"Dec 8/ 41: Should Hitler disavow the Tokyo Axis?" Topic

You're Adolf Hitler and you wake up on 12/8/41 and read the newspapers. Is it your best move to phone FDR and tell him that those sneaky Japanese sob's are no longer your buddies and that you are really, really sorry Pearl Harbour happened and can't Germany and the US just stay friends?

Of course!! Don't know what he was smoking on that day! Can't rememeber any other treaty that he signed that he didn't dump as soon as it wasn't of any value to him.

US was already supplying Britain and the USSR with loads of equipment and supplies. US could not really attack Germany directly until at least 1943, so not much would change for at least a year if he stayed with the Japanese or not. If by then he had not beaten the USSR he was never going to do so. May as well have one decent ally.

Mike "Bunkermeister" Creek
bunkermeister.blogspot.com

He underestimated the USA. He underestimated a lot of people.

My gut feel (guess) is he thought the USA would not be able to fight a war on two fronts (while he himself could) and the Pacific front would get priority. By declaring war he was 'splitting US resources'. Wrong on all counts of course.

But he should not have declared war. Leave the US with the political problem of whether to declare war on you, and selling it to the people.

I allways heard that the Japanese hinted that they would attack Russia in Siberia if he decared war on the US. And that the Japanese never had any plans to aid Germany. Smart move by the Japanese to have the US pull off resources that would have been used ag them.

No need to disavow the Axis. The Japanese ignored it in June. Why should Hitler honor it now?
As for making up to the USA, why bother? Ignore us, and we would have gone away to fight the Japs.

This is why I cannot fathom the ignorance of the "Roosevelt knew about Pearl Harbor!" conspiracy wackos. They assume that Roosevelt engineered the whole thing to get into the war. How does engineering a Japanese attack guarantee that Hitler would make the stupidest blunder of his career by declaring war on the US?

Didn't matter in the final analysis IMO. US would've entered the war sooner or later in spite of isolationist attitudes at home. The pressures of GB and Russia are great, and the US would want a piece of the action in the shaping of post-war Europe, whether or not Germany declared war after the Pearl Harbor attack.

Not declaring on the US wouldn't have been disavowing anything. It was a mutual defense pact. If the US had attacked Japan he would have had an obligation to declare, but since Japan was the aggressor he would have been within his rights under the treaty to say "Sorry, but that is your problem not mine".

It highley likely that he did it to get the Japanese to attack Russia.

I've been told that Churchill knew of the attack, ordered the sinking of a British submarine that had spotted the Japanese fleet and told his his agents close to Hitler to make him declare war on the USA. At least according to what a former secret agent wrote in his 1967 book. Forgot the name though as it sounded a bit too much tin foil hat.

That's at least three and a half tin foil hats,,,

The best option for the Corporal from Austria? Disavow the Axis, express sympathy for US losses, offer to assist the US and most certainly don't declare war

I once worked with a German lady (born in '44, and proud to have the papers showing she was a good Aryan) who refused to believe me when I told her Germany declared war on the United States and we responded by declaring war on Germany, and not vice versa.
Grelber

The only practical reason I can think of for why AH declared war on the US is that he might have thought it would assist him in his submarine war in the Atlantic. Can think of anything specific though.

There is of course always the ideologically bizarre side of Nazism. Hitler believed that the US was a "mongrel" nation without the stamina of "pure" Aryan peoples. He may well have been deluded enough to think that Germany's declaration of war couple with Pearl might send the American people into a quivering, confused lump of helpless sobbing fear and that they would simply never mobilize. (Hard to imagine that after the US participation in WW1, but Hitler was never really that…. logical.)

Hitler was a nutjob – why try to second guess his psychosis?

They assume that Roosevelt engineered the whole thing to get into the war. How does engineering a Japanese attack guarantee that Hitler would make the stupidest blunder of his career by declaring war on the US?

Well, I'm not supporting the Conspiracy freaks here, but FDR was clearly trying to push the Japanese into a war with the US. I presume his goal was war with Japan, not war with Germany (that was just a fortuitous bonus). He's been advocating war with Japan since the '20s.

He wanted war with Germany too, of course – he had a whole campaign of provocation in place there, too. I doubt he expected the twofer, though.
-Kle.

I was under the impression that since the battle of Khalkin-Gol (sp?) the Soviets and Japanese had commited significant resources to the standoff on the Mongolian/Manchurian border and that Hitler only declared war when the Japanese threatened to sign a non-aggression pact with the Soviets which would have freed their resources up for use against the Germans.

