angrybellsprout
01-13-08, 05:34 AM
Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a man who spoke highly of neutrality and for that is hailed as a hero by some Americans for being a neutral president. He tried to tell a story about how he pushed for neutrality in a world of belligerents, but sadly was forced into war due to the actions of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. That if it were not for the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by Imperial Japan, then the neutral Americans would not have had to defend themselves against the aggressive nations.
As Franklin spoke so much of his neutrality, then it would be expected that he knew what neutralism, neutrality and being a neutral were. The accepted definition of neutralism is both as neutrality and a policy or the advocacy of neutrality especially in international affairs, while neutrality is commonly defined as the quality or state of being neutral especially with regards to immunity from invasion or being used by belligerents. Finally the term neutral is considered to be a term to describe a neutral state or power that is not engaged on either side of a conflict.
These terms seem to correspond well with the words of the Neutrality Acts that were both passed by the United States Congress and signed by FDR himself during the 1930s. The Neutrality Acts offered such proposals as a suspension of rights of American citizens on board a belligerent ship, a prohibition of loans to belligerent nations, and a prohibition of involvement in civil wars. These were actions meant to keep the nation out of war.
The definitions of neutrality, neutralism and neutral also seem to correspond well with the words of Roosevelt himself given in a radio address to the nation on September 3rd, 1939. In this address he talked about the German invasion of Poland, and how there had been so much war in the past four years. Roosevelt also went on to talk about how he was in the process of writing up a proclamation of neutrality to go along with international law and American policy. The address ended with Roosevelt talking about how he had seen war and that he hated war, thus he hoped that the United States would keep out of the war in Europe.
Not even a week later, Roosevelt begun to take actions that would go against the very concept of neutrality. On September 5th, 1939 Roosevelt contacted Winston Churchill to work on plans to force the United States into the British war with Germany. The focal point of these plans was to force an attack on the United States by Germany, so that Roosevelt would be able to declare war on Germany and claim self-defense.
During 1940 the American people witnessed German advancement over Europe, and were debating on America’s role in the war. There were large groups of isolationists and interventionists all across the United States. 1940 was also an election year and Franklin Roosevelt was up for re-election to the presidency. Within this context, Roosevelt proposed policies such as the draft, Destroyers for Bases, the Joint Canadian-American Defense Board and Lend-Lease. All of which were assaults on the very concept of neutrality that Roosevelt had proudly proclaimed just a year earlier, but were made easier to proclaim because Roosevelt’s opponent in the election that year was also a proclaimed interventionist, thus the view of Roosevelt as somewhat of a neutral remained in tact.
Winston Churchill, now Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, said he was very anxious waiting for the passage of the Lend-Lease Bill by Congress in a communication to Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins in February of 1941. Churchill was very glad to see that the bill pass on March 11th since it would allow his country the material to strengthen its position in the war it was fighting against Germany.
Roosevelt had put into place American patrols to protect British shipping in the Atlantic Ocean. The job of these patrols was to discover the location of German naval warships, and report those locations to the British. The orders of the patrols came just short of shooting at the Germans on sight due to resolutions that were introduced into Congress in late March of 1941.
The hopes of these naval patrols were two-fold in nature, and were commonly talked about in the communications between Roosevelt and Churchill. The first goal was to give aid to the British Royal Navy, and the second was an attempt to goad the German’s into attacking the Navy of the United States. The purpose of the second goal was to allow Roosevelt a chance to declare war on Germany without disturbing the American populace at home by claiming self-defense. Around April of 1941 Roosevelt saw that most of Europe had fallen to the might of the German military, and Churchill was pressuring Roosevelt for direct involvement in the war in Europe.
All along Roosevelt and Churchill would talk about an “incident” occurring between the United States and the German military in the text of the telegraphs and letters between the two of them. The two of them hoped that the Americans could anger the Germans to the point of attacking them. This would allow for Roosevelt to declare war and claim self-defense in the process, thus being able to hang on to his claim of neutrality. With the patrols in the Atlantic tracking German Naval positions, Roosevelt expressed his certainty of an “incident” from Germany. He even went as far as to state that he was “confident that the Germans would give us” such an “incident”.
Churchill shared the feelings of despair that the Americans might not be able to have an “incident” take place in the Atlantic due to German naval policy. This sentiment along with his feelings towards Roosevelt’s public assertion that the Atlantic Conference brought America “no closer to war” were expressed in a message to Henry Hopkins on August 29th, 1941. Hopkins later wrote in a memo that he told Roosevelt the British were under the belief that the United States would ultimately get into the war on some basis or another.
More specifically Roosevelt and Churchill were writing about their hoped for response to the American declaration of having a protectorate over Greenland, and the stationing of American naval forces in the Canadian port of Argentina. There was a glimmer of hope on May 21st when the American freighter Robert Moor was sunk, but it was not enough to convince the American people to end their neutrality and to go to war in Europe.
The desire of the American people to remain neutral was not going to stand in the way of Roosevelt’s desire to commit belligerent acts towards Germany in order to force declared war with the Germans. Roosevelt’s next step towards achieving this goal was to relieve the British troops in Iceland. The act was declared “practically an act of war” by Admiral Stark. After the deployment Roosevelt told Britain’s Lord Halifax the “whole thing would now boil up very quickly.”
Once he had the troops in Iceland, Roosevelt declared that the Navy was to escort all ships to Iceland, even foreign ships. Secretary of War Henry Stimson then made an analogy about Roosevelt’s plans for Germany by saying “the vacillations and the pulling back and forth, trying to make the Confederates fire the first shot. Well, that is what apparently the President is trying to do here.”
After Churchill criticized Roosevelt for his public statements of refusing to discuss war, Roosevelt came up with his response. Roosevelt explained that he was “skating on pretty thin ice in his relations with Congress, which, however, he did not regard as truly representative of the country.” After complaints about how the process of a formal war declaration through Congress would take too long, Roosevelt made more comments about the need to force an incident. Roosevelt declared that with regards to Germany he “would wage war, but not declare it, and that he would become more and more provocative… Everything was to be done to force an ‘incident’… The President… made it clear that he would look for an ‘incident’ which would justify him in opening hostilities.”
Roosevelt’s next move in violating his own neutrality was to get into the island chain owned by the government of Portugal known as the Azores, under the guise of defending the territory of Portugal from German advances. The move was planned to take place September 15th 1941, the same date that Churchill was to move into the mid-Atlantic by way of occupying the Spanish owned Canary Islands. The plans didn’t go through since the continued Soviet resistance against the German invasion made their claims of defending Portugal and Spain moot.
During all of this time there was another war going on in the world. In fact it was one of the wars that Roosevelt was making reference to in his September 3rd radio address in 1939 after the German invasion of Poland. The Japanese were still at war with China, and were looking towards a southern move against southeastern Asia, and particularly the European colonies in the area.
The invasion of China by the Japanese did create a fairly negative view of the Japanese within the American population. While this did convince the American government to impose limited economic and political sanctions, they did not even consider the idea of going to war with Japan over China. The American people even refused to believe that the Japanese were even their enemies.
When he first entered office Roosevelt had joined a long line of presidents who had set a fairly consistent tradition considering the issues of East Asia. Both Roosevelt and the presidents who preceded him believed in the Open Door policy and free trade, but they also believed that the treaties considering that area of the world should be held up with moral principles instead of warfare. Even Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, in talking about the actions of president Hoover, noted that Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt’s relative and former president, said that “American interests in the Orient were not worth a war.”
Even by 1937 Franklin Roosevelt and his governmental policy regarding the Far East remained one of fairly strict neutrality. While the American government was still angered over the invasion of China by the Japanese, the Secretary of State at the time Cordell Hull made it clear to the Chinese nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, that while the American government wanted to see treaties upheld, it did not wish to involve itself in a foreign conflict. Hull even made note to the Japanese Ambassador that both sides would be held “equally responsible” for the hostilities taking place if the action moved closer to Shanghai.
As the relationship between Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany grew closer and closer, especially with the signing of the Tripartite Pact, the American response grew more and more hostile towards Imperial Japan. The American people began to equate the Japanese New Order with Hitler’s. In the view of many Americans the war in Europe and Asia were in fact the same war, and the Tripartite Act only solidified this idea.
Along with the growing distrust and resentment towards the Japanese by the American people, the American government as well began to openly discuss making hostile acts towards Imperial Japan. Aid had begun to flow into China to help them resist the Japanese, and there were calls for more aid and embargos against the Japanese government. The only real response that the Japanese could make back to the Americans was that the United States and Britain had forced them into the alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy due to the isolation that Imperial Japan had found itself in.
