what the Italians got. She will be used to further his evil designs and will be tricked and cast aside when she has served Hitler’s purpose. Hitler is fatal to his friends.” The U.S. government promoted the same message as U.S.-Japanese negotiations reached the crisis point in late November. The December 1 issue of Time magazine quoted Secretary of State Cordell Hull as having warned Japanese envoy Saburo Kurusu that “you are on Hitler’s list before us,” meaning that “long before Hitler is prepared to take on North America, he must have Japan completely subservient to his will.” The New York Times elaborated on this prediction on December 5 by publishing a letter asserting that “under no circumstances could it be admitted that a victorious Germany would allow Japan to contaminate China with its military ardor and passion of conquest,” even though “it is in the interest of Hitler now to encourage” it.14 The New York Times went on to explain why Hitler would now be pursuing one policy toward Japan, which would be followed later by a policy reversal. The Times published a UP story explaining that “diplomatic circles” were saying that Germany wanted to incite a war between Japan and the Allies now, not only to divert the Allies from Europe, but also to enable a Germany victorious in Europe to then march into a war-torn and weakened Asia and seize

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it by simply stooping to pick up the pieces. According to the UP/Times story, “the long-range German program was not averse to destruction of Japanese power so that Germany would be able to control the wealth of the Far East in the event of victory in Europe.” In its last issue before Pearl Harbor, Newsweek repeated the warning of the German threat to Japan. Regular columnist Admiral William Pratt insisted that Germany might still conquer Russia and Siberia, which would make Germany a greater threat to Japan than Russia ever was. Such a scenario would place Hitler in the same position toward Japan as he was toward Italy and the European satellites, namely Japan’s “master.”15 This was how most Americans of all political stripes viewed German power in relation to Japan. Americans believed that Japan’s foreign policy was motivated by either the carrot of German trickery or the stick of German intimidation, or both simultaneously. This U.S. perception had become ingrained before Pearl Harbor and persisted throughout Pearl Harbor month and beyond. This perception became a fundamental U.S. casus belli toward Germany after Pearl Harbor, which is why it was important for Americans to restate it repeatedly after that attack. Thus on December 13 the Sioux Falls (South Dakota) Daily Argus-Leader reiterated the proposition that if the Japanese “should win with Germany, they would become subject to Germany’s will.” On December 16 the Detroit Free Press predicted that if “Germany should emerge triumphant, it will not be long before they take away from their little brown chums [the Japanese] all that they have seized. If they don’t, Hitler will be going contrary to all that he proclaimed in ‘Mein Kampf.’”16 This was a virtual reiteration of the prediction in President Roosevelt’s December 9 speech. Not only did Americans believe this, but they were also certain that the Japanese believed it and therefore feared Germany. This perception underlay the notion that fear of Germany had influenced, if not dictated, Japan’s recent foreign policy. As the New York Times reported on December 21, “a certain Japanese diplomat” said Japan “must have Siberia as far west as Lake Baikal. We must set up a buffer to keep the Germans away from Japan” after Germany conquered Russia. This report also suggested that Japan had been subject not only to German threats, but also to its promises. Yet it was the fear that was seemingly uppermost in the Japanese mind, because all realized by now that the Germans “are past masters of the double-cross.”17 In order to sustain the U.S. casus belli against Germany during Pearl Harbor month, Americans had to be thoroughly convinced that Germany was a real threat to Japan. On January 9, 1942, the Atlanta Journal argued that Hitler’s racism proved that he was anxious to attack Japan eventually. The Journal said that it was only a temporary Axis alliance within which “Hitler includes the Italians and the Japanese. Only till he doesn’t need them anymore. The world under his heel, they’ll be under his heel with the rest. He

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likes a Jap no more than he likes a Jew.” The January 26 issue of Newsweek restated and elaborated on the alleged Japanese fear of Germany. Under the headline “Nazi Orient Program,” Newsweek reported that Japan’s hurried efforts to organize Thailand and the Philippines economically may well indicate Tokyo’s fear of Nazi post-war plans for the orient after an Axis victory. Weeks before the Pacific war started, Tokyo had evidence indicating that Hitler had no intention of granting it full hegemony in the Far East. Japan knew that crack Hitler agents like Fritz Wiedeman, Heinrich Stahmer, Hans Borchers, and Christian Zinsser were busily trying to weld economic ties with the Nanking puppet government in China and with Indochina. Tokyo also had reason to believe that German efforts to settle the China “incident” were motivated as much by a desire to obtain a SinoGerman “understanding” as to free Japan’s hands for a Pacific war.18

This was by now an old story, simply reappearing with new embroidery. The press had long informed Americans that Germany could intimidate Japan directly via Siberia, or indirectly via a Chinese “puppet.” These were the ultimate German weapons that could force Japan into an aggressive policy in the Pacific. The result was that most Americans believed that Japan had felt German pressure, and that this pressure had caused the Japanese to attack the United States. The pressure of a German strategic/military threat against Japan was the strongest and most damning reason possible Americans could rely on in order to hold Germany fully responsible for Pearl Harbor. Hence, after Pearl Harbor, Americans could believe that their war in the Pacific was being fought at least as much against Germany as it was against Japan. Americans could hold this perception because they had been predisposed to it long before Pearl Harbor. After Pearl Harbor, Americans would in large measure believe that their Asia-Pacific policy was being directed against both Japan and Germany. This was not a great leap in the basis of U.S. foreign policy toward Asia and the Pacific, including Japan, because official U.S. policy had always been primarily based on the perceived threat from Germany. Before Pearl Harbor, the key U.S. motive for opposing Japanese aggression in Asia was the perception that such Japanese aggression would aid Germany. U.S. (and British) policy opposed Japan not primarily because of fear of Japan, but fear of Germany.19 President Roosevelt’s only major speech on the subject of Japan before Pearl Harbor, on July 24, 1941, explained the underlying reason for U.S. policy. Explaining the total U.S. embargo on Japan, Roosevelt said that the United States had taken this extraordinarily provocative step in response to the recent Japanese occupation of southern Indochina.20 Roosevelt gave many reasons why the United States needed to vigorously oppose Japanese expansion, but the most powerful and persuasive reason was fear of an eventual invasion of the United States.

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President Roosevelt did not justify in this speech the new U.S. policy against Japan as a measure to prevent a Japanese invasion of the United States. Rather, he justified the new policy as a measure to hinder German expansion, which was the only Axis expansion that he ever warned, before Pearl Harbor, as threatening a military invasion of the United States. Specifically, Roosevelt justified the embargo on Japan as a measure to aid Britain’s maintenance of its imperial supply line to Asia. Most Americans had long understood the fundamental necessity of strengthening Britain and its empire because, as Roosevelt had repeatedly stated, a strong Britain was needed in order to prevent a German invasion of the United States. Roosevelt gave another similarly important reason to justify U.S. opposition to Japanese expansion, also stemming from the same underlying motive. The United States, he explained, needed to secure Asian raw materials to feed the U.S. defense industry, which, as Americans had repeatedly been told, was primarily needed to build the weapons that would counter the preeminent threat of German expansion. Roosevelt said that the U.S. embargo was necessary to prevent further Japanese expansion in the South Pacific where we had to get a lot of things—rubber, tin—and so forth and so on—down in the Dutch Indies, the Straits Settlements, and Indo-China. And we had to help get the Australian surplus of meat and wheat, and corn, for England. It was very essential from our own selfish point of view of defense to prevent a war starting in the South Pacific . . . we wanted to keep that line of supplies from Australia and New Zealand going to the Near East. . . . So it was essential for Great Britain that we try to keep peace down there in the South Pacific . . . keeping war out of the South Pacific for our own good, for the good of Great Britain, and the freedom of the seas.21

President Roosevelt stuck to this rationale and repeated it in another major speech, his January 6, 1942, State of the Union address. He said that when Hitler organized his Berlin-Rome-Tokyo alliance, all these plans of conquest became a single plan. Under this, in addition to her own schemes of conquest, Japan’s role was obviously to cut off our supply of weapons of war to Britain, and Russia and China—weapons which increasingly were speeding the day of Hitler’s doom. The Act of Japan at Pearl Harbor was intended to stun us—to terrify us to such an extent that we would divert our industrial and military strength to the Pacific area, or even to our own continental defense.22

It seemed clear to contemporary Americans that U.S. policy toward Japan was predicated on U.S. strategic perceptions and fear of Germany. Some historians have recognized this reality, although it has been the major historiographical trend since World War II to separate retroactively the bases of U.S.

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policy toward Japan and Germany as much as possible. Manfred Jonas, however, compromises somewhat and says that U.S. policy against Japan was determined “in part because” of a U.S. need to defend the Allies against Germany. Jonas provides another clue to the coherence of this rationale that undergirded U.S. policy when he states that the overall U.S. strategy was “to prevent” a British defeat at the hands of Germany. Jonas seems to imply that contemporary Americans made no separation between the Axis allies.23 As a historian of American isolationism, Jonas seems to be more attuned to the motives of contemporary Americans than are many historians who have focused primarily on foreign policy. Historians of isolationism seem more attuned to the contemporary political debate as it revealed contemporaries’ political motives. Another historian of isolationism, Wayne Cole, has similarly focused on the contemporary motives underlying U.S. policy toward Japan. Cole notes that isolationist critics of U.S. policy attacked the central rationale enunciated by President Roosevelt in July 1941, aid to Britain against Germany. The critique offered by the America First Committee was that the United States had “never raised a finger for China in her four years of war until Britain’s eastern empire became involved.” Cole cites Roosevelt’s justification of U.S. policy toward Japan by explaining how the president stated that Asia affected Britain because the British empire needed the “vast resources” of economic and military materials in order to fight “their enemies.” It was Britain’s primary enemy, Germany, that had necessitated LendLease. In order for Britain to survive, Roosevelt explained, it needed the maximum amount of defense materials, and so British defense strategy needed to be “global.”24 Britain shared this common understanding of the basis of policy toward Japan. As Prime Minister Winston Churchill told President Roosevelt at Argentina Bay in August 1941, he “feared that the Japanese Navy might cut Britain’s lifeline to the commonwealth.” This rationale undergirding Allied and U.S. policy toward Japan was repeated well into 1942 by nationally syndicated columnist and longtime interventionist Ernest Lindley in his book How War Came. Lindley repeated the motives put forward by Roosevelt in his July 1941 speech and concluded that the president had based his policy toward Japan upon the defense of Britain. The analysis offered by Lindley in the post–Pearl Harbor period concurred with that of the formerly isolationist Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, which explained on December 27, 1941, that U.S. defense of the Philippines was not predicated upon retention of the territory as a prerequisite for the direct defense of the continental United States. Congress had recognized the strategic irrelevance of the Philippines by legislating in 1934 that the territory be granted independence from the United States in 1946. Rather, the U.S. strategic need to defend the Philippines was now predicated upon retention of the territory as an aid to Britain in Singapore.25

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It was well understood by most Americans that the U.S. need to defend Britain was itself predicated upon U.S. defense against the primary threat, Germany. Thus U.S. policy was constructed upon an early version of the popular domino theory. Most Americans also recognized that U.S. policy toward Japan was ultimately predicated upon national defense against Germany. That defense was to be indirectly aided by British and U.S. access to Asian strategic raw materials. As the U.S.-Japanese crisis began to intensify in middle to late November 1941, the New York Times repeatedly explained that this was the basis of U.S. opposition to Japanese expansion. Americans needed to know that U.S. opposition toward Japan was not being undertaken to fight an extra and separate foreign aggression, in addition to the fight against Germany. Americans were told, and were telling themselves, that U.S. policy toward Asia was not an extra and separate burden to be shouldered, but was an indivisible subset of the policy toward Germany.26 On November 30, 1941, the New York Times explained that the intensifying U.S. opposition to Japan was to prevent “involving the United States in the Pacific area and lessening aid to the British and their allies across the Atlantic.” Indeed, any such Pacific war launched by Japan would be the result of “a Hitler squeeze-play.” The result was that the United States made two major demands on Japan, that it cease its aggression, and that it withdraw from the Axis. Both of these demands were inextricably interconnected in the U.S. view. On the morning of December 7, before the attack, the Times repeated its analysis of the major motives behind U.S. policy toward Japan. These were, in order of presentation by the Times, first, defense of the British empire, and second, retention of strategic raw materials vital to U.S. defense. As to the priority of importance of these two to U.S. interests, the Times repeated columnist Anne O’Hare McCormick’s assessment that British interests in the Far East were greater than U.S. interests there. As to the nature of Britain’s specific interest in the Far East, Times columnist Arthur Krock had explained during the previous week that Britain needed Asian raw materials for defense against Germany.27 Thus it had long been clear to most Americans before Pearl Harbor that U.S. policy toward Japan was predicated upon U.S. perceptions of Germany. It was therefore quite natural that most Americans would also accept the puppetmaster theory under which U.S. policy was again predicated on the predominating German implications in the Pacific. The propagation of the puppetmaster thesis came into full bloom after Pearl Harbor, though it had existed in embryonic form before. The U.S. perception of German mastery over Japan was based on the many assumptions regarding a German threat to Japan if it defied Hitler’s will, not least the belief in a German threat to send military forces to East Asia in order to promote a war against the Allies there. This assumption was stated both before and after Pearl Harbor by newspapers and politicians from all sections of the United States.28

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Whether such a German military entry into Asia and the Pacific was to be in the form of aid to, or of a threat against Japan, was a paradox that most Americans neither reconciled nor felt the need to reconcile. Most Americans were relatively certain both before and after Pearl Harbor that German military power and influence over Japan was a fact, whether benign or (from the Japanese viewpoint) malign. This was why Americans had described Japan as either a dependant enthusiastic ally of Germany, or an intimidated puppet of Germany. Some of the more analytical U.S. pundits seem to have recognized that Japan could not necessarily or logically be both at the same time, which is why they usually gravitated toward defining the concept of an Axis “ally” to be more accurately a mere euphemism for the concept of a “puppet.”29 Despite some of the rather complicated notions put forward by Americans as Pearl Harbor month progressed, the premier notion undergirding the U.S. casus belli against Germany—the unadulterated puppetmaster theory, continued to find mainstream acceptance in the U.S. body politic. It was restated with a vengeance in the highly publicized keynote speech of Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles to the “Rio Conference” of Western Hemisphere nations in Brazil, on January 15, 1942. The New York Times, for example, carried this address and made no criticisms of its assumption regarding the key U.S. casus belli against Germany. Welles spoke of the Axis Tripartite Pact of September 1940, “which made Japan the submissive tool of Hitler” in the effort to hinder U.S. aid to Britain. Welles elaborated, saying that Hitler had been able to inveigle the war lords in control of the Japanese Government into believing that should Japan carry out German orders and were the western democracies defeated, Germany would permit Japan to control the Far East. Hitler would, of course, take her spoils from Japan whenever he saw fit.

This analysis was largely an embroidered repetition of President Roosevelt’s December 9 speech. Welles also saw Pearl Harbor as “the Japanese warlords, under the orders of their German masters, adopting the same methods of deceit and treachery which Hitler has made.” The attack on Pearl Harbor, he concluded, was but another step in Hitler’s “plans to conquer the entire world.”30 Welles, and the government on whose behalf he spoke, identified the origins of German puppetmastery over Japan as having begun in September 1940 with the signing of the Axis pact. Many others, including Secretary of State Cordell Hull and President Roosevelt, said the same thing, citing the 1940 Axis Tripartite Pact itself not only as evidence of German puppetmastery over Japan, but ultimately as evidence of Germany’s responsibility and guilt for Pearl Harbor. The Roosevelt administration led the nation in this assertion, which produced an overwhelming number of adherents.

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Notes 1. Salt Lake Tribune, December 11, 1941, p. 12; Los Angeles Times, November 2, 1941, pt. 2, p. 5; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), November 13, 1941, p. A5183; Toledo Blade, December 8, 1941, p. 8; Cleveland Press, December 8, 1941, p. 4; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 8, 1941, p. 4. 2. Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 10, 1941, p. 6A. 3. Minneapolis Star Journal, December 13, 1941, p. 2; Indianapolis News, December 19, 1941, p. 6; John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986). 4. Newsweek, July 7, 1941, p. 22; July 14, 1941, p. 24. 5. New York Times, July 10, 1941, p. 18; July 12, 1941, p. 12; July 11, 1941, p. 4. 6. Time, July 7, 1941, p. 22; July 14, 1941, p. 24; July 21, 1941, p. 22; August 4, 1941, p. 21; August 18, 1941, p. 21; October 6, 1941, p. 34; October 13, 1941, p. 27; November 3, 1941, p. 23; November 10, 1941, p. 29; November 17, 1941, p. 27; December 1, 1941, p. 13. 7. Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), October 9, 1941, p. A4681. See Chapter 10 for a fuller explanation of the domino theory, circa 1941. 8. Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), October 10, 1941, pp. A4599–A4600; October 16, 1941, pp. 4686–4687. 9. Ibid., October 17, 1941, pp. A4715–A4716. 10. Ibid., October 21, 1941, p. A4761; October 30, 1941, p. A4897. 11. Newsweek, October 27, 1941, pp. 11, 28, 25. 12. Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), November 5, 1941, p. A4997; Los Angeles Times, November 6, 1941, pt. 2, p. 4; Washington Post, November 13, 1941, p. 17. 13. Readers Digest, December 1941, pp. 107–110, quoting Atlantic Monthly, November 1941. 14. New York Times, November 30, 1941, p. 32; December 5, 1941, p. 22; Time, December 1, 1941, pp. 13–14. 15. New York Times, December 5, 1941, p. 4; Newsweek, December 8, 1941, p. 27. 16. Sioux Falls (South Dakota) Daily Argus-Leader, December 13, 1941, p. 6; Detroit Free Press, December 16, 1941, p. 6. 17. New York Times, December 21, 1941, p. 21. 18. Atlanta Journal, January 9, 1942, p. 18; Newsweek, January 26, 1942, p. 11. 19. This was analogous to the later U.S. Cold War opposition to third-world Communists, whom the United States opposed, in large measure, because of their ties to the Soviet Union. 20. Herbert Feis, The Road to Pearl Harbor: The Coming of the War Between the United States and Japan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950); Paul Schroeder, The Axis Alliance and Japanese-American Relations, 1941 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1958); George Kennan, American Diplomacy, 1900–1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951); John Wiltz, From Isolation to War, 1931–1941 (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1968); Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979);

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Thomas Bailey and Paul Ryan, Hitler vs. Roosevelt: The Undeclared Naval War (New York: Free Press, 1979). 21. Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 10, 1941 (New York: Random House, 1950), July 24, 1941, p. 280. 22. Ibid., vol. 11, 1942, January 6, 1942, p. 33. 23. Jonas’s implication would not only be bucking the historiographical trend since World War II, but it would also be correct. Manfred Jonas, The United States and Germany: A Diplomatic History (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), pp. 257–258; Warren Kimball, ed., Franklin D. Roosevelt and the World Crisis, 1937–1945 (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973), p. xvii. 24. Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932–1945 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), pp. 499, 491. 25. Gordon Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), p. 846; Forrest Davis and Ernest Lindley, How War Came: An American White Paper, from the Fall of France to Pearl Harbor (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942), p. 258; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 27, 1941, p. 12. 26. New York Times, November 16, 1941, p. 27; November 17, 1941, p. 7; November 23, 1941, p. E5; November 25, 1941, p. 5; November 26, 1941, p. 8; November 28, 1941, pp. 4, 22; November 29, 1941, p. 3. 27. New York Times, November 30, 1941, pp. E1, E3; December 7, 1941, pp. E1, 6E. 28. New York Times, November 30, 1941, p. E3; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 12, 1941, p. A5566. 29. Many newspapers in all sections of the United States, including the Midwest, described Japan’s relation with Germany as either an ally or a puppet, or even both. Atlanta Journal, December 10, 1941, p. 22; December 14, 1941, p. 15; Topeka (Kansas) Daily Capital, December 15, 1941, p. 4; New York Times, December 20, 1941, p. 18. 30. New York Times, January 16, 1942, pp. 1, 4.

