{"id":176423,"date":"2015-08-28T12:14:01","date_gmt":"2015-08-28T12:14:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/?p=176423"},"modified":"2015-08-28T12:14:01","modified_gmt":"2015-08-28T12:14:01","slug":"the-greatness-of-franklin-d-roosevelt-or-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/the-greatness-of-franklin-d-roosevelt-or-not\/","title":{"rendered":"The Greatness of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Or Not?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

Many people are aware that\u00a0U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt skillfully lured Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor so as to get the American public to support joining England\u2019s war against Adolf Hitler\u2019s Nazis.<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Until the Pearl Harbor attack, all of FDR\u2019s efforts to win the U.S. public\u2019s support for going to war against Hitler had failed miserably, and time was rapidly running out to turn the war\u2019s tide away from Hitler and global dictatorship, and toward Churchill and a possible world future of democracy (the latter being the world future which has made our lives as good as they are, not the hell that Hitler had intended them to be). FDR\u2019s effort to join the war was blocked by congressional Republicans, allied with a few determinedly pacifist Democrats such as Idaho\u2019s Senator William E. Borah, people who ignored the ideological stakes, vast though those were, if they even opposed fascism at all (which in many cases is questionable). Communism was widely hated because America\u2019s rich hated it and propagandized heavily against it; so, Stalin\u2019s perfidies were well-publicized, but Hitler\u2019s and other fascists\u2019 vilenesses weren\u2019t so clearly and unambiguously presented, especially because many of America\u2019s aristocrats were very profitably doing business with Nazis and were hoping to become invited onto what then seemed likely to be the winning team after the war between Churchill and Hitler would be over. Both the Congress and the American public were against FDR on the war-issue, and yet FDR needed to turn all of them around on it, and to do it fast. The process to do this violated moral rules; and, in some respects, it even violated U.S. laws; but FDR did what he had to do, in order to save the world, by joining Churchill\u2019s war against Hitler.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As the BBC documentary which is linked to there (within the article linked to just above) makes clear (read that article, but above all, click onto that video<\/span><\/a>), Churchill was hiding some important things from FDR, or else FDR was hiding from everyone key things about Pearl Harbor that Churchill had informed him of. No one knows which is the case, but Churchill had certainly been constantly currently informed by British code-breakers regarding all details of Japan\u2019s evolving war-plans concerning Pearl Harbor, including Japan\u2019s decision in January 1941 to attack Pearl Harbor. Of course, Churchill had wanted the attack to occur, at least as much as did FDR, because Churchill desperately wanted Britain not to be defeated, and a U.S. entry into the war was now Britain\u2019s only hope. Furthermore, America\u2019s FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover intercepted British intelligence that showed Germany was helping Japan to prepare its Pearl Harbor attack. (Churchill already knew all about this, since it came from Britain\u2019s double-agent, who had infiltrated German intelligence.) FDR might have been hiding some important things from Churchill, Hitler might have been hiding some important things from Japan\u2019s leaders, Japan\u2019s leaders were definitely hiding some important things from Germany\u2019s leaders, and the situation was even more complicated than that.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

J. Edgar Hoover was hiding some important things from everyone but perhaps FDR, and FDR was hiding some important things from everyone, including from the commanders at Pearl Harbor. And the commanders at Pearl Harbor were, unbeknownst to them, being actively set-up by the U.S. President to take the rap for failing to have protected their forces adequately from an attack which FDR\u2019s people were actually doing everything they possibly could to facilitate and even to cause, and which Churchill\u2019s people knew all the details of, including even the planned day and time of the attack.\u00a0(NOTE: Those commanders were not punished, only retired from further service, so their \u201cSacrifice at Pearl Harbor,\u201d as the BBC documentary on the subject was titled, was kept to the very minimum that was necessary for the purpose, and the biggest sacrifice at Pearl Harbor was instead actually the 2,403 Americans who died, and the 1,178 who were wounded. Their sacrifices must be measured against the benefits that have been gained by defeating Hitler \u2013 benefits for the entire world, which continue to this day.)<\/span><\/p>\n

