Did Roosevelt shut off oil supplies to the Japanese in order to provoke them into attacking Pearl Harbor?
It was probably less to provoke an attack than to try and get the Japanese to stop their war in China. Despite Japan’s rapid modernization and ability to maintain its independence from Western colonialism, the Japanese were still badly underestimated by most Americans. So most likely Roosevelt thought he could make them submit to American demands by choking their war machine to death. But it’s also clear that it was recognised that American tactics might goad the Japanese into attacking. There are records indicating that the US was anticipating a Japanese strike, possibly even at Pearl Harbor, in the month of December of 1941. Whether lulled by the approaching Christmas season, the idea that the Japanese weren’t competent enough to actually pull off such an attack, or other reasons, the word wasn’t spread enough to put the troops on alert. And while Japan and Germany were allied, provoking the Japanese to attack could not guarantee that the Germans would declare war on the US. Roosevel
Sgatland is right in everyhing he says; but though an attack was expected no-one really seriously thought that it would be at Pearl. If it had been elsewhere – say simultaneous landings on the Philippines, Wake and Midway, then the scope of the war would very possibly have been redically different. US plans existed, in the event of a Japanese attack, to lauch a massive counter-blow, seeking a battleship-led encounter in mid-Pacific. Had these eight battleships then been jumped by six carrier-loads of planes and been permanently sunk five miles deep (of the eight battleships damaged at Peal, three were back on active service within six weeks, and a further thee within eighteen months). By no means would that have won the Japanese the war, but it might’ve taken longer for US industrial might to save the day. The main rumour about Pearl was that the two carriers attached to the Pacific fleet (the Japanese had six fleet carriers, the US had two – plus one undergoing sea trials and one unde