By the start of 1941, the Japanese had strengthened their holdings in China, had occupied French Indochina, and were looking towards a southern expansion into the colonies of the European powers, such as British Borneo, the Dutch East Indies, and the American Philippine Islands. The American government was leading the way in supplying aid to the Chinese and keeping an embargo against Japan.
Within the American government during the first half of 1941 Roosevelt’s goals in relation to Japan were fairly clear. America needed to prevent the southern expansion of Japan, and needed to keep Japan out of the war in Europe. The ways to do this were to keep pushing aid into China and to start freezing Japanese assets within the United States.
Despite all of this, one thing still remained the same in American policy. While the Americans were displeased with the idea of Japan occupying China, they would not go to war over China. The belief was that America would go to war to defend the British, Dutch and American territories in Asia, but China was simply not worth it. This was confirmed in the writings of Ambassador Grew in November of 1940.
By July 1941 the Japanese were on the defensive, things were starting to fall apart within the nation. The strict economic sanctions imposed by the United States were working, and the Japanese were at a point where they wanted peace with America. The Japanese were starting to give signs that they would be willing to leave Indochina, and that they were starting to realize their desire for southern expansion was one that was not going to materialize.
While there were some who wanted to change the strategy from one of just keeping Japan at bay, there were others who were wanting to push Japan out of China before peace could be reestablished between America and Japan. The most notable opponents to this idea of pushing Japan even further were the American military leadership. They believed that America should focus on keeping Japan out of the war and pushing for the fall of Germany, and not care if China falls further into Japanese hands. The Army Intelligence Service believed that there were growing rifts between Germany and Japan, that the Japanese had the desire to get itself peace without war, and that if the Americans pushed too hard for the removal of Japanese troops from China that it could end up harming America.
The Army Intelligence Service believed that aside from the fact that the Japanese government wasn’t in the position politically to be able to leave China, the excess troop numbers that would be freed up would most likely end up in an invasion of Siberia or the southwest Pacific. The end result of the Japanese leaving China would end up being war with the United States. Colonel Hayes A. Kroner, acting Assistant Chief of Staff of the Service, specifically warned against further American efforts to push the Japanese out of China in a memorandum for sent to the President, Secretary of War, the Under Secretary of War, the Assistant Secretary of War, the Director of Naval Intelligence, Major General Embick, and others.
While Roosevelt himself seemed to ignore much of the events taking place with respects to Japan, he had to have heard the warnings of Colonel Kroner. It was obvious that further pressure on Japan would lead to war with Japan, and push Japan closer to Germany. This was Roosevelt’s chance to obtain the incident that he had been trying for since 1939 with Germany, and get Churchill off his back about joining the war in Europe.
Roosevelt used willful neglect, both towards traditional American policy in the Far East and against the advice of his military leadership, to allow his Secretary of State to force war with Japan as a means to obtain a way around the American public and the Congress to gain his admission into the Second World War. Now Roosevelt could still claim neutrality to the public, and pretend that the United States was forced into the war. This was despite the illegal warfare in the Atlantic Ocean and other belligerent acts towards Germany, and the forcing of war with Japan.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt may have called himself a neutral, and may have used the term in many of his public addresses, but his actions prove otherwise. His lies about being a victim of the belligerent states, while being as belligerent as those he opposed, are an affront to the very concept of neutrality. How this man could ever mention the word neutral with a straight face is shocking, and the fact that others would take him for his word is saddening.
Bibliography
Dallek, Robert. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945
New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Churchill, Winston S. The Grand Alliance Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company
1950.
Gantenbein, James W. Documentary Background of World War II New York:
Columbia University Press, 1948.
Kroner, Hayes A. Memorandium for the Chief of Staff: Subject: Japanese-
American Relations October 2, 1941
http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/timeline/411002amie.html
Marks, Fredrick W. III. Wind Over Sand the Diplomacy of Franklin Roosevelt
Athens GA: University of Georgia, 1988.
“Neutrality Acts” The Reader’s Companion to American History, Eric Foner and
John A. Garraty Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991 Answers.com 27 Apr.
2006 http://www.answers.com/topic/neutrality-act
Schroeder, Paul W. The Axis Alliance and Japanese-American Relations 1941
Ithaca, New York Cornell University Press, 1958.
Websters New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam Co. 1977.