I've also heard it claimed that Germany was reliant upon the Japanese Empire for rubber.

I've also heard it claimed that Germany was reliant upon the Japanese Empire for rubber.

Good luck getting it there…
Japan started the war, in part, to GET rubber. It was in Malaya.

1. The US was already escorting convoys of supplies to Britain at least half-way across the Atlantic. One US warship had already been sunk by a U-boat while doing just that. Between that and the Lend-Lease program, AH probably figured that the US was already doing about all it could to help the Allies anyway -- and, of course, he thought that we would be busy fighting Japan. But, yes, it was a stupid move -- right up there with not finishing off the BEF when he had the chance.

2. FDR might have figured that once the US was at war with SOMEONE/ANYONE his freedom of action would be much greater. Anyone who opposed him then would be "unpatriotic."

3. AH was neither crazy nor stupid -- dispicable, yes, and ill-informed and ignorant on many subjects (who isn't?), but not crazy or stupid. (Stupidity and ignorance are not the same thing.) On a couple of important questions he had proven to know (or guess) better than his generals when they were the supposed experts, a fact that reinforced his overconfidence in his own abilities.

I always thought the reason Adolf didn't finish off the BEF was because the Grand Fleet would risk its butt standing offshore in the Channel and firing over open sights with Fighter Command flying patrol overhead.

In a shoot-em-out between the RN and a Panzerkorps, I put my guineas on the tars.

The USA was already involved in convoy ops in the North Atlantic, objectively relations with the US were only going to get worse. Still I would have gone with "Tojo, old buddy, nice job on Pearl Harbor and Hong Kong. When you are going after Vladivostok, you have my number, da?"

Of course, Adolf was mad enough he could have been thinking "good, I still have dibs on Siberia"

Not sure there would be much enthusiasm about Vladivostok after the IJA got tanned at Khalkin-Gol. AFAIK, the Japanese top brass had no interest or ability to tangle with the USSR again. They were bogged down in China, PLUS were about to conquer the Philippines, Burma, Malaya , Indonesia, etc. Not sure muddling about in tundra-land was part of the plan.

But while we're speculating, the Japanese had 1 major thing that Nazi Germany lacked. A BIG modern surface fleet. Assuming that the USA backed down after Pearl, maybe that fleet would have helped out in the Atlantic a little.

Silly dream, in retrospect. But Adolf was never very practical, was he?

The Soviets maintained at least 25 rifle/tank/motorised/mountain divisions on the Japanese frontier throughout the war in Europe – and that low was only reached in mid-1942, it was higher the rest of the time, and when they only had 25 divisions they had another 29 independant rifle brigades!

the 25 divisions were down from 32 on hte eve of Barbarossa, and 30 on 1/1/1942

This was less than at the start of the war, but was still a substantial force & the Japanese were never going to be able to attack it AND conquer the Sth Pacific – not that they didn't have plenty of troops in Manchuria, but they couldn't afford the supplies for offensive operations and there were no strategic materials to be gained by attacking.

Hitler had a very, very misguided view of America – he reckoned that the racial tensions and economic problems left over from the Great Depression had weakened America, and he had the view that America's being made up of a large number of immigrants from a variety of origins made it weaker than Germany

Surprise, surprise

The Soviets maintained at least 25 rifle/tank/motorised/mountain divisions on the Japanese frontier throughout the war in Europe

No they didn't. They were on their knees in 1942 and 1943 and every serviceable man went to fight the Nazis. What was left in Siberia were reservists, with obsolete arms and equipment.

Stalin maintained the fiction of a strong force of course, rather than just wave the Japanese in. But it was a fiction only.

After the war the Soviets continued to preserve the line that they had always had men and tanks in reserve in Siberia, because it made it look as if they had always been in control. They are paper units though.

With Hitler knocking on the doors of Moscow and Leningrad would anyone have left full tank divisions in Siberia? Especially once Sorge had found out that the Japanese weren't interested in Siberia any more, after their 1919-1920 fiasco.

(Despite determined efforts to pretend otherwise, the "mineral wealth" of far Eastern Siberia is mostly too much bother to mine. Even with Gulag labour it was marginally economic for the Russians. China has much better pickings.)

No they didn't. They were on their knees in 1942 and 1943 and every serviceable man went to fight the Nazis. What was left in Siberia were reservists, with obsolete arms and equipment.

Based on what?

We have the soviet records – only a handful of divisions were actually sent – the "Siberian myth" of Moscow did not involve many units from the Far East at all.

