Threshold of War

by Heinrichs, Waldo;

  Early 1941 was a time of breakout and good hunting for the German navy. The Scheer, already at large, sank seventeen ships in a cruise to the Indian Ocean. In February the cruiser Hipper caught an unprotected convoy east of the Azores and sank seven. In February and March the pair of battle cruisers, prowling the shipping lanes near North America, scored twice. On March 15–16, some 500 miles southeast of Newfoundland, where traffic concentrated to pass around the Grand Banks and escorts departed, they destroyed or captured sixteen ships and left convoys in that part of the Atlantic scattering in their wakes. Late in March the Scheer and Hipper broke back to Norwegian waters through Denmark Strait, between Iceland and Greenland, while the Gneisenau and Scharnhorst diverted British attention by reaching Brest. Meanwhile raiders in distant oceans disguised as merchant vessels sank thirty-eight ships in the first half of 1941. And the great Bismarck readied for sea.35

  In March 1941, Britain was losing ships at the rate of over 500,000 tons a month, and losses were on the rise. U-boats were sinking about half the ships, with naval raiders and aircraft accounting about equally for the rest. This gave an annual rate of more than five million tons, roughly a quarter of Britain’s merchant fleet. New building in shipyards now under blitz would replace at best only 30 percent of the losses. At this rate Britain would import for the year 14 percent less than its required minimum.36

  The British government was not slow in conveying a sense of the threat to Americans. To begin with, Churchill gave “this new battle” a name. It was now not just a battle on the approaches to the British Isles but the Battle of the Atlantic, on the doorstep of the Americas as well. The prime minister formed a committee with that name to deal more effectively with the many-sided threat, and the name began appearing in American headlines. “The Battle of the Atlantic Is On,” proclaimed the New York Times on March 11. The Washington Post reported that German submarines were now operating on the American side of the Atlantic. A U-boat, it was even said, was coming to sink ships off New York harbor. At the end of March, Churchill sent word to Roosevelt of “heavy disastrous losses.”37

  Now the principal concern of the president and his advisers, well bruited in speeches by officials and by the press, was how to ensure that the wealth of war materials becoming available under Lend-Lease arrived safely in Britain. On March 15, at the annual dinner of the White House correspondents, the president delivered a speech described as “one of the most powerful of his career.” Roosevelt made it a bipartisan occasion, warmly greeting Wendell Willkie, his Republican opponent of 1940. He sought to move the minds of Americans ahead from the “great debate” over Lend-Lease to the delivery of goods to the battle lines. Upon the will of his countrymen to sacrifice, work harder, and increase the tempo of production depended “the survival of the vital bridge across the ocean—the bridge of ships that carry the arms and the food for those who are fighting the good fight.” But “{s}peed, and speed now” must be the watchwords, “now, now,… NOW.”38

  That same day orders went to the United States Atlantic Fleet, then conducting amphibious exercises in the Caribbean, to return at once to home ports on the East Coast, there to strip ship of inflammables and peacetime conveniences, undergo overhaul, apply camouflage paint, and prepare for active duty. A squadron of destroyers due for transfer to the Pacific was to remain. Except in the Caribbean, neutrality patrols ended. Admiral Stark informed Admiral King that this was in effect an Atlantic war mobilization.39

  Then on March 19 the president and his most comfortable friends—Robert Jackson, Harold Ickes, “Pa” Watson, Ross Mclntyre, and Harry Hopkins — left for Fort Lauderdale and a fishing cruise to the Bahamas, his first vacation in several months. The presidential yacht Potomac was escorted by two destroyers. The sea was rough, but Roosevelt “worked at his stamps and fished much more assiduously than any one else,” according to Ickes. As the Atlantic Fleet readied, the president soaked up sun and sea air and turned over in his mind how to protect the “bridge of ships.”40

