A Time for War: Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the Path to Pearl Harbor

The author of this intriguing study maintains that the traditional view that America entered WW II in response to the attack on Pearl Harbor is misguided. Thompson argues instead that the U.S. was engaged in a naval war with Germany and an economic war with Japan well before December 7, 1941, and that American support for the Chinese, Lend-Lease aid to Britain and the July '41 oil embargo against Japan were calculated incitements that forced the two Axis powers into war with America. According to Thompson, the Roosevelt administration, far from neutral or isolationist, was increasingly dominated by a coalition of interventionists who wished to establish a new world order under United States leadership. This book is the clearest exposition so far of the revisionist theory of U.S. provocation of Germany and Japan. Thompson teaches foreign policy at the University of South Carolina. Photos. (July)