I don't think that there is enough evidence to suggest that Roosevelt "engineered" or "had advance knowledge of" the attack on Pearl Harbor. Everybody expected the attack to hit the Philippines. Japanese war planning initially focused on taking the Philippines & Guam and then setting a naval ambush for the US Battlefleet. The US War Plan Orange (Japan) focused on 'relieving' Filipino forces by naval resupply. Adm. Yamamoto turned the Japanese strategy on its head by attacking Pearl Harbor first, and in great secrecy.
And don't tell me that we were reading Japanese naval codes, because we weren't at this point. We had broken the Japanese diplomatic key, which is entirely different.
If I'm not mistaken, Roosevelt was Secretary of the Navy during WW1 and helped engineer the successful German attack on the Lusitania, with the connivance of Churchill, in order to accomplish the same thing he did at Pearl Harbor in WW2.
Where'd you get this? The U-boat that sank the Lusitania was by itself and had 1 torpedo left. She was getting ready to leave the patrol area to head home and, by chance, caught a glimpse of the Lusitania emerging from a fog bank. The German skipper later said that he didn't think that a single torpedo was enough to sink such a large ship.
The point here is that, while FDR may have allowed munitions to be shipped on the Lusitania, he couldn't have passed the ships position onto the German Navy. If he had, the Germans would have had more than a single U-Boat on station that was down to its last shot.
Now, if you want to say that FDR 'provoked' the Japanese by embargoing Steel, Rubber & Texas Crude, I might go along with that.
"Where'd you get this?"
I saw a program on TV - it was the History Channel or Discovery.
The program stated that the Lusitania, a passenger ship, was illegally carrying munitions aboard and German Intelligence was aware of it, and German newspapers warned civlians not to sail on it. It also said that the ship was charting a course into waters infested with German submarines and the destroyer escourts abandoned it as it was entering those waters.
What's so difficult to believe about this?? Churchill was once asked how many American soldiers should be sent over to help in WW1. He supposedly stated "Just one. We'll take very good care of him and make sure we put him someplace where he is sure to be shot."
The reluctance of Americans to get involved with foreign wars was well-known. Their equal irrascibility once aroused was also.
"The German skipper later said that he didn't think that a single torpedo was enough to sink such a large ship."
And the Souix indians said that the Seventh Cavalry shot themselves. Why would the skipper of a U-Boar responsible for such a tragic attack say anything we could trust?
"Now, if you want to say that FDR 'provoked' the Japanese by embargoing Steel, Rubber & Texas Crude, I might go along with that."
He did more than that. He sent American Naval forces into Japanese territorial waters to antagonize them. And even if Washington suspected the main attack at the Phillipines, you would have expected, under the circumstances, that the Administration would have made sure that our major naval base in the Pacific was on high alert while all this was going on. The reason it wasn't I believe, is because Roosevelt wanted an attack which would unite public opinion behind his war to help Joe Stalin.
As for the Japanese Codes, I don't know for sure when we had broken them, but I HAVE read they were broken BEFORE the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Either way, the attack on Pearly Harbor was CERTAINLY not something FDR should not have anticipated, given all the many provocations delivered to the Japanese beforehand.
It was hardly the equivalent of 9-1-1.