rise-and-fall-of-the-third-reich-william-shirer-pdf

THE TURN OF THE UNITED STATES 797Nazi misapprehensions were due in large part to the failure at this junctureof the Japanese to take the German government into their confidence as to theirfateful decisions regarding America. Secretary Hull, thanks to the ”Magic”code breaker, was much better informed. As early as November 5 he knewthat the new Foreign Minister, Shigenori Togo, had wired Nomura setting adeadline of November 25 for the signing of an agreement – on Japan’s terms –with the American government. The final Japanese proposals were delivered inWashington on November 20. Hull and Roosevelt knew they were final becausetwo days later ”Magic” decoded for them a message from Togo to Nomura andKurusu which said so, while extending the deadline to November 29.There are reasons beyond your ability to guess [Togo wired his ambassadors]why we wanted to settle Japanese-American relations bythe 25th. But if the signing can be completed by the 29th . . . wehave decided to wait until that date. This time we mean it, thatthe deadline absolutely cannot be changed. After that things areautomatically going to happen. 1104November 25, 1941, is a crucial date.On that day the Japanese carrier task force sailed for Pearl Harbor. InWashington Hull went to the White House to warn the War Council of thedanger confronting the country from Japan and to stress to the U.S. Armyand Navy chiefs the possibility of Japanese surprise attacks. In Berlin thatday there was a somewhat grotesque ceremony in which the three Axis Powers,amid much pomp and ceremony, renewed the Anti-Comintern Pact of 1936 –an empty gesture which, as some Germans noted, did absolutely nothing to getJapan into the war against Russia but which afforded the pompous Ribbentropan opportunity to denounce Roosevelt as the ”chief culprit of this war” and toshed crocodile tears for the ”truthful, religious . . . American people” betrayedby such an irresponsible leader.The Nazi Foreign Minister seems to have become intoxicated by his ownwords. He called in Oshima on the evening of November 28, following a lengthycouncil of war earlier that day presided over by Hitler, and gave the Japaneseambassador the impression that the German attitude toward the United States,as Oshima promptly radioed Tokyo, had ”considerably stiffened.” Hitler’s policyof doing everything possible to keep America out of the war until Germany wasready to take her on seemed about to be jettisoned. Suddenly Ribbentrop wasurging the Japanese to go to war against the United States as well as Britainand promising the backing of the Third Reich. After warning Oshima that ”ifJapan hesitates . . . all the military might of Britain and the United States willbe concentrated against Japan” – a rather silly thesis as long as the Europeanwar continued – Ribbentrop added:As Hitler said today, there are fundamental differences in the veryright to exist between Germany and Japan and the United States.We have received advice to the effect that there is practically nohope of the Japanese-U.S. negotiations being concluded successfullybecause the United States is putting up a stiff front.If this is indeed the fact of the case, and if Japan reaches a decisionto fight Britain and the United States, I am confident that that not