Hitler's American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and Germany's March to Global War

by Brendan Simms

There was a clear risk now that the British and Russians would be able to grind down the Reich with American logistical support alone, rather than the United States’ active entry into the war.

Atlantic Charter.

By September, Roosevelt was publicly referring to the Reich as a “rattlesnake,”

Greer,

American warships would escort British vessels in the Atlantic.

“shoot on sight,”

Lend-Lease

to Stalin,

From Hitler’s perspective, therefore, it looked like the United States would soon be at war with the Third Reich, and in some ways already was.

If Hitler broadly welcomed the USSR-Japan rapprochement, which left Tokyo free to confront Washington and London, he greatly feared an understanding between Tokyo and the Anglo-Saxon powers. It was for this reason that in mid-August 1941, the Führer once again assured the Japanese that “if a clash occurs by any chance between Japan and the United States, Germany will at once open war against the United States.”

As winter 1941 approached, Berlin and Tokyo were increasingly seized by the feeling that they were running out of time.

Increasingly certain that open hostilities with the United States loomed, Hitler took two far-reaching steps. First, he launched an offensive on Moscow, Operation Typhoon, in early October 1941, which was designed finally to capture the city in hopes of knocking the Soviet Union out of the war, shocking Britain into suing for peace, and precluding Roosevelt’s intervention.1 Second, Hitler further intensified his war on the Jews and Anglo-American plutocracy. This was intended to punish “the Jews” for their alleged support for the Allied cause, and was meant to send the president one last warning, even if it was only in Hitler’s mind.

Hitler and the Japanese

Neither was under any illusion about the industrial might of America,

Both countries acted in the belief that time was running out, and that further delay only played into the hands of the Anglo-Americans.

Wannsee

The intent at this point was not necessarily to murder the deportees.

unlike those of the Soviet Union, who had been classified and murdered as enemy belligerents, the Jews of central and western Europe were still regarded as hostages to constrain Roosevelt.

Throughout the autumn of 1941, Hitler had made the connection between US policy and the fate of European Jewry more and more explicit.

Does the evidence that follows carry the point?

Hitler’s perception that American Jews had an overbearing influence on Roosevelt and were pushing the United States toward war with Germany was a product of his conspiratorial mindset rather than reality.

In fact, Roosevelt and his closest advisers—such as Treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau and Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter, who were themselves Jewish—were determined not to offer any sign that the administration’s pro-Allied policies were predicated on Nazi anti-Semitism over and above Hitler’s other crimes.51 In any case, the Americans could not fully grasp the extent of Nazi barbarity, even as evidence mounted.

many American Jewish political leaders were incredulous, as were newspaper publishers and editors, who consigned the reports to the back pages.

If Hitler thought that threatening European Jewry with destruction would deter American intervention, there is no evidence that the situation was understood in these terms in Washington.

the Anti-Comintern Pact

was now directed as much, if not more, against Anglo-American and Jewish international capitalism as it was against the Soviet Union and Communism.

Ribbentrop, like Hitler, justified the continuing war with the Soviet Union not so much on an ideological basis but as a necessity for defeating Britain and deterring Roosevelt.

Again, I always thought it the other way round-- the war with the Soviet Union was for Hitler the point of it all…

the German capital was thronged with visitors from across Eurasia and what we today call the global south.

the grand mufti of Jerusalem,

Ciano

the Slovak chief minister

Subhas Chandr...

The ousted Iraqi leader Rashid Ali al-Gailani,

Very few of these journalists, though, were sympathetic to the Third Reich; one exception was Guido Enderis, the Berlin bureau chief of the New York Times.

By the end of November 1941, the Axis’s strategic failure had become manifest.

The United States, Hitler had told his foreign minister, was contesting Japan and Germany’s right to exist. He regarded war with Roosevelt as inevitable, and he had already accepted that the campaign in the east would not be completed by the end of the year.

“Should Japan become engaged in a war against the United States,” Ribbentrop therefore told Japanese ambassador Hiroshi Oshima, “Germany, of course, would join the war immediately.

Both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had thus reached the same turning point—not so much in hubris, but in fear. Neither expected to defeat their enemy outright, but at best to seize the resources and a perimeter line behind which they could defend themselves until a compromise peace had been reached.

All sides were engaged in a racial struggle, though “race” meant different things to each. In his mind, Hitler was battling not only the Jews and Slavs but also the Anglo-Saxons; he was fighting Bolshevism, but even more he was struggling against international plutocratic capitalism. The Japanese were challenging white imperial rule in East Asia and articulating their vision of a Tokyo-dominated “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere,” a stepping-stone toward a grand bargain with the Western powers.125 Britain and the United States, by contrast, were battling Hitler on behalf of the balance of power, freedom, and democracy in Europe and—though this was less clearly articulated—Japan in defense of international law and the white position in Asia.

there were some who believed that an American entry into the war would force Roosevelt to concentrate on the Pacific to such an extent that the supply of US war matériel to the European theaters would be reduced. That, of course, was Hitler’s own calculation.

December 4, 1941,

Chicago Tribune.

Wedemeyer’s Victory Program we...

the German chargé d’affaires

Hans Thomsen,

it confirmed the general view that the full extent of American fighting power would not be deployed before July 1943.

Besides, Thomsen went on, Britain and Russia would be unable to cope “materially” with a US-Japan war. It would mean “a painful reduction of Lend-Lease support to both countries,”

If the Führer had not been aware of America’s “Germany first” strategy, he was now.

December 5, Ribbentrop sent a draft of the proposed Axis agreement to the Italians.

in the event of the outbreak of war between Japan and the United States, they would both immediately come to the aid of Tokyo and wage war against the Americans with all their might. Unlike the Tripartite Pact—which was defensive and only committed the contractants to come to each other’s aid if attacked by the United States—this agreement was, implicitly, offensive in nature. Moreover, it was to be kept secret and only published in the event of war, and was thus not intended to deter Roosevelt.168 Instead, the planned agreement was plainly intended to encourage a Japanese attack on the United States.

Ribbentrop told the German ambassador in Tokyo, Ott, that, contrary to his previous instructions, he was not to give the Japanese advice on avoiding the opprobrium of starting hostilities but rather to let them get on with it.185 Clearly, Berlin wanted Tokyo to attack the United States regardless of the political optics.