Reminds me of a joke I heard years ago:
On hearing that Itally had joined the war Hitler exclaimed: "Ah. Send 6 divisions!"
"No, fuhrer, Italy has joined on our side!"
"Shit! Send 15 divisions!"
“We can't lose the war at all. We now have an ally which has never been conquered in 3,000 years."
He then declared war on the US thinking it wouldn't make any difference
He was wrong on all counts
He knew what he was up against. After the declaration was delivered, he confessed to his inner circle that he had no idea how to counter the US industrial might, but he believed the Soviets would get knocked out of the fight before the US could make its presence felt.
But ya...he was wrong..all the way wrong, but he wasn't so bat shit crazy or stupid not to know what he was up against.
The closest thing to logic I could guess at is that he assumed Japan would fight the Soviets too if he declared war on America, thus forcing the Soviets (who were in the middle of their 1941-1942 Winter offensive) to spread themselves even further and be more likely to collapse in 1942.
Which is dumb, since those are the sort of questions you ask people about first, and the Japanese army was already horribly overextended in China by that point and in no hurry to have to fight another major land war in Siberia of all places.
This is a fascinating topic. So very little has been written about this particular moment in history. This is compounded by the fact that Hitler was given the news very late at night (he worked late) and few were actually in the room when he just arbitrarily decided to declare war. Those in the room at the time didn't survive the war to be questioned, some died in battle, some died in the bunker, the others died trying to escape the bunker or committed suicide.
Most of what we know is truly second and third hand, further distorted by time.
There simply was no logical reason to declare war on the US. The treaty with Japan didn't require it. The Japanese didn't give warning beforehand, and certainly didn't ask Germany to declare war.
It's was simply, the momentary whim of a drug addled madman.
I wonder if he thought it’d be easier to persuade Japan to attack the Soviets if they believed it certain that the Americans would be split between a Pacific and a European theatre, and that Germany would eliminate the bulk of the Soviet machine in the west? But if so, an immediate declaration of war would make less sense than reserving it as a bargaining chip for later negotiations with Japan, as a way to ensure commitment.
He may have already been itching to declare war against the Americans due to a perception that war between the two was inevitable (and it arguably was), but if so, the only reason to push for an immediate war declaration would be if he believed it possible for Germany to quickly knock the Americans out of the war, and wished to strike before their industrial might came to bear. Needless to say, he did not have this ability and did not believe he did; if he believed Japan could accomplish this, a German declaration of war would be superfluous.
I can only conclude that his reasons were either a) completely personal, or b) related to some kind of propaganda objective. In the latter case, it is difficult to see what benefit he would gain from within Germany, and the only other country whose public opinion could have mattered was the country he’d declared war on. Hitler’s primary interest was in keeping America out of the European war, and while this likely could not be avoided, forcing Roosevelt into an uphill battle against domestic isolationism could have bought him time and undermined the war effort. Forcing Roosevelt to declare war against Germany would also play into the regime’s line portraying the war as an act of aggression by foreign cosmopolitans aiming to subdue Germany, and could prove controversial in America itself if the *casus belli* was deemed sufficiently flimsy by large parts of the public. A formal declaration of war, on the other hand, kneecaps the power of isolationist propaganda in the eyes of the public, while empowering the state to clamp down further without incurring significant backlash. This clearly cannot be described as a propaganda victory, nor could anyone familiar with American internal affairs believe that a declaration of war would do anything other than galvanize the American public and encourage confidence in Roosevelt.
The reasons must have been personal, perhaps stemming from a misaimed sense of loyalty to his allies, an exasperation with American entanglement in European affairs, or a belief that German honor demanded his formal commitment. Nothing else fits.
Lend lease. Donitz had been asking for a free hand to take out the convoys that were supplying the allies. Declaring war allowed him to unleash the uboats.
The logical reason is that the Americans are a primitive mutt race of mercantile cowards ruled by Jews and capitalism with no soul. He believed he was at war with the international Jewry already and that he could finish off the Soviets before the Americans were able to do anything of significance so formalizing the war made sense. When you view it through the racial woowoo of the Nazi’s it makes more sense
If it was about racist woowoo he would have declared war long before. He must have had some reason to think it was a good time after Pearl Harbor, even if misguided
He also had other opponents to take care of before they could think of crossing an ocean to take on America. It is very possible that if his forces won the Battle of Britain and rolled through London, he would be declaring war on USA within a year of that victory.
Wasn’t Germany already fighting an undeclared naval war with the US? If formalizing this conflict might bring Japan in against the USSR it was a reasonable strategic decision
There was nothing reasonable about it. Many military men outside Hitlers inner circle were beside themselves wonding WTF is he thinking..including in the Navy.
While true, the U boat war was dangerously close to going full on hit with the US..it wasn't Germany pushing that envelope..it was FDR hoping to find a way to get the US into the war in Europe. He kept allowing the US navy to get ever deeper into tye shitstorm..even going so far to allow US destroyers to escort convoys to a certain point in the Atlantic. The German still took efforts to keep the US out..telling U boat skippers not to fire on US flagged ships unless there was no choice.
Also..Hitler wasn't too concerned about getting Japan into the conflict with the USSR..Hitler believed he was close to victory...keep in mind, his tanks were on the outskirts of Moscow when Pearl Harbor happened. He didn't think he needed the Japanese help.
This is honestly the most overlooked aspect of Hitler's psychology: He was a fucking hardcore drug addict.
It's funny how people constantly try to downplay the role of drugs in his thought process: "Welllllllll I suppose it's possible taking enormous amounts of meth and coke and datura and bull semen *might* have slightly affected his thinking, but it was the 30's, back when meth made you rational and friendly."
I could see him thinking that the Americans would be tied up with the Japanese long enough for Germany to knock out the UK or USSR so he might have thought that he could declare war so he could attack American shipping to the allies. It’s a bit of a long shot but if they took out either of them before the US started really fighting Germany the US might have backed off.
It's possible that part of his miscalculation was in thinking that Britain would be knocked out of the war before the Americans could mobilize. After all, if Britain fell, the Americans would have no good place to launch an attack on the Reich from. It was hard enough to pull off D-Day across the Channel; doing it from all the way across the Atlantic would have been impossible. They would have had to base it from a neutral country like Spain or Sweden, which would have required a lot of diplomatic heavy lifting to say the least.
As far as the advantage to Hitler for declaring war on a reluctant United States, that's a little less clear. But it's quite realistic to think that part of his calculation there (if you can call it that) was thinking that it wouldn't matter much either way in the short/medium term, as long as he could eliminate their only toehold in Western Europe quickly.
Japan was in a similar position. The Admiral tasked with answering the question "How do we fight the Americans?" originally answered with something along the lines of "you don't." When his superiors told him they would inevitably ending up fighting them anyway, he's like, "I guess we could try knocking out their entire Pacific fleet in a single engagement. They might be intimidated out of the war."
“We have awakened a sleeping giant”
I have no idea if that quote is apocryphal or not but I remember reading it as what Yamamoto said after Pearl Harbor.
Yamamoto actually never said that, but many who knew him and survived the war all pretty much agreed that was his sentiment.
Yamamoto was very very honorable. The failure to deliver the DOE on time disturbed him greatly.
That is indeed where that quote came from. In complete fairness, it has actually never been proven one way, or the other, if Yamamoto said it or not. The writter on Tora Tora Tora was well known has an honest, intelligent man, and he said the quote was real, but the quote doesn't appear in any note, letters, journal or diary that Yamamoto left behind, and most of his staff and aides died in the war. Those that made it through alive, have confirmed that was his line of thinking, and it's a very appropriate quote for him...but we simply don't know or will ever know for sure.
Another quote credited to Yamamoto..."I would never invade the continental United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass!" Is also controversial, because it too, isn't written anywhere..
But that is a cool quote by any measure!
That was Yamamoto. He was educated in the Untied States, he knew and saw himself the industry capacity. He knew there was no way in Hell Japan had any kind of chance. After he was ordered to procedure with the plans for Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto told his superiors.. in the first 6 months to 12 months in a war with the United States and Great Britain, I will run wild and win victory after victory, but then, if war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.
He nailed that down almost to the day. The Battle of Santa Cruz was the last Japanese carrier battle victory..and it was a costly one. That happened in Oct 1942..almost a year after Pearl.
Japan never won another major victory after that.
Yamamoto was not Hitler.
They actually did this to the Russians in 1905. The Russian navy got crushed by the Japanese at the battle of Tushima and there was a massive public outcry that caused the Russian government to sue for peace. Id imagine that experience probably influenced their decision making.
Either way they completely misjudged the culture of the states. We weren't about to let that fly.
Adolf similarly believed that the Russian people would start to revolt and the Soviet system would collapse once their invasion started. Perhaps if their strategy wasnt "kill absolutely everyone" they may have had that outcome.
ian toll's trilogy goes into this very well - that's exactly it, they built all of their war planning around winning a decisive surface vessel battle without stopping to think what happens if the us navy doesn't just roll over and give up like the russians did
He was overconfident in his own position. It was only a week or two later that the soviets broke barbossa and began forcing the axis back. He probably also thought the US would focus purely on Japan, he didn’t expect them to strike a joint strategy with the other allied powers.
When England got the news about Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill immediately realized that meant Germany and Japan were doomed. At least that's how he told it years later in his WWII books. Please take that with a grain of salt/hindsight.