  Chapter 2

  April Balancing Risks

  As Roosevelt headed south to relax and ponder, Matsuoka Yōsuke, foreign minister of Japan, journeyed westward across the Soviet Union dreaming of accomplishing a diplomatic coup by his forthcoming negotiations in Moscow and Berlin. He envisioned a four-power entente embracing the Axis powers and the Soviet Union through which Japan could adjust problems in the north and free itself to achieve self-sufficiency in resources in the south and a New Order in East Asia. As his special train traversed the unending white wastes of Siberia, the diminutive, combative diplomat passed the time drinking vodka, telling his staff “how he would make puppets of Hitler and Stalin,” writing short poems “full of subtle twists of thought,” or simply meditating while sipping tea.1

  A decade earlier, during the Manchurian crisis, the Japanese could not have imagined their foreign minister settling accounts in Moscow, or seeking Berlin’s help in the matter. Neither could they have conceived of their nation’s present sweeping confrontation with the British Commonwealth and the United States on top of a never-ending war with China. As Japan expanded, so did its problems. Its feeling of vulnerability intensified; fears of encirclement magnified. As defense needs increased, so did impoverishment in war resources. By 1941 Japan had greatly enlarged the portion of the world it considered vital. The precise nature, boundaries, and means of accomplishment of the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” were still uncertain, but the military was increasingly taken with the idea of seizing Southeast Asia, especially for its oil, and securing a broad realm of imperial self-sufficiency.

  Japan’s aggressiveness derived from more than its share of irrationality. Policy was misconceived because the process that formed it was basically incoherent. The problem was not simply that the military dominated policy from 1931 onward and civilian restraints were lacking, for officials in the foreign ministry and elsewhere, indeed prime ministers, often shared military preconceptions. Nor was the problem limited to differing strategic objectives and bureaucratic interests of the army and navy, so that policy usually embraced something of both and more than Japan could afford, though this was a central difficulty.

  The Battle of the Atlantic: New York Times, April 27, 1941.

  The main fault lay in the way decisions within the bureaucracies percolated upwards rather than flowed downward from some central authority, such as the Meiji oligarchs of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, with a broad perspective and the capability of establishing priorities and judging ends and means. The influence of subordinates was not necessarily insubordinate. That had existed, it is true, in the army in the 1931–36 period, reaching proportions of conspiracy and mutiny. But discipline had been restored. Nevertheless, subordinates retained the initiative. They precipitated policy by action, as in the cases of the Kwantung, Tientsin, and South China field armies, or, as factions or committees in the middle range of the military bureaucracies, they pressed their views on their superiors, who endeavored to accommodate them. As a result the more chauvinistic, parochial, and activist elements of both the army and navy had undue influence so that Japanese policy was the more belligerent, impulsive, and opportunistic.2

  Japan’s inchoate drive for self-sufficiency interacted with violent changes in world politics and widening opportunities. The debilitating struggle in China turned the attention of the army southward to the resources of Indochina, the Dutch East Indies, and Malaya and the chance these weakly protected colonies presented of sealing off China from outside aid. In this direction of advance both army and navy could agree.

  German victory in the west in May and June 1940 presented a glowing opportunity. Matsuoka saw alliance with Germany as a means of immobilizing the United States and preventing it from interfering in the southward advance. He and Prince Konoe Fumimaro, the prime minister, also saw the pact as a means of improving relations with Moscow by way of the Nazi-Soviet ties of 1939, thereby gaining security in the north before prosecuting advance
in the south. At the same time, the terms of alliance left Japan considerable flexibility in determining whether it would enter a German-American war.

  Matsuoka stopped in Moscow for a day to prepare the ground for negotiations before continuing to Berlin to see what influence Germany might bring to bear. The answer was none. Hitler did not disclose his intent to attack the Soviet Union to his Axis partner, though Matsuoka undoubtedly picked up the rampant diplomatic speculation on this question. The Fuehrer, showing no interest in an improvement in Japanese-Soviet relations, urged a Japanese attack on Singapore. The Japanese army and navy were not yet ready to go that far, so Matsuoka had to decline a commitment. Leaving Berlin empty-handed he returned to Moscow on April 7 to see what could be salvaged in a separate Soviet-Japanese agreement.