The White House decided to transfer some important military assets away from Pearl Harbor in order to make the target more vulnerable to Japan\u2019s attack. U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who was not in on the plan, was earnestly negotiating with Japan the conditions of ending the U.S. oil embargo against Japan, which blockade (aimed actually to force Japan to attack the U.S.) was strangling Japan, but (at 33:00 in the BBC documentary) Hull was shocked when FDR killed the deal, just at the time when Hull thought he had succeeded; Hull was \u201cfeeling betrayed\u201d by the President, for whom he had been working so long and so hard on this. The tapped phone call from the Japanese negotiator, back to Tokyo (34:46), said: \u201cI have made all efforts but they will not yield. \u2026 I believe it is of no avail. \u2026 Something will have to be done to get us out of this situation [i.e., to end the oil-blockade].\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Hull\u2019s \u2018negotiations\u2019 with Japan\u2019s Ambassadors were actually intended by Roosevelt to serve merely the purpose of fooling Japan\u2019s high command to think that the U.S. was trying to avoid a war with Japan. It was part of the trap FDR had set up. He succeeded at fooling Japan\u2019s high command. And he did it in such a way that (according to the taped phone-conversation) caused Japan\u2019s high officials to feel \u201chumiliated\u201d by what seemed to them to be the American President\u2019s casual dismissal of their offer. Hull was confused and frustrated by FDR\u2019s response, and was consequently unable to explain or justify it to his Japanese interlocutors. This was precisely what FDR wanted.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, in this light, we should all become introduced and welcomed into the world of international relations, regarding how mega-history is really made \u2013 not the fantasies that are told about it in the cleansed \u2018history\u2019 books (such as Republicans and other conservatives insist upon).\u00a0It\u2019s made by deceptions. And it\u2019s made by strategically sacrificing some of the people on one\u2019s own side, in order to save others of one\u2019s own people, so as to win victory in the greater international conflict.<\/span><\/p>\n

Mega-history is made by individuals who, even when they are partners and not merely when they are enemies, don\u2019t trust and are not always honest with one-another. It\u2019s made in a murky world, where each individual, if he is intelligent at all, needs to be doing his own investigation and to take the statements even of people on his own side as being possibly intended to deceive or otherwise mislead. This is the world of intelligence, and it\u2019s also the world of national leadership \u2013 even in a democracy. It\u2019s not just right values, and right priorities; it\u2019s also right gamesmanship. FDR was a giant.<\/span><\/p>\n

The press are constantly being lied-to; and any \u2018news\u2019 medium that reports, other than with considerable skepticism, anything that its government is saying or doing about international relations, is purely a propaganda-medium, no authentic journalistic medium, at all. That\u2019s just fake \u2018news\u2019 \u2018reporting,\u2019 but it is the routine and not the exception. It\u2019s nationalistic, but it is not<\/i> \u00a0patriotic. (There is a big<\/i> <\/span>difference.)<\/span><\/p>\n

On 29 November 1941 (39:00 in the linked-to BBC documentary), Cordell Hull confided to a journalistic friend, Joe Leib, that \u201cPearl Harbor would be attacked on December the seventh,\u201d and that \u201cif anything should erupt against him, that he would be protected by a friend.\u201d It was his request to Leib, to be<\/i> \u00a0that friend, \u201cwhich I have been to him.\u201d Leib immediately then issued a news report, to UPI, \u201cwhich put it only on the foreign wire. Ironically, the only paper to use it was The Honolulu Advertiser<\/i>. In its watered-down form,\u201d it was ignored even there locally; the news-editors had turned it into nothing, despite its being an exclusive news report from the U.S. Secretary of State. Even the Pearl Harbor command was still being kept in the dark. No one could imagine that the U.S. President would be willing to do such a thing. Even the U.S. Secretary of State did not fully understand FDR\u2019s strategy and the necessity of the tactics. The President played his cards that close to his vest. And this is how Hitler was defeated.\u00a0Because: otherwise, there seemed to be no other way he even could<\/i> <\/span>have been. (At that time, the defeat by Stalin of Hitler\u2019s invasion of Russia (\u201cOperation Barbarossa\u201d<\/span><\/a>) was hardly even imagined: Stalin\u2019s counteroffensive, which won the war in the East, just started on 5 December 1941, two days before<\/i> <\/span>the Pearl Harbor attack. At the time of Pearl Harbor, Hitler\u2019s fortunes were at their very peak. This is how desperate things were at that time.)<\/span><\/p>\n