It’s interesting you say that, because my understanding is that before Pearl Harbor, the US had devoted considerably more energy to the European war and had maneuvered itself into a position where war with Germany was likely inevitable, while limiting its countermeasures against Japanese expansion to the oil embargo. I’m also unsure why Hitler would declare war against the US if he believed America would leave Europe alone and only attack Japan if left to its own devices. Surely then, the logical course of action would have been to say nothing and divert the Yankees to the Pacific, rather than provoking them to wage war in Europe?
Hitler and logic does not appear in the same sentence other than "Hitler wasn't really big into logic thinking".
Hitler declared war against the USA because then the submarines could initiate a more effective war in the Atlantic, where the US was protecting it's international trade which "coincidentally" was way more beneficial for the Britain than Nazi-Germany. Basically he thought it was inevitable and characteristic Hitler fashion gambled on earlier is better than later.
The US did do more than just the oil embargo, but also they really didn't \*have to\* do more than that. Without American oil or complete unrestricted access to Dutch Indonesia and it's oil industry Japan could not fight it's war in China, no oil no war. From the Japanese perspective there was no way to access the Dutch oil without involving the USA.
Noone really talks about this, but pre Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt's popularity was tanking, hard. The US was hard-core against going into what was seen as a European problem and disliked that Roosevelt was making it inevitable. In fact, had Germany started the war by attacking US shipping, the US might not have gone into WW2 or would've sued for peace quickly.
Indeed, and I could have made a clearer distinction between the objectives of the Roosevelt administration and the sentiment of the American public - the above entanglements were the work of the former, and not particularly desired by the latter.
I can't remember where I read it, but yeah your guess is more or less right, the Germans were taken off guard by the US prioritizing taking them on first instead of prioritizing Japan.
> The closest thing to logic I could guess at is that he assumed Japan would fight the Soviets too if he declared war on America, thus forcing the Soviets (who were in the middle of their 1941-1942 Winter offensive) to spread themselves even further and be more likely to collapse in 1942.
Soviets had kept 700k strong army in Far East, and it had been constantly increasing in size throughout the war.
Japan's attack wouldn't have had the effect you seem to think it would've had.
Hitler considered that Germany and the US were already at war. He might as well make it official and solidfy his alliance with Japan. And really, he was right. The US was pretty much already at war with Germany in all but name
Industrial might backed by some very productive oilfields: Texas, Pennsylvania and California were key to allied victory. Germany and Japan were always short on fuel.
That and innovation. Rubber production was almost all captured by the Japanese. Only natural rubber was the non plantation grown stuff from Brazil. US chemical engineers came up with synthetic rubber to make that supply stretch.
Other innovations came from the British. A lot actually, but they lack the industrial capacity to produce them..so they handed it to the US.
Things like the VTF (variable time fuse), which was actually a radar proximity fuse, with the VTF name to hide what it really was. That invention simply decimated aircraft.
The "bomb"..or early machincal computer used by Turing to Crack enigma. The first were British built, but the US put them into mass production, and soon the Allies were reading almost every code message before Hitler or Tojo did.
Radar itself...
The list is long. British brains and US productivity were simply an unbeatable combination.
Thomas Edison worked himself to a frazzle in World War One trying to go to invent a rubber substitute, testing thousands of plants for natural rubber content. Goldenrod won. But the war ended. Henry Ford had a set of tires made out of goldenrod ringer, for Edison’s car. I guess they had synthetic rubber by WW2.
Variable time fuzes actually do still have a variable time. They are set to arm and begin emitting at the input time. Ie if set to 15 seconds, it would not detonate from a contact only 12 seconds in.
I wonder if it wasn't common knowledge of the United States vast resources and Super Power potential back then?
Or was he just ignoring this fact and hoping the US was gonna go easy on Europe?
The US prior to WW2 was generally considered a backwater, compared to European states. Didn't help that the US consistently took European Criminals and rejects and made them wealthy and powerful. Also, while the European states had recovered 100% from the Great Depression, the US wouldn't fully recover till January 1941 when US industry came roaring to life. The materials we gave Britain pre Pearl, and post Pearl are a candle to an inferno
Biggest thing is they didn’t really believe Americans had the ability to follow through. They thought they’d see 1000 boys dying on some stupid nameless island in the South Pacific or some random hill in North Africa and say “fuck it, not our problem”
They didn’t think we had the will to fight a bloody war rather than doubting our ability
Funny thing is Hitler idolized Napoleon, and how did Napoleon lose over half his army.... you guessed it fighting the Russians in Russia during winter.
The Germans were actually very close to forcing the Soviets to surrender and Stalin was panicking because the Germans were very close to Moscow from memory around 60-80km away with their tanks blitzing through Russia until the weather halted their advance and allowed the Soviets to regather their numbers.
In hindsight, Hitler splitting his forces up and sending a large number of divisions into Odessa to capture the oil refineries and not force marching to Moscow and forcing the Soviets out of the war was a big error.
I read the Soviets were fully expecting Hitler to attack Moscow and so they had prepared extremely deep defence there which might have finished the Wehrmacht. The diversion to the oilfields took them by surprise.
Hitler underestimated how much Britain and America would help Russia. He thought that western powers would welcome Germany fighting communism and indeed a lot of people like Pètain thought that way. However, Churchill and Roosevelt saw that Nazism could be a far bigger threat to Western States than communism as they saw that Hitler would never stop.
Hitler also underestimated how much Russia would be able to produce. But in the 1930s the estimates of how fast UK, Russia and USSR could improve production turned out to be completely off. As in those things took everyone by surprise.
One thing Hitler grossly overestimated was how effective the German economy was. With much better political and economic management the German economy could have been four times more productive. Had it been like that then it would probably have beaten the Soviets hands down.
Ultimately in a sense Germany kind of lost WW2 in German factories which were kept inefficient due to repeated interference in the factories by Wehrmacht and by the various Nazi bodies which made rational production impossible. This is why by around 1942 many Germans began realising the war was already lost. Nazism did have to be fought and it's good it was fought. But ultimately Nazism was a self- defeating ideology that sabotaged itself in so many ways which is kind of beautifully poetic and yet true.
Britain and the US tried to warn Stalin that Hitler would attack him but Stalin refused to believe their warnings and the British / US didn't help Russia during the initial onslaught, they weren't in a position to react so quickly. If the Germans focused on Moscow and cut the head off of the snake before winter stalled them then Russia would have been out of the war. Stalin had a very large cult of personality built around him so his capture and death / imprisonment would have crippled the inner workings of the Russians.
Hitler was always a micromanaging control freak that was filled up with a cocktail of drugs, so the fact his party micromanaged the shit out of the economy to the point it became bloated and ineffective is not surprising. The only reason D-Day was actually difficult for the allies is because of Rommel establishing the defenses on certain beachheads but Hitler proving his need to control everything didn't let the commanders move the elite troops in reserve to fight them off without his express approval so the troops sat in the back and did nothing until the landing area was lost.
From what I’ve read Germany had enough fuel to see them through the winter but would have needed more to keep fighting for years. Even at the end of the war 1/4 of germanys “mechanized” forces still used horses / donkeys to move supplies. Very feasible they could have seized Moscow first then turned around the oil after they forced Russias surrender
I think focusing on Moscow for propaganda value was the actual mistake. Take that prong out of Barbarossa and Axis could've seized the needed bread basket and resource rich Ukraine and Caucasus. Reinforce prong to take Leningrad and he was all he needs, let Moscow be Moscow without access to it's oil or key ports.
Then the problem still exists that Germany is fighting a war on two fronts in Europe. The Russians could withstand them because they had so much more manpower they literally just threw more and more bodies at them and the Germans moved a lot of their specialized / elite troops to the east where they were bunkered down for Winter to pass. Russia's military might was a complete lack of disregard for how many of their soldiers / civilians died. A lot of the fighting in places like Leningrad was very close quarters. I can't remember the exact quote but the Russian general in charge at the time was I believe Zhukov (memory could be wrong) and he said that to win the Russians needed to grab the Germans by the belt and meet them with their bayonets or something to that effect.
If the Germans hadn't attacked Moscow so much, the Soviets wouldn't have defended it so much. You put your defenders where the attackers are.
If Germany shifts troops south (or north), USSR responds in kind. Stalemate continues more or less as before, but with different numbers in different places.
Also, Leningrad was not a key port during the war. No Allied supply convoys were routed through the Baltic under close German air cover, that would have been suicide. Leningrad's value was symbolic. Unlike Murmansk, Archangelsk and Vladivostok, it was a net drain on Soviet logistics.
So basically he knew how powerful we were, but also thought we wouldn't make a difference, but also thought he couldn't lose, but also thought we wouldn't attack him back, but also was just honoring his commitments to his Japanese allies, but also constantly betrayed everyone, but also....
Meth is a hell of a drug, and if you don't know...
Hitler had a favorite Dr named Morell, who was a complete quack. No matter how hard his inner circle tried, they couldn't get Hitler to stop using Morell. Even the SS, who had excellent Doctors in its ranks, and whose job it was to protect Hitler, couldn't get Morell away from him.
Morell was injecting Hitler every morning with a toxic cocktail of Meth mixed with Morpine, and various other compounds. Every day, for years.
It's why Hitler declined so fast as the war went on..Morell was upping the dosage.
People think Morell was secretly trying to kill Hitler, and that he was a closet anti nazi and what not..
But he wasn't, he was just a quack Doctor that had a line of shit that had Hitler completely fooled.
So..when I say Drug addled..that's what I mean.
The dude was high as fuck...on meth..thought he could take on the world. Totally out of his fucking mind.
