Test Your Knowledge: Here are the 10 Real Steps Which Led the US into World War II

Destroyers for Bases Agreement

In the spring of 1940 the German Army smashed through the Low Countries and France, nearly captured the bulk of the British Army in the process. With the French knocked out of the war only the British remained to oppose the Germans in Europe. Many refer to this period as the time in which they stood alone, but they were not really alone. The British Empire, including India, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand stood alongside England. But in order to get men and supplies from the Empire, and from the officially neutral United States, the British needed to protect their shipping from U-boats.

The British lost masses of supplies when they evacuated their army from Dunkirk, and FDR bypassed the strict requirements of the Neutrality Act by declaring tons of American military supplies as surplus, allowing him to send them to the British. Throughout the summer of 1940 the Battle of Britain raged, and Churchill became increasingly reliant on aid arriving from North America. The U-boat menace remained a serious threat. In the late summer of 1940 a deal was arrived at in which the US would acquire the land and favorable leases to build bases on British held islands in the Atlantic.

The United States acquired basing rights (although they would have to build the bases) on seven islands in the Atlantic and Caribbean. In return, 50 surplus destroyers which had been mothballed after the First World War were transferred, 43 to the Royal Navy and 7 to the Royal Canadian Navy. The British later provided five of the destroyers to crews of the Royal Norwegian Navy. After the Germans attacked the Soviet Union some of the destroyers were transferred to the Russian Navy for use protecting the lend lease convoys to Murmansk.

The ships were not in good shape, having in some cases been in mothballs for twenty years, and in the opinion of Winston Churchill the deal was far more advantageous to the United States than to the United Kingdom. After America entered the war anti-submarine patrols operated from all of the islands acquired by the United States in the deal, but initially submarine attacks on ships along America’s Atlantic coastline were devastating, mainly because the US Navy was at first reluctant to operate convoys in coastal waters. That soon changed.

The destroyers for bases agreement clearly violated the spirit of the Neutrality Act and angered the isolationists, but it did not break the letter of the law. The arrangement made it clear to the Axis countries that FDR was squarely on the side of the British, and would continue to seek out ways and means of helping the British Empire in its war against Germany and Italy. Nine of the destroyers were lost during the war, six of them to U-boats. The remaining were either broken up or sunk as target ships following the war.

The McCollum Memo

To some conspiracy theorists, the McCollum Memo is the smoking gun which proved that FDR and the American military were aware in advance of the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, having deliberately provoked the Japanese into action. This presupposes that Roosevelt wanted a war in the Pacific and Europe at the same time. Roosevelt was a consummate politician well aware that the Tripartite Pact meant that Hitler had an obligation to declare war on the United States if the US attacked Japan, but he was under no obligation to do so if the Japanese attacked first.

The content of the McCollum Memo recommends steps for the United States to strengthen its position in the Pacific in a manner which could prevent further Japanese aggression. It specifically recommends that the United States keep the Pacific Fleet in Hawaii, where it was better positioned to respond to any Japanese move. It also suggested strengthening the Asiatic fleet, and ensuring sufficient arrangements were made with the Dutch and British for mutual use of bases. It was written in the fall of 1940, and was read and approved by multiple senior officers, (its author was a Lieutenant Commander) who later denied that its intent was to push the Japanese into attacking the Americans or their allies.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s America’s strategy for prosecuting a war against Japan was developed as Plan Orange. Essentially American military planners believed that an attack on the US would likely be directed at the Philippines and some of the territorial islands, including the Aleutians. It did not anticipate an attack on the fleet at Pearl Harbor, or even the fleet being positioned at Pearl Harbor, instead the fleet would muster its crews and sojourn from its normal west coast bases. While the plan evolved as a result of annual training exercises it did not vary greatly from the original.

With the Philippines likely to be attacked the strengthening of the Asiatic fleet, and the positioning of the main battle fleet at Hawaii, was a precaution ensuring the Philippines of an adequate defense while the battle fleet sortied to their aid. Fleet problems and training exercises had made the need to do so apparent. The Japanese did attack the Philippines about eight hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor. They achieved almost total surprise. The air power stationed there was mostly destroyed on the ground. Still American and Filipino troops managed to hold out on Bataan for nearly four months, but there was no fleet to come to their support.

