Today in Supreme Court History: December 7, 1941

12/7/1941: Pearl Harbor is attacked.

 

Comments

[ThePublius]

And how is this a day in Supreme Court history, other than it occurred when the Supreme Court was in existence. Quite a stretch, Prof. Blackman.

[Mr. Hook]

December 7, 1989: Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, while flying United from Los Angeles to St. Louis, eats a ham and swiss on pumpernickel that she later claims is one of the best sandwiches she's ever had, in the air or otherwise.

[Syd Henderson]

World War II led to a number of precedents, some of them bad (Korematsu), some good (O'Connor's sandwich).

[Frank Drackman]

well it really sunk the nomination of FDR's diversity Surpreme Court pick, Judge Hirrohito Tojo!!!

[Dilan Esper]

It led to some really important (and bad) SCOTUS decisions, such as Korematsu, Hirabayshi, and Quirin.

[Commenter_XY]

Spare a thought today for the ~2,300 sailors and soldiers lost at Pearl Harbor, eighty years ago today.

[MiloMinderbinder]

I also saw this movie, and it was not good.

[Frank Drackman]

the strange thing is that they make such bloody good Cameras!

[mydisplayname]

Consider 7-Dec-1938, when the Washington Post published an editorial cartoon suggesting that France should agree with Hitler so that the world could enjoy peace: https://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/images/lehmann/lehmann5.jpg

A few years make a difference: by the end of 1942 [!] the Post had reduced its admiration of Hitler.

[Aladdin's Carpet]

Appeasement was in vogue. Chamberlain wasn't exactly staking an unpopular position, he supported appeasement because it was popular. Churchill actually took a position that many disagreed with ... he ended up being right.

[Libertymike]

Yes, he ended up being right all right; so much so that the sovereignty of the nation state for which Churchill insisted England must go to war was forfeited to Soviet totalitarian misery for 45 years.

Yes, he ended up being right all right; so much so that hundreds of thousands of British civilians either died or were injured or starved or lost their homes.

Yes, he ended up being right all right; so much so that hundreds of thousands of German civilians were murdered, starved, and / or sustained injuries and / or saw their homes firebombed.

Yes, he ended up being right all right; so much so that the objective of plunging his people into war, the defeat of totalitarianism, resulted in the enslavement of tens of millions of people.

Yes, he ended up being right all right; so much so that the sun set on the British Empire.

[ThePublius]

What is your point? Are you saying that if there was no Churchill the world would have been a better place, and all of that harm would not have occurred? I rather doubt it. The "final solution" was already in motion.

[Libertymike]

Each and every result of the egomaniacal mass murderer's passion play to which I adverted stands on its own.

We know what ensued Churchill's bellicose war-making. It is hard to imagine that there would have been more harm had there been no Churchill. Your doubts are rank speculation; my observations are not.

[Dan Schiavetta]

What if there were no Pearl Harbor? How long would we have sat around watching Hitler do his worst?

[KiwiLib]

Hitler was already doing his best to get the US into war. There had already been torpedo attacks on US Navy ships causing casualties. A U-Boat had only just missed hitting the battleship USS Texas with a torpedo attack. The Texas was a pretty ancient battleship and probably would have sunk if she'd been hit.

Meanwhile if no Pearl Harbor, what the heck would the Japanese be doing as their supplies of fuel ran out and with it the destruction of their economy?

[Frank Drackman]

maybe they could have worked on nuclear energy...

[Dan Schiavetta]

Yes Hitler was doing his best to get us into the war but we were doing even our better best to ignore him.

If he had not been foolish enough to declare war on the U.S. right after Pearl Harbor — ?

[KiwiLib]

Then the US would have been sending vast quantities of supplies to the UK with giant US flags on the ships and public statements that these were "supplies to fight the Japanese".
The Germans declared war on the US because they knew that there was no better time. The longer they waited the better equipped and prepared the US's armed forces were going to be. The USA was already producing more tanks and aircraft per year than Germany and this was in peacetime. And a great deal of that production was going to the UK and the USSR.
A declaration of war and a hope of rapid Japanese success was the best they could do.

[David Nieporent]

How did Germany declaring war on the U.S. affect that in any way?