Pearl Harbor - conspiracy?

I haven't found a thread about this topic (if there is one, pls post the link).

What do you all think of the theory: President Roosevelt sacrificed Pearl Harbor wilfully, so he had a reason to enter the war?

[ 17. October 2003, 02:08 PM: Message edited by: KnightMove ]

 

Well, Knightmove,

this one´s a bit of a hot potato as there´s not enough evidence, but it must be said that the US played rough games with the Japanese. The Japs were running out of fuel and giving up their demands in China for the US oil was just too much. As well mixed with this was the US false thinking that Japanese technology was not capable of Shallow water torpedoes or fuelling the planes in the air...

check the site:

http://www.ww2forums.com/cgi-bin/ubbcgi/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=3;t=000123#000000



PS. I would not call it conspiracy actually but a move with a lot of "stick" attached- I wonder if the US had several Japanese possibilities of response covered-they should have. And if Roosevelt was not to be blamed then the US intelligence and Military High Commad for sure for not taking all choices seriously.

[ 09. May 2003, 01:47 PM: Message edited by: Kai-Petri ]

 

I have posed this question a few months ago, rather asking for personal opinions. Apart from Kai-Petri, nobody answered. Do you find the conspiracy thesis too absurd to discuss it?

 

Let the man himself answer...

In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.

Franklin D. Roosevelt



Maybe???

Here´s some interesting questions. I wonder if someone has read the book?

DAY OF DECEIT
Robert B. Stinnett

The Japanese fleet did break radio silence?

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/14086

And the fact that the Japs attacked the British about 30 minutes earlier than Pearl Harbor...no warning anywhere?? 30 minutes...



I agree with several sources that the US was not ready for war and as well that "Germany first" politics proves that Roosevelt may not have wanted war with Japan, but then again Roosevelt did need a reason to enter war ( to help Churchill against Germany ) and New Deal may not have been so successful as claimed (?) and a succesful war would change everything. Tricky, isn´t it?

 

There are a LOT of reasons why this conspiracy silly is simply not true. But the most telling is a very simple logical reason.

When the japanese hit Pearl Habour, it raised the rightious fury of the American people in a massive cry for vengeance. Every newspaper in the nation called for wars against Japan, atacks against japan, editorials about japan, personal anecdotes about japan... The US was now dead et on a war with japan.

Not Germany.

In fact, only the unpredictable (and arguably, colossaly stupid) move of Hitler declaring war on the US freed the US to act in Europe. Congress and the people were no more willing to get in a war in Europe before PH then after it. Nobody could have predicted the German declaration of war.

Next, far too much is made of the carriers being at sea while the Battleships were at home. If the Navy wanted to save their ships of the line, then it would have been the opposite, despite progress in tactics, carriers were still seen as secondary to battleships in importance. It was only after the destruction of the PH fleet that the US HAD to rely on their carriers.

There is a lot more, those are just the top two reasons out of many...

Oh, and to the person who mentioned the 30 mintes time lag... this is 1941. 30 minutes is an incredibly short period of time.

Lastly, the Stinnitt book has been so soundly and effectively destroyed in the scholarly journals that it retains no credibility.

 

Sorry Mr Personaswell..

I remembered wrong..It was 70 minutes..not 30 minutes...

The Japan's first act of war that day is not the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but the laying of mines off the coast of Malaya to cover the forthcoming invasion. The British planes on Malaya still had difficulties with low thick clouds, yet on several occasions they could see the Japanese invasion fleet steaming toward Malaya. The reports were, however, so unclear, that they couldn't make a clear picture toward which place are they sailing to. At the end they dispatched two flying boats Catalina futher to the north to observe the bays on the west coast of Indochina. One plane returned, not noticing anything, while the second plane never returned. The flying boat PBY Catalina of No.205 RAF Squadron captained by Flying Officer Bedell was shot down by Japanese aircraft whilst attempting to monitor the progress of the Japanese fleet and all his crew died. They were the first Allied casualties of the war with Japan. Shortly after midnight the Indian guards at Kota Bharu observed three large transport ships dropping anchor approximately 3km's from the coast. Several minutes afterwards the shelling starts. Rough seas and strong winds hampered the operation and a number of smaller craft capsized. Several Japanese soldiers drowned. Despite these difficulties by 12.45 the first wave of landing craft carrying troops under the command of Colonel Masu were heading for the beach in four lines. The Japanese soldiers, the veterans of the 56th Infantry Regiment, came ashore, and ran into stiff machinegun fire from British and Indian troops of the 8th Indian Brigade (Brigadier B.W. Key). After a short and tough fight with Key's Indians, the Japanese managed to create a solid bridgehead. Having been alerted of the Japanese landing, Hudsons of No.1 RAAF Squadronn began taking off to bomb the transports. Despite the intensity of the AA gunfire, the Allied planes scored several hits and severly damaged the ships.
The attackers had risked. They were on land 70 minutes before the Pearl Harbor strike , and any news about the attack might warn the Americans on Hawaii. Fortunately for the Japanese this didn't happen.

