Description:

First published in 1947, Pearl Harbor: The Story of the Secret War is widely regarded as the first Revisionist book about the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and the complex history which preceded and followed it. Although it drew both criticism and praise on its initial release, this book covers many aspects of that war, its antecedents and its consequences, and ranks among the best of the numerous volumes published on the subject. “Those who object to historical skepticism may complain that my book is no contribution to the political canonization of its central figure. That is no concern of mine. As to the purpose my book is intended to serve, some observations from the minority report of the Joint Congressional Committee which investigated the Pearl Harbor attack are pertinent: ‘In the future the people and their Congress must know how close American diplomacy is moving to war so that they may check in advance if imprudent and support its position if sound ... How to avoid war and how to turn war -- if it finally comes -- to serve the cause of human progress is the challenge to diplomacy today as yesterday.’“—George Morgenstern

Review

George Morgenstern's Pearl Harbor is a book that lives in the space between history and indictment. Published in 1947, while the Joint Congressional Committee's findings still smelled of fresh ink, it is the first full-dress argument that the catastrophe of December 7, 1941 was not a failure of American intelligence but a success of American policy — that Franklin Roosevelt and his war cabinet wanted a Japanese attack, worked to produce one, and then spent five years burying the evidence beneath a pyramid of rigged investigations. The book is a monster of forensic assembly: 180,000 words, dozens of verbatim Magic intercepts, trial-transcript page numbers, Stimson's diary entries, suppressed Army Board findings, and a running annotation that treats the congressional minority report as the only honest verdict ever rendered. It is also, unmistakably, a polemic — adversarial in every paragraph, dismissive toward contrary evidence, and so tightly argued that one occasionally wonders what the other side might have said if Morgenstern had given it room to breathe.

The position this review will defend is that Pearl Harbor remains the indispensable starting point for any serious inquiry into the attack's Washington backstory, not because Morgenstern is even-handed — he is not — but because he assembles the documentary record so relentlessly that his thesis becomes almost impossible to dismiss wholesale. The question is not whether the book overstates its case; it does, and the overstatement is structural. The question is whether the evidence Morgenstern marshals can be explained by any account less damning than the one he offers. The answer, after sixty years of declassification and scholarship, is: not easily.

Morgenstern's core thesis is set out in the foreword with the clarity of a prosecutor's opening statement. "Long before December 7 the United States was in fact at war," he writes. "That decision had come at the policy-making level of the government and of the Army and Navy high command, and it had been put into execution without anybody asking a vote from Congress or bothering to let the people in on the secret." The book then unfolds that claim across two parallel tracks. The first is a chronicle of escalating provocation: Roosevelt's 1940 decision, over Admiral Richardson's strenuous objections, to base the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor as a "deterrent"; the secret ABC-1 staff agreements committing American forces to defend British and Dutch colonies in Asia; Lend-Lease, which diverted 1,900 patrol planes and 1,500 anti-aircraft guns from Hawaii to Britain; the undeclared Atlantic naval war, complete with shoot-on-sight orders; the Atlantic Conference of August 1941, at which Churchill pressed for a Pacific tripwire; and the diplomatic endgame of November 1941, in which Hull abandoned a viable modus vivendi under pressure from Chiang Kai-shek and instead handed Nomura a ten-point ultimatum everyone in Washington knew Japan would reject. The second track is a forensic demonstration that Washington had overwhelming advance intelligence — Magic decryptions, the "bomb plot" berthing-plan messages, the December 4 "east wind rain" broadcast — pointing to an imminent attack on Pearl Harbor, and that this intelligence was systematically withheld from Admiral Kimmel and General Short, who were then scapegoated for the disaster it enabled.