9 Nobody Knows: Better Safe Than Sorry

The degree of certainty promoted by the puppetmaster thesis was enough to carry the nation into total war against Germany during the week and month following the attack on Pearl Harbor. This degree of certainty was, however, sometimes accompanied by a small degree of contradiction or confusion, though not significant enough to halt the momentum toward war with Germany. Nevertheless, it is important to examine the minority counter-trend that contradicted the predominant puppetmaster thesis. After Pearl Harbor month, a major U.S. casus belli against Germany seemed to mutate somewhat and become based on the German U-boat offensive that advanced to the U.S. coastline by mid-January 1942. If this became the major U.S. casus belli against Germany, then it might be inferred that the puppetmaster theory had begun to erode as a major motivator of U.S. belligerence. Since the evidence suggests such a transition, it is historically valuable to identify the rudimentary origins of the political counter-trend away from the puppetmaster thesis. It is historically valuable as well to show that even during Pearl Harbor week and month, the U.S. press published some news and views that seemingly contradicted the dominant puppetmaster theory. Americans were apprised of this minority counter-trend, but apparently chose to reject it in favor of a preponderant belief in the puppetmaster thesis. If this were the case, then it can be argued that Americans freely chose their path to total war despite the presence of alternative assumptions. The identification and isolation of this minority counter-trend may also be helpful in underscoring the trace element of apparent confusion or contradiction that seemed occasionally to arise in the various periods under study. One aspect of this confusion was the U.S. interpretation of the significance of the 1940 Axis pact between Germany and Japan. Despite the major trend, which cited the Axis pact as evidence of German mastery over Japan, the New York Times on December 10, 1941, also reported that there existed some 165

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“question” as to the “German interpretation” of the treaty. The Times was not sure if the Germans would now honor the treaty and aid Japan because the Axis treaty was a defensive pact that would not legally obligate Germany if Japan had been the aggressor.1 It was strange that the Times asked this question at a time when it also subscribed to the puppetmaster thesis, because this thesis was founded upon the very “fact” of German aid to Japan. It was also strange because the existence of the Axis treaty itself was supposed to have certified the existence of the puppetmaster relationship. This counter-attitude on the part of the Times seemed to be a faint echo of an earlier time, before Pearl Harbor, when it had not been as solid a subscriber to the puppetmaster thesis. Confusion on the true state of German puppetmastery had been evident earlier when the Times and the United Press (UP) considered the realities of geographic distance rather than the legalities of the Axis pact. They reported on December 5 that “because Germany is so distant from the Far East it was doubted that she could render much aid to Japan.” Yet this opinion, as expressed by some diplomats, was essentially countered that day by others who feared German power in Asia. This included the fear that China would “possibly enter the German orbit.”2 Such confusion almost completely abated after Pearl Harbor, though it could still be detected in trace amounts. Just as the New York Times had been guilty of some confusion on December 10, the extreme interventionist Atlanta Journal, a natural devotee of the puppetmaster thesis, printed an editorial that same day by regularly syndicated columnist Paul Mallon that offered the seemingly isolationist argument that “Hitler is too far away to do the Japs [sic] either harm or good.” This denial of the assumption upon which the puppetmaster thesis rested seems strange on the editorial page of an extreme interventionist newspaper. Yet it was even stranger that the Journal would repeat the idea the next day in its publication of an Associated Press (AP) report on that day’s German declaration of war. This December 11 report concluded, “it appeared that the European dictators were offering Japan moral support rather than any possibility of actual fighting aid.”3 It may seem difficult to understand why the adherents of the puppetmaster thesis would print such reports that could be used to deny the assumptions of the thesis. In fact, such reports were not published frequently during Pearl Harbor week and month. Indeed, their ideas were overwhelmed by the contrary notion that Germany was or would be sending military aid to Japan. The reports on the problems of the distance between the two Axis partners may have been published for a reason that had nothing to do with any doubt about the puppetmaster thesis. During Pearl Harbor week especially, Americans were so fearful, even panicked, over the prospect of an oncoming German juggernaut in the Pacific that they probably felt the need to try to mitigate such fright by citing the reassurances of geographic distance between Ger-

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many and Japan. Such a need for reassurance may have been particularly acute on the West Coast on December 17, when the formerly isolationist Sacramento Union suggested that the Japanese are halfway around the globe from Berlin and they are quartered on islands which are open to air and sea attack. The Nazis can advise the Japanese and help them plan their treachery but the Nazis can give very little aid to their Axis partners of the Pacific in the way of manpower or seapower.4

That such reassuring citations were seldom published may have been due to the subsequent realization that they undermined the U.S. casus belli against Germany. After Pearl Harbor month, the U.S. casus belli against “Germany, the puppetmaster,” gradually receded and seemed to be superceded by a casus belli against “Germany, the co-conspirator with Japan,” and “Germany, the U-boat attacker” of the U.S. coastline. As this happened, a discussion of the problems of geographic distance between Germany and Japan reappeared in the U.S. press, implying that Germany might have a problem imposing itself militarily on Japan and Asia. For example, on February 9, 1942, Newsweek reported that the only way Germany could transport anything to Japan was by U-boat.5 The minimal trace of U.S. confusion during Pearl Harbor week and month was based on questions about geographical distance with its implications for German capabilities, and on legal questions inherent in the Axis pact. The confusion concerned the seemingly central question: What were Germany’s true strategic intentions regarding Japan? Although the New York Times on December 10 seemed to be somewhat unclear about whether Germany would be a faithful Axis treaty partner to Japan, it had raised this question of Germany’s strategic intentions on December 8, when it still seemed uncertain whether or not Hitler was responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor. The Times even went so far as to speculate that it was more “credible” to suppose that Hitler did not want war with the United States “at this time.” This minor counter-trend in U.S. thinking during Pearl Harbor week and month may have arisen from a disinclination to believe that Hitler would have associated himself with anything as insane as an attack on the United States, a disinclination that was duly dropped by many who had characterized the North Atlantic incidents as aggression by Hitler.6 Doubt of Axis involvement receded quickly after Pearl Harbor and became but a faint echo of an already limited strain of thinking. Such skepticism had been voiced, for example, on December 2, when the New York Times had headlined, “Axis involvement in Far East war doubted” because such a German involvement would have the effect of pushing the United States into the European war, “sooner or later.” This report also surmised that Germany

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would not aid Japan because Japan had not aided Germany in Russia, despite the Tripartite Pact. Confusion crept back into the story when the Times also reported that most Germans were saying that they should not aid Japan, “at least until Spring.” Whether this qualifier supported or contradicted the message in the headline is not entirely clear. The headline’s message was, however, supported by other information predicting that, in the event of a U.S.Japanese war, the effect on German policy would be that “some supporting gestures might be made, such as breaking off diplomatic relations,” but that the current German policy was one of appeasement of the United States, “and it would not help such a policy if diplomatic relations were broken off.”7 The New York Times evidently imputed a greater degree of rationality or sanity to Hitler before Pearl Harbor than it did afterward, when imputations such as those of December 8 and 10 grew much more rare. Some time would need to elapse after Pearl Harbor week before skeptical Americans would again begin questioning their assumptions about the strategic intentions of both the Germans and the Japanese, as well as the resultant inference, the puppetmaster thesis. Careful scrutiny of the literature of Pearl Harbor month reveals a slight but detectable nagging undertone of confusion that bit at the heels of the popular puppetmaster thesis. This undertone could not be entirely stamped out, and its persistence, though minimal, tended to bother somewhat the analysts at Newsweek. In its December 22 issue, Newsweek commented on Hitler’s declaration of war on the United States, and pointed out: Significance—the most striking thing about the German and Italian declarations was their timing. That 5-day delay did not fit in with the way the Axis has started wars on previous occasions. The only purpose it served was to allow the Fuhrer and the Duce to prepare formal declarations. In contrast to reports from the Pacific that the Germans had planned the Japanese blitz attack, the delay in Berlin, combined with the weakness of Hitler’s speech, strongly indicated that there may have been a slip-up in coordination between the Axis allies. This certainly did not mean that the Japanese and the Germans had not been working closely together in the Orient. One of the long-range German objectives has always been to use Japan either to intimidate Washington or involve it in a war in the Pacific. But the curious Axis timing did raise some doubt as to whether or not Nazi plans called for a more coordinated campaign with both Japanese and Germans participating from the beginning. Furthermore, it was common knowledge among diplomats that the Reich had been working to patch up some kind of peace between the Chinese and the Japanese in order to free Tokyo for a blow in another direction.

Newsweek’s confusion was compounded by a report of a Russian statement that the “Germans had been attempting to persuade the Japanese to attack Russia in Siberia.” Newsweek continued with the observation that “there was the fact that during the previous week, when the Anglo-Saxon powers were reeling under the shock of the Japanese assault, the Reich did not launch an

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immediate attack in another part of the world—telling evidence that the Nazis were not ready.” Newsweek concluded that it did not know if Hitler was “surprised or not by the Japanese action.” Newsweek may have professed some amount of confusion, but measured in terms of newsprint, it devoted a great many more column inches to reporting and thus validating the puppetmaster story during Pearl Harbor month.8 The more pro-interventionist New York Times skewed the ratio even further toward the puppetmaster thesis. As mentioned in Chapter 8, it did not begin to seriously question the puppetmaster thesis until the January 10, 1942, maverick editorial of regular columnist Anne O’Hare McCormick, which suggested that, because of the German disasters in Russia, It is more unlikely that they [Germany] will help or be helped by their Japanese ally. As the Pacific campaign develops, there is no evidence that the Japanese are being aided by Germany. There is some ground for expecting, moreover, that the military clique in Tokyo, faithful imitators though they are of the Nazi technique, made the attack entirely on their own. A correspondent who was for several years military attaché to Berlin from a neighboring country advances the opinion that the Japanese did not even advise the German General Staff of their intentions.

McCormick’s “correspondent” reminded Americans that Germany had also neglected to warn Japan about the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact, or about the German invasion of Russia. McCormick continued by saying: It is true that if the Japanese were acting in accordance with Hitler’s grand strategy, they might have been expected to move first against Siberia, in order to relieve the pressure on the German armies. Likewise true is it that until the last minute Hitler was doing everything to avoid a break with the United States. Japanese successes in the Pacific will hardly compensate him for the effect caused by American entry into the war on the populations of Europe and on the German people themselves. Certainly, it is this development which dooms him to that long and finally unequal combat he has done everything to avoid. . . . In the tangled net of hate, fear and suspicion binding the aggressors together, this is as good as the opposite theory which sees them working in perfect concert, Hitler in supreme command and the partners each supporting the other as long as it serves his own ends. The plotting behind the curtain drawn over Germany may be against Hitler or for the next Hitler drive against the world. Nobody knows.9

Thus, by mid-January 1942, confusion was beginning to rise to noticeable proportions. It had taken some time after the shock and trauma of Pearl Harbor for a few Americans to start to regain some semblance of balance in their assessment of German strategy. As McCormick groped her way back, she offered as explanation one of the reasons that had been discussed long before Pearl Harbor. On July 11,

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1941, the New York Times had headlined, “Nazis press Japan to attack Siberia.” Japan had not obeyed this German “order,” so many Americans would not become total subscribers to the puppetmaster thesis until Pearl Harbor. Isolationist historian William Chamberlin seems to suggest that even the Roosevelt administration may itself have always been privately something less than a total subscriber as well because the “Magic” decrypts showed that Japan rebuffed German urging to attack Siberia. In August 1941, even such a strong post–Pearl Harbor supporter of the puppetmaster thesis as Senator Tom Connally (D–Tex.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, seemed somewhat ambivalent, as was suggested by his public statement that “the Japanese are not altruistically going to war for Mr. Hitler. Anything they do they will do for Japan.”10 By early November 1941, as the naval war between the United States and Germany climaxed with the USS Reuben James incident, the New York Times closely and daily monitored Japanese responses to German overtures to invoke the Axis treaty against the United States. Although Hitler had charged that the North Atlantic incidents represented U.S. aggression against Germany, the Japanese government made no comment or commitment about whether it would respond with an active defense of its Axis ally. Indeed, on November 4 the New York Times reported that Japan probably would not now rush to Germany’s defense. The Times headlined that “this disputes Nazi assertion that Tokyo and Rome wholly uphold German statements.” The Times remained cautious, however, as it continued at this time to report stories that conveyed both puppetmaster and non-puppetmaster themes.11 The main theme communicated by New York Times stories in midNovember 1941 was that Japan’s status was ambiguous and did not necessarily involve subservient puppetry. Rather, the question of which path Japan would choose, alliance with Germany or with the United States, remained unclear. The Times summarized this confusion in its November 10 statement, “Japan’s commitments are not so clear.” Much of the confusion about Japan’s status in mid-November stemmed from acute U.S. nervousness over the fragility of the U.S.-Japanese negotiations and the dire implications of their failure. U.S. confusion also stemmed from the credibility of the sources that insisted that the Japanese were not German puppets. A major source for this point of view was the Japanese government itself, which regularly insisted that it was an independent actor.12 The New York Times continued to carry reports throughout November that could imply whatever the reader wanted to infer, that Japan was or was not a German puppet. There is perhaps a clue to understanding American psychology regarding this question in the November 19 statement in Congress of Representative Homer Angell (R–Oreg.), a supporter of the Roosevelt administration’s foreign policy. Angell noted that “Japan, despite pressure by Ger-

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many, has kept out of the war.” This seems to confirm that some, if not most, Americans were not fully convinced that Japan was indeed a German puppet until the attack on Pearl Harbor.13 U.S. ambiguity and confusion about Japan’s status can, in hindsight, even be seen to shift toward the puppetmaster thesis starting about a week before Pearl Harbor. The event that began this shift was the news that broke on November 28 that Japan had re-signed the Anti-Comintern Pact in Berlin. The New York Times, at least, signified its own editorial shift on this issue when it began to more assertively label Japan as “one of his [Hitler’s] satellites.” This news began to fuel other reports, which the Times also began to emphasize. On November 29 the Times reported new German promises of military aid to Japan. It continued its new emphasis on November 30 by carrying a statement of Britain’s First Lord of the Admiralty, A. V. Alexander, who now compared Japan to Italy in its servitude to Germany.14 By December 1 the Times was reporting the news that the diplomatic race between Germany and the United States to lure Japan into its own camp and away from the enemy’s was heating up. The stage was apparently being set to cast Japan as someone’s puppet, so Americans could still hope that they might carry away the trophy. This lingering hope was reflected in a December 1 Newsweek report that said, “surprising as it sounds, the Japanese are actually cracking down on the more active Nazis in Tokyo.” It seems that twenty Germans had been arrested, including Richard Sorge, the Nazi German reporter in Tokyo.15 Newsweek concluded on an optimistic note by pointing to the “signs that Tokyo is seriously considering severance of its Axis ties.” Hope of stealing the Japanese away from Germany was still being expressed in Congress on December 3 by Representative Fred Crawford (R–Mich.), who pointed to the struggle for Japan that was now taking place with the U.S.-Japanese negotiations, and the German requests for these talks to cease.16 As the U.S.-Japanese negotiations were reaching a crisis point in early December, the U.S. press focused on the intensified activity of German diplomacy. The last issue of Newsweek before Pearl Harbor reported that the Germans were stepping up their efforts at negotiating a peace between Japan and China. On December 5 the New York Times not only reported on the escalation in the U.S.-Japanese crisis, but also on “the apparent willingness of Japan to serve as a cats-paw for the Axis.” The Times increasingly reported not only its opinion that Germany was controlling Japanese policy toward the United States, but also the claim that Hitler was controlling Japanese policy in China.17 The Times analysis was probably the most representative of the majority opinion of Americans as expressed by their newspapers. As a moderate interventionist, the Times not only held the preponderant middle ground between the extremes of opinion, but similarly it best and most prominently reflected

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the views of the Roosevelt administration, both before and after Pearl Harbor. Historian Gordon Prange surveyed newspapers during Pearl Harbor week and reached the conclusion that many responsible newsmen assumed that Japan could never have pulled off such an astounding feat on its own; the Germans must have been back of it. . . . A surprising number of newspapers shared that view. One receives the impression that to the gentlemen of the fourth estate, a thorough shellacking at the hands of the demon genius of Berlin would be less humiliating than one administered unaided by the hitherto-underrated Japanese. Some of these newshawks thought that Hitler might even have contributed planes and pilots to the attack . . . to be sure, many American newspapers did not fall victim to the myth of German responsibility. They emphasized that the Japanese were “perfectly capable of doing what they have done without any coaching from the Nazi Fuehrer.”18

What Prange’s survey does not make clear is the degree of skepticism about the puppetmaster. Prange makes no indication about whether the skeptics were in the majority or in the minority. The preponderance of the evidence, though, suggests that skepticism was quite rare during Pearl Harbor week and month. Before that time, it is not clear if a majority of Americans believed in the puppetmaster theory. This lack of clarity was reflected in the ambiguous and confusing reports on the subject that preceded the attack. Because the situation did not demand a clear-cut decision before the attack, Americans were not forced to take a stand, as they were after the attack. The situation became more ambiguous and confused after Pearl Harbor month, when some Americans began to ask if the evidence really fit the puppetmaster theory. In addition to the story by Anne O’Hare McCormick of the New York Times on January 10, 1942, the January 19 issue of Newsweek pondered the contradictions between evidence and theory: Information only now available indicates that Japan didn’t carry out the full Axis war plan when it launched its Pacific blitz, because it failed to attack Siberia. Nazi “experts” in Tokyo, who had much to do with the war plans, had been insisting on a Siberian attack since July, but Japan had demurred. They were still insisting early in December [that] Japan’s failure to move north surprised them. It’s known that Nazi representatives in Thailand and China showed clear signs of chagrin and anger.

Newsweek did not, however, disassociate itself entirely from the long and passionately held puppetmaster thesis, as it predicted that an “eventual war” between Japan and Russia “is a virtual certainty,” thus clinging to the belief that the puppetmaster thesis would eventually manifest itself.19 By this time, however, some former isolationists had seen enough to enable them to become fully convinced that the puppetmaster thesis was not

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true. The January 17 issue of the Saturday Evening Post ran an advertisement for an upcoming story titled “The Axis is a Myth,” by Demaree Bess. Because the subject material would still be very controversial for most Americans, the Post aimed its exposé not at U.S. interventionists, but rather, and more cleverly, at Hitler. The advertisement asked, “Who first invented the phrase ‘Axis powers’? Why? In an article which silences the biggest guns of our enemies’ propaganda battery, Mr. Bess tells you how Hitler sold us a counterfeit label we no longer need accept. A genuine contribution to knowledge.” On January 21 the Chicago Tribune also ran an advertisement for this upcoming Saturday Evening Post article that read: “Is the Axis a myth? Demaree Bess analyzes both Japan’s and Germany’s recent actions showing that we face not one, but two rival empire builders on the make . . . so-called partners who are more competitive than cooperative. Read ‘The Axis is a Myth.’”20 The January 24 cover of the Saturday Evening Post proclaimed, “The Axis is a Myth.” Promising “the truth about a phrase that’s overscared too many,” the article reminded readers that when Japanese bombing planes and submarines struck at Pearl Harbor last December, the immediate and almost unanimous opinion in this country was that Adolf Hitler personally had given the signal for this Japanese attack upon the United States. It was upon Hitler that we bestowed the credit—or discredit—for setting off the Japanese blitzkrieg. That opinion seemingly was confirmed a few days later, when Germany and Italy declared war upon us. Here, at last, many Americans believed, was the coordinated Axis attack which they had been dreading for years. Most of us have been so convinced that the Japanese are merely puppets in the hands of the Germans that we have failed to note the mounting evidence that this Japanese blitzkrieg did not originate in Germany, but was an independent move. Even now most of us do not understand that the Germans, as well as ourselves, seem on this occasion to have been caught flat-footed by the Japanese.

The article explained that Germany had wanted Japan to strike Russia in order to bail Germany out of its failures there. Indeed, because of Hitler’s dire needs in Russia, Japan’s very attack on Pearl Harbor should have proven to Americans that the Japanese were not “Hitler’s puppets.” The article then asserted that Americans had fallen for the Axis alliance myth because that was what Hitler wanted the United States to believe, in order that the United States might be better intimidated by a united Axis.21 The Post was, nevertheless, reluctant to use this information as a basis for explicitly pushing for a return to an isolationist policy toward Germany. The same was true of the New York Times, which had begun reporting stories that undermined the puppetmaster thesis. On January 23 the Times reported that in November the Germans had wanted Japan to attack Russia, but “those plans of the Nazis were upset by the reluctance of the Japanese military leaders to fulfill their assigned part.” Despite this information that undermined the orig-

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inal U.S. casus belli against Germany, neither the New York Times nor the Saturday Evening Post pushed for a return to isolationism with regard to Germany.22 Others were not so reluctant. The January 26 issue of Newsweek carried the headline “New America First?” According to Newsweek, “a number of leading ex-isolationists are now adopting a line of thought which may become the program for a new national organization,” and were demanding that the United States cease its Germany-first policy and pursue a Japan-first or even a Japan-only policy. Newsweek columnist Ernest Lindley also commented on this new trend in U.S. politics that dissented from the administration’s Germany-first policy. Lindley explained how this new trend had arisen by recounting recent history: On December 7, preventing the concentration of American attention on the Pacific became the President’s most important political problem. So he continued to condemn Hitler as the No. 1 enemy and even depicted Japan as a puppet. The Nazis helped him by declaring war on us. The fact that some of the former isolationist journals and leaders are revealing an almost exclusive interest in the Pacific has encouraged the President to keep emphasizing that the primary danger is from Hitler. But many of his advisers feel that his campaign is overdone. Germany is, or was, the strongest of the Axis partners.

Lindley then advised the president to justify the U.S. war against Germany not based on the puppetmaster thesis, but rather based on the fact that Germany was a direct threat to the United States.23 On February 16, Newsweek conceded that “there is some foundation for the belief that the Japanese attack on the United States was not launched in perfect harmony with the Germans.” After some weeks of discussion, questioning, and debate in early 1942, even some longtime interventionists finally became persuaded by the neo-isolationists’ arguments. In March 1942, even the longtime arch-interventionist Time magazine ran a story titled “Is Hitler Running Japan?” Although Time answered no for the first time, it still insisted that “Axis collaboration” or “cooperation” existed. The article did not explain, however, why the United States should base its war policy on a Germany-first strategy if the puppetmaster thesis was false. Nevertheless, Time was now of the opinion that in the democracies the final mistaken hangover from the idea that the Japanese were little monkeys, just playing at the game of mankind, was the idea that the Japanese were little lackeys just playing Germany’s game. There was no basis in fact for the impression that Adolf Hitler had ordered, or blackmailed, or even wheedled Japan into its southward drive for riches. Japan had begun solving problems with the sharp edge of a sword back in 1931, two years before Hitler came to power. Japan is not Germany’s tool.

