FDR - Jean Edward Smith [341]
Initially the news was bad. On December 10 Japanese aircraft sank the British battleships Repulse and Prince of Wales off Malaya. (Prince of Wales had been the site of FDR’s Atlantic Charter meeting with Churchill.) Hong Kong, Guam, Wake Island, New Britain, the Gilbert Islands, and the Solomons all fell within weeks of Pearl Harbor. In the Philippines, American and Filipino troops retreated to the Bataan peninsula and the island redoubt of Corregidor. In Burma, Japanese forces advanced almost without opposition. In Malaya, British and Indian forces, despite a two-to-one, sometimes three-to-one, numerical advantage, proved no match for the better-trained, better-led divisions of General Tomoyuki Yamashita. Singapore, with a garrison of 85,000 troops—the “Gibraltar of the Pacific”—fell on February 15, 1942, the most ignominious defeat of British arms on record. If Pearl Harbor represented the nadir of the U.S. Navy, the defeat at Singapore was as much a disaster for the British Army. Twelve days later, in the Battle of the Java Sea, a Japanese naval force of five cruisers and nine destroyers took on an equivalent American-British-Dutch-Australian formation, sinking all five Allied cruisers (including the USS Houston) and five of nine destroyers. Fighting ended in the Dutch East Indies on March 12, and another 93,000 troops entered Japanese captivity. Allied propaganda notwithstanding, many in Burma, Malaya, and the East Indies initially welcomed the Japanese as liberators who were freeing Asian peoples from European imperialism.3
Roosevelt had not asked Congress to declare war against Germany and Italy. On December 11 Hitler remedied the omission by appearing before the Reichstag to announce that a state of war existed between the United States and the Third Reich. Italy followed two hours later. Neither Hitler (who was at the eastern front) nor Mussolini had been apprised of the attack on Pearl Harbor beforehand. And the strict black-letter text of the Tripartite Pact did not oblige them to follow Japan’s lead. But they were overjoyed to do so. Mussolini welcomed the clarification of America’s status, and Hitler saw the Japanese attack as a harbinger of victory. “Now it is impossible for us to lose the war,” the führer told his generals. “We have an ally who has never been vanquished in three thousand years.”4
So confident were Hitler and Mussolini of ultimate victory that they did not press Japan for a parallel declaration of war against Russia. Hitler wished to finish off the Soviet Union himself and was content to see the Japanese free the Pacific of American and British influence. Germany’s declaration of war against the United States intensified the U-boat campaign in the Atlantic. Hitler removed the restraints under which the German submarine fleet had been operating, and American coastal shipping became a prime target. By late January 1942 more than twenty U-boats were operating in American waters. On January 28, a single submarine standing off New York harbor sank eight ships, including three tankers, in just twelve hours.5*
Roosevelt chose not to respond to Hitler by going before Congress. Late on the afternoon of December 11 he sent a written message requesting both houses to acknowledge that the United States and Germany were at war.6 The House acted instantly by voice vote, the Senate shortly afterward. Both votes were unanimous.
As soon as the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Churchill decided it was essential for him to meet Roosevelt. “I have formed the