ricknro, you would be perfectly correct....if FDR invited the Japanese to attack so he could end the great depression with a great war.  Of course, many historians actually believe that to be true, that Pearl Harbor was an "invited attack' arranged by FDR who believes we should get into the world conflict. But that would be counter intuitive. This can only be true if FDR knew ahead of time that Germany will declared war on US to support Japan and there was totally no guarantee that this will happened. Without Hitler's impulsive behavior that caught most people in the Third Reich completely by surprise and in utter dismay, US would have only gone to war with Imperial Japan and left Europe to her fate......an exact opposite of what FDR really want. Reason for this is that alliance between Japan and Germany was defensive. If Japan was attack or if German was attack, the other side will join the war. But clearly, Japan was the aggressor and Hitler had no obligation to do what he did.