27. The Strange Belief That FDR Knew of Japan’s Plan to Attack Pearl Harbor in Advance and Allowed it to Happen
A strange WWII myth claims that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew in advance of the Japanese plan to attack Pearl Harbor. He supposedly allowed it to happen in order to bring America into the war on Britain’s side against Germany. The myth stems from the fact that American cryptanalysts had cracked Japanese codes and gleaned messages indicative of hostile intent. However, the messages did not specify when and where Japan planned to attack. Warnings were issued to American commanders throughout the Pacific. However, the ones in Pearl Harbor failed to take adequate precautions – as did Douglas MacArthur in the Philippines, who was also caught unprepared despite the warnings.
The strange myth, which began during the 1944 presidential campaign, is also illogical. FDR did see Nazi Germany as the world’s greatest menace and was busily rearming and preparing America for what he deemed the inevitability of war against fascism. However, there is no causal nexus between allowing the Japanese to bomb Pearl Harbor and the US going to war against Nazi Germany. It was Germany that FDR wanted to fight, not Japan. The Japanese attacking the US would have resulted in a war against Japan, which FDR did not want, not in a war against Germany, which FDR wanted.
