Did Hitler underestimate the US? (WW2, war, Roman, bomb)
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I believe it was Goering (commander of the Luftwaffe) that said that Americans could make razor blades and washing machines, but they couldn't make aircraft.
The P47's that my dad worked on (and just about every other aircraft produced by the U.S.) certainly proved him wrong.
"What is America but beauty queens, millionaires, stupid records and Hollywood?"
~ Adolf Hitler, 1940
Yep, it's too bad of him that he forgot about all of our extremely powerful guns, weapons, tanks, planes, ships, et cetera. As a result of this and other miscalculations of his, Hitler ended up a corpse in Berlin just five years after he said this about the United States.
Anyway, he and his compadres certainly underestimated the USSR.
Yep; Hitler and his Nazi buddies throught the that U.S.S.R. was like an enormous house of cards--all it needs is one touch for the whole thing to collapse. Boy, were they wrong!
Hitler's biggest problem was he believed his own propaganda. He drove some of the brightest scientists from his country while at the same time lured one of the mightiest nations in to a war it didn't even want to fight. It is hard to say if he truly under estimated the USSR. I think he under estimated their will to fight and the national pride that overrode any internal dislike of the regime. Had the lend lease program not happened then Germany might well have won that part of the war or at least fought to a stalemate.
Yep, it's too bad of him that he forgot about all of our extremely powerful guns, weapons, tanks, planes, ships, et cetera. As a result of this and other miscalculations of his, Hitler ended up a corpse in Berlin just five years after he said this about the United States.
Well, the only thing he really miscalculated was America'scapacity to make all of those things. Many people forget that the US military was an absolute joke in 1940/41.
In 1940 the US military ranked 17th in the world in terms of size and combat power. That placed us just behind Romania. We barely had 190,000 soldiers. We had a professional officer corps numbering only 14,000. Of those the average age of a major was 48 years old. In the National Guard one quarter of all lieutenants were over 40 years old. Not a single officer on duty in 1941 had commanded even something as large as a division in WW1. When Pearl Harbor was bombed the US had one single division that was actually fully combat ready. Most of our coastal defense batteries hadn't been test fired in over 20 years. We didn't have enough AA guns to defend a single city. We had a total of 464 tanks, most of them light "scout" tanks that would stand zero chance against even the lightest German tanks. The Army Chief of Cavalry testified before Congress in 1941 and assured them that "four well-spaced horsemen can charge a machine gun position and overtake it without suffering a scratch."
Hitler wasn't underestimating the capabilities of the US at all. In 1940/41 the US was pathetic. What he underestimated was the ability and resolve of the US to produce and equip a powerful fighting force. That was his glaring error. However, he didn't always think that way.
Hitler wrote two books. Everyone knows about Mein Kampf and the necessity of fighting two wars for the security of Germany and the domination of Europe. One against France and one against Russia. In his second book, called Zweites Buch, penned in 1928 but not published until after the war (Mein Kampf was not a big seller in 1928 and the publisher felt a second book would just hurt sales) Hitler theorized a war between his European alliance (Germany, Italy and Britain) against the United States. Hitler saw the US as the only realistic longterm threat to European domination. Hitler also saw "his kind of stength" in the US and admired the way the US solved the "Indian and Phillipine problem" and conducted itself internationally.
So, what changed by 1940 when he uttered the quote about Hollywood and stupid records? The answer is the Great Depression. Hitler saw the plunging of the US economy into the Great Depression and then followed by a double dip to signify the neutering of the US's industrial might. He also became more overtaken with his racial theories and saw the US as a weak nation of "cohesive" peoples led by "Jews and n*r lovers". FDR was pretty much a giant punchline to him. The "crippled puppet dancing for his Jewish puppetmasters".
With the US's economy in shambles and the military something that only terrified our Allies, Hitler did not consider the US a threat. Looking at the situation objectively, it is hard to say that Hitler was grossly wrong in his assessment. The ability of the US to build the military that it used to great effect in WW2 was a rather miraculous undertaking.
Hitler's biggest problem was he believed his own propaganda. He drove some of the brightest scientists from his country while at the same time lured one of the mightiest nations in to a war it didn't even want to fight. It is hard to say if he truly under estimated the USSR. I think he under estimated their will to fight and the national pride that overrode any internal dislike of the regime. Had the lend lease program not happened then Germany might well have won that part of the war or at least fought to a stalemate.
Before Lend Lease had any real impact on the Eastern Front, the course of the war had already been decided in favor of the Soviet Union. The overall role of Lend Lease to the Soviet Union and American participation in the war in general was to drastically shorten the duration. Absent Lend Lease and American involvement, WW2 could have easily lasted another 18-24+ months longer than it did and cost even more countless lives.
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