As an investigative historian, I am dedicated to truth as being a historian\u2019s highest and most solemn obligation, and so I was taken aback when finding that many readers have criticized articles that I\u2019ve written that FDR was one of America\u2019s greatest, if not the very greatest, Presidents (a view that is widely shared among historians<\/span><\/a>\u00a0but not among the public who read only press propaganda), and who were saying of those articles from me, such things as,\u00a0“that was truly fdr\u2019s \u2018we had to kill democracy in order to save it\u2019 moment. it\u2019s not a democracy if the executive uses a false flag attack to manipulate the\u00a0public into war. he made his choice. he failed to imagine a better way. it\u2019s hard to respect such a person.\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

I replied to him: “FDR did what he needed to do there, because otherwise Hitler would have won the war, and we\u2019d subsequently have been ruled by Hitler. You might prefer\u00a0Hitler to FDR, Harry Truman, etc., but most Americans would not. FDR faced a public and a Congress who opposed our getting into the war; he needed\u00a0something like a Pearl Harbor in order to get the U.S. into the war in time to prevent Hitler from defeating Britain. Being a nation\u2019s leader entails the\u00a0making of a few choices that are like this: an injustice sometimes needs to be done in order to prevent there being an even bigger injustice. Abraham\u00a0Lincoln knew this; FDR knew this, and you are not better than they for your not knowing this or for your denying that it is true. To the contrary.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Another reader backed up the complainant\u2019s criticism, by saying, “A justified false flag. Amazing.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

To that, I replied: “Yes, a justified false-flag. It was the only remaining hope for the possibility (which is all it was at the time) that Hitler would be defeated. I am amazed at\u00a0the number of readers at this site who wish that Hitler had succeeded. Go to StormFront, instead: you don\u2019t belong here.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

And, to that, the original complainant responded by linking to this terrific BBC documentary (the one that was linked to in the present article\u2019s first link, and which has been summarized earlier here).\u00a0That video was their \u201ccase.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

So: now you know both sides of this debate, and can fairly judge it. I think that I have adequately presented both sides.<\/span><\/p>\n

PS: I have intentionally left out of this debate the other enormous achievements of FDR, such as Social Security, Glass-Steagall, and many more, because the complainants against my respect for FDR have focused almost exclusively upon this \u2018scandal\u2019 about him \u2013 a \u2019scandal\u2019 which I believe to be instead against the people who find it to be a scandal, not actually against FDR, in any way. But that\u2019s for you to judge, because the essential facts in the debate are now clear, and are accepted by both sides to it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013\u2013<\/span><\/p>\n

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They\u2019re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010<\/i><\/span><\/a>,<\/i> and of \u00a0<\/i>CHRIST\u2019S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity<\/i><\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org Many people are aware that\u00a0U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt skillfully lured Japan into attacking Pearl Harbor so as to get the American public to support joining England\u2019s war against Adolf Hitler\u2019s Nazis.\u00a0 Until the Pearl Harbor attack, all of FDR\u2019s efforts to win the U.S. public\u2019s support for going […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1254,"featured_media":176424,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[5722,948,535,886,702,5441,49,76,40,5691],"class_list":{"0":"post-176423","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-breaking-news","8":"tag-churchill","9":"tag-fdr","10":"tag-global-news","11":"tag-japan","12":"tag-nazis","13":"tag-roosevelt","14":"tag-usa-news","15":"tag-warfare","16":"tag-white-house","17":"tag-world-war-ii"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1254"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}