The McCollum Memo and the American leadership did not anticipate the scope of the initial Japanese actions in December 1941, nor the quality of its pilots and aircraft. American generals and admirals in the aftermath of the initial attacks were soon pointing the finger of blame at each other and at Washington. When Roosevelt requested a declaration of war from Congress there was no mention of Germany or Italy. Roosevelt wanted a war with Germany and recognized the possibility, even the probability, that the US would be fighting all three of the Axis nations. But allowing an attack on Pearl Harbor did not guarantee a war with Germany. It took Adolf Hitler to do that.

Lend Lease Aid to Britain

In the 1930s in response to the strength of the isolationists in the United States the US Congress passed the Neutrality Act prohibiting the sale of “arms, ammunition, and implements of war” to nations at war. It later amended the Act to prohibit loans of money to belligerents. US ships were forbidden from carrying war materials, even if they originated in other nations. FDR opposed the Neutrality Act, and at his urging Congress provided an amendment that allowed for the purchase of vital materials which were not implements of war, such as oil or aluminum, as long as they were paid for at the time of purchase and delivered in ships not of US registry.

In 1939, as war erupted in Europe, Roosevelt pushed through a new Neutrality Act which allowed for belligerent nations to purchase the formerly proscribed instruments of war, but the “cash-and-carry” requirement remained. Theoretically the Germans could have purchased war materials from the United States, but they lacked the shipping to carry it, while England and France did not. After France fell and England and its Empire carried on the fight, they quickly found there coffers were being drained of cash and the provision of the Act which prohibited loans to belligerents remained. There were actually two laws which prohibited lending money to Britain, the Johnson Act of 1934 denied credit to countries which had not repaid their war debts from the First World War. Britain had not.

Lend-lease was designed to allow the United States to send supplies for which payment would be deferred, and eventual payment would be in part in the form of other considerations besides money. The terms of Lend-Lease were first negotiated between the British and Americans before a bill was prepared for debate within Congress. Throughout early 1941 the issue was hotly debated, with the isolationists believing that it would drag the United States into the European war. Proponents pointed out that if England was allowed to fall to the Germans the British fleet – the world’s largest – would be in the hands of the Germans.

The bill was passed in March 1941, and in addition to Britain it extended aid to China and Free French forces. Eventually as the war expanded lend lease was provided to over 30 countries, with some countries paying in gold bullion and others returning the items provided after the war, or providing payment in kind. While officially the United States remained a non-belligerent and neutral, the lend-lease program began the conversion of the US economy to a war footing.

The first lend-lease shipments were sent in a convoy to rendezvous with British escorts near Iceland. During the shipment, the United States Navy could not convoy vessels carrying materials of war to a belligerent nation. To do so would have been an overt act of war. But the US Navy could and did perform convoy drills, a legitimate peacetime operation, supported by patrol aircraft from some of the bases acquired by the bases for destroyer’s agreement. By the end of the summer of 1941 American ships were routinely covering the convoys, and reporting U-boat sightings to British and Canadian ships and aircraft.

Great Britain in the Pacific

As American sanctions against the Japanese began to bite, Japan, recognizing that the fall of France meant England could ill afford another war in the Pacific, demanded that the British close the Burma Road. The Burma Road was a critical link for the Chinese which they needed to transport badly needed supplies necessary to their ongoing resistance to the Japanese. Supplies and war materials were landed at Rangoon, and sent by rail to Lashio, one terminus of the road.

This flexing of international muscle by the Japanese occurred in July 1940, a period when the British were strained almost to the breaking point following the collapse of France. Unable to fight the Japanese without the certainty of American support, the British gave in and closed the road. The Burma Road remained closed for three months. During this period the Japanese signed the Tripartite Pact with Italy and Germany, creating the Axis, agreeing that each member would come to the aid of the other if they were attacked by another nation.

The following spring the Japanese entered into a neutrality agreement and non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union, despite the traditional enmity which existed between the two nations. The Soviets had signed a non-aggression pact with the Germans in 1939 and Hitler had not yet invaded the Soviet Union, although by the spring of 1941 preparations for that event were well underway. With Britain effectively neutralized by the war in Europe and with their backs secure from the Russian menace, the Japanese now entered into negotiations with the United States from a position of strength.