BT's and T26's may have been obsolete (and there were a lot – still over 1200 avaialble in 1945!) they were also a match for Japanese armour.

the Entire soviet army of 1942 was made up of "reservists" (the pre-war soviet army was wiped out in 1941 – but hte army was stronger in manpower in Jan 1942 than it was in July 1941!), and mostly underequippend and lacking in heavy arms – the Far Eastern dibvisions that were sent to the West were invariably strong and much better equipped than those that were already there – the battle record of a few of them around Smolensk has them doing very well.

There is no reason that I'm aware of to assume that the Far Eastern troop who remained there were any better or worse trained than any other Soviet troops – and indeed there is at least circumstantial evidence that they were not raided for replacements other than the downsizing associated with Soviet division size throughout the war so may well have been better trained.

Certainly their armour was not the best….but it didn't need to be.

Certainly they maintained a propaganda line after the war – but we don't have to accept that – Glantz et al have looked at the records & we know the facts. One of hte great things about the USSR is that it was a total beuracracy – the records are perfect – of they were not released to the public until the 1990's, but they are meticulous as only a totally controlled beuracracy can be! :)

They may not have had thousands of T34's in reserve there, but the troops they did hae there were as much fighting men as any others in the Soviet forces – and probably better than the poor sods swept off the sreets and farms off reconquered Russia, Ukraine and Byelorus in 44-45 given a rifle and a week's "training" before being sent to the front!

"3. AH was neither crazy nor stupid -- dispicable, yes, and ill-informed and ignorant on many subjects (who isn't?), but not crazy or stupid. (Stupidity and ignorance are not the same thing.) "

I think DonLowry makes a good point there. Its much too easy to just brush Hitler off as crazy. He is far too under rated when considering WW2. For someone to make it to leadership they have to have a following that believe he is able to do the job. Hitler had a huge following and many of those had a belief in him that was nothing short of fanatical.

We have the benefit of hindsight. That enables us to see the really bad decisions he made and be critical of them. But at the time some of them were made he had plenty of people who agreed. Later in the war the staff mostly disagreed, but by then they were afraid of the fanatical following and thus went along.

I believe that Hitler declared war on the USA in a mistaken idea that he was appealing to the Japanese sense of honour and the Bushido spirit by standing with his Axis ally. So called honor, was a big thing with the Nazi's even if to us their idea of what was honourable and what was not, was rather bizzare.

Sooner or later there would have been another clash in the Atlantic and with America at war, it would have provided the necessary excuse for the US to declare war on Germany. In that regard I believe it was inevitable. However I am still of the opinion that it was not the reason for the German declaration of war and that the above, was in fact the reason.

Stalin was every bit as evil as Hitler and his death toll of Russians, is supposed to be higher than Hitler's total of everyone. Yet he managed to remain in power. He initially meddled in Military matters, but he seems to have recognized the need to loosen up on his generals to allow them to win the war, while concentrating his efforts on retaining control of the state and the people. As soon as victory was assured, the Generals were also brought back under strict control.

Hitler on the other hand tried to interfere in everything. That shows him to have a poor ability to see the over all picture.

These men were evil. But evil is not necessarily crazy or it could never succeed at all. Evil was eventually overcome, but if crazy was involved, I believe the fall would have come far quicker.

Hitler could perhaps be better described as an evil genius up to 1942. After that his evil side and the loyalty of those around him, was able to keep him in power. Hitler was seen less and less in public. The General staff knew of his decline, but it was kept from the bulk of his followers because they could not see it, and it was not being reported.

The Japanese were similarly under the leadership of men who had pretty much total power. In their case they were not so much evil, as totally misguided, and men of poor judgement. Most of their evil, came about from mistaken beliefs, rather than deliberate planning. The Nazi's set out to kill people for the simple reason they didnt like them and were prepared to exterminate. The Japanese treated people badly because they believed those peoples were inferior. But in an over all sense, wanted to conquer and colonize, not exterminate.

The differences are that on one hand a deliberate policy was set in motion, and on the other hand a situation came about because of other policy.

The difference probably matters little to the dead. But from a historical point the war aims of the two powers were quite divergent.

I believe Hitler was occasionally deranged in the later part of the war. We know in the medical sense that humans can go back and forth between states of mind. But BEFORE he was actually deranged…or crazy….his beliefs were nothing short of evil, yet his conduct of affairs quite brilliant.

