On the eve of Pearl Harbor, Japan's Shogun Oshima was a passionate lover of German-Austrian classical music. Despite the tense situation, he flew to Austria to participate in the Mozart Festival.
But the wonderful music of the great Austrian composer did not last long.
On December 1, 1941, he received an urgent notice and hurried back to Berlin.
As soon as he arrived at the embassy, he saw new instructions for him to step up his efforts to get Germany to sign an agreement on coordinated operations.
No time can be delayed.
And now Ribbentrop was forced into a corner, but hesitated. The Nazi foreign minister said he had obtained a copy of the telegram by "magic."
In fact, Washington, like Berlin, learned on the last day of November that Japan might wage war against the United States!
How did Japan get to Pearl Harbor?
From the outbreak of the war of aggression against China to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, there was a key event.
In 1931, when Japan launched a war of aggression against China and quickly occupied the entire Northeast, Henry Stimson, the secretary of state of the Hoover administration at the time, expounded the American view: non-recognitionism.
After Roosevelt entered the White House, he inherited his predecessor's policy toward Japan.
On April 17, 1934, the Japanese government issued a statement warning the United States not to interfere with or harm Japan's interests in China.
After the "fireside speech", the US military enterprises began to implement a 7-day-a-week work system, and many important production departments were produced 24 hours a day to supplement the lack of the US Air Force and Navy.
Major consortiums began to invest in more new factories, large-scale expansion of old factories, many small factories also began to turn to the production of strategic materials, in the roar of the machine, the United States truly became a huge arsenal.
In 1936, Japan issued another statement, saying that Japan was not bound by the tonnage ratio of US, British, and Japanese capital ships stipulated by the Washington Conference, and that it was an attempt to exclude the US and British forces in China, break the balance of power in the Pacific, and establish Japan's dominant position in the Pacific.
In January 1938, Japan decided to launch a deadly war against the Nationalist government in Nanjing, and large-scale clashes broke out between Chinese and Japanese armies in the Beijing area, and the war spread rapidly.
Japan's military leaders disagreed on whether to continue the operation, with many believing that the only threat to Japan's interests in Korea and northeast China was the Soviet Union, and that it was unnecessary and foolish to wage a long, large-scale war in China.
But as the Japanese advanced, other members of the General Staff decided that the only way to stop the war was to force China to lose hope of fighting.
This faction of soldiers has taken action!
From April to June 1941, there was still a lot of bickering within the U.S. government over whether to cut off oil exports to Japan and freeze Japanese funds, most of which were used to buy oil.
It is clear that the Axis powers and the United States are moving toward direct conflict day by day.
At the same time, German troops quickly swept through Central Europe, western Europe, northern Europe and the Balkan Peninsula, while controlling the human resources of 16 countries in Europe, including France, western Poland, the Netherlands, and Norway.
In late November or early December 1941, was there really a Japanese signal for "weather forecasting" that was about to carry out the attack plan? At the end of December of that year, the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs instructed its envoys abroad that if Japan's diplomatic relations with the United States, Britain, or the Soviet Union deteriorated, a false message would be broadcast!
On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, united States, was as calm as ever. Because it was a weekend, the Pacific Fleet stationed here was not as heavily guarded as usual, and most of the officers and men were still in bed.
Meanwhile, the Japanese had driven the mobile forces of Task Force Commander Chuichi Minamimo to about 230 nautical miles north of Pearl Harbor.
They are brewing an attack that has never been planned before.
At 6 a.m., Nanyun received orders.
In less than 15 minutes, all 183 aircraft on the first wave of attack had flown off the deck of the carrier, and 43 fighters, 49 horizontal bombers, 40 torpedo planes and 51 dive bombers had directly hit Pearl Harbor.
At 7:55 a.m., the bombs poured down in the Pacific Ocean.
At 1:47 p.m., the phone rang, and it was Secretary of the Navy Knox who said, "Mr. President, it seems that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor."
Roosevelt was surprised: What's going on!
