What did Germany know about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, prior to December 7, 1941.
When did Germany first learn of Japan's plans to attack the American naval base?
Did Germany approve of Japan's plans? Was there any discussion between the two Axis partners about the impending attack, and if Germany opposed Japan strenuouslyon this issue, is it known if Japan was willing to go ahead with its plans anyway?
What Did Germany Know About Pearl Harbor?
The Japanese ambassador informed the Germans four days prior to Dec. 7th that negotiations had reached a deadlock with America and war might be imminent. This seems to be the first direct communication Hitler had that war with America and Japan was imminent. The German ambassador in Japan had been instructed to push for a Japanese attack against the Soviet Union. As the Americans had broken the Japanese diplomatic codes presumably they would have known the contents of the message passed to Hitler. The Japanese declaration of war was delayed and not handed in till after the attack but the Americans already knew what it said. The American government completly out manouvered the Japanese in the lead up to Dec.7th it was just the manner of the Japanese strike and their skill that was a surprise.
When Matsuoka (foreign minister) visited Berlin in spring 41 Hitler urged him to attack Singapore as this would deter America from entering the war. However he seemed delighted with Japans attack in Dec. and insisted on declaring war even though Ribbentrop pointed out that under the terms of the pact he did not have to. He had come to the conclusion that a virtual state of war already existed between the U.S and Germany and that he had so far practised restraint He seems not to have undertstood the potential of America as its military impact on WW1 had not been great. Also the war in the east appeared won, but the Soviet counter offensive started on the 6th.
Taken from Hitler - A Study in Tyranny
Taken from Hitler - A Study in Tyranny
Pearl
Basically Hitler was pleased that Pearl Harbour had happened. Simple as that.
Hitler and Pearl Harbour
Pleased? He took a few days to take it all in before he, true to the Tri-Partite Pact - found the balls to do what he had dreaded all the time - declare war on the US. Despite his 'finally all of his chest...' speech I think the man was quite clear over that the scales had just tilted heavily against him.
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Guderian
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Steve
Steve, I don't agree with the general idea that the american's didn't kow about the incoming japs attaci, try this URL about the PH attack. They have interesting iformation about how possible FDR new of the incoming attack and did nothing to have a pretext to enter into the war.
Enjoy, Guderian
http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/pearl.html
http://www.geocities.com/northstarzone/PEARL.html
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p119_Stolley.html
http://www.disinfo.com/pages/article/id1488/pg1/
Exposing FDR's Role in the Pearl Harbor Attack
by Jerome F. Winzig
Northern City Journal
14 August 2000 Issue
Copyright © 2000 Jerome F. Winzig. All rights reserved.
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.NorthernCityJournal.com
In his heavily-documented new book, Day of Deceit (Free Press, New York, 2000), Robert B. Stinnett paints a profoundly disturbing picture of the role that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and others played in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. It's a book that should be read by anyone who wants a complete picture of FDR and World War II. Stinnett, who served in the U.S. Navy in World War II and worked for the Oakland Tribune as a photographer and journalist, has been working on his expose since 1986.
For years, there have been accusations that FDR and others knew about the impending Japanese attack in advance and deliberately allowed it to happen to galvanize American public opinion in favor of war. In 1942 a commission headed by Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts concluded that the Pearl Harbor attack "resulted largely from a sense of security...that any immediate attack by Japan would be in the Far East."
However, Admiral James Richardson, whom Roosevelt removed because he objected to Roosevelt's order to keep the U.S. Fleet in Hawaiian waters starting in 1940, condemned the commission's report: "It is the most unfair, unjust, and deceptively dishonest document ever printed by the Government Printing Office. I cannot conceive of honorable men serving on the commission without greatest regret and deepest feeling of shame."
In 1944 Thomas Dewey, the Republican presidential candidate, learned that the United States had intercepted and decoded Japanese messages before the attack. He was planning to make it a campaign issue until General George Marshall convinced him otherwise, telling Dewey that with the war still going on, "American lives are at peril."
