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.
********
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.
That point reminds me of a story from the early days of WWII when Britain was evacuating children to Canada. A London woman whose children were being sent over wired relatives in Vancouver asking them to meet her kids when their ship landed in Halifax. The Vancouver relatives wired back, “You meet them- you’re closer than we are.”
At time of surrender in 1945 the Japanese had 1 million troops in Manchuria. Enough to “invade” Russia from the southeast and try to link up with German forces from the West? Probably not considering the need to occupy China. Enough that it should have caused the Russians to look both directions during the war? Yeah, I think so.
I don’t think Japan had the notion or stomach for a land war with Russian and I think they kinda transmitted than to them regardless of what they might have been telling Germany at the time.
He might have, but he didn't have air dominance. The Battle of Britain, where the elimination of the RAF had been the initial focus, suffered from mission creep and degenerated into a campaign against population centers which only stiffened British resolve.
Failure to eliminate the RAF caused a loss of air dominance, precluding the invasion attempt. Bombing civilian targets justified the collateral damage of the later Allied bombing campaigns.
Goering's ill-fated campaign was an appeal to his vanity, but it may have been nothing more than an attempt to force the British to sue for peace so they could be dealt with at leisure. It very is doubtful he planned any amphibious assault until after the Soviets were defeated.
“He might have, but he didn’t have air dominance. The Battle of Britain, where the elimination of the RAF had been the initial focus, suffered from mission creep and degenerated into a campaign against population centers which only stiffened British resolve.
Failure to eliminate the RAF caused a loss of air dominance, precluding the invasion attempt. Bombing civilian targets justified the collateral damage of the later Allied bombing campaigns. “
Control of the air above the Channel was the key to Sea Lion and as you say the Luftwaffe’s devolution from attacking airfields toward attacking population centers was its undoing.
Though, to the OP’s thoughts about a German invasion of Britain, I have always wondered about that. The channel boats and river ferries they massed to try to plan that crossing seem so puny in light of what the Allies put in play 4 years later to accomplish the Normandy landings. The Germans, once the RAF dealt with, seemed it a mere cross channel fairy ride to land on England’s shores in comparison. With that I must think they believed the Stukas would take care of the Royal Navy’s interference in the affair and that invading the south of England would be assumed at that point. They invaded Norway after all and that was, geographically, a more daunting task than little old England in their minds.
[For the Japanese,] moving on siberia would have made no sense.
IINM, it was the crushing defeat of the Japanese Army in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol by Soviet forces under General (later Marshall) Georgii Zhukov that convinced the Japanese to stay neutral viz. Germany and the USSR in WWII.
Ju 390...
Bump to post 86
After the brutal drubbing Zhukov laid on the Japanese Army you know they didn’ t really want Siberia after all. :)
The Russians understood concepts like “ tanks” and “artillery” that apparently didn’t translate into Japanese very well.
They would have killed him eventually. One more unwinnable war would have done it.
A more likely scenario is that in the face of failure he would have offed himself...oh, wait; HE DID!
Well, the problem for the British was they had to abandon most of their heavy equipment—tanks, APCs, artillery, trucks—that the BEF left on the beaches of Dunkirk. The late summer of 1940 was tough for them. They had men, but were low on everything, including ammo.
Perhaps an invasion by ferry would not be so far-fetched, if the British had no means to offer a defense-in-depth at the water’s edge...
Take a close look at films and photos of British troops hauling ass at Dunkirk and see if you can spot any of them even carrying a rifle. Not very many. They at least could have toted some man- portable stuff back to England.
The British made much of their “Miracle at Dunkirk” but it really was an unmitigated disaster.
That they were able to return so many men to England also had a lot to do with the Germans hoping to get Britain to sue for peace. They could’ve conducted much more aggressive operations against the fleet of vessels involved in the rescue.
It was great that so much of the BEF didn’t finish the war in POW camps or died defending themselves, but all that was a silver lining in a very dark cloud.
Imagine if Chamberlain, rather than Churchill, was still Prime Minister... He might have waved another piece of paper in the air that had the Articles of Surrender on it... Imagine a British National Socialist party in charge of the Royal Navy...
What could have the United States done in the Fall of 1940? Nothing! Still, eventually our commerce would’ve made shipping goods to Nazi Europe as routine as shipping goods to the UK and France. We might have even been a willing partner to Hitler’s war on the Soviet Union...
We owe a lot to a British half-American named Winston.
In December 1941, "Grossdeutschland" stretched from the Pyrenees to Moscow from west to east and from the Arctic Circle to Egypt from north to south. That's a bit bigger than Montana.
The. Original. German. Borders.
I. Get. That.
But at the time Hitler declared war on the United States, he controlled continental Europe. That’s quite a different scenario than what you describe. It wasn’t Montana declaring war on the United States. It was Hitler and the exploited resources of Europe declaring war on the United States.
What. Is. With. The. Single. Word. Sentences. It. Is. So. Weird.
Actually. No. Now. I. Am. Starting. To. Like. It. I. Think. I. Will. Keep. Doing. It.
This. Is. Fun. Wow. I. Love. It. Do. Not. Let. Me. Stop.
You. Are. A. Wild. Man.
:)
Just giving what I get, man.
No! If! I! Was! Truly! Wild! They! Would! Be! Exclamation! Points!
You made my morning, Laz. With only a few punctuation marks!
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