Entry of the United States into World War II

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The United States entered World War II on December 11, 1941 when Germany and Italy declared war on the United States , which was answered on the same day. On December 7th, Japan carried out the attack on Pearl Harbor . The next day the USA declared war on Japan . With the declaration of the United Nations of January 1, 1942, the United States entered the anti-Hitler coalition with Great Britain and the Soviet Union as the main allies. The entry into the war was preceded by a lengthy phase of diplomatic tension between the US and the Axis powers , during which the US indirectly supported the European Western powers and national China directly. When the Second World War broke out in Europe in 1939, the US population and government were still largely isolationist and refused to enter the war.

Attitude of the United States to the European war

In an opinion poll in the autumn of 1939, 95% of Americans were against a declaration of war by the USA on Germany . In further surveys, 84% wanted the Western powers to win and 82% said Germany was to blame for the war. However, they also stated that the further the German troops advanced towards Great Britain , the more the US saw itself affected by the war . President Franklin D. Roosevelt , whose sympathies, like most Americans, were clearly on the side of the Western powers, pursued a cautious but determined policy of supporting the Allies while maintaining neutrality . This enabled American journalists such as William L. Shirer to continue working in Germany and later in occupied Europe and to provide the American population with comprehensive information on the dramatic consequences of the war that broke out in Poland on September 1st . In his fireside chats , which were broadcast on the radio, Roosevelt was able to gradually convince the Americans of his foreign policy course over the next two years. In his quarantine speech of October 5, 1937, by calling for the international isolation of Germany, Italy and Japan, he clearly positioned himself as an opponent of the Axis powers.

In the pre-war period of the 1930s, influenced by the work of the Nye Committee , the US had passed a number of neutrality laws. These had already been undermined by Roosevelt on the occasion of the Second Sino-Japanese War , in which the United States supported China. In November 1939, the American Congress changed the neutrality laws and approved the sale of war material to warring states. However, the condition was immediate payment and transport of the cargo by non-American ships, which is why the provision in question became known as the cash-and-carry clause . This ensured that only the Western powers could receive supplies as Axis merchant ships could not get past the British blockade in the Atlantic. At the same time, the US Navy began monitoring shipping in the western Atlantic with its own neutrality patrol . The Naval Expansion Act of May 1938 set course for a "two-ocean fleet".

Due to logistical necessities, preparations for the construction of military infrastructure in West African Liberia began as early as 1939 . In these plans, Monrovia formed the bridgehead to North , East and South Africa . The airfield established there and the naval base were seen as part of an airlift installed over the Caribbean , Venezuela and Brazil .

After the German destruction of the rest of the Czech Republic , the USA imposed a punitive tariff of 25% on all German imports on March 17, 1939 . The German government saw this as a declaration of economic war .

On May 20, the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies announced its establishment and called for material and moral support for the Allies in the fight against Germany. On July 19, 1940, after the fall of Denmark and Norway as well as the Benelux countries and France , the Two-Ocean Navy Act became law, which provided for an enlargement of the United States Navy by 70% within six years. On September 2, 1940, the United States signed the " Destroyer-for-Base Agreement " with Great Britain , through which 50 American destroyers from World War I were given to the British in exchange for land use rights in British overseas colonies in the Western Hemisphere were. Also in September 1940, the Selective Training and Service Act was passed, which first introduced compulsory military service in peacetime. On September 4, 1940, the " America First Committee " was founded as the most important mouthpiece and reservoir for the American isolationists.

President Roosevelt signs the Lending Act, March 1941

The fact that Roosevelt's increasingly clear policy of preparing for war corresponded to the will of the majority of Americans was evident not only in his practically unchallenged re-election as Democratic candidate for the 1940 presidential election , but also in the position of his Republican rival Wendell Willkie , the one Preparing the armed forces for all eventualities, including those of war, deemed necessary in the national interest. In January 1941, after his clear victory over Willkie, Roosevelt gave his programmatic Four Freedoms speech in which he once again took a clear position on the need to defend freedom and democracy against the aggression of tyranny such as that of the Axis powers was embodied, related. In his speech to the Congress he asked for its support in the planned expansion of armaments spending and the delivery of war materials to the remaining democracies. In addition, the American armed forces were upgraded. In 1941 an army of over 1.6 million men grew and arms production rose to $ 4.5 billion a year. In March 1941, Roosevelt enforced the Lend- Lease Act . The law made it possible for the federal government to lend military equipment to those states which, in the eyes of the President, seemed vital to the defense of the United States. By the end of the war, the United Kingdom consumed $ 30 billion in supplies and the Soviet Union , which was invaded by Germany and its allies in June 1941 and to which the arrangement was then extended, worth $ 12 billion. This corresponded to 427,000 trucks, 15,000 planes and 13,000 tanks.

