Acting boldly during February and March, Roosevelt froze German and Italian assets in the United States; seized German and Italian ships in U.S. harbors “to prevent their sabotage”; and created a Support Force of twenty-seven destroyers to escort merchant ship convoys from North American ports as far as Iceland. In March he devised the Lend-Lease program so that the U.S. industrial base could become the “arsenal of democracy.” On 9 April he authorized the establishment of U.S. military bases and meteorological stations in Greenland. And, nine days later, he extended the “Western Hemisphere,” which, he said, the United States had a duty to defend, to about 26 degrees west longitude, or 2,300 nautical miles east of New York. The new jurisdiction, covering some four-fifths of the Atlantic, including Greenland and the European Azores, Roosevelt brazenly called the Pan-American Security Zone. In July, he extended his conception of the Western Hemisphere even farther, to 22 degrees west to include Iceland; and at the (forced) invitation of the Icelandic government, he dispatched an occupation force of 4,095 Marines to Reykjavík. The United States was edging into the Battle of the Atlantic. And with the occupation of Iceland, it was compromising its condemnation of the Japanese occupation of northern Indo-China, as Tokyo was quick to point out.
* * *
During spring, summer, and fall of 1941 there were incidents at sea. On 10 April, while rescuing survivors from a torpedoed Dutch freighter off the coast of Iceland, the destroyer USS Niblack made sonar contact with what she thought was a submerged U-boat, range closing. Niblack dropped three depth charges—the first American shots fired in World War II. No visible damage resulted, and German naval archives make no mention of the event, leading to the conclusion that the sonar contact was a false one. On 21 May, a 5,000-ton American freighter, SS Robin Moor, sailing under the stars and bars in the South Atlantic, was torpedoed and sunk by U-69 (Kapitänleutnant [hereafter Kptlt.] Jost Metzler). The crew and passengers were found and rescued. Calling the sinking “ruthless,” Roosevelt declared an “unlimited national emergency” on 27 May. Berlin turned a deaf ear to Washington’s demand for restitution. On 20 June, U-203 (Kptlt. Rolf Mützelburg) attempted to attack the U.S. battleship Texas in the western approaches to Britain, but during a sixteen-hour pursuit was not able to overtake the faster battlewagon. Her commander, Mützelburg, explained to Dönitz that he thought the warship was British because it was east of the Pan-American Security Zone and inside the declared German blockade area surrounding the British Isles. On the U.S. side, the event would not become known until after the war.
Officially, Hitler did not want such incidents to occur, since he was not yet ready to make war against the United States. Dönitz dutifully issued warnings to his commanders to scrupulously avoid all U.S. naval and merchant vessels. And there were no further incidents until 4 September, when inadvertent action by a Royal Air Force Coastal Command bomber caused U-652 (Kptlt. Georg-Werner Fraatz) to launch two torpedoes, ten minutes apart, at a World War I–era, 200-ton flush-deck “four-piper” destroyer, USS Greer, which was steaming toward Iceland with mail, freight, and military passengers. It was the first German attack on a U.S. Navy warship in the war. The bomber involved, an American-made Hudson, had warned Greer by blinker light that a U-boat lay submerged athwart her track about ten miles ahead; then, when seeing the destroyer come upon the position and begin a sonar tracking pattern, the bomber dropped four depth charges randomly and headed back to base. Coming to periscope depth, U-652’s commander saw that the destroyer was of the same class that had been traded to Britain, and, thinking that the depth charges had come from Greer, considered himself justified in attacking her. Both torpedoes missed. Greer thereupon dropped nineteen depth charges, without effect, and broke off the engagement ten hours after first contact. In Washington, Roosevelt seized on this first “exchange-of-fire” event to demand that the U-boat responsible for the “unprovoked” attack (which he would later learn was not an exact description) be “eliminated” (which was not exactly possible). In a “fireside chat” to the nation on 11 September he denounced the U-boats as “rattlesnakes of the Atlantic” and declared that henceforth U.S. warships would “shoot on sight” (as the press put it) all German and Italian vessels discovered in Security Zone waters. Sixteen days later, addressing a Navy Day audience, Roosevelt himself used the “shoot on sight” phrase in presenting his newly assertive position, which drew a 62 percent approval rating in a Gallup poll published on 2 October.35