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In the wake of a string of Japanese victories, Time was also forced to admit that Japanese torpedo bomber tactics and skills were superior to those of the Germans. Time remained interventionist, nevertheless, by falling back on the interpretation of German-Japanese collaboration that focused on German advisers teaching Japanese pupils, warning that “eventually it may involve a synchronized German-Japanese squeeze on India” and Russia. Yet Time conceded that the Japanese were actually independent, and that “if they lead an attack on Russia, they will not be doing so because Adolf Hitler orders them to.” Although Time had substantially undercut the original predominant U.S. casus belli against Germany, it could now rely on a new justification for continued Germany-first policy. On the very next page of its story, Time reported that “a new battlefront was opened by the Axis last week . . . U-boats in the Caribbean.” This was a new casus belli, the direct threat to which Newsweek’s Ernest Lindley had most likely referred. This new German attack on the Americas had begun on January 13, 1942, at the close of Pearl Harbor month.24 The puppetmaster thesis gradually lost some amount of its credibility and thus its motivating power for U.S. belligerency against Germany in early 1942. Americans gradually began to perceive a Germany that was less powerful overall, especially in relation to Japan, than had been perceived during December 1941 and Pearl Harbor month. The changing U.S. perception of Germany was inextricably and inversely related to the simultaneously changing U.S. perception of Japan in early 1942. The authority on U.S. perceptions of Japan during World War II, John Dower, notes this change during early 1942, pointing out that the year began with the long-standing U.S. perception of Japan as infinitely inferior to the ethnically European powers. Dower notes that by spring 1942 after a string of Japanese victories, however, Americans’ perception of Japan reversed to yet another unrealistic extreme myth, “the Japanese superman.” As this new U.S. perception rose, the German puppetmaster perception fell in credibility. During the first quarter of 1942, these two new U.S. trends were influenced not only by Japan’s victories, but also by Germany’s continued lack of success in Russia and Africa.25 The puppetmaster thesis had begun to lose some of its supremacy as the U.S. casus belli against Germany sometime in January 1942. This trend was led by former isolationists who had by then regained some of their former composure. Newsweek noted this new shift in U.S. politics on January 12, when it reported, “That phase of national unity which makes all criticism ‘unpatriotic’ is nearing its end. Congressmen are receiving a growing stream of mail from constituents condemning the conduct of the war.” In fact, Newsweek had reported in its previous week’s edition that the public, for the first time, preferred a Japan-first strategy to the Roosevelt administration’s Germany-first strategy. By mid-January, public criticism over this issue had

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reached such a level that the Roosevelt administration felt obliged to answer it. U.S. newspapers on January 13 published Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox’s response, which reiterated the Germany-first strategy based on the idea that Germany was the principal enemy and that it controlled Japan, its puppet. Secretary Knox’s simple reiteration of the puppetmaster thesis actually did more to inflame than to calm the criticism. A week later President Roosevelt himself had to assuage the inflamed criticism of Secretary Knox’s simple Germany-first reiteration. Roosevelt, however, essentially contradicted Knox, as was encapsulated in the headline “U.S. is fighting on all fronts, says Roosevelt,” meaning that an equal amount of attention was also being given to Asia.26 Rising public criticism of the Germany-first strategy became evident sometime in early January and had grown to such a level that even the president felt obliged to respond a few weeks later. This public criticism proved to be an abortive political movement, however, as it began to lose steam the longer the new German U-boat offensive off U.S. coasts lasted. The Roosevelt administration could now justify its Germany-first strategy, and indeed the war against Germany itself, on the strength of U-boats off the U.S. coast, in combination with the guilt by association inherent in the Axis pact. War with Germany no longer needed to rely on the increasingly shaky puppetmaster thesis. Still, the puppetmaster thesis should not be underestimated. It was the historically monumental perception that launched the United States onto the path of total war against Germany during Pearl Harbor month; U-boats in the Americas were but the second step down this path.27 Moreover, and throughout the war, a significant portion of the U.S. body politic continued to subscribe to either the puppetmaster thesis or its analog, the coconspirator thesis. The historiographical evidence indicates that the puppetmaster thesis itself simply would not die during the war, and lingered even beyond it. This is true for historians on both sides of the political divide. The German puppetmaster/coconspirator thesis was such a bedrock belief supporting U.S. war policy during Pearl Harbor month that the wartime generation apparently felt unable to abandon it entirely. As a result, a number of U.S. writers during the war continued to cite the German puppetmaster/coconspirator thesis as a genuine U.S. casus belli.28 As strong as the puppetmaster thesis was at the outset of the war, its power and political popularity began a gradual decline soon thereafter, and accelerated even further after the war had ended. Postwar historians writing about the origins of U.S. entry into World War II usually fail to even mention either the puppetmaster or the coconspirator thesis at all. Thus the historiographical discussions of U.S. entry into the war have not accounted in any way for the actual wartime rationales for U.S. belligerency against Germany.29 There has, however, remained some degree of historiographical or interpretive divide over some version of the puppetmaster/coconspirator thesis. Any

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such continuing divide may have been generated not only by the contemporary opinions expressed during the war, but also by the somewhat Delphic judgment expressed afterward, by the Nuremberg Tribunal. For example, H. L. Trefousse notes that “the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg was right when it convicted the Nazi defendants of having urged a policy upon Japan almost certain to bring America into the war; the judges did not find that Germany pushed her partner into the conflict.” However, the question of exactly how much judicial guilt was levied against Germany for Pearl Harbor, in particular, was confounded even further by German Admiral Karl Doenitz’s assertion that the “International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg found that Germany had not waged a war of aggression against the United States—nor against Britain or France.”30 It was apparently possible to come away from the Nuremberg judgments with a variety of interpretations about the subject of German guilt for Pearl Harbor. On the subject of the Nuremberg judgment regarding Britain and France, Doenitz’s assessment seems to be correct. Regarding the subject of the United States, the Nuremberg Tribunal’s judgment is not nearly so clear. This unfortunate situation was due to the vagueness and ambiguity in much of the Nuremberg Tribunal’s language in passing sentence on Germany. Such ambiguity is apparent when this language is contrasted to the tribunal’s other, more specific statements. For example, the tribunal was unambiguous when it explicitly convicted Germany of the specific crime of “aggression” against certain European nations. When the tribunal addressed the origins of the war between the United States and Germany, however, its language became decidedly more ambiguous. In some places, the tribunal’s judgment only implied that Germany may have committed “aggression” against the United States. In other places, the tribunal conspicuously omitted any mention of the crime of “aggression” by Germany against the United States. This stands in stark contrast to the tribunal’s other statements, which were never ambiguous regarding the guilt of German “aggression” against such European nations as Poland, Russia, Yugoslavia, and a host of others. Regarding the specific charge of German puppetmastery or coconspiracy with Japan, the tribunal stated that Germany had “encouraged Japan . . . to attack Great Britain and the United States,” and that Germany promised to “support” such a Japanese attack. This was hardly an endorsement of the puppetmaster/coconspirator thesis.31 Gordon Prange unequivocally rejects the old notion that the Japanese needed German guidance through every stage of Operation Hawaii. This idea—that the Germans masterminded Japanese foreign policy, strategy, and tactics, and even contributed pilots to the Pearl Harbor striking force—arose almost immediately after the event and persisted for years. This concept was absolutely false. The Japanese were not German stooges. They planned and carried out the attack entirely on their own.32

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It bears repeating that Prange seems to attribute the power of the puppetmaster/coconspirator thesis to American racism, which rationalized that “a thorough shellacking at the hands of the demon genius of Berlin would be less humiliating than one administered unaided by the hitherto-underrated Japanese.” Another historian of Pearl Harbor, Thurston Clarke, believes that the power of the puppetmaster/coconspirator thesis stemmed from U.S. “delusions about the inferiority of the Japanese military,” delusions that were “attempting to explain how Americans could be humiliated by Asian flyers” at Pearl Harbor and in the Philippines. This explanation needed the attack to be “masterminded and executed by another Caucasian people, the Germans.” Clarke concludes that “underneath the other December 7 delusions, is a stubborn, immutable racial and military pride.” Clarke also argues that the puppetmaster/coconspirator thesis was emblematic of another American cultural trait, belonging to a long list of other conspiracy theories and popular myths that have permeated U.S. history.33

Notes 1. New York Times, December 10, 1941, p. 9. 2. New York Times, November 3, 1941, pp. 1, 5; November 12, 1941, p. 14; December 5, 1941, p. 4. 3. Atlanta Journal, December 10, 1941, p. 23; December 11, 1941, p. 1. 4. Sacramento Union, December 17, 1941, p. 7. 5. Newsweek, February 9, 1942, p. 14. 6. New York Times, December 8, 1941, p. 22. 7. New York Times, December 2, 1941, p. 5. 8. Newsweek, December 22, 1941, p. 37; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 17, 1941, p. 8. 9. New York Times, January 10, 1942, p. 14. 10. New York Times, July 11, 1941, p. 4; William Henry Chamberlin, America’s Second Crusade (Chicago: Regnery, 1950), p. 160. The Magic decrypts were not declassified until after the war, when they were publicized as a result of the controversial congressional “Pearl Harbor Attack” hearings in 1945–1946. Los Angeles Times, August 19, 1941, p. 7. 11. New York Times, November 2, 1941, p. 12; November 4, 1941, p. 6. 12. New York Times, November 9, 1941, p. E5; November 10, 1941, p. 3; November 11, 1941, p. 22; November 16, 1941, pp. E3, E7; November 18, 1941, p. 6; November 19, 1941, pp. 1, 10; November 23, 1941, p. 19. 13. Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), November 19, 1941, p. A5207. 14. New York Times, November 28, 1941, pp. 4, 22; November 29, 1941, p. 3; November 30, 1941, p. 32; December 1, 1941, p. 1. 15. It was later learned that Sorge was a double agent whose ultimate loyalty was to Stalin. See Gordon Prange, Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985).

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16. New York Times, December 1, 1941, p. 8; Newsweek, December 1, 1941, p. 14; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 3, 1941, p. A5412. 17. Newsweek, December 8, 1941, p. 14; New York Times, December 5, 1941, p. 22. 18. Gordon Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), p. 583. 19. Newsweek, January 19, 1942, p. 9. 20. Saturday Evening Post, January 17, 1942, p. 6; Chicago Tribune, January 21, 1942, p. 6. 21. Saturday Evening Post, January 24, 1942, pp. 2, 9. See Chapter 10 for a discussion of the historiography concerning Hitler’s foreign policy motives toward the United States during Pearl Harbor month. See also Chapters 5 and 6 for historiographical discussions of Hitler’s foreign policy toward the United States before Pearl Harbor. 22. New York Times, January 23, 1942, p. 4. 23. Newsweek, January 26, 1942, pp. 11, 24; Chicago Tribune, February 5, 1942, p. 14. 24. Newsweek, February 16, 1942, p. 18; Time, March 2, 1942, pp. 18–19, 21–22. 25. John Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, 1986), pp. 109–112. This most recent American mood swing was rendered all the more possible because it was not an altogether unprecedented phenomenon. Americans had held mixed perceptions of German power in relation to Japan before Pearl Harbor. See, for example, Newsweek, September 22, 1941, p. 10; New York Times, November 25, 1941, p. 1. 26. Newsweek, January 5, 1942, p. 21; January 12, 1942, p. 7; Chicago Tribune, January 13, 1942, p. 4; January 21, 1942, p. 6. 27. Moreover, if historians argue, as they apparently all have, that the United States initiated this total-war policy in December 1941 and not later, then it was the puppetmaster/coconspirator thesis that was most significant for the U.S. body politic, who continued to subscribe to it throughout the war. Its significance was also demonstrated by the Germans, who accused the United States of being the puppetmaster/coconspirator of various European governments to which it had long been sending aid. Despite Lend-Lease, Americans did not stop to ponder during Pearl Harbor month whether or not the United States itself had long been guilty of the same actions Germany was being accused of after December 7. If the Germans were guilty for Pearl Harbor because they had sent military aid to Japan, how then did Americans view themselves with respect to Lend-Lease? The absence of any such comparison by Americans in the U.S. press after Pearl Harbor leads to the conclusion that Americans drew no parallel here. The parallel did not escape Adolf Hitler, who emphasized it in his December 11 declaration-of-war speech. Hitler used the epithet “puppet” several times, and he included Britain in his list of several European states that had received aid from the United States. He recited the Destroyer Deal and Lend-Lease in connection with the U.S. “desire to take over the British Empire,” and charged that since 1939, the United States, or rather President Roosevelt, had “interfered in internal European affairs” and “upheld puppet governments.” Among these, “the Norwegian, Dutch and Belgian puppet governments were recognized by Roosevelt.” Hitler made a similar charge regarding “American aid to France.” In addition, the New York Times reported on December 12, 1941, that “Hitler repeated the old charge” that U.S. aid to Poland in 1939 had precipitated World War II.

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Just as many Americans had singled out Hitler as being ultimately to blame for the entire war, Hitler charged that “a single man is burdened with this world war,” President Roosevelt, who was “pursuing a policy of world dictatorship.” After Hitler had identified who for him was the real and ultimate puppetmaster, he went further by stating that “the eternal Jew is behind all this,” because it was “the intention of the Jews to rule all civilized states in Europe and America.” The German version of the puppetmaster/coconspirator thesis may have exposed this comic potential of this general idea to some, had its propaganda value not been so tragically influential. Indeed, in January 1942 the cynical German propaganda minister Josef Goebbels seems to have recognized the farcical potential of this thesis to fit various political needs. Not only did he repeat the charge in his radio broadcasts aimed at Britain that the British were “puppets” of the United States, but he also charged in his radio broadcasts aimed at Americans that they were the “puppets” of Britain. The effectiveness of at least one German version of the puppetmaster thesis was suggested by Newsweek on January 19, 1942, when it reported that some British members of Parliament feared that Britain would become a mere satellite of the United States. See New York Times, December 12, 1941, p. 4; January 17, 1942, p. 3; Newsweek, January 19, 1942, p. 30. The idea of Britain as the puppet of the United States seemed to constitute the major theme of German propaganda, as Hitler had declared on December 11, despite any of Goebbels’s later variations. Hitler reaffirmed this major theme in another speech in which, as reported by the New York Times on January 31, 1942, he asserted that Prime Minister Churchill was President Roosevelt’s “stooge.” Nevertheless, Goebbels continued to promote his own strategy in the divide-and-conquer propaganda game, as was remarked upon by the U.S. government’s own director of information, Archibald MacLeish of the Office of Facts and Figures. On February 6, 1942, MacLeish pointed out that German propaganda was still telling the United States that Britain was dictating U.S. foreign policy. He added that Germany was also employing this kind of divisive propaganda to set U.S. Protestants against Latin American Catholics. See New York Times, January 31, 1942, p. 4; February 6, 1942, p. 5. This kind of propaganda was so widespread because it was so effective, on both sides of the war. The German brand helped to reinforce existing beliefs among former isolationists. By 1950 at least one U.S. isolationist historian still took it for granted that Lend-Lease had been a major determinant of British foreign policy during the war. See William Henry Chamberlin, America’s Second Crusade (Chicago: Regnery, 1950), p. 308. 28. H. L. Trefousse, Germany and American Neutrality, 1939–1941 (New York: Bookman Associates, 1951), pp. 153, 211; Wilfred Fleischer, Our Enemy Japan (New York: Doubleday, 1942); Violet Sweet Haven, Gentlemen of Japan (New York: ZiffDavis, 1944); Forrest Davis and Ernest Lindley, How War Came: An American White Paper, from the Fall of France to Pearl Harbor (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942), pp. 291–292. 29. James Compton, The Swastika and the Eagle: Hitler, the United States, and the Origins of World War II (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), pp. 227, 231, 234, 264, 238–239; Saul Friedlander, Prelude to Downfall: Hitler and the United States, 1939–1941 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1967), pp. 272–273, 303, 306, 312; H. L. Trefousse, German and American Neutrality, 1939–1941 (New York: Bookman Associates, 1951), pp. 153, 162, 180, 161, 163; Cajus Bekker, Hitler’s Naval War (New York: Doubleday, 1974), p. 308; Warren Kimball, ed., Franklin D. Roosevelt and the World Crisis, 1937–1945 (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973), p. xvii. See Chapter 5 for a fuller discussion of the historiography on this subject.

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30. H. L. Trefousse, Germany and American Neutrality, 1939–1941 (New York: Bookman Associates, 1951), p. 155; James Compton, The Swastika and the Eagle: Hitler, the United States, and the Origins of World War II (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), pp. 264, 227–228, 231, 238–239; Karl Doenitz, Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1959), pp. 193–194. 31. Office of the United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression: Opinion and Judgement (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1947), pp. 45–46, 16–46. 32. Gordon Prange, Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History (New York: McGrawHill, 1986), p. 309. 33. Gordon Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981), p. 583; Thurston Clarke, Pearl Harbor Ghosts: A Journey to Hawaii, Then and Now (New York: William Morrow, 1991), pp. 225, 229, 227.

10 Conclusion: Why Did the United States Declare War on Germany? Most studies of U.S. entry into World War II argue that the decision to invade Germany with an American Expeditionary Force (AEF) came in response to, and because of, the German declaration of war on the United States on December 11, 1941. Without the German declaration of war, they imply, the Roosevelt administration would have been unable to gain public and congressional support for the U.S. declaration of war on Germany. What historians say is reinforced by how they say it. The typical historical narrative recounts U.S.-German relations and conflicts up to December 11, and then either concludes at this point or immediately jumps to U.S. government planning later that month for the invasion of North Africa and Europe. No further explanations of the reasons for the new U.S. policy of European invasion are given. U.S. defensive retaliation to the German declaration of war is assumed to be self-evident.1 This traditional explanation is so simple and clear-cut that most historians have accepted it, a rare instance of near unanimity among a usually disputatious lot. Because of this traditional consensus, scholars have not felt the need to analyze the German declaration any more extensively for the purpose of explaining why this document might have had such a profound impact upon the United States. Such an omission seems somewhat odd if Germany’s declaration was indeed the fundamental cause of the U.S. declaration of war on Germany. Yet the supposedly significant German declaration has never been thoroughly examined and explained. The traditional consensus historiographical emphasis on Germany’s December 11 declaration of war on the United States is part of a much larger consensus theory explaining U.S. policy toward Nazi Germany. This consensus argues that the Roosevelt administration and its majority foreign policy constituency in the United States had been largely motivated by a broad inter183

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nationalist vision, not by narrow nationalist self-interest. Within this vein lies the declaration of war, a legal procedure that constitutes a substantial body of international law.2 Before December 11, 1941, there was no U.S. national or federal law that would have mandated U.S. policy in the event of the receipt of a foreign declaration of war. Therefore, the emphasis upon Germany’s declaration of war on December 11 fits nicely with the historiographical consensus that it was internationalism, not nationalism, that had been the foundation of U.S. policy toward Nazi Germany. The internationalist interpretation was in political concurrence with the international coalition warfare that the United States participated in during World War II.3 I have argued that the traditional historiographical consensus is wrong to emphasize the German declaration of war on December 11 as being the major reason why the United States decided to declare war on Germany. Rather, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7 was the major reason for the dramatic change of U.S. policy toward Germany on December 11. The German declaration of December 11 was essentially meaningless to most Americans in December 1941. This conclusion not only challenges the traditional historiographical consensus, but it can also be viewed as a supplement to the long-standing minority revisionist historiographical interpretation, in that it completes the previously unexplained argument of the revisionists: that the United States entered an all-out conflict against Germany through what they call “the backdoor to war,” Pearl Harbor.4 Most of these revisionists published their arguments in the period between the end of World War II and the end of the Korean War. Almost invariably, they terminated their narratives at December 7, 1941, with December 11 appearing merely as an epilogue. They neglected to explain how and why Pearl Harbor became the logical endpoint for their explanation of how and why the United States went to war against Germany in the days and weeks that followed. The revisionists never adequately explained just exactly how and why a U.S.-Japanese war was a “backdoor to war” with Germany, how one side of the “door” connected to the other. It is possible that the early revisionists did not feel the need to recount the “backdoor” story in detail to contemporaries who had, after all, lived though the very public events and explanations recounted in this book. Perhaps the revisionists believed it would have been redundant and thus unnecessary to remind their readers of what they presumably already knew and understood—how a Japanese attack on the United States had led to a U.S. “counterattack” on Germany, the puppetmaster/coconspirator. For later generations of readers, however, who did not personally recall the events and explanations in the week and month following the attack on Pearl Harbor, the early revisionist interpretations are incomplete and inadequate in their explanatory power. They do not adequately explain how and