USS Kearny in Reykjavík harbor two days after being torpedoed by U-568. The hole on the starboard side amidships is clearly visible. Behind the US destroyer USS Monssen .

On May 27, 1941, after the events in the Balkans , North Africa and the Atlantic , President Roosevelt declared a permanent national emergency. In June all German and Italian balances in the USA were frozen and the consulates in these countries were closed. After the Japanese invasion of the southern part of French Indochina in July 1941, Roosevelt also had the Japanese assets frozen and ordered the reinforcement of the American defense in the Philippines under the new commander Douglas MacArthur .

About to Denmark belonging Greenland had already in April 1941 an agreement between US Secretary of State Cordell Hull and the Danish Ambassador Henrik Kauffmann been taken to the United States allowed the establishment of bases on the island. In July of this year, the USA also landed troops on Iceland in order to relieve the British of the task of defending the island and to be able to better protect shipping to England from here. This suffered considerably from German submarine attacks . As a result, clashes between American ships and German submarines increased in the Atlantic . After an incident between an American destroyer and a German submarine in the Atlantic, he issued the directive shoot on sight ("attack upon sighting"). The USA recorded the first casualties of the hitherto undeclared war, eleven sailors, on October 17th, south of Iceland, when the escorting destroyer USS Kearny was torpedoed in convoy SC-48 by the German submarine U 568 . On October 31, U 552 sank the escorting destroyer USS Reuben James in convoy HX-156.

At the beginning of October, at a conference in Moscow, the extension of the lend lease program to the Soviet Union was agreed. The agreement (1st Moscow Protocol) provided for the delivery of weapons and essential war goods to the Soviet Union worth around one billion US dollars by the middle of the following year.

Atlantic Charter

In August 1941, Winston Churchill , the British Prime Minister, and Franklin D. Roosevelt promulgated the Atlantic Charter . This was marked by the attack on the Soviet Union and was based on a similar program of the American President in World War I, Woodrow Wilson , the 14-point program . The central statements of the Atlantic Charter were:

  1. Britain and the US are not looking for territorial expansion .
  2. They generally do not want any territorial changes as a result of the World War, unless the peoples concerned so wish.
  3. They want all peoples to have the right to choose the form of government under which they want to live.
  4. They want every state to have equal access to world trade after the war and to those raw materials "which are necessary for [the] economic welfare [of the states]".
  5. They strive for economic cooperation among peoples in order to achieve better working conditions and economic growth.
  6. They want all peoples to live in peace within their borders when Nazi rule has been destroyed.
  7. This peace should also make it possible for everyone to travel the seas and oceans peacefully.
  8. They also hope for a disarmament through which the states gain security from threats and the use of force. They think that the use of force must be suppressed in order to achieve a permanent system of general security.

Decision in the Pacific

Sphere of control of the imperial powers in Asia / Pacific 1939

However, the decision to enter the war was made in the Pacific. The aspiring Japanese Empire had been allied with the German Reich under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini in the Anti-Comintern Pact since 1936 and 1937 , but tried to avoid a war with the USA, with which it repeatedly came to the question of the Japanese war against China diplomatic tensions had arisen. A US "moral embargo" on the export of aircraft and equipment to countries known to use them to attack civilians had been in place since July 1938.

In the winter of 1938/39, after the German annexation of the Sudetenland , the American Joint Planning Committee carried out a reassessment of the strategic options of the Axis powers for an incursion into the western hemisphere, from which it derived the so-called Rainbow plans for repelling such an attack . These expanded the "color-coded" plans created after the First World War , such as the War Plan Orange for a war against Japan, to include the possibility of a multi-front war in the Atlantic and Pacific. In the beginning, it was assumed that, while at the same time supporting the European democracies against Germany, one would have to engage militarily mainly in the Pacific against Japan.

As a deterrent against Japanese entry into the war, the US Pacific Fleet did not return to its bases on the American west coast in May 1940 after its annual exercises around Hawaii , but remained in an advanced position in Pearl Harbor . The unexpectedly rapid collapse of France in June 1940 and the imminent threat of a German attack on Great Britain via the Channel exacerbated the threat to the United States considerably, as it not only shook the Atlantic defensive position, but Japan could also feel encouraged, the possessions to attack the European powers in Southeast Asia, which in the long term would lead to the establishment of Japanese hegemony over large parts of Asia. When Japan began to put pressure on the French authorities in Indochina to provide bases in the summer of 1940, the United States reacted by banning the export of machine parts , jet fuel and scrap metal to Japan. Japan's signing of the three -power pact, which is indirectly directed against the USA, at the end of September 1940 only intensified the fronts.

