![\"WW23\"](\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/05\/ww23.jpg?w=620\")
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FDR ordered American military forces to \u2018shoot on sight\u2019 months before Pearl Harbor, just as Charles Lindbergh, the original America Firster, was about to address an anti-war rally.<\/strong><\/p>\n In 1941: Fighting the Shadow War: A Divided America in a World at War<\/i>, historian Marc Wortman depicts how President Franklin Roosevelt<\/a> led America into war long before Pearl Harbor while the nation remained deeply divided over its role in World War II<\/a>. By September 1941, American \u201cNeutrality Patrol\u201d ships were sailing deep within Hitler\u2019s declared Atlantic Ocean combat zone. Violent confrontation between the U.S. and Germany was inevitable. The first shots of the \u201cundeclared war\u201d were fired on September 4, 1941.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n That day, deep in the North Atlantic, a naval destroyer, the USS Greer<\/i>, steaming to Iceland, which American forces had occupied in early July, shadowed a German submarine. The Greer<\/i>\u2019s skipper trailed the U-boat to alert British forces. After a British patrol plane attacked the U-boat, the German commander, believing he was under attack by the destroyer, fired torpedoes in response. The Greer<\/i> returned fire before breaking off the attack.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n FDR knew that this \u201cunprovoked\u201d attack involved threatening American action. But those German torpedoes gave him the \u201cfirst shot\u201d he believed he needed to commence open hostilities. It was time to inform the American people that \u201cundeclared\u201d war had begun.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n He waited to announce the military\u2019s \u201cshoot on sight\u201d order until the evening of September 11. Perhaps deliberately, the president\u2019s radio address to the American people and the world came in the midst of an America First rally in opposition to U.S. intervention in the war, in Des Moines. Eight thousand people were on hand to hear the anti-war forces\u2019 most powerful spokesperson, aviation hero Charles Lindbergh<\/a>. Lindbergh\u2019s personal diaries show that, after months of hesitation and preparation, he intended to tell the American people that \u201cother people,\u201d Jews, British supporters, and the White House, he claimed, formed a conspiracy to push the unwilling country into war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n![\"1941\"](\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/05\/1941.jpg\")
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