This human ability and at the same time failing, is something we need to carry on through history, because we are sure to come across it again.

Aloysius: first you disagree with me, then you basically agree with me. Which is it to be?

If the divisions sent from the east were "invariably strong and better equipped" than those of the west, it suggests that they were taking their best stuff.

I never said they stripped the border clean, just that they didn't have anything like 25 first-class divisions sitting round doing nothing while their country was on the edge of disaster.

One of hte great things about the USSR is that it was a total beuracracy – the records are perfect

Oh really! That's too funny!

For a brief period of Glaznost people were able to access some archives. Not the really good ones, but some useful stuff. Now it is almost back to the way it was.

Important state secrets -- ones which the fate of the country hung on -- were not treated lightly in the USSR. Modern Russia has plenty of reasons to maintain the old lines regarding the Great Patriotic War, and does not take kindly to people suggesting otherwise.

Try to find out something on the murder of Sergei Kirov, say, and you'll see how recorded everything was.

I have always thought Hitler's declaration of war on the US was his single biggest error of the war.

Those who say that war with the US was bound to happen sooner or later might well be right, but Hitler's decision certainly made it a whole lot easier for them. It is also seems to be widely believed these days that America joined the war against Germany for the 'right' reasons, but I do not support this view either – Hitler had committed a series of acts against neutral and friendly powers over a few years, and yet there was still no great desire from the American people to join the war.

Even assuming that America would have entered the war at some point, surely Hitler would have been better served in biding his time, and springing some sort of trap on the US, declaring war on them at a time more of his choosing – perhaps he could have gathered a large number of U-Boats of the American coast and suddenly attacked without warning or something.

In many ways the Germans were victims of their own propaganda and racial superiority myths. They constantly underestimated their opponents. For example we have this from Hitler on the eve of Barbarossa:
"You only have to kick the door in and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down."

And, from Goering:
"The Americans cannot build aeroplanes. They are very good at refrigerators and razor blades."

AH was neither crazy nor stupid

His bizarre occult beliefs argue strongly for "both". So does his belief that he could alter reality by denying it loudly.
-Kle.

Hitler always viewed war with the US as inevitable- he probably thought he was just getting an early start.

There's also the strong possibility that he was lead on by extremely optimistic reports of how much damage the Japanese had inflicted in Pearl Harbor. If the whole US fleet is lying on the bottom then there's little risk is fighting them now.

-Will

wminsing

'Hitler always viewed war with the US as inevitable'

Is that the case? I have read that Hitler had no desire to fight the British Empire and wanted to co-exist with them if possible, so I am surprised that you say he always considered war with the US as inevitable – or do you mean, after war with the British Empire had started?

Is that the case? I have read that Hitler had no desire to fight the British Empire and wanted to co-exist with them if possible, so I am surprised that you say he always considered war with the US as inevitable – or do you mean, after war with the British Empire had started?

My reading on the subject indicates that Hitler did think that at some point in the later 20th century, after Russia had been crushed and the British Empire convinced that working with the Reich was better then fighting the Reich, that there would be a final, decisive war against the United States to complete the Reich's world domination.

Now, a lot of this thinking was apparently in the mid-30's, well before the war actually started. So I don't know how much changed in Hitler's thinking by late 1941- it's possible he had something completely different in mind.

I will have to search for sources, but much of this was material was apparently pulled from an early draft of a sequel to 'Mein Kampf'

-Will

wminsing

Very interesting – I was in no way disputing your statement, merely seeking to clarify it. Who knows what other ideas went through his head…

And, from Goering:
"The Americans cannot build aeroplanes. They are very good at refrigerators and razor blades."

How about the Americans who thought that the Japanese could not function as fighter pilots due to racial short-sightedness?

Foreign intel was never the nazi's forte. A few, like Ribbentropp, thought they had the British and Americans all figured out and could predict how they would react. Hitler also overestimated how much the fear of communism would hamper aid to Stalin.

Propaganda is all well and good until you start to believe it yourself.

Remember that when Hitler declared war, it seemed the Soviets would be defeated in a matter of weeks and the US had suffered a serious blow and the UK was rated "mostly harmless" It was clear nothing could stand the way of the Axis …

AH was neither crazy nor stupid

His bizarre occult beliefs argue strongly for "both". So does his belief that he could alter reality by denying it loudly.

Again, ignorance is not the same thing as stupidity. I would wager that his IQ was pretty high. But anyone will reach false conclusions using very sound logic, if their basic assumptions are false, as in: based on false information.