The strength of the book lies in the density of its documentation, and the most damning exhibits are drawn from the administration's own internal records. Morgenstern reproduces Admiral Stark's November 7, 1941 letter to Kimmel: "Whether the country knows it or not, we are at war." He quotes Stimson's diary entry of November 25 — thirteen days before the attack — recording a White House war cabinet discussion of "how we should maneut'er them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves." He notes that when Kimmel testified before the Joint Congressional Committee, his bewilderment was not tactical but informational: "I cannot understand now — I have never understood — I may never understand — why I was deprived of the information available in the Navy Department in Washington on Saturday night and Sunday morning. . . . The Pacific fleet deserved a fighting chance." The cumulative effect of these quotations is hard to parry. Morgenstern's argument is not that Roosevelt and his cabinet knew the exact hour and vector of the attack — though he comes close to asserting that with the "winds" message — but that they knew war was imminent, that they knew Pearl Harbor was the probable target, and that they chose not to warn the commanders who could have done something about it.

The "winds" message controversy occupies the book's most charged chapters, and it is here that Morgenstern's prosecutorial method is both most impressive and most vulnerable. The story, in brief: Tokyo had prearranged a weather-code broadcast to signal its diplomatic missions about the rupture of relations with the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union. "East wind rain" meant war with America. Captain Laurance Safford, chief of the Navy's radio intelligence unit, and Lieutenant Commander Alwin Kramer, the senior language officer, both testified that they intercepted and decoded this broadcast on December 4, 1941 — three full days before the attack. The intercept then vanished from Navy files. Monitoring station logs were destroyed. Kramer suffered a nervous breakdown and recanted under pressure from Admiral Stark and the special counsel John Sonnett. Major Henry Clausen, dispatched by Stimson, traveled the world collecting recanting affidavits from key witnesses. Safford alone held firm. Before the Joint Congressional Committee in February 1946, he stated flatly: "There was a 'winds' message. It meant war — and we knew it meant war." Morgenstern treats Safford's testimony as definitive and the subsequent recantations as episodes in an orchestrated cover-up. A skeptical reader will note that the "winds" message has never been conclusively authenticated by independent documentary evidence, and that even among revisionist historians it remains contested ground. Morgenstern does not dwell on this difficulty. That is a weakness, but it is the kind of weakness that comes from having made a judgment and chosen to argue it — and the surrounding architecture of the cover-up, from the destruction of logs to the uneven promotion patterns Morgenstern catalogs, lends circumstantial weight to the charge.

The November 27 "war warning" messages receive equally sharp treatment. The Navy dispatch to Kimmel named Southeast Asia as the expected theater of operations. The Army dispatch to Short, drafted by Stimson and Gerow under Marshall's signature, emphasized sabotage and the necessity that "Japan commit the first overt act." Short, reading these directives together with simultaneous proposals to strip Hawaii of half its pursuit planes, concluded the danger was internal subversion and ordered an anti-sabotage alert — parking his aircraft wingtip-to-wingtip on the runways, where they were destroyed on December 7. Morgenstern's reading is that the "Do-Don't" messages were deliberately ambiguous, that the administration's overriding concern was to ensure Japan fired the first shot, and that Short was set up to fail by instructions designed to produce precisely the vulnerability they nominally warned against. Short's own words at the JCC hearings give the argument its human weight: "I do not feel that I have been treated fairly or with justice by the War Department. I was singled out as an example, as the scapegoat for the disaster."

The chapter on the night of December 6–7 is a masterpiece of slow-burning fury. Morgenstern reconstructs the chain of events in Washington: Colonel Bratton of Military Intelligence desperately trying to reach General Marshall with the decoded 13-part Japanese reply; Bedell Smith, the secretary of the War Department General Staff, failing to deliver it; Marshall's unexplained two-and-a-half-hour disappearance for a Sunday-morning horseback ride; Roosevelt reading the first thirteen parts and telling Harry Hopkins, "This means war!"; and the final, almost unbelievable decision to send the December 7 warning to Hawaii by slow commercial RCA radio rather than the scrambler phone, Navy radio, or FBI radio — all of which were available. The message arrived hours after the attack. The Army Board later judged Smith's failure merely "unfortunate." Morgenstern's judgment is less restrained, and the archive he builds to support it — including Marshall's own explanation that he avoided the scrambler phone because "the Japanese would have grasped at any straw to bring to public that we were committing an act that forced action on their part" — suggests an administration more worried about appearances than about the lives of sailors and soldiers.

