Toland contends President FDR knew.
Prange contends FDR did not.
I thought it was telling that Prange basically argued: FDR did not know, but even if he did, it was a good thing because we needed to get into the war.
I think FDR knew we were going to be attacked, but never believed the Japanese could hit us so hard and do so much damage. Before Pearl Harbor, and even for a short while later, Churchill and FDR very much underestimated the Japanese.
The British navy paid a terrible price with the sinking of the Prince of Wales and and the Repulse. Churchill sent them in the South Pacific without any air cover, The sinking occurred on 10 December, 1941, three days after Pearl Harbor.
I was reading about the building and refitting of battleships during WWII.
Something I had not thought about but makes obvious sense is the vast increase in antiaircraft guns. Still didn’t stop a lot of them being sunk but those British ships might have survived with more.
“I think FDR knew we were going to be attacked, but never believed the Japanese could hit us so hard and do so much damage. Before Pearl Harbor, and even for a short while later, Churchill and FDR very much underestimated the Japanese.”
I hold a different opinion:
I believe that all of FDR’s actions demonstrate that he was prepared to make sacrifices to Japanese aggression, which he was openly goading. All the signs were there: Warnings to shipping, American bases and intel...oh the intel.
However, I also believe that our people probably advised, but no single action other than telling Kimmel to maintain a defensive posture demonstrates any conspiracy. I don’t think anyone knew, but everyone suspected and I’d bet my left gonad FDR quietly prayed for some attack on a US base in the Pacific. Even the carriers were staggered on their deployments away from Pearl, not a single sortie. Enterprise was due back on 12/7 but delayed by a storm.
Even though I believe the attack was unknown, it was not unanticipated and certainly was expected in some manner due to Lexington’s mission to deliver Marine Scouting Bombing Squadron Two Thirty One (VMSB-231) to Midway. One could only hope that our military would have anticipated as much but, likewise - as outlined in the OP’s linked article - FDR fired Richardson (who was crowing about an attack) and installed lackey Kimmel. How effing convenient.
After all that I’ve learned about our government’s adoption of Bernay’s principles, Operation Mockingbird (among others) and what we know of media bias and deep state manipulation today, IMHO a person must suspend disbelief to conclude that anyone in FDR’s administration didn’t discuss the need for a catalyst - a “Lusitania” - to goad the public into war to both rescue the American economy from his policy failures and to deal with Germany.
Clearly the attack stunned everyone, but it gave them exactly what was needed and, of course, obviously there could be only one story.
I submit that among the trillions expended upon the war that was easily-accomplished and we suffer the effects of the Four Minute Men to this day.
https://www.gla.ac.uk/media/media_247022_en.pdf