Roosevelt Did Conspire With Churchill For US To Enter War

The following is an excerpt of information released by the British War Office in 1976 re secret agreements between Roosevelt and Churchill made at the Atlantic treaty Conference.

This information has been public for 25 years yet many histories gloss over it - or as Gerhard L. Weinber's 'A World At Arms, A Global Historu of WW II', actually provide disinformation while holding out to be deeply scholarly exegesises of the political and diplomatic moves leading to and during WWII!

'When Churchill returned to London, he informed the Cabinet of what had been agreed to. Thirty years later, the British documents were released. Here is how the New York Times reported the revelations: Formerly top secret British Government papers made public today said that President Franklin D. Roosevelt told Prime Minister Winston Churchill in August, 1941, that he was looking for an incident to justify opening hostilities against Nazi Germany. . . . On August 19 Churchill reported to the War Cabinet in London on other aspects of the Newfoundland [Atlantic Charter] meeting that were not made public. . . . 'He [Roosevelt] obviously was determined that they should come in. If he were to put the issue of peace and war to Congress, they would debate it for months,' the Cabinet minutes added. 'The President had said he would wage war but not declare it and that he would become more and more provocative. If the Germans did not like it, they could attack American forces. . . . Everything was to be done to force an incident.' In 1976, the public finally learned the story of William Stephenson, the British agent code named 'Intrepid,' sent by Churchill to the United States in 1940. Stephenson set up headquarters in Rockefeller Center, with orders to use any means necessary to help bring the United States into the war. With the full knowledge and cooperation of Roosevelt and the collaboration of federal agencies, Stephenson and his 300 or so agents 'intercepted mail, tapped wires, cracked safes, kidnapped, . . . rumor mongered'

How about a good citation for that info? Where could one get a copy?

Regards from the Velo Nut

Dale V Lally Jr W0OWF Pompano Beach FL

Yawn.

No. This information is nothing new.

Right. Roosevelt was strongly in favor of the US joining the war, and would like to have had a sufficiently striking incident. He did not manage to get one until the German declaration of war after Pearl Harbor. Was there any doubt of this?

Why dig through secret papers finally released? Why not look at what Roosevelt did?

In fact, he did act provocatively in the North Atlantic through much of 1941. When a U-boat attacked the Greer, he used that as an excuse to order the US Navy into an undeclared war with Germany, and kept trying to incite US public opinion with the incidents thus caused.

In other words, your description of Roosevelt's intentions is correct, but your claim that this has been covered up is ludicrous. The undeclared war in the Atlantic was not covered up at the time, but rather Roosevelt publicized every incident he thought might bring the US closer to war. The appropriate volume of the USN official history, that described the undeclared war in detail, came out in 1947, in case anybody missed it as it was happening in 1941.

It didn't take thirty years of waiting for secret papers to be released to find out. There never was a coverup of Roosevelt's

Sir William Stephenson was not 'INTREPID'. That was the non-secret, non-code cable address of the offices of 'British Security Coordination' in NYC. (BSC was Stephenson's front organization.)

The claim that 'Stephenson was INTREPID' comes from _A Man Called INTREPID_ by hack writer William Stevenson (no relation, notice the different spelling).

Stevenson's book is riddled with errors and outright falsehoods. One example of its quality: photos are included, which are labelled as being being from the official records of British intelligence, which are in fact publicity stills for a Hollywood film.

To get the true story of Stephenson's work, read

_British Security Coordination : The Secret History of British Intelligence in the Americas, 1940-1945_, published 1999, which was Stephenson's official report to the British government.

BTW - when Stevenson produced _his_ book, Stephenson was 80 years old and in poor health. That is why he provided an introduction (and implicit endorsement) for Stevenson; he probably never read the book.

In the 1970's, while doing naval annual active duty at NAS Willow Grove, I met a retired USN sailor who had served in the North Atlantic prior to the outbreak of the war.

According to him, the US Navy was at war with the Kriegsmarine long before PH. However, according to him it was never admitted. In fact, he claims to have sent several letters home in which he stated that they were fighting the Germans. His parents never believed him - saying that Roosevelt would not do that.

In 1945, just a few months after VE day, he saw a small article in the NYT in which it was admitted that the USN and the Kriegsmarine had been at war long before Pearl Harbor.

He cut out the article and sent it to his parents with comments to the effect that 'See, I told you so!'

At any rate I found it extremely interesting that the shooting naval war was covered up and the general public led to believe that we were trying to be neutral.

I realize that this experience is anecdotal and cannot be proven at all. I did find it interesting at the time that the retired sailer did take the time to regale me with that story.

Regards from the Velo Nut

Dale V Lally Jr W0OWF Pompano Beach FL

war was covered up and the general public led to believe that we were trying to be neutral.

Four USN ships were attacked during 1941:

Salinas (?) Greer (no damage) Kearney (damaged) Reuben James (sunk)

(NB: Above from memory.)

Each of these attacks were reported in the newspapers of the day. It was announced that we'd protect ourselves if attacked and the extension of the Neutrality Patrol was publicized.

I frequently get advisories of incidents being 'covered up', but when I check the media of the day I find that they were frequently front page news. The attack on a USN cruiser in China was such an example. A gentleman advised me that for some reason we hid the fact that a US warship was bombed and sailors killed. The reasoning behind the cover-up was not explained, just that it was another example of FDR's 'back door to war' program. How that was so was not included in the email.

Larry J

N.Y. Times, Jan. 12, 1972, There are other sources on the internet, one is www.lewrockwell.com/orig/racio-churchill3.html

Additionally, 'The March of Time', a biweekly 'informational' newsreel with wide distribution ran, in early 1941, a feature called 'Uncle Sam: Neutral'. The material in this 20 minute article shows that 'Uncle Sam' was far from neutral.

'The March of Time' later that year ran a feature length program called 'The Ramparts We Watch' which detailed US entry into WWI and then compared that to the current situation, including US support for the Allies.

My point is that from the present day we can look back and make assumptions about what the US public knew about our efforts to shore up the Allies, but it's better to go back and check the information for '39-'41 to get a real picture of the public awareness of our military efforts. I think that the 'strongly isolationist' idea is put forward to explain (for some poeple anyway) FDR's supposed need for a major event to propel public opinion into the war camp. Studying the polls, speeches, editorials and other media of the time give a far different picture. By 1941 the US was very aware that we would be soon involved in the war, but, like a visit to the dentist, we weren't eager for it.

Larry J

FDR made little secret of his belief that Hitler and the Axis Powers were the enemies of humanity. Look at all the efforts to aid Britain from 1940 until we officially entered the war - sale of "surplus" war materiel, the agreements to patrol the Atlantic (what we called "Neutrality Patrols", Lend-Lease and the stated intention that the U.S. would be the "Arsenal of Democracy." Herman Wouk's "The Winds of War" covers many of the well-known aspects of the U.S. aid efforts in a highly readable and accurate, albeit fictional, form.

As far as that, I am OK with this - FDR never made a secret of his views. Nazi Germany was a menace and needed to be opposed - U.S. public opinion did not support open warfare and FDR worked to move public opinion to a point where he could do what he believed was the right thing. "Conspiring with Churchill" is not entirely accurate since "conspiracy" is a secret thing - while the lead up to the Argentia meeting of August 1941 was secret, the results were far from it (the Atlantic Charter).

FDR's actions could have justified a German declaration of war long before his declaration post-Pearl Harbor - the fact was, Hitler did not want the U.S. in the war if he could help it. The Germans *did* attack US Naval vessels (anybody heard of the USS Reuben James? It was sunk by a U-boat in October 1941, only 44 survivors from crew of 159).