Marching Orders : The Untold Story of How the American Breaking of the Japanese Secret Codes Led to the Defeat of Nazi Germany and Japan

"We might have possessed the genius to break the Purple code, but in 1941 we didn't have the brains to know what to do with it."--Henry C. Clausen, special investigator for secretary of war Henry L. Stimson On December 6, 1941, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, commander in chief of the United States Pacific Fleet, assured his staff that the Japanese would not attack Pearl Harbor. The next morning, Japanese carriers steamed toward Hawaii to launch one of the most devastating surprise attacks in the history of war, proving the admiral disastrously wrong. Immediately, an investigation began into how the American military could have been caught so unaware. The results of the initial investigation failed to implicate who was responsible for this intelligence debacle. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, realizing that high-ranking members of the military had provided false testimony, decided to reopen the investigation by bringing in an unknown major by the name of Henry C. Clausen. Over the course of ten months, from November 1944 to September 1945, Clausen led an exhaustive investigation. He logged more than fifty-five thousand miles and interviewed over one hundred military and civilian personnel, ultimately producing an eight-hundred-page report that brought new evidence to light. Clausen left no stone unturned in his dogged effort to determine who was truly responsible for the disaster at Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement reveals all of the eye-opening details of Clausen's investigation and is a damning account of massive intelligence failure. To this day, the story surrounding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor stokes controversy and conspiracy theories. This book provides conclusive evidence that shows how the US military missed so many signals and how it could have avoided the events of that fateful day. The “extraordinarily informed” account of how US cryptographers broke Japan’s Purple cipher to change the course of World War II ( Kirkus Reviews , starred review). Marching Orders tells the story of how the American military’s breaking of the Japanese diplomatic Purple codes during World War II led to the defeat of Nazi Germany and hastened the end of the devastating conflict. With unprecedented access to over one million pages of US Army documents and thousands of pages of top-secret messages dispatched to Tokyo from the Japanese embassy in Berlin, author Bruce Lee offers a series of fascinating revelations about pivotal moments in the war. Challenging conventional wisdom, Marching Orders demonstrates how an American invasion of Japan would have resulted in massive casualties for both forces. Lee presents a thrilling day-by-day chronicle of the difficult choices faced by the American military brain trust and how, aware of Japan’s adamant refusal to surrender, the United States made the fateful decision to drop nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hailed as “one of the most important books ever published on World War II” by Robert T. Crowley, an intelligence officer who later became a senior executive at the CIA, Marching Orders unveils the untold stories behind some of the Second World War’s most critical events, bringing them to vivid life. With this book, “many of the mysteries that have eluded historians since the end of the war are much clarified: the Pearl Harbor fiasco, D-Day, why the Americans let the Russians capture Berlin, and why the decision to drop the atomic bomb was made. This is the most significant publication about World War II since the recent series of books on the Ultra revelations” ( Library Journal ). It’s a story that, as historian Robin W. Winks said, “no one with the slightest interest in World War II or in the origins of the Cold War can afford to ignore.” ?Breaking the Japanese codes shortened the course of the war by two years.? {u2014}General S. J. Chamberlin, General MacArthur{u2019}s operations officer. Proclaimed ?one of the most important books ever published on World War II,? Marching Orders provides a stunning account of how the American military{u2019}s breaking of the Japanese diplomatic Purple codes led to the defeat of Nazi Germany. Bruce Lee, having had access to more than one million pages of US Army documents and thousands of pages of daily top-secret messages dispatched to Tokyo from the Japanese embassy in Berlin, assembles fascinating revelations about pivotal moments in the war, including the reason Eisenhower stopped his army at the Elbe and let the Russians capture Berlin, the invasion of Europe, and the battles on the African and Eastern fronts. Magic and Ultra were the names of the Allied code-breaking efforts that unlocked the secrets of the Axis powers. One of the most extraordinary takeaways from these ingenious deciphering activities was the fact that Japanese leaders were intransigent in their refusal to surrender, which led to the strategic and fateful decision to drop the atomic bomb and force an end to the conflict in which thousands of lives would have been lost. This groundbreaking book clearly demonstrates how the success of the American code breakers led to so many favorable military and strategic outcomes for the Allies and hastened the end of this devastating war "We might have possessed the genius to break the Purple code, but in 1941 we didn't have the brains to know what to do with it." —Henry C. Clausen, special investigator for secretary of war Henry L. Stimson On December 6, 1941, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel, commander in chief of the United States Pacific Fleet, assured his staff that the Japanese would not attack Pearl Harbor. The next morning, Japanese carriers steamed toward Hawaii to launch one of the most devastating surprise attacks in the history of war, proving the admiral disastrously wrong. Immediately, an investigation began into how the American military could have been caught so unaware. The results of the initial investigation failed to implicate who was responsible for this intelligence debacle. Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, realizing that high-ranking members of the military had provided false testimony, decided to reopen the investigation by bringing in an unknown major...