After the Fall

December 7, 1941, remains, as Franklin Roosevelt described it, a “date which will live in infamy.” The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, now more than eighty years ago,  shocked the United States to its core, revealing military vulnerability and firing up a thirst for retribution. Americans were never the same. The event quickly led to Washington’s declaration of war against Japan and, in a bizarre twist, to the Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler declaring war on the United States. Since then, almost every aspect of that Sunday morning in Hawaii has been analyzed, giving rise to hundreds of books, feature films, and documentaries as well as memorials, museum displays, and no shortage of conspiracy theories.

With When France Fell, Michael Neiberg, the chair of war studies at the United States Army War College and the author of more than a dozen military histories, focuses his lens of...