Most histories about this period assign the origin of Roosevelt’s “shoot on sight” order to the Greer event. But documents found in the Modern Military Branch collection of the National Archives and in the Operational Archives and Library of the Naval Historical Center at the Washington Navy Yard disclose that the “shoot on sight” order was originally given two months before, in July.36 After Greer Roosevelt was merely articulating in public operational war orders that Admiral King had issued to his escort ship captains on 1 and 18 July: “Destroy hostile forces which threaten shipping of U.S. and Iceland flag”; “My interpretation of threat to U.S. or Iceland flag shipping, whether escorted or not, is that threat exists when potentially hostile vessels are actually within sight or sound contact of such shipping or its escorts [emphasis added].”37 And on 19 July King added a spatial dimension to his order: Operation Order No. 6-41 directed U.S. naval forces to attack any U-boats or other German or Italian (and, one supposes, Japanese, if he thought that there were any around) warships found within one hundred miles of an American-escorted convoy to or from Iceland.38 Thus, King went to war four and a half months before 7 December—notice of which action was never transmitted by Main Navy to Admiral Kimmel at Pearl Harbor.
No Axis ships were detected or attacked in the undeclared war that King waged beginning in July. Had there been, according to the third article of the Tripartite Pact, Japan (theoretically) would have been obligated to come to the aid of her German ally. Of course, the loss of just one U-boat or one surface vessel might not have been enough to trigger the pact’s provisions. But if that surface vessel was a capital ship the outrage might have risen to a different order of magnitude. That King was plainly prepared to go that far may be gathered from an extraordinary step he took on 5 November, when he dispatched Task Force 1, consisting of battleships Idaho and Mississippi (transfers from Kimmel’s Pacific Fleet), cruisers Tuscaloosa and Wichita, with three destroyers, to sink the German pocket battleship Admiral Scheer (or possibly the superbattleship Tirpitz, sister ship of Bismarck), which British naval intelligence predicted would sortie from her base in Norway and enter the transatlantic convoy lanes. Under King’s direct command, Task Force 1 took up attack positions athwart the Denmark Strait (between Iceland and Greenland), through which Scheer/Tirpitz was expected to pass. As events unfolded, it was Scheer who was the intended intruder, and she was kept in port by machinery damage. Had the German raider attempted to force the strait, as planned, it is very likely that she would have been sunk by the combined firepower of King’s task force, and Hitler would have had no option but to declare war on the United States. The noted German historian Dr. Jürgen Rohwer told this writer that, while the loss of fifty men in a U-boat could be kept quiet, the loss of a capital ship with one thousand hands could not. Pride, face, and anger would have caused the Führer to move his declaration of war forward from December to November. Japan, we may assume, would have followed suit. Pearl Harbor would have gone on maximum alert, and, both because the Japanese Combined Fleet was not ready to sail that early in November, and because the element of surprise would have been lost altogether, the events of 7 December might not have happened at all, or as they did.39
* * *
The Roosevelt administration’s identification with Britain’s war against Germany was further tightened during 1941 through the adoption of two formal war plans. The first, called the ABC-1 [American–British Commonwealth] Staff Agreement, represented the fundamental strategy that would be followed by the two powers in the Atlantic-European and P
acific theaters. It resulted from Anglo-American military staff conversations begun at London in September 1940 and concluded at Washington in January– March 1941. A key passage read:
Since Germany is the predominant member of the Axis Powers, the Atlantic and European area is considered to be the decisive theatre. The principal United States military effort will be exerted in that theatre, and operations of United States forces in other theatres will be conducted in such a manner as to facilitate that effort.…
Even if Japan were not initially to enter the war on the side of the Axis Powers, it would still be necessary for the Associated Powers [the United States and the British Commonwealth] to deploy their forces in a manner to guard against Japanese intervention. If Japan does enter the war, the military strategy in the Far East will be defensive. The United States does not intend to add to its present military strength in the Far East but will employ the United States Pacific Fleet offensively in the manner best calculated to weaken Japanese economic power, and to support the defense of the Malay barrier by diverting Japanese strength away from Malaysia.40
