The Root Causes of Pearl Harbor Serve as Important Lessons for America Today

DB Daily Update ^ | David Blackmon

[SuperLuminal]

This article, particularly the final paragraph, is the biggest pile of stinking BS I've seen since obunghole was president...

obunghole was a "blame America for everything" communist supporter also...
BLM: Blackmon's Lunacy Masterpiece...

[BroJoeK]

"But we had broken their codes enough to know they were going to attack.
IIRC there was an article posted in FR suggesting we had intercepted and deciphered the Japanese message to their embassy of the intent to start the war."

There's a lot of confusion over the question of US code-breaking.
The facts are that the US had indeed long-since broken the Japanese diplomatic codes and knew in advance what Tokyo was telling its diplomatic spies.
But as of December 1941 there was not yet success in breaking their naval codes.

So Washington did expect a Japanese attack somewhere in the Pacific, at some unspecified time.
That's why, weeks before December 7, Washington sent out official "War Warnings" to all Pacific commanders, from the Panama Canal to MacArthur in the Philippines.
The warnings were generalized, said, in effect: be ready for a Japanese attack anywhere, any time.

Sadly, the warnings were ineffective and none of the US Pacific commands were ready (Halsey's Enterprise excepted) when the attacks came.

[BroJoeK]

Karoo: "I have never known why FDR wanted us in a war. Was it to boost the economy?"

eagleone: "I think it was two fold....one was he realized the "New Deal" had failed to end the Depression."

For crying out loud, can we give Marxist economic theory a rest?
I don't care what your professors taught you in school, not everything in life is ruled by dialectical materialism.

In 1940 the US was again doing great economically, without going to war, by supplying the Allies with as much war-material as possible.
FDR did not need for the US to go to war just to achieve full employment.

eagleone: "Second, I think he did recognize Germany was a threat.
Now, the question could be was he influenced by the Communists in his administration to want to attack Germany?"

"Recognize Germany was a threat" is the real heart of it.
A young FDR had been Under-Secretary of the Navy under lunatic President Wilson in the First World War.
Along with several other American leaders (i.e., Gen. Pershing) FDR recognized that Wilson's "peace without victory" policy was pure insanity.
They all knew in 1918 that Germany would be back in twenty years for Round Two.
They understood that Germany needed, needed, needed to be thoroughly, completely & utterly defeated to the point where they'd never, ever raise up their ugly, arrogant & dominating heads again.

Some, like FDR's WWI friend Winston Churchill, warned & warned their own lunatic politicians to beware & be ready, but none of them paid any attention.
Until it was too late.

So why did FDR hate Germans?
Well, for starters, as a boy FDR had travelled & stayed in Germany, he spoke German, and grew to personally dislike German arrogance, belligerence & domineering natures.
Roosevelts were, after all, of Dutch descent and no fans of German imperial ambitions.

As for Stalin's Soviet Union, FDR had no such personal animosity towards Russians and considered them vital allies for victory over Germany.

[BroJoeK]

SuperLuminal: "This article, particularly the final paragraph, is the biggest pile of stinking BS I've seen since obunghole was president..."

So you disagree with this?

"A perceived weak United States always emboldens mischief from nations controlled by tyrants."

Did you give it serious thought?

[abb]

I’ll throw this in here about now...

https://winstonchurchill.hillsdale.edu/sleep-of-the-saved-and-thankful-2/

“I thought of a remark which Edward Grey had made to me more than thirty years before—that the United States is like ‘a gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate. Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.”

[ealgeone]

For crying out loud, can we give Marxist economic theory a rest? I don't care what your professors taught you in school, not everything in life is ruled by dialectical materialism.

The New Deal was failing. That's a fact.

In 1940 the US was again doing great economically, without going to war, by supplying the Allies with as much war-material as possible. FDR did not need for the US to go to war just to achieve full employment.

Well, yes he did.

[corkoman]

Ive been engrossed in Indy Neidell's The Great War series of WWI. Very good production and its been consuming my time for past 3 months.

Holy chaos WWI is super complex and I always wanted to understand it better. Carnage. so much carnage.

[dfwgator]

Yep, Between that and the WWII series, I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

[dfwgator]

Here is the playlist for the whole “Pearl Harbor - Minute By Minute” series by Indy Neidell. Highly recommend it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Joh2BXPsrXs&list=PLsIk0qF0R1j6ydMvoUBKj_WrnP4PtBlfk

[Covenantor]

Ditto on the recommendation of two World War by the Week series. Have the pearl Harbor on my playlist for tonight.

[SuperLuminal]

"Did you give it serious thought?"

Just sprinkling a couple of truths throughout a POS propaganda article doesn't change it's purpose...

[colorado tanker]

I binge watched The Great War. Outstanding series. WWI is generally given short shrift in US history classes to WWII. In any event I learned a ton from that very well done series.

A few random impressions.

It seemed that every month hundreds of thousands of lives would be lost in some ghastly battle that achieved nothing. I understand much better why the French and British were so reluctant to go to war with Hitler given their last experience.

Austrian leadership was utterly abysmal. The decision to go to war with Russia over a murder in the Balkans was as stupid as they come. The generals were almost uniformly incompetent. I'm not at all sympathetic to them losing their empire.