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why the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor could have so easily led to all-out war against Germany. A step through this “door” seems to later generations of readers to be a giant, illogical leap. Perhaps this is one reason why the traditional consensus explanation has seemed, by comparison, to be more persuasive to later generations than has the minority revisionist interpretation. Later generations of readers may have read “the backdoor to war” interpretation of the revisionists and then asked, “What backdoor?” The central purpose of the revisionists was not to retell the well-known “backdoor” explanation, but rather to argue that the Roosevelt administration had deliberately provoked Japan into attacking the United States in order to plunge the United States into war with Germany. The revisionists believed that the Roosevelt administration secretly and primarily desired a total war against Germany. Although some historians of the traditional consensus school have also argued that the Roosevelt administration secretly wanted an all-out U.S. war against Germany, the traditionalists deny that the Roosevelt administration wanted a U.S. war with Japan, and they vehemently deny that the Roosevelt administration provoked a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The traditionalists have been sustained by the fact that this “backdoor to war” theory has never been adequately explained by the revisionists, meaning that they have never explained precisely how a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor could have precipitated a U.S. war with Germany. Perhaps the most powerful argument in the arsenal of the traditional consensus has been this explanatory void on the part of the dissenting revisionists.5 One particular and continuing strand of revisionism argues not only that the Roosevelt administration deliberately provoked a Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but also that the Roosevelt administration intentionally facilitated such an attack by deliberately withholding vital, secret U.S. signals intelligence, “Magic,” from the commanders at Pearl Harbor.6 This ongoing and vigorous debate has seen the traditional historiographical consensus—the defenders of the Roosevelt administration—again predominantly relying on the apparent unpersuasiveness of “the backdoor to war” theory.7 In the specific case as well as the general one, the Pearl Harbor revisionists have not responded with a rejoinder that offers a persuasive explanation of this theory. These very specialized revisionists have preferred to focus relentlessly on uncovering further increments of evidence to show that the Roosevelt administration withheld vital intelligence from Hawaii and then tried to cover it up. The traditional consensus has repeatedly and quite successfully dismissed the revisionists’ evidence by simply reiterating their argument that the Roosevelt administration had no motive to commit such a crime against the commanders and servicemen at Pearl Harbor and, therefore, obviously did not do so. This traditional consensus argument asserts that the Roosevelt administration did not desire a war with Japan because such a war would have diverted the United States from the war the Roosevelt administration actually desired,

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a U.S. war against Germany. The traditional consensus has defended the Roosevelt administration’s withholding of vital intelligence from Hawaii by characterizing it as an inadvertent blunder, and not as a deliberate design to facilitate a Japanese attack on Hawaii. The evidence presented in this study provides a means of understanding the revisionist “backdoor to war” argument. Although this study does not address the merits of the revisionists’ arguments regarding the Roosevelt administration in the placing of blame for the attack on Pearl Harbor, it can nevertheless be considered a supplement to those arguments because it demonstrates how the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor actually did lead to nearly unanimous public support for total war against Germany in December 1941. Historians may be nearly unanimous in their conviction that the United States invaded Europe because of Germany’s declaration of war, but the virtually unanimous explanation of contemporary Americans in December 1941 was very different. Historians have never understood that contemporary Americans were virtually unanimous in stating quite clearly that Germany’s declaration of war was of very little importance to the U.S. decision on December 11 to declare war on Germany. Americans in December 1941 gave wholly different reasons to justify this new policy against Germany. Most Americans believed that Germany was the major guilty party in the attack on Pearl Harbor. The predominant U.S. perception in December 1941 held Germany to be the sole master of the Axis bloc, and all other members of the Axis alliance to be mere political “puppets” under the control of Germany. This automatically meant to most Americans that if Japan had perpetrated a crime at Pearl Harbor, then Germany was at least equally if not mostly guilty. This was the belief that motivated most Americans to go to war against Germany in December 1941. Historians, however, have subsequently ignored this predominant U.S. contemporary belief and rationale for total war against Germany. This neglect is no doubt in some measure due to the postwar discovery that the U.S. perception of 1941 was a misconception. This discovery was officially announced in U.S. Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall’s testimony to Congress in September 1945, in which Marshall stated that there was in fact no evidence of coordination between Germany and Japan during the war.8 This fact may have led historians to then emphasize, retroactively, the “importance” of Germany’s December 11, 1941, declaration of war. The German declaration was indeed quite a sensational news story that day. If one continues to read the contemporary U.S. political record beyond December 11, however, it becomes evident that Germany’s declaration of war amounted to little more than a one-day news sensation in the United States. It is therefore evident that Hitler’s declaration provided little or no motivation

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for U.S. policy beyond that day. The record, moreover, demonstrates that Hitler’s declaration provided only marginal motivation for U.S. policy on December 11 itself. The contemporary political record is quite clear. Before Pearl Harbor week, the second week of December 1941, U.S. political opinion was bitterly polarized and even fragmented on what U.S. policy toward Germany should be. But then these long-standing, continuing, and deep U.S. political divisions simply vanished overnight as isolationism died out after December 7, and before December 11. The end of isolationism was reflected in another display of rare unanimity, the congressional vote to declare war on and to send an AEF to Europe to defeat Germany. Is it possible that such a sweeping, momentous, and sudden change of heart on the part of the die-hard isolationists could have been effected solely by a declaration, a speech and a note, written in Berlin? Were Americans abruptly moved to the bloody business of total war simply in response to mere German words? If the contemporary record is so clear and unanimous, why has the historiographical record diverged so sharply from the contemporary record? Perhaps the main reason concerns the facts publicized by General Marshall’s testimony at the end of the war. When these facts were finally realized, historians could just retroactively modify their wartime justifications in order to maintain their political commitment to interventionism. Many historians may have wanted to maintain their political commitment due to a variety of political considerations, including the moral repugnance they felt toward the atrocious Nazi regime. It is humanly impossible not to share this repugnance. Humanitarian sympathy, however, does not explain the preeminent motives of the overwhelming majority of contemporary Americans in December 1941, those who actually faced the situation, and not merely reflected back on its morality retrospectively, or even nostalgically.9 In order to understand the motivations of contemporary Americans, the choice of source material explaining mass political motivations is critical. The sources from which this study is derived include The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the Congressional Record, newspapers, national news magazines, and national opinion polls. These most important sources detail the contemporary public political discourse that explained the reasons for the public policy. It was the public political explanation that was the essential national explanation of the motivation to go to war. Any ulterior, secret, and publicly unexpressed motives must necessarily be relegated to secondary status in the understanding of why this democracy did what it did. The periodical sources are particularly important to understanding the detailed and daily political concerns of Americans on and around the crucial date of December 11, 1941. They also permit one to sample the diverse regional editorial views, which are important because U.S. political opinion

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regarding U.S. policy toward Germany had been largely split along geographic lines, before Pearl Harbor. Roughly speaking, the South was interventionist, the Midwest and West were isolationist, and the East was divided.10 To understand why opinion in the United States shifted from isolationist to interventionist during Pearl Harbor week and month, this study has focused on the former isolationists as they explained their policy reversal, giving disproportionate weight to the newspapers of the Midwest, West, and East. Even though each region of the United States had expressed differing opinions and policy prescriptions before Pearl Harbor, afterward all regions of the United States expressed the same opinions and reasons for waging war on Germany. The sources show that after Pearl Harbor, Americans were united, as reflected in the unanimous congressional vote on December 11 consenting to President Roosevelt’s request for a declaration of war. The explanations offered by contemporaries for this unanimity differ markedly from those offered by postwar historians, in regard to both the particular facts of Pearl Harbor week as well as the broader interpretation of U.S. entry into World War II. Regarding the broader interpretation of U.S. intervention, postwar historians have essentially explained U.S. policy against Nazi Germany as internationalist in character. They have explained it in terms of international or global balance-of-power calculations, and also in terms of international law/morality, with power being somewhat more important than law/morality.11 Geopolitical and legalistic motives were indeed regularly offered by contemporaries in 1941 to explain U.S. policy toward Germany. Nevertheless, historians have underemphasized what the major primary documents predominantly emphasize—that U.S. policy primarily originated from mostly nationalist, not internationalist, considerations.12 There is, however, some mention of such nationalist motives in the secondary histories. One purpose of this study was to investigate just how important nationalist motives were to the contemporaries, as expressed in primary documents. This research indicates that post-1945 historians, and even some post-1941 historians, have erroneously overemphasized internationalism. Historians probably became more internationalist-minded after 1941, when U.S. policy itself became more internationalist, mutating slowly from its nationalist origins in 1941 and early 1942. This nationalist self-interest, which actually never disappeared, was overwhelmingly emphasized by contemporaries in 1941 and 1942, and to a great extent throughout the rest of the war, apparently because it was the most compelling way to persuade most Americans to go to war.13 The nationalist foundation of U.S. policy was based on U.S. territorialism. The consensus political discourse in the United States in 1941 primarily emphasized the German military threat to U.S. territory in particular, and to the Western Hemisphere in general. German territorial expansion in Eurasia was feared predominantly as a possible prelude, though not necessarily as a

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prerequisite, to a direct and near-term military assault on the United States. This actual fear was quite different from some long-term internationalist or globalist vision of a German domination of Eurasia being a prerequisite to an ultimate threat of a gradual strategic or economic strangulation of the United States. On the contrary, President Roosevelt and the majority of Americans subordinated any long-term global balance-of-power visions to the fear of imminent air raids on the United States. From the fall of France through Pearl Harbor, the most pervasively acute fear felt by Americans was the specter of a sudden German military assault on and invasion of the Western Hemisphere. President Roosevelt and most Americans repeatedly expressed their most compelling fear, that Hitler would simply continue his pattern of targeting weak countries for attack, invasion, and plunder. If the route of least resistance led Hitler through North and West Africa to South American booty, he then could easily bypass Eurasia and the British Isles to threaten the Western Hemisphere and, by extension, the United States directly and militarily. These Americans feared that Hitler’s Luftwaffe could simply outflank both the Royal Navy and the U.S. Navy.14 Another U.S. fear was the specter of a German conquest of Britain and Eurasia, with its implications for a German attack on the United States. This was merely the worst-case scenario, however. It was not the most tangible or imminently feared German threat to the United States, because Americans understandably considered a German conquest of Britain and Eurasia to be a more difficult and thus a less likely near-term possibility than a German conquest of North and West Africa, and the Atlantic islands in its vicinity. These were the staging areas that Americans feared Germany could seize in order to attack and invade the Western Hemisphere and the United States. This fear could be observed, both before and after December 7, 1941, when many Americans speculated furiously on the meaning of recent German retreats in Russia and North Africa. Some accurately assessed that they were the result of the many recent German defeats. Others were more suspicious, believing they might be yet another deceptive maneuver by Hitler, and an ominous portent. They theorized that Germany could actually be feigning defeat in Russia and North Africa and that German troop movements were, in reality, a strategic redeployment to Vichy West Africa. This was the staging area Americans had long feared the Germans would seize in order to invade Brazil, which could then put the Luftwaffe within bombing range of both the Panama Canal and the southern United States.15 Many Americans had long theorized that Hitler might well execute such a daring but presumably easy foray primarily for the purpose of securing South American raw materials for his war machine. The overwhelming majority of Americans believed that a Nazi German invasion and occupation of northern South America would be an intolerable threat to U.S. security and would thus be a casus belli against Germany.16 Some analysts offered both

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economic and strategic reasons for this U.S. policy, but both reasons ultimately became one and the same. Americans feared being denied access to South American raw materials, an economic impoverishment that would also militarily weaken the United States and increase its strategic vulnerability to German aggression. Germany might even invade South America via Brazil, some analysts speculated, simply for the purpose of conducting air raids on the United States in order to cut Lend-Lease supply lines to Britain and the Soviet Union. Many Americans also believed that Hitler ultimately harbored an even grander ambition, the conquest and subjugation of the United States itself.17 These fears and theories held by Americans throughout 1941 suddenly exploded in magnitude after December 7, 1941. Beginning December 8, there was a sudden upsurge of panic in the United States as Americans anticipated imminent German air raids on the United States. This scenario was now deemed to be the highly probable German contribution to a general Axis attack that had begun on December 7. These American fears in December 1941 far outweighed any U.S. concern that Germany was then poised to conquer Russia or Britain. Indeed, global balance-of-power estimates were largely subordinate to U.S. territorialism in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy in 1941. Accordingly, President Roosevelt never forsook his preeminent promise of the 1940 election. The United States never would and never did, from its point of view, “fight in foreign lands outside of the Americas except in case of attack.”18 The German military threat to U.S. territory was countered by a U.S. policy that was primarily designed to repel invasion, or as President Roosevelt enunciated: “I repeat: Our objective is to keep any potential attacker as far away from our continental shores as we possibly can.”19 U.S. military policy responses to this territorial threat were themselves implemented via territorial or nationalist measures, not via internationalist, global, or universalist policies. U.S. strategic and military policies took the form of phased territorial expansions, so that the boundary lines of territory under U.S. military control were incrementally extended. The U.S. response to German military operations in the Atlantic Ocean was not a universalist or internationalist application of complete “freedom of the seas,” despite some of the more idealistic rhetoric. Rather, the actual U.S. military policy response in 1941 was to extend its defense or “neutrality zone,” the zone under U.S. military protection, incrementally in longitudinal stages: first to Canada, then to Greenland, then to Iceland, then to the shores of Europe, and then finally to the heart of Europe.20 Each of these phased U.S. expansions was, moreover, stimulated by a particular German provocation or perceived threat against what the United States considered its territorial frontiers or “American outposts for hemisphere defense,” as they were called.21 None of these phased expansions was

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ever advertised by its proponents as a mere preliminary step toward the goal of a global military policy. Indeed, quite the contrary, because otherwise the policy never would have been accepted by a majority of Americans. U.S. strategic and military policy in 1941, in terms of latitudes, extended southward only to the bulge of Brazil, just below the equator, and not to all of South America. This was called the quartersphere defense, short of total hemisphere defense.22 U.S. policy was based on nationalism and territorialism, and not on the more conventional historiographical notion of internationalism.23 Even the internationalists/interventionists largely sold this policy to Americans in 1941 as a means to secure national ends. Postwar historians have tended to concentrate too much on the Roosevelt administration’s personal internationalist ideologies and interventionist policy preferences, and not enough on the administration’s actual and stated policies, or on the actual policy stated by the majority of the Congress, or by the nation in its public opinion polls and its press. This triad gives the best explanation of the consensus opinion motivating and controlling U.S. policy. Generally speaking, the U.S. political spectrum, before Pearl Harbor, was divided into not just two, but at least three main ideological factions with regard to European policy. These were the extreme interventionists, the moderates, and the extreme isolationists. The moderates were the majority, and comprised a coalition of moderate interventionists and moderate isolationists. U.S. policy reflected the compromise this majority coalition had effected.24 There was some difference of opinion, however, between the moderate isolationists and the moderate interventionists, as their differing labels would imply. The moderate isolationists were generally content with policy as it existed. The moderate interventionists preferred the existing policy over the one proposed by the extreme interventionists, the latter always being desirous of a U.S. invasion of Europe and Germany, the policy ultimately legislated on December 11, 1941. Moderate interventionists did, however, continually seek to persuade the moderate isolationists to escalate the policy of U.S. military involvement incrementally. An example of this moderate coalition politicking came on October 9, 1941, when President Roosevelt and his moderate interventionist faction asked for revision of the Neutrality Act to allow the arming of U.S. merchant ships, and to permit them to enter belligerent ports. The moderate isolationists resisted this revision until mid-November, after two weeks of negotiations following the October 31 torpedoing and sinking of the USS Reuben James and the loss of 115 sailors. Nevertheless, before Pearl Harbor, the moderate ruling coalition resisted extreme interventionist pleas for a declaration of war and an AEF invasion of Europe, just as it resisted the extreme isolationist pleas for a U.S. military withdrawal to a tighter defense perimeter around only Canada and the Panama Canal.25

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After Pearl Harbor, Congress as a whole finally acceded to the extreme interventionist position. Historians have explained this momentous change in U.S. policy in terms of the internationalist interpretation, arguing that it was fundamentally induced by the continuing German expansion in Eurasia, Africa, and the North Atlantic, as well as specifically by the German declaration of war against the United States, with all of its ramifications in international law. This study suggests that historians are largely wrong about this, just as they are more generally in error about the foundations of pre–Pearl Harbor U.S. policy. U.S. policy underwent a tremendous and highly conspicuous change during Pearl Harbor week and month. Accordingly, the citizen and the historian would expect that the president, the Congress, and the press would have made public, substantive, and specific statements explaining that change of policy. They did indeed do so, and those explanations comprise the arguments presented in this book. If international or global balance-of-power calculations centered on the European theater had been the primary consideration underlying this change, one might expect to find substantive and specific statements during Pearl Harbor week and month by the president, the Congress, and the press stating that the German military had finally expanded beyond some boundary in its three long-standing Eurasian theaters of operation, and that this new German expansion was now intolerable to U.S. security. But nowhere does one find any of the opinion leaders citing a recent German military victory, offensive, breakthrough, or expansion in the North Atlantic, Russia, or North Africa, as being the line over which Hitler had now stepped, and to which the United States now had to respond militarily. Quite the contrary. By middle to late November 1941, the Germans were actually retreating, and continued to retreat, in all three theaters, having suffered highly publicized defeats. In the premier theater, Russia, the month of November 1941 had witnessed the movement of most military activity away from the northern fronts around Leningrad and Moscow, as the war shifted toward the south. The onset of winter had stalled the German drive in the north, resulting in Hitler’s redeployment of troops toward his new primary objective in the Caucasus. American newspaper readers watched nervously the slow but steady German gains in the southern Ukraine, which climaxed on November 22 with the German capture of Rostov. During the week that followed, however, Americans read reports of Russian counterattacks and of a great new battle for Rostov, and on November 29 they learned that the Russians had achieved a great victory with the recapture of Rostov. Many influential interventionist editorialists said that this Russian victory was decisive and amounted to a great turning point in the war.26 The Germans continued to retreat westward over the next week, a disorderly flight that was further hastened as the Russian advance snowballed into

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a general counteroffensive in the days before Pearl Harbor. The Germans did not relaunch any offensives in Russia until late spring 1942, at which time they gained some ground toward their objective at Stalingrad.27 Many Americans in late 1941 and 1942 still harbored apprehensions that Russia might fall to the Germans, in the long term, meaning approximately six months hence from any particular point in time, but this concern was similar to the one first expressed in mid-1941 at the inception of Operation Barbarossa, when the German invasion was making its greatest gains against Russia. Concern for global or Eurasian balance of power did not trigger an AEF to Europe in June 1941, any more than it did later, despite President Roosevelt’s intimations that the United States might need to intervene if it appeared that Russia was on the verge of defeat.28 In fact, at the inception of Operation Barbarossa and for the rest of that summer, many U.S. strategic forecasters predicted that Russia would hold out for only six more weeks before collapsing under the Nazi juggernaut. But neither at that time nor at any time afterward can global balance-of-power theorists point to the Russian front as being the cause of the first U.S. “D-Day,” the November 8, 1942, invasion of North Africa, any more than it was the cause of the more famous D-Day in 1944 at a time when the Russians had defeated the Germans without cessation since Stalingrad in late 1942. The same is true regarding the war in North Africa. All through 1941 and 1942, the desert war was notorious for its ebb and flow, back and forth, first one side gaining, then the other. By the time of Pearl Harbor week, Erwin Rommel had been retreating in the wake of the latest British offensive, Operation Crusader, which had commenced around November 19 after a prolonged lull in the fighting. Rommel would continue to retreat until early 1942, when he retook the initiative by again exploiting another British overextension. Such was the nature of this seesaw war on both sides, a situation that continued throughout 1942.29 As was the case with Russia, at no time in 1941 did President Roosevelt raise the alarm that the Germans were poised for a victory in North Africa that would now demand an immediate and dramatic new U.S. escalation, an AEF. Americans remained as calm about North Africa in December 1941 as they had all through 1941. The first decisive change in the North African theater came with the defeat of Rommel at El Alamein, which was proceeding in the weeks and days before the first AEF landings in North Africa in November 1942. As was the case with Russia, global balance-of-power theorists cannot point to the North African war as having necessitated and caused the U.S. declaration of war.30 The case of the war in the North Atlantic is somewhat more complicated. If global balance-of-power theorists were to argue that the German submarine offensive had increased its power and danger to U.S. Lend-Lease shipments by December 1941, however, they would be mistaken. By November 1941,