After World War II, in November 1945, a joint committee of Congress began an investigation of whether the Japanese code was broken before Pearl Harbor. But, as Stinnett rather conclusively demonstrates, "It was a total sham. None of the details involving the interception, decoding, or dissemination of the pre-Pearl Harbor Japanese messages saw the light of day. Only diplomatic messages were released." Hamstrung by lack of information, the committee never got to the bottom of the issue.
In 1995, at the urging of the families of Admiral Husband Kimmel and Lieutenant General Walter Short (who were demoted and officially blamed for the Pearl Harbor attack), Congress opened a new probe of the circumstances leading to Japan's attack. This probe was also denied essential information, and refused the families' request to posthumously reinstate Kimmel and Short.
Stinnett makes a convincing case that the truth goes far beyond FDR doing nothing in spite of his advance knowledge of the impending attack. He produces a disturbing memo written on October 7, 1940 by Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum, head of the Far East desk of the Office of Naval Intelligence. The memo was addressed to two of Roosevelt's most trusted advisors, and secret presidential routing logs and information in Navy files indicate that Roosevelt himself saw the memo.
McCollum's memo outlines an eight-point action plan that would lead to a Japanese attack on the United States. Stinnett argues that this memo became U.S. policy. All eight points were implemented before Pearl Harbor. Two involved imposing a total embargo on Japan and cutting off its access to raw materials. One read: "Keep the main strength of the US Fleet, now in the Pacific, in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands." In other words, according to Stinnett, FDR not only knew about the Pearl Harbor attack in advance, but intentionally set about to provoke it and deliberately positioned American ships in Hawaii so they could be attacked.
Stinnett assembles a convincing set of facts. The United States began monitoring Japanese military communications in the 1920s. By 1940 had already deciphered all the codes used by Japan throughout World War II. (Japan never discovered that its codes had been compromised.) Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, thousands of Japanese military radio messages were intercepted and decoded by U.S., British, and Dutch intelligence operations.
There were other sources of information as well. On January 27, 1941, ten months before the attack, the U.S. embassy in Japan sent a radiotelegraph to Washington, reporting that "the Japanese military forces planned in the event of trouble with the United States, to attempt a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor using all of their military facilities."
Stinnett demonstrates that Admiral Kimmel and General Short, the Naval and Army commanders at Pearl Harbor, were deliberately kept ignorant of virtually all intelligence reports about Japanese plans and troop movements in the months preceding the attack. They were not told that numerous radio messages from the Japanese attack fleet were intercepted and deciphered as the fleet moved from Japan to Pearl Harbor. (Contrary to Japanese and American claims that continue to this day, the fleet did not maintain radio silence.)
On November 25, the day the Japanese carrier force left Hitokappu Bay for Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy declared the North Pacific a "Vacant Sea" and ordered all trans-Pacific shipping out of the area the Japanese fleet would use on its way to Pearl Harbor.
A suspicious Admiral Kimmel had already sent the Pacific fleet to sea north of Hawaii to look for a Japanese carrier force. Officially, it was a war exercise, but Kimmel had ordered the fleet to be extremely watchful. Eerily, Kimmel selected the exact launch area--the Prokoviev Seamount, an extinct underwater volcano about 200 miles north of Oahu--that the Japanese fleet would use a week later in the attack on Pearl Harbor.
But Rear Admiral Royal Ingersoll, Assistant Chief of Naval Operations, sent Kimmel orders to do nothing that would "precipitate Japanese action." Kimmel, remembering Roosevelt's September directive that shooting orders had only been issued for the Atlantic and Southwest Pacific areas, felt compelled to abruptly cancel the war games exercise and order the fleet back into port at Pearl Harbor.