  Evidence of growing Japanese ambitions in the south was accumulating in London and Washington. Japan was seeking a vastly greater allocation of oil, especially aviation-grade crude and aviation gasoline, from the Dutch East Indies. American Standard-Vacuum Oil Company, a principal producer in the Indies, was keeping the Department of State closely informed. The Dutch and the oil companies fended off Japanese demands with a temporizing agreement in November 1940, but the contracts were soon due for renegotiation.3

  In February 1941, Japan, with appropriate displays of naval strength in the Gulf of Siam and South China Sea, insisted on mediating border clashes between French Indochina and Thailand, leading to fears of French or Thai compensation in the form of bases opening the way to Burma, the Indian Ocean, and Singapore. Britain sounded the alarm and urged an American warning. A war scare ensued with Australian reinforcements moving to Malaya, the Dutch recalling their shipping, and warnings in the press of an impending Japanese “lightning stroke.” The American embassy at Tokyo on its own initiative warned the vice minister of foreign affairs that if Japan threatened British imperial communications it “would have to expect to come into conflict with the United States.” Shocked, Öhashi Chuichi replied: “Do you mean to say that if Japan were to attack Singapore there would be war with the United States?” Eugene Dooman, counselor of the American embassy, replied, “The logic of the situation would inevitably raise that question.” American leaders, with MAGIC to go by, correctly doubted that Japan was ready to go as far as base acquisition at the moment, and indeed the crisis subsided.4

  Only at the moment, however; the menace persisted. MAGIC intercepts revealed that Japanese consular officials at Singapore were ordered to secure evidence of Chinese dissatisfaction with British rule because “our troops are moving southward.” Urgent instructions went to consuls in the Dutch East Indies to secure maps of the islands. In an intercepted report of March 24 from the Japanese embassy in Berlin, Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering had strongly urged on Matsuoka a Japanese attack on Singapore, confiding that after the forthcoming invasion of Britain, Germany would crush the Soviet Union.5 Accordingly Washington looked upon Matsuoka’s journey with apprehension, fearing some agreement that would accelerate the southward advance.6

  Franklin Roosevelt had not really found any answer to Japanese aggression. He was a Europeanist. As a child he had spent time in England, France, and Germany and had been taught German and French. He believed he understood Europeans. Of Asia he had no direct experience. Often he spoke of his family’s involvement in the China trade as if seeking authority in ancestry. He could be discerning about China and was positive about its future, but his tone was patronizing and he kept Chinese problems at arm’s length. He knew a great deal about the Japanese navy from his experience in World War I, and this inclined him to be distrustful and negative about the nation as a whole.7 In thinking about Asia he was not immune to the stereotypes and racial bias of his class and society.

  Americans, in contrast to the Japanese, operated from a sense of invulnerability, at least until 1940, and resource abundance. Europe was at the center of their world concerns, Asia at the edges. Americans had invested great hopes in China. Its struggle against the Japanese invaders aroused widespread sympathy and deepened hostility toward Japan, yet China’s portion of American trade with Asia in the 1930s, which in itself was a minor portion of total foreign trade, was only 13 percent, while trade with Japan was 36 percent and with Southeast Asia 35 percent.8 The Philippines were due for independence in 1946. Defending them were one weak American-Filipino division, a hundred or so obsolete airplanes, and an Asiatic Fleet of World War I vintage except for one modern cruiser. The United States Pacific Fleet at Hawaii lacked the superiority, training, and auxiliaries to risk an encounter with the Imperial Japanese Navy in the western Pacific.9

