A Time for War: Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Path to Pearl Harbor - Hardcover

Thompson, Robert Smith

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0136533388 ISBN 13: 9780136533382

Publisher: Prentice Hall Direct, 1991

Synopsis

Argues that the Roosevelt administration forced Japan into war against the U.S. through a campaign of psychological, economic, and military provocation

About this title

From Kirkus Reviews:

Here, Thompson (Pledge to Destiny: Charles de Gaulle and the Rise of the Free French, 1974; Foreign Policy/Univ. of South Carolina) argues that FDR, greatly exceeding his executive powers, led a depressed, militarily weak, and traditionally isolationist America into WW II by forcing Germany and Japan to go to war with us. Thompson's extensive research convincingly builds a vast mosaic revealing a startling picture of America's largely secret cold war with Japan (and later Germany), waged many years before the Pearl Harbor attack. The author documents how FDR broke neutrality laws, made secret loans and treaties to belligerents, and set embargoes to strangle Japan even as he seems to have lied to and manipulated his people, whom he believed to be in danger. Thompson apparently has found early 1941 American plans to firebomb Japanese cities, factories, and ships; and evidence both that FDR hoped to provoke war with Germany by the bold patrols of US ships in Atlantic convoys, and that warnings of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor were ignored in high places (it seems OSS chief Donovan had a British warning of an immediate Japanese attack; archives show that Donovan was with FDR one hour before Japan struck). Thompson records the deadly menace of Japan's aggressiveness in China, and of its intention to destroy European and American power in the Far East--to conquer all Pacific islands including the Philippines. FDR, the author shows, was alert to the Axis threat, and so led his country out of a dangerous isolationism--albeit by desperate means. Provocative revisionist history that could stimulate a widespread reevaluation of the traditional view of why America entered WW II. (Twenty-five b&w photographs--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1991, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Publishers Weekly:

The author of this intriguing study maintains that the traditional view that America entered WW II in response to the attack on Pearl Harbor is misguided. Thompson argues instead that the U.S. was engaged in a naval war with Germany and an economic war with Japan well before December 7, 1941, and that American support for the Chinese, Lend-Lease aid to Britain and the July '41 oil embargo against Japan were calculated incitements that forced the two Axis powers into war with America. According to Thompson, the Roosevelt administration, far from neutral or isolationist, was increasingly dominated by a coalition of interventionists who wished to establish a new world order under United States leadership. This book is the clearest exposition so far of the revisionist theory of U.S. provocation of Germany and Japan. Thompson teaches foreign policy at the University of South Carolina. Photos.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Prentice Hall Direct
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0136533388
• ISBN 13: 9780136533382
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 16