- [Narrator] Hanoi, September 22nd, 1940, 20:00 hours.
General Maurice Martin, commander of French forces
in Indochina sits in a humid meeting room
with a general of the Imperial Japanese Army.
They're working under a deadline.
For in two hours, Japan will invade.
This had started in June just after France fell
with a demand from foreign minister Matsuoka
to cease shipments across the border to China
and allow Japanese border observers.
But as the months dragged on, the ultimatum has increased.
Now Japan wants the border totally closed
and to station troops, ships, and warplanes
in Northern French Indochina.
It's egregious, but Martin has little choice.
The Japanese 22nd Army is ready to cross the border
at 22:00 hours.
He makes a counteroffer.
How about 6,000 Japanese troops, not 25,000?
The general agrees. Whew.
An hour before the deadline,
word goes out that an agreement has been reached.
But when the deadline comes, the 22nd Army invades anyway.
(upbeat music)
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Japanese diplomats hadn't expected
the Indochina operation to go like that.
Theoretically, this was supposed to be part
of a diplomatic expansion South,
one that was to be accomplished amicably
through negotiation.
After all, Japan was Germany's ally
and Germany now controlled France.
I mean, why wouldn't France just let them in?
But again, at this point,
Japanese diplomats weren't really running the show.
Rather, militarists in the cabinet
were directing foreign policy now.
And even though foreign Minister Matsuoka,
a man who'd led Japan's exit from the League of Nations,
was himself a militarists, even he still had limited power.
The military considered
the civilian foreign ministry unreliable
and rarely shared their plans
with Matsuoka or his subordinates.
I mean, they sent a general to negotiate
in Hanoi, not an ambassador.
Meanwhile, low-level military officers
were provoking conflicts again,
like launching a needless invasion of French Indochina
despite receiving word of a diplomatic solution.
And to be clear,
we're not talking about a small border skirmish here.
we are talking a multi-day undeclared war
with tank formations and amphibious assaults.
Now, a few months later,
the foreign ministry did successfully act
as a mediator to end a short war
between Thailand and French Indochina.
But that didn't really change Japan's image
as a military aggressor.
And at the White House,
Roosevelt most certainly still felt that way.
Over that chaotic summer of 1940,
he'd been taking all the actions he could,
pitching them as defensive in order
to avoid backlash from isolationists.
In May, he'd stationed the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor
where it could credibly threaten Japan should it try
to move south, a move the Navy disliked
since it split their fleet
and kept it far from its home base.
He'd also made diplomatic and congressional moves
on what would eventually become the Lend-Lease Program,
which you can watch our video about here,
supplying the UK and other not quite allies
with old military equipment.
And after the fall of France,
he'd pushed a bill through Congress known
as the Two-Ocean Navy Act,
expanding the US Navy fleet size by 75%.
Not only would this allow the US
to simultaneously fight a war
in both the Atlantic and Pacific,
the expansion focused on aircraft carriers
and naval aviation, modernizing a badly aging fleet.
In September, he reinstated the military draft
and he began efforts to harden American defenses
in the Philippines and Guam
and transform the civilian airstrips on Midway
and Wake Islands into Navy airbases.
America would not seek a war, the reasoning went,
but given the march of German and Japanese aggression,
it needed to be ready to fight one.
But after the aggression in Indochina,
Roosevelt wanted to directly target the Japanese military,
so he expanded the embargoes of the Export Act
to also cover iron and steel scrap,
metals crucial for war production.
In response, the Japanese ambassador in Washington met
with Secretary of State Cordell Hull,
calling the metal embargo an unfriendly act.
The United States was intervening
in diplomatic negotiations between allies,
he said, where it simply had no part.
Besides, Japan was merely trying
to stop illegal weapon shipments
to the corrupt nationalist regime in China.
But Hull knew that argument was a smokescreen
because a US military program known
as Magic had secretly broken
Japan's new diplomatic cipher, Purple.
While the decryptions weren't total
and many of the messages were difficult
to understand due to code words and poor translations,
one thing was clear.
The moves in Indochina were part of an expansion south.
Yet relations did briefly improve.
In November, that ambassador was recalled and replaced
with the genial Admiral Nemura, who immediately bonded
with Roosevelt over their shared interest in naval matters.
Furthermore, Hull and Nemura got along well,
meeting regularly at Hull's apartment
where they could be more candid.
And Nemura always kept an even temper,
even when the two clashed,
believing to his core that a conflict would be bad
for both countries.
But what Hull and even Nemura didn't realize was exactly
how much Roosevelt's attempt at deterrence was
in fact driving Japan closer to war with the United States.
In Tokyo, military and civilian leaders were terrified
over Roosevelt's expansion of naval power
because this wasn't just the US leaving
behind the naval treaties of the Twenties and Thirties,
this meant new American carriers, destroyers, cruisers,
and airplanes coming off the production line every year
for the next five years.
Currently, the US and Japan had roughly equal navies
with Japan having a slight advantage in merchant vessels.
