Back Door To War

Behandler baggrunden for USA's indtræden i 2. verdenskrig.

COMPLETELY RESET AND REFORMATTED. Charles Callan Tansill, one of the foremost American diplomatic historians of the twentieth century, convincingly argues that Franklin Roosevelt wished to involve the United States in the European War that began in September 1939. Whenhis efforts appeared to come to naught, Roosevelt determined to provoke Japan into an attack on American territory. Doing so would involve Japan's Axis allies in war also, and so America would thus enter the war through the "back door". The strategy succeeded, and Tansill maintains that Roosevelt therefore welcomed Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. Tansill demonstrates quite convincingly his central theme: that FDR sought to include the United States in the Second World War on the side of the Soviet Union from the very beginning, and duped the Japanese into firing the first shot. Tansill faulted Roosevelt, accusing him of pressuring Neville Chamberlain to fight Hitler; of increasingly involving America in Britain's war effort; of trying to provoke Hitler into attacking American warships in the Atlantic; and, by escalating economic and diplomatic pressure, of maneuvering the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor. Tansill proves his premise by the usage of extensive primary material from US State Department files, current periodicals, and sound reasoning.

How Pearl Harbor has been written about, thought of, and manipulated in American culture.

First published in 1947, Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War is widely regarded as the first Revisionist book about the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the complex history which preceded and followed it. Although it drew both criticism and praise on its initial release, this book covers many aspects of that war, its antecedents and its consequences, and ranks among the best of the numerous volumes published on the subject. “Those who object to historical skepticism may complain that my book is no contribution to the political canonization of its central figure. That is no concern of mine. As to the purpose my book is intended to serve, some observations from the minority report of the Joint Congressional Committee which investigated the Pearl Harbor attack are pertinent: ‘In the future the people and their Congress must know how close American diplomacy is moving to war so that they may check in advance if imprudent and support its position if sound ... How to avoid war and how to turn war -- if it finally comes -- to serve the cause of human progress is the challenge to diplomacy today as yesterday.’“—George Morgenstern

As the first comprehensive treatment of the American entry into World War II to appear in over thirty-five years, Waldo Heinrichs' volume places American policy in a global context, covering both the European and Asian diplomatic and military scenes, with Roosevelt at the center. Telling a tale of ever-broadening conflict, this vivid narrative weaves back and forth from the battlefields in the Soviet Union, to the intense policy debates within Roosevelt's administration, to the sinking of the battleship Bismarck, to the precarious and delicate negotiations with Japan. Refuting the popular portrayal of Roosevelt as a vacillating, impulsive man who displayed no organizational skills in his decision-making during this period, Heinrichs presents him as a leader who acted with extreme caution and deliberation, who always kept his options open, and who, once Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union stalled in July, 1941, acted rapidly and with great determination. This masterful account of a key moment in American history captures the tension faced by Roosevelt, Churchill, Stimson, Hull, and numerous others as they struggled to shape American policy in the climactic nine months before Pearl Harbor.

Using previously unreleased documents, the author reveals new evidence that FDR knew the attack on Pearl Harbor was coming and did nothing to prevent it.

Reproduction of the original: State of the Union Addresses by Franklin D. Roosevelt

Conceived by Charles Beard as a sequel to his provocative study of American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War outraged a nation, permanently damaging Beard's status as America's most influential historian.Beard's main argument is that both Democratic and Republican leaders, but Roosevelt above all, worked quietly in 1940 and 1941 to insinuate the United States into the Second World War. Basing his work on available congressional records and administrative reports, Beard concludes that FDR's image as a neutral, peace-loving leader was a smokescreen, behind which he planned for war against Germany and Japan even well before the attack on Pearl Harbor.Beard contends that the distinction between aiding allies in Europe like Great Britain and maintaining strict neutrality with respect to nations like Germany and Japan was untenable. Beard does not argue that all nations were alike, or that some did and others did not merit American support, but rather that Roosevelt chose to aid Great Britain secretly and unconstitutionally rather than making the case to the American public. President Roosevelt shifted from a policy of neutrality to one of armed intervention, but he did so without surrendering the appearance, the fiction of neutrality. This core argument makes the work no less explosive in 2003 than it was when first issued in 1948.