In November 1940, the American Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Harold R. Stark addressed a memorandum (so-called Plan Dog Memo ) to the President in which he described the threat posed by a possible defeat to Great Britain as the most serious threat to the security of the USA . Therefore the ability to conduct offensive operations in Europe and Africa must be established as a priority. In order to prevent a simultaneous unlimited conflict in the Pacific, Japan must be prevented from further expansion in South Asia through an increased American presence, which would allow these areas to be held in an emergency. Although Roosevelt did not want to commit himself to such a strategy, British-American staff discussions in disguise began in January 1941 on the basis of Stark's memorandum. In May 1941, the two countries exchanged official military missions. The US war plan, code-named Rainbow 5 , was adapted to the ABC agreements and foresaw a simultaneous war in Europe and the Pacific in which Britain and the United States would be allies . Under the direction of Albert Wedemeyer , an officer in the War Plans Division of the War Department , the so-called Victory Plan was drawn up in the summer of 1941 for the provision of troops and war material adapted to the requirements of a two-front war.

In August 1941, the USA, along with Great Britain and the Dutch East Indies, imposed an embargo on the export of oil to Japan. 90% of its requirements were dependent on these imports; around half of its imports had previously been obtained from the USA. With this, Japan's entire geopolitical strategy in East Asia for the establishment of a Greater East Asian sphere of prosperity including China was called into question. In order to take possession of oil wells such as the Dutch Indies, which were necessary for its continued existence as an economic and military power, the Japanese Empire would now have to risk a war with Great Britain and, according to Japanese fears, also with the USA if it did refused to give up his goal of subjugating China to his domination. Such a task was out of the question for the Japanese ultra-nationalists and expansionists, who found strong support in the Imperial Army . As a result, the bellicose faction increasingly prevailed against the traditionalists, who are mainly represented in business. Doubts harbored by some of the Imperial Navy leadership about the chances of success in a war with the United States, including those of United Fleet Commander Yamamoto Isoroku , have been increasingly ignored. In the summer, the Navy began training its attack fleet , the Kidō Butai , and its naval aviators for the later attack on Pearl Harbor , for which plans had been drawn up since the beginning of the year. The planners used the British attack on the Italian fleet in the port of Taranto in November 1940 as a template .

American replica of the PURPLE machine

In the USA since 1941, thanks to the long-term efforts of numerous cryptanalysts in military service to replicate the RED and PURPLE machines as well as other codes used by the Japanese , the intercepted diplomatic and, in some cases , military encrypted communications have been in a position with some delay read along. The information obtained in that one as " Magic " (Eng. Magic ) designated, but were subject to such strict secrecy that important information about the Japanese war preparations in part did not reach the competent military staffs, which would prove to be disastrous in Pearl Harbor.

On October 16, 1941, the Japanese Prime Minister Konoe resigned after the deadline set by the Imperial Conference for reaching an agreement with the United States had expired. From this point on, the country was clearly set on a course of war under the government of his successor, the previous Minister of the Army Tōjō Hideki . On November 26, the US government presented the representatives of Japan with the Hull Note formulated by Foreign Minister Cordell Hull , which unequivocally called for the withdrawal of Japanese troops from China and Indochina as a precondition for further negotiations on the lifting of the oil embargo. This was recorded only as the last of a series of provocations in Japan. On the same day, the Japanese attack fleet was set on march to Pearl Harbor. On November 27, all US military units in the Pacific were placed on high alert. On December 1st, Emperor Hirohito gave his final approval for the attack. The corresponding order was transmitted to the fleet the next day. On December 6, President Roosevelt again addressed Emperor Hirohito in a personal message of peace.

Burning American ships after the attack on Pearl Harbor

On December 7th, Japan attacked the American Pacific Fleet in the port of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii without a declaration of war . This attack killed 2,400 people. In addition, 8  battleships and 11 other warships were sunk or badly damaged. Further attacks took place over the next few days on Guam , the Philippines , Wake and Midway .