I'm just saddened that I wrote this before I had found out about this :(
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/McCollum/
As Franklin spoke so much of his neutrality, then it would be expected that he knew what neutralism, neutrality and being a neutral were. The accepted definition of neutralism is both as neutrality and a policy or the advocacy of neutrality especially in international affairs, while neutrality is commonly defined as the quality or state of being neutral especially with regards to immunity from invasion or being used by belligerents. Finally the term neutral is considered to be a term to describe a neutral state or power that is not engaged on either side of a conflict.
These terms seem to correspond well with the words of the Neutrality Acts that were both passed by the United States Congress and signed by FDR himself during the 1930s. The Neutrality Acts offered such proposals as a suspension of rights of American citizens on board a belligerent ship, a prohibition of loans to belligerent nations, and a prohibition of involvement in civil wars. These were actions meant to keep the nation out of war.
The definitions of neutrality, neutralism and neutral also seem to correspond well with the words of Roosevelt himself given in a radio address to the nation on September 3rd, 1939. In this address he talked about the German invasion of Poland, and how there had been so much war in the past four years. Roosevelt also went on to talk about how he was in the process of writing up a proclamation of neutrality to go along with international law and American policy. The address ended with Roosevelt talking about how he had seen war and that he hated war, thus he hoped that the United States would keep out of the war in Europe.
Not even a week later, Roosevelt begun to take actions that would go against the very concept of neutrality. On September 5th, 1939 Roosevelt contacted Winston Churchill to work on plans to force the United States into the British war with Germany. The focal point of these plans was to force an attack on the United States by Germany, so that Roosevelt would be able to declare war on Germany and claim self-defense.
During 1940 the American people witnessed German advancement over Europe, and were debating on America’s role in the war. There were large groups of isolationists and interventionists all across the United States. 1940 was also an election year and Franklin Roosevelt was up for re-election to the presidency. Within this context, Roosevelt proposed policies such as the draft, Destroyers for Bases, the Joint Canadian-American Defense Board and Lend-Lease. All of which were assaults on the very concept of neutrality that Roosevelt had proudly proclaimed just a year earlier, but were made easier to proclaim because Roosevelt’s opponent in the election that year was also a proclaimed interventionist, thus the view of Roosevelt as somewhat of a neutral remained in tact.
Winston Churchill, now Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, said he was very anxious waiting for the passage of the Lend-Lease Bill by Congress in a communication to Secretary of Commerce Harry Hopkins in February of 1941. Churchill was very glad to see that the bill pass on March 11th since it would allow his country the material to strengthen its position in the war it was fighting against Germany.
Roosevelt had put into place American patrols to protect British shipping in the Atlantic Ocean. The job of these patrols was to discover the location of German naval warships, and report those locations to the British. The orders of the patrols came just short of shooting at the Germans on sight due to resolutions that were introduced into Congress in late March of 1941.
The hopes of these naval patrols were two-fold in nature, and were commonly talked about in the communications between Roosevelt and Churchill. The first goal was to give aid to the British Royal Navy, and the second was an attempt to goad the German’s into attacking the Navy of the United States. The purpose of the second goal was to allow Roosevelt a chance to declare war on Germany without disturbing the American populace at home by claiming self-defense. Around April of 1941 Roosevelt saw that most of Europe had fallen to the might of the German military, and Churchill was pressuring Roosevelt for direct involvement in the war in Europe.
All along Roosevelt and Churchill would talk about an “incident” occurring between the United States and the German military in the text of the telegraphs and letters between the two of them. The two of them hoped that the Americans could anger the Germans to the point of attacking them. This would allow for Roosevelt to declare war and claim self-defense in the process, thus being able to hang on to his claim of neutrality. With the patrols in the Atlantic tracking German Naval positions, Roosevelt expressed his certainty of an “incident” from Germany. He even went as far as to state that he was “confident that the Germans would give us” such an “incident”.
Churchill shared the feelings of despair that the Americans might not be able to have an “incident” take place in the Atlantic due to German naval policy. This sentiment along with his feelings towards Roosevelt’s public assertion that the Atlantic Conference brought America “no closer to war” were expressed in a message to Henry Hopkins on August 29th, 1941. Hopkins later wrote in a memo that he told Roosevelt the British were under the belief that the United States would ultimately get into the war on some basis or another.
