On December 7, 1941, the United States and the rest of the world were shocked by a surprise

attack by the Japanese Empire on the American Navy stationed in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

However, in its aftermath, there have been people who have wondered and speculated that the United States government knew about the attack and did nothing to prevent it as an excuse to get the United States into the war.

Learn more about whether the United States into the war.

Learn more about whether the United States government

had advanced knowledge of the Pearl Harbor attacks

on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Thank you. I don't normally delve into what would be considered conspiracy theories on this show.

Many of them are absolutely ridiculous and aren't worth the time it would take to debunk them.

The problem is is that there have been conspiracies throughout history.

The assassination of Julius Caesar was a conspiracy, as was the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. of as a conspiracy. So to be true to history you have to acknowledge that sometimes

conspiracies have been true. On the other hand I am also a big believer in

Hanlon's razor which if you can remember back to my episode on eponymous laws,

states, never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

So the big question was if the attack on Pearl Harbor was an intelligence

failure or if it was allowed to happen intentionally. To understand why some

people think that it was allowed to happen intentionally, we have to go back to the American attitude towards the war before Pearl Harbor.

Prior to the attack, public sentiment was strongly in favor of remaining neutral.

Over 100,000 Americans were killed in the First World War, and after the war, many Americans

questioned what it was for.

Americans had died in a European war where European countries

were fighting over European soil. Throughout the 1930s isolationism and

neutrality were official US policy. When it appeared that war might break out in Europe again,

...