Myths regarding Roosevelt

One Roosevelt did not control the intelligence generated by the army and Navy.
Two The diplomatic code never carried military information
Three the Pearl Harbor was never discussed except in person by those few who knew about it.
Four Roosevelt did not tell Kimmel or Short how to do their job.

 

It's not that FDR wasn't devious - just look at his activities with regard to his politics.
FDR's loyalty was to his political party, first, last and always. In actuality, a simpleton, who believed
the most ridiculous things ( the Depression due to "overproduction", the ability to control food prices by controlling the gold supply,
etc. etc. etc - it's a very long list). But the idea of FDR engineering a war with, of all countries, Japan, goes beyond any
rational thought. Besides, FDR wasn't bright enough to have done it, even if it were possible, which it wasn't.

 

Anyway, stripping Japan out of oil, without which their Navy would be useless in one year or less, probably means that something happens. Right? Or did Roosevelt and his Generals think the Japanese would pull out of China and say they are sorry for all the killings etc.? THAT would be naive.

 

Nevermind

 

Care to produce any actual support for this opinion?

Documentation please.

 

I'm curious where you get your ideas about Roosevelt. Perhaps imposing stringent sanctions doesn't meet your definition of engineering a war (though if I were a Japanese PM and faced the sanctions in qusdtion I'd surely think long and hard about what courses of action, including military action, might mitigate them. I doubt that unchaining the dragon to the immediate west would be my first choice.) "Simpleton" I will write off as a base slur, since the word has fallen out of the popular lexicon and I think Roosevelt's record makes it fairly obvious he wasn't suffering any significant intellectual impairment, either developmental or resulting from neurodegenerative disease. (One isn't elected to the presidency without, at minimum, an ability to speak clearly and remember one's lines. Organizational skill is also quite useful. These seem to be some of the first things affected by neurological disease, having lived through several close relatives suffering from a veritable panoply of said.) I think your discussion of Roosevelt's agricultural policy, at least, runs rather contrary to the historical record. A brief examination of the Agricultural Adjustment Act will show that the Roosevelt administration used subsidies paid to growers as the primary means to control food prices. By paying growers not to produce the administration sought to manipulate not the gold supply, but the food supply. The Thomas Amendment to the above did give the president broad power to influence monetary policy, but this was done mostly be either printing federal reserve notes or decreasing the gold content of the dollar; two inflationary devices that increase the money supply without affecting the gold supply. There was a mechanism for accepting silver in payment of war debts, but this would affect not the gold supply but the silver supply, and this seems to have been seldom used.

 

Japans decision to seize Indochina had only one purpose, to give Japan bases to seize more territory. The invasion of Malaya would have required carrier support with out the bases they had around Saigon. Japan started its war before Roosevelt took office. Besides America had no obligation to sell Japan oil and steel.

 

I'm inclined to believe that Roosevelt wanted Japan out of China, saw said war as more or less inevitable (which it probably was by then), and guessed that such a war would expand to military support of Britain in her war against Germany, so while he didn't write the oil embargo, his administration certainly pushed to enforce it and give it teeth.

OP, Was it not the United States that pressured Britain and through them the Dutch to join the embargo? And it was my understanding that his administration was the driving force behind the steel embargo. I suspect you have the answer to that close to hand. Virtually everything I've read about the subject came through a link you posted, so I'll leave it to you.

 

I'm off to see a movie...on the Hudson I think its called...later this week..where FDR meets our king before ww2. Clips seem good. As to the truth it will show I can only guess...But I like FDR...Britain liked FDR..we still do...for a foreign leader of so many years hence who was not a military dictator, he is quoted and mentioned lots still over here...We all have our personal rights and wrongs...but FDR will be remembered in this foreign land for many years to come. And on a personal note...I think he was your best president since Lincoln. But I'm a foreigner and leaders apart from dictators are never ever given the credit they sometimes deserve by their own folk..Thatcher, Gorbachev...etc. Blair...Not always feted in their own lands.

 

Thats it...the clips made me laugh out loud..so I have to see this one...Hot dogs for the king and queen of England...By god sir....

 

Not only did they have a hot dog feast, they were also entertained by Native American dancers. As a rather funny aside, the Queen couldn't open her mouth wide enough to eat the fully loaded hot dogs she was served, so she cut them up into smaller pieces and ate them like finger food. If I remember correctly they also had both potato salad and macaroni salad.

 

The movie - at least in this country - is Hyde Park on Hudson; I enjoyed it and thought it was well done. Bill Murray was excellent as FDR, interesting to see someone known for goofy comedy branching out (and getting older ). I liked the portrayals of George and Elizabeth too; we'd recently seen The King's Speech and another biopic about them, so they're getting to be familiar.

The hot dogs were not like ours today, long and skinny, too long for the rolls. No doubt somebody researched historic hot dogs; there's probably a doctoral thesis on them somewhere...... Today the dogs are often shorter than the rolls, guess it's getting harder to make ends meat......