Here’s a big, likely one I rarely see discussed. December, 1941. The Japanese bomb Pearl, and the US goes to war with them. A few days later, Hitler decides to join the pile on and declares war on the US himself.
What if Germany hadn’t declared war? The US populace was mad as hell at Japan, and wanted it to be our top war priority. Yea, we’d have likely ended up at war with Hitler eventually, but what if Adolph kept his cool and declared strict neutrality (maybe even offering some back channel intelligence help to the US)?
Here’s a big, likely one I rarely see discussed. December, 1941. The Japanese bomb Pearl, and the US goes to war with them. A few days later, Hitler decides to join the pile on and declares war on the US himself.
What if Germany hadn’t declared war? The US populace was mad as hell at Japan, and wanted it to be our top war priority. Yea, we’d have likely ended up at war with Hitler eventually, but what if Adolph kept his cool and declared strict neutrality (maybe even offering some back channel intelligence help to the US)?
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Declaring war on us was perhaps Hitler’s greatest mistake according to experts. However, Germany and Japan were Allies along with Italy so Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor sealed our fate.
We were already working more or less under and over the table with Churchill, so we were “IN” even before we “GOT INTO” the war. We had no other choice and Hitler’s Operation Drumbeat, a massacre of our Merchant Marine, began a month after Pearl Harbor. Over 600 ships were sunk at a cost of only 22 U Boats. Drumbeat, also called the Second Happy Time or the Second Battle of the Atlantic started in January 1942, was most devastating in February 1942 and lasted until August, when we finally got our act together and organized convoys. Single ships had been sitting ducks but convoys were protected. It took a while to get ourselves organized.