But now that America was
on a war producing footing,
that might only last a year or two.
So an argument started to circulate.
If a war was inevitable, why not fight it soon?
After all, every day Japan waited,
the US Navy was getting larger.
And if Roosevelt cut their oil, the opposite would be true.
Each day of non-combat operations
would mean Japan had less fuel to fight.
Japan's attempt to manufacture synthetic oil had failed.
And when they made import deals with Mexico,
the US leaned on its southern neighbor
to get those canceled.
Foreign minister Matsuoka, however, had a solution.
Deter US action by signing a tripartite pact
with Europe's totalitarian states of Germany and Italy.
Nazi diplomat Von Ribbentrop
had first suggested such a thing as early as 1938.
And to Matsuoka, it made immediate sense.
Germany was one of the few nations
to recognize Japan's Machurian puppet state.
All three wanted to deter the US from joining the war.
And by signaling a mutual defense pact,
it meant America would need to fight a two ocean conflict.
Germany also pledged that the Pacific
would be Japan's sphere of influence,
Matsuoka's concept
of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere,
the idea that Japan would throw Western colonialists
out of Asia and lead the region to prosperity.
Though it should be noted,
not everyone was on board with a Nazi alliance.
In Tokyo, one colleague warned that Hitler was untrustworthy
and routinely violated treaties.
After all, Hitler had already broken
his anti-communist pact with Japan
by signing a non-aggression pact with Stalin.
And he hadn't even bothered to inform Tokyo in advance.
An alliance hadn't helped them in Indochina after all.
And once the pact was signed,
Matsuoka had to issue embarrassing statements
saying Japan wouldn't be adopting
Germany's anti-Semitic policies.
But Matsuoka remained committed to the alliance,
especially because he believed the Soviets could
be enticed to join,
forming a block of totalitarian nations
to challenge the Western democracies.
And in 1940, the alliance bore fruit.
November 11th, 1940, 250 miles southwest of Sumatra.
Officers of the German Commerce Raider Atlantis
board the merchant vessel.
They'd come upon it disguised as a fellow merchant ship
then fired at the bridge at close range,
killing most of the command.
Now they're taking passengers and crew
aboard their own ship before scuttling it.
But then one of the passengers asks an officer
if they could go get her family's tea set
in the ship's vault.
And when he agrees and goes to retrieve it,
the officer finds more than just porcelain.
15 bags of top secret mail destined
for the British Far East Command.
There are maps, decoders, intelligence reports,
and a special bag filled with holes,
so it would sink when thrown overboard.
Documents inside detailed Britain's plans
for the defense of Singapore.
Troops strengths in the region
and how the colonies would fight a potential war.
The assessment is grim.
Currently, Britain cannot win a fight with Japan.
All 15 bags were forwarded to Tokyo.
Their reception causing a massive stir.
The Strike South Plan was not only feasible,
it should begin soon.
But wait, what of the American fleet at Pearl Harbor?
If Japan took the Dutch East Indies,
it would surely respond.
Yet a group of naval officers felt otherwise,
arguing that the US fleet could be preemptively destroyed
at the commencement of hostilities,
giving Japan a year or two
to consolidate its wins in Southeast Asia
before having to fight the Americans in earnest.
It was worth developing a contingency plan.
After all, in November, the British had used their fleet
of carrier launched torpedo bombers to raid an Italian port.
Huh? They should get someone to study that possibility.
Lucky for them, one man was eager for the assignment,
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto.
Oh man, Zoey, can you imagine
how all the public facing stuff
in this story was being reported in the news back then?
I mean, it was probably being covered very differently
in the United States than it was in Japan.
At least today we have access to Ground News.
For the uninitiated, Ground News is a first
of its kind website and app
that lets you compare how news stories
are being covered across the political spectrum,
which can be super helpful when you're trying
to navigate conflicting information,
sensationalized coverage, and endless social media feeds.
That way you can be confident
you're getting the whole story.
Also, with their bias distribution chart,
which I like to think of
as a sort of Metacritic for news biases,
you get to see where various media outlets
you get your news from falls on the political spectrum.
Plus you can even compare headlines
to see how phrasing changes between news outlets,
which not only is fascinating,
but can actually help you find possible blind spots.
Ooh, and speaking of blind spots,
they even have a blind spot feed displaying stories
you might be interested in that are underrepresented
in the news you regularly consume.
So if you're looking for a better way to stay informed
about current events around the world,
check out Ground News
by visiting Ground.News/ExtraCredits
to download their free app.
Then not only will you have more information
about where your news is coming from,
you'll also be helping out our channel in the process,
which for the record is always news we like hearing.
Thanks so much.
Well, shucks. Howdy there Ahmed Ziad Turk,
Angelo Valenciana, Arkhalight Games, Casey Muscha,
Dominic Valenciana, Joseph Blame, and Skyler Holmes.
Thanks so much for being legendary patreons.
(dramatic music)