December 1941 (39 page)

The House committee with oversight of the navy held a closed-door meeting but was scheduled to hold a hearing the next day as well. They were still trying to pin down Secretary Knox and Admiral Stark on a mutually agreeable time to testify.
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The issue of secrecy arose. Senator Charles Tobey of New Hampshire, who three days earlier had been an isolationist and a Republican and who was now an internationalist and a Republican, shocked his colleagues when he said, “But when a thing is a fait accompli, and when, as reported on the floor of the Senate in conversation today, a large part of the Pacific fleet is wiped out—and that is a fait accompli, the enemy certainly knows that—the American people and their representatives in Congress ought to know it.” A colleague attempted to shush him, but Tobey kept flapping his gums.
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Other members of Congress were just downright mad. Congressman Emanuel Celler lost his temper so badly, the House actually went into a brief recess until he cooled down. Celler was angrily calling for all isolationists to apologize to Roosevelt.
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With America's eyes on the Pacific, across the Atlantic, the Nazis were only beginning to employ their politics of hate. The pawn Vichy government, at the direction of Berlin, rounded up some eleven thousand communists and “Jews who entered France since January, 1936.” The reason being, according to Vichy head Marshall Petain, they were to blame for the attacks on German officers in Paris. “Attacks against officers and soldiers of the armies of occupation constitute a national danger for France.” Petain said investigations “have proven Jews, Communists and foreigners to be responsible.” Petain went so far as to send Adolf Hitler a telegram, offering his “condolences” over the attacks on German officers by Parisians.
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But the real target was France's Jewish population. “The announcement also says that all Jews who have entered France . . . are to be either incorporated in working formations or confined in concentration camps. The measure is described as applying Jews in the occupied and unoccupied zones alike.”
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This dispatch in the
New York Times
ended hopefully. “Despite the severity of these measures there is a strong feeling here tonight that the execution of hostages will not resume.”
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The situation in Berlin continued to disintegrate rapidly. American journalists, some of whom the Third Reich had successfully feted over the past several years, convincing them of the superiority of the “Thousand Year Reich” and that National Socialism was the only way forward, now ordered these same scribes confined to their homes.

Throughout the 1930s and up to 1941, American journalists stationed in Paris and Berlin fed their newspapers back home a steady diet of stories, many of them puff pieces, about the fascist celebrities in their midst. The American public couldn't get enough “Hitlerania” from these reporters. Many of them were lazy and besotted hedonists, a little too enamored of café society. Others, such as William J. Shirer in Berlin, would go on to chronicle the rise and fall of Nazi Germany with brilliant distinction. But now, neither the hacks nor the professionals were allowed to go to their offices. German officials claimed it was a retaliatory strike because supposedly German reporters had been arrested in the United States.

Berlin also wasn't too fond of FDR's remarks of the previous evening.
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There had been no slackening or shortage of young men wanting to enlist, and in many areas even more young men turned out day after day. “All recruiting records of the nation's armed forces were shattered . . . as thousands of men attempted to enlist for combat duty in the Army, Navy, Marine Corps or Coast Guard.”
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It appeared that America would need every man possible for all the battles coming down the road.

Not just in the Pacific either but maybe in North Africa and Europe. It was reported that the American embassy in Rome was burning papers “in preparation for severance of American diplomatic relations with the Axis.”
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CHAPTER 11
THE ELEVENTH OF DECEMBER

Germany and Italy Declare War on U.S. and Sign New Axis Alliance

The Evening Star

United States Declares War against Germany and Italy

The Robesonian

Naval Base, Air Depot at Manila Aflame after Merciless Attack

The Atlanta Constitution

T
he formalities began on the morning of December 11, 1941, when German and Italian diplomats paid a call on Secretary of State Cordell Hull to advise him of their governments' decision to declare war on the United States of America, something Hull and the world already knew. Now the whole world would be completely aflame.

After declaring war on America, Adolf Hitler and his fascist factotum, Benito Mussolini, gave ranting speeches in their respective capitals to appreciative and cheering audiences.
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Hitler announced that “the war would determine the history of the world for the next 500 to 1,000 years. This,” he said, “has become the greatest year of decision by the German people.” The Japanese ambassador was seated at the Hitler speech; their fates were now joined.
²

The führer elaborated his reason for war with America, saying, “If anyone said the cultural values have been brought back from America to Europe, it was only the invention of a decayed Jewish mixture.”
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Hitler viewed America as too decadent and lazy to fight a global war effectively—certainly too weak to go up against the so-far unbeatable Wehrmacht. In Hitler's febrile mind, American society was rotted from within by a mongrel Jewish-Negroid race that was addicted to pleasure and the sort of jazz music that was now banned in Germany. Unbeknownst to him, German youth surreptitiously gathered in jazz-listening clubs at great personal risk to savor that same music in still-urbane places such as Berlin.