http://www.geocities.com/dutcheastindies/december2.html

 

I read in a military journal a couple of years ago that within two to three months of Pearl Harbour, the US had commissioned and stationed sufficient new battleships at its Pacific naval ports to more than replace those sunk and damaged on Dec 7. The article concluded that any reduction in US sea power in the Pacific was very temporary indeed and nothing like the 6 months plus period which is often stated.

 

Well, at least Roosevelt had enough reasons to want war with Japan, too. The Japanese expansion directly threatened American interests. So this is not a contradiction.

 

Well, but as ignorant and arrogant as the Americans were, would they *really* have been alerted?! Probably Pearl Harbor would have reacted with: "Ah ok, the Japs attack English Malaya. Thank God not us! Well, let's stay idle and wait for orders..."

 

But within these 6 months the Japanese reached almost all their war aims, it couldn't have come much worse for the Allies till summer 1942. This is one of the reasons why I say 'no' on the conspiracy theory, even though, I am looking for more info (that's why this thread).

 

I try to steer clear of these types of conversations as alot of times they resort to personal attacks, but this board has a great group of respectful posters so I'll just say a little bit.

I'd say no to a conspiracy theory. We have to remember that we are in 2003 looking back at 1941. At the time the US only had the ability to break the Japanese diplomatic code not naval code as Stinnett in his book asserts. Therefore even if the Japanese fleet would have broken radio silence it would have been hard to break the code. Also remember that there are a alot of transmissions being made by the Japanese, not all of them being broken (something like 1% of codes were broken?). Information overload easily.

Finally do not forget that in late November Roosevelt did send a war warning to Pearl Harbor and the Phillipines telling them that war with Japan was imminent. From my eyes that would constitute the President was not hiding anything and was all but telling the US Military that we were going to war with Japan. It was up to the commanders such as Kimmel and Short and McArthur to be ready for war.

Also here is another issue that is never mentioned. Why after Pearl Harbor was attacked does the USAAF in the Phillipines stay on the ground? Why did not McArthur order them to strike Formosa? The US was already at war with Japan by something like 12 hours.

Greg

 

I say no. There was no conspiration. Franklyn Roosvelt didn't want to stay out of the war because he knew that it would reach the USA one day and he didn't want to get into it when it was too late.

This is just one of the thousand mistakes of that weekend in December 1941. Remember that an inexperienced radar-operator confused 17 B-17s with 300 Japanese carrier-based aircraft which were flying from opposite directions. Remember that midget submarines had been found in the mouth of the harbour an hour before the attack. Remember that the diplomatic code had been broken and that the 14th part of the message, containing the breaking of relations and the ultimatum handed at precisely 1 o'clock, Washington time (0900 Hawaii time)... Etc, etc. The American icompetence of that day simply astonishes me.

This is completely true. By the sixth month after Pearl harbour, the American war production was entering into the adequate production quotas range.

Because there was fog and bad weather. That's why the Japanese planes delayed twelve hours in attacking the American air bases there.

 

Thanx for reminding of this Friedrich!

Yes, and as I remember it correctly the US ships attacked them with bombs and such. So they were aware that something is about to happen, right? No big alert though???

 

This raises another question: As we know, the teleprinter at Honolulu was out of order. This delayed the income of General Marshall's warning:

"Japanese are presenting at one p.m. eastern standard time today what amounts to an ultimatum. Also, they are under orders to destroy their code machine immediately. Just what significance the hour set may have we do not know but be on the alert accordingly. Inform naval commanders of this communication."