First proposed in U.S. military circles in a famous “Plan Dog” memorandum authored by Admiral Stark in November 1940, the “Germany first” strategy would be followed even if (as would happen) Japan attacked the United States before the Germans made an attack or declaration of war. The strategy rested on the assumption that the defeat of Germany ensured the defeat of Japan, but not the obverse. Meanwhile, as plainly stated here, the operations of the Pacific Fleet would be offensive as well as defensive. It would not be correct to assert, as some have during the years since, that the Pacific strategy was to be a “holding operation.”41 Only one serious disagreement divided the U.S. and British delegations. The British thought that their base at Singapore was essential for the defense of the Malay Barrier, and they urged that a detachment of the U.S. Pacific Fleet be sent to defend that base. The American naval delegation, arguing that Singapore could not be held, even with the detachment, if Japan seized airfields in southern Indo-China, from which she could bomb Singapore at will, insisted that the Pacific Fleet not be divided. The stalemate was acknowledged in the ABC-1 Staff Agreement. Though an effort was made to devise an ABCD (American–British Commonwealth–Dutch) Agreement similar to ABC, the effort failed after one week of discussion. One of the rocks on which it foundered was the uncertainty on all three sides on where Japan might strike next and on what self-interested measures would then be taken by such disparate partners as the distant United States, the British in Malaysia, the orphaned Dutch East Indies, and the locally concerned Australia and New Zealand. President Roosevelt, for his part, was puzzled about what course he could take, given Congress’s reluctance to consider a declaration of war against anybody; though he personally believed that the United States should oppose with force a Japanese entry into Malaysia, because it would give Japan a near monopoly on rubber and tin.42
In the footsteps of ABC-1 came a comprehensive war plan produced in May by the Joint Board, soon to be renamed the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Called the United States Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan, or, more commonly, Rainbow 5, the plan incorporated leading features of ABC-1. From it was derived the basic Navy plan WPL-46, and from it again Admiral Kimmel developed the operating plan that governed specifically the Pacific Fleet, WPPac-46, which was promulgated by him on 21 July. The first offensive action of the Pacific Fleet was to “make reconnaissance and raid in force on the Marshall Islands.”43 WPPac-46 was approved by Stark on 9 September. But with war plans at the tactical level there was no certainty that what read well on paper would play out the same in execution. In the oft-cited expression of Count Helmuth von Moltke (1800–1891), “No battle plan survives contact with the enemy.” In this instance, the events of 7 December would put the offensive features of WPPac-46 on temporary hold.
* * *
At Tokyo the Konoye cabinet was reeling from new restrictions imposed in February by Secretary Hull, after consultation with the President, on the export to Japan of copper, brass and bronze, zinc, nickel, and potash. And during the weeks and months of 1941 that followed, one after another of materials and products that could serve the Japanese war effort were placed under control, e.g., lead, jute, burlap, borax, phosphate, carbon black, cork, and animal and vegetable fats.44 Exports of crude oil and regular gasoline were still off the table, but Hull found indirect means in that field, too, for punishing the Japanese warlords for what they had done in China and for what they might do next: in February and March he directed U.S. flag tankers to avoid Japanese ports, and he closed off further exports of oil drilling and refining machinery, storage tanks, containers, and even drums. Faced with these shortages in the energy field, the Japanese cabinet, with Foreign Minister Matsuoka in the lead, applied stiff pressure on the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) to provide unhindered access to her oil fields, technology, and equipment, as well as to her other raw materials. What Japan was demanding amounted to colonial domination of the NEI replacing that previously exercised by the defeated Dutch government in Europe. Because they feared that a U.S. cutoff of all oil exports would precipitate an armed takeover of the colony, NEI government officials sought a delicate balance, giving Japan just so much petroleum and raw materials as would keep her industries and military forces pacified, and, on the other hand, asking the United States to keep her own oil flowing westward lest there be unfortunate consequences for the NEI, including armed invasion. Hull and Hornbeck agreed to observe this policy, for the time being.