He had to have been a very clever politician to gain power in the first place. And he quickly got the German economy on track again once he had power. He hood-winked the French and British gloriously when he remilitarized the Rhineland, seized Austria, and took Czechoslovakia without a fight.

The pact with Russia really caught the Allies flat-footed and enabled him to take Poland. He also gobbled up Denmark and Norway against the advice of his generals. And when his senior generals wanted to repeat the Schleiffen Plan of WW1 he backed Manstein's Schickelsnitt instead, resulting in the quick collapse of France.

An idiot could never have pulled off half of those things, let alone all of them in a row. Maybe a paranoid schizo could, I don't know. I'm not a psychiatrist or psychologist.

Certainly, after things began to go wrong he increasingly lost touch with reality. Many people do. Just as the French generals and politicians did in 1940. Stalin, they say, went almost catatonic when the Germans first attacked Russia. (Now there WAS a paranoid!)

Obviously he was ego-centric, sociopathic, and ignorant or misinformed on subjects like race, Jews, the U.S., and maybe the occult (I know some Nazis were into that -- I don't know that AH himself was.) But lot's of people believe lots of strange things without necessarily being crazy or stupid.

Obviously he was ego-centric, sociopathic, and ignorant or misinformed on subjects like race, Jews, the U.S., and maybe the occult

You have a different idea of what "ignorance" means than I do.

We apparently agree upon "crazy", since you say he was sociopathic, above.
-Kle.

Ignorance is a lack of (correct) information. Stupidity is a lack of intelligence. Or, in computer terms, ignorance is a lack of (good) data (as they say, "garbage in, garbage out"), stupidity is a lack of processing power.

I suppose if Hitler had been a computer the allies could have fed him a virus…or the various plotters could have re-booted him to factory specs!

Ignorance is a lack of (correct) information. Stupidity is a lack of intelligence.

Concur.
I would suggest that Hitler had plenty of accurate information available to him, regarding many of the things you state he was ignorant of above. If someone ignores readily available information, and clings to their own imaginings instead, that seems to hint that they might be stupid, IMO.
-Kle.

I think that by 1943 Hitler had deteriorated into a man who was starting to show mental illness that may not have been so obvious to those around him in earlier years.
I've read accounts of people claiming him to be obviously mad much earlier than that. But some of those comments are using hindsight. We do however have plenty of evidence from direct witnesses that after 1842 he showed all the physical signs of mental illness.

Prior to that its always difficult to tell. Look how many modern instances we know of where people have seemed a bit strange, but otherwise normal, then gone out and committed horrible crimes. Hitler is a sort of extreme version of that. To outsiders he probably appeared more cunning, sly and unable to be trusted, than actually mad.

Most of the comments from political leaders of the day dont seem to consider madness. Just that he was a nasty bit of work. Also most of the Military dont seem to have started saying he was actually crazy until events like Stalingrad. From then onward though, there are dozens of military people who claimed in memoirs that Hitler was obviously mad.

Ideas that are repulsive to some, are not necessarily the ideas of a madman. Look at the modern world where some people treat women as personal slaves, try to carry out ethnic cleansing, and other acts that are not acceptable to the majority of us. Are they mad? Or are they just of an opinion that the rest of us dont share?

The end of 1941 through to the end of 1942 was the peak of German U Boat successes in the Battle of the Atlantic. I think it is possible that Hitler though declaring war would allow him to use his submarine force to cut off American aid to Britain. And certainly during 1942 he may have strutted and patted himself on the back, because the peak of sinkings was higher than ever before. So it could have been another of his cases of declaring his infalible decision making, bringing victory.

Of course 1943 in the Atlantic would have shown the complete reverse of his supposedly infallible decision making, but Hitler was never one to revisit things like that and admit his mistake. And while from March 1943 onward nothing went right for him in the Atlantic, we have the benefit of knowing that in hindsight. Therefore I believe he declared war on the USA in expectation of what happened in the Atlantic in 1942 but didnt allow for the reversals of 1943 when technology really got ahead of the Nazi war machine.

I think Mal is wright.

I would suggest that Hitler had plenty of accurate information available to him, regarding many of the things you state he was ignorant of above.

Often the (more) accurate info can't get accepted because it doesn't fit the currently accepted paradigm. This is often true of many otherwise intelligent people. Getting anyone to reexamine their basic assumptions is not easy -- even less so, I would imagine, with an absolute dictator.

For a brief period of Glaznost people were able to access some archives. Not the really good ones, but some useful stuff. