“We must solve all continental European problems in 1941,” Hitler had told Jodl on 17 December 1940, “since from 1942 on the United States would be in the position to intervene.” Now, as the turn of events in front of Moscow cast a gloomy mood over the Führer Headquarters, came the news on 7 December of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, which might have been expected to deepen the sense of apprehension even more. After all, as a German officer in Warsaw noted in his diary, “What probably every German has feared has come true.” Even Goebbels worried that Germany could “probably not avoid a declaration of war on the United States.” For Hitler, however, the news produced a “euphoric mood,” as if he “had been freed from a nightmare.” To him, in fact, it was nothing less than “a deliverance”: “We now have an ally that has never been conquered in 3,000 years.”98 With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s subsequent declaration of war on the United States on 11 December, a European war, Hitler’s war, had become a global war, one, moreover, that Hitler knew had come too soon and for which Germany was unprepared. Why, then, did he see this turn of events as hopeful for Germany?
Hitler had been aware of the potential power of the United States ever since his Second Book, written in 1928 but never published, and increasingly from the late 1930s America entered into his strategic calculations. In common with many German nationalists, his extremely negative view of the United States had been shaped by two events: American entry into World War I, which was, he thought, the result of the manipulation of Jewish finance capital, and President Wilson’s “betrayal” of Germany in both the armistice and the Treaty of Versailles. This had resulted in revolution, chaos, and national humiliation, which could never be forgiven. By the late 1930s, as Roosevelt moved in a more outspoken anti-German direction, Hitler once again detected the hand of Jewish finance directing American actions in a warlike manner, the consequences of which he had laid out in his infamous 30 January 1939 speech. Despite his realization that the United States could do little in the short term to disturb his plans, he was aware of the rapid American rearmament and the likelihood of its support for Britain and France in the event of war. At the beginning of hostilities, he expressed confidence that Germany would solve all its problems in Europe before the Americans could intervene, but he also registered deep concern “if we’re not finished by then,” for all assessments indicated that the United States would be ready for war by 1942. The western war, Hitler clearly understood, had to be won quickly and decisively. The failure to do so, as we have seen, put him under a considerable time pressure and greatly influenced the timing of his move against the Soviet Union. The war he had always planned to fight on ideological grounds now had an urgent strategic goaclass="underline" establish German continental dominance by the end of 1941 and remove any British hope of holding on before American intervention became a reality.99
To Hitler, doing nothing in the spring of 1941 raised the specter of a possible two-front war against Germany engineered by the Jews acting from both Russia and the United States. If he needed any confirmation of America’s hostile intentions, the Lend-Lease Act, enacted in March 1941, and Roosevelt’s actions in deliberately escalating the naval conflict in the Atlantic were regarded in Berlin as a virtual declaration of war on Germany. Hitler, however, did not want to give the American president an incident he could use to justify intervention, as had happened in World War I, so he ordered his naval leaders, chomping at the bit for a confrontation with the United States, to avoid any provocations. At the same time, the Führer began to see his erstwhile ally, Japan, in a new light. If Japanese expansion could be encouraged in the Pacific, he believed, that would not only strike a blow against British power but also distract U.S. attention from Europe. The key to enticing a more aggressive Japanese posture, in turn, would be the rapid defeat of the Soviet Union. That would eliminate the threat to both Germany and Japan and allow each to proceed unhindered against their remaining adversary. The Germans thus set about trying to encourage a more belligerent attitude in Tokyo.100
By the autumn, with the defeat of the Soviet Union in 1941 increasingly unlikely, and with concern growing in Berlin over a possible Japanese-American rapprochement, Japan now assumed a key role in Hitler’s thinking. In order to buy time for a 1942 campaign that would secure its material base in Europe, if not destroy the Soviet Union outright, it was urgently necessary that Berlin coax Tokyo into taking action in the Pacific. Much to German relief, a mid-October change of government had set Tokyo on a more confrontational path with the United States. By early November, in fact, it was the Japanese who were seeking assurances of support from Germany in the event of a Japanese-American conflict, guarantees that Berlin was happy to provide. Ribbentrop not only assured the Japanese ambassador on 28 November that Germany would aid Japan in the event of war but also reaffirmed its commitment not to make a separate peace with the United States.101
By now, German leaders sensed that Japanese action was imminent, but they were taken completely by surprise—“a bolt from the blue,” Goebbels admitted—by the bold attack on the key American naval base in the Pacific. Hitler now took a step that some historians have seen as “the most puzzling” of his decisions, indeed, as a “suicidal” impulse without any strategic purpose: declaring war on the United States. After all, Germany was under no treaty obligation to enter the conflict against the United States since Japan had not been attacked, and he had what he wanted at no apparent cost, a war in the Pacific that would preoccupy the Americans. The Führer’s action, however, was not as irrational as it seemed. At the beginning of December, he certainly understood that his original concept of the war had failed, that the Soviet Union would not be defeated in 1941, that Germany did not yet possess the economic or armaments ability to fight a sustained war, that the intervention of the United States was only a matter of time, and that Germany could not win a two-front war against the United States and the Soviet Union. The Japanese action, however, gave Germany a last opportunity to defeat the unexpectedly resilient Soviets or at least produce some sort of satisfactory result, such as a deal with Stalin. For this to succeed, for Germany to have the time to accomplish its aims, Japan would have to tie down the Americans as long and as completely as possible in the Pacific.102
Germany’s role, in turn, would be to prevent the Americans from concentrating all their considerable resources on the Japanese and, thus, win a quick victory before turning on Germany. The United States, through German action, would be compelled to divert resources to the Atlantic, thus forcing it into a war across two broad oceans. The tables, neatly enough, would be turned: this time, the Americans, not the Germans, would have to disperse their strength. Not surprisingly, then, on the eighth, even before the declaration of war three days later, Hitler removed the shackles from his U-boats and now ordered them to attack American shipping, a move that certainly would have resulted in an American declaration of war. He not only hoped thereby to disrupt American supplies to the British, and, thus, weaken their position, but also aimed to send a signal to the Japanese that Germany would support them fully. In retrospect, he grossly overestimated Japanese military abilities and underestimated those of the United States, but his decision, given his assessment of the situation, was certainly not irrational. Faced with a two-front war, he believed that the only way out of his dilemma was to help the Japanese preoccupy American power long enough to allow him to win the resources necessary to continue what was now a war of attrition from a solid material base. Nor, given Roosevelt’s actions in the past year, did he assume that he was taking some sort of fateful step; after all, given its undeclared war in the Atlantic, the United States could be expected to declare war on Germany.103