Posted on 12/11/2013 5:51:00 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Editor's Note (1999): In his new book, A Republic, Not an Empire, Patrick Buchanan claims that as of mid-1940 Hitler "was driven by a traditional German policy of Drang nach Osten, the drive to the East." He did not want war with the West, insists Buchanan. (Pp. 268-69.) Why then did Hitler, following Pearl Harbor, declare war on the United States? Buchanan insists this was the irrational act of a madman. In fact, insists Gerhard Weinberg, it was consistent with an objective Hitler had long nourished.
It had been an assumption of Hitler's since the 1920s that Germany would at some point fight the United States. As early as the summer of 1928 he asserted in his second book (not published until I did it for him in 1961) that strengthening and preparing Germany for war with the United States was one of the tasks of the National Socialist movement. Both because his aims for Germany's future entailed an unlimited expansionism of global proportions and because he thought of the United States as a country which with its population and size might at some time constitute a challenge to German domination of the globe, a war with the United States had long been part of the future he envisioned for Germany either during his own rule of it or thereafter.
During the years of his chancellorship before 1939, German policies designed to implement the project of a war with the United States had been conditioned by two factors: belief in the truth in the stab-in-the-back legend on the one hand and the practical problems of engaging American military power on the other. The belief in the concept that Germany had lost the First World War because of the collapse at home -- the stab in the back of the German army -- rather than defeat at the front automatically carried with it a converse of enormous significance which has generally been ignored. It made the military role of the United States in that conflict into a legend. Believing that the German army had not been beaten in the fighting, Hitler and many others in the country disbelieved that it had been American participation which had enabled the Western Powers to hold on in 1918 and then move toward victory over Germany. They perceived that to be a foolish fable, not a reasonable explication of the events of that year. A solid German home front, which National Socialism would ensure, could preclude defeat next time; the problem of fighting the United States was not that the inherently weak and divided Americans could create, field, and support effective fighting forces, but rather that they were so far away and that the intervening ocean could be blocked by a large American fleet. Here were the practical problems of fighting America: distance and the size of the American navy.
To overcome these practical obstacles Hitler built up the German navy and began work on a long-range bomber -- the notorious Amerika Bomber -- which would be capable of flying to New York and back without refueling. Although the bomber proved difficult to construct, Hitler embarked on a crash building program of superbattleships promptly after the defeat of France. In addition, he began accumulating air and sea bases on the Atlantic coast to facilitate attacks on the United States. In April 1941 Hitler secretly pledged that he would join Japan in a war on the United States. This was critical. Only if Japan declared war would Germany follow.
As long as Germany had to face the United States essentially by herself, she needed time to build her own blue-water navy; it therefore made sense to postpone hostilities with the Americans until Germany had been able to remedy this deficiency. If, on the other hand, Japan would come into the war on Germany's side, then that problem was automatically solved.
Hitler was caught out of town at the time of Pearl Harbor and had to get back to Berlin and summon the Reichstag to acclaim war. His great worry, and that of his foreign minister, was that the Americans might get their declaration of war in ahead of his own. As Joachim von Ribbentrop explained it, "A great power does not allow itself to be declared war upon; it declares war on others." He did not need to lose much sleep; the Roosevelt administration was quite willing to let the Germans take the lead. Just to make sure, however, that hostilities started immediately, Hitler had already issued orders to his navy, straining at the leash since October 1939, to begin sinking American ships forthwith, even before the formalities of declaring war. Now that Germany had a big navy on its side (Japan's), there was no need to wait even an hour.
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This article is excerpted from Gerhard Weinberg's Germany, Hitler, and World War II (Cambridge University Press: 1995). It is reprinted with permission of the author and publisher and was reposted at TomPaine.com in 1999.
One of my HS buddy’s father captured a German officer. His name was Ritter, the Kraut was von Ritter.
The conversation was rather lively and less than cordial, and ended when Mr. Ritter placed the barrel of his .45 on the center of Herr von Ritter’s forehead and suggested that he might just want to shut up...
They had to go to war in 1939?
What overwhelming factor prevented them from spending more time getting ready?
China has spent decades getting ready for the impending conflict.
The industrial/military potential of a country has nothing to do with its physical size. Not sure what your point is.
It started off with the question: Why would a country the size of Montana (Germany) take on the world? Just saying/asking. Got the normal responses. Thanks.
It’s definitely still in print, though Amazon is probably your best bet.
In the past few years, interest in Phillip K. Dick has risen sharply. There was even a Phillip K. Dick film festival here in NYC last weekend.
>>The author used the I Ching to make every plot decision as he wrote. It somehow works.
As do the characters in the book who are under Japanese occupation (Western North America).
Another interesting self-reference in the book is the fact that the key characters in the book seek out the reclusive author of a counterfactual history in which the US and its allies won WW II. Best of all, this counterfactual history does not match our own timeline exactly.
Nagasaki?
Hitler wouldn’t need to invade the US. We had a huge 5th column movement in this country via the German American Bund and the America First Committee plus pro German sentiment from anyone who was anti-Semitic or anti-communist. We would have voted in our own Fuhrer. Probably Nelson Rockefeller, lol!
The draconian terms of surrender left them feeling they had nothing to lose, humiliated and angry.
Cornered rat.
Giving them the Sudetenland emboldened them.
A few baby steps from there and pretty soon the whole world is involved.
That plus Europe was tired of war having lost so many during The Great War. Twenty years was not long enough for wounds to heal. Rest of Europe just didn’t want war again. Peace in our time and all that.
Yeah. Appeasement has worked every time it’s been tried, sorta like communism...
And basically what John “Effing” Kerry is doing now with Iran.
Why, what a coinky-dink!
Just wondering if he sets policy or is he just a mouth piece for Obama.....
Iranian born VayJay sets policy.
No, that was the second test.
No, try again.
They had to go to war with the Western Powers. That’s because England lived up to her treaty with Poland. Hitler may or maybe not have expected them to, but the deal with The USSR was too good to pass up.
Had they built up their war machine for another five years and waited to invade Poland until 1944, they could have pulled it off.
I am presenting Hitler’s thinking. He knew the U.S. would roll up the Japanese Navy unless we were tied up in Europe as well. On Dec. 7, 1941, the German Army was within sight of the Kremlin’s towers. Hitler had reason to believe he could focus the might of the Wehrmacht on Britain alone.
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