My point relates to FDR personally. Given that we-the-people were 80% opposed to entry into WWII before Pearl Harbor, and that Neville Chamberlain's "peace in our time" was popular in Britain at the time, it actually can be understood that FDR had no way of getting the country to fight Hitler before Pearl Harbor.But the reason my lifetime was so fouled up by the Cold War is basically that FDR loved the idea of socialism enough to bend practically everything to protect the Soviet Union from Germany. Much as we think of Churchill and FDR as being buddy-buddy, in fact FDR (and the US Navy which he once basically headed before his presidency) had anti-British Empire sentiments (which helps to explain why we were sufficiently slow to pick up British Navy tactics that we lost almost 400 coastal merchantmen to U-boats by June 1942).
FDR was unhappy over the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact; once it was broken by Hitler's invasion FDR began trying to provoke the U-boats into attacking our Navy. It wouldn't surprise me to learn, tho I don't know, that the US diplomatic posture vs. Japan stiffened on the very day Hitler invaded the USSR.
FDR was unhappy over the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact; once it was broken by Hitler's invasion FDR began trying to provoke the U-boats into attacking our Navy. It wouldn't surprise me to learn, tho I don't know, that the US diplomatic posture vs. Japan stiffened on the very day Hitler invaded the USSR.
The appropriate timing would have been the sinking of the USS Panay.