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sinkings of Allied merchant ship were at a low, having declined from a peak in April 1941.31 The climax of U.S. war fever regarding the Atlantic, however, occurred in early November 1941 in the immediate wake of the torpedoing and sinking of the USS Reuben James. This incident produced no U.S. declaration of war against Germany, and the Atlantic U-boat threat remained relatively dormant well past December 11. At no time in 1941 did President Roosevelt raise the alarm that the Battle of the Atlantic had reached a critical phase that demanded that the United States send troops to Europe. In fact, by October 1941 the U.S. government had authorized the U.S. Army to end its manpower buildup and to begin a reduction in size, an order reversed after Pearl Harbor.32 For eight months before the crucial date of December 11, 1941, the balance of power in the North Atlantic had been shifting away from Germany and toward the United States and Britain. Therefore, global balance-of-power theorists cannot argue that German expansion in this theater triggered the U.S. decision for an AEF and total war against Germany in December 1941.33 The problem with global balance-of-power theories regarding U.S. entry into World War II is that they are ahistorical. Although German victories in 1940 and the first part of 1941 triggered belligerent U.S. responses, U.S. government policies were almost always responsive to U.S. public opinion, which fluctuated depending on the fortunes of war. By December 1941 most Americans had regained at least as much optimism as they had felt a year earlier at the victorious conclusion of the Battle of Britain. Whatever impetus German expansion via its military victories had given to U.S. policy at various times prior to the latter part of 1941, balance-of-power calculations or fears were only minimally operational, if at all, by the time of Pearl Harbor. U.S. policy was dynamic and ultimately responsive to the public perception of current events, and for some time before and after December 7, 1941, the public was aware that the Germans were retreating and on the defensive.34 If balance-of-power considerations had any significance in actual U.S. decisionmaking in December 1941, it was in the calculation that a weakening of German power motivated the United States to go to war with Germany. Most Americans judged Germany to be guilty of the attack on Pearl Harbor based on the rationalization that a losing and therefore desperate Germany had induced the Japanese to strike.35 The other prominent conventional internationalist historiographical explanation states that the United States moved to all-out war against Germany in December 1941 because Germany declared war on the United States. It is also essentially incorrect. Most historians, in explaining the road to war between the United States and Germany, end their narrative of the causes of this clash at December 11, 1941, the day Germany and the United States declared war on each other. Historians then usually pick up the story with the United States planning its invasion of North Africa. If one seeks a complete explanation of why the United States finally decided to invade and occupy

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North Africa, Europe, and Germany, however, one must study the political discourse not only beyond the conventional December 11, 1941, cutoff date, but also comprehensively after December 7. By doing so, one discovers that both government spokesmen and the press discuss at length the preeminent motives behind the momentous change in U.S. policy toward Germany. In the aftermath of the shock of Pearl Harbor, U.S. public opinion and policy toward Germany was primarily based on an emotional misunderstanding of the situation in the Pacific. Even isolationist historians have neglected this heated but decisive political discourse regarding Germany during the period that should properly be called “Pearl Harbor Month,” December 7, 1941, to January 13, 1942. That end-date was the beginning of the German U-boat offensive off the U.S. East Coast, Operation Drumbeat. Isolationist historians may have neglected this aspect of the period from their narratives because Americans had become united for war against Germany during Pearl Harbor month. The analysis in this study as to when and why the United States decided to invade Germany begins on December 8, 1941, when most Americans blamed Germany at least as much as Japan for the assaults on Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and British Malaya. Because of this popular perception, there was widespread and unprecedented speculation in the U.S. press that President Roosevelt could have obtained at least a majority in Congress to declare war on Germany on December 8, 1941. This was a radical transformation, since throughout 1941 before Pearl Harbor, Americans who were opposed to such a declaration fluctuated between approximately 70 and 80 percent of those polled. In fact, Time magazine reported that during the weeks before Pearl Harbor, interventionist sentiment was actually on the decline.36 After Pearl Harbor, however, the radical reversal of public political opinion toward Germany was overwhelmingly evident well before the famous date of December 11. This radical reversal is demonstrated by the evidence presented in this study, and was encapsulated in the Gallup poll published on December 10 in which 90 percent of Americans polled said that President Roosevelt should have declared war on Germany on December 8. Some historians have subsequently explained that Roosevelt waited to ask for a declaration because he was convinced, from intelligence sources and decrypts, that Germany would soon declare war on the United States. By waiting, Roosevelt apparently thought he could ensure himself an even larger vote in Congress for a declaration of war against Germany, and thus guarantee himself as free a hand as possible in prosecuting the war.37 The events of December 11–13 also require detailed explanation because of their complexity. Simply put, while Hitler may have declared war on December 11, he essentially retracted the declaration on December 12, an apparent continuation of his practice of double-dealing. His shifty maneuvers were apparently designed to resolve his dilemma, which was how to encour-

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age and associate himself with Japanese victories over Britain, Russia, and the United States, while simultaneously continuing his long-standing policy of nonprovocation of the United States until he was in a strong enough position to engage the United States militarily. Thus Hitler’s two-faced rhetorical policy was to issue what sounded very much like a declaration of war against the United States on December 11—in order to appease his Japanese and domestic allies, while on December 12 denying that he ever made any declaration of war—in order to continue his policy of appeasement toward the United States, which he was still not yet ready to fight. This declaration denial or virtual retraction, although reported in the U.S. press at the time, has been lost to history and historians.38 Despite historians’ emphasis upon Germany’s December 11, 1941, declaration of war, any importance that most contemporary Americans attached to it peaked that day. After December 12, any U.S. opinion regarding the importance of Hitler’s declaration virtually disappeared overnight, so that almost no one cited it as a significant justification for the new U.S. policy. The December 12 denial/retraction story was distributed by the Associated Press (AP) and it appeared in many newspapers across the United States. The Chicago Tribune, for example, ran the story under the headline “Hitler speech no war opener, Germans insist.” Relegated to page seven, this story was datelined: Berlin, December 12 (Official Radio received by AP)—Spokesman at the Wilhelmstrasse declared today that Adolf Hitler’s speech yesterday was not a declaration of war against the United States. Technically they said it was “nothing else but a statement of facts created by President Roosevelt’s aggressive policy”—a “registration of a condition already existing between the United States and Germany.”

This was the AP news report in its entirety, but some of these newspapers chose to also print an addendum that the AP had tacked on to the end, in parentheses and italics: Germany’s declaration left at the State Department yesterday morning by Hans Thomsen, German Charge d’Affaires, said that Germany “as from today considers herself as being in a state of war with the United States of America.”39

The U.S. reaction to this news story, as well as to the German declaration of war in general, is a complex and lengthy story in itself. It reveals that most Americans attached little importance to either of Germany’s statements, of both December 11 and December 12. This U.S. opinion included the former isolationists, the crucial “swing vote,” who needed to be thoroughly persuaded to make war on Hitler. They especially attached little importance to Hitler’s declaration, even before his denial/retraction of December 12. One

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example can be seen in the nation’s leading isolationist newspaper, the Chicago Tribune, which immediately supported the U.S. declaration on Germany, while simultaneously recalling that the United States had not needed to wait for a German declaration of war in 1917 before declaring war on Germany.40 Yet historians have insisted ever since the end of World War II that the United States decided to declare war on and invade Germany on December 11, 1941, because Germany declared war on the United States. Examination of both the interventionist and the former isolationist press at the time reveals that after December 11, the major U.S. justification for the new war against Germany remained what it had been after December 7. This justification was based on blaming Germany for the assaults on Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, and Malaya. Most Americans believed that Germany had financed, planned, ordered, and probably militarily participated in these new offensives in the Pacific. The U.S. belief that the German military itself had actually bombed Pearl Harbor was prevalent in the United States for at least nine days following December 7, and to a lesser degree afterward. When material evidence to support the belief in German raids in the Pacific was not forthcoming, this belief began slowly to erode. It was then that the other, concurrent but related belief about German guilt for Pearl Harbor assumed primacy in U.S. public opinion. Comprising two separate and distinct notions, this belief held on the one hand that Germany and Japan were equally guilty coconspiring partners, while on the other hand that Japan was a mere political, economic, and military puppet of Germany. Either way, most Americans believed Germany to be at least as guilty as Japan for the crime at Pearl Harbor.41 Although both interpretations were regularly offered, most Americans seemed much more partial to the puppetmaster theory, which prevailed into 1942 on the assumption that the Japanese were incapable, without German arms and expertise, to run their war machine so successfully. Hence most Americans argued that Japan was a mere political puppet of Germany, occupying the same subordinate position of power in the Axis constellation as did the other “satellites” like Italy, Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Slovakia, and Albania. President Roosevelt and most Americans repeatedly labeled Japan, during Pearl Harbor month, not so much as an equal alliance partner of Germany, but more as a military and economic dependent that took orders from Berlin. Americans perceived the Japanese relationship to Germany much as Americans in 1950 perceived the People’s Republic of China and North Korea to be inferior and subservient in relation to Moscow during the Korean War. Both the puppetmaster and the coconspirator theories were conceptually related to theory held by Americans that the German military had participated in the bombing of Pearl Harbor, an attack that could have been executed by equal partners, or led by tactically dominant German units. No matter who

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may or may not have actually raided Pearl Harbor, most Americans were certain in December 1941 that its probable greatest significance was more as a portent than as a crime. Beginning December 8, U.S. newspapers expressed the view that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was simply the first arm of an all-out and coordinated Axis pincers attack on the United States. Hence Americans expressed an unprecedented level of terrified anticipation that the Pearl Harbor operation in the West foreshadowed German air raids on the continental eastern United States. It was this widespread set of beliefs that became the prime motivator of U.S. policy in December 1941. Germany’s declaration of war was therefore viewed in the blindingly bright light of this overriding perception. During Pearl Harbor week and beyond most Americans apparently believed that the greatest significance of the German declaration of war was as an admission that Germany had ordered, participated, or conspired in the Pacific raids against the United States. Most Americans were thus persuaded that Hitler’s declaration was a warning that German air raids on the United States were imminent. When Hitler denied or retracted his declaration on December 12, Americans viewed this as no more than Hitler’s latest refusal to admit his guilt, this time for “his” attacks against the United States in the Pacific. The U.S. perception of the German threat after December 7 was a fullblown version of a widespread perception before that date. Americans had long contemplated and debated the possibility of German air raids on the United States, but after December 7, 1941, this debate transformed itself into a nationwide near panic as the federal and virtually all state governments lurched into an unprecedented number of emergency measures for civilian defense. The federal effort was overseen by the Office of Civilian Defense (OCD) and its director, New York mayor Fiorello LaGuardia. Americans were so terrified in December 1941 of the expected German air raids that the hypotheses as to how the Germans would execute them may seem, in hindsight, somewhat astonishing. These theories are yet another measure of the strategic paranoia, or as it was sometimes called in December 1941, “war hysteria,” that also fueled the other theories—the German bombing of Pearl Harbor, the German puppetmaster, and worldwide Axis conspiracy.42 Most Americans believed after December 7, 1941, that a second and allGerman arm of an Axis pincers attack initiated in the West at Hawaii would follow in the East, along the U.S. Atlantic seaboard. There was considerable speculation as to exactly how the Germans would carry it out. Americans agreed that the eastern seaboard of the United States, comprising the Atlantic and Gulf coastlines, was the most vulnerable to attack. Americans were, however, uncertain as to whether the Germans would launch their air raids from northern or western Europe, the Atlantic islands, or western Africa. Even though the eastern seaboard was the more vulnerable, all areas east of the Rocky Mountains thought themselves possible targets of German air raids.

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Accordingly, state governments began to take civilian defense precautions against German air raids after December 7.43 Americans had long discussed the possibility of German air raids upon the United States, but this concern had never risen to the panic-induced governmental policy level of the period after December 7, 1941. Before that date, most Americans had been relatively calmed by the isolationist assertion that no one, the Germans included, possessed aircraft capable of round-trip bombing missions across the Atlantic Ocean. Hence, U.S. policy had been to secure the North Atlantic island chain, the shortest flight path to the United States. This was primarily why the focus of U.S. military policy in 1941 had been the phased expansions, first to Newfoundland, then to Greenland, then to Iceland, then to Britain. These were the potential air bases that Germany could use to bomb the United States if the first domino, Britain, ever fell.44 While this northern route had been progressively secured in 1941, the other possible flight path to the Western Hemisphere remained relatively unprotected, due to the presumed numerical insufficiency of U.S. arms. Hence the major U.S. fear in 1941 was that the Germans might seize Vichy West Africa, invade South America by air, and fly bombing missions across the Gulf of Mexico and over the southern United States. The relative calm felt by the rest of the United States completely evaporated after December 7, as the soundness of previous policy was suddenly dismissed.45 Americans east of the Rockies now became as terrified of imminent German air raids as were southerners. These nervous Americans speculated on the manner in which the Germans would execute the momentarily expected air raids on the United States. In addition to fervently restating the long-feared South American tactic, Americans now touted others as well, which in hindsight seem to lack the logic that had calmed Americans before Pearl Harbor. The first possible tactic that the Germans might use was the same tactic that had been used at Pearl Harbor, aircraft carriers. Although Americans believed that Germany possessed only one or possibly two carriers, they thought this could be enough to wreak havoc on a United States whose continental air defenses were now feared to be porous and weak. Even if the Germans had actually possessed only one or two carriers, many Americans now believed the Germans could augment that force by quickly converting merchant ships to aircraft carriers in order to bomb the United States. The “two German carriers,” however, actually remained in various stages of construction at the time of Pearl Harbor, and just how quickly merchant ships could be converted to aircraft carriers, although discussed in the U.S. press, was never examined or debated very thoroughly.46 To answer any Americans who might be skeptical that this theoretical and small German carrier fleet could penetrate an alert U.S. air defense system, some analysts offered a supplementary naval-air theory. They argued that both German submarines and surface catapult ships could be used to carry and

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launch bombers against the United States. In addition, other analysts feared that Germany might fly aircraft-carrying Zeppelins over the United States. All these craft were already in existence, to a limited degree. The offensive capability of such small aircraft might also be described as small, but such details were of little comfort to people who now believed themselves to be relatively defenseless after the shocking example of Pearl Harbor. Indeed, U.S. strategic paranoia had inflated to the extent of fearing the possible existence of secret German air bases in Latin America and the Caribbean, particularly in French colonies.47 The second major theory as to how the Luftwaffe could bomb the United States was no less imaginative, and was also based on a grain of reality. Americans theorized that large German land-based bombers, capable only of oneway flights to the United States from Europe, could carry out suicide missions. President Roosevelt discussed this widespread fear in his January 6, 1942, State of the Union address. He vowed to exact a disproportionate revenge “if any of our enemies, from Europe or from Asia, attempt long-range raids by ‘suicide’ squadrons of bombing planes.”48 Americans were already aware of Japanese suicide pilots called “human torpedoes” in the Pacific, but the U.S. theory regarding the Germans was somewhat more refined. German air crews could sacrifice either their lives, or perhaps just their aircraft or their freedom in order to bomb the United States. According to nationally syndicated columnist Paul Mallon, who became an interventionist after Pearl Harbor, German bombers launched from bases in either northwestern Europe or the Atlantic islands “could fly the Atlantic, drop their bombs, and their crew could either bail out or head for some frozen beach in the Canadian wilds to refuel from Fifth Columnists and attempt to escape home.” Americans calculated that the Germans would eagerly make the profitable tradeoff of a few bombers for the damage they could inflict on U.S. war industries. Thereupon a furious demand arose among many Americans that U.S. defense factories be built primarily in the Midwest, further out of range of air raids. The Roosevelt administration soon adopted this policy.49 These air-raid theories blossomed into full maturity virtually overnight after the shock of Pearl Harbor. The majority of Americans, who had been relatively sure that the United States was relatively secure from imminent air raids, were now decidedly unsure, confused, and terrified in the wake of the previously unimaginable, the Axis success at Pearl Harbor. The U.S. base at Pearl Harbor had been known as the “Gibraltar of the Pacific” due to its renown for being the nation’s most heavily defended fortress, an “impregnable” bastion.50 But after December 7, the military science that had posited the advantages of such a defensive strategy was almost completely discredited. Strategic security stemming from such air defenses was now popularly dismissed as bunk and likened to a foolish reliance on a “Maginot Line.” The U.S. public now recited only the supposed lessons of Pearl Harbor, and dis-

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carded the somewhat different lessons learned in other European operations, such as the Battle of Britain. After Pearl Harbor, the only successful or good defense was considered to be a good offense: sending U.S. troops to Europe to fight Germany. Americans reasoned that if Pearl Harbor could be successfully attacked, a similarly successful attack seemed imminent against the eastern half of the United States.51 Germany did attack eastern U.S. territory with its U-boat offensive in mid-January 1942, U.S. territorial waters, that is. Before that offensive, and during this general period, it was the airborne bomber, not the submarine, that was the most universally feared weapon. After Pearl Harbor, Americans became convinced that Germany would repeat what it had done there, by attacking the continental United States. This seemed obvious to Americans since they believed it was Germany that was largely responsible for the first phase of the offensive, the attack on Pearl Harbor. In December 1941, this belief held that Hitler had in fact given the orders to the Japanese military to bomb Pearl Harbor for the purpose of diverting the United States away from Europe. Americans believed that Hitler had done so in desperation over his defeats on all fronts. This U.S. perception that Japan obeyed Germany, which made Germany equally if not mostly guilty for Pearl Harbor, was widespread until early 1942, and remained strong well after. This vast majority of Americans assigned responsibility for Pearl Harbor to the Germans because this was the only reasoning that seemed to make sense. These Americans could not believe that an “inferior” nation like Japan could have been so victorious over the United States at Hawaii unless German expertise was primarily responsible. It was only after the stunning string of Japanese victories throughout early 1942 that Americans slowly began to realize that Japan was indeed a powerful actor in its own right, and thus probably not subordinate to Germany.52 After early 1942, Americans began to fall back on the coconspirator theory to justify and maintain the U.S. war against Germany. Americans had also developed a new and separate reason by early 1942 to accuse Germany of being a primary and direct aggressor against the United States. As an increasing number of Americans began to realize by early 1942 that the Germans might not be the puppetmasters and thus might not be primarily responsible for Pearl Harbor, a new U.S. motive to attack Germany began either to replace or to augment the slowly eroding older motive. In mid-January 1942, Germany began a six-month U-boat campaign along the U.S. eastern seaboard. Finally, the Germans executed what most Americans had long feared, a military assault on the U.S. homeland. By early 1942, German military violation of U.S. territorial waters had remotivated the United States to counterattack with an offensive against German territory, just as Americans had been motivated during the previous month by the perceived German military assault or German-directed assault on the U.S. territory of Hawaii and the Philippines.

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Territorialism was always the underlying primary strategic motive of the United States, and its policy response was to attack and occupy German territory. After early 1942 the U.S. casus belli against Germany shifted into a twofold indictment. The first accusation comprised the old coconspirator charges against a Germany that had again become no more than the equal ally of Japan. This U.S. accusation against Germany, dating from December 1941, was then supplemented by a new charge originating in January 1942 against Germany’s Operation Drumbeat, its U-boat attacks along the U.S. coastline. In both substance and tone, however, this second charge never seemed to carry as much weight as a casus belli incriminating Germany, as had the various charges that arose in December 1941. Both contemporary Americans and later historians definitely cast a somewhat anticlimactic tone over the provocative value of the second charge in January 1942, as compared to the tone of the first charges in December 1941.53 The anticlimactic historiographical treatment of the German U-boats of January 1942 can be observed, for example, when historians emphasize that the all-out U.S. war against Germany began in December 1941, and not later. Even contemporary commentators who were, in January 1942, much closer to the new German U-boat offensive displayed an equally anticlimactic tone. Thus the tone of contemporary American outrage surrounding the commentary on the January U-boat offensive never reached the much higher degree of outrage enunciated in December regarding German guilt for Pearl Harbor. As was the case with later historians, this contemporary anticlimax was also a result of the general acceptance that the all-out war against Germany had indeed begun in December 1941.54

Notes 1. See Chapter 1, endnotes 2–3, and Chapter 2 for the traditional historiographical explanation that emphasizes Hitler’s declaration of war as being decisive for U.S. policy that followed. 2. Thomas Bailey and Paul Ryan, Hitler vs. Roosevelt: The Undeclared Naval War (New York: Free Press, 1979), p. 237. 3. This Allied coalition was dubbed the United Nations by President Roosevelt after December 11, 1941. See New York Times, January 3, 1942, p. 4. 4. The revisionists include Charles Callan Tansill, Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy, 1933–1941 (Chicago: Regnery, 1952); Charles A. Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941: A Study in Appearances and Realities (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948); Harry Elmer Barnes, ed., Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Its Aftermath (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton, 1953); George Morgenstern, Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War (New York: Devin Adair, 1947); William Henry Chamberlin, America’s Second Crusade (Chicago: Regnery, 1950); Frederick C. Sanborn, Design for War: A Study of Secret Power Politics, 1937–1941