More specifically Roosevelt and Churchill were writing about their hoped for response to the American declaration of having a protectorate over Greenland, and the stationing of American naval forces in the Canadian port of Argentina. There was a glimmer of hope on May 21st when the American freighter Robert Moor was sunk, but it was not enough to convince the American people to end their neutrality and to go to war in Europe.
The desire of the American people to remain neutral was not going to stand in the way of Roosevelt’s desire to commit belligerent acts towards Germany in order to force declared war with the Germans. Roosevelt’s next step towards achieving this goal was to relieve the British troops in Iceland. The act was declared “practically an act of war” by Admiral Stark. After the deployment Roosevelt told Britain’s Lord Halifax the “whole thing would now boil up very quickly.”
Once he had the troops in Iceland, Roosevelt declared that the Navy was to escort all ships to Iceland, even foreign ships. Secretary of War Henry Stimson then made an analogy about Roosevelt’s plans for Germany by saying “the vacillations and the pulling back and forth, trying to make the Confederates fire the first shot. Well, that is what apparently the President is trying to do here.”
After Churchill criticized Roosevelt for his public statements of refusing to discuss war, Roosevelt came up with his response. Roosevelt explained that he was “skating on pretty thin ice in his relations with Congress, which, however, he did not regard as truly representative of the country.” After complaints about how the process of a formal war declaration through Congress would take too long, Roosevelt made more comments about the need to force an incident. Roosevelt declared that with regards to Germany he “would wage war, but not declare it, and that he would become more and more provocative… Everything was to be done to force an ‘incident’… The President… made it clear that he would look for an ‘incident’ which would justify him in opening hostilities.”
Roosevelt’s next move in violating his own neutrality was to get into the island chain owned by the government of Portugal known as the Azores, under the guise of defending the territory of Portugal from German advances. The move was planned to take place September 15th 1941, the same date that Churchill was to move into the mid-Atlantic by way of occupying the Spanish owned Canary Islands. The plans didn’t go through since the continued Soviet resistance against the German invasion made their claims of defending Portugal and Spain moot.
During all of this time there was another war going on in the world. In fact it was one of the wars that Roosevelt was making reference to in his September 3rd radio address in 1939 after the German invasion of Poland. The Japanese were still at war with China, and were looking towards a southern move against southeastern Asia, and particularly the European colonies in the area.
The invasion of China by the Japanese did create a fairly negative view of the Japanese within the American population. While this did convince the American government to impose limited economic and political sanctions, they did not even consider the idea of going to war with Japan over China. The American people even refused to believe that the Japanese were even their enemies.
When he first entered office Roosevelt had joined a long line of presidents who had set a fairly consistent tradition considering the issues of East Asia. Both Roosevelt and the presidents who preceded him believed in the Open Door policy and free trade, but they also believed that the treaties considering that area of the world should be held up with moral principles instead of warfare. Even Secretary of State Henry L. Stimson, in talking about the actions of president Hoover, noted that Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt’s relative and former president, said that “American interests in the Orient were not worth a war.”
Even by 1937 Franklin Roosevelt and his governmental policy regarding the Far East remained one of fairly strict neutrality. While the American government was still angered over the invasion of China by the Japanese, the Secretary of State at the time Cordell Hull made it clear to the Chinese nationalist leader, Chiang Kai-shek, that while the American government wanted to see treaties upheld, it did not wish to involve itself in a foreign conflict. Hull even made note to the Japanese Ambassador that both sides would be held “equally responsible” for the hostilities taking place if the action moved closer to Shanghai.
As the relationship between Imperial Japan, Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany grew closer and closer, especially with the signing of the Tripartite Pact, the American response grew more and more hostile towards Imperial Japan. The American people began to equate the Japanese New Order with Hitler’s. In the view of many Americans the war in Europe and Asia were in fact the same war, and the Tripartite Act only solidified this idea.
Along with the growing distrust and resentment towards the Japanese by the American people, the American government as well began to openly discuss making hostile acts towards Imperial Japan. Aid had begun to flow into China to help them resist the Japanese, and there were calls for more aid and embargos against the Japanese government. The only real response that the Japanese could make back to the Americans was that the United States and Britain had forced them into the alliance with Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy due to the isolation that Imperial Japan had found itself in.
