President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War, 1941: Appearances and Realities

by Charles A. Beard

Conceived by Charles Beard as a sequel to his provocative study of American Foreign Policy in the Making, 1932-1940, President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War outraged a nation, permanently damaging Beard's status as America's most influential historian. Beard's main argument is that both Democratic and Republican leaders, but Roosevelt above all, worked quietly in 1940 and 1941 to insinuate the United States into the Second World War. Basing his work on available congressional records and administrative reports, Beard concludes that FDR's image as a neutral, peace-loving leader was a smokescreen, behind which he planned for war against Germany and Japan even well before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Beard contends that the distinction between aiding allies in Europe like Great Britain and maintaining strict neutrality with respect to nations like Germany and Japan was untenable. Beard does not argue that all nations were alike, or that some did and others did not merit American support, but rather that Roosevelt chose to aid Great Britain secretly and unconstitutionally rather than making the case to the American public. President Roosevelt shifted from a policy of neutrality to one of armed intervention, but he did so without surrendering the appearance, the fiction of neutrality. This core argument makes the work no less explosive in 2003 than it was when first issued in 1948.

Genres: History, World War II, American, Nonfiction, American History

644 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1968

About the author

American historian and educator Charles Austin Beard explored the aspects in works, such as An Economic Interpretation of the Constitution in 1913; self-interests of formulators based the document in his view, which profoundly affected the study.

Mary Ritter Beard shared economic view of history of Charles Austin Beard, her husband, and they collaborated on first volume in 1927 of The Rise of American Civilization , which characterized northern capitalists, who perpetrated the Civil War as the "second American Revolution" over southern plantation owners for gain.

shared her husband Charles's economic view of history and collaborated with him on The Rise of American Civilization (first volume 1927), in which they characterized the Civil War as the "second American Revolution," perpetrated by Northern capitalists over Southern plantation owners for economic gain


Charles Austin Beard with Frederick Jackson Turner most influenced of the first half of the 20th century. He published hundreds of monographs and textbooks in political science. He included a radical re-evaluation and thought of more than philosophical principles that motivated the Founding Fathers of the United States. Charles Austin Beard with Mary Ritter Beard, his wife, wrote the wide-ranging and bestselling The Rise of American Civilization , most influential major book, in 1927.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles...

Reviews

[Nils]

As always, Beard makes an indictment and collects a lot of receipts. He makes two central arguments, one of which is far more credible than the other. The credible charge is that Franklin Roosevelt overstepped his constitutional powers to take the country to war against both his campaign promises of 1940 and the broad anti-war and anti-imperial wishes of most citizens of the republic. That Roosevelt generally expanded the powers of the presidency — that is, the norms regarding the extent of those powers — is clearly true across many dimensions and this includes the use of the presidency’s commander in chief powers during peacetime. However, even here, in the more plausible part of Beard’s argument, the strong version of this thesis goes to far, given that in fact Roosevelt did secure legislative support for key elements of the path to war, such as the Lend Lease Act to support the British war effort against the Nazis, and also in Congressional hearings urging a hard negotiating line against Japanese expansionism in the East.

The (much) less credible charge is that FDR essentially committed an act of diplomatic and military malpractice in not anticipating the attack on Pearl Harbor, and maybe even welcomed the attack. To make this case, Beard combs through in detail the negotiations between Tokyo and Washington during the summer and fall of 1941, concluding that on November 26 the US issued what amounted to an ultimatum to the Japanese, which they could only interpret as a kind of blockade and therefore an act of war. (Indeed, an enormous weight of argument in the book falls specifically on this memo.) At this point, to not have expected — and prepared — for an attack was either criminally foolish or perhaps even intentionally designed to provoke the sort of attack which would overcome the American people’s natural and correct aversion to overseas war.

To this conspiratorial charge one can, if one is generous, award a scotch verdict: unproven. Certainly it’s true that Roosevelt’s refusal to mandate a court martial against the commanders in Hawaii evinced a desire to turn the page on domestic culpability in the attack, but to conclude that he actually therefore desired such an attack is merely a sophisticated repetition of a partisan conspiracy theory. In the first place, it’s not at all clear that the November 26, 1941 memo to the Japanese was necessarily understood by all parties as the final word and end of negotiations. I mean, read the memo: https://avalon.law.yale.edu/wwii/p1.asp. Do you see anything here that reads like an ultimatum designed to foreclose further peaceful negotiation? Further, even if you’ve issued a directive that both sides clearly interpret as an ultimatum — which is very difficult to believe if you read the memo in a plain manner — that is no reason necessarily to expect a massive surprise attack, especially in an era where prior declarations of war were customary.

Now, of course it is true that the USG believed that for all practical purposes, the Japanese effort to stabilize conditions in the pacific had come to an end, and US military intelligence expected the Japanese to respond militarily — most likely with an amphibious expedition against the Philippines, Thai, or Kra Peninsula or possibly Borneo. The USG also wanted to make sure that, given the American public’s skepticism about foreign adventures, Japan would be seen as having “fired the first shot.” But to say this is very far short of the proving that the attack on Pearl Harbor should have been anticipated, much less that FDR and George Marshall actually wanted or baited Japan into that attack.

[John Geddes]

"[This Book and American foreign policy in the making https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...] by the late dean of American historians constitute the most complete and authoritative treatment of the evolution of Roosevelt foreign policy from isolationism to interventionism and war. The second volume is the most detailed account of Roosevelt's maneuvering the Japanese into the attack at Pearl Harbor, providing the full political and diplomatic background."

IHR Revisionist Bibliography 1981
https://archive.is/LWkOQ

[Maria Smith]

Excellent. A must read.