President Roosevelt signs the declaration of war on Japan

With this attack, the discussion about America's entry into the war ended. On December 8th, Roosevelt gave his speech before the joint session of the Congress, in which he called the day of the attack “ a date which will live in infamy ” (German: “a date that will always be a day of shame”) designated. 81 percent of Americans watched the speech on the radio, the highest audience rating in American history. Immediately afterwards, the congress declared the state of war with Japan with only one vote against (that of the pacifist Jeannette Rankin ). In a radio address the following day, Roosevelt stated that Germany and Japan were following a common plan in their warfare and that, consequently, Germany and Italy were to be regarded as powers considered to be at war with the United States. Two days later, on December 11th, Germany and Italy, in turn, declared war on the United States . On the same day, Roosevelt, authorized by Congress, declared war on these two states.

At their first war conference, the Arcadia Conference in Washington, DC from December 22, 1941 to January 14, 1942, the US and Great Britain reaffirmed their previous agreements on the "Germany first" strategy, according to which Germany should be defeated first before one turned to the destruction of Japan. At this conference, the United States also signed the United Nations Declaration on January 1, 1942 , marking its entry into the anti-Hitler coalition alongside 25 other states, including Great Britain, the Soviet Union and China, and each unilateral Separate peace with the three main opponents Germany, Japan and Italy excluded.

Surprise attack investigations

Shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor, voices were raised alleging that the American government had prior knowledge of an imminent Japanese attack and criticized the armed forces' inadequate preparation for one. A total of eight investigations into this matter were initiated during the war and led to the discovery of deficiencies in the evaluation of intelligence material and the cooperation between the armed forces.

Two later studies focused on intercepted by the Americans intelligence, including the declaration of the termination of diplomatic relations ( "14-point frame") by Japan, after the attacks by Ambassador due to become not ready in time translation Kichisaburō Nomura was presented . In this context, Roosevelt is said to have said on December 6th that this was tantamount to a declaration of war.

See also

literature

  • Dirk Bavendamm : Roosevelt's War. American Policy and Strategy 1937–1945. 2nd edition Herbig, Munich / Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-7766-2058-7 . First edition under the title Roosevelt's War 1937-1945 and the mystery of Pearl Harbor. (In a review from 1993 rated as revisionist)
  • Horst Boog , Werner Rahn , Reinhard Stumpf , Bernd Wegner : The German Reich and the Second World War , Volume 6: The Global War - The Expansion to World War I and the Change of Initiative 1941 to 1943 , Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1990 (reprint 1993 ), XX, 1184 pp. ISBN 978-3-421-06233-8 .
  • Steven Casey: Cautious Crusade. Franklin D. Roosevelt, American Public Opinion and the War against Nazi Germany. Oxford University Press, Oxford et al. 2001, ISBN 0-19-513960-7 .
  • Henry Steele Commager (Ed.): Documents of American History. Volume 2: Since 1898. 9th edition. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs NJ 1973, ISBN 0-13-217000-0 .
  • Waldo Heinrichs: Threshold of war. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American entry into World War II. Oxford University Press, New York NY / Oxford 1989, ISBN 0-19-506168-3 .
  • Peter Herde : Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. The outbreak of the war between Japan and the United States and the expansion of the European war into World War II. Scientific Book Society, Darmstadt 1980, ISBN 3-534-07555-2 . (Further editions)
  • Peter Herde: Italy, Germany and the way to the war in the Pacific 1941. Lecture. (= Meeting reports of the Scientific Society at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. Vol. 20, 1). Steiner, Wiesbaden 1983, ISBN 3-515-04001-3 .
  • David Kaiser: No End Save Victory: How FDR Led the Nation into War. Basic Books, 2014, ISBN 978-0-465-01982-3 .
  • Richard M. Ketchum: The Borrowed Years 1938-1941. America on the Way to War. Random House, New York NY 1989, ISBN 0-394-56011-6 .
  • Michael Libal : Japan's way to war. The Foreign Policy of the Konoye Cabinets 1940/1941. Droste, Düsseldorf 1971, ISBN 3-7700-0254-7 (also: Tübingen, University, dissertation, 1968).
  • Heinz Magenheimer : War aims and strategies of the great powers 1939–1945. Osning, Bielefeld / Bonn 2006, ISBN 3-9806268-4-9 .
  • Janet M. Manson: Diplomatic ramifications of unrestricted submarine warfare, 1939-1941 (= Contributions in Military Studies. Vol. 104). Greenwood Press, New York NY et al. 1990, ISBN 0-313-26894-0 .
  • George Morgenstern: Pearl Harbor 1941. An American disaster. Herbig, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-7766-1996-1 . Several editions, 2012 by Druffel-Vowinckel , Gilching, (Original edition: Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War. Devin-Adair, New York NY 1947). (According to Eugene C. Murdock in the Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 1956, No. 1, one of the revisionist authors who advocate the conspiracy theory, Roosevelt and his close advisers would have known all the dates of the Japanese surprise attack, but did not warn about it.)
  • Charles Callan Tansill: The Back Door to War. The drama of international diplomacy from Versailles to Pearl Harbor. Pour le Mérite, Selent 2000, ISBN 3-932381-11-4 ., (Counts, among others, Tansill among the revisionist authors who advocate the conspiracy theory; Roosevelt and his close advisers knew about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor before the attack began and they deliberately kept silent because they wanted to drive the USA into World War II.)

