Word: ultimatum
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Next day Göring advised Joachim von Ribbentrop, then ambassador in London: "Tell Halifax and Chamberlain ... it is not true that Germany has given any ultimatum...
...object of 74-year-old Cordell Hull's wrath was the Army Investigating Board's Pearl Harbor report (TIME, Sept. 10). The report, branding his note to the Japs on Nov. 26, 1941 as an "ultimatum," had gone on to say: "It was the document that touched the button that started the war, as Ambassador Grew so aptly expressed...
November 20. The Jap envoys handed Hull a five-point ultimatum which called for the U.S. to abandon all its checks on Japanese aggression...
November 20-25. Franklin Roosevelt, alarmed by the Jap ultimatum, wavered, seriously considered a modus vivendi to last six months. In a penciled note to Cordell Hull he wrote: "U.S. to resume economic relations-some oil and rice now-more later. ... U.S. to introduce Japanese to Chinese to talk things over. . . . Later on Pacific agreements." To Winston Churchill he cabled that this would be "a fair proposition" for the Japs but that he was not hopeful of its acceptance; "we must all be prepared for real trouble, possibly soon...
November 26. The objections to temporizing prevailed; Franklin Roosevelt abandoned his plan for retreat. Secretary Hull handed the Japs a ten-point counterproposal to the Nov. 20 ultimatum. The negotiations, as events eleven days later proved, were over. On Nov. 30 Churchill again urged the President by cable to warn the Japs that any further aggression would "lead immediately to the gravest consequences"; instead, Franklin Roosevelt sent his now-famous personal appeal to Emperor Hirohito...