Both Washington and Tokyo wanted to avoid a war in the Pacific, at least for the time being. Japan wanted a free rein to extend their Empire. Japan wanted full hegemony over what it called its Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. This meant occupation of other nations which were placed under the rule of the Emperor. To the United States such conquest was intolerable. The Japanese then demanded that the Vichy government of France allow them to build airfields and bases in Indochina or they would take the French colony by force. Vichy yielded.

When Japanese aggression spread into Indochina FDR cut off all oil exports to the Japanese and as has been seen, froze their assets in the United States. The oil rich colonies of the East Indies were thus targets for Japanese conquest. Had they simply attacked the Dutch and British colonial holdings without first attacking the American fleet at Pearl Harbor it probably wouldn’t have enabled FDR to get a declaration of war through Congress. The US would not have gone to war with Japan to help Great Britain and the Netherlands retain their colonies. The Japanese miscalculated the American response to Pearl Harbor, a risk which they had to take because of their perceived lack of oil.

Hitler’s Declaration of War on the United States

The German invasion of the Soviet Union is often cited as the single biggest mistake made by Adolf Hitler which led to his downfall. While definitely a mistake, it was likely not his biggest. The United States declared war on Japan on the day following the Pearl Harbor attack. There was no mention of Germany. Roosevelt’s advisors were nearly all certain that a full American effort in the Pacific would mean the end of major aid to Britain and the Soviet Union in Europe. Churchill too believed that the war would be two separate campaigns, with Britain and the Soviet Union fighting Germany and Italy, and Britain, the United States, and China fighting Japan.

Hitler changed that in a decision which he apparently made with little consultation with his own advisors. The terms of the Tripartite Pact did not obligate him to declare war on the United States, since Japan had been the aggressor. Whatever his personal reasons for doing so were, among them was a growing hatred of Roosevelt and what the German leadership regarded as the Jewish influence in American politics.

In his speech before the Reichstag Hitler referred to FDR as the “…main culprit of this war.” A major portion of his speech to the Reichstag lists the activities of Roosevelt as a warmonger, driven by the need to hide the failure of his economic policies. Hitler claimed that it was Roosevelt’s clear intent to take over the British Empire, citing the destroyers for bases agreement and lend lease. Hitler listed the activities of the United States Navy in the Atlantic and Mediterranean which assisted the British in capturing or causing them to scuttle several German ships.

Many of his accusations were blatantly false, many were simply self-serving and many were directed towards Roosevelt personally, rather than the American people. Even though most of the Reichstag and German military leaders believed that the United States was in fact acting as a full partner in everything but major combat operations with the British it was still a blunder to provide FDR with the means to now fully engage Germany as an ally of the British and the Soviet Union.

In the formal, written declaration of war which was delivered by Joachim Ribbentrop to the American Charge d’Affaires the Germans listed formal charges against the United States, including the violation of the rules of neutrality which it claimed were severe provocations against Germany. It specifically addressed three United States Navy destroyers which were involved in incidents with German U-boats in which the Germans were fired upon by the Americans beginning in the autumn of 1941. The destroyers were the USS Kearny, the USS Greer, and the USS Reuben James.

The USS Greer Incident in September 1941

On September 4 1941, USS Greer was fired upon by a German U-boat, with a torpedo, with the Americans claiming that the Germans had fired first and the Germans claiming the opposite, saying the submarine had been under a depth charge attack by the Americans. Roosevelt reported that the American destroyer was flying the US flag and was deliberately attacked while speaking to the American people through one of his fireside chats. Roosevelt ordered the US Navy hence to “shoot on sight” any German submarine operating in “…waters which we deem necessary for our defense…” This placed the Atlantic fleet on a full war footing.

Chief of Naval Operations (the highest ranking officer in the US Navy) Admiral Harold Stark prepared a written report after investigating the event, in preparation for a hearing before the Senate Committee on Naval Affairs. Stark’s report confirmed that the Germans had fired first and after the torpedo track crossed Greer’s wake the destroyer responded with a depth charge attack. But there was additional information in Stark’s report which had not been shared by the President in his fireside chat discussing the incident.

Greer had been bound for Iceland when it received information from a British antisubmarine patrol airplane which identified a submarine ahead of the destroyer’s track. The report was received by Greer at about twenty minutes to nine in the morning (0840) and Greer responded by initiating a search for the submerged U-boat. It located the submarine about 40 minutes later and began to track it, radioing its position to British aircraft and surface units while it followed the Germans. The British aircraft which had notified Greer of the submarine’s presence attacked it with depth charges before departing the area.