What elevates Pearl Harbor above mere conspiracy literature is Morgenstern's engagement with constitutional questions. The book draws heavily on the Joint Congressional Committee's minority report, authored by Senator Homer Ferguson and Senator Owen Brewster, which deployed the unitary-executive doctrine of Federalist No. 70 against Roosevelt himself. Morgenstern quotes the President's own December 1940 press conference: "You cannot, under the Constitution, set up a second President of the United States." The logic is remorseless. If the Constitution vests sole executive authority in one person, then that person bears sole responsibility for the executive branch's catastrophic failure to communicate. The minority report's Conclusion 20 — that "the President of the United States failed to take that quick and instant executive action which was required by the occasion" — becomes, in Morgenstern's hands, not a partisan swipe but a constitutional finding. This is the book's most original intellectual move: accepting the Hamiltonian premises that the New Deal state had expanded, and then demanding that the expansion carry the weight of accountability.

Within the library's conceptual architecture, Pearl Harbor sits at the intersection of revisionist historiography, the libertarian anti-interventionist tradition, and the forensic method of investigative journalism. It belongs on the same shelf as Charles Beard — who read the manuscript and praised it — and its preoccupations with executive secrecy, signals intelligence, and the manipulation of public opinion make it a forerunner of every subsequent inquiry into the deep state's relationship with democratic accountability. The book's treatment of Magic prefigures the Church Committee's revelations about NSA surveillance three decades later; its catalog of post-attack promotions for administration loyalists (Standley, Reeves, King, Stark, Gerow) and post-attack suppression of dissenters (Safford, Bratton, Sadtler, Kramer) reads like a case study in the institutional self-protection of power. Morgenstern quotes one particularly acid observation: "One of the remarkable features of the Pearl Harbor story is that, almost without exception, those who played the administration's side in the controversy prospered, while everyone who showed a less accommodating spirit failed to win promotion and pay." The book's insistence that the American people "had no intimation whatever of the policies and operations that were being undertaken" frames the entire episode as a failure not merely of intelligence or command but of the constitutional separation of war powers — a theme that resonates far beyond 1947.

The cross-references Morgenstern mobilizes are telling. He cites Forrest Davis and Ernest Lindley's contemporaneous How War Came approvingly, draws on Joseph Grew's Ten Years in Japan for the diplomatic backstory, and invokes Albert Jay Nock's verdict that Roosevelt "waged by psychological means, by propaganda, and deception against the American people, who were thought by their leaders to be laggard in embracing war." The book's intellectual lineage is the America First skepticism about foreign entanglements, but Morgenstern is too careful a lawyer to make the argument purely about isolationism. His claim is narrower and, for that reason, harder to dismiss: not that the United States should have stayed out of World War II, but that the Roosevelt administration's chosen method of entering it — by executive maneuver, secret agreement, and deliberate provocation — was both unconstitutional and operationally catastrophic.

The book's weaknesses are real and should be named. Morgenstern treats the JCC minority report as the authoritative verdict without seriously engaging the majority's reasoning or the possibility that the majority's more equivocal conclusions might reflect genuine interpretive disagreement rather than bad faith. His treatment of Hull is almost entirely hostile; the possibility that Japanese diplomacy in 1941 was operating under constraints that made a modus vivendi genuinely unworkable receives little sustained attention. The "winds" message argument, however powerfully presented, rests on testimony that was contested even in 1946 and has never been fully corroborated by documentary evidence. And the book's moral equivalence framing — in which the European empires and Imperial Japan are presented as broadly symmetrical threats — will strike many readers as a category error, even if one accepts the narrower argument about executive deception. Morgenstern seems to sense this last difficulty and mostly avoids it by concentrating on process rather than moral stakes. The result is a book that is forensic rather than philosophical — and, for its purposes, stronger for it.