Literature for the lemma. Not yet incorporated by March 25th.

  • Joachim Käppner : 1941. The attack on the whole world. Rowohlt, Berlin 2016, ISBN 978-3-87134-826-6 . (The author describes the most important events of this central war year, its causes and consequences. And he asks the question why large parts of the German elite and society unswervingly followed Hitler's policy, although in 1941 it became more murderous, irrational and self-destructive every month.)
  • Gerhard Ludwig Weinberg : A world in arms. The global history of the Second World War . DVA, Stuttgart 1995. (English first edition: New York 1995)
  • Heinrich August Winkler : History of the West. The time of the world wars 1914–1945. Beck, Munich 2011.

Web links

Wikisource: Pearl Harbor speech  - Sources and full texts (English)

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gallup and Fortune Polls , in: The Public Opinion Quarterly , Vol. 4, No. 1 (March 1940), pp. 83-115. Here p. 98 ff.
  2. ^ Neutrality Act of November 4, 1939 at mtholyoke.edu , accessed May 6, 2010.
  3. ↑ Liberia in World War II (English) accessed on November 2, 2010.
  4. ↑ Adam Tooze : Economy of Destruction. The history of the economy under National Socialism . Munich 2007, p. 359.
  5. ↑ War Breaks Out on historycentral.com , accessed May 6, 2010.
  6. ↑ a b c US Department of State: Chapter XIII: European War 1941 , in: Peace and War United States Foreign Policy 1931-1941. US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1943.
  7. ↑ "The Army numbered 1,643,477 [...]" in: Chapter 19: Between World Wars , in: American Military History. Center of Military History United States Army, Washington, DC 1989.
  8. ↑ a b US Department of State: Chapter XIV: Discussion With Japan 1941, Pearl Harbor , in: Peace and War United States Foreign Policy 1931-1941. US Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1943.
  9. ↑ Text of the agreement on ibiblio.org , accessed on 15 September 2012 found.
  10. ↑ http://www.uboat.net/ops/convoys/convoys.php?convoy=SC-48
  11. ↑ http://www.uboat.net/ops/convoys/convoys.php?convoy=HX-156
  12. ^ Richard M. Leighton, Robert W. Coakley: Global Logistics and Strategy, vol. 1. 1940-1943. Center of Military History, US Army, Washington, DC 1995, pp. 101 ff.
  13. ↑ Chapter I: The War Plans , in: Maurice Matloff , Edwin M. Snell: Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1941-1942. The War Department, Washington DC 1990.
  14. ↑ US Department of State: Chapter XII: Relations With Japan 1938-1940 , in: Peace and War United States Foreign Policy 1931-1941. United States Government Printing Office , Washington, DC, 1943.
  15. ↑ Chapter II: German Victories and American Plans , in: Maurice Matloff, Edwin M. Snell: Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1941-1942. The War Department, Washington DC 1990.
  16. ↑ Chapter III: British-American Plans January-November 1941 , in: Maurice Matloff, Edwin M. Snell: Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1941-1942. The War Department, Washington DC 1990.
  17. ↑ Introduction , in: Charles E. Kirkpatrick: An Unknown Future and A Doubtful Present: Writing the Victory Plan of 1941. Center of Military History United States Army, Washington, DC 1992.
  18. ↑ The Alpha: Pearl Harbor, December 1941 on microworks.net , accessed May 6, 2010.
  19. ↑ Nolte mortale - How an American President must serve to exonerate Hitler of his war guilt. Bernd Greiner , Die Zeit, December 3, 1993.
  20. ↑ https://www.ifz-muenchen.de/heftarchiv/1956_1_6_murdock.pdf
  21. ^ Eugene C. Murdock: On the Entry of the United States into World War II. In quarterly issues for contemporary history 1956, issue 1
  22. ↑ [1]
  23. ↑ Charles Callan Tansill died Der Spiegel , November 15, 1964th