Greer continued to track the submarine for what Stark reported was 3 hours and 28 minutes before the submarine fired a single torpedo. It missed. Greer lost contact with the submarine at one o’clock in the afternoon and initiated another search. At twelve minutes after three the submarine was again detected and Greer attacked it with depth charges. Admiral Stark was unable to say what followed, as Greer again lost contact, but it was assumed from the reaction of the Germans that the submarine was undamaged, as was Greer.

In providing his shoot on sight order FDR at last removed any pretense of US neutrality as far as the Battle of the Atlantic was concerned. FDR was not about to let ships of his Navy be attacked by surprise. Neither the Germans nor the Americans reported any casualties from the incident, which occurred three full months prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. American warships were from then on proceeding into the Atlantic with clear intent to engage German vessels which they encountered and the fact being known to the Germans meant that they would no doubt respond in kind. Still, there was no declaration of war and the isolationists still hoped to avoid war with Hitler’s Germany.

The USS Kearny Incident October 1941

USS Kearny was one of several United States destroyers based at Iceland in the fall of 1941, under orders since the Greer incident to shoot on sight any German vessels. By that time US destroyers were escorting convoys from east coast ports to Iceland, where the British or Canadians then took over their protection. US Navy patrol planes were also being used when within range to protect the convoys bound for the United Kingdom. USS Kearny was a fully modern American destroyer; in the fall of 1941 Kearny was just over one year old.

Kearny had completed three convoys between Iceland and Newfoundland and was in Iceland, having arrived there only three days earlier, when a British convoy was attacked by a group of German submarines which the convoy’s Canadian escorts had been unable to contain. Four American destroyers at Reykjavik, including Kearny, were sent to provide assistance and seek out and destroy the German wolfpack. Upon arrival at the scene the American destroyers began depth charge attacks on the U-boats.

Kearny continued to search for and attack submerged targets through the early and late evening hours. Shortly after midnight in the early hours of October 17 a submarine fired a torpedo which approached the destroyer on its starboard side. Kearny was unable to evade and the torpedo struck the destroyer nearly amidships, blasting a large hole in its hull and flooding the compartment housing the forward fire room. The crew demonstrated their proficiency in damage control procedures and controlled the flooding to the single compartment.

Kearny managed to steam back to Reykjavik under its own power, and there the crew and support personnel conducted temporary repairs to the ship. Extensive hull patches and machinery repair in the forward engine room were necessary due to the harsh nature of the North Atlantic during the winter months, and permanent repair facilities were not available in Iceland. Eleven of Kearny’s crew were killed in the attack by the German U-boat, and another 22 were injured. Whether any German U-boats were lost in the engagement is unknown.

Kearny finally departed Iceland for Boston and permanent repairs late in 1941, with the United States by then officially at war with the Germans. It was the second shooting incident between the United States Navy and the German Navy to have occurred prior to the declaration of war by the Germans on the United States. Kearny survived the war, serving throughout in the Atlantic and Mediterranean. The ship’s only sustained battle damage was that which occurred before the war was declared.

USS Reuben James incident October 31 1941

The first American warship to be sunk as a result of hostilities during the Second World War was not at Pearl Harbor. That distinction belongs to USS Reuben James, one of three American destroyers mentioned by name as having taken provocative action in violation of the neutrality laws in the German declaration of war. By October 1941 24 US Navy destroyers were employed in convoy duties between Halifax and Iceland. Reuben James was one of them. When a convoy of 43 ships left Halifax on October 22, 1941 they were met by Reuben James and four other American destroyers.

Early on the morning of October 31 the convoy was approaching Iceland when it was sighted by two German U-boats. Almost simultaneously Reuben James detected one of the U-boats on its sound detection gear. Reuben James moved towards the bearing upon which the sound was detected when it suddenly exploded. A torpedo from the U-boat had struck the destroyer on the port side and penetrated into its forward magazine and the resulting explosion blew the ship in half. Reuben James carried a crew of 159 and one supernumerary, a passenger enlisted man bound for Iceland.