In February, the Konoye cabinet dispatched a new ambassador to the United States in an announced effort to improve political and economic relations. He was Admiral Nomura Kichisaburo, a former foreign minister, known for his dignity, character, and friendly inclinations toward the United States and Britain. Premier Konoye viewed the appointment of a moderate legate as a means both of buying time and of securing, if possible, reversal of export controls. Nomura himself seems not to have been optimistic of selling the New Order of Greater East Asia, given the anger in America over Japanese aggression in China, but, encouraged by former naval colleagues who wanted to avoid war, he agreed to try. At the date of his confirmation by the Emperor, he may not have been aware, given the bifurcation of Japanese officialdom, that his nation’s independently operating warlords were then engaged in an intensive program of constructing airfields, seaplane bases, and fortifications throughout the mandated Marshall and Caroline Islands west-southwest of Hawaii. When on 14 February he presented his papers to Roosevelt, whom he had met before, he exhibited, as expected, a respectful, affable, and accommodating demeanor, to which Roosevelt responded in kind. To the President Nomura made clear that he was on a mission of peace. And in his discussions he never wavered from that course.
Altogether, from February through 7 December, the stately antifascist would meet with Roosevelt eight times, with Hull forty-five times, and with Welles six times. Interspersed were meetings with old naval acquaintances Stark and Turner. Hull said of him, “He spoke a certain—sometimes an uncertain—amount of English. His outstanding characteristic was solemnity, but he was much given to a mirthless chuckle and to bowing. I credit Nomura with having been honestly sincere in trying to avoid war between his country and mine.”45 Hull’s conversations with the emissary were conducted after work in the secretary’s private apartment at the Wardman Park Hotel. A small group of State Department staffers attended and recorded the discussions. Hornbeck, who dismissed the proceedings as a sham and abhorred the thought of compromise where China was concerned, was the least frequent in his attendance. It was Hull who had the hardest task in maintaining a diplomat’s poker face and a semblance of interest in what Nomura had to say, because he knew every day beforehand what words the emissary would speak.
In August 1940 War Department cryptanalysts had created an electromechanical decryption device that penetrated the high-grade Japanese diplomatic cipher code-named “Purple.” With this equipment the Army and Navy alternated d
aily in “breaking” intercepted Japanese diplomatic (DIP) radio traffic. Thus Hull, who was one of the few Washington officials to see the machine’s product, called “Magic,” was privy to all of Nomura’s instructions from Tokyo, as well as to his reports home.
On 16 April Hull nudged the discussions along a more “get to the point” track by presenting four principles on paper that concisely represented the American position. In offering them to Nomura he invited the Japanese government’s comment on them. They read:
1. Respect for the territorial integrity and the sovereignty of each and all nations.
2. Noninterference in the internal affairs of other countries.
3. National equality, including equality of commercial opportunity.
4. Maintenance of the status quo in the Pacific except where it might be altered by peaceful means.46
Tokyo would not comment on the principles until 11 May, possibly because it was hard-pressed to think of a reasonable reply that was not a capitulation, or, because the Konoye cabinet was preoccupied with another diplomatic development: on 13 April Foreign Minister Matsuoka concluded with Soviet Foreign Minister V. M. Molotov a Russo-Japanese Neutrality Pact. By its terms Russia and Japan would maintain peaceful relations with each other, and should either power be attacked by one or several third powers, the other would remain neutral throughout the duration of the conflict. The pact had advantages for each of the signers, if two duplicitous nations could trust each other’s signatures. For Russia it meant that if she were invaded by Germany (as she would be, on 22 June) she need not worry about being stabbed in the back by a Japanese assault on her maritime provinces. For Japan it meant that she need not keep forces on the Manchurian border that abutted her traditional enemy, and could now execute her long-planned hokushu nanshin strategy: “Hold north, go south.”
Pearl Harbor Betrayed Page 11