  Preoccupation with the economic depression and weakness at the Asian periphery made for caution and avoidance in dealing with Japan. During the 1930s, non-condonation and non-provocation governed policy.10 As Japanese expansion widened, the policy of gingerly complaint persisted, but behind it the outline of a blunter conception appeared: the idea that the nations surrounding Japan should cooperate to stop Japanese aggression. Multilateralism had been the dominant mode of nations dealing with the international problems of East Asia, tolerable even to a United States otherwise horrified by foreign entanglements. Secretary of State John Hay’s Open Door notes (1899) seeking to maintain the old treaty system in China and Secretary of State Charles Evans Hughes’ leadership of the Washington Conference (1921–22) are cases in point. The idea followed from Wilsonian faith in collective security and the appeal to principle in successive American protests against Japan’s unlawful aggressions.

  In October 1937, as the fighting in China escalated to full-scale war, the commander of the United States Asiatic Fleet, Admiral Harry E. Yarnell, cast about for a concerted way of dealing with the “international gun man” of East Asia. In a letter which came to President Roosevelt he drew attention to Japan’s dependence on external sources of raw materials. The United States, Britain, France, the Netherlands, and the Soviet Union should join in a common front to cut off all trade with Japan, simply attacking Japanese commerce from their distant encircling bases, while China tied down Japanese troops. The result would be “strangulation” of Japan without the cost of huge armies or the risk of Jutland-style naval battles.

  This made a “lot of sense” to Roosevelt. It reminded him of the successful American strangulation of Tripoli in the Barbary wars and of an article he had written for Asia magazine in 1923. That piece, aimed at bettering relations with Japan, had warned that war between the two nations would result in strategic deadlock and the outcome would be decided by economic strength, “in which the United States had, and has, a vast superiority.”11

  The idea of concerted action and long-range blockade of Japan in the worst extremity was dormant but by no means extinct in Roosevelt’s thinking. Under consideration in 1940 were plans for sending a task force consisting of the aircraft carrier Yorktown and four heavy cruisers with escorts to the Java Sea to assist the British and Dutch in defending the so-called Malay Barrier (the line of the Malay Peninsula, the Dutch East Indies, and eastward to the Fiji Islands). In October 1940, when Roosevelt was considering various measures against Japan, he toyed with the idea of setting up two lines of patrol vessels to intercept Japanese shipping, in effect a long-range blockade, but was dissuaded by the navy.12

  However, joint containment of Japan remained only an idea. World concern focused on the German threat in Europe. British naval power concentrated in European waters, leaving the Singapore base vacant. Soviet-American relations, which had never solidified in the thirties, turned abysmal with the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 and the subsequent Soviet attack on Finland. In November 1940, American strategic policy itself turned away from the Pacific to a preoccupation with ensuring the survival of Britain.

  Strategic reassessment began among American naval leaders frustrated with the immobility of the Pacific Fleet, tied to Pearl Harbor, too weak for its original mission—a main fleet engagement with the Japanese in the western Pacific—yet too far away to be of practical use in the
desperate circumstances which the United States faced across the Atlantic. On November 12, 1940, Admiral Stark and his staff completed a report for the president setting forth various strategic alternatives for the United States, among which the fourth, or Plan D (in naval parlance Plan Dog), was the one they recommended.

  The vital interest of the United States, according to the so-called Plan Dog memorandum, lay in defending Britain and the British Empire, requiring a concentration of effort toward Europe and invasion of the continent to defeat Germany. The memorandum questioned the wisdom of even limited war in the Pacific. The United States simply did not have the ships to project American naval power far west of Hawaii and also protect its more vital interests in the Atlantic. The navy doubted how willing or able the British and Dutch were to resist Japan or how much better chance of success they would have with help from a reinforced Asiatic Fleet. Operations in the western Pacific would divide the fleet and quite likely create their own dynamic to the detriment of effort against Germany. A strategy of Europe first meant a strict defensive in the Pacific and avoidance of war with Japan if possible. The Pacific Fleet must be held close to Pearl Harbor for possible recall to the Atlantic.13