Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941

by Ian Kershaw

  If he had been contemplating seeking a declaration of war–and there is not the slightest evidence that this was in his mind during these months–the question of revisions to the Neutrality Act would have dissuaded him.

  The logic of repealing at least some sections of the 1939 legislation followed from the enactment of lend-lease. If weapons and merchandise were to be transported across the Atlantic, it made sense if the merchant ships were armed, and if American vessels could carry their cargoes all the way to Britain. The question of asking Congress to repeal the relevant sections of the Act was aired in spring 1941. But Cordell Hull had advised against it, on the grounds of the strength of isolationist opposition.123 He seems to have changed his mind by the end of June, when he urged the President to discuss amending the Act with congressional leaders as a matter of urgency. Roosevelt carried out the discussions, but did not feel confident enough to go ahead until the Greer incident in early September gave him his opportunity.124 In the last week of the month Hull proposed modifications rather than the outright repeal of the entire Act (certain parts of which, such as the collection of funds for belligerents, the administration had an interest in continuing to control).125

  The President received a great deal of conflicting advice from leading members of his administration on running the risk of an unfavourable verdict from Congress.126 Opinion in the country, influenced by some leading newspapers, supported the amendments. A Gallup poll on 5 October indicated that 70 per cent of those asked thought the defeat of Hitler was more important than keeping the country out of the war.127 But opinion in Congress was another matter altogether. Isolationist feeling was once more whipped up. The passing of the amendments in Congress could not be taken for granted.

  Informal soundings in the Senate in early October suggested that the President was wise to progress cautiously. Roosevelt decided to test the waters, with the repeal initially only of the section of the Act prohibiting the arming of merchant ships (Section VI), on which the highest degree of consensus could be expected. He put the proposal to Congress on 9 October. It was the beginning of a further bitter debate. As it was approaching its conclusion, news of the attack on the Kearny came through. This probably had an impact. The repeal of Section VI was approved by the House of Representatives on 17 October, with a sizeable majority (259 to 138). Even so, 113 Republicans had rejected even this measure.128

  A good deal more rancour followed when the resolution to repeal Sections II and III (excluding American shipping from designated combat zones) came before the Senate. Roosevelt’s belligerent speech following the attack on the Kearny, then the sinking of the Reuben James, inflamed isolationist opposition.129 One arch-isolationist publicly proposed that Roosevelt should seek a vote from Congress on whether or not the United States should enter the war. There was no danger of the President falling into such an obvious trap. The very suggestion was enough to show Roosevelt that his caution was justified; were he to follow such a course, ‘he would meet with certain and disastrous defeat’.130 Eventually, on 7 November the resolution was passed by the Senate, but only by the uncomfortable margin of 50 to 37 votes. Again, most Republicans were in opposition. It was the smallest majority on any foreign-policy issue in the Senate since war had started in Europe.131 In the House of Representatives it was even worse. The amendments were approved there by a slim majority of only 18 votes, 212 in favour, 194 against.132 Roosevelt had got what he wanted. But the struggle on such logical consequences of what had already been agreed months earlier when the Lend-Lease bill was enacted showed once more in clear terms that any attempt to seek a declaration of war from Congress would have resulted in resounding failure.

  V

  The narrow passage of the amendments to the neutrality legislation showed that clashes in the Atlantic such as those involving the Greer, the Kearny and the Reuben James were far from sufficient to persuade Congress that the United States should formally enter the war.133 But without the likelihood of obtaining a declaration of war, Roosevelt was left with no option. His only choice was to continue the ‘undeclared war’.

  This was, in any case, Roosevelt’s preference. ‘We don’t want a declared war with Germany,’ he told a press conference in early November, ‘because we are acting in defense–self-defense–every action.’134 His entire policy for more than a year had been directed at providing maximum help to Britain (and, more recently, the Soviet Union) as part of American defence, in the–diminishing–hope that the United States would be able to keep out of the direct fighting. Despite the accusations of his detractors, that he was working by devious means to take the country into war, the evidence suggests that the President had been genuine in his earlier expressions of his abhorrence of war, but that he had gradually and reluctantly come to the conclusion that American involvement was both inevitable and necessary if Hitler were to be defeated.135

  There were, however, good reasons to defer the moment of entry as long as possible.136 The longer America could remain out of the formal combat, the more advanced her military build-up and the mobilization of an arms economy would be. Moreover, a declaration of war would doubtless have resulted in domestic clamour to utilize the arms and equipment now being sent to Great Britain and the Soviet Union for the United States’ armed forces, leading to a weakening, not strengthening, of the resistance to Hitler on the European fighting front in the short term–perhaps with disastrous consequences. American shipping losses to preying U-boats in the Atlantic would, as an immediate consequence, probably have mounted sharply. There was also the real concern that a declaration of war against Germany would immediately bring Japan–Hitler’s ally under the Tripartite Pact–into the war. Having to fight in the Pacific would certainly complicate dealing with Hitler, which was consistently seen as the main event.137 By the autumn the signs were mounting strongly that Japan’s entry was simply a matter of time. But American policy was nevertheless to delay that moment as long as possible.

