U. S. PLANS ECONOMIC CURBS ON JAPAN TO COUNTER ANY INDO-CHINA INVASION (7/23/41)

Microfilm-New York Times archives, Monterey Public Library | 7/23/41 | John H. Crider, C. Brooks Peters, Daniel T. Brigham, Eugene Petroff, Hanson W. Baldwin, Ray Brock

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

I would have ASSIDUOUSLY avoided any empty threats or provocation that I could not back up. Basically, I would have said, “Nice doggie, nice doggie” while looking around for a big honking rock.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

Russian spies in the Sorge organization told Stalin that the Japanese did not intend to attack Siberia in 1941, allowing him to free up 12 fresh divisions that fell on the Nazis outside of Moscow on December 7, 1941 like the hammer of an angry god.

[CougarGA7]

I definitely couldn’t have done nothing. At this point I already have too much at stake. While I’m not in the business of protecting the British colonial possessions, in fact, I know at this point that colonialism is on its deathbed, I also have already made my position as far as the axis and allies well known.

We are only not at war with Germany on paper and it is clear to the Axis that we are going to support the British and the Russians by any means possible. We also are providing aid to the Chinese that are already at war with Japan and though I don’t share the opinion of many policy makers at the time that the Open Door policy with China is still valid, I don’t feel we can abandon them either. Letting continued expansion in the Far East go with only harsh words puts us in the same position that Nevile Chamberlain put the British in back in 1938-39.

Applying some political pressure seems like the correct action at this point, though I don’t think I would go as far as a wholesale embargo. I would probably suspend gold sales as a first measure and move forward from there. As to the condition of our defenses in the theater, I am in the same camp as Admiral Richardson in that the fleet cannot refit for war from Hawaii and I would return it San Diego. (But I would have done that a while ago)

[BroJoeK]

Lonesome in Massachussets: "What could possibly go wrong?"

If you assume (and why would you?) that FDR wanted to avoid war at all costs, then obviously, everything went wrong.

But that assumption would be incorrect.
In fact, Roosevelt wanted to do everything he could, short of declared war, to help the allies and prepare Americans for all-out war.

As for declaring war on the Axis powers, Roosevelt knew that could never happen -- and he had promised voters it would never happen -- short of a major attack on the US.
No, some U-boat sinkings of US ships in the Atlantic would not do it.
It had to be a major attack, and the enemy must commit the first overt act of war.

So how was all this going to happen?
Well, there was a plan, called the Eight Action Plan, developed by US naval intelligence (Cmdr. Arthur McCollum).
The plan was intended to provoke the Japanese into war, and one-by-one, FDR executed McCollum's eight actions.

The result, as intended, was war.
Of course, whether FDR & company knew or suspected specifically that Japan intended to attack the fleet at Pearl Harbor is still hotly debated -- i.e., CougarGA7 and I will no doubt go at this one again before December 7.

But the fact that FDR needed and wanted a major enemy attack on US assets -- major enough to declare that "a state of war has existed" -- is beyond dispute, imho.

So, nothing "went wrong."
FDR's plans, brilliantly conceived and flawlessly executed, produced just the results he intended.

[treetopsandroofs]

We’d already secretly been at war with Japan for a couple of years. If a Republican president had financed a squadron in China against Japan in the late 1930’s, it would have been considered illegal.