What Pearl Harbor is for, finally, is the reader who wants to understand how the official narrative of December 7 was constructed, contested, and — in Morgenstern's telling — systematically falsified. It is not a balanced history, and it does not pretend to be one. It is a brief for the prosecution, with all the strengths and vulnerabilities that form implies. Anyone who comes to it expecting dispassionate weighing of evidence will be disappointed. Anyone who comes to it as a primary source in the historiography of American dissent — as a document of what the anti-interventionist right believed in 1947, and why — will find it indispensable. The book's deepest claim is not historical but civic: that a republic whose executive branch learns to manufacture casus belli in secret has already lost something essential, regardless of whether the ensuing war is just. Morgenstern quotes Kimmel's appeal to "the long tomorrow" of history. That tomorrow has now stretched across eight decades, and while Kimmel and Short have been partially rehabilitated, the constitutional architecture Morgenstern indicted remains largely intact. The book, in that sense, is not yet obsolete.

Notable Quotes

Pearl Harbor was the terminal result of a complex of events moving in many parallel courses. National ambition and international intrigue, diplomacy, espionage, politics, personalities, and the personal responses of men to crisis-all of these were of equal or greater importance than purely military considerations.

Morgenstern's foreword, framing the scope of the book beyond purely military analysis — war origins, systemic failure, complexity

The administration has done its utmost to discourage examination of the acts and intentions of the men who were in the vanguard of the march toward war. It has suppressed relevant documents and permitted important papers to 'disappear' or be destroyed.

Foreword, on the Roosevelt administration's efforts to control the Pearl Harbor narrative — government secrecy, suppression of evidence, accountability

Long before December 7 the United States was in fact at war. That decision had come at the policy-making level of the government and of the Army and Navy high command, and it had been put into execution without anybody asking a vote from Congress or bothering to let the people in on the secret.

Opening chapter, on the undeclared war in the Atlantic before Pearl Harbor — executive power, constitutional crisis, democratic accountability

I said, 'Mr. President, I still do not believe it and I know that our fleet is disadvantageously disposed for preparing for or initiating war operations.'

Admiral Richardson confronting Roosevelt over basing the fleet at Pearl Harbor, October 1940 — military dissent, civilian-military relations, fleet vulnerability

The President said in effect, 'Despite what you believe, I know that the presence of the fleet in the Hawaiian area has had and is now having a restraining influence on the actions of Japan.'

Roosevelt overruling Richardson's professional military judgment on fleet disposition — presidential power, deterrence theory, strategic miscalculation

He told me, 'The last time you were here you hurt the President's feelings.'

Secretary Knox explaining to Admiral Richardson why he was relieved of command after opposing Roosevelt's fleet policy — presidential authority, military dissent, consequences of candor

Whether the country knows it or not, we are at war.

Admiral Stark writing to Admiral Kimmel on November 7, 1941, about the undeclared Atlantic war — undeclared war, executive war-making, constitutional violation

I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.

Roosevelt's campaign pledge at Boston, October 30, 1940, contrasted with his private war preparations — political deception, campaign promises, democratic trust

The question was how we should maneuver them into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.

Secretary Stimson's diary entry for November 25, 1941, recording Roosevelt's remarks at the war cabinet meeting — war provocation, executive decision-making, casus belli

When I read the findings of the Roberts Commission, I was dumbfounded. To be accused of dereliction of duty after almost 40 years of loyal and competent service was beyond my comprehension.

General Short's testimony before the Joint Congressional Committee on being scapegoated — injustice, scapegoating, institutional betrayal

I do not feel that I have been treated fairly or with justice by the War Department. I was singled out as an example, as the scapegoat for the disaster.