By the start of 1941, the Japanese had strengthened their holdings in China, had occupied French Indochina, and were looking towards a southern expansion into the colonies of the European powers, such as British Borneo, the Dutch East Indies, and the American Philippine Islands. The American government was leading the way in supplying aid to the Chinese and keeping an embargo against Japan.
Within the American government during the first half of 1941 Roosevelt’s goals in relation to Japan were fairly clear. America needed to prevent the southern expansion of Japan, and needed to keep Japan out of the war in Europe. The ways to do this were to keep pushing aid into China and to start freezing Japanese assets within the United States.
Despite all of this, one thing still remained the same in American policy. While the Americans were displeased with the idea of Japan occupying China, they would not go to war over China. The belief was that America would go to war to defend the British, Dutch and American territories in Asia, but China was simply not worth it. This was confirmed in the writings of Ambassador Grew in November of 1940.
By July 1941 the Japanese were on the defensive, things were starting to fall apart within the nation. The strict economic sanctions imposed by the United States were working, and the Japanese were at a point where they wanted peace with America. The Japanese were starting to give signs that they would be willing to leave Indochina, and that they were starting to realize their desire for southern expansion was one that was not going to materialize.
While there were some who wanted to change the strategy from one of just keeping Japan at bay, there were others who were wanting to push Japan out of China before peace could be reestablished between America and Japan. The most notable opponents to this idea of pushing Japan even further were the American military leadership. They believed that America should focus on keeping Japan out of the war and pushing for the fall of Germany, and not care if China falls further into Japanese hands. The Army Intelligence Service believed that there were growing rifts between Germany and Japan, that the Japanese had the desire to get itself peace without war, and that if the Americans pushed too hard for the removal of Japanese troops from China that it could end up harming America.
The Army Intelligence Service believed that aside from the fact that the Japanese government wasn’t in the position politically to be able to leave China, the excess troop numbers that would be freed up would most likely end up in an invasion of Siberia or the southwest Pacific. The end result of the Japanese leaving China would end up being war with the United States. Colonel Hayes A. Kroner, acting Assistant Chief of Staff of the Service, specifically warned against further American efforts to push the Japanese out of China in a memorandum for sent to the President, Secretary of War, the Under Secretary of War, the Assistant Secretary of War, the Director of Naval Intelligence, Major General Embick, and others.
While Roosevelt himself seemed to ignore much of the events taking place with respects to Japan, he had to have heard the warnings of Colonel Kroner. It was obvious that further pressure on Japan would lead to war with Japan, and push Japan closer to Germany. This was Roosevelt’s chance to obtain the incident that he had been trying for since 1939 with Germany, and get Churchill off his back about joining the war in Europe.
Roosevelt used willful neglect, both towards traditional American policy in the Far East and against the advice of his military leadership, to allow his Secretary of State to force war with Japan as a means to obtain a way around the American public and the Congress to gain his admission into the Second World War. Now Roosevelt could still claim neutrality to the public, and pretend that the United States was forced into the war. This was despite the illegal warfare in the Atlantic Ocean and other belligerent acts towards Germany, and the forcing of war with Japan.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt may have called himself a neutral, and may have used the term in many of his public addresses, but his actions prove otherwise. His lies about being a victim of the belligerent states, while being as belligerent as those he opposed, are an affront to the very concept of neutrality. How this man could ever mention the word neutral with a straight face is shocking, and the fact that others would take him for his word is saddening.
Bibliography
Dallek, Robert. Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932-1945
New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Churchill, Winston S. The Grand Alliance Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company
1950.
Gantenbein, James W. Documentary Background of World War II New York:
Columbia University Press, 1948.
Kroner, Hayes A. Memorandium for the Chief of Staff: Subject: Japanese-
American Relations October 2, 1941
http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/timeline/411002amie.html
Marks, Fredrick W. III. Wind Over Sand the Diplomacy of Franklin Roosevelt
Athens GA: University of Georgia, 1988.
“Neutrality Acts” The Reader’s Companion to American History, Eric Foner and
John A. Garraty Houghton Mifflin Company, 1991 Answers.com 27 Apr.
2006 http://www.answers.com/topic/neutrality-act
Schroeder, Paul W. The Axis Alliance and Japanese-American Relations 1941
Ithaca, New York Cornell University Press, 1958.
Websters New Collegiate Dictionary, Springfield, MA: G. & C. Merriam Co. 1977.
I'm just saddened that I wrote this before I had found out about this :(
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/McCollum/