[spodi]

Good afternoon history buffs, I don't expect a response for at least month because the only nouns that seem to attend this sub forum are tumbleweeds and I so... When you get around to my question in 2015 first off, happy new years and secondly, my question. FDR was a great President and you could argue the greatest but what was his greatest mistake? I'm all ears.

[ThirdTerm]

FDR was the most popular president in US history who served four presidential terms but there is ample evidence that President Roosevelt provoked Imperial Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor by a series of diplomatic manipulations. During an election campaign, Roosevelt promised American voters that he would not send American soldiers to foreign wars and he needed to maneuvre Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan into firing the first shot, which would enable America to come to Britain's rescue in the European theatre. Even though relevant documents are still classified, Churchill may have warned FDR on the impending Japanese attack in a few telegrams he sent to FDR on the eve of Pearl Harbor. The Japanese fleet approaching Pearl Harbor did not maintain radio silence and Naval intelligence intercepted numerous dispatches, some of which revealed that Pearl Harbor was the target. The Dutch Army also decoded a dispatch from Tokyo which insinuated attacks on four sites including Hawaii and this crucial information was shared with British intelligence.

Roosevelt's intentions were nearly exposed in 1940 when Tyler Kent, a code clerk at the U.S. embassy in London, discovered secret dispatches between Roosevelt and Churchill. These revealed that FDR — despite contrary campaign promises — was determined to engage America in the war. Kent smuggled some of the documents out of the embassy, hoping to alert the American public — but was caught. With U.S. government approval, he was tried in a secret British court and confined to a British prison until the war's end.

During World War II's early days, the president offered numerous provocations to Germany: freezing its assets; shipping 50 destroyers to Britain; and depth-charging U-boats. The Germans did not retaliate, however. They knew America's entry into World War I had shifted the balance of power against them, and they shunned a repeat of that scenario. FDR therefore switched his focus to Japan. Japan had signed a mutual defense pact with Germany and Italy (the Tripartite Treaty). Roosevelt knew that if Japan went to war with the United States, Germany and Italy would be compelled to declare war on America — thus entangling us in the European conflict by the back door. As Harold Ickes, secretary of the Interior, said in October 1941: "For a long time I have believed that our best entrance into the war would be by way of Japan."

Much new light has been shed on Pearl Harbor through the recent work of Robert B. Stinnett, a World War II Navy veteran. Stinnett has obtained numerous relevant documents through the Freedom of Information Act. In Day of Deceit: The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor (2000), the book so brusquely dismissed by director Bruckheimer, Stinnett reveals that Roosevelt's plan to provoke Japan began with a memorandum from Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum, head of the Far East desk of the Office of Naval Intelligence. The memorandum advocated eight actions predicted to lead Japan into attacking the United States. McCollum wrote: "If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better." FDR enacted all eight of McCollum's provocative steps — and more.

While no one can excuse Japan's belligerence in those days, it is also true that our government provoked that country in various ways — freezing her assets in America; closing the Panama Canal to her shipping; progressively halting vital exports to Japan until we finally joined Britain in an all-out embargo; sending a hostile note to the Japanese ambassador implying military threats if Tokyo did not alter its Pacific policies; and on November 26th — just 11 days before the Japanese attack — delivering an ultimatum that demanded, as prerequisites to resumed trade, that Japan withdraw all troops from China and Indochina, and in effect abrogate her Tripartite Treaty with Germany and Italy.

After meeting with President Roosevelt on October 16, 1941, Secretary of War Henry Stimson wrote in his diary: "We face the delicate question of the diplomatic fencing to be done so as to be sure Japan is put into the wrong and makes the first bad move — overt move." On November 25, the day before the ultimatum was sent to Japan's ambassadors, Stimson wrote in his diary: "The question was how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot...."

http://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/h ... dr-was-not

[spodi]

Nice response thirdterm! Thanks for fresh information. I attended a book forum yesterday and if your a big Roosevelt fan I'll recommend the book. Its called Sphinx. Its about Roosevelt having to deal with isolationists and a war weary public prior to WWII. You might enjoy it.

Oh yeah they mentioned this at the forum lol

[Oberon]

Good afternoon history buffs, I don't expect a response for at least month because the only nouns that seem to attend this sub forum are tumbleweeds and I so... When you get around to my question in 2015 first off, happy new years and secondly, my question. FDR was a great President and you could argue the greatest but what was his greatest mistake? I'm all ears.

FDR's greatest 'mistake' was a mistake merely due to hindsight in judging his Presidency, but it was not spending nearly enough to break the the Depression. We know now, due to the military spending of WW II that we should have spent much more than what was spent given the depth of the Depression. It would have saved years of unnecessary sufffering, i.e. reduced the Depression to a couple of years versus a long gradual increase in the economy. Another failure was allowing gangsters to take over some labor unions, out of an unwarranted fear of Trotskyite leadership in some of them.