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(New York: Devin Adair, 1951); Robert A. Theobald, The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor: The Washington Contribution to the Japanese Attack (New York: Devin Adair, 1954); Husband E. Kimmel, Admiral Kimmel’s Story (Chicago: Regnery, 1955); Anthony Kubek, How the Far East Was Lost: American Policy and the Creation of Communist China, 1941–1949 (Chicago: Regnery, 1963). For an overview, see Wayne S. Cole, “American Entry into World War II: A Historiographical Appraisal,” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 43 (March 1957): 595–617. The second generation of revisionists includes: Bruce M. Russett, No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of the United States Entry into World War II (New York: Harper and Row, 1972); Lloyd C. Gardner, The Economic Aspects of New Deal Diplomacy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964); Jonathan G. Utley, Going to War with Japan, 1939–1941 (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984); Robert Freeman Smith, “American Foreign Relations, 1920–1942,” in Barton J. Bernstein, ed., Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History (New York: Pantheon Books, 1968). 5. Revisionist dissents were published mainly during the periods of the Korean and Vietnam Wars. See Jerald A. Combs, The History of American Foreign Policy, vol. 2 (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986), p. 290. 6. Harry Elmer Barnes, Pearl Harbor After a Quarter of a Century (New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1972); John Toland, Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath (New York: Doubleday, 1982); Edwin Layton, Roger Pineau, and John Costello, And I Was There: Pearl Harbor and Midway—Breaking the Secrets (New York: William Morrow, 1985); Bruce Bartlett, Cover Up: The Politics of Pearl Harbor, 1941–1946 (New York: Arlington House, 1978); Edward Beach, Scapegoats: A Defense of Kimmel and Short at Pearl Harbor (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1995); Robert Stinnett, Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor (New York: Free Press/Simon and Schuster, 1999); George Waller, ed., Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt and the Coming of War (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1976). 7. Gordon Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981); Gordon Prange, Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986). 8. The War Reports of General of the Army George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff, General of the Army H. H. Arnold, Commanding General, Army Air Forces [and] Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander in Chief, United States Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1947), pp. 141–149. 9. Prewar Americans were well aware of the grievous human rights violations or aggressions perpetrated by all the Great Powers and Empires within the Eurasian continent. See Alan Bullock, Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1992); Edwin Bacon, The Gulag at War: Stalin’s Forced Labour System in the Light of the Archives (New York: New York University Press, 1994); Bernard Porter, The Lion’s Share: British Imperialism, 1850–1983 (New York: Longman, 1984); A. J. P. Taylor, The Origins of the Second World War (New York: Atheneum, 1961). 10. For geopolitical divisions within the United States, see New York Times, November 24, 1941, p. 16; November 28, 1941, p. 10; November 29, 1941, p. 16; November 30, 1941, p. E9; December 2, 1941, p. 10; Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932–1945 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), p. 7; Wayne S. Cole, America First: The Battle Against Intervention, 1940–41 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953), p. 146; Wayne S. Cole, Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle Against American Intervention in World War II (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), pp. 9, 13; Richard Norton Smith, The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick, 1880–1955 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997), pp. 389, 400, 402–403, 442; Peter Trubowitz, Defining the National Interest: Conflict

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and Change in American Foreign Policy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), chap. 3: “North-South Alliance and the Triumph of Internationalism in the 1930s”; Joseph Gies, The Colonel of Chicago (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979), pp. 156–157; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), October 23, 1941, p. A4787; November 13, 1941, p. A5095; November 17, 1941, p. 9; Los Angeles Times, August 21, 1941, p. 4; Chicago Tribune, August 19, 1941, p. 8; Time, October 13, 1941, p. 19; February 23, 1942, p. 50; Atlanta Journal, December 17, 1941, p. 22; Thomas Bailey and Paul Ryan, Hitler vs. Roosevelt: The Undeclared Naval War (New York: Free Press, 1979), p. 143; Newsweek, August 25, 1941, p. 17; Forest Pogue, George C. Marshall: Ordeal and Hope (New York: Viking Press, 1965), pp. 122, 287; Thomas Parrish, Roosevelt and Marshall: Partners in Politics and War (New York: William Morrow, 1989); Porter Sargent, Getting Us into War (Boston: Porter Sargent, 1941), p. 473; David Tompkins, Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg: The Evolution of a Modern Republican, 1884–1945 (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1970), p. 192; Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York: Harper and Bros., 1947), pp. 325, 364; Forrest Davis and Ernest Lindley, How War Came: An American White Paper, from the Fall of France to Pearl Harbor (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942), pp. 116, 230; Robert Shogan, Hard Bargain: How FDR Twisted Churchill’s Arm, Evaded the Law, and Changed the Role of the American Presidency (New York: Scribner, 1995), p. 268; Geoffrey Perrett, Days of Sadness, Years of Triumph: The American People, 1939–1945 (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1973), pp. 155–157, 191–192, 198. 11. The internationalist historiographical school developed the theme of global balance of power, illegal aggression, and Britain as the final bulwark of U.S. security. This was first enunciated by Walter Johnson, The Battle Against Isolation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944); Dexter Perkins, America and Two Wars (Boston: Little, Brown, 1944); and later by Basil Rauch, Roosevelt: From Munich to Pearl Harbor—A Study in the Creation of a Foreign Policy (New York: Creative Age Press, 1950); Hans Morgenthau, In Defense of the National Interest: A Critical Examination of American Foreign Policy (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1951); William Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Challenge to Isolation: The World Crisis of 1937–1940 and American Foreign Policy (New York: Harper and Row, 1952); William Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 (New York: Published for the Council on Foreign Relations by Harper, 1953); Robert Osgood, Ideals and Self Interest in America’s Foreign Relations: The Great Transformation of the Twentieth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953); Walter Lippmann, America in the World Today (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1957); Arthur Whitaker, The Western Hemisphere Idea: Its Rise and Decline (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1954); Donald Drummond, The Passing of American Neutrality, 1937–41 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1955); Justus Doenecke and John Wiltz, From Isolation to War, 1931–1941, 2nd ed. (Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1991); Charles Bohlen, The Transformation of American Foreign Policy (New York: W. W. Norton, 1969); Arnold Offner, American Appeasement: United States Foreign Policy and Germany, 1933–1938 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969); Gloria J. Barron, Leadership in Crisis: FDR and the Path to Intervention (New York: Kennikat Press, 1973); Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979); Robert Divine, Second Chance: The Triumph of Internationalism in America During World War II (New York: Atheneum, 1967); T. R. Fehrenbach, FDR’s Undeclared War, 1939–1941 (New York: David McKay, 1967); Warren Kimball, ed., Franklin D. Roosevelt and the World Crisis, 1937–1945 (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973); Melvin Small, Was War Nec-

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essary? National Security and U.S. Entry into War (London: Sage, 1980); David Reynolds, The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, 1937–41 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981); Waldo Heinrichs, Threshold of War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Entry into World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Detlef Junker, “Roosevelt and the National Socialist Threat to the U.S.,” in Frank Trommler and Joseph McVeigh, eds., America and the Germans (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985), pp. 30–44. Internationalists who focused on U.S. geostrategic and geopolitical interests include H. L. Trefousse, Germany and American Neutrality, 1939–1941 (New York: Bookman Associates, 1951); Saul Friedlander, Prelude to Downfall: Hitler and the United States, 1939–1941 (New York: Alfred Knopf, 1967); James Compton, The Swastika and the Eagle: Hitler, the United States, and the Origins of World War II (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967); Alton Frye, Nazi Germany and the American Hemisphere, 1933–1941 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967). 12. Geostrategic and geopolitical analysts who focus upon the Western Hemisphere and U.S.–Latin American relations include Stetson Conn and Byron Fairchild, The Framework of Hemispheric Defense (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1960); Mark Skinner Watson, The War Department Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1950); Frank McCann, The Brazilian-American Alliance, 1938–1940 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973); Bryce Wood, The Making of the Good Neighbor Policy (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961); R. B. Woods, The Roosevelt Foreign Policy Establishment and the Good Neighbor Policy: The United States and Argentina, 1941–1945 (Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1979); David Haglund, Latin America and the Transformation of U.S. Strategic Thought, 1936–1940 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984). Revisionist analysts include Charles Callan Tansill, Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy, 1933–1941 (Chicago: Regnery, 1952); Ronald Radosh, Prophets on the Right: Profiles of Conservative Critics of American Globalism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975); Patrick Hearden, Roosevelt Confronts Hitler: America’s Entry into World War II (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1979). These revisionists were prefigured by the earlier conclusions of Lloyd C. Gardner, The Economic Aspects of New Deal Diplomacy (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1964); Charles A. Beard, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941: A Study in Appearances and Realities (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948). Works dealing with prewar isolationism include Wayne S. Cole, America First: The Battle Against Intervention, 1940–41 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953); Selig Adler, The Isolationist Impulse: Its Twentieth-Century Reaction (New York: Free Press, 1966); Thomas Guinsburg, The Pursuit of Isolationism in the United States Senate, from Versailles to Pearl Harbor (New York: Garland, 1982); Adolf Berle [Roosevelt’s assistant secretary of state], Navigating the Rapids, 1918–1971: From the Papers of Adolf A. Berle, edited by Beatrice Bishop Berle and Travis Beal Jacobs, introduction by Max Ascoli (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973). 13. Mark A. Stoler, “From Continentalism to Globalism: General Stanley D. Embick, the Joint Strategic Survey Committee, and the Military View of American National Policy During the Second World War,” Diplomatic History 6 (summer 1982): 303–321; Louis Morton, “Germany First: The Basic Concept of Allied Strategy in World War II,” in Kent R. Greenfield, ed., Command Decisions (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1960), pp. 11–47; Michael S. Sherry, Preparing for the Next War: American Plans for Postwar Defense, 1941–45 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977); Daniel Yergin, Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977), pp. 193–220.

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14. Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 9, 1940 (New York: Random House, 1950), May 16, 1940, pp. 199–200; David Haglund, Latin America and the Transformation of U.S. Strategic Thought, 1936–1940 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984). 15. Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 14, 1941, p. 20A; New York Times, November 30, 1941, pp. E3, E5; December 1, 1941, p. 18; December 2, 1941, p. 22; December 5, 1941, pp. 1, 6, 10, 22; December 6, 1941, pp. 4–6, 16; December 7, 1941, p. E1; December 20, 1941, p. 9; December 22, 1941, pp. 8–9, 16; December 23, 1941, p. 6; Milwaukee Sentinel, December 12, 1941, p. 20; Denver Post, December 11, 1941, p. 2; Nebraska State Journal, December 13, 1941, p. 8; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 16, 1941, p. 4; December 18, 1941, p. 4; Toledo Blade, December 10, 1941, p. 3; Des Moines Tribune, December 13, 1941, p. 4. 16. George Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–1971, vol. 1 (New York: Random House, 1972), pp. 262–334. 17. Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 9, 1940 (New York: Random House, 1950), December 29, 1940, pp. 636–638; vol. 10, 1941, May 27, 1941, p. 185; September 11, 1941, p. 387; October 27, 1941, p. 439; November 3, 1941, p. 463; November 24, 1941, pp. 495–497; December 9, 1941, p. 529; December 11, 1941, p. 532; vol. 11, 1942, January 6, 1942, p. 40; February 17, 1942, p. 103; February 23, 1942, p. 107. 18. Ibid., vol. 9, 1940, October 23, 1940, p. 495. 19. Ibid., vol. 9, 1940, July 10, 1940, p. 289; October 12, 1940, p. 466; October 30, 1940, p. 516; December 29, 1940, pp. 640, 643; vol. 10, 1941, May 27, 1941, pp. 182, 189, 190; September 11, 1941, p. 392; September 23, 1941, p. 394; November 13, 1941, p. 488; vol. 11, 1942, January 6, 1942, p. 39; February 14, 1942, p. 99. 20. Ibid., vol. 10, 1941, April 10, 1941, p. 96; May 27, 1941, p. 188; July 7, 1941, p. 255; September 11, 1941, p. 384; November 24, 1941, pp. 495–497. 21. Ibid., vol. 9, 1940, September 3, 1940, pp. 391–392; October 12, 1940, p. 465; vol. 10, 1941, March 27, 1941, p. 81; May 27, 1941, p. 188; New York Times, November 30, 1941, pp. 2E, E5. 22. Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 9, 1940 (New York: Random House, 1950), October 12, 1940, p. 460; October 23, 1940, pp. 494–495; October 28, 1940, p. 502; October 30, 1940, p. 516; vol. 10, 1941, February 27, 1941, p. 41; April 25, 1941, p. 133; May 27, 1941, p. 188; Forrest Davis and Ernest Lindley, How War Came: An American White Paper, from the Fall of France to Pearl Harbor (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942), p. 55; Stetson Conn and Byron Fairchild, The Framework of Hemispheric Defense (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1960); Mark Skinner Watson, The War Department Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1950). 23. This was due to the interventionist-isolationist tension in U.S. politics. The isolationists were also known as the non-interventionists. Roughly speaking, the interventionists were internationalists, and the isolationists were nationalists. 24. Joseph Gies, The Colonel of Chicago (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1979), pp. 156–157; Thomas Bailey and Paul Ryan, Hitler vs. Roosevelt: The Undeclared Naval War (New York: Free Press, 1979), p. 143; Wayne S. Cole, Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle Against American Intervention in World War II (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), p. 9; Wayne S. Cole, America First: The Battle Against Intervention, 1940–41 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953), p. 146; Forest Pogue, George C. Marshall: Ordeal and Hope (New York: Viking Press, 1965), pp. 122, 287; Thomas Parrish, Roosevelt and Marshall: Partners in Politics and War (New York: William Morrow, 1989), pp. 101–102; Porter Sargent, Getting Us into War (Boston:

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Porter Sargent, 1941), p. 473; David Tompkins, Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg: The Evolution of a Modern Republican, 1884–1945 (Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1970), p. 192; Forrest Davis and Ernest Lindley, How War Came: An American White Paper, from the Fall of France to Pearl Harbor (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942), pp. 116, 230; Robert Shogan, Hard Bargain: How FDR Twisted Churchill’s Arm, Evaded the Law, and Changed the Role of the American Presidency (New York: Scribner, 1995), p. 268; Geoffrey Perrett, Days of Sadness, Years of Triumph: The American People, 1939–1945 (New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1973), pp. 155–157, 191–192, 198, 419; H. L. Trefousse, Germany and American Neutrality, 1939–1941 (New York: Bookman Associates, 1951), p. 162; James Schneider, Should America Go to War? The Debate over Foreign Policy in Chicago, 1939–1941 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989), pp. x, 83, 140–141, 157–200; Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 77th Congress, 1st sess., vol. 87, pt. 9 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), December 8, 1941, p. 9529; New York Times, November 1, 1941, p. 2; November 3, 1941, p. 13; November 4, 1941, pp. 1, 4, 22; November 5, 1941, pp. 2, 22; November 7, 1941, p. 11; November 9, 1941, p. E3; November 14, 1941, p. 4; November 16, 1941, p. 5; November 17, 1941, p. 9; November 30, 1941, sec. 6, p. 36; December 2, 1941, p. 10; December 6, 1941, p. 4; Nebraska State Journal, December 17, 1941, p. 6; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 8, 1941, p. 4; Congressional Record: Appendix, vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941), October 23, 1941, p. A4808; November 5, 1941, p. A4497; November 19, 1941, p. A5215; October 27, 1941, p. A4876; Los Angeles Times, August 6, 1941, p. 10; August 20, 1941, p. 4; August 22, 1941, pt. 2, p. 4; November 1, 1941, p. 2; San Francisco Chronicle, November 1, 1941, p. 10; November 2, 1941 p. 5; November 3, 1941, p. 1; Chicago Tribune, August 19, 1941, p. 1; November 17, 1941, p. 9; Time, February 24, 1941, p. 46; March 31, 1941, p. 6; May 19, 1941, p. 19; July 7, 1941, p. 11; August 4, 1941, p. 15; August 18, 1941, pp. 12–13; September 1, 1941, pp. 12, 70; September 15, 1941, p. 63; September 22, 1941, p. 11; September 29, 1941, p. 13; October 6, 1941, p. 17; November 24, 1941, p. 23; New York Times, November 4, 1941, p. 4; November 5, 1941, p. 22; November 25, 1941, p. 8; Washington (D.C.) Times-Herald, December 12, 1941, p. A13; Newsweek, June 28, 1941, p. 16; October 6, 1941, p. 15; October 20, 1941, p. 20; November 10, 1941, p. 21; November 24, 1941, p. 13; Colliers, December 27, 1941, p. 70; Readers Digest/Atlantic Monthly, November/December 1941, p. 109; Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists: 1932–1945 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), pp. 7, 357, 393, 428, 451; Wayne S. Cole, Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle Against American Intervention in World War II (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), pp. 9, 13, 91, 123, 137; Wayne S. Cole, America First: The Battle Against Intervention, 1940–41 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953), pp. 146, 166. 25. Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 10, 1941 (New York: Random House, 1950), October 9, 1941, pp. 406–411; November 13, 1941, pp. 487–489. 26. New York Times, November 30, 1941, p. 1; December 5, 1941, pp. 10, 19; December 6, 1941, pp. 5, 16; December 7, 1941, p. E1; December 17, 1941, p. 1; December 19, 1941, p. 24; December 20, 1941, p. 18; December 21, 1941, pp. E3, 4E, 6E; December 22, 1941, p. 16; December 23, 1941, p. 18; December 28, 1941, p. 8E; December 30, 1941, p. 10; January 4, 1942, p. E3; Chicago Tribune, December 4, 1941, p. 18; December 11, 1941, p. 14; December 16, 1941, p. 16; December 23, 1941, p. 16; December 28, 1941, p. 12; January 1, 1942, p. 16; January 7, 1942, p. 10. 27. At no time in 1942 were Americans informed that the Germans were on the verge of victory in Russia, or that the fall of Russia was close at hand. Quite the con-

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trary. Throughout 1942, President Roosevelt was consistently optimistic about the situation in Russia, both before and after the first landings of the AEF in North Africa in November 1942. See Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 11, 1942 (New York: Random House, 1950). This situation, or contest, in 1942, before November, can best be described as undecided. Certainly there was much movement in that highly mobile warfare, but there were no decisive victories that indicated an eventual victor. See Thomas Greiss, ed., The Second World War: Europe and the Mediterranean (Wayne, N.J.: Avery, 1989), chaps. 4–6. This inconclusive situation in 1942, before November, no doubt accounted for Roosevelt’s optimistic attitude, an attitude that stands in stark contrast to his alarmist attitude at earlier times when the fortunes of the Allies were at a lower point, such as at the fall of France, or with the first Atlantic incidents. See Rosenman, Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vols. 9–11, 1940–1941. 28. Warren Kimball, The Juggler: Franklin Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), pp. 34, 40. 29. Thomas Greiss, ed., The Second World War: Europe and the Mediterranean (Wayne, N.J.: Avery, 1989), chap. 7. 30. U.S. concerns about North Africa and Russia in 1941 underwent no change during and after 1942. See The War Reports of General of the Army George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff, General of the Army H. H. Arnold, Commanding General, Army Air Forces [and] Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander in Chief, United States Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1947), pp. 141–149. 31. S. E. Morison, The Battle of the Atlantic, vol. 1 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1947), p. 95; New York Times, December 14, 1941, pp. 2E, 10E; Thomas Greiss, ed., The Second World War: Europe and the Mediterranean (Wayne, N.J.: Avery, 1989), p. 224. 32. Mark Skinner Watson, The War Department Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1950), p. 366; Eric Larrabee, Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), p. 94. 33. The Germans did, however, expand their submarine operations and their rate of sinkings in the North Atlantic during 1942, after the U.S. declaration of war. There is indeed some evidence that this heightened warfare did play some part in keeping the fires of total war lit in the United States after they had been ignited in December 1941. The evidence demonstrates that this increased German submarine warfare provoked Americans not so much because of the increased rate of Allied sinkings, but rather because of where they now took place, along the U.S. coastline and in the Caribbean. Therefore it was not so much that the Atlantic balance of power had shifted to the Germans, but more that the Germans had territorially shifted where they sank U.S. ships. This assessment was also reflected in statements made by President Roosevelt in 1942. Therefore, the U-boat provocation of the United States in 1942 does not accord with the internationalist theory so much as it accords with the nationalist theory. Nevertheless, before the November AEF landings in North Africa, German sinkings of Allied ships in 1942 peaked in June. So for approximately five months before the first U.S. ground invasion of the Eastern Hemisphere, the Atlantic balance of power was shifting back again toward the Allies. This evidence directly contradicts the assumptions of global balance-of-power theorists, who argue that overall German global expansion caused the U.S. policy to send troops to Europe. See Thomas Greiss, ed., The Second World War: Europe and the Mediterranean (Wayne, N.J.: Avery, 1989), chap. 9. 34. The Germans did not relaunch offensives in any of the three theaters until 1942. Nevertheless, global balance-of-power calculations remained a minimal concern of most Americans after Pearl Harbor, due to the ongoing stalemate in Europe. Global

