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“Many people are misled by formalities. They assume, for example, that the United States went to war against Germany and Japan only after its declarations of war against these nations in December 1941. In truth, the United States had been at war for a long time before making these declarations. Its war making took a variety of forms.” — Robert Higgs at the Arthur M. Krolman Lecture in 2012.
Robert Higgs is an economic historian that talked at length about the common misconception that the United States was provoked first in World War II. The truth was that the U.S. was at war for a long time before having to declare war on Japan and Germany in December 1941 and that it took war in a variety of forms — including conducting “shoot on sight” convoys against Germans, even though German U-boats were told to refrain from attacking any U.S. ships.
The United States started pairing with Great Britain to combine intelligence, combine the development of weapons, and test military equipment. The United States military cooperated the most with the British military — it would tell the British navy of aerial or marine sightings of German submarines, and then the British could attach them.