[Manifest]

FDR was a great President and you could argue the greatest but what was his greatest mistake?

This discussion topic is obviously biased and completely dishonest. You have limited the debate to force it to fit your ideology.

[Zamuel]

When you get around to my question in 2015. --- FDR was a great President and you could argue the greatest but what was his greatest mistake? I'm all ears.

Well, it's past mid 2015, time to address the question I guess ...

IMHO Roosevelt's biggest mistake was the OSS ... He created the agency under pressure and against military and state department advice and turned it over to a Kooky WWI medal of honor winner with strong ties to Nazi Germany. "Wild Bill" Donovan staffed it with like minded Ivy League lawyer friends ... Roosevelt basically ignored it throughout the war. It accomplished little, but established deep ties within the Nazi hierarchy.

Truman tried to dissolve it but it had grown to strong and morphed into the CIA. Donovan's buddies (like the Dulles brothers) used it to perpetuate fascist ideals, demonized communism, and perverted American ideology for the next 30 years.

Zam

-A conservative is a man with two perfectly good legs who, however, has never learned to walk forward- Franklin D. Roosevelt

[The Immortal Goon]

The internment of Japanese-Americans was his biggest blunder. Though FDR was reasonably progressive about race for his time (he started a slow crawl for integration), this was a completely unnecessary move that not only made the US lose a moral high ground and all that, but made the war more difficult. The 442, the mostly Japanese unit, was hugely decorated.

Added to this, Japanese soldiers were used very sparingly in the occupation and pacification of Japan. More of this would have been helpful.

Finally, it continued a precedent to remove and distribute land based upon ethnicity. After the war, housing and other government programs were applied along racial lines.

There are those that say this kind of thing would have been impossible for FDR to combat. But he was the most popular president in history (by some scales), and I do think something better could have been done.

[Joe Liberty]

FDR's greatest 'mistake' was a mistake merely due to hindsight in judging his Presidency, but it was not spending nearly enough to break the the Depression. We know now, due to the military spending of WW II that we should have spent much more than what was spent given the depth of the Depression. It would have saved years of unnecessary sufffering, i.e. reduced the Depression to a couple of years versus a long gradual increase in the economy.

The opposite has been argued extensively (and successfully), in fact: FDR's policies extended the Depression, forestalling a recovery that would've happened sooner.

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/FDR-s ... ssion-5409

So I would agree with you about his biggest mistake being the economy, but from a different perspective.

A very close second is the internment camps.

[Decky]

You really hate him don't you? You wish more American workers would have killed themselves and businesses would have been even richer. Libertarianism is treason.

[ThirdTerm]

The internment of Japanese-Americans was his biggest blunder. Though FDR was reasonably progressive about race for his time (he started a slow crawl for integration), this was a completely unnecessary move that not only made the US lose a moral high ground and all that, but made the war more difficult. The 442, the mostly Japanese unit, was hugely decorated.

President Roosevelt was a Democrat and his party had been closely associated with the Klan. President Wilson's close friend from Princeton was a Klansman and he promoted "The Birth of a Nation" at the White House, helping to boost the Klan's popularity. President Woodrow Wilson attended a special screening of the film directed by D.W. Griffith and based on "The Clansman", a novel written by Wilson's good friend Thomas Dixon. The Pacific War broke out mainly because of various racist policies adopted in the US at the time mostly by Democrats (i.e. the Chinese Exclusion Act.) There was long-standing racism against Japanese Americans on the West Coast but FDR's Executive Order 9066 was a necessary security measure. By interning Japanese Americans, Imperial Japan was completely in the dark about America's intentions and some Japanese Americans in Hawaii actually spied for Tokyo prior to Pearl Harbor. Thousands of German citizens were also interned in Britain by Churchill but it was impracticable to treat German Americans as enemy aliens in the US as they made up around 30% of white Americans.

On September 24, 1941, Tokyo wired the Honolulu consulate with what became known as the “bomb plot” message. It read:

#83 Strictly secret. Henceforth, we would like to have you make reports concerning vessels along the following lines insofar as possible:

1. The waters (of Pearl Harbor) are to be divided roughly into five sub-areas. (We have no objections to your abbreviating as much as you like.)
Area A. Waters between Ford Island and the Arsenal.
Area B. Waters adjacent to the Island south and west of Ford Island. (This area is on the opposite side of the Island from Area A.)
Area C. East Loch.
Area D. Middle Loch.
Area E. West Loch and the communicating water routes.

2. With regard to warships and aircraft carriers, we would like to have you report on those at anchor, (these are not so important) tied up at wharves, buoys and in docks. (Designate types and classes briefly. If possible we would like to have you make mention of the fact when there are two or more vessels along side the same wharf.)

