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

802 THE RISE AND FALL OF THE THIRD REICHfirst at Thailand and perhaps Malaya. At 9 P.M. President Roosevelt got off apersonal message to the Emperor of Japan imploring him to join him in finding”ways of dispelling the dark clouds” and at the same time warning him thata thrust of the Japanese military forces into Southeast Asia would create asituation that was ”unthinkable.” At the Navy Department, intelligence officersdrew up their latest report on the location of the major warships of the JapaneseNavy. It listed most of them as being in home ports, including all the carriersand other warships of the task force which at that very moment had steamedto within three hundred miles of Pearl Harbor and was tuning up its bombersto take off at dawn,On that Saturday evening too the Navy Department informed the Presidentand Mr. Hull that the Japanese Embassy was destroying its codes. It had firsthad to decipher Togo’s long message, which had dribbled in all afternoon infourteen parts. The Navy decoders were also deciphering it as fast as it camein and by 9:30 P.M. a naval officer was at the White House with translationsof the first thirteen parts. Mr. Roosevelt, who was with Harry Hopkins in thestudy, read it and said, ”This means war.” But exactly when and just where,the message did not say and the President did not know. Even Admiral Nomuradid not know. Nor far off in Eastern Europe did Adolf Hitler. He knew lessthan Roosevelt.HITLER DECLARES WARThe Japanese onslaught on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor at 7:30A.M. (local time) on Sunday, December 7, 1941, caught Berlin as completelyby surprise as it did Washington. Though Hitler had made an oral promise toMatsuoka that Germany would join Japan in a war against the United Statesand Ribbentrop had made another to Ambassador Oshima, the assurance hadnot yet been signed and the Japanese had not breathed a word to the Germansabout Pearl Harbor. ∗ Besides, at this moment, Hitler was fully occupied tryingto rally his faltering generals and retreating troops in Russia,Night had fallen in Berlin when the foreign-broadcast monitoring service firstpicked up the news of the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. When an official of theForeign Office Press Department telephoned Ribbentrop the world-shaking newshe at first refused to believe it and was extremely angry at being disturbed. Thereport was ”probably a propaganda trick of the enemy,” he said, and orderedthat he be left undisturbed until morning. 1110 So probably Ribbentrop, for once,told the truth when he testified on the stand at Nuremberg that ”this attackcame as a complete surprise to us. We had considered the possibility of Japan’sattacking Singapore or perhaps Hong Kong, but we never considered an attackon the United States as being to our advantage.” 1111 However, contrary to whathe told the tribunal, he was exceedingly happy about it. Or so he struck Ciano.A night telephone call from Ribbentrop [Ciano began his diary onDecember 8], He is joyful over the Japanese attack on the UnitedStates. He is so happy, in fact, that I can’t but congratulate him,∗ It was long believed by many that Hitler knew in advance the exact hour of the attack onPearl Harbor, but I have been unable to find a single scrap of evidence in the secret Germanpapers to substantiate it.