11 - The Road to Pearl Harbor

Summary

The several months between September 1939, when Germany invaded Poland, and the spring of 1940, when the target of the attack shifted to Western Europe, have been referred to as the period of a phony war. These events revealed that, although the European war may have been phony, momentous developments were occurring on the global scale, with Germany, Japan, and now the Soviet Union clearly intent on revising territorial boundaries by force. The public had supported neutrality revision, assistance to China, and the termination of the Japanese commerce treaty. It should be noted that America's firm policy toward Japan as well as Germany had been well established before the consummation of the Axis alliance. The bulk of the United States fleet was kept at Pearl Harbor after April instead of being sent back to the Atlantic after its spring exercises in the Pacific.