Diplomats & Admirals: From Failed Negotiations and Tragic Misjudgments to Powerful Leaders and Heroic Deeds, the Untold Story of the Pacific War from Pearl Harbor to Midway

by Dale A Jenkins

Overview

WAS THE JAPANESE ATTACK ON PEARL HARBOR INEVITABLE?

It's November 1941. Japan and the US are teetering on a knife-edge as leaders on both sides of the Pacific strive to prevent war between them. But failed diplomacy, foiled negotiations, and possible duplicity in the Roosevelt administration thwart their attempts.

Drawing on now-declassified original documents, Diplomats & Admirals reveals the inside story of one fateful year, including:

• How the hidden agendas of powerful civilian and military leaders pushed the two nations toward war
• The miscommunications, misjudgments, and blunders that doomed efforts at peace
• China's role in the US ultimatum that triggered the attack on Pearl Harbor
• Why the carrier-to-carrier showdown at Coral Sea proved a fatal mistake for Japan
• How courageous US navy pilots snatched victory from defeat at the Battle of Midway

The defining events of WWII could have ended very differently. Combining perspectives from both military and civilian leaders, Diplomats & Admirals uncovers new insights into the Pacific naval battles that shaped the world-and the men behind them.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798986562605
Publisher:	Aubrey Publishing Co.
Publication date:	11/08/2022
Pages:	402
Sales rank:	158,675
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.89(d)

About the Author

Dale Jenkins has had a lifelong interest in the Navy and international affairs. He is a former US Navy officer who served on a destroyer in the Pacific and for a time was home-ported in Yokosuka, Japan. Pacific Fleet commitments took him to the Philippines, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong, and Singapore. While on active duty, he was awarded the Navy/Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal. His business career was primarily in international banking, and he was also a staff director at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. Dale currently serves on the Samuel Eliot Morison Committee of the Naval Order of the United Sates, New York, and as a Regional Director of the Naval War College Foundation. As a result of his active-duty experience and new revelations, Dale provides insight into the diplomacy and strategies of the Pacific region. He has degrees in history and business from Harvard and Columbia.

Editorial Reviews

2023-12-17
Jenkins offers a meticulous analysis of the diplomatic and strategic blunders that led to hostilities between the United States and Japan at the beginning of World War II.

Most readers familiar with American history are at least broadly aware of the events leading up to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and President Roosevelt’s subsequent declaration of war on Japan. Without a closer scrutiny of the political details (an assessment scrupulously provided by the author), that outbreak of war can seem as sudden as it was inexorable. Jenkins argues that there was ample opportunity to defuse the antagonism between the two nations, but a series of diplomatic mistakes and strategic errors, combined with grotesque miscommunications, led to catastrophe. The author looks at both sides and painstakingly (though concisely) unpacks each nation’s internecine conflicts. Roosevelt was often stymied by disagreements between the civilian leaders serving on his War Council and his military commanders. Secretary of State Cordell Hull had drawn up a plan for detente between the United States and Japan, an agreement that likely would have avoided war, but failed to advocate for it due to opposition from China and England. Likewise, Japanese prime minister Konoe worked hard for peace, but he was constantly opposed by his own foreign minister, Matsuoka Yosuke, and his aggressive military generals. Jenkins paints a detailed picture of the squandered opportunities for peace on both sides, and of the deadly aftermath of Japan’s attack, culminating in the naval battles at Coral Sea and Midway. For all of the book’s rigor and precision, the author appropriately acknowledges the limitations of historical analysis and the intractability of “imponderables of history.” This text is an astonishingly thorough treatment of the subject, despite its admirable brevity—Jenkins wastes no words, and leaves nothing essential out.

An impressive one-volume history of the events leading up to the outbreak of war between the United States and Japan.

Kirkus Reviews