Tokyo wanted in effect to place each American ship at Pearl Harbor in a grid. Perhaps most revealing was its final request: Why would the Japanese need to know when two or more vessels were docked side by side? This should have alerted American intelligence that Pearl Harbor might be a target, as such information would be critical in an attack; if two ships were at one wharf, dive-bombers would be needed to supplement submarine torpedoes, which likely would not be able to penetrate the outside ship’s hull and still reach the ship anchored on the inside.

The Americans deciphered message 83 on October 9, two months before Pearl Harbor. But neither Rear Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, the naval commander at Pearl Harbor, nor Lieutenant General Walter C. Short, the army commander there, read it until after the attack. The U.S. War Department in Washington did not generally share intercepted messages with its field commanders, for fear that disseminating too much intelligence gleaned from Japanese cables could alert the Japanese that their code was broken. General Short later testified to Congress that he should have been informed of message 83. That dispatch “analyzed critically,” he said, “is really a bombing plan for Pearl Harbor.”

http://www.historynet.com/the-spy-who-d ... harbor.htm

[quetzalcoatl]

Libertarianism is treason.

Agreed. However, libertarians don't acknowledge national or other collective identities, so treason means nothing to them. Incidentally, the notion that FDR's spending programs extended the depression have been thoroughly and completely debunked. Roosevelt, who wasn't strong on economics, fell prey to arguments that spending should be restrained. This halted the recovery and extended the Depression for another 5 years. FDR's real accomplishment was Social Security.

[Saeko]

Agreed. However, libertarians don't acknowledge national or other collective identities, so treason means nothing to them. Incidentally, the notion that FDR's spending programs extended the depression have been thoroughly and completely debunked. Roosevelt, who wasn't strong on economics, fell prey to arguments that spending should be restrained. This halted the recovery and extended the Depression for another 5 years. FDR's real accomplishment was Social Security.

Filthy barbarians.

[mikema63]

Libertarians only understand treason against a corporation, because a corporation has personhood and is thus and individual.

[The Immortal Goon]

ThirdTerm, that's really overstating FDR's relations with the Klan.

The Democrats were essentially two parties: the Dixiecrats and the Northeastern immigrant urbanites. The 1924 Democratic Convention is still notorious for both sides going at it for week after week, trying to take control of the party.

Governor of New York Al Smith, an Irish and Italian Catholic that came up through the Tammany machine; against William G. McAdoo, a wealthy Georgian backed by the Ku Klux Klan. FDR came out in favor of Smith, in the most dramatic way possible when nominating him, but also (I believe) supported the convention officially denouncing the Klan (this lost).

Davis of West Virginia ended up winning as a compromise candidate, but from here on out the lines in the Democratic ranks were pretty clearly drawn. FDR was on the anti-klan side.

Now, after he was president it is true he had to work with the Dixiecrats. It's also true that his wife was far more progressive than him and wanted him to go further in his integration policies. But by the standards of the time, he was progressive on those issues, even if not a radical.

And as for the utility of interning the Japanese, I don't think that it was worth the cost of not having access to the potential loyal soldiers, or continuing the precedent for division that followed policy after the war.

[Political Interest]

The Japanese treated Europeans who were citizens of enemy nations in the same way, both in Japan and in the countries they occupied.

No difference.

[KlassWar]

The Japanese treated Europeans who were citizens of enemy nations in the same way, both in Japan and in the countries they occupied.

No difference.

The Imperial Japanese were an overtly Fascist, ethnic-chauvinist regime. The US of A have traditionally pretended to be a democracy.

[Political Interest]

The Imperial Japanese were an overtly Fascist, ethnic-chauvinist regime. The US of A have traditionally pretended to be a democracy.

Yes that is very true but often the issue of the Japanese internees is used to morally condemn the West. It has nothing to do with ideology (unless we consider ideology merely an expression of a nation's collective will). All I am saying is that the Japanese did the same things as the Americans and therefore it is pointless to try and use this to argue that America was somehow uniquely immoral in doing so. If I'm not mistaken the Soviet Union also deported "problematic" populations like Volga Germans, Koreans and Caucasians to Central Asia.

Make no mistake, I'm the first one to condemn the excesses of any state, no matter which one it happens to be. I consider the Anglo-American fire bombings of Dresden and Tokyo some of the most abominable war crimes in history.

[Decky]

Meh, Germany started it PI. Maybe they should have thought about consequences before they all went out and voted for Hitler.

[Political Interest]

Meh, Germany started it PI. Maybe they should have thought about consequences before they all went out and voted for Hitler.

If you remember, they didn't all vote for Hitler. A number of them did but not all and not even a majority. Hitler got enough seats in parliament to form a government with the conservatives, after which he used the apparatus of state to exploit his way into leadership.

In any case we are going off topic...

[Decky]

Conservatives/ Nazis it's all the same in my book. The Tory party are instituting an action T4 program against the disabled in Britain right now.