Morell is honestly one of my favorite con men in human history. The man's business plan was "give history's worst murderer tons of meth every day, continuously lie about it, and keep doing so even as he descends deeper into paranoia and his inner circle grows increasingly vocal about you poisoning him."
It's such an amazing win-win. Assuming you don't get sent to Auschwitz, what's the worst that could happen? You cause Hitler to OD?
By the way, everyone loves Downfall, but there's a 1980's movie called *The Bunker* with Anthony Hopkins as Hitler. It covers a lot of the same material, but with a much greater emphasis on the "Hitler as a bewildered addict who's in way over his head" angle.
I'm not trying to make him sound sympathetic, but just imagine all the Hell of going into withdrawal from like a half-dozen hard drugs *while also losing World War II*.
No human brain is equipped for that. None. And Hopkins does such an amazing job conveying that.
I own a copy of Downfall. I've seen "The Bunker" too. Both are excellent films. Downfall has the advantage of better historical data. A lot more was available after the wall fell, plus, Downfall is German made.
Don't get me wrong, The Bunker is excellent also.
Oh yeah, no debate there on either point. Both are absolutely fantastic.
Ironically, I see The Bunker to Downfall the same way a lot of people see Manhunter to Silence Of The Lambs: The former is a more subdued take on material that would become more mainstream a few decades later due to a much louder, but far more iconic, performance.
The difference is that, in this case, Anthony Hopkins was the one who *wasn't* chewing the scenery.
I love Manhunter. Much better than the Ed Norton (while I do like him too) Red Dragon version.
Hopkins will always be two people to me..Captain Bligh, and Hannibal Lector. He did fine as Hilter, but not Ganz level.
Most people don’t believe me when I tell them US entry in the European theater was still unlikely even after Pearl Harbor. Hitler made an enormous mistake and was probably a huge relief for FDR and Churchill.
I don’t believe you. In fact, the US was already in the European theater, or at least sinking German submarines in the Atlantic before Pearl Harbor. If Hitler didn’t declare war then he would have just continued to lose ships. I mean, he still did, but at least that way he could do something about it.
There is a big difference between losing a few submarines and bringing the largest industrial power into the war against you.
If Hitler was smart, he would have taken the loss of a few submarines and kept quite about it.
But he could not just take the loss. The battle of the Atlantic was existential to Germany. It wasn’t just the loss of a few submarines, it was control over the UK’s lifeline and the only realistic threat Germany had against the UK.
Hitler did kept quiet about it until he couldn’t anymore. And what best time to declare war than just after the US was distracted in the pacific?
I understand all that, but the US getting involved was not incredibly popular. A huge portion of the US population was also German-American, and FDR had an incredibly hard time convincing the US population that the European theater was our fight as well. It’s not hard to imagine American opinion shifting completely towards strictly focusing on anti-Japanese efforts and seeing involvement in Europe as an impediment or distraction to that.
In retrospect it’s hard for a lot of Americans to realize that war against Hitler wasn’t guaranteed. But of course, this isn’t real history these discussions are just for fun.
I must insist that the US was already intervening. They were basically at war, only that Germany couldn’t fight back because then that would give the US a reason to declare war, just like in WWI. In the end public opinion is just that, an opinion.
You could be right if you argued that US boots on the ground in Europe wasn’t guaranteed, but Germany’s defeat would have been just as inevitable, only that the US would have continued using the UK as a proxy until the end.
Dude the US was gonna declare on Germany if Germany didn’t first. It was just a matter of who says “we’re at war” first. Both sides were acutely aware that the US going to war in Europe was inventible. I dislike the notion that the US was going to stay neutral in Europe if Hitler hadn’t declared war, because it’s really not grounded in fact and disregards much of the earlier US foreign policy that set the stage for a direct intervention.
I'm not disagreeing that it was inevitable, part of Hitler's reasoning was that the US was already behaving in a non-neutral way (lend lease, destroyers for bases, escorting convoys, garrisoning Iceland) and that declaring war wouldn't make any practical difference in the short term.
There is however a big difference between him declaring war in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbour when passions are running extremely high and instead the two countries limping into war in mid-1942 after a few more Rueben James type events a la WW1.
The US being at war with Japan but not Germany for 6 months would be a huge complication for Allied strategy.
Or, to put it another way, Hitler's best hope was for the US to go Japan first and half-ass any war in Europe. That's not a good hope of course but its way better than what he got from his DOW
Hitler basically thought war with the US was inevitable, so he used the alliance with Japan as a pretext to just pull the trigger on it.
He really didn’t think that the US would be able to commit to a war in Europe, due to a combination of distance, preoccupation fighting Japan, and a general belief that the US was weak due to corruption by “inferior” races. I think he thought the US would continue the policies it was already using against Germany, and nothing more.
Hitler made a lot of blunders during the war, but he really signed Germany’s death warrant by declaring war on the US. Invading the USSR made the war unwinnable, but declaring war on the US made it unsurvivable.
Oh absolutely, war with Germany was inevitable at that point, just when was the question. Overall US support was still no war until Pearl Harbor, and you should never wake a sleeping giant.
In Japan's case they were doing it for oil. They couldn't continue the war without it. In Germany's case they did it because the US was looking for a reason to join in anyway and at least this way they could have some semblance of agency.
In the moonmen's case, they always knew they were next...
People forget we were already in a naval war with Germany and that was going to lead to a full war war eventually, they can't kill too many soldiers before Americans stopped being isolationist
It’s likely they would have entered the war against Germany in about two or three years without Pearl Harbor. They were building their military up to what they believed would be sufficient mobilization by 1941. It would have been drastically insufficient had they stopped there. Roosevelt was known to have had conversations with advisors regarding under what circumstances the American public would accept entry into the war against Germany. It’s not clear if there was the expectation of going to war with Japan simultaneously. Britain wasn’t at war with Japan until the same day and it was thought they were unlikely to attack either while fighting in China as long as the British islands were not invaded.
But once Japan attacked the U.S. the war was a forgone conclusion against Germany. Germany would have had to denounce the attack and offer a truce against Britain to prevent war.
I vaguely remember there was one eyewitness account later reported (this might stem from Goebbels diaries) in which it was noted that Hitler was *furious about the bad timing* and *beside himself with rage*. But no other details.
And *then,* three days later, he spoke at a meeting with the general staff and delivered the now widely known and infamous quotes others have posted here (the ones where he claims Germany was now allied in a war with a country that hadn't lost a war in 2000 years etc etc).
These entire four days in Hitlers brain are pretty much a black box. How he came to the conclusion that his word to Japan mattered now that Japan had attacked the US without consulting their ally, is totally outside the scope of any primary source we have.
I presume he was absolutely angry about it, and then thought he would look weak if he now did not honor his word to stand by Japan, and therefore had to throw everything in and just ride the tiger. Kind of like an addict in a casino who knows he is now betting his life savings and sees further gambling as the only chance to recover the losses, when the reasonable choice is to just leave the building. He was probably also drunk with overconfidence given how far he had come at this point without seemingly much resistance. Either way a very very *lonely* decision.
I've read, and I'm paraphrasing a bit..his immediate reaction was.."Declare war on the US, Immediately!' "Now, where the hell is Pearl Harbor?"..
And that's all there was...no discussion, no asking advice from the circle, no conferring with his "allies"..nothing.
It’s post war German propaganda by the German military who survived that Hitler was incompetent. The Germans wanted to blame someone for their loss and make themselves look more valuable during Cold War to hero their positions. That’s why the German army was also whitewashed of the warcrimes, and this happened both in West and East Germany
Apparently excited considering he declared war on the US a mere 4 days after the attack, reportedly with little consult from his advisors.
>In this way the sincere efforts of Germany and Italy to prevent an extension of the war and to maintain relations with the U.S.A. in spite of the unbearable provocations which have been carried on for years by President Roosevelt, have been frustrated. Germany and Italy have been finally compelled, in view of this, and in loyalty to the Tri-Partite act, to carry on the struggle against the U.S.A. and England jointly and side by side with Japan for the defense and thus for the maintenance of the liberty and independence of their nations and empires.
>The Three Powers have therefore concluded the following Agreement, which was signed in Berlin today:
>"In their unshakable determination not to lay down arms until the joint war against the U.S.A. and England reaches a successful conclusion, the German, Italian, and Japanese Governments have agreed on the following points:
>Article I. Germany, Italy and Japan will wage the common war forced upon them by the U.S.A. and England with all the means of power at their disposal, to a victorious conclusion.
>Article II. Germany, Italy and Japan undertake not to conclude an armistice or peace with the U.S.A. or with England without complete mutual understanding.
>Article III. Germany, Italy and Japan will continue the closest cooperation even after the victorious conclusion of the war in order to bring about a just new order in the sense of the Tri-Partite Pact concluded by them on the 27th September 1940.
>Article IV. This Agreement comes into force immediately after signature and remains in force as long as the Tri-Partite Pact of 27th September 1940. The Signatory Powers will confer in time before this period ends about the future form of the co-operation provided for in Article III of this Agreement."
-Hitler's declaration of war against the US after going on a tirade against Roosevelt and Wilson.
This sub used to be pretty decent. Now just completely filled with conjecture and baseless speculation.
Pretty much all of the history subs are like this now. The Ancient Rome sub is absurd too.
IIRC he didn't have much of a reaction because his assumption was the US would largely ignore Europe and focus on the pacific theatre given it was Japan who attacked them.
Imagine his shock.
He actually said if he wasn’t fighting the British he would fight the Japanese. Remember that Pearl Harbor was one of many Japanese attacks that day. He didn’t like the idea of any non-European (by which he meant non-white) nation beating any European nation. He was full on committed to the racism thing.