Kimmel tried to protect the fleet in other ways. On November 24, he approved plans for a 25-warship group built around the carrier USS Enterprise and the battleship USS Arizona--led by Vice Admiral William Halsey--to guard against an "enemy air and submarine" attack on Pearl Harbor. But on November 26, Kimmel received orders to use aircraft carriers to deliver Army pursuit planes to Wake and Midway islands.
As a result, on November 28, the USS Enterprise, escorted by eleven of the fleets newest warships, set out for Wake and Midway islands. On December 5, the carrier USS Lexington, accompanied by eight modern warships, left for Midway island, leaving behind warships that were mostly 27-year-old relics of World War I. At 7:00 a.m. on December 7, the Japanese raid began. Honolulu became the only American city ever subjected to an air raid, suffering civilian casualties and significant damage. At 9:35 a.m., the Japanese withdrew, leaving 2,273 Army and Navy dead and 1,119 wounded.
On December 11, Rear Admiral Leigh Noyes, the Navy's Director of Communications, ordered his subordinates to "Destroy all notes or anything in writing" regarding pre-Pearl Harbor Japanese military and diplomatic intercepts, beginning a decades-long censorship policy. On December 16, 1941, Admiral Kimmel was relieved of command and demoted to rear admiral. Today, many of the records from 1940 and 1941 are still classified as top secret. Requests under the Freedom of Information Act are censored or denied. Key records are inexplicably missing or have been checked out to unnamed persons. In spite of the cover-up, however, Stinnett's 14 years of research have exposed much of the story. It's time for the government to declassify the rest.
Jerome F. Winzig is a freelance technical writer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He wrote this article for the Northern City Journal.
Enjoy, Guderian
http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/pearl.html
http://www.geocities.com/northstarzone/PEARL.html
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v12/v12p119_Stolley.html
http://www.disinfo.com/pages/article/id1488/pg1/
Exposing FDR's Role in the Pearl Harbor Attack
by Jerome F. Winzig
Northern City Journal
14 August 2000 Issue
Copyright © 2000 Jerome F. Winzig. All rights reserved.
E-mail: [email protected]
Web site: http://www.NorthernCityJournal.com
In his heavily-documented new book, Day of Deceit (Free Press, New York, 2000), Robert B. Stinnett paints a profoundly disturbing picture of the role that Franklin Delano Roosevelt and others played in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. It's a book that should be read by anyone who wants a complete picture of FDR and World War II. Stinnett, who served in the U.S. Navy in World War II and worked for the Oakland Tribune as a photographer and journalist, has been working on his expose since 1986.
For years, there have been accusations that FDR and others knew about the impending Japanese attack in advance and deliberately allowed it to happen to galvanize American public opinion in favor of war. In 1942 a commission headed by Supreme Court Justice Owen J. Roberts concluded that the Pearl Harbor attack "resulted largely from a sense of security...that any immediate attack by Japan would be in the Far East."
However, Admiral James Richardson, whom Roosevelt removed because he objected to Roosevelt's order to keep the U.S. Fleet in Hawaiian waters starting in 1940, condemned the commission's report: "It is the most unfair, unjust, and deceptively dishonest document ever printed by the Government Printing Office. I cannot conceive of honorable men serving on the commission without greatest regret and deepest feeling of shame."
In 1944 Thomas Dewey, the Republican presidential candidate, learned that the United States had intercepted and decoded Japanese messages before the attack. He was planning to make it a campaign issue until General George Marshall convinced him otherwise, telling Dewey that with the war still going on, "American lives are at peril."
After World War II, in November 1945, a joint committee of Congress began an investigation of whether the Japanese code was broken before Pearl Harbor. But, as Stinnett rather conclusively demonstrates, "It was a total sham. None of the details involving the interception, decoding, or dissemination of the pre-Pearl Harbor Japanese messages saw the light of day. Only diplomatic messages were released." Hamstrung by lack of information, the committee never got to the bottom of the issue.
In 1995, at the urging of the families of Admiral Husband Kimmel and Lieutenant General Walter Short (who were demoted and officially blamed for the Pearl Harbor attack), Congress opened a new probe of the circumstances leading to Japan's attack. This probe was also denied essential information, and refused the families' request to posthumously reinstate Kimmel and Short.
Stinnett makes a convincing case that the truth goes far beyond FDR doing nothing in spite of his advance knowledge of the impending attack. He produces a disturbing memo written on October 7, 1940 by Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum, head of the Far East desk of the Office of Naval Intelligence. The memo was addressed to two of Roosevelt's most trusted advisors, and secret presidential routing logs and information in Navy files indicate that Roosevelt himself saw the memo.
McCollum's memo outlines an eight-point action plan that would lead to a Japanese attack on the United States. Stinnett argues that this memo became U.S. policy. All eight points were implemented before Pearl Harbor. Two involved imposing a total embargo on Japan and cutting off its access to raw materials. One read: "Keep the main strength of the US Fleet, now in the Pacific, in the vicinity of the Hawaiian Islands." In other words, according to Stinnett, FDR not only knew about the Pearl Harbor attack in advance, but intentionally set about to provoke it and deliberately positioned American ships in Hawaii so they could be attacked.
Stinnett assembles a convincing set of facts. The United States began monitoring Japanese military communications in the 1920s. By 1940 had already deciphered all the codes used by Japan throughout World War II. (Japan never discovered that its codes had been compromised.) Before the attack on Pearl Harbor, thousands of Japanese military radio messages were intercepted and decoded by U.S., British, and Dutch intelligence operations.
There were other sources of information as well. On January 27, 1941, ten months before the attack, the U.S. embassy in Japan sent a radiotelegraph to Washington, reporting that "the Japanese military forces planned in the event of trouble with the United States, to attempt a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor using all of their military facilities."
Stinnett demonstrates that Admiral Kimmel and General Short, the Naval and Army commanders at Pearl Harbor, were deliberately kept ignorant of virtually all intelligence reports about Japanese plans and troop movements in the months preceding the attack. They were not told that numerous radio messages from the Japanese attack fleet were intercepted and deciphered as the fleet moved from Japan to Pearl Harbor. (Contrary to Japanese and American claims that continue to this day, the fleet did not maintain radio silence.)
On November 25, the day the Japanese carrier force left Hitokappu Bay for Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy declared the North Pacific a "Vacant Sea" and ordered all trans-Pacific shipping out of the area the Japanese fleet would use on its way to Pearl Harbor.
A suspicious Admiral Kimmel had already sent the Pacific fleet to sea north of Hawaii to look for a Japanese carrier force. Officially, it was a war exercise, but Kimmel had ordered the fleet to be extremely watchful. Eerily, Kimmel selected the exact launch area--the Prokoviev Seamount, an extinct underwater volcano about 200 miles north of Oahu--that the Japanese fleet would use a week later in the attack on Pearl Harbor.
But Rear Admiral Royal Ingersoll, Assistant Chief of Naval Operations, sent Kimmel orders to do nothing that would "precipitate Japanese action." Kimmel, remembering Roosevelt's September directive that shooting orders had only been issued for the Atlantic and Southwest Pacific areas, felt compelled to abruptly cancel the war games exercise and order the fleet back into port at Pearl Harbor.
Kimmel tried to protect the fleet in other ways. On November 24, he approved plans for a 25-warship group built around the carrier USS Enterprise and the battleship USS Arizona--led by Vice Admiral William Halsey--to guard against an "enemy air and submarine" attack on Pearl Harbor. But on November 26, Kimmel received orders to use aircraft carriers to deliver Army pursuit planes to Wake and Midway islands.
As a result, on November 28, the USS Enterprise, escorted by eleven of the fleets newest warships, set out for Wake and Midway islands. On December 5, the carrier USS Lexington, accompanied by eight modern warships, left for Midway island, leaving behind warships that were mostly 27-year-old relics of World War I. At 7:00 a.m. on December 7, the Japanese raid began. Honolulu became the only American city ever subjected to an air raid, suffering civilian casualties and significant damage. At 9:35 a.m., the Japanese withdrew, leaving 2,273 Army and Navy dead and 1,119 wounded.
On December 11, Rear Admiral Leigh Noyes, the Navy's Director of Communications, ordered his subordinates to "Destroy all notes or anything in writing" regarding pre-Pearl Harbor Japanese military and diplomatic intercepts, beginning a decades-long censorship policy. On December 16, 1941, Admiral Kimmel was relieved of command and demoted to rear admiral. Today, many of the records from 1940 and 1941 are still classified as top secret. Requests under the Freedom of Information Act are censored or denied. Key records are inexplicably missing or have been checked out to unnamed persons. In spite of the cover-up, however, Stinnett's 14 years of research have exposed much of the story. It's time for the government to declassify the rest.
Jerome F. Winzig is a freelance technical writer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He wrote this article for the Northern City Journal.
sylvieK4 said
varjag said
One thing many people fail to realize is that Germany declared war on the United States and the United States didn't plan on declaring war on Germany even after Pearl harbor. The Japanese issue was still under debate because they were not in Europe but the US had a neutrality law for any European conflict and were through with the Germany debate before the war even began.I was wondering if Germany might have opposed Japanese action at the time, knowing that it would give the U.S.A the overt excuse it needed to go to war in Europe, thereby posing a heavy problem for the Third Reich.
varjag said
This had nothing to do with "balls" the reason Hitler did this is because he was hoping Japan would declare war on the SU (which it did not). Germany didn't have to declare war on the US and it shouldn't have but Hitler was a very over confident retard and figured his country of 60million people could dominate and hold the intire world.... how wrong he was ;pPleased? He took a few days to take it all in before he, true to the Tri-Partite Pact - found the balls to do what he had dreaded all the time - declare war on the US. Despite his 'finally all of his chest...' speech I think the man was quite clear over that the scales had just tilted heavily against him.
please no code purple
Oh my the old question of whether the us new about Pear or not is something that will probably never be answered.
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Guderian
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- Location: Santo Domingo, Dominican Rep.
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The Americans new of the incoming jap attack at Pearl
admfisher
At the end you are right. Never the US Gov. will allow to admit that FDR forced the Japs to attack and have an strong argument to enter at full war, since the US were already at war with Germany with their lease and lend policy.
Guderian
At the end you are right. Never the US Gov. will allow to admit that FDR forced the Japs to attack and have an strong argument to enter at full war, since the US were already at war with Germany with their lease and lend policy.
Guderian
I agree the Japanese engagement with USA would have lightened the two front war they were about to enter in Europe.Steve wrote:When Matsuoka (foreign minister) visited Berlin in spring 41 Hitler urged him to attack Singapore as this would deter America from entering the war. However he seemed delighted with Japans attack in Dec. and insisted on declaring war even though Ribbentrop pointed out that under the terms of the pact he did not have to. He had come to the conclusion that a virtual state of war already existed between the U.S and Germany and that he had so far practised restraint He seems not to have undertstood the potential of America as its military impact on WW1 had not been great. Also the war in the east appeared won, but the Soviet counter offensive started on the 6th.
Taken from Hitler - A Study in Tyranny
Wonder how soon the war in Europe would have ended if the Imperial Japan had not been engaged in the war in Pacific ?
When did Germany and Japan decide of AXIS treaty or what ever it was called ?
rgrds,
Juke T
Roosevelt's dilemma then would have been HOW to get into the war. Because Hitler, not spurred by the Japanese attack - would not have declared war on the US. As Roosevelt, if not the American people, was itching to get into the war against Germany - as I see it, Roosevelt and the hawks in the US administration would have continued to provoke Hitler in the Atlantic and Africa until the hothead in Berlin replied in kind. In late 1941 the relations were so strained anyway - that war might have come into being before the end of 1942. THAT - would probably have ended Hitlers reign - much the same as history has recorded it. Or - perhaps six months earlier, but little more. Japan joined the Rome-Berlin 'axis' in 1940 in what was called the Tri-Partite Pact. One that later was joined by Hungary, Rumania, Bulgaria Slovakia and Croatia. ONE notable exception - was your native Finland - that wisely, and politely - said No Thank You.
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Simon Gunson
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Well I thought everybody knew the story of the abwher spy Disko Popov from the balkans. The British tracked him as he journeyed to Spain and caught a steamer for New York. The British confronted him and turned him into a double agent. Some say he was Flemming's inspiration for James Bond. The British advised the American FBI before the steamer arrived. FBI intercepted Popov as he left the ship. They acquired a microdot giving Popov instructions to learn specific details about Pearl Harbour several months before the attack. Indeed the microdot may have served to turn Roosevelt into a firm supporter for Churchill before the Japanese attack.
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OpanaPointer
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Re:
Sorry for the necro, but why would they have had Popov try to get information they were already getting from their own people?Simon Gunson wrote:Well I thought everybody knew the story of the abwher spy Disko Popov from the balkans. The British tracked him as he journeyed to Spain and caught a steamer for New York. The British confronted him and turned him into a double agent. Some say he was Flemming's inspiration for James Bond. The British advised the American FBI before the steamer arrived. FBI intercepted Popov as he left the ship. They acquired a microdot giving Popov instructions to learn specific details about Pearl Harbour several months before the attack. Indeed the microdot may have served to turn Roosevelt into a firm supporter for Churchill before the Japanese attack.
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ChristopherPerrien
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Re: What Did Germany Know About Pearl Harbor?
You drug out this corpse OP . Now I will fling the maggots everywhere 
, If we can get any old warriors 
or original topic posters here now, I supposed the topic can be debated further.
That the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor was a "bolt out of the blue" for all countries concerned except Japan. For them to have attacked Singapore and the Philippines was a given. And personally,IMO, the only reason the Japanese came up with the idea of a Pearl Harbor Attack, was based on them knowing about mock USN carrier attacks/exercises conducted against Pearl Harbor starting in 1927. Without them, they would have wrote off Taranto as a "fluke" , conducted against incompetent Italians, and how the ships damaged/sunk there were not operational again, given the "Italians' lack of enthusiasm for the war in general. I.E. The Japanese thought the USA would be like Italy in WWII.
The USA was at war with Germany since the beginning as per Stimson-("All but name" ). Hitler knew this too,and declared war against the USA upon the attack on Pearl Harbor solely as a diplomatic gesture to goad the Japanese into declaring war on the USSR. It is to the shame of the Japanese that they did not do so in reply, to support their "allies". Hitler simply did not understand the Japanese mindset. Or maybe he did, and just hoped for the best outcome.
Chris
, If we can get any old warriors or original topic posters here now, I supposed the topic can be debated further.That the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor was a "bolt out of the blue" for all countries concerned except Japan. For them to have attacked Singapore and the Philippines was a given. And personally,IMO, the only reason the Japanese came up with the idea of a Pearl Harbor Attack, was based on them knowing about mock USN carrier attacks/exercises conducted against Pearl Harbor starting in 1927. Without them, they would have wrote off Taranto as a "fluke" , conducted against incompetent Italians, and how the ships damaged/sunk there were not operational again, given the "Italians' lack of enthusiasm for the war in general. I.E. The Japanese thought the USA would be like Italy in WWII.
The USA was at war with Germany since the beginning as per Stimson-("All but name" ). Hitler knew this too,and declared war against the USA upon the attack on Pearl Harbor solely as a diplomatic gesture to goad the Japanese into declaring war on the USSR. It is to the shame of the Japanese that they did not do so in reply, to support their "allies". Hitler simply did not understand the Japanese mindset. Or maybe he did, and just hoped for the best outcome.
Chris