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

by Brendan Simms

Throughout the day, American interventionists in Congress and the press reiterated the argument already made by some administration officials that Japan had attacked the United States at Hitler’s behest.

The argument that Japan was merely Hitler’s cat’s-paw in Asia had long been common among advocates of intervention, particularly since the signing of the Tripartite Pact.10 But in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor, some went even further to suggest that German planes, and even Nazi pilots, had led the Japanese assault. This partly reflected the long-standing racially charged insinuations that the Japanese were incapable of perpetrating such sophisticated operations.

For Roosevelt, who closely monitored the White House mail after any major speech, it would have been evident that the vast majority of letters dated December 8 applauded his address without necessarily pushing for him to extend America’s war to Europe.

Among members of Parliament and government officials, the Guardian reported that it was “largely accepted that Hitler demanded the attack.”

These observers were, of course, unaware that Hitler had had little advance warning of an attack on the United States and had been happily surprised when informed of the news.

The Führer’s mind was firmly on America. In the morning, Hitler issued a politically and operationally fateful instruction to the Kriegsmarine. The gloves were to come off. Hitler declared that all restrictions on the sinking of ships in the Atlantic, Mediterranean, Black Sea, and the Arctic “are lifted.”

Hitler, Goebbels noted, had not known of the impending Japanese strike and had at first not believed the news.

Hitler was conscious of America’s economic potential, which would reveal itself over time. This is why he was so pleased with Japan’s audacity. Roosevelt, he told Goebbels, had made a mistake in exposing himself. “A boxer who saves his most crushing blows for the fifth or sixth round,” he continued, “can experience what Max Schmeling experienced in his last encounter with Joe Louis, which is that he is knocked out in the first round.” This was a remarkable insight into Hitler’s own strategic conception, which was based on defeating or at least deterring a heavyweight opponent by front-loading a series of devastating blows to keep him off balance.

The Führer made clear to Goebbels his determination to “make public” the German declaration of war on the United States, but explained that hostilities had already begun with the order to pursue unr...

Overall, Hitler and Goebbels were delighted to have secured so powerful and reliable an ally as the Japanese, whom they regarded as “the Prussians of the Far East.”

It was clear that Russia was very much a second-order issue for Hitler at this time.

An anxious Churchill was now even more convinced that he needed to see Roosevelt personally as soon as possible.

A message to that effect was sent

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.

the Führer,

was in no doubt about what he was facing.

His expectation, as Below went on to say, was that the United States would for the foreseeable future be distracted by Japan and kept from interfering in the European theater of operations.116 This had been Hitler’s strategy all along—a catastrophically mistaken one, as it turned out, but one that made sense to him give...

Strikingly, there was no opposition to the prospect of a new war in the German Foreign Office, the armed services, or the Nazi Party. They had been conditioned by Hitler’s rhetoric and Roosevelt’s actions to beli...

Ribbentrop’s principal concern was to nail down the treaty text with Tokyo and Rome. This was partly in order to ensure that the Japanese would not be able to conclude a separate peace with the Allies and partly to agree upon a common ideological front against the United States and Britain. The agreeme...

A power struggle between agencies was already underway. At the War Department, officials were working to ensure “the merger of Lend-Lease with the War Department appropriations.”

it was not clear that the United States could currently afford the luxury of exporting aircraft to other countries. After consulting with the chief of staff, Secretary of War Stimson was determined to impress this on the president

Stimson also received Roosevelt’s approval to merge all appropriations of Lend-Lease into the respective army and navy production.

This did little to allay Stettinius’s fears about the immediate consequences for the fighting capabilities of America’s allies.

received confirmation that the embargo would only last forty-eight hours.

Ships were being held at the docks and goods in transit were now backed up under orders from the War Department.

To American intelligence analysts, though, the emphasis by both German and Italian commentators on the disruption to Lend-Lease was notable.

despite the White House press release claiming Lend-Lease was continuing as usual, the truth could not remain hidden for much longer.

This was also the day that the Germans chose to release news of Hitler’s meeting with the grand mufti of Palestine, Amin al-Husseini, about ten days earlier.

Rashid Ali al-Gailani was on his way to Germany.

The timing of both announcements was significant, because they suggested that the Third Reich was going to use the opportunity created by Pearl Harbor to increase the pressure on the British Empire.

There is no evidence that Amin al-Husseini originated the idea of murdering “world Jewry,” but there is no doubt that he welcomed the measure as beneficial for the Arab interest in Palestine, as he understood it, and more generally.

a report arrived from the German embassy in Washington. Thomsen wrote that while the conflict with Japan enjoyed massive popular support, “the American people were not yet ripe for a war on European soil.” In other words, it might still be possible to avoid direct military confrontation with the United States.

Hitler and Ribbentrop’s narrative that it was psychologically important to seize the initiative and declare war on the United States, rather than passively waiting to be attacked.

Halifax was seemingly unaware that Roosevelt now had knowledge, through magic decrypts, of Ribbentrop’s personal assurance to Oshima that Germany and Italy would enter the conflict against the United States. Yet could Roosevelt really be certain how Hitler would respond?

When he relayed Churchill’s request for a meeting, Roosevelt demurred.

It was clear to Halifax that Japan’s attack had perhaps not been sufficient to convince America’s still considerable swathe of isolationist opinion that the United States should go to war with Nazi Germany.

The president thus remained reliant on Hitler to act. He was also acutely conscious of the political dangers from any perception that US foreign policy was not wholly independent.

Churchill now had confirmation that Ribbentrop had pledged that Germany would make war official, although it was not clear when that might be or even whether he definitely spoke for Hitler.

Throughout the day, the president continued to work on the text of that evening’s fireside chat.

Above all, it was essential that the indivisibility of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany was impressed on the American mind, even while the president remained alive to the continued political risks of requesting a formal declaration of war against Hitler.

The Japanese leadership, clearly, remained nervous that they would be left to face the Americans alone.

The destruction and damage to the eight US battleships had left the Japanese Navy unrivaled in the region.

Once this information filtered out to the general public, the America First leaders believed, many Americans would react by joining them in opposing any administration attempt to precipitate a two-ocean war with Germany as well.

Most Americans were unaware just how engaged the US Navy already was in the war with Germany.

The connections between events in the Pacific, the power of American industry, and the war in Europe were well understood. But the implications of the new war for the vital supply line from the United States and the resulting impact on the struggle against Hitler remained unclear.

Hans Thomsen

sent an open telegram to Berlin reporting that Roosevelt had issued no fewer than three proclamations warning of “an invasion or predatory incursion” by Nazi Germany, despite the fact that the two countries were not at war. The president had also designated German and Italian nationals as “alien enemies.” The Justice Department and FBI were empowered, Thomsen reported, to detain German and Italians considered “dangerous” to US security.

A few minutes after Thomsen sent that cable, Churchill received the news from Lord Halifax that Roosevelt was unable to commit to a meeting until early January and would prefer that it take place in Bermuda, rather than the United States, “on security grounds.”2 Clearly, the president was trying to put some distance between himself and the prime minister, at least until relations with Hitler had been sorted out. It was already evident that Pearl Harbor alone was not enough to cement the US-Britain partnership.

people in Washington to assume that a formal declaration of war from Germany, or at least a break off of diplomatic relations, was to be expected within twenty-four hours.7 Over the course of the day, Roosevelt received additional intelligence that supported this inference.

Roosevelt addressed the American people in his first fireside chat since the Pearl Harbor attack. The focus in this address was as much on Hitler’s Germany as it was on Japan.