In the afternoon, Hitler met with Ribbentrop. There was no discussion about the decision to declare war on the United States. Indeed, Minister of State Otto Meissner recalls that the Führer told the foreign minister and his entourage “that the state of war between Germany and the United States was already de facto in existence since Roosevelt’s shoot-on-sight order of the previous September.”114 Instead, the subject of their discussion was the text of the Axis declaration and treaty, which Hitler wanted in place before he stood up to make his great speech.