The bicycle messenger was still on the way to Fort Shafter when the attack started.

Just assume, the warning would have arrived there in time... would it *really* have alerted Pearl Harbor? In fact, it is no red alert or something... Maybe Pearl Harbor would have stayed idle the same as before?

 

The US were convinced the Japanese would not attack Pearl Harbor because the Japs ( as far as the US knew ) did not have shallow water torpedos.They believed the ships would be ok. Unfortunately the japs developed the torpedoes during autumn 1941 for the operation.

I have more on this in the Pacific war section on Pearl harbor.

 

Yes, but my question was about this specific accident... what if General Marshall's warning arrives in time? Does it make a difference?

 

To Hitler, the declaration of war made strategically sense.

All one needs to understand is that to him (and maybe he was right, see Roosevelts escalating policy "short of war" against the Nazis) the U.S. joining the war on the British side was ineviatable and just a matter of time.

Now with the Japanese atttack, his declaration of war divided U.S. ressources on two theaters. In Dec. 1941, Hitler needed two more years (1942 for SU, 1943 for GB) to fight his war in Europe. His calaculation was that a U.S. fighting the Japanese with 100% commitment will soon succeed (Nazi as he was he considered the Japanese race somehow lower than the white race anyway), so soon will be able to concentrate full on the ETO.

So Hitler's war declaration was basically done to divert the U.S: war efforts to an extent enableing him to buy time until he crushed the SU and GB.

Cheers,

 

To Hitler, the declaration of war made strategically sense.

All one needs to understand is that to him (and maybe he was right, see Roosevelts escalating policy "short of war" against the Nazis) the U.S. joining the war on the British side was ineviatable and just a matter of time.

Now with the Japanese atttack, his declaration of war divided U.S. ressources on two theaters. In Dec. 1941, Hitler needed two more years (1942 for SU, 1943 for GB) to fight his war in Europe. His calaculation was that a U.S. fighting the Japanese with 100% commitment will soon succeed (Nazi as he was he considered the Japanese race somehow lower than the white race anyway), so soon will be able to concentrate full on the ETO.

So Hitler's war declaration was basically done to divert the U.S. war efforts to an extent enabeling him to buy time until he crushed the SU and GB.

Actually his "strategy" was right (D-Day in 1944) with the critical exception that the Russkies didn't fold down in 1941, and didn't fold down in 1942, but instead kicked Germans ass in the end of 1942. At least from that time one Hitler had no more strategic options than either capitulation or fighting to the bitter end hoping for miracles.

Cheers,

 

To Hitler, the declaration of war made strategically sense.

All one needs to understand is that to him (and maybe he was right, see Roosevelts escalating policy "short of war" against the Nazis) the U.S. joining the war on the British side was ineviatable and just a matter of time.

Now with the Japanese atttack, his declaration of war divided U.S. ressources on two theaters. In Dec. 1941, Hitler needed two more years (1942 for SU, 1943 for GB) to fight his war in Europe. His calaculation was that a U.S. fighting the Japanese with 100% commitment will soon succeed (Nazi as he was he considered the Japanese race somehow lower than the white race anyway), so soon will be able to concentrate full on the ETO.

So Hitler's war declaration was basically done to divert the U.S. war efforts to an extent enabeling him to buy time until he crushed the SU and GB.

Actually his "strategy" was right (D-Day only in 1944) with the critical exception that the Russkies didn't fold down in 1941, and didn't fold down in 1942, but instead kicked Germans ass beginning from end of 1942. At least from that time on, Hitler had no more strategic options than either capitulation or fighting to the bitter end hoping for miracles.

Just think about IF the SU would have surrendered in 1942: Germany sharing a common land connection with the Japanese-rules Pacific theater, the Axis exploiting Soviet ressources and industrial power, Germans heading back westwards to deal with the Brits in 1943, D-Day 1944 impossible.

Cheers,

 

This was not what the nazis desired. The original plan was to esatablish a line Archangel - Astrachan (how is it written in English?). Himmler's wildest dreams stop at the Urale. Nobody did ever want to go any beyond.