Knox replied: Mr. President, the Telecommunications Department of the Admiralty has just detected a cable about the airstrike on Pearl Harbor. It was an urgent notice from Commander-in-Chief Kimmel of the Pacific Fleet to the U.S. ships in Hawaii.
The content of this telegram was shocking, Harry, who seemed to have attacked Pearl Harbor and roosevelt, said very heavily to his subordinates after hanging up the phone.
His expression was calm and serious, and he was silent for a long time before he spoke:
Whether it was peace or war, the United States had no choice, because the Japanese had already made decisions for us.
The core idea that World War II was a "just war" was that the United States entered the war against Japan's unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor, which killed more than 2,000 soldiers, sank or seriously damaged 18 warships, and destroyed 188 aircraft.
"According to this view," says historian Stephen Sniegoski, "the cause of the war stemmed from Japan's evil efforts to conquer the Far East and the Western Pacific under aggressive militarists." ”
The day after the attack, President Roosevelt, in addressing Congress, called December 7, 1941 ," "it will be a day of shame."
Pearl Harbor is the largest and most important U.S. naval base in the Pacific Ocean, where the Pacific Fleet is anchored.
On Sunday afternoon, December 7, 1941, the cold wind whistled, and many people sat at The Polo Stadium in New York, wrapped tightly in their thick coats. The stadium seats more than 55,000 spectators who are watching the finals of the full-week Soccer League season, a championship that will be produced between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers.
As the news spread, the anger of the American people soared, and everyone gathered, some venting their dissatisfaction and protests outside the Japanese Embassy, and some singing patriotic songs outside the White House. Hull feared that problems at the Japanese Embassy would endanger the safety of U.S. diplomatic staff in Japan.
In fact, an hour after Pearl Harbor, congressional leaders arrived, and Roosevelt told them about Pearl Harbor and asked Congress to convene a joint session of the House and Senate tomorrow.
Roosevelt received countless cheers, but never once was so enthusiastic. Both Democrats and Republicans are expressing their bold loyalty to him and, through him, to their homeland.
In the end, the Senate passed Roosevelt's declaration of war by 82 votes to 0 and the House of Representatives by 388 votes to 1. Since then, the United States officially joined "World War II".
At the same time, US President Roosevelt delivered this speech, on the one hand, expressing to Japan the anger of the United States and the American people on the incident, denouncing Japan and exposing the nature of Japan's aggression, and on the other hand, officially announcing to the world the determination of the United States to carry out defensive war and vow to die.
Roosevelt repeated more than 20 "ours" in a row to highlight the crisis brought to the United States by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which involved every American people, spread throughout every inch of American territory, and was concerned about the common interests of the United States, and the people, territory, and interests were the most important things for the United States.
After Pearl Harbor, Kimmel, commander of the Pacific Fleet, who received alerts but did not pay attention, was dismissed, and Admiral Nimitz became the new commander.
As a result of pearl harbor, the U.S. government had a reasonable reason to participate in the war, and the camp of World War II was finally formed. Prompted by many accidental historical events, the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union became allies in joint fighting.
Pearl Harbor prompted Roosevelt, Donovan, and several other top state secret officials to realize that Pearl Harbor exposed weaknesses in U.S. strategy.
Two days after the attack, William Langer, a prominent Harvard historian who succeeded Batter as head of research, drew a very frightening prospect for Donovan, based on the inferences of the institution's top researchers: Japanese troops caught up with the Pacific Fleet fleeing pearl harbor and destroyed it in one fell swoop.
So Roosevelt and Churchill eventually agreed to set up a joint headquarters with the primary goal of defeating Germany.
After pearl harbor, under the pressure of domestic political opinion to start a war in other countries as soon as possible, roosevelt also agreed to suspend the plan of the cross-strait war in late July, starting with an attack on North Africa.
All in all, after the outbreak of Pearl Harbor, World War II expanded to a global scope.
Let's discuss the Pearl Harbor incident together, welcome to follow!
The author | Gong Liuhui