@FieldMarshalGames:
Japan had no incentive to taking over North America. They just wanted the Westerners out of the Pacific and Asia.
In fact, they wanted to remain at peace with the United States as a trading partner. Japanese Exports to the United States were very large and growing before the 1940s (Like Chinese Manufacturing today). It was almost a JOKE of the time in the pre-war years that almost everything was being “Made in Japan”.
You’ve made an excellent point: Japan did not want war with the U.S. The Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor represented a victory for the FDR administration’s geopolitical strategy, and Germany’s subsequent declaration of war on the U.S. represented a larger victory.
In the war between Nazism and communism, FDR was strongly on the side of the communists. Unhesitatingly. Wholeheartedly. Without any concerns or regrets whatsoever. The two pillars of his vision for the world’s future were the destruction of Nazi Germany and a long-term alliance between the United States and the Soviet Union. He liked and praised Joseph Stalin, and gaining Stalin’s approval was very important to FDR personally. FDR helped create the pro-Soviet propaganda film Mission to Moscow. But when FDR showed the film to the Soviet dictator, hoping for compliments and praise for having presented communist propaganda to the American people, all he got in return was a grunt.
FDR’s pro-Soviet and anti-Nazi perspective was the foundation for the U.S.'s entire political and military strategy of the late '30s and early to mid '40s.
Japan had launched aggression against China in 1937. That war was of secondary or tertiary interest to FDR and his administration, which is why little or nothing was done about it at the time. The equation changed in the spring of 1941 when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The danger, at least from FDR’s perspective, was that Japan would launch a second invasion from the east. A second front would tie down a portion of the Red Army, and would interfere with FDR’s ability to ship weapons to the Soviets via Vladivostok. Japanese forces would be very strong near the coast due to its powerful battleships and to the fact that the Japanese had a powerful air force in 1941, whereas the Soviets’ air force had been almost completely destroyed by the Germans.
If, however, Japan were to attack the United States, it would divert Japanese military strength away from the Soviet Union. If the Germans were led to believe that the United States was too weak to fight a two ocean war, Germany might also be tempted to declare war on the U.S. (Especially because doing so would allow Germany to sink the massive quantities of Lend-Lease Aid that FDR was sending to the Soviets and the British.)
Shortly after Germany invaded the Soviet Union, the FDR administration enacted an oil embargo against Japan. At that point, the Japanese knew that they had less than a year before their oil reserves were exhausted. The most logical source of new oil was, as Malachi Crunch pointed out, the Dutch East Indies. The FDR administration worked to create the impression that, if Japan attacked British or Dutch holdings in the Pacific, the U.S. would declare war. (Whether Congress would have gone to war to protect European colonialism in the Pacific is another matter.) In addition, the FDR administration altered the military’s strategic posture in the Pacific to make it far more threatening to Japan. Strategic bombers were sent to the Philippines–bombers with the range to hit Japanese cities. That base was threatening–but also was something which could be taken out by a surprise attack had the Japanese chosen to launch it.
The United States had cracked Japan’s diplomatic codes. FDR knew that if he asked for moderate concessions to have the oil embargo lifted, the Japanese would agree. But if he asked for steep concessions, the Japanese would go to war. His administration asked for very steep concessions indeed. The breaking of the diplomatic code also meant that FDR had two weeks of advance notice about the impending Japanese attack. He did not know the exact hour of the attack or its targets, but he knew an attack was coming. The American military was not put on alert, and the military commanders at Pearl Harbor were specifically forbidden from ordering patrol flights. FDR’s administration later scapegoated those in charge of Pearl Harbor, blamed them for the U.S. having been caught by surprise, ended their careers, and publicly humiliated and attacked them with Congressional hearings.
Two weeks before the Pearl Harbor attack, an important U.S. government document was leaked. This document made it seem as though war between the U.S. and Germany was inevitable and that it was only a matter of time before the U.S. turned its full military strength against Germany. Over the short-term, however, the U.S. was (it was claimed) too weak for a two ocean war, and had an 18 month - 2 year period of vulnerability. After this period of vulnerability had ended, the U.S. would of course make Germany the primary target of its war effort. This document was pivotal in persuading Germany to declare war against the U.S. in the aftermath of the Pearl Harbor attack. The German plan was to defeat the Soviet Union before the U.S. could significantly participate in the European war. Germany would then have the industrial capacity necessary to hold off a D-Day invasion or the destruction of its cities. It would then negotiate an end to hostilities from this position of relative strength.
Evidence suggests the above-described document was leaked by FDR personally. Its release certainly helped FDR achieve his objective of turning a war against Japan into a war against Germany.
Shortly after the Pearl Harbor attack, Stalin sent 100 divisions west across the Trans-Siberian railway. They arrived in the middle of winter, and proved to be a complete surprise to the Germans. He was able to do this because the Pearl Harbor attack meant that Japan could no longer launch a major attack on the Soviet Union. In 1942, Americans landed in Algeria, and began fighting the German Army directly. In 1943 Hitler called off his attack against the Soviets at Kursk, in part because he was concerned about an attack the Americans and British had launched in Italy. In addition, Hitler never had the chance to turn Germany’s industrial strength fully against the Soviet Union. A significant portion had to be retained both to build fighters to defend against Anglo-American attacks against German cities, and to continue building up Germany’s industrial capacity to counter increasing levels of American aircraft production.
WWII succeeded in placing most of Europe under communist domination. That state of affairs bothered Churchill, but did not concern either FDR or Truman. At Yalta, both FDR and Churchill agreed to hand over refugees from the Soviet Union to Stalin, regardless of their consent. Nearly 5 million refugees were affected by this arrangement.
Tolstoy described the scene of Americans returning to the internment camp after having delivered a shipment of people to the Russians. “The Americans returned to Plattling visibly shamefaced. Before their departure from the rendezvous in the forest, many had seen rows of bodies already hanging from the branches of nearby trees.”[10]
FDR’s willingness to help the Soviets unjustly imprison or murder millions of innocent men, women, and children represents the natural culmination of his pro-Soviet foreign policy.