There were 44 survivors, and all of the officers aboard were killed. Whether the destroyer had been deliberately fired upon or if it had blundered into the path of a torpedo which had been fired at one of the ships of the convoy has since been a matter of conjecture. The commander of the German submarine, Erich Topp, became one of the leading German submariners of the war, and never said whether he was aiming at the destroyer. None of the Americans who had been on the destroyer’s bridge survived and it is not known if they had seen the torpedo before it struck.

Within days the US Navy was sending out the telegrams notifying next of kin of the loss of their relative, which would become all too common in the coming days. Relatives were informed that their loved ones were lost in the performance of their duties when their ship was sunk by a torpedo. Nonetheless there was no large public outcry for war with the Germans, and isolationists continued to claim that FDR was trying to drag America into a European war. The convoying and shoot on sight order remained in effect.

Reuben James was the only ship of the convoy it escorted to be lost. That was seldom the case after the US entered the war, Battle of the Atlantic losses rose dramatically in 1942. When Adolf Hitler declared war he specifically cited the Reuben James incident as another of the American provocations which led to his declaration of war. Within a few weeks of the sinking of the American destroyer the Japanese launched their attack in the Pacific and Reuben James, except to the families and friends of the dead crew, was largely forgotten as war fever was directed towards Japan.

Final Days Before War

While the United States Navy, by direction of the President, maintained a shoot on sight policy in the North Atlantic, it followed a different approach regarding the Pacific. In late November 1941 Secretary of War Henry Stimson informed commanders in the Pacific that negotiations with Japan appeared to be finished, at least as far as promising any real progress, and that they should expect to be attacked. On November 27 Stimson informed commanders in the Pacific that what the Japanese may do next was impossible to predict, but, “…the United States desires that Japan commit the first overt act.”

Documents which detail messages between Washington and the Pacific are frequently cited as evidence that not only was FDR and his leading advisors aware of the impending attack on Pearl Harbor, they deliberately withheld information from their officers in the Pacific. Another frequently cited bit of “evidence” was the absence of the American aircraft carriers at Pearl Harbor at the time of the attack. This is simply false. Nearly everyone in the chain of command knew that an attack was coming, the problem was that they didn’t know where it would take place.

US doctrine for years placed the Philippines as the most likely location for the brunt of the Japanese thrust, and the American troops there, despite the urgency and frequency of warnings to be prepared at all levels, was as surprised as had been the fleet and air power at Pearl Harbor, even though the Philippines were struck a full eight hours after Hawaii. The US command structure was simply moribund after years of peacetime, and unprepared for the flood of modern weapons and firepower with which the Japanese struck.

The Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor was a hit and run raid which destroyed the American battle line, but it is a myth that all of the American battleships were lost. The day after Pearl Harbor the United States still had the battleships New Mexico, Idaho, New York, Colorado, Mississippi, Texas, and Arkansas. What it did not have was a modernized battle fleet capable of engaging the Japanese fleet protected by air cover. Even if the Japanese had not attacked Pearl Harbor it is unlikely that the battle line stationed there could have relieved the Philippines once the Japanese established air superiority. Many American commanders were aware of this, it was the politicians and isolationists who were not.

The reason for waiting for the Japanese to strike the first blow was to accomplish exactly what was accomplished, the instant unification of the public towards the prosecution of the war against Japan. All of the necessary warnings were sent to the bases in the Pacific, yet few were prepared when they were struck on December 7 and 8 1941. There is no doubt that the US government wanted to stop the monstrous Nazi regime in Europe and the equally savage Japanese empire from enslaving and exterminating whole races of humans. But in the Pacific it tried to avoid combat as much as it could. It was the intransigence of the Japanese which led to the Pacific War. To them, conquest and enslavement was their divine right.

Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:

“How U.S. Economic Warfare Provoked Japan’s Attack on Pearl Harbor”, by Robert Higgs. The Independent Institute

“Roosevelt Announces Destroyers for Bases Agreement”, by Daryl Worthington. The New Historian

“Lend Lease and Military Aid to the Allies in the Early Years of World War II”, Office of the Historian, US Department of State

“Great Britain and the Coming of the Pacific War”, by Peter Lowe

“December 11, 1941: Hitler and Arguably the Most Insane and Pivotal Decision in History”, by Stephen Frater. History Reader

“US Destroyers: An Illustrated Design History”, Naval Institute Press

“Notable U.S. Navy Ships Lost Since World War II”, US Naval Institute

“Henry L. Stimson”, entry, Brittanica.com