Did public opinion make Pearl Harbor possible?
Richard Freeman asks whether public hysteria in wartime Britain helped fend off an attack, while public apathy in America help to precipitate one.
In December 1941 most Americans refused to believe that the Japanese would mount a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The attack duly came on December 7th that year. In the years leading up to the First World War the British lived in terror of a surprise attack and invasion by the German High Seas Fleet. The attack never came. Did public hysteria in Britain help fend off an attack, while public apathy in America help to precipitate one?
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