General Short's statement to the congressional committee on Washington's treatment of him — accountability, scapegoating, moral injury

I surely was entitled to know of the hour fixed by Japan for the probable outbreak of war against the United States. I cannot understand now-I have never understood-I may never understand-why I was deprived of the information available in the Navy Department in Washington on Saturday night and Sunday morning.

Admiral Kimmel's testimony about being denied the Magic intelligence that could have saved the fleet — intelligence failure, command responsibility, institutional failure

There was entirely too much secrecy before Pearl Harbor in all branches of government connected with national defense. I can see no reason for breaking ciphers in Washington unless some use is going to be made of the contents.

Admiral Smith, Kimmel's chief of staff, on the absurdity of decoding intelligence and not acting on it — intelligence failure, bureaucratic dysfunction, secrecy

Had a full war message, unadulterated, been dispatched or had direct orders for a full, all-out alert been sent, Hawaii could have been ready to have met the attack with what it had.

The Army Pearl Harbor Board's assessment of the confused 'do-don't' warnings sent to Hawaii — communication failure, command responsibility, preventable disaster

The Japanese knew everything. The War and Navy departments transmitted to Short only so much of what they knew as they judged necessary.

Army Board observation on the asymmetry of information between Japan and the Hawaiian commanders — intelligence failure, information asymmetry, institutional dysfunction

I felt that if the chief of staff wanted an all-out alert in Hawaii, he would have ordered it himself and not expected me to make the decision, knowing as he did how relatively limited was my information as compared to that available to him.

General Short on why Washington should have issued direct orders rather than vague warnings — command responsibility, chain of command, intelligence sharing

America provoked Japan to such an extent that the Japanese were forced to attack Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty on history ever to say that America was forced into war.

Captain Oliver Lyttelton, British production minister, speaking in London in June 1944 — war provocation, Allied perspective, historical truth

This is what I have dreamed of, aimed at, and worked for, and now it has come to pass.

Churchill in Commons, February 15, 1942, on American entry into the war — Anglo-American alliance, war aims, British strategy

When the news first came that Japan had attacked us my first feeling was of relief that the indecision was over and that a crisis had come in a way which would unite all our people.

Secretary Stimson's diary entry on learning of the Pearl Harbor attack — war psychology, political calculation, moral reckoning

If Japan hesitates at this time, and Germany goes ahead and establishes her European new order, all the military might of Britain and the United States will be concentrated against Japan.

Ribbentrop urging Japan toward war on November 29, 1941, in a decoded intercept available to Washington — Axis diplomacy, intelligence, geopolitics

Our ultimatum put Japan in a box. She had to knuckle under or else fight us.

Dr. E. Stanley Jones, missionary and mediator, on the effect of Hull's November 26 demands — diplomacy, ultimatum, war inevitability

Even if they had not sunk a ship, the Japs might have crippled the base and destroyed all the fleet's fuel supplies, which were in the open. The result might have been worse than it actually was, because this would have forced the fleet to return to the West Coast.

Admiral Kimmel on the Japanese strategic error of targeting battleships instead of fuel and infrastructure — military strategy, Japanese errors, Pearl Harbor aftermath

It has been said, and it is a popular belief, that Hawaii is the strongest outlying naval base in the world and could, therefore, withstand indefinitely attacks and attempted invasions. Plans based on such convictions are inherently weak and tend to create a false sense of security.

The Martin-Bellinger report of April 1941, which prophetically predicted the form of the Japanese attack — complacency, military planning, false security

The high civilian and military officials in Washington who had skillfully maneuvered Kimmel and Short into the position of exclusive blame knew at the time all the hidden facts about Pearl Harbor, at least as much and probably more than this investigation has been able to uncover.

Representative Keefe's additional views appended to the majority report of the Joint Congressional Committee — cover-up, institutional dishonesty, accountability