Replies

With respect to Stalin's failure, I am just about finished reading Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia, by Gabriel Gorodetsky, based on newly released archival material, especially in Russia. Turns out most of the intel Stalin got was sanitized to tell him what his underlings knew he wanted to hear. The few times people were brave enough to tell him otherwise, he blew his stack. I imagine it was the same with Hitler and Normandy.

As for FDR and Pearl Harbor, I think the latest info confirms the conspiracy theories, so that that was not really an intelligence failure.

Again, I think it's a little harsh on FDR. Yes, I think they knew something was up, but where? At the time, SIGINT and code-breaking was in its barest infancy, nobody knew if it would work or not.

There were probably hundreds of rumors flying around about Japan, but I have yet to believe that the major elements of the conspiracy theory is there:

1. FDR knew that it was going to be Pearl Harbor.
2. FDR knew it was going to be at 0755 AM on December 7, 1941.
3. FDR deliberately ordered the information withheld from military commanders.

No, what happened at Pearl Harbor, and what probably happened here was probably this: An enemy whose cunning and ruthlessness we grossly underestimated launched a well-planned, well-executed sneak attack on our country. In the case of Pearl Harbor, it was planned by Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto. For these attacks, we have not discovered who yet, but when we do, we'll settle the account with him, just as we did with Yamamoto.

>As for FDR and Pearl Harbor, I think the latest info confirms the conspiracy theories, so that that was not really an intelligence failure.

I'm normally a tin foil kind of guy, but the enormity of this tragedy makes it impossible for me to seriously believe that our government actually may have known about it in advance. 20,000 deaths is just so monstrous, so horrible, that I just can't believe anyone would let it happen.

But there are so many questions that I don't see how a rational person could let them go unasked. Some straightforward ones are:

How could this have been planned for five years without _some_ intelligence agency knowing about it?

How could this have involved 50+ people without _some_ intelligence agency knowing about it?

How could this have involved people traveling between -- at least -- three or four different countries without _some_ intelligence agency knowing about it?

There is one final thing that has been bugging me lately.

During the last election, during all the fighting and legal squabbles, tin foil people at www.enterprisemission.com put forward a complicated theory which was built around the belief that people in power knew that something horrendous was going to happen, something which would enable the governing party to make vastly important decisions and vastly change/shape the future of the globe. That was why, they suggested months ago, that the republicans and democrats were slugging it out it a way unheard of in modern politics. Because they both knew that _something_ big was coming down... EnterpriseMission.com has put up crazy theories and such. But they wrote about this months ago, while the election was still undetermined. (They've since removed old files from their site so I can't link to their wild theory.)

Emotionally, I can't even start to believe that our politicians are _so_ bad that they would let something like this happen.

But I can't stop asking myself the questions, either... Mark W.

As for FDR and Pearl Harbor, I think the latest info confirms the conspiracy theories, so that that was not really an intelligence failure.

I don't buy the conspiracy crap. In order for a conspiracy to make sense, Roosevelt would have had to know ahead of time that the attack would cause the American people to rally behind the war effort, rather than become demoralized and defeatist. This was by no means assured.

He also would have had to know ahead of time that we would (almost miraculously) win the Battle of Midway. If we had lost at Midway, the Japanese would have been free to invade the West Coast.