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balance-of-power theorists may be familiar with some causes of U.S. policy at certain points, such as during certain months of 1940, but they seem unfamiliar with causes at the most crucial point of all, December 1941. 35. See Chapter 5 for a thorough discussion of this common U.S. perception and motivation. 36. Time, December 22, 1941, p. 63; Wayne S. Cole, Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle Against American Intervention in World War II (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974), pp. 8, 186–189; Wayne S. Cole, America First: The Battle Against Intervention, 1940–41 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953), pp. 60–61; Wayne S. Cole, Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932–1945 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), pp. 12, 364, 465; George Gallup, The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–1971, vol. 1 (New York: Random House, 1972), pp. 263–311, 319, 321, 326, 346, 301, 295, 334; Hadley Cantril, ed., Public Opinion, 1935–46 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), pp. 1077–1078; Harwood Childs, ed., Public Opinion Quarterly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942), pp. 302, 311; Thomas Bailey, The Man in the Street: The Impact of American Public Opinion on Foreign Policy (New York: Macmillan, 1948), pp. 134–135, 86, 12. 37. The December 10, 1941, Gallup/AIPO (American Institute of Public Opinion) poll asked, “Should President Roosevelt have asked Congress to declare war on Germany, as well as on Japan?”: yes—90%, no—7%. See Hadley Cantril, ed., Public Opinion, 1935–46 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), p. 1173; see also the book’s Appendix for all relevant public opinion polls. On the subject of Roosevelt’s waiting until December 11 to request a declaration of war on Germany, see Chapter 2, which is in part derived from the following sources: Robert Sherwood, Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History (New York: Harper and Bros., 1948), p. 441; Gordon Prange, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor (New York: McGrawHill, 1981), p. 557; The Diary of Harold Ickes, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Manuscript Reading Room, container 8, reels 4–5, December 7, 1941, p. 6111. 38. The historiography concluding that Hitler was a past master of double-dealing, deceit, and lies is enormous. That this opinion was indeed still widespread during Pearl Harbor month was amply demonstrated by President Roosevelt in his January 6, 1942, State of the Union address when he reminded Americans that “Hitler . . . will try to use the same technique of falsehood and rumor-mongering with which he divided France from Britain. He is trying to do this with us even now.” See Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 11, 1942 (New York: Random House, 1950), State of the Union address, January 6, 1942, p. 39. Regarding Hitler’s specific actions and motives during Pearl Harbor week, see Norman Rich, Hitler’s War Aims, vol. 1 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1973), p. 245; James Compton, The Swastika and the Eagle: Hitler, the United States, and the Origins of World War II (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), p. 238; H. L. Trefousse, Germany and American Neutrality, 1939–1941 (New York: Bookman Associates, 1951), pp. 141–155; Klaus Hildebrand, The Third Reich, translated from the German by P. S. Falla (London: Allen and Unwin, 1984), p. 59; Klaus Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich, translated from the German by Anthony Fothergill (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), p. 115; Michael Bloch, Ribbentrop (New York: Crown, 1992), pp. 346–347; U.S. Department of State, Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–45, ser. D, vol. 13 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964), pp. 991–994; Michael Gannon, Operation Drumbeat: The Dramatic True Story of Germany’s First U-Boat Attacks Along the American Coast in World War II (New York: Harper and Row, 1990), p. 99; Holger Herwig, Politics of Frustration: The United States in German Naval Planning, 1889–1941 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1976), p. 236; Justus Doenecke and John Wiltz, From Isolation to War, 1931–1941,

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2nd ed. (Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1991), p. 177; Joseph Lash, Roosevelt and Churchill, 1939–1941: The Partnership That Saved the West (New York: W. W. Norton, 1976), pp. 491–492; Eberhard Jaeckel, Hitler in History (London: Brandeis University Press, 1984), pp. 84–87; Curt Reiss, The Self Betrayed: Glory and Doom of the German Generals (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1942), p. 295; David Irving, Hitler’s War (New York: Viking, 1977), pp. 345–346, 292. 39. Chicago Tribune, December 13, 1941, p. 7; Milwaukee Sentinel, December 13, 1941, p. 2A; Detroit Free Press, December 13, 1941, p. 16; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 13, 1941, p. 20; December 15, 1941, p. 4; Indianapolis News, December 12, 1941, p. 5; Atlanta Journal, December 12, 1941, p. 17; New York Times, December 14, 1941, p. 54. 40. Chicago Tribune, December 12, 1941, p. 5. For the overall U.S. reaction to Hitler’s declaration of war, see Chapter 2, endnote 1. 41. Puppetmaster guilt is analogous to the belief held by many district attorneys that the crime “kingpin” is as dangerous, or even more dangerous, than his “triggerman.” 42. New York Times, December 8, 1941, p. 3; December 9, 1941, p. 1; December 10, 1941, pp. 1, 24; December 11, 1941, p. 1; December 12, 1941 pp. 21, 23; December 13, 1941, pp. 4, 13; December 14, 1941, pp. 43, 64, 2E, E5, E7, 10E; December 15, 1941, p. 14; December 16, 1941, pp. 1, 24; December 17, 1941, pp. 31–32; December 18, 1941, pp. 33, 35; December 19, 1941, pp. 18, 21, 24; December 20, 1941, pp. 10, 12; December 21, 1941, pp. 1, 35, 2E, E3, 8E; December 22, 1941, pp. 13, 16; December 23, 1941, pp. 1, 19; December 24, 1941, p. 16; December 25, 1941, p. 24; December 28, 1941, p. 1; December 29, 1941, p. 16; December 30, 1941, p. 17; December 31, 1941, pp. 4, 16; January 1, 1942, p. 33; January 2, 1942, p. 10; January 3, 1942, p. 8; January 10, 1942, p. 14; January 11, 1942, p. 6E; January 12, 1942, p. 8; January 13, 1942, p. 2; January 15, 1942, p. 14; January 16, 1942, p. 16; January 18, 1942, pp. E1, E5; January 20, 1942, pp. 1, 3; January 24, 1942, p. 16; January 25, 1942, pp. 6, 6E, 8E; January 27, 1942, p. 10; January 29, 1942, p. 14; January 31, 1942, pp. 8, 16. 43. New York Times, December 12, 1941, pp. 12, 23; December 14, 1941, pp. E5, E7, 10E; December 15, 1941, p. 14; December 20, 1941, pp. 10, 12; December 21, 1941, p. 8E; January 11, 1942, p. 6E; January 25, 1942, pp. 6E, 8E; January 31, 1942, pp. 8, 16; St. Louis Post Dispatch, December 14, 1941, p. 16A; Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 14, 1941, p. 20A; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 12, 1941, p. 13; December 14, 1941, sec. 4, p. 4, magazine, p. 2; Milwaukee Sentinel, December 11, 1941, p. 8; Topeka Daily Capital, December 14, 1941, pp. 1, 16B; Cleveland Press, December 10, 1941, p. 17; December 11, 1941, p. 16; Montana Standard, December 11, 1941, p. 1; Idaho Daily Statesman, December 10, 1941, p. 8; December 11, 1941, p. 6; December 12, 1941, pp. 2, 7; December 14, 1941, p. 1; Des Moines Tribune, December 15, 1941, pp. 3, 6; Denver Post, December 12, 1941, p. 8; December 15, 1941, p. 2; Sioux Falls (South Dakota) Daily Argus-Leader, December 9, 1941, p. 4; December 10, 1941, p. 2; Milwaukee Post, December 11, 1941, p. 10; Salt Lake Tribune, December 10, 1941, p. 4; December 11, 1941, p. 12; Nebraska State Journal, December 8, 1941, p. 8; December 9, 1941, p. 12; December 10, 1941, p. 14; December 14, 1941, pp. 1, D1; Wyoming State Tribune, December 8, 1941, p. 4; December 15, 1941, p. 7; Minneapolis Star Journal, December 15, 1941, p. 10; December 17, 1941, p. 1; Detroit Free Press, December 9, 1941, p. 17; December 10, 1941, p. 6; December 12, 1941, pp. 3, 13; December 13, 1941, pp. 1, 16; December 14, 1941, p. 2; December 15, 1941, p. 16; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 13, 1941, p. 4; December 14, 1941, p. 15; December 17, 1941, pp. 1–3; Indianapolis News, December 17, 1941, pp. 12, 15; December 19, 1941, p. 1; December 26, 1941, p. 7; December 30,

Conclusion

211

1941, p. 6; December 31, 1941, p. 8; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 15, 1941, p. 1; December 16, 1941, p. 10; Toledo Blade, December 10, 1941, p. 6; December 11, 1941, p. 29; December 12, 1941, p. 1; December 13, 1941, p. 3. 44. Waldo Heinrichs, Threshold of War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Entry into World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988); Mark Skinner Watson, The War Department Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1950); William Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 (New York: Published for the Council on Foreign Relations by Harper, 1953); Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 9, 1940 (New York: Random House, 1950), July 10, 1940, p. 289; October 12, 1940, p. 466; October 30, 1940, p. 516; December 29, 1940, pp. 640, 643; vol. 10, 1941, April 10, 1941, p. 96; May 27, 1941, pp. 182, 188–190; July 7, 1941, p. 255; September 11, 1941, pp. 384, 392; September 23, 1941, p. 394; November 13, 1941, p. 488; November 24, 1941, pp. 495–497; vol. 11, 1942, January 6, 1942, p. 39; February 14, 1942, p. 99. 45. Waldo Heinrichs, Threshold of War: Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Entry into World War II (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), pp. 26–27, 47, 64–65, 78–79, 82, 110, 157, 178; Mark Skinner Watson, The War Department Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations (Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1950), pp. 94–95, 106, 116–117, 188, 362, 389, 404; William Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 (New York: Published for the Council on Foreign Relations by Harper, 1953), pp. 58, 62, 64, 71, 85, 161, 452, 518, 523, 600, 580, 587, 454, 505, 669, 771; Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 9, 1940 (New York: Random House, 1950), December 29, 1940, pp. 636–638; vol. 10, 1941, May 27, 1941, p. 185; September 11, 1941, p. 387; October 27, 1941, p. 439; November 3, 1941, p. 463; November 24, 1941, pp. 495–497; December 9, 1941, p. 529; December 11, 1941, p. 532; vol. 11, 1942, January 6, 1942, p. 40; February 17, 1942, p. 103; February 23, 1942, p. 107; Salt Lake Tribune, December 8, 1941, p. 3; Omaha Morning World-Herald, December 15, 1941, p. 12; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 11, 1941, p. 14; Toledo Blade, December 10, 1941, p. 22; Sacramento Union, December 19, 1941, p. 10. 46. New York Times, December 21, 1941, pp. E3, 8E; December 24, 1941, p. 16; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 12, 1941, p. 13; Milwaukee Sentinel, December 13, 1941, p. 13; Grand Forks (North Dakota) Herald, December 10, 1941, p. 2; Salt Lake Tribune, December 10, 1941, p. 12; Wyoming State Tribune, December 26, 1941, p. 3; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 10, 1941, p. 7; December 12, 1941, p. 4; December 14, 1941, p. 15; December 15, 1941, p. 10; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 13, 1941, pp. 1, 3; Toledo Blade, December 12, 1941, p. 2; Newsweek, December 22, 1941, p. 25. 47. Patrick Abazzia, Mr. Roosevelt’s Navy: The Private War of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, 1939–1942 (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1975), p. 366; New York Times, December 14, 1941, p. 10E; December 21, 1941, p. 8E; December 31, 1941, p. 16; January 18, 1942, p. E5; Indianapolis News, January 7, 1942, p. 1; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 15, 1941, p. 10; Omaha Morning World-Herald, December 15, 1941, p. 12; Toledo Blade, December 10, 1941, p. 22. 48. Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 11, 1942 (New York: Random House, 1950), January 6, 1942, p. 40. 49. New York Times, December 19, 1941, pp. 18, 21; December 21, 1941, p. E3; December 22, 1941, p. 16; January 13, 1942, p. 2; January 31, 1942, pp. 8, 16; New York Daily News, December 12, 1941, p. 24; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 12, 1941, p. 13; Milwaukee Sentinel, December 13, 1941, p. 13; December 14, 1941, p. 6; Sioux Falls (South Dakota) Daily Argus-Leader, December 10, 1941, p. 2;

212

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December 12, 1941, p. 6; Salt Lake Tribune, December 10, 1941, p. 12; Omaha Morning World-Herald, December 13, 1941, p. 7; December 15, 1941, p. 12; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 10, 1941, p. 1; December 12, 1941, p. 4; December 13, 1941, p. 6; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 13, 1941, p. 3; San Francisco Examiner, December 13, 1941, p. 9; Samuel Rosenman, comp., The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt, vol. 11, 1942 (New York: Random House, 1950), January 6, 1942, p. 40; February 17, 1942, p. 103. 50. Thomas Bailey and Paul Ryan, Hitler vs. Roosevelt: The Undeclared Naval War (New York: Free Press, 1979), p. 234. 51. New York Times, December 12, 1941, pp. 12, 23; December 14, 1941, pp. E5, E7, 10E; December 15, 1941, p. 14; December 20, 1941, pp. 10, 12; December 21, 1941, p. 8E; January 11, 1942, p. 6E; January 25, 1942, pp. 6E, 8E; January 31, 1942, pp. 8, 16; St. Louis Post Dispatch, December 14, 1941, p. 16A; Cleveland Plain Dealer, December 14, 1941, p. 20A; Des Moines (Iowa) Register, December 12, 1941, p. 13; December 14, 1941, sec. 4, p. 4, magazine, p. 2; Milwaukee Sentinel, December 11, 1941, p. 8; Topeka Daily Capital, December 14, 1941, pp. 1, 16B; Cleveland Press, December 10, 1941, p. 17; December 11, 1941, p. 16; Montana Standard, December 11, 1941, p. 1; Idaho Daily Statesman, December 10, 1941, p. 8; December 11, 1941, p. 6; December 12, 1941, pp. 2, 7; December 14, 1941, p. 1; Des Moines (Iowa) Tribune, December 15, 1941, pp. 3, 6; Denver Post, December 12, 1941, p. 8; December 15, 1941, p. 2; Sioux Falls (South Dakota) Daily Argus-Leader, December 9, 1941, p. 4; December 10, 1941, p. 2; Milwaukee Post, December 11, 1941, p. 10; Salt Lake Tribune, December 10, 1941, p. 4; December 11, 1941, p. 12; Nebraska State Journal, December 8, 1941, p. 8; December 9, 1941, p. 12; December 10, 1941, p. 14; December 14, 1941, pp. 1, D1; Wyoming State Tribune, December 8, 1941, p. 4; December 15, 1941, p. 7; Minneapolis Star Journal, December 15, 1941, p. 10; December 17, 1941, p. 1; Detroit Free Press, December 9, 1941, p. 17; December 10, 1941, p. 6; December 12, 1941, pp. 3, 13; December 13, 1941, pp. 1, 16; December 14, 1941, p. 2; December 15, 1941, p. 16; Cincinnati Enquirer, December 13, 1941, p. 4; December 14, 1941, p. 15; December 17, 1941, pp. 1–3; Indianapolis News, December 17, 1941, pp. 12, 15; December 19, 1941, p. 1; December 26, 1941, p. 7; December 30, 1941, p. 6; December 31, 1941, p. 8; Minneapolis Morning Tribune, December 15, 1941, p. 1; December 16, 1941, p. 10; Toledo Blade, December 10, 1941, p. 6; December 11, 1941, p. 29; December 12, 1941, p. 1; December 13, 1941, p. 3. 52. Much the same slow realization dawned on Americans in the 1960s as the People’s Republic of China demonstrated its own independence from Moscow. 53. Such an anticlimactic tone may have been influenced by the perception that Operation Drumbeat was but a replication of the U.S. revision of the Neutrality Act on November 13, 1941. 54. Such an analysis becomes relevant and important, not only with regard to the historical explanation of the origins of the U.S.-German war, but also with regard to contemplating the legacy of this war: the U.S. occupation of, and permanent security commitment to Europe, and the resultant Cold War.

Appendix: Public Opinion Polls George Gallup, ed., The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–1971, vol. 1 (New York: Random House, 1972). July 1941. “If you were asked to vote today on the question of the United States entering the war now against Germany and Italy, how would you vote—to go into the war now or to stay out of the war?”: “go in”—21%, “stay out”—79% (p. 290). November 7, 1941, poll taken October 9–14. “The Army has asked Congress to change the law that says drafted men cannot be sent to fight outside of North or South America or this country’s possessions. Do you think Congress should give the Army the right to send drafted soldiers to any part of the world?”: yes—42%, no—53%, no opinion—5% (p. 304). November 22, 1941, poll taken November 7–12. “It has been suggested that Congress pass a resolution declaring that a state of war exists between the United States and Germany. Would you favor or oppose such a resolution at this time?”: favor— 26%, oppose—63%, no opinion—11% (p. 307). December 13, 1941. “Do you think there is any chance that your city will be bombed?”: West Coast: yes—49%; East Coast: yes—45% (p. 311). December 23, 1941, poll taken December 12–17. “Which country is the greater threat to America’s future—Germany or Japan?”: Germany—64%, Japan—15% (p. 312). January 28, 1942, poll taken January 8–13. “Do you approve of the way Franklin Roosevelt is handling his job as President today?”: approve—84%, disapprove—9% (p. 319). March 20, 1942, poll taken March 12–17. “In general do you approve or disapprove of the way Franklin Roosevelt is handling his job as President?”: approve—78%, disapprove—13% (p. 326). Harwood Childs, ed., Public Opinion Quarterly (Princeton: Princeton University Press, summer 1942). October 4, 1941. “Should the United States enter the war now?”: “U.S. should enter war now”—21%, “U.S. should not enter war now”—79% (percentages “of those expressing an opinion”) (p. 164, Gallup/AIPO [American Institute of Public Opinion]). October 1941. “Do you think we should help defend the following places if either Germany or Japan threatened to take them?”: “South America (below bulge)”: yes— 213

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72.8%, no—9.2%, don’t know—18%; “Azores”: yes—45.9%, no—24.7%, don’t know—29.4%; “Dakar”: yes—41.2%, no—28.3%, don’t know—30.5% (these three locations were considered to be the most strategically vital to Americans consulted in this poll) (p. 170, Fortune magazine). Hadley Cantril, ed., Public Opinion, 1935–46 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), a compilation of several different polling organizations, such as Gallup/AIPO, and the Elmo Roper/Fortune magazine poll. November 19, 1941. “Do you feel that you have a clear idea of what the war is all about (that is, what we are fighting for)?”: yes—50%, no—47% (p. 1077, OPOR [Office of Public Opinion Research]). December 10, 1941. “Why do you think Japan is fighting the United States—what are the underlying reasons?”: “urged by Germany”—48%, “miscellaneous”—6%, “no answer and don’t know”—12% (p. 1078, AIPO). December 10, 1941. “Should President Roosevelt have asked Congress to declare war on Germany, as well as on Japan?”: yes—90%, no—7% (p. 1173, AIPO). February 1942. “Which of these statements comes closest to your idea of the main reason why Japan attacked us”: “The Japanese government is doing its part as Hitler’s ally, and its move was part of German strategy”—68.5% (p. 1078, Fortune magazine). March 26, 1942. “Do you feel that you have a clear idea of what the war is all about?”: yes—48%, no—47% (no data on this question exist between November 1941 and March 1942) (p. 1077, OPOR). June 9, 1942. “Do you feel that you have a clear idea of what the war is all about (that is, what we are fighting for)?”: yes—53%, no—47%; OPOR: yes—64%, no— 29% (p. 1078, AIPO). December 2, 1942. “Do you feel that you have a clear idea of what the war is all about (that is, what we are fighting for)?”: yes—68%, no—32% (p. 1078, AIPO). Gallup/AIPO national poll of all forty-eight continental states taken December 1–19. December 23, 1941. “Which country is the greater threat to America’s future—Germany or Japan?”: “Believe Germany the greater threat”—64%, “Believe Japan the greater threat”—15%. “In the American Institute in the United States the voters who singled out Germany as the greater threat gave two main reasons—that Germany is the ‘core,’ the ‘driving force’ of the Axis, while Japan is the ‘puppet,’ and that Germany’s aims are world-wide” (New York Times, p. 4).

Selected Bibliography

Records at the U.S. National Archives, College Park, Md. Record Group 59. Records of the State Department. LM 193-LM 196, early World War II. Record Group 165. Records of the War Department. Ser. 4000, War Plans Division. ———. Ser. 2000, Military Intelligence Division.

Published Collections of Documents Childs, Harwood, ed. Public Opinion Quarterly. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1942. Fuehrer Conferences on Naval Affairs, 1939–1945. London: Greenhill Books, 1990. Gallup, George. The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–1971. Vol. 1. New York: Random House, 1972. Rosenman, Samuel, comp. The Public Papers and Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Vols. 9–11, 1940–1942. New York: Random House, 1950. U.S. Department of State. Documents on German Foreign Policy, 1918–45. Ser. D, vol. 13. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1964. ———. Foreign Relations of the United States. Vol. 1941. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. The War Reports of General of the Army George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff, General of the Army H. H. Arnold, Commanding General, Army Air Forces [and] Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King, Commander in Chief, United States Fleet and Chief of Naval Operations. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1947.

Memoirs and Diaries Berle, Adolf. Navigating the Rapids, 1918–1971: From the Papers of Adolf A. Berle. Edited by Beatrice Bishop Berle and Travis Beal Jacobs. Introduction by Max Ascoli. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973. Churchill, Winston. The Grand Alliance. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950.

215

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Selected Bibliography

Doenitz, Karl. Memoirs: Ten Years and Twenty Days. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1959. Eden, Anthony. The Reckoning: The Memoirs of Anthony Eden, Earl of Avon. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1965. Ickes, Harold L. The Secret Diary of Harold L. Ickes. Vol. 3, The Lowering Clouds, 1939–1941. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1955. Kimmel, Husband E. Admiral Kimmel’s Story. Chicago: Regnery, 1955. Layton, Edwin, Roger Pineau, and John Costello. And I Was There: Pearl Harbor and Midway—Breaking the Secrets. New York: William Morrow, 1985. Stimson, Henry L., and McGeorge Bundy. On Active Service in Peace and War. New York: Harper and Bros., 1947.

Unpublished Diaries The Diaries of Henry L. Stimson. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Manuscript Reading Room, vols. 35–40, reel 7. The Diary of Harold Ickes. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Manuscript Reading Room, container 8, reels 4–5.

Miscellaneous U.S. Government Publications Congressional Record: Appendix. Vol. 87, pt. 14, 77th Congress. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941. Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the 77th Congress. 1st sess., vol. 87, pt. 9. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1941. Office of the United States Chief of Counsel for Prosecution of Axis Criminality. The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression: Opinion and Judgement. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1947.