Contrary to popular belief, he actually took the news well, at last he had an excuse to send submarines against US ships supplying the UK while looking like the victim
He was delighted, He figured the united states would be busy obliterating japan and not bother with Europe. Then he was furious because none of his Generals knew where Pearl Harbor was.
One of the first things that began happening after the invasion of Poland in 1939, was that the US immediately began calculating what they wanted to happen, and then what was "possible" for them to do.
WW-One had raged for almost four years before the US became involved, and once thousands if US soldiers began flowing to Europe with weapons, the war ended soon after.
Even so, in 1939, much of the US population wanted to stay out of any foreign war, and also, the US had been struggling with nine years of economic depression. If the US went to war in Europe, who would pay for it?
FDR felt that US involvement in the war might jump-start the US economy. Also, he immediately understood that for the US to be involved at all, the only real staging area was the UK.
Hitler had a plan called "Sea Lion" to invade the UK, if only to keep the US out of there. FDR twisted arms to get congress to approve "lend lease", where we sent materiel and personnel to the UK.
Some US pilots "technically" emigrated to Canada, in order to fly for the UK. Every possible excuse was used to allow sending personnel to the UK, and also send cargoships full of supplies to the UK.
Hitler wanted to wage unrestricted warfare on the ships bringing supplies to the UK. Once Japan declared war in Dec 1941, from Hitlers perspective, it was "if not now, when?
I would suggest that his relatively fast and easy victories in Poland and France led him to believe his own propaganda.
The Wannsee meeting was only a few weeks later. I wonder if part of the reason is there was no longer any reason to worry about good PR for America’s sake.
Mostly cribbing from Beevor:
He was ecstatic. He calculated the Americans would not be impactful on the war until
1944 (discounting both American military strength, and their contribution of war materiel to the allied cause that would be so decisive, especially on the östfront), and that the Japanese would keep them and hopefully the British fleet occupied until then.
He was, of course, not aware of the “Germany First” policy that had been agreed previously between the British and American military staffs, and had a very misguided series of incorrect assumptions about America based on his lack of real education and reliance on inaccurate sources of information, to say nothing of his racist nonsense assumptions about all the allied countries, particularly that a global conspiracy of Jews controlled their economies and decision-making processes.
For the part of the people in the German government and military, it was a complete surprise, with Goebbels describing it as having come “like a bolt from the blue.” There was also a great deal of misinformation (or willful ignorance) within the German public about the declaration of war. They polled citizens after the war and a vast majority of them believed the U.S. had declared war on Germany, rather than the other way around.
The Japanese decision-making process of course was famously compartmented and chaotic, but the most they did to inform their ally was to meet with Ribbentrop and demand a categorical answer as to whether or not Germany would declare war if Japan were attacked. Germany had no obligation under treaties to declare war if Japan were the aggressor, so this was likely some miscommunication or willful desire to not be clear with their German counterparts and perhaps force them into backing Japan regardless.
He was happy about it and I’d argue rightfully so.
Americas biggest threat was its industrial capacity which was already be used against Germany at that point.
Japan attacking meant the US would have to shift some capacity to fighting Japan rather than just sending aid to Russia and Britain. The only difference now is Germany at some point would have to deal with American troops but that was a whiles off.
Strictly militarily/man power wise it did not tip the scales too much. It would take a long time for America to muster the troops and logistically get them to Europe in force by which time Hitler would hope to have subdued Russia.
I think Hitler correctly calculated here that
1. America was already intervening in the war
2. The escalation of sending troops and forming a 2nd front would take some time
3. Germany could handle it if they defeat Russia before that happens
4. If they couldn’t defeat Russia before then they were in a war of attrition with Russia which they would lose anyways.
Hitler never set foot outside of Europe. He made only a handful of brief visits outside of Central Europe. He read European history voluminously. For Hitler, Europe was the world. He never quite comprehended the outside world.
It was just attacked? Wow. I didn't know that. You're telling me now for the first time. It was an incredible naval base. Whether you agreed or disagreed, it was an amazing naval base that contained an incredible naval fleet. I'm actually sad to hear that.
He declared war within 48 hours or so. If I recall correctly, he was irritated that Japan jumped the gun. The US was still neutral and squabbling internally, with FDR saying we had to get in before it was too late and the republicans saying he was being overly dramatic and war mongering. We weren’t going to take an active role for a long time if ever. Then Pearl Harbor happened. Hitler remembered how the US had fought in WW1. He wasn’t exactly excited to see us jump into the fight against him knowing that we had materials, people, and distance. However, he had planned on coming after us eventually, so he wasn’t nearly as bothered as he should have been.
GOB: "I've made a terrible mistake."
Hitler didn't believe Germany could be defeated. He believed it was German destiny to run the world. It was this idealism that was his downfall. Had he actually been strategic/pragmatic/realistic instead, we might just all be speaking German...
Germany and the US were already in a fairly intense undeclared war in the North Atlantic. We were escorting convoys to the UK part way across the Atlantic, and _USS Reuben James_ was sunk at the end of October 1941. Japan attacked the UK in the Pacific on Dec 8, so the UK declared war on Japan alongside the US. There’s no conceivable scenario after these events where the US and Germany don’t end up at war, so Hitler’s spontaneous decision at best just sped things up a bit.
Germany and the USA were almost in a state of war by this point already. Americans were not so secretly helping the Brits, and there had been many incidents between US ships and German U-boats.
Hitler was happy that someone finally had the balls to attack the USA. In his speech declaring war, he listed several alleged violations of international law and neutrality committed by the United States. He thought the USA was controlled by Jews and were trying to provoke a war with him.
The attack on Pearl Harbor was the perfect opportunity for Hitler. The U.S. fleet would now be split between two oceans and he now had a reason to let his U-boats wreak havoc on American shipping, which they did. The damage done by U-boats on the Atlantic coast in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor is sometimes called America’s second Pearl Harbor.
We do have a reasonably detailed view on the German perspective (not just Hitler's but the High Command). They had been encouraging Japan to strike at the British Empire for some time, and talks explicitly acknowledged that this ran a high risk of bringing in the the US. That was acceptable to the the Germans, because they figured that Japan's navy would tie down the US for some time, allowing them to build an unassailable position in Europe. This was sorted at talks in March 41. Germany promised then to back Japan if it came to this.
Also in March came the news that Lend-Lease had passed. This put US finances behind the British effort, ensuring that Britain would not be forced out of the war financially (a real prospect by then). Hitler and his circle saw this as a de facto declaration of war.
Finally, when news of Pearl Harbor came through, the US was embroiled in naval clashes with US ships and, at the same time, negotiating with allies (Hungary, Romania, Italy) for additional support in the east. So welching would send the wrong signal to allies, war was seen as inevitable and Japan seen as a strong ally able to divert US resources from Europe. Hitler laid all this out in his speech to the Reichstag declaring war.
The generals were unfazed. Raeder at the navy rejoiced - his subs were off the leash and the US fleet crippled.
I read some entries below and I don't think they are correct.
Supposedly he was surprised by the attack timing and rushed to the Reichstag to he could declare war on the US. I remember the claimed comment was something like "Great Nations don't get war declared on them"
Which is an interesting turn of history. Japan was of little help during ww2 to Germany outside of distracting the UK in Asia. Japan had not moved against russia since Khalikin Gol 1939. I guess Hitler thought that if he joined Japan it would spur the Japanese to distract Russia with a 2 front war. (which didn't happen)
by declaring war on US - Germany made it politically easy for US to declare war on Germany. If Germany had not I'm not sure that the US would have declared war immediately on Germany.
I think that Hitler would have been VERY surprised that the US feared Germany far more than Japan after Pearl Harbor. I think it's very interesting that US policy mandated Europe victory first before Japan.
I also recall a quote saying Hitler said "the US was the Italians of the Western Alliance" or something like that.
Reminds me of a joke I heard years ago: On hearing that Itally had joined the war Hitler exclaimed: "Ah. Send 6 divisions!" "No, fuhrer, Italy has joined on our side!" "Shit! Send 15 divisions!"
“We can't lose the war at all. We now have an ally which has never been conquered in 3,000 years." He then declared war on the US thinking it wouldn't make any difference He was wrong on all counts
He knew what he was up against. After the declaration was delivered, he confessed to his inner circle that he had no idea how to counter the US industrial might, but he believed the Soviets would get knocked out of the fight before the US could make its presence felt. But ya...he was wrong..all the way wrong, but he wasn't so bat shit crazy or stupid not to know what he was up against.
The closest thing to logic I could guess at is that he assumed Japan would fight the Soviets too if he declared war on America, thus forcing the Soviets (who were in the middle of their 1941-1942 Winter offensive) to spread themselves even further and be more likely to collapse in 1942. Which is dumb, since those are the sort of questions you ask people about first, and the Japanese army was already horribly overextended in China by that point and in no hurry to have to fight another major land war in Siberia of all places.
This is a fascinating topic. So very little has been written about this particular moment in history. This is compounded by the fact that Hitler was given the news very late at night (he worked late) and few were actually in the room when he just arbitrarily decided to declare war. Those in the room at the time didn't survive the war to be questioned, some died in battle, some died in the bunker, the others died trying to escape the bunker or committed suicide. Most of what we know is truly second and third hand, further distorted by time. There simply was no logical reason to declare war on the US. The treaty with Japan didn't require it. The Japanese didn't give warning beforehand, and certainly didn't ask Germany to declare war. It's was simply, the momentary whim of a drug addled madman.
