The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was what actively and officially put the United States into the Second World War. Without war against Japan, any conflict with Germany could conceivably have been limited to naval engagements. But was the sudden attack a surprise to Roosevelt? Was the deliberate attack "utterly unprovoked" like Secretary of State Cordell Hull said it was?
There have been many essays, chapters in books, and whole books written over the years on the subject of Roosevelt's duplicity and culpability regarding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. The most recent one, I believe, is George Victor's The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable (Potomac Books, 2007). The best one is probably Robert Stinnett's Day Of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor (Free Press, 2000). I provide a detailed list in my Rethinking the Good War (Vance Publications, 2009), as well as concluding that the attack on Pearl Harbor was but the climax of a long series of events. It was neither a surprise nor unprovoked.
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