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October 25 - November 19, 2022
The linkage the regime and many Germans had made between the fate of the Jews and the confrontation with the United States
better educated and wealthier Germans believed,
any mistreatment of the Jews would lead to “new suffering” for Germans in the outside world, “especially in America.”
Churchill’s principal concern that day revolved around whether a Japanese attack on Britain would be regarded by the Americans as sufficient incitement for them to join the war.
the Jews, who were collectively considered to be either hostages, in the case of the western and central European Jews under Nazi rule, or enemy combatants, in the case of Soviet Jews.
The western and central European Jews, by contrast, were mostly still alive, and although the deportation of the German Jews had just begun, there was still no concrete plan for their wholesale murder.
the primary explanation was that Jews continued to be seen by Hitler as “hostages” to deter the United States from entry into the war on the Allied side.
the semipublic corralling of large numbers of living Jews was central to Hitler’s “hostage” strategy.
Among these hostages were the residents of the Jewish ghetto of Litzmannstadt (Lodz) in the Warthegau (annexed Polish territory).
Roosevelt had not categorically stated that he would declare war on Japan if it just invaded the colonies of Britain or the Netherlands.
Churchill,
remained fearful that Japanese aggression would be targeted in such a way as to leave the United States out of the war.
Britain’s diplomats, already fearful that the country’s “unpopular” image would undermine the American “urge to assist us,” cautiously waited to see how developments in the Pacific would affect their attempts to acquire desperately needed supplies.134 Soviet officials shared these fears.
Throughout the coming hours and days, Hitler would express relief that Japan’s actions would tie down substantial British and American resources in the Far East, accepting not merely that he would have to deliver on his draft treaty commitments to Tokyo, but that it was in his vital interest to prevent his ally from going down to defeat on its own. In any case, he was convinced that he was effectively already at war with America. And this time, unlike in 1917, the Reich would not wait to be openly attacked by the United States. Hitler would strike first.
as far as Hitler was concerned, the die was cast: he would take the plunge and go to war with the United States. There was no way, however, that the British, the Americans, or even the Japanese could be sure that he would actually do so.
Sensitive as the president was to the threat from Germany, he also remained attuned to the attack’s likely impact on American public opinion.
there was, for now, with the exception perhaps of the position of Army Group North, no sign of acute anxiety on his side about the situation on the eastern front. As far as Hitler was concerned, he was simply winding down the Russian campaign for the winter in preparation for delivering the final blow in the spring.
Many shared Hitler’s assumption that the Japanese attack opened up a window of opportunity for the Reich before the United States could bring its full might to bear on them.
Though the president agreed with Stimson that Germany was the driving force behind Japan’s actions, he rejected his counsel to request a declaration against Hitler at this time. None of the other cabinet members supported Stimson either.
there was general agreement that the United States should wait and see how Hitler and Mussolini responded. Meanwhile, the United States would proceed “on the assumption that we were at war with the European section of the Axis as well,” and its fleet in the Atlantic would act accordingly.
Stimson remained concerned that the moment might pass, leaving the United States fighting in the Pacific but still not legally at war in the Atlantic.
Roosevelt
intended to do nothing that would fuel criticism from noninterventionists in Congress; he would not expose the administration to criticism that it had mishandled the negotiations with Japan or that it was exploiting the crisis to bring the United States into the European conflict.
If many Japanese saw themselves struggling against the entire white race, the Anglo-Saxons were set aside for particular hostility as the shared racial enemy of all the Axis powers, including the European ones.
Even if
a broad congressional consensus was forming around a response to Japan’s assault—the idea of war against Germany and Italy was another story.
some noninterventionists charged that Roosevelt’s meddling in Europe, particularly the defense aid that he had provided to the Allies, had left the United States even more exposed in East Asia.
America First Committee
issued a statement committing itself to full support of the war effort against Japan but pointedly made no reference to its attitude in connection with the war in Europe.
Clearly, Pearl Harbor had failed to bring about the instantaneous collapse of isolationism.
that night the US Army suspended the transfer of Lend-Lease aid to Europe. This was an “emergency action” to ensure that the US military’s needs were met amid the unfolding crisis in the Pacific.
Now that a US-Japan war had come, American intelligence offered little certainty as to how Hitler would respond.
In Tokyo too, a nagging sense of unease prevailed about German intentions. Would Hitler keep his word?
In the Axis and pro-Axis press, the Japanese attack was interpreted as part of a wider struggle of the have-nots against the Western haves, and of the Japanese and German peoples against the Anglo-Saxons.
There was a distinct racial tinge to this rhetoric, which pitted the United States and Britain against much of the rest of the world.
the Führer decided to let the German Navy off the leash against American shipping in the Atlantic and Caribbean.
Key to German thinking remained the calculus around Lend-Lease. “The USA will hardly be in a position,” Goebbels crowed that day, “to send significant amounts of material to England, let alone the Soviet Union.”
from the point of view of
the entire anti-Semitic apparatus, a newfound urgency about solving the “Jewish problem.”
That same day, the first Jews were gassed to death at the Chelmno camp in Poland.
By contrast, most Jews in central and western Europe, who served as Hitler’s hostages to deter Roosevelt, were still alive. Many of those who had already been deported to the east were still in contact with friends and relatives in the west.
the deported German Jews, unlike the Soviet ones, had not yet been systematically targeted for extermination. Their future was still unclear.
War Department,
“we are suspending for the time being all defense aid transfers.”
Churchill’s most significant rhetorical flourish was to tie Japan’s actions to those of Nazi Germany.
“we can only feel that Hitler’s madness has infected the Japanese mind, and that the root of the evil and its branch must be extirpated.” Aware that his words would also be relayed to the United States, this appeal for treating the Axis powers as one was as much for American ears as for his immediate audience.
The fact that it was Stimson and the War Department that was responsible for dramatically curtailing Lend-Lease supplies in the twenty-four hours after Pearl Harbor was particularly ominous for British and Soviet interests. Stimson was the administration’s leading advocate of American intervention to aid the Allies prior to December 7.
On top of this, Britain’s war effort depended on the supply of vital commodities from the United States.
Eager to redirect public opinion back to the principal enemy, Roosevelt released a statement to the press claiming that “obviously Germany did all it could to push Japan into the war as it hoped that such a conflict would put an end to the Lend-Lease program.”
It was evident that Roosevelt recognized Hitler’s strategy very clearly. The flow of American matériel was going to be critical to the outcome of the war. The Americans knew that the Germans knew it, and the Germans knew that the Americans knew that the Germans knew it.
