The First Week in December, 1941

It was a gloomy time.  Germany dominated Western Europe and was rolling up vast Russian armies.  Nazi forces were also driving toward Egypt and the oil fields of the Middle East.  Japan had subjugated China and had launched an invasion force toward the Phillipines and the Dutch East Indies (today's Indonesia).

Still the U.S. was not yet involved in WWII.  But of the ten Japanese aircraft carriers that December week, intelligence had lost track of 4.  Where were they?  We now know they were sailing toward Pearl Harbor to deliver the surprise attack that vaulted the US into war.

Did Roosevelt know ahead of time?  Why were the US carriers not at Pearl?  The British surely wanted the US to enter the war.  Did Churchill know via Ultra and persuade FDR to move the carriers but leave the battleships?  After all most assumed that Pearl was too shallow for torpedoes, so how much damage could the Jap planes really do?  Even if they did disable US heavy ships, the British had big ships to spare - Germany's Bismarck and Sharnhorst were sunk, Tirpitz was bottled up in Norway, Italian Navy neutralized, no other Axis challengers to mighty Royal Navy guns.

But an attack of any kind by Japan on the US - successful or otherwise - would bring America into the war, not only in the Pacific but against the Germans in Europe and Africa.

We will never know but recently scholars have speculated that this scenario is plausible.  After all, Germany was winning the war, Britain was fighting alone, Russia was "sure to fall".  Only the US could swing the odds in the Allies favor against the Axis.

What do you think?