The Germans came damn close to winning but couldn't move enough troops West fast enough after the Russian collapse to win on the Western Front before American troops began arriving in strength.

[colorado tanker]

Hiya, Joe. Still fighting the good fight, I see.

I try putting myself in the shoes of the Washington brain trust in late 1941. I would have thought a Japanese attack likely, but against the Philippines, not Pearl. It was the Philippines that lay athwart the routes to the mineral rich areas of SE Asian.

Attacking Pearl was a huge risk, as Yamamoto knew full well. He warned the leadership that to defeat America, the Japanese would have to invade the West Coast and march to and take Washington. He didn't mean they actually could do that - he and his audience knew damn well they couldn't.

But it was their only chance, however slim, to try to win the war. Knock the US out for a while and hope there will be enough time to conquer their empire and secure it before the US could muster its full power. There wasn't.

[BroJoeK]

eagleone: "The New Deal was failing. That's a fact."

The New Deal failed in 1937.
By 1940 US employment was at an all-time high, due to war-time production for US allies.

US employment from 1920 to 1940:

FDR did not need the US in war to "cure" US unemployment.
That's a fact.

[BroJoeK]

SuperLuminal: "Just sprinkling a couple of truths throughout a POS propaganda article doesn't change it's purpose..."

So, you confess the last sentences are true?

"Reagan’s doctrine of “Peace Through Strength” was a true then as it was in the 1980s and is true today.
A powerful unassailable United States would probably have kept Japan at bay and it likely would have forced them to play nice on the international stage.
A perceived weak United States always emboldens mischief from nations controlled by tyrants."

So what, exactly do you disagree with about these sentences:

"In closing, America also bears some of the blame in its clumsy handling of Japan in the forty years prior to the Pearl Harbor attack, and because it began rebuilding its military and navy far too late to thwart Japan’s imperialist ambitions.
Had the mobilization and new construction begun when Japan quit the limitation treaties, invaded China, attacked the USSR, when Germany attacked Poland, or when Japan joined the Axis, it would most likely have persuaded its leaders that a war with the United States was a no-win proposition under any circumstances."

Yes, the words "clumsy handling" annoy me too, because I don't believe more adroit "handling" would have made any difference.
I also don't think the US would have gone on a total-war footing absent some major provocation.
And then there's the matter of technology -- a lot of our pre-war equipment proved woefully inadequate when real combat came.

But overall, the article is fine, I'd say.

Why do you disagree?

[BroJoeK]

"I try putting myself in the shoes of the Washington brain trust in late 1941.
I would have thought a Japanese attack likely, but against the Philippines, not Pearl.
It was the Philippines that lay athwart the routes to the mineral rich areas of SE Asian."

Exactly right, and so Washington warned all the Pacific area commanders to be ready for war.
And, except for the US west coast itself, those warnings all proved true -- for the Philippines, Australia, Guam, Wake, & Hawaii.

The problem was that nobody could quite visualize what the Japanese intended, and none were ready for it.

Not for the first or last time, we were caught by surprise.

[SuperLuminal]

""Reagan's doctrine of “Peace Through Strength” was a true then as it was in the 1980s and is true today. A powerful unassailable United States would probably have kept Japan at bay and it likely would have forced them to play nice on the international stage."
----------
Absolutely hogwash... Nothing would have stopped the japs... It was religion-driven conquests, just like the moslem's their history...

""In closing, America also bears some of the blame in its clumsy handling of Japan in the forty years prior to the Pearl Harbor attack, and because it began rebuilding its military and navy far too late to thwart Japan's imperialist ambitions."
----------
Pure, unadulterated BS... This moron would also claim that the destruction of the towers on 911 was partly the fault of the American people... Using the same revisionist fantasy...

"Had the mobilization and new construction begun when Japan quit the limitation treaties, invaded China, attacked the USSR, when Germany attacked Poland, or when Japan joined the Axis, it would most likely have persuaded its leaders that a war with the United States was a no-win proposition under any circumstances.""
----------
Here he goes again... Smoke-a-toke thinking...
Typical communist revisionist fantasizing to enhance a article written purely for its divide-the-Nation propaganda strategy...
The same fellow travelers wrote much the same kind of crap after WWII when we dropped the bombs to end the war...

[PapaBear3625]

FDR wanted that attack to happen so badly, he could taste it. My grandfather, a reporter at the time for the New York Journal, said he saw FDR stand up from his wheelchair and do a bit of a jig when news reached him. Of course he knew it was coming and he was willing to sacrifice American lives to let it happen.

The US had broken the Japanese code. We knew they were coming. FDR WANTED war, so he could come to the aid of his buddy Stalin.

The Jap attack on Pearl Harbor destroyed/damaged some obsolete battleships. Our carriers were safe, out at sea. The Japs destroyed a bunch of obsolete planes on the ground, while not killing the pilots, who soon got better planes.

[ealgeone]

You're making the assertion US wartime production would have been what it was even without US involvement in the War.

Not sure we'd ramped up everything to that degree.

[BroJoeK]

"Absolutely hogwash... Nothing would have stopped the japs... It was religion-driven conquests, just like the moslem's their history..."

I agree with your analysis.
Thanks for making it clear.
I had suspected you were going in some other direction, sorry for the misunderstanding.