Pearl Harbor: The Seeds and Fruits of Infamy - Ludwig von Mises ...

Editor’s Preface
No one can plan history. Every one of us—rich and poor, powerful
and not so powerful, famous and infamous, important
and unimportant—plans his or her actions in the hope of
accomplishing some goal. History is the outcome of countless
such purposive actions, intertwined, interconnected, interrelated.
Although each action is planned by the individual actor in the
hope of achieving some end, history itself is not only not planned,
but unplannable. And so it is with the Pearl Harbor disaster
which launched the United States into World War II. It was the
unplanned, unintended consequence of countless separate preattack
planned actions on the part of the principals concerned.
And the post-attack coverup and revelations arose as the unintended
consequences of the purposive actions of the principals
concerned.
Th e goal of the historian of any historical event is to try to
discover how it happened as an unintended consequence of the
purposive actions of individuals. And that is the goal of this book,
as it was also the goal of the post-attack investigations, to determine
how and why the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and how
and why Washington offi cials responded as they did. My husband,
Percy Greaves, became interested in the pros and cons of
the December 7, 1941 attack from the moment he learned, as
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