  Beyond these considerations, there was, as always, the question of public opinion–not just congressional opposition–to ponder. Public opinion was, to go from the results of surveys, more favourably disposed towards Roosevelt and his policy on the war than Congress, where hardbitten isolationists could always reckon with the additional backing of those with their own varied reasons for wanting to give the President a bloody nose. But the large percentage of the public consistently opposed to entry into the war could not be ignored. Perhaps some of that opinion could be won over. However, Roosevelt’s powerful speeches had not dented it to any great extent. The fact had to be faced: unless the United States were to be attacked, a declaration of war–even in the unlikely event that it could be pushed through Congress–would undoubtedly produce a bitterly divided country.

  It seems as if Roosevelt had settled in autumn 1941 for as long a period as possible of partial, undeclared hostilities with Germany. Perhaps as justification for avoiding what Churchill had long been pressing for, the President told Lord Halifax that, in any case, ‘declarations of war were going out of fashion’.138 The limited and unprovocative way that he introduced convoying all the way across the Atlantic directly to Britain (and also to Russia) in late November and early December does not suggest he was in any haste to move beyond the current stalemate in relations with Germany. In Roosevelt’s ideal scenario, this would have continued for some months.139 This strategy nevertheless had a limited time-span. The Victory Program, eventually laid before the President in September (and giving rise to an enormous furore when a damaging leak enabled the leading isolationist organ, the Chicago Tribune, to publish its details in the first week of December140), had after all concluded that Hitler could only be defeated by sending millions of men to fight in Europe by 1943.141 The prognosis in the plan had envisaged the defeat of the Soviet Union before that date. But even with the Red Army providing far stiffer resistance than American military strategists had forecast, destroying Hitler meant American soldiers fighting a land war in Europe. The document
was explicit: ‘if our European enemies are to be defeated, it will be necessary for the United States to enter the war.’142 That day, Roosevelt was hoping, could be delayed. But it could not be postponed indefinitely if Nazism were to be crushed.143

  The Victory Program recommended ‘holding Japan in check pending future developments’.144 By late November 1941 future developments were certainly pending. Intercepts of Japanese diplomatic intelligence were telling the White House that aggression by Japan was imminent. Roosevelt had hoped to take the United States to the brink but not beyond in the Atlantic, and to keep Japan at bay. But those hopes exploded with the bombs that fell on American ships at anchor far away in the south Pacific on that clear sunny morning of 7 December 1941.

  The events of that morning were dire indeed from an American perspective. But Roosevelt, who had striven to hold off direct participation in the growing global conflagration while preparing for it, finally had an incident capable of bringing a united people into the war.

  8

  Tokyo, Autumn 1941

  Japan Decides to Go to War

  If we miss the present opportunity to go to war, we will have to submit to American dictation. Therefore, I recognize that it is inevitable that we must decide to start a war against the United States.

  Hara Yoshimichi, President of the Privy Council,

  5 November 1941

  Two years from now we will have no petroleum for military use. Ships will stop moving. When I think about the strengthening of American defences in the south-west Pacific, the expansion of the American fleet, the unfinished China Incident, and so on, I see no end to difficulties. We can talk about austerity and suffering, but can our people endure such a life for a long time?

  Tojo Hideki, Japanese Prime Minister, 5 November 1941

  In the summer of 1941, Japan’s leaders suddenly faced new options. These were framed, as they had been the previous year, by the immediate global consequences of events far away. As earlier, Hitler had made the decisive move. The German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, like the victory over France almost exactly a year earlier, caught Japan’s power-elite unawares, in spite of the clear warnings they had been given. Hitler’s attack destroyed at one stroke Japanese hopes of building a coalition of forces together with Germany, Italy and the Soviet Union aimed at deterring the western powers from hostilities in the Far East against Japan while she was establishing her dominance of a ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’. The driving force behind such a strategy had been the Foreign Minister, Matsuoka Yosuke, who in April, following visits to Berlin and Rome, had engineered a spectacular diplomatic success with the signing of the Japanese-Soviet Neutrality Pact in Moscow. That strategy was now in ruins. Instead, the prospect loomed of the Soviet Union compelled, despite ideological differences, to turn towards Britain and America for support in the clash with Nazi Germany. Japan was set to become more diplomatically isolated than ever. And she still had found no exit route from the China quagmire.

