The Foreign Service Journal, December 2021

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | DECEMBER 2021 57 FS HERITAGE Recalling Dec. 11, 1941 WhenWorldWar II TrulyBegan Join this retired FSO and historian on a journey back to the day when the U.S. entered the Second World War. BY RAY WALSER Ray Walser is a retired FSO (1980-2007), former senior policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation and currently Professor of Practice, Seton Hall University’s School of Diplomacy and International Relations, Washington Program. He holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “E xcruciating uncer- tainty.” Such was the troubled state of mind among Embassy Berlin staff, as First Secretary George F. Kennan recalled in his memoirs, in the aftermath of Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941. Stationed in the Nazi capital since 1939, Kennan at age 37 was already in his 15th year of diplomatic service. For four days, U.S. Embassy Berlin, occupying the sprawling Blücher Palace, was increasingly isolated: no cables, no telephones; code books and sensitive files burned without clear instruction. “We were,” recalled Kennan, “on our own.” Shortly after noon onThursday, Dec. 11, Kennan continued, “the telephone suddenly and mysteriously came alive.” A German official announced dispatch of a car to collect Chargé Leland B. Morris. Once ushered into ForeignMinister Joachim von Ribbentrop’s grandiose Wilhelmstrasse office, Morris remained standing while the Nazi’s top diplomat, “striking ferocious attitudes,” deliv- ered a declaration of war, “screaming at him, ‘Your President has wanted this war, now he has it!’” Morris simply requested permission to cable Washington. Having, in diplomatic-speak, been handed his passport, Morris acknowledged the end of America’s diplo- matic mission in Nazi Germany. The hostile encounter lasted three minutes. b At 3 p.m., in the Kroll Opera House, Adolf Hitler launched into a 90-minute boastful, meandering tirade to announce war with the United States. Much of the speech was devoted to vilification of President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a plutocrat, failed political leader, warmonger, hypocrite, insane individual and pawn of “the eternal Jew,” according toMark Weber in The Journal of Historical Review . Moreover, Hitler reached an ominous conclusion: Ulti-