America was a paper tiger poised to fall; that was apparent to Hitler, who declared that Italy and Germany were now bound to Japan in a “death pact.”
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The strutting and hyper-macho Mussolini, in addressing a crowd of 150,000, simply called it a “steel pact.”
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Like Hitler, Mussolini also went after FDR. “One man, one man only, a real tyrannical Democrat, through a series of infantile provocations, betraying with a supreme fraud the population of his own country, wanted the war and had prepared for it day by day with diabolical obstinacy.”
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Hitler also threw back in Washington's face the leaked War Department document of several days before, which had claimed that the U.S. government was mobilizing for a conflict against Germany to begin in 1943.
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Secretary of War Henry Stimson had prepared a document at FDR's request, outlining what it would take in terms of money, manpower, and materiel if the United States entered the war, but it was certainly not a declaration of war.
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Concluding, Hitler modestly remarked, “I am now the head of the strongest military force in the world, of the strongest air force and the most gallant navy. Behind me is the National Socialist Party with which I grew great and which grew great with me and by me. I thank the President and I thank God for the opportunity given me and the German nation that our generation, too, may write a page in the book of honor of German history.”
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None of this was news to either Franklin Roosevelt or Cordell Hull. The speeches themselves happened about thirty minutes before the nations' diplomats arrived—and news, even then, traveled fast. Roosevelt and Hull had known this was in the offing and even wanted to get into the war to help Britain. In
Our Country
, Michael Barone wrote, “The United States entered 1941 with a president who was determined to bring the country to the defense of Britain. . . .”
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So, it was not surprising that Hull took the whole matter with a bit of nonchalance. He didn't even bother meeting with German first secretary Herbert von Strempel (who was suspected of funneling money to pro-Nazi groups in America)
¹¹
and Chargé d'Affaires Hans Thomsen. They arrived at 8:30 a.m., thirty minutes after Hitler's announcement. Hull was not there, and the two diplomats waited an hour before meeting with Ray Atherton, chief of the European Division. Atherton took the note and said his acceptance of it was only the formalization of the undeclared war that had existed between the two countries since 1939—in retrospect, an astonishing statement. Hull then arrived, but through an aide he informed the two Germans that he was “too busy with important matters to see them.”
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Hull was frostier than the Washington weather, which was only in the low twenties. The
New York Times
reported the only excitement generated at the State Department was from the “correspondents and photographers seeking information and pictures.”
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The message Hull refused to accept came from Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop, via their ambassador to America, the same as which von Ribbentrop had given personally in Berlin to the American representative, Leland Morris,
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and Chargé d'Affaires George L. Brandt around the same time. America had not had an ambassador to Germany since 1938, when Hugh Wilson had been recalled for discussions and never returned.
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Like the Japanese declaration, the German avowal accused the United States of all manner of things including “having violated in the most flagrant manner and in ever-increasing measure all rules of neutrality in favor of the adversaries of Germany.” The missive elaborated, saying, “Although Germany on her part has strictly adhered to the rules of international law in her relations with the United States during every period of the present war, the Government of the United States from initial violations of neutrality had finally proceeded to open acts of war against Germany. The Government of the United States has thereby virtually created a state of war.” The statement concluded by breaking off diplomatic relations between the two countries and “as from today, considers herself as being in a state of war with the United States of America.”
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The situation between Washington and Berlin had been deteriorating for several years, at least since the Munich Conference in 1938, when Roosevelt had publicly urged Hitler not to seek any more territory. In April 1939, FDR had actually offered Hitler economic assistance in exchange for Germany to abide by “10-year[s] of peace and disarmament.”
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By the fall of 1941, the two countries were at war in nearly all respects, at least on the high seas, with Hitler's “unrestricted warfare” directive on all American vessels,
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both military and commercial.

Some slow-learning observers complained that Germany was in complete violation of the Versailles Treaty ending the Great War, but it was beyond moot at this point. A war machine of terrifying abilities had been assembled and was being led by a madman.

Later that morning, around 10:40 a.m., Italian Ambassador Prince Colonna arrived at the State Department but only delivered a verbal message of the Italian pronouncement of war on America. This time, only the lowly political adviser to Hull, James Dunn, granted an audience to the Italian. Dunn told Colonna, with all the contempt he could muster, that the United States “fully anticipated that Italy would follow obediently along” the lead of Germany.
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Apparently Colonna had to be roused for the meeting. Earlier, reporters had banged on the door of the Italian embassy in Washington, only to be greeted by a servant wearing an apron who replied, “The boss is still in bed.”
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Following the formalities, all representatives agreed to surrender their diplomatic credentials, and all parties agreed to the safe and speedy passage of nationals to their respective countries as proscribed by the rules of international law.

Hard as it was to comprehend, the goal of the Geneva Conventions had been to civilize war.

That afternoon, Roosevelt sent a communiqué to the Hill, along with a request for resolutions of war against Germany and Italy. It said:

“On the morning of December 11, the Government of Germany, pursuing its course of world conquest, declared war against the United States,” he said. “The long-known and long-expected has thus taken place. The forces endeavoring to enslave the entire world now are moving toward this hemisphere. Never before has there been a greater challenge to life, liberty and civilization. Delay invites great danger. Rapid and united effort by all the peoples of the world who are determined to remain free will insure a world victory of the forces of justice and of righteousness over the forces of savagery and of barbarism.” Then concluding, FDR wrote, “Italy also has declared war against the United States. I therefore request the Congress to recognize a state of war between the United States and Germany and between the United States and Italy.”
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The
New York Times
noted that while “all over the city the Stars and Stripes flew proudly from public buildings,”
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the vote in Congress came amid a “grim mood.”
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But it was also a determined mood. Unlike the vote on war with Japan, Congress this time passed the declarations without opposition, as Congresswoman Jeannette Rankin squeakily voted, “present.”
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The people of Montana had been apoplectic over Rankin's vote several days earlier against war with Japan.
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This time, the Senate voted 88–0 for war with Germany and 90-0 for war with Italy. Two members had been in
abstentia
but apparently in town for the vote on Germany but made it back in time for the vote on Italy. Those two were Democrats William Smathers of New Jersey and Charles Andrews of Florida who both “arrived in the Senate chamber just too late to vote for war against Germany, but were recorded in the Italian count.”
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Again, as with the vote on Japan, some members were missing but sent messages indicating they would have voted in the affirmative.