Books and Articles Abazzia, Patrick. Mr. Roosevelt’s Navy: The Private War of the U.S. Atlantic Fleet, 1939–1942. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1975. Adler, Selig. The Isolationist Impulse: Its Twentieth-Century Reaction. New York: Free Press, 1966. Bacon, Edwin. The Gulag at War: Stalin’s Forced Labour System in the Light of the Archives. New York: New York University Press, 1994. Bailey, Thomas. The Man in the Street: The Impact of American Public Opinion on Foreign Policy. New York: Macmillan, 1948. ———. Woodrow Wilson and the Lost Peace. New York: Macmillan, 1944. Bailey, Thomas, and Paul Ryan. Hitler vs. Roosevelt: The Undeclared Naval War. New York: Free Press, 1979. Barnes, Harry Elmer. Pearl Harbor After a Quarter of a Century. New York: Arno Press and the New York Times, 1972.

Selected Bibliography

217

———, ed. Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: A Critical Examination of the Foreign Policy of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Its Aftermath. Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton, 1953. Barron, Gloria J. Leadership in Crisis: FDR and the Path to Intervention. New York: Kennikat Press, 1973. Bartlett, Bruce. Cover Up: The Politics of Pearl Harbor, 1941–1946. New York: Arlington House, 1978. Beach, Edward. Scapegoats: A Defense of Kimmel and Short at Pearl Harbor. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1995. Beard, Charles A. President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941: A Study in Appearances and Realities. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948. Bekker, Cajus. Hitler’s Naval War. New York: Doubleday, 1974. Ben-Zvi, Abraham. Prelude to Pearl Harbor: A Study of American Images Toward Japan, 1940–41. New York: Vintage Press, 1979. Blair, Clay. Hitler’s U-Boat War. New York: Random House, 1996. Bloch, Michael. Ribbentrop. New York: Crown, 1992. Bohlen, Charles. The Transformation of American Foreign Policy. New York: W. W. Norton, 1969. Buchanan, Russell. The United States and World War II. Vol. 1. New York: Harper and Row, 1964. Bullock, Alan. Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1992. Burns, James MacGregor. Roosevelt: The Lion and the Fox. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1956. ———. Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970. Cantril, Hadley, ed. Public Opinion, 1935–46. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951. Cashman, Sean. America, Roosevelt, and World War II. New York: New York University Press, 1989. Chamberlin, William Henry. America’s Second Crusade. Chicago: Regnery, 1950. Clarke, Thurston. Pearl Harbor Ghosts: A Journey to Hawaii, Then and Now. New York: William Morrow, 1991. Cole, Wayne S. America First: The Battle Against Intervention, 1940–41. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1953. ———. “American Entry into World War II: A Historiographical Appraisal.” Mississippi Valley Historical Review 43 (March 1957): 595–617. ———. Charles A. Lindbergh and the Battle Against American Intervention in World War II. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1974. ———. Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932–1945. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983. Combs, Jerald A. The History of American Foreign Policy. Vol. 2. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986. Compton, James. The Swastika and the Eagle: Hitler, the United States, and the Origins of World War II. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967. Conn, Stetson, and Byron Fairchild. The Framework of Hemispheric Defense. Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1960. Craven, Wesley, and James Cate, eds. The Army Air Forces in World War II. Vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948. Current, Richard. Secretary Stimson: A Study in Statecraft. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1954. Dallek, Robert. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.

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219

Hildebrand, Klaus. The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich. Translated from the German by Anthony Fothergill. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970. ———. The Third Reich. Translated from the German by P. S. Falla. London: Allen and Unwin, 1984. Hogan, Michael, and Thomas Paterson. Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Irving, David. Hitler’s War. New York: Viking, 1977. Jaeckel, Eberhard. Hitler in History. London: Brandeis University Press, 1984. Johnson, Walter. The Battle Against Isolation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1944. Jonas, Manfred. The United States and Germany: A Diplomatic History. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984. Junker, Detlef. “Roosevelt and the National Socialist Threat to the U.S.” In America and the Germans, edited by Frank Trommler and Joseph McVeigh. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1985. Kennan, George. American Diplomacy, 1900–1950. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951. Ketchum, Richard. The Borrowed Years, 1938–41. New York: Random House, 1989. Kimball, Warren. Forged in War: Roosevelt, Churchill, and the Second World War. New York: William Morrow, 1997. ———, ed. Franklin D. Roosevelt and the World Crisis, 1937–1945. Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973. ———. The Juggler: Franklin D. Roosevelt as Wartime Statesman. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991. Kinsella, William. Leadership in Isolation: FDR and the Origins of the Second World War. Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1979. Kolko, Gabriel. The Politics of War: The World and United States Foreign Policy, 1943–1945. New York: Random House, 1968. Kris, Ernst, and Hans Speier. German Radio Propaganda: A Report on Home Broadcasts During the War. London: Oxford University Press, 1944. Kubek, Anthony. How the Far East Was Lost: American Policy and the Creation of Communist China, 1941–1949. Chicago: Regnery, 1963. Langer, William, and S. Everett Gleason. The Challenge to Isolation: The World Crisis of 1937–1940 and American Foreign Policy. New York: Harper and Row, 1952. ———. The Undeclared War, 1940–1941. New York: Published for the Council on Foreign Relations by Harper, 1953. Larrabee, Eric. Commander in Chief: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, His Lieutenants, and Their War. New York: Harper and Row, 1987. Lash, Joseph. Roosevelt and Churchill, 1939–1941: The Partnership That Saved the West. New York: W. W. Norton, 1976. Link, Arthur. Woodrow Wilson: Revolution, War, and Peace. Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1979. Lippmann, Walter. America in the World Today. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1957. MacCormac, John. This Time for Keeps. New York: Viking, 1943. Maddox, Robert James. The United States and World War II. Boulder: Westview Press, 1992. Manchester, William. American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880–1964. Boston: Little, Brown, 1978. Maney, Patrick. The Roosevelt Presence: A Biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. New York: Twayne, 1992.

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Martin, Bernd. Japan and Germany in the Modern World. Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1995. May, Ernest. American Intervention, 1917 and 1941. Washington, D.C.: Harvard University Press, Service Center for Teachers of History, 1960. Mayer, Arno. Politics and Diplomacy of Peacemaking: Containment and Counterrevolution at Versailles, 1918–19. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1967. McCann, Frank. The Brazilian-American Alliance, 1938–1940. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1973. Melosi, Martin. The Shadow of Pearl Harbor: Political Controversy over the Surprise Attack, 1941–1946. College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1977. Meskill, Johanna. Hitler and Japan: The Hollow Alliance. New York: Atherton Press, 1966. Miller, Nathan. The War at Sea: A Naval History of World War II. New York: Scribner, 1955. Morgan, Ted. FDR: A Biography. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985. Morgenstern, George. Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War. New York: Devin Adair, 1947. Morgenthau, Hans. In Defense of the National Interest: A Critical Examination of American Foreign Policy. New York: Alfred Knopf, 1951. Morison, S. E. The Battle of the Atlantic. Vol. 1. Boston: Little, Brown, 1947. Nevins, Allan, and Louis Hacker. The United States and Its Place in World Affairs, 1918–1943. Boston: D. C. Heath, 1943. Offner, Arnold. American Appeasement: United States Foreign Policy and Germany, 1933–1938. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969. ———. The Origins of the Second World War. New York: Praeger, 1975. Osgood, Robert. Ideals and Self Interest in America’s Foreign Relations: The Great Transformation of the Twentieth Century. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1953. Parrish, Thomas. Roosevelt and Marshall: Partners in Politics and War. New York: William Morrow, 1989. Perkins, Dexter. America and Two Wars. Boston: Little, Brown, 1944. Perrett, Geoffrey. Days of Sadness, Years of Triumph: The American People, 1939–1945. New York: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan, 1973. Pogue, Forest. George C. Marshall: Ordeal and Hope. New York: Viking Press, 1965. Porter, Bernard. The Lion’s Share: British Imperialism, 1850–1983. New York: Longman, 1984. Prange, Gordon. At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1981. ———. Hitler’s Words. Washington, D.C.: American Council on Public Affairs, 1944. ———. Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986. ———. Target Tokyo: The Story of the Sorge Spy Ring. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1985. Radosh, Ronald. Prophets on the Right: Profiles of Conservative Critics of American Globalism. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975. Rauch, Basil. Roosevelt: From Munich to Pearl Harbor—A Study in the Creation of a Foreign Policy. New York: Creative Age Press, 1950. Reiss, Curt. The Self Betrayed: Glory and Doom of the German Generals. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1942. Reynolds, David. The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, 1937–41. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1981. Rich, Norman. Hitler’s War Aims. Vol. 1. New York: W. W. Norton, 1973.

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Rosenbaum, Herbert. Franklin D. Roosevelt: The Man, the Myth, the Era, 1882–1945. New York: Greenwood Press, 1987. Roskill, S. W. The War at Sea, 1939–1945. Vol. 1. London: Her Majesty’s Stationer’s Office, 1954. Russett, Bruce M. No Clear and Present Danger: A Skeptical View of the United States Entry into World War II. New York: Harper and Row, 1972. Sanborn, Frederick C. Design for War: A Study of Secret Power Politics, 1937–1941. New York: Devin Adair, 1951. Sargent, Porter. Getting Us into War. Boston: Porter Sargent, 1941. Schneider, James. Should America Go to War? The Debate over Foreign Policy in Chicago, 1939–1941. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1989. Schroeder, Paul. The Axis Alliance and Japanese-American Relations, 1941. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1958. Sherry, Michael S. Preparing for the Next War: American Plans for Postwar Defense, 1941–45. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977. Sherwood, Robert. Roosevelt and Hopkins: An Intimate History. New York: Harper and Bros., 1948. Shogan, Robert. Hard Bargain: How FDR Twisted Churchill’s Arm, Evaded the Law, and Changed the Role of the American Presidency. New York: Scribner, 1995. Small, Melvin. Public Opinion and Historians: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970. ———. Was War Necessary? National Security and U.S. Entry into War. London: Sage, 1980. Smith, Richard Norton. The Colonel: The Life and Legend of Robert R. McCormick, 1880–1955. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997. Smith, Robert Freeman. “American Foreign Relations, 1920–1942.” In Towards a New Past: Dissenting Essays in American History, edited by Barton J. Bernstein. New York: Pantheon Books, 1968. Stinnett, Robert. Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor. New York: Free Press/Simon and Schuster, 1999. Stoler, Mark A. “From Continentalism to Globalism: General Stanley D. Embick, the Joint Strategic Survey Committee, and the Military View of American National Policy During the Second World War.” Diplomatic History 6 (summer 1982): 303–321. Stone, Ralph. The Irreconcilables: The Fight Against the League of Nations. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970. Tansill, Charles Callan. Back Door to War: The Roosevelt Foreign Policy, 1933–1941. Chicago: Regnery, 1952. Taylor, A. J. P. The Origins of the Second World War. New York: Atheneum, 1961. Theobald, Robert A. The Final Secret of Pearl Harbor: The Washington Contribution to the Japanese Attack. New York: Devin Adair, 1954. Toland, John. Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath. New York: Doubleday, 1982. ———. The Rising Sun: The Decline and Fall of the Japanese Empire, 1936–1945. New York: Random House, 1970. Tompkins, David. Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg: The Evolution of a Modern Republican, 1884–1945. Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1970. Trefousse, H. L. Germany and American Neutrality, 1939–1941. New York: Bookman Associates, 1951. Trubowitz, Peter. Defining the National Interest: Conflict and Change in American Foreign Policy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Utley, Jonathan G. Going to War with Japan, 1939–1941. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1984.

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Von der Porten, Edward P. The German Navy in World War II. New York: Galahad Books, 1969. Waldrop, Frank. McCormick of Chicago: An Unconventional Portrait of a Controversial Figure. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1966. Waller, George, ed. Pearl Harbor: Roosevelt and the Coming of War. Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1976. Watson, Mark Skinner. The War Department Chief of Staff: Prewar Plans and Preparations. Washington, D.C.: Department of the Army, 1950. Weinberg, Gerhard. Germany, Hitler, and World War II: Essays in Modern German and World History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Weintraub, Stanley. Long Day’s Journey into War: December 7, 1941. New York: Dutton, 1991. Whitaker, Arthur. The Western Hemisphere Idea: Its Rise and Decline. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1954. Widenor, William. Henry Cabot Lodge and the Search for an American Foreign Policy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. Wiltz, John E. From Isolation to War, 1931–1941. New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1968. Wood, Bryce. The Making of the Good Neighbor Policy. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961. Woods, R. B. The Roosevelt Foreign Policy Establishment and the Good Neighbor Policy: The United States and Argentina, 1941–1945. Lawrence: Regents Press of Kansas, 1979. Yergin, Daniel. Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977.

Index

Air raid alerts in U.S., 42, 76, 85, 189, 190, 198–201 America First Committee, 22, 38, 159, 174 American Expeditionary Force (AEF) 1, 24–26, 33, 121, 183, 187, 191–194, 201, 208 Anti-Comintern Pact, 91, 92, 99, 102, 115, 171 Axis: aliens in U.S., 6, 94; conspiracy 1–8, 13–17, 20, 28–34, 42–49, 69, 74, 81–107, 109, 125, 158–160, 167, 173, 176, 197, 201, 202; conspiracy, U.S. disbelief in, 75–79, 83, 98–103, 137, 142, 165–181; global pincers, 44, 83–85, 158, 173, 198; monolith, 87, 88; Tripartite Pact, 6, 30, 43, 70, 85, 89–93, 97, 99, 105, 129, 139, 161, 165–170 Barkley, Senator Alben, 82, 152 China, German threat in, 53, 58, 60, 111, 151–159, 166, 168, 171, 172 Churchill, Winston, 92, 120, 159, 180 Cold War, 7, 8, 76, 147, 197, 212 Congress, pre-Pearl Harbor votes of, 21, 28, 29 Connally, Senator Tom, 23, 29, 30, 97, 144, 170 Declarations of war as formality, 17, 28, 30–34, 42–47, 91, 135, 168, 173

Fifth Column, 7, 8, 76, 94, 118, 123, 133–148, 200 George, Senator Walter, 51, 116, 117, 134 Germany: aid to and patron of Japan, 95–97, 110, 112, 116, 122, 123, 133–137; declaration of war 1–15, 17, 18, 20, 21, 27–32, 35, 42, 48, 49, 90, 91, 96, 97, 102, 105, 115, 128, 132, 143, 166, 173, 174, 179, 180–187, 192, 194–8; declaration of war, U.S. anticipation of, 15, 18, 19, 27–35, 195; denial/retraction of declaration 2, 5, 10, 13, 15, 18, 33–35, 119, 195–198, 209; as rogue state, 96, 125; Germany bombs Pearl Harbor rumor, 50–58, 65–69, 83, 145, 172, 177, 197; rumor skeptics, 56, 57, 71, 75, 76, 139; Germany losing the war 7–10, 83, 85, 92, 95–98, 102, 125, 144, 150, 152, 154, 169, 173, 175, 189, 192–194, 207, 208 Goebbels, Josef, 115, 142, 180 Herblock, 87, 88, 125 Historiography: Hitler and the Axis conspiracy, 46, 71, 99, 100–103, 107, 110, 158, 159, 176, 177, 187, 188, 196, 202; internationalism v. nationalism, 183, 184, 188–197, 208; revisionism, 9, 10, 170, 180, 184

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224

Index

Hitler’s motive to declare war on U.S., 97–101, 144, 155, 166, 168, 173, 179, 180 Hull, Secretary of State Cordell, 19, 42, 85, 92, 99, 111, 155, 161 Ickes, Secretary of the Interior Harold, 19 Imperialism, 7, 8, 41, 142, 143, 158–160, 173, 189, 190, 199 Isolationists: extreme, 22, 26, 73–75, 174, 191; moderate, 22, 23, 29, 48, 86, 111, 191 Japan: alien nationals arrested in U.S., 6, 94; in the Anti-Comintern Pact, 91, 92, 99, 102, 115, 171; conspiracy with Germany, U.S. belief in, 1–8, 13–17, 20, 28–34, 42–49, 69, 74, 81–107, 109, 125, 158–160, 167, 173, 176, 197, 201, 202; conspiracy with Germany, U.S. disbelief in, 75–79, 83, 98–103, 137, 142, 165–181; German aid to and patron of, 95–97, 110, 112, 116, 122, 123, 133–137; German Fifth Column in, 7, 8, 76, 94, 118, 123, 133–148, 200; military coordination with German, U.S. belief in, 44, 83–85, 158, 173, 198; negotiations with United States, 85, 90, 96, 99, 102, 111, 129, 133, 155, 170, 171; as puppet of Germany, 7, 14, 44–49, 69, 83, 109–148, 150, 156, 160, 161, 165, 167–181, 186, 197, 201; racial perceptions of in U.S., 7, 8, 9, 55, 98, 127, 143, 150, 156, 174, 175, 178; and Siberia, 151–157, 168, 169, 170, 172; as Tripartite Pact partner with Germany, 6, 30, 43, 70, 85, 89–93, 97, 99, 105, 129, 139, 161, 165–170 “Japanazi,” 54, 89 Knox, Secretary of the Navy Frank, 64, 72–74, 110, 121, 122, 176 Lend-Lease 3, 15, 23, 93, 159, 179, 180, 193

Lippmann, Walter, 49, 87, 91, 93, 97, 155 MacArthur, General Douglas, 55, 110 Marcantonio, Rep. Vito, 143, 152, 153 Marshall, General George, 19, 55, 100, 186, 187 Midwest: 4, 15, 17, 42, 49, 50, 114, 139, 188; swings between Isolationism and Interventionism, 16, 50, 73–75, 86, 115, 118–124, 134, 136, 141, 172–175, 187, 196 Military Intelligence, U.S. and British, 5, 6, 59, 64, 65, 71, 72, 113, 123, 124, 136, 170, 185 Naval War, U.S. v. German, 9, 83, 97, 165, 167, 170, 175, 176, 191–195, 201, 202, 208, 212 Nuremberg, International Military Tribunal at, 100, 177 Ott, General Eugen, 139, 140, 141 Pearl Harbor, attack of: air raid rumors surrounding, 50–58, 65–69, 83, 145, 172, 177, 197; air raid rumor skeptics, 56, 57, 71, 75, 76, 139; naval rumors surrounding, 63, 64–69, 71, 72; as precursor of air raids in U.S., 42, 76, 85, 189, 190, 198–201; as precursor to German attacks, 44, 83–85, 158, 173, 198 Pepper, Senator Claude, 16, 24, 26, 34, 154 Public Opinion: 2, 3, 7, 18, 21, 30, 120, 187, 194, 195; polls, 4, 7, 18, 23, 36, 37, 120, 127, 128, 131, 132, 195, 209, 213, 214 Puppetmaster theory, 7, 14, 44–49, 69, 83, 109–148, 150, 156, 160, 161, 165, 167–181, 186, 197, 201 Racism, 7, 8, 9, 55, 98, 127, 143, 150, 156, 174, 175, 178 Rankin, Rep. Jeanette, 24, 27, 38, 153, 154

Index

Roosevelt, Franklin D.: 2–4, 15, 18, 19, 21–28, 41, 52, 53, 76, 81, 113, 123, 128, 153, 161, 171, 172, 186, 190; December 9, 1941, speech, 15, 20, 41– 47, 86, 90, 97, 113, 123, 124, 149, 150, 156, 161; December 15, 1941, White Paper, 41, 47, 48, 86, 92; January 6, 1942, State of the Union Address, 41, 48, 49, 121, 158, 200 Siberia, Germany v. Japan in, 151–157, 168, 169, 170, 172 Stalin, Josef, 43, 55, 136 Stimson, Secretary of War Henry, 19–21, 37, 42, 99, 110, 113, 124 Tirpitz, 63, 64–69, 71, 72

225

United States: Japanese negotiations, 85, 90, 96, 99, 102, 111, 129, 133, 155, 170, 171; declaration of war, 1–5, 13–18, 21, 23, 26, 28, 29, 31, 33, 34, 35, 41, 42, 47, 94, 114, 124, 128, 183, 184, 186, 188, 191, 193–5; Germany anticipates U.S. declaration,, 32, 33; U.S. declaration pre–Pearl Harbor, 16, 23–26, 29, 38 U-boats, see Naval War Western Hemisphere defense, 9, 26, 43–45, 84, 85, 96, 117, 134, 152–155, 161, 188–191, 198–200, 208 Wheeler, Senator Burton, 22, 24, 68

About the Book

In the aftermath of the attack on Pearl Harbor, U.S. politicians, policymakers, and citizens focused their desire for retribution not on the obvious target, Japan, but on Hitler’s Germany. Richard Hill challenges a major point of conventional wisdom on U.S.-Axis relations to explain why the U.S. held Hitler responsible for the Japanese action—and why Hitler’s December 11 declaration of war was inconsequential to the U.S. involvement in the European theater. Hill’s carefully argued analysis reveals widespread acceptance in late 1941 that the route to Tokyo was through Berlin—that Germany was the overlord of Japan, as well as its coconspirator. Despite emerging uncertainty about German guilt for Pearl Harbor, he shows, the prevailing public opinion in the first weeks after December 7 mandated a Germany-first strategy and continued to color U.S. policy throughout the war. Richard Hill is adjunct professor of U.S. history at Florida International University.

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