Why did America enter the Second World War?
By Charles A. Morse
web
posted May 28, 2001
 Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor: Histortainment, not history |
The new movie "Pearl Harbor," released amidst much fanfare, provides an opportunity to revisit the issue of why America entered the Second World War. The conventional and technically accurate explanation, reinforced by this film and all the hyperbole surrounding it, is that we entered the war as a result of an unprovoked and dastardly attack on our fleet, stationed in Pearl Harbor Hawaii, December 7, 1941, by the forces of the Empire of Japan. This sneak attack marked "a date which will live in infamy," as President Franklin D. Roosevelt accurately described it at the time.
There presently exists, however, mountains of evidence indicating that President Roosevelt and his inner circle had provoked the Japanese attack, knew of the attack well in advance, and did nothing to stop it or protect the Pacific fleet. Two books, "Infamy: Pearl Harbor and it's Aftermath" by John Toland and the just released "Day of Deceit; the Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor" by Robert B. Stinnett, make this point with voluminous documentation. Besides provoking Japan, Roosevelt was secretly aiding Britain in it's war against Nazi Germany, and was engaging in actions, both in the Atlantic and Pacific, that were war-like by any customary understanding of international law.
Why did Roosevelt and his cohorts want to enter the war when the vast majority of Americans, on all sides of the political spectrum, wanted to stay out? Roosevelt spoke of stopping totalitarianism and aggression, yet, he formed an alliance with the Communist Stalin. Rather than fighting totalitarianism, he chose to fight one totalitarian regime, Nazi Germany, while forming an alliance with another totalitarian regime, Communist Russia. History indicates that Russia was equally as atrocious as Germany. This fact was well known at the time.
The aggression against Poland by the Nazis is often held up as an excuse for having entered the war against Germany, yet, both the Nazis and the Communist Russians invaded Poland simultaneously after signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, August 9, 1939, that signaled a formal alliance between these two Socialist behemoths. As a result of this secretive pact, the Communist Russians would gobble up, in addition to Eastern Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bessarabia, and part of Finland. The valiant Finns were able to repulse the Communist blitzkrieg while winning the admiration of the world.
Most American Jews admired Roosevelt's entry into the war and considered him to be a virtual savior; yet, Roosevelt clearly didn't give a damn about the Jews. Roosevelt went to great measures to keep the truth about the Holocaust out of the news, he refused to lift a finger to stop the Nazi program, and, in fact, he never even uttered the word "Jew" until the last weeks of his life. Arthur D. Morse, in his book "While Six Million Died," documents the fact that Roosevelt knew about the Holocaust and did nothing. He even refused to allow the St. Louis, a ship of fleeing Jewish refugees, from landing in the US and he called the President of Cuba, who wanted to grant asylum to the Jews, urging him not to allow the ship to dock in Cuba. The ship was forced to return to the clutches of Hitler and his gas chambers.
Roosevelt's wartime policies, rather than ending the war sooner, seemed to have prolonged the war. In early 1943, there were senior officers in the German army who were ripe for rebellion. George N. Crocker, in his book "Roosevelt's Road to Russia" recounts such an incident:
"The Bishop of Chichester had been approached in Stockholm by two anti-Nazi Germans who asked him to find out whether the British and American governments would negotiate for peace with a German democratic government if the Hitler regime were overthrown…There was an opposition to Hitler led by General Ludwig Beck, Carl Goerdeler, von Kluge, von Manstein, Admiral Canaris, General Oster.Count von Stauffenberg…to succeed, they needed some encouragement from outside. This they never got."
General Albert C. Wedemeyer, who attended the 1943 Casablanca Conference with Roosevelt stated:
"No attempt was made by the western allies to divide the Germans by offering Hitler's enemies decent terms of peace-this in spite of the fact that British and American intelligence agents were aware that Hitler was faced with the opposition of men holding some of the highest appointments in the Army, Navy, and Civil Service"
Instead, Roosevelt insisted on "unconditional surrender" which the German people took to mean total slavery. British military historian J.F.C.Fuller would recount, "Gagged by this idiotic slogan, the Western Allies could offer no terms, however severe. Conversely, their enemy could ask for none, however submissive." With no alternative, Hitler's road to chaos, murder, and mayhem would be left open until the bitter end. Japan would, likewise, find itself trapped by the same asinine "unconditional surrender" and, in spite of vain attempts to sue for peace, would suffer the scalding fire of nuclear holocaust.
The motivation behind Roosevelt's insistence on entering America into
the Second World War remain shrouded in mystery. Could it be the influence
of the Communists and Communist sympathizers that surrounded him, and
even lived with him in the White House? People such as Alger Hiss, Harry
Dexter White, Laughlin Curry, Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry Hopkins? Were
they holding the crippled president as a sort of informal hostage? The
answers to these questions will never be fully known. 
Chuck Morse is the author of Thunder out of Boston which is available at Amazon.com.
Buy Infamy: Pearl Harbor and it's Aftermath by John Toland at Amazon.com for $7.19 or Day of Deceit; the Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor by Robert B. Stinnett at Amazon.com for $12.80. For a good general history detailing the attack on Pearl Harbor itself, Walter Lord's Day of Infamy (at Amazon.com for $11.20) is considered the classic.
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