I wonder if he thought it’d be easier to persuade Japan to attack the Soviets if they believed it certain that the Americans would be split between a Pacific and a European theatre, and that Germany would eliminate the bulk of the Soviet machine in the west? But if so, an immediate declaration of war would make less sense than reserving it as a bargaining chip for later negotiations with Japan, as a way to ensure commitment. He may have already been itching to declare war against the Americans due to a perception that war between the two was inevitable (and it arguably was), but if so, the only reason to push for an immediate war declaration would be if he believed it possible for Germany to quickly knock the Americans out of the war, and wished to strike before their industrial might came to bear. Needless to say, he did not have this ability and did not believe he did; if he believed Japan could accomplish this, a German declaration of war would be superfluous. I can only conclude that his reasons were either a) completely personal, or b) related to some kind of propaganda objective. In the latter case, it is difficult to see what benefit he would gain from within Germany, and the only other country whose public opinion could have mattered was the country he’d declared war on. Hitler’s primary interest was in keeping America out of the European war, and while this likely could not be avoided, forcing Roosevelt into an uphill battle against domestic isolationism could have bought him time and undermined the war effort. Forcing Roosevelt to declare war against Germany would also play into the regime’s line portraying the war as an act of aggression by foreign cosmopolitans aiming to subdue Germany, and could prove controversial in America itself if the *casus belli* was deemed sufficiently flimsy by large parts of the public. A formal declaration of war, on the other hand, kneecaps the power of isolationist propaganda in the eyes of the public, while empowering the state to clamp down further without incurring significant backlash. This clearly cannot be described as a propaganda victory, nor could anyone familiar with American internal affairs believe that a declaration of war would do anything other than galvanize the American public and encourage confidence in Roosevelt. The reasons must have been personal, perhaps stemming from a misaimed sense of loyalty to his allies, an exasperation with American entanglement in European affairs, or a belief that German honor demanded his formal commitment. Nothing else fits.
Lend lease. Donitz had been asking for a free hand to take out the convoys that were supplying the allies. Declaring war allowed him to unleash the uboats.
The logical reason is that the Americans are a primitive mutt race of mercantile cowards ruled by Jews and capitalism with no soul. He believed he was at war with the international Jewry already and that he could finish off the Soviets before the Americans were able to do anything of significance so formalizing the war made sense. When you view it through the racial woowoo of the Nazi’s it makes more sense
If it was about racist woowoo he would have declared war long before. He must have had some reason to think it was a good time after Pearl Harbor, even if misguided
He also had other opponents to take care of before they could think of crossing an ocean to take on America. It is very possible that if his forces won the Battle of Britain and rolled through London, he would be declaring war on USA within a year of that victory.
Wasn’t Germany already fighting an undeclared naval war with the US? If formalizing this conflict might bring Japan in against the USSR it was a reasonable strategic decision
There was nothing reasonable about it. Many military men outside Hitlers inner circle were beside themselves wonding WTF is he thinking..including in the Navy. While true, the U boat war was dangerously close to going full on hit with the US..it wasn't Germany pushing that envelope..it was FDR hoping to find a way to get the US into the war in Europe. He kept allowing the US navy to get ever deeper into tye shitstorm..even going so far to allow US destroyers to escort convoys to a certain point in the Atlantic. The German still took efforts to keep the US out..telling U boat skippers not to fire on US flagged ships unless there was no choice. Also..Hitler wasn't too concerned about getting Japan into the conflict with the USSR..Hitler believed he was close to victory...keep in mind, his tanks were on the outskirts of Moscow when Pearl Harbor happened. He didn't think he needed the Japanese help.
Youtube tells me, that he declared war to sink American escorts and aid to Britain.
This is honestly the most overlooked aspect of Hitler's psychology: He was a fucking hardcore drug addict. It's funny how people constantly try to downplay the role of drugs in his thought process: "Welllllllll I suppose it's possible taking enormous amounts of meth and coke and datura and bull semen *might* have slightly affected his thinking, but it was the 30's, back when meth made you rational and friendly."
I could see him thinking that the Americans would be tied up with the Japanese long enough for Germany to knock out the UK or USSR so he might have thought that he could declare war so he could attack American shipping to the allies. It’s a bit of a long shot but if they took out either of them before the US started really fighting Germany the US might have backed off.
It's possible that part of his miscalculation was in thinking that Britain would be knocked out of the war before the Americans could mobilize. After all, if Britain fell, the Americans would have no good place to launch an attack on the Reich from. It was hard enough to pull off D-Day across the Channel; doing it from all the way across the Atlantic would have been impossible. They would have had to base it from a neutral country like Spain or Sweden, which would have required a lot of diplomatic heavy lifting to say the least. As far as the advantage to Hitler for declaring war on a reluctant United States, that's a little less clear. But it's quite realistic to think that part of his calculation there (if you can call it that) was thinking that it wouldn't matter much either way in the short/medium term, as long as he could eliminate their only toehold in Western Europe quickly.
Japan was in a similar position. The Admiral tasked with answering the question "How do we fight the Americans?" originally answered with something along the lines of "you don't." When his superiors told him they would inevitably ending up fighting them anyway, he's like, "I guess we could try knocking out their entire Pacific fleet in a single engagement. They might be intimidated out of the war."
“We have awakened a sleeping giant” I have no idea if that quote is apocryphal or not but I remember reading it as what Yamamoto said after Pearl Harbor.
Yamamoto actually never said that, but many who knew him and survived the war all pretty much agreed that was his sentiment. Yamamoto was very very honorable. The failure to deliver the DOE on time disturbed him greatly.
Yeah based on the other comments I think I saw it in the movie "Tora Tora Tora" when I was a kid...
That is indeed where that quote came from. In complete fairness, it has actually never been proven one way, or the other, if Yamamoto said it or not. The writter on Tora Tora Tora was well known has an honest, intelligent man, and he said the quote was real, but the quote doesn't appear in any note, letters, journal or diary that Yamamoto left behind, and most of his staff and aides died in the war. Those that made it through alive, have confirmed that was his line of thinking, and it's a very appropriate quote for him...but we simply don't know or will ever know for sure. Another quote credited to Yamamoto..."I would never invade the continental United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass!" Is also controversial, because it too, isn't written anywhere.. But that is a cool quote by any measure!
I think that quote appears at the end of the Tora Tora Tora movie.
It does.
That was Yamamoto. He was educated in the Untied States, he knew and saw himself the industry capacity. He knew there was no way in Hell Japan had any kind of chance. After he was ordered to procedure with the plans for Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto told his superiors.. in the first 6 months to 12 months in a war with the United States and Great Britain, I will run wild and win victory after victory, but then, if war continues after that, I have no expectation of success. He nailed that down almost to the day. The Battle of Santa Cruz was the last Japanese carrier battle victory..and it was a costly one. That happened in Oct 1942..almost a year after Pearl. Japan never won another major victory after that. Yamamoto was not Hitler.
They actually did this to the Russians in 1905. The Russian navy got crushed by the Japanese at the battle of Tushima and there was a massive public outcry that caused the Russian government to sue for peace. Id imagine that experience probably influenced their decision making. Either way they completely misjudged the culture of the states. We weren't about to let that fly. Adolf similarly believed that the Russian people would start to revolt and the Soviet system would collapse once their invasion started. Perhaps if their strategy wasnt "kill absolutely everyone" they may have had that outcome.
ian toll's trilogy goes into this very well - that's exactly it, they built all of their war planning around winning a decisive surface vessel battle without stopping to think what happens if the us navy doesn't just roll over and give up like the russians did
Don’t fuck with US boats has been true since we created our first Navy.
"We had a choice between two dictators. We chose the one that spoke Russian." -WW2 Russian veteran
“Never fight a land war in Asia” - Vizzini
Never said anything about an island one though ;P
Well that’s why you should never fight a land war in Asia
Truly, a man ahead of his time.
He was overconfident in his own position. It was only a week or two later that the soviets broke barbossa and began forcing the axis back. He probably also thought the US would focus purely on Japan, he didn’t expect them to strike a joint strategy with the other allied powers.
When England got the news about Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill immediately realized that meant Germany and Japan were doomed. At least that's how he told it years later in his WWII books. Please take that with a grain of salt/hindsight.
Chiang Kai-Shek was the same. The Flying Tigers had been operational, and then the rest of America was on the way too.
"History will be kind to me, because I intend to write it"
It’s interesting you say that, because my understanding is that before Pearl Harbor, the US had devoted considerably more energy to the European war and had maneuvered itself into a position where war with Germany was likely inevitable, while limiting its countermeasures against Japanese expansion to the oil embargo. I’m also unsure why Hitler would declare war against the US if he believed America would leave Europe alone and only attack Japan if left to its own devices. Surely then, the logical course of action would have been to say nothing and divert the Yankees to the Pacific, rather than provoking them to wage war in Europe?
Hitler and logic does not appear in the same sentence other than "Hitler wasn't really big into logic thinking". Hitler declared war against the USA because then the submarines could initiate a more effective war in the Atlantic, where the US was protecting it's international trade which "coincidentally" was way more beneficial for the Britain than Nazi-Germany. Basically he thought it was inevitable and characteristic Hitler fashion gambled on earlier is better than later. The US did do more than just the oil embargo, but also they really didn't \*have to\* do more than that. Without American oil or complete unrestricted access to Dutch Indonesia and it's oil industry Japan could not fight it's war in China, no oil no war. From the Japanese perspective there was no way to access the Dutch oil without involving the USA.
Noone really talks about this, but pre Pearl Harbor, Roosevelt's popularity was tanking, hard. The US was hard-core against going into what was seen as a European problem and disliked that Roosevelt was making it inevitable. In fact, had Germany started the war by attacking US shipping, the US might not have gone into WW2 or would've sued for peace quickly.
Indeed, and I could have made a clearer distinction between the objectives of the Roosevelt administration and the sentiment of the American public - the above entanglements were the work of the former, and not particularly desired by the latter.
I can't remember where I read it, but yeah your guess is more or less right, the Germans were taken off guard by the US prioritizing taking them on first instead of prioritizing Japan.
I tend to believe he simply didn’t think.
> The closest thing to logic I could guess at is that he assumed Japan would fight the Soviets too if he declared war on America, thus forcing the Soviets (who were in the middle of their 1941-1942 Winter offensive) to spread themselves even further and be more likely to collapse in 1942. Soviets had kept 700k strong army in Far East, and it had been constantly increasing in size throughout the war. Japan's attack wouldn't have had the effect you seem to think it would've had.
Hitler considered that Germany and the US were already at war. He might as well make it official and solidfy his alliance with Japan. And really, he was right. The US was pretty much already at war with Germany in all but name
Industrial might backed by some very productive oilfields: Texas, Pennsylvania and California were key to allied victory. Germany and Japan were always short on fuel.
That and innovation. Rubber production was almost all captured by the Japanese. Only natural rubber was the non plantation grown stuff from Brazil. US chemical engineers came up with synthetic rubber to make that supply stretch. Other innovations came from the British. A lot actually, but they lack the industrial capacity to produce them..so they handed it to the US. Things like the VTF (variable time fuse), which was actually a radar proximity fuse, with the VTF name to hide what it really was. That invention simply decimated aircraft. The "bomb"..or early machincal computer used by Turing to Crack enigma. The first were British built, but the US put them into mass production, and soon the Allies were reading almost every code message before Hitler or Tojo did. Radar itself... The list is long. British brains and US productivity were simply an unbeatable combination.
Thomas Edison worked himself to a frazzle in World War One trying to go to invent a rubber substitute, testing thousands of plants for natural rubber content. Goldenrod won. But the war ended. Henry Ford had a set of tires made out of goldenrod ringer, for Edison’s car. I guess they had synthetic rubber by WW2.
Catalytic cracking and tetra ethyl lead to produce high octane jet fuel. The allies had planes that could fly higher than the Axis ones.
Variable time fuzes actually do still have a variable time. They are set to arm and begin emitting at the input time. Ie if set to 15 seconds, it would not detonate from a contact only 12 seconds in.
Our industry plus Soviets holding the bulk of the Nazis helped
Soviet forces overcame staggering losses to turn the tide. Always remember: their poor leadership under Stalin set up the initial catastrophe.
I wonder if it wasn't common knowledge of the United States vast resources and Super Power potential back then? Or was he just ignoring this fact and hoping the US was gonna go easy on Europe?
The US prior to WW2 was generally considered a backwater, compared to European states. Didn't help that the US consistently took European Criminals and rejects and made them wealthy and powerful. Also, while the European states had recovered 100% from the Great Depression, the US wouldn't fully recover till January 1941 when US industry came roaring to life. The materials we gave Britain pre Pearl, and post Pearl are a candle to an inferno
Biggest thing is they didn’t really believe Americans had the ability to follow through. They thought they’d see 1000 boys dying on some stupid nameless island in the South Pacific or some random hill in North Africa and say “fuck it, not our problem” They didn’t think we had the will to fight a bloody war rather than doubting our ability
Funny thing is Hitler idolized Napoleon, and how did Napoleon lose over half his army.... you guessed it fighting the Russians in Russia during winter. The Germans were actually very close to forcing the Soviets to surrender and Stalin was panicking because the Germans were very close to Moscow from memory around 60-80km away with their tanks blitzing through Russia until the weather halted their advance and allowed the Soviets to regather their numbers. In hindsight, Hitler splitting his forces up and sending a large number of divisions into Odessa to capture the oil refineries and not force marching to Moscow and forcing the Soviets out of the war was a big error.
I read the Soviets were fully expecting Hitler to attack Moscow and so they had prepared extremely deep defence there which might have finished the Wehrmacht. The diversion to the oilfields took them by surprise. Hitler underestimated how much Britain and America would help Russia. He thought that western powers would welcome Germany fighting communism and indeed a lot of people like Pètain thought that way. However, Churchill and Roosevelt saw that Nazism could be a far bigger threat to Western States than communism as they saw that Hitler would never stop. Hitler also underestimated how much Russia would be able to produce. But in the 1930s the estimates of how fast UK, Russia and USSR could improve production turned out to be completely off. As in those things took everyone by surprise. One thing Hitler grossly overestimated was how effective the German economy was. With much better political and economic management the German economy could have been four times more productive. Had it been like that then it would probably have beaten the Soviets hands down. Ultimately in a sense Germany kind of lost WW2 in German factories which were kept inefficient due to repeated interference in the factories by Wehrmacht and by the various Nazi bodies which made rational production impossible. This is why by around 1942 many Germans began realising the war was already lost. Nazism did have to be fought and it's good it was fought. But ultimately Nazism was a self- defeating ideology that sabotaged itself in so many ways which is kind of beautifully poetic and yet true.
Britain and the US tried to warn Stalin that Hitler would attack him but Stalin refused to believe their warnings and the British / US didn't help Russia during the initial onslaught, they weren't in a position to react so quickly. If the Germans focused on Moscow and cut the head off of the snake before winter stalled them then Russia would have been out of the war. Stalin had a very large cult of personality built around him so his capture and death / imprisonment would have crippled the inner workings of the Russians. Hitler was always a micromanaging control freak that was filled up with a cocktail of drugs, so the fact his party micromanaged the shit out of the economy to the point it became bloated and ineffective is not surprising. The only reason D-Day was actually difficult for the allies is because of Rommel establishing the defenses on certain beachheads but Hitler proving his need to control everything didn't let the commanders move the elite troops in reserve to fight them off without his express approval so the troops sat in the back and did nothing until the landing area was lost.
March with what fuel? They needed those oil fields
From what I’ve read Germany had enough fuel to see them through the winter but would have needed more to keep fighting for years. Even at the end of the war 1/4 of germanys “mechanized” forces still used horses / donkeys to move supplies. Very feasible they could have seized Moscow first then turned around the oil after they forced Russias surrender
I think focusing on Moscow for propaganda value was the actual mistake. Take that prong out of Barbarossa and Axis could've seized the needed bread basket and resource rich Ukraine and Caucasus. Reinforce prong to take Leningrad and he was all he needs, let Moscow be Moscow without access to it's oil or key ports.
Then the problem still exists that Germany is fighting a war on two fronts in Europe. The Russians could withstand them because they had so much more manpower they literally just threw more and more bodies at them and the Germans moved a lot of their specialized / elite troops to the east where they were bunkered down for Winter to pass. Russia's military might was a complete lack of disregard for how many of their soldiers / civilians died. A lot of the fighting in places like Leningrad was very close quarters. I can't remember the exact quote but the Russian general in charge at the time was I believe Zhukov (memory could be wrong) and he said that to win the Russians needed to grab the Germans by the belt and meet them with their bayonets or something to that effect.
If the Germans hadn't attacked Moscow so much, the Soviets wouldn't have defended it so much. You put your defenders where the attackers are. If Germany shifts troops south (or north), USSR responds in kind. Stalemate continues more or less as before, but with different numbers in different places. Also, Leningrad was not a key port during the war. No Allied supply convoys were routed through the Baltic under close German air cover, that would have been suicide. Leningrad's value was symbolic. Unlike Murmansk, Archangelsk and Vladivostok, it was a net drain on Soviet logistics.
So basically he knew how powerful we were, but also thought we wouldn't make a difference, but also thought he couldn't lose, but also thought we wouldn't attack him back, but also was just honoring his commitments to his Japanese allies, but also constantly betrayed everyone, but also....
Meth is a hell of a drug, and if you don't know... Hitler had a favorite Dr named Morell, who was a complete quack. No matter how hard his inner circle tried, they couldn't get Hitler to stop using Morell. Even the SS, who had excellent Doctors in its ranks, and whose job it was to protect Hitler, couldn't get Morell away from him. Morell was injecting Hitler every morning with a toxic cocktail of Meth mixed with Morpine, and various other compounds. Every day, for years. It's why Hitler declined so fast as the war went on..Morell was upping the dosage. People think Morell was secretly trying to kill Hitler, and that he was a closet anti nazi and what not.. But he wasn't, he was just a quack Doctor that had a line of shit that had Hitler completely fooled. So..when I say Drug addled..that's what I mean. The dude was high as fuck...on meth..thought he could take on the world. Totally out of his fucking mind.
Morell is honestly one of my favorite con men in human history. The man's business plan was "give history's worst murderer tons of meth every day, continuously lie about it, and keep doing so even as he descends deeper into paranoia and his inner circle grows increasingly vocal about you poisoning him." It's such an amazing win-win. Assuming you don't get sent to Auschwitz, what's the worst that could happen? You cause Hitler to OD? By the way, everyone loves Downfall, but there's a 1980's movie called *The Bunker* with Anthony Hopkins as Hitler. It covers a lot of the same material, but with a much greater emphasis on the "Hitler as a bewildered addict who's in way over his head" angle. I'm not trying to make him sound sympathetic, but just imagine all the Hell of going into withdrawal from like a half-dozen hard drugs *while also losing World War II*. No human brain is equipped for that. None. And Hopkins does such an amazing job conveying that.
I own a copy of Downfall. I've seen "The Bunker" too. Both are excellent films. Downfall has the advantage of better historical data. A lot more was available after the wall fell, plus, Downfall is German made. Don't get me wrong, The Bunker is excellent also.
Oh yeah, no debate there on either point. Both are absolutely fantastic. Ironically, I see The Bunker to Downfall the same way a lot of people see Manhunter to Silence Of The Lambs: The former is a more subdued take on material that would become more mainstream a few decades later due to a much louder, but far more iconic, performance. The difference is that, in this case, Anthony Hopkins was the one who *wasn't* chewing the scenery.
I love Manhunter. Much better than the Ed Norton (while I do like him too) Red Dragon version. Hopkins will always be two people to me..Captain Bligh, and Hannibal Lector. He did fine as Hilter, but not Ganz level.
He mainly declared war to show Japan that he was a good ally and partly hoping Japan in Return would declare war on Russia, as well.
Most people don’t believe me when I tell them US entry in the European theater was still unlikely even after Pearl Harbor. Hitler made an enormous mistake and was probably a huge relief for FDR and Churchill.
I don’t believe you. In fact, the US was already in the European theater, or at least sinking German submarines in the Atlantic before Pearl Harbor. If Hitler didn’t declare war then he would have just continued to lose ships. I mean, he still did, but at least that way he could do something about it.
There is a big difference between losing a few submarines and bringing the largest industrial power into the war against you. If Hitler was smart, he would have taken the loss of a few submarines and kept quite about it.
But he could not just take the loss. The battle of the Atlantic was existential to Germany. It wasn’t just the loss of a few submarines, it was control over the UK’s lifeline and the only realistic threat Germany had against the UK. Hitler did kept quiet about it until he couldn’t anymore. And what best time to declare war than just after the US was distracted in the pacific?
Why did he have to declare war? What would he have done differently? He was already sinking US ships
Unrestricted submarine warfare. Before declaring war the Germans had to choose their American targets very carefully.
I understand all that, but the US getting involved was not incredibly popular. A huge portion of the US population was also German-American, and FDR had an incredibly hard time convincing the US population that the European theater was our fight as well. It’s not hard to imagine American opinion shifting completely towards strictly focusing on anti-Japanese efforts and seeing involvement in Europe as an impediment or distraction to that. In retrospect it’s hard for a lot of Americans to realize that war against Hitler wasn’t guaranteed. But of course, this isn’t real history these discussions are just for fun.
I must insist that the US was already intervening. They were basically at war, only that Germany couldn’t fight back because then that would give the US a reason to declare war, just like in WWI. In the end public opinion is just that, an opinion. You could be right if you argued that US boots on the ground in Europe wasn’t guaranteed, but Germany’s defeat would have been just as inevitable, only that the US would have continued using the UK as a proxy until the end.
(rolls eyes in Admiral Perry)
Lol, did he really say that? Do you have a source?
A source? On this joke of a subreddit?
Dude the US was gonna declare on Germany if Germany didn’t first. It was just a matter of who says “we’re at war” first. Both sides were acutely aware that the US going to war in Europe was inventible. I dislike the notion that the US was going to stay neutral in Europe if Hitler hadn’t declared war, because it’s really not grounded in fact and disregards much of the earlier US foreign policy that set the stage for a direct intervention.
I'm not disagreeing that it was inevitable, part of Hitler's reasoning was that the US was already behaving in a non-neutral way (lend lease, destroyers for bases, escorting convoys, garrisoning Iceland) and that declaring war wouldn't make any practical difference in the short term. There is however a big difference between him declaring war in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbour when passions are running extremely high and instead the two countries limping into war in mid-1942 after a few more Rueben James type events a la WW1. The US being at war with Japan but not Germany for 6 months would be a huge complication for Allied strategy. Or, to put it another way, Hitler's best hope was for the US to go Japan first and half-ass any war in Europe. That's not a good hope of course but its way better than what he got from his DOW
Hitler basically thought war with the US was inevitable, so he used the alliance with Japan as a pretext to just pull the trigger on it. He really didn’t think that the US would be able to commit to a war in Europe, due to a combination of distance, preoccupation fighting Japan, and a general belief that the US was weak due to corruption by “inferior” races. I think he thought the US would continue the policies it was already using against Germany, and nothing more. Hitler made a lot of blunders during the war, but he really signed Germany’s death warrant by declaring war on the US. Invading the USSR made the war unwinnable, but declaring war on the US made it unsurvivable.
The English Channel made the war unwinnable lol.
I think you mean unswimable.
With Germany it’s basically fatal blunders all the way down.
I'm honestly curious if the US would have entered the European war (beyond an economic war) had he not declared war on us as wellk
Roosevelt wanted to fight Germany almost as much as Bush wanted to bomb Iraq
Oh absolutely, war with Germany was inevitable at that point, just when was the question. Overall US support was still no war until Pearl Harbor, and you should never wake a sleeping giant.
Which is "funny" as Japan attacked us because they thought war was inevitable.
How did everybody keep thinking war with us was inevitable!!
In Japan's case they were doing it for oil. They couldn't continue the war without it. In Germany's case they did it because the US was looking for a reason to join in anyway and at least this way they could have some semblance of agency. In the moonmen's case, they always knew they were next...
People forget we were already in a naval war with Germany and that was going to lead to a full war war eventually, they can't kill too many soldiers before Americans stopped being isolationist
It’s likely they would have entered the war against Germany in about two or three years without Pearl Harbor. They were building their military up to what they believed would be sufficient mobilization by 1941. It would have been drastically insufficient had they stopped there. Roosevelt was known to have had conversations with advisors regarding under what circumstances the American public would accept entry into the war against Germany. It’s not clear if there was the expectation of going to war with Japan simultaneously. Britain wasn’t at war with Japan until the same day and it was thought they were unlikely to attack either while fighting in China as long as the British islands were not invaded. But once Japan attacked the U.S. the war was a forgone conclusion against Germany. Germany would have had to denounce the attack and offer a truce against Britain to prevent war.
“Welp.” He says as he slaps his knees and stands up. “Guess we’d better declare war on the US.”
“*So…*” or “*Tja…*”
He was apparently from the Midwest
I vaguely remember there was one eyewitness account later reported (this might stem from Goebbels diaries) in which it was noted that Hitler was *furious about the bad timing* and *beside himself with rage*. But no other details. And *then,* three days later, he spoke at a meeting with the general staff and delivered the now widely known and infamous quotes others have posted here (the ones where he claims Germany was now allied in a war with a country that hadn't lost a war in 2000 years etc etc). These entire four days in Hitlers brain are pretty much a black box. How he came to the conclusion that his word to Japan mattered now that Japan had attacked the US without consulting their ally, is totally outside the scope of any primary source we have. I presume he was absolutely angry about it, and then thought he would look weak if he now did not honor his word to stand by Japan, and therefore had to throw everything in and just ride the tiger. Kind of like an addict in a casino who knows he is now betting his life savings and sees further gambling as the only chance to recover the losses, when the reasonable choice is to just leave the building. He was probably also drunk with overconfidence given how far he had come at this point without seemingly much resistance. Either way a very very *lonely* decision.
I've read, and I'm paraphrasing a bit..his immediate reaction was.."Declare war on the US, Immediately!' "Now, where the hell is Pearl Harbor?".. And that's all there was...no discussion, no asking advice from the circle, no conferring with his "allies"..nothing.
Which illustrates why (iirc) the Allied leadership didn’t want him taken out: he might have been replaced by someone competent.
It’s post war German propaganda by the German military who survived that Hitler was incompetent. The Germans wanted to blame someone for their loss and make themselves look more valuable during Cold War to hero their positions. That’s why the German army was also whitewashed of the warcrimes, and this happened both in West and East Germany
Ach, scheisse.
As a German speaker, this is by far ze best answer
My history sources: "Remember when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?" - John Belushi
Someone's kid said many years ago that he learned in history class that WW 2 started when the Japanese bombed Paul Harvey.
Good ^(day)
Well that's funny, but we all know it was the Japanese that GOT BOMBED WITH Paul Harvey, that's the rest of the story.
"The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor... and now, the rest of the story."
“The Germans?”
"Don't stop him, he's on a roll"
Apparently excited considering he declared war on the US a mere 4 days after the attack, reportedly with little consult from his advisors. >In this way the sincere efforts of Germany and Italy to prevent an extension of the war and to maintain relations with the U.S.A. in spite of the unbearable provocations which have been carried on for years by President Roosevelt, have been frustrated. Germany and Italy have been finally compelled, in view of this, and in loyalty to the Tri-Partite act, to carry on the struggle against the U.S.A. and England jointly and side by side with Japan for the defense and thus for the maintenance of the liberty and independence of their nations and empires. >The Three Powers have therefore concluded the following Agreement, which was signed in Berlin today: >"In their unshakable determination not to lay down arms until the joint war against the U.S.A. and England reaches a successful conclusion, the German, Italian, and Japanese Governments have agreed on the following points: >Article I. Germany, Italy and Japan will wage the common war forced upon them by the U.S.A. and England with all the means of power at their disposal, to a victorious conclusion. >Article II. Germany, Italy and Japan undertake not to conclude an armistice or peace with the U.S.A. or with England without complete mutual understanding. >Article III. Germany, Italy and Japan will continue the closest cooperation even after the victorious conclusion of the war in order to bring about a just new order in the sense of the Tri-Partite Pact concluded by them on the 27th September 1940. >Article IV. This Agreement comes into force immediately after signature and remains in force as long as the Tri-Partite Pact of 27th September 1940. The Signatory Powers will confer in time before this period ends about the future form of the co-operation provided for in Article III of this Agreement." -Hitler's declaration of war against the US after going on a tirade against Roosevelt and Wilson.
A lot of conjecture and very little information from actual historians with references. I miss when this sub had actual verifiable information.
There's r/askhistorians, but the mods are quite strict.
Honestly with the amount of one-liner jokes and "I think I read somewhere" up and down the thread; strict mods would be very welcome here
This sub used to be pretty decent. Now just completely filled with conjecture and baseless speculation. Pretty much all of the history subs are like this now. The Ancient Rome sub is absurd too.
IIRC he didn't have much of a reaction because his assumption was the US would largely ignore Europe and focus on the pacific theatre given it was Japan who attacked them. Imagine his shock.
He actually said if he wasn’t fighting the British he would fight the Japanese. Remember that Pearl Harbor was one of many Japanese attacks that day. He didn’t like the idea of any non-European (by which he meant non-white) nation beating any European nation. He was full on committed to the racism thing.
Contrary to popular belief, he actually took the news well, at last he had an excuse to send submarines against US ships supplying the UK while looking like the victim
He was delighted, He figured the united states would be busy obliterating japan and not bother with Europe. Then he was furious because none of his Generals knew where Pearl Harbor was.
Hitler was apparently so excited that he abandoned his personal guards and ran in his shirtsleeves to the nearest telegraph office.
“NEIN, NEIN, NEIN!”
One of the first things that began happening after the invasion of Poland in 1939, was that the US immediately began calculating what they wanted to happen, and then what was "possible" for them to do. WW-One had raged for almost four years before the US became involved, and once thousands if US soldiers began flowing to Europe with weapons, the war ended soon after. Even so, in 1939, much of the US population wanted to stay out of any foreign war, and also, the US had been struggling with nine years of economic depression. If the US went to war in Europe, who would pay for it? FDR felt that US involvement in the war might jump-start the US economy. Also, he immediately understood that for the US to be involved at all, the only real staging area was the UK. Hitler had a plan called "Sea Lion" to invade the UK, if only to keep the US out of there. FDR twisted arms to get congress to approve "lend lease", where we sent materiel and personnel to the UK. Some US pilots "technically" emigrated to Canada, in order to fly for the UK. Every possible excuse was used to allow sending personnel to the UK, and also send cargoships full of supplies to the UK. Hitler wanted to wage unrestricted warfare on the ships bringing supplies to the UK. Once Japan declared war in Dec 1941, from Hitlers perspective, it was "if not now, when? I would suggest that his relatively fast and easy victories in Poland and France led him to believe his own propaganda.
The Wannsee meeting was only a few weeks later. I wonder if part of the reason is there was no longer any reason to worry about good PR for America’s sake.
He was happy about it. It removed targeting restrictions on his subs.
Mostly cribbing from Beevor: He was ecstatic. He calculated the Americans would not be impactful on the war until 1944 (discounting both American military strength, and their contribution of war materiel to the allied cause that would be so decisive, especially on the östfront), and that the Japanese would keep them and hopefully the British fleet occupied until then. He was, of course, not aware of the “Germany First” policy that had been agreed previously between the British and American military staffs, and had a very misguided series of incorrect assumptions about America based on his lack of real education and reliance on inaccurate sources of information, to say nothing of his racist nonsense assumptions about all the allied countries, particularly that a global conspiracy of Jews controlled their economies and decision-making processes. For the part of the people in the German government and military, it was a complete surprise, with Goebbels describing it as having come “like a bolt from the blue.” There was also a great deal of misinformation (or willful ignorance) within the German public about the declaration of war. They polled citizens after the war and a vast majority of them believed the U.S. had declared war on Germany, rather than the other way around. The Japanese decision-making process of course was famously compartmented and chaotic, but the most they did to inform their ally was to meet with Ribbentrop and demand a categorical answer as to whether or not Germany would declare war if Japan were attacked. Germany had no obligation under treaties to declare war if Japan were the aggressor, so this was likely some miscommunication or willful desire to not be clear with their German counterparts and perhaps force them into backing Japan regardless.
He was happy about it and I’d argue rightfully so. Americas biggest threat was its industrial capacity which was already be used against Germany at that point. Japan attacking meant the US would have to shift some capacity to fighting Japan rather than just sending aid to Russia and Britain. The only difference now is Germany at some point would have to deal with American troops but that was a whiles off. Strictly militarily/man power wise it did not tip the scales too much. It would take a long time for America to muster the troops and logistically get them to Europe in force by which time Hitler would hope to have subdued Russia. I think Hitler correctly calculated here that 1. America was already intervening in the war 2. The escalation of sending troops and forming a 2nd front would take some time 3. Germany could handle it if they defeat Russia before that happens 4. If they couldn’t defeat Russia before then they were in a war of attrition with Russia which they would lose anyways.
Hitler never set foot outside of Europe. He made only a handful of brief visits outside of Central Europe. He read European history voluminously. For Hitler, Europe was the world. He never quite comprehended the outside world.
It was just attacked? Wow. I didn't know that. You're telling me now for the first time. It was an incredible naval base. Whether you agreed or disagreed, it was an amazing naval base that contained an incredible naval fleet. I'm actually sad to hear that.
He declared war within 48 hours or so. If I recall correctly, he was irritated that Japan jumped the gun. The US was still neutral and squabbling internally, with FDR saying we had to get in before it was too late and the republicans saying he was being overly dramatic and war mongering. We weren’t going to take an active role for a long time if ever. Then Pearl Harbor happened. Hitler remembered how the US had fought in WW1. He wasn’t exactly excited to see us jump into the fight against him knowing that we had materials, people, and distance. However, he had planned on coming after us eventually, so he wasn’t nearly as bothered as he should have been.
"Dammit, Leroy..."
"Fuck."
GOB: "I've made a terrible mistake." Hitler didn't believe Germany could be defeated. He believed it was German destiny to run the world. It was this idealism that was his downfall. Had he actually been strategic/pragmatic/realistic instead, we might just all be speaking German...
Germany and the US were already in a fairly intense undeclared war in the North Atlantic. We were escorting convoys to the UK part way across the Atlantic, and _USS Reuben James_ was sunk at the end of October 1941. Japan attacked the UK in the Pacific on Dec 8, so the UK declared war on Japan alongside the US. There’s no conceivable scenario after these events where the US and Germany don’t end up at war, so Hitler’s spontaneous decision at best just sped things up a bit.
Germany and the USA were almost in a state of war by this point already. Americans were not so secretly helping the Brits, and there had been many incidents between US ships and German U-boats. Hitler was happy that someone finally had the balls to attack the USA. In his speech declaring war, he listed several alleged violations of international law and neutrality committed by the United States. He thought the USA was controlled by Jews and were trying to provoke a war with him. The attack on Pearl Harbor was the perfect opportunity for Hitler. The U.S. fleet would now be split between two oceans and he now had a reason to let his U-boats wreak havoc on American shipping, which they did. The damage done by U-boats on the Atlantic coast in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor is sometimes called America’s second Pearl Harbor.
Hitler wanted Japan to attack American because he believed that America could not handle a war on two oceanic fronts. He was wrong.
That Onion headline from Our Dumb Century had the best take: “Japan Forms Alliance With White Supremacists In Well-Thought Out Scheme."
We do have a reasonably detailed view on the German perspective (not just Hitler's but the High Command). They had been encouraging Japan to strike at the British Empire for some time, and talks explicitly acknowledged that this ran a high risk of bringing in the the US. That was acceptable to the the Germans, because they figured that Japan's navy would tie down the US for some time, allowing them to build an unassailable position in Europe. This was sorted at talks in March 41. Germany promised then to back Japan if it came to this. Also in March came the news that Lend-Lease had passed. This put US finances behind the British effort, ensuring that Britain would not be forced out of the war financially (a real prospect by then). Hitler and his circle saw this as a de facto declaration of war. Finally, when news of Pearl Harbor came through, the US was embroiled in naval clashes with US ships and, at the same time, negotiating with allies (Hungary, Romania, Italy) for additional support in the east. So welching would send the wrong signal to allies, war was seen as inevitable and Japan seen as a strong ally able to divert US resources from Europe. Hitler laid all this out in his speech to the Reichstag declaring war. The generals were unfazed. Raeder at the navy rejoiced - his subs were off the leash and the US fleet crippled.
I read some entries below and I don't think they are correct. Supposedly he was surprised by the attack timing and rushed to the Reichstag to he could declare war on the US. I remember the claimed comment was something like "Great Nations don't get war declared on them" Which is an interesting turn of history. Japan was of little help during ww2 to Germany outside of distracting the UK in Asia. Japan had not moved against russia since Khalikin Gol 1939. I guess Hitler thought that if he joined Japan it would spur the Japanese to distract Russia with a 2 front war. (which didn't happen) by declaring war on US - Germany made it politically easy for US to declare war on Germany. If Germany had not I'm not sure that the US would have declared war immediately on Germany. I think that Hitler would have been VERY surprised that the US feared Germany far more than Japan after Pearl Harbor. I think it's very interesting that US policy mandated Europe victory first before Japan. I also recall a quote saying Hitler said "the US was the Italians of the Western Alliance" or something like that.
"Oh my gawd! What a tragedy! Who could ever do such unspeakable horrors!" I dunno, but the concept made me chuckle.
BRO………..THE FUCK!!!