being at “war” officially is only meaningful in semantics. The U.S. was already at War with Germany as soon as they invaded France and the Netherlands. For a short time we were attempting to recruit them as anti-commie buddies but that obviously was not going to work out.
Both US and Germany had multiple spies operating against each other, especially when it came to Atomic research, which was already well under way in 1941. There were politicians and citizens who were lied to about the deaths of Americans on merchant shipping that uboats were sinking. There were many begging Roosevelt for war in the US for a long time before Pearl Harbor.
We were already at war with Japan before Pearl Harbor, we were operating the flying tigers (totally against the geneva convention) in China against Japan (a clear stance of War) while supporting our puppet Chaing. We were also enforcing an embargo against Japan’s oil to bait them into aggression to make it look like they started it, a plan that eventually worked in what we call “Pearl Harbor” a wonderfully planned (by the US) event to get us into the war which the wall street big boys desperately wanted.
Whats up with the codes we cracked for both Japan and Germany? Does anybody really believe we were just able to magically crack them because we were smarter and they were inferior? The ruskies never cracked them, and we weren’t about to provide them with that information. Please!, its obvious the bankers knew who was going to win and geared us up for it. They placed most of their bets on us, while draining our enemies dry and came out rich as all hell. Look at Switzerland if you want proof. A small, defenseless country with the most international banks at the time. Notice this country is NEVER touched by any side in either WWI or WWII despite untold carnage raging all around it. Think about it, its a no brainer.
Think about it, we went from a pretty rural and slightly militarized nation to becoming the largest and most powerful economic and military power the world had ever seen, ONLY because of our involvement in WWII. We just needed some time to gear up and decide who our enemies would be.