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In the spirit of discussing what *did* happen instead of speculating about what might have happened if some historical fact were changed, I'd like to discuss the motivations for the German declaration of war on the US at the start of WWII.
Frankly to me it seems like a dumb move. Not certain if the Nazi regime knew about Pearl Harbor plans in advance, were notified or consulted. IIRC they were not.
Not clear to me that Germany could have stayed out of it for years, but, not clear at all why they jumped in with both feet of their own accord when they did.
This is case where I don't see a success path being available to the attacking party when they attacked. Given the industrial infrastructure and particularly petroleum resources and industry in the US at the time, and with Germany not having any real way to attack the US homeland, seems to me the outcome was pre-ordained from the beginning. Clearly, the US could get to Britain, and then launch attacks on the German homeland from there. There is no similar island off the US east coast. They did have some designs for bombers and even missiles that could reach the US, but these were at least several years in the future even in 1945.
So why didn't Hitler just say to Tojo, "Interesting fight you have picked there, good luck with it!" ? Just plain hubris, thinking he could win the day by - what exactly?
I think Hitler also thought Americans were useless. Remember that at the outbreak of WW2 America's standing army was rather small and was untested in war and generally under-trained. I don't think Hitler or the Japanese fully understood the magnitude of America's industrial might. He also thought the same thing about the Soviets. Look how that turned out.
Hubris most certainly must have played a part. At that point in time, German armies had still not met defeat anywhere. Their invasion of Russian was bogging down, but the Battle of Moscow which began on December 5th, would not be resolved in favor of the Soviets for another three weeks.
Hitler was anticipating FDR bringing the war against Germany as well as Japan, and being the supreme egoist that he was, he wanted the inevitable to appear to be part of his design rather than some development beyond his control.
(It's really painful to read, and I had to proof it, all forty+ pages.)
Wow, thanks for that, didn't realize this existed! Having read through it, seems very long on ideology, about what a rat FDR was, but seems to be devoid of any practical ideas on how to get from December '41 to some sort of victory over the US (never mind USSR) by some fixed date. (Fixed date that would conform with available resources available to prosecute the war).
So I guess the Cliff's Notes version is, that Hitler just charged in on ideological grounds, and figured his generals could figure out the "trivial" (in his mind) practical problems. As an engineer, to me this sounds just plain nuts, but then again most politicians seem to be just plain nuts to me most of the time.
Too bad I can't give you multiple reps for this post, though!
My sense has always been that Hitler felt that if he did not jump into war with us on Japan's behalf, that Japan would not jump in on his behalf in the Far East. Of course, we saw how that turned out.
Hitler was anticipating FDR bringing the war against Germany as well as Japan, and being the supreme egoist that he was, he wanted the inevitable to appear to be part of his design rather than some development beyond his control.
Egotistic certainly from the victor's perspective but if you don't know the official story, his arguments seem to be pretty rational and certainly not anything unheard of (sounded a lot like those Cold War speeches warning about creeping communism).
Either way, it was a very interesting read and not that far away from the political babbling that have been made during this election cycle... Roosevelt/Clinton tools of Wall St. how not original!!
If I didn't know better I can understand that Holocaust deniers and Germophiles who still back Germany in WWII. Sad but I can understand it if you ignore everything else that was going on in Europe at the time.
If you found those interesting, try the "Words of Peace, Words of War" collection at my diplomatic site. A few thousand documents there, plus links to the Foreign Relations of the United States at the top of each year.
Just popping in to say... it had never occurred to me before I saw this thread, that Hitler had bothered to declare war against the U.S. Lol.... talk about a forgotten footnote of history. And I'm glad.
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how not original!!
