During this early December time of remembrance of the “sneak attack” on Pearl Harbor some 82 years ago there comes to mind what is no more than a footnote in some out-of-print history book. The topic is coined “Back Door to War” by one Charles Beard.
The theory of Mr. Beard has just a dash of plausibility but no factual confirmation known to the CLB. The CLB agrees with Beard that the United States was slow to enter World War II. That Congressional Declaration of war of December 8, 1941 should probably have happened in 1940. Beard surmised that President Roosevelt (FDR) wanted to enter the War but lacked (to his thinking) the requisite level of public support for such an endeavor that would likely cost the U.S. so much in treasure and lives.
Intelligence leaked in (purportedly) about Japanese aggression aimed at Pearl Harbor. Whether or not he knew of the danger, FDR did nothing. The Navy brass did nothing. Pearl Harbor was a sitting duck that the Japanese Navy could not resist. According to Beard, FDR’s goal was achieved. For the acceptable price of 2,400 lives and 19 warships, he had his ticket to WWII.¹ After (barely) learning of Charles Beard in undergrad History at Butler University, around 15 years passed before I had cause to think of him again. Then a friend loaned me her copy of the novel titled The Paladin by Brian Garfield, not to be confused with The Paladin by David Ignatius. In sharing the fictional(?) tale of a Brit schoolboy recruited by Winston Churchill to be a WWII spy, assassin, and general “black ops” guy, Garfield fully embraced the Beard theory of the back door to war, but with the plot twist that it was Churchill who had advance knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack while FDR was clueless.
To the CLB the U.S. entry into WWII was inevitable. The adrenaline dose of Pearl Harbor energized that entry and served up the moral certainty that, for instance, distinguishes WWII from the nonsense of Vietnam.
Remember the Maine? . . . What does this old, dishonored war cry have to do with FDR’s (purported) back door to WWII? Here is a familiar quote attributed to Hiram Johnson (1866 – 1945), a progressive Republican senator from California.
“The first casualty, when war comes, is truth.”
The war cry “Remember the Maine” from the Spanish-American War was based on a lie. More recently there was the 1964 “Gulf of Tonkin incident” cited to justify U.S. intervention in Vietnam, based on another lie. It seems we like to stay a step ahead of Hiram’s premise by casting off the truth before war finally comes.
To the slightly cynical CLB, there is an expectation that the U.S. will lie about its cause for entering into a war. Is there a parallel to Pearl Harbor from recent events? Consider the Palestinian raid of October 7, 2023 upon adjacent Israel. Netanyahu may call it an “intelligence failure” that Israel had no advance notice. The CLB is inclined to think that there was advance notice but that Israel elected to play the long game, that is to allow the October 7th aggression to take place in exchange for the opportunity for Israel to retaliate in a fashion beneficial to Israel, now and in the future.
Apart from the recent example of the October 7th “sneak attack” on Israel, there is the example of the 9-11 attack on New York’s Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Reports made public in the aftermath show that there were disturbing Intelligence reports of suspicious activity by Saudi aviation students. Only the right hand never knew what the left hand knew. Whether you call it the NSA, FBI, or CIA, our Intelligence Community portrayed a state of being overwhelmed by information. There is no claim here that then-president G.W. Bush had the guile or the will to let 9-11 happen in order to justify an invasion of Afghanistan.
The CLB regards it as well-settled that the U.S. will lie routinely about the reason for declaring war. But what does that mean in the historical perspective? . . . The answer is “not a lot.” Whether or not FDR had advance knowledge, the Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor. All that happened to Japan subsequently was deserved.
Whether or not G.W. Bush had advance knowledge, bin Laden’s al Qaeda destroyed the Twin Towers, damaged the Pentagon and took the lives of 3,000 or so. Afghanistan was the host of al Qaeda. All that happened subsequently to Afghanistan was deserved.
Whether Netanyahu had advance knowledge or not, the terror group governing the Gaza Strip attacked Israel on October 7th of 2023 with a torrent of rockets and border incursions. They killed and kidnapped at a Kibbutz and at a music festival. All that happened to Hamas subsequently has been deserved. The open question is whether Gaza residents unaffiliated with Hamas have paid too high a price for their proximity to Hamas.
Parallel to the grand tradition of lying about the cause of entry into war there is a less known tradition of sacrifice of the innocent for the greater good. There is no better example than the fate of the English City of Coventry on November 14, 1940. Three Hundred German bombers attacked. More than 500 lives were lost. Hundreds more were wounded. The consensus is that Churchill had advance knowledge but did nothing to prevent the loss of life other than the typical RAF engagement of German aircraft. Churchill knew of the plan to bomb Coventry because the secret of the German Enigma Code had just been solved. But an evacuation of Coventry would admit the code-breaking and deprive Churchill of the use of intercepted coded information for more beneficial purposes than damage control in Coventry. The sacrifice of Coventry originated not in a lie but rather in the withholding of truth.
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¹ The U.S. never got around to declaring war against Germany, which had a mutual defense pact with Japan. In accord with that pact, Germany declared war on the U.S. soon after December 8th.
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