  Japan’s leaders differed sharply in how they judged the opportunities and the dangers that had emerged. But overnight, it was clear, the question of an alternative strategy had arisen. Should Japan postpone, at least temporarily, the policy of expansion to the south, determined the previous summer, in favour of a northern advance to strike at the Soviet Union from the east while the Stalinist regime was reeling from the devastating German assault from the west? Much seemed to speak in favour of grasping the chance that had presented itself. There were powerful advocates of such a drastic reordering of priorities, the most outspoken of them Matsuoka himself. In typically ebullient fashion, he simply cast off the strategy that he had been urging for months. ‘Great men will change their minds,’ he declared. ‘Previously I advocated going south, but now I favour the north.’1

  Some in the army leadership, too, relished the prospect of landing a fatal blow on the traditional enemy to the north. Army leaders were, however, more cautious than Matsuoka. Japan had, after all, lost around 17,000 men killed or injured in bitter clashes with Soviet troops in the summer of 1939–the ‘Nomonhan Incident’–over a stretch of disputed territory on the Manchurian-Mongolian border. They were less sure than Matsuoka that Germany would prove victorious in the Soviet Union. And, as they were well aware, Soviet forces greatly outnumbered Japan’s troop contingent in the north. A military build-up necessary for a northern offensive could not be accomplished overnight. They preferred, therefore, to see how the German-Soviet war developed before committing themselves to an attack in the north, which at this juncture would be a hazardous enterprise. The navy, of course, remained in any case wedded to the southern advance.2

  Matsuoka became, therefore, an increasingly isolated figure. He soon encountered the combined opposition of the army and navy representatives. In a series of meetings at the end of June, his plans suffered a complete rebuff. The northern option was ruled out–or at least postponed until Germany had proved utterly victorious in the war against the Soviet Union. Defeated and lacking all support in high quarters, Matsuoka was forced to resign as Foreign Minister in mid-July, to be replaced by the more emollient Admiral Toyoda Teijiro.

  Shortly afterwards Japan took a crucial step in the planned southern advance. Following pressure on Vichy France, 40,000 Japanese troops (later swelling to 185,000) moved into French Indochina on 28 July.3 Japan was now in a position to close off the supplies to Chiang Kai-shek passing through the Burma Road. And the way to the oil of the Dutch East Indies now lay open. Aware in advance of the move through intelligence intercepts, the American administration had already started to take retaliatory steps. On 23 July the American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, informed the Japanese ambassador in Washington, Nomura Kichisaburo, that he was terminating diplomatic deliberations that had been proceeding, for the most part unofficially, for months in the hope of improving the worsening relations between Japan and the United States. Three days later, all Japanese assets in the United States were frozen (followed over the next days by identical measures in Britain, Canada, the Philippines, New Zealand and the Netherlands).4 Japan would no longer be able to buy oil from America. Keen to avoid provoking a Japanese invasion of the Dutch East Indies, President Roosevelt fought shy of imposing a total oil embargo. Small quantities of low-grade oil, not fit for usage in aircraft, could still be exported. The President appears to have had in mind at this stage temporary restrictions to serve as a deterrent, rather than a total and complete stoppage. But he was in effect bypassed by the administration’s hawks in the Treasury and on the newly formed Economic Defense Board, which would not permit the release of funds even to obtain inferior grades of oil. Roosevelt did not discover until early September that Japan had received no oil after 25 July.5 Effectively, therefore, a total embargo on oil to Japan had been imposed.6 The Japanese military had seriously miscalculated. They had continued to believe that America would not impose a total oil embargo.7 Konoe’s government was thrown into near panic.8 Without oil, Japan’s quest for power and prosperity was doomed. But Japan had less than two years of oil reserves left, and was rapidly consuming remaining supplies.9 The clock was ticking.10

  The southern advance could not wait. The oil of the Dutch East Indies had to be secured for Japan. But that meant, with certainty, a clash not only with the Dutch authorities, but also with Great Britain, and, most threatening to Japan, with the United States. Not only were America, Britain and the Dutch in effective alliance. Their interests were also bound up in the fate of China, where Chiang Kai-shek’s nationalists had been engaged (with western support) in the most bitter and brutal of conflicts with the Japanese for over four years–a conflict with no end in sight, and one that had already cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Japan was preparing, therefore, for a possible gigantic showdown with what had come to be labelled the ABCD (American, British, Chinese and Dutch) powers. America’s own position (with Britain egging her on) had hardened sharply over the summer. This had pushed Japan still further into the c
orner where her own policies had driven her. By August 1941, therefore, the outlook was bleak. Intransigence had set in on both sides. War was beginning to appear inevitable. The only question seemed to be: when? The die was cast. Or was it?

  In retrospect, the path to the Pacific War appears undeviating. But at the time, even in autumn, Japan’s leaders still thought there were possibilities of avoiding the conflict; that options, if narrowed, remained open. Indeed, that was the case. In autumn 1941 there were still significant figures–including the Prime Minister, Konoe, the Foreign Minister, Toyoda, and Emperor Hirohito himself–opposed to war. Even within the army and navy leadership there was hesitation; and much anxiety about the consequences of war. Opinion in the elites was split. Some, especially in the military (backed by the chauvinism of a general public whose belligerence had been whipped up for years by manipulated mass media), were gung-ho. Others were fearful. A protracted war (which was likely), they were sure, could not be won. Its consequences for Japan would be incalculably calamitous. Many more entertained a samurai-like fatalism. War would come. It might mean even Japan’s destruction. But that would have to be endured. There could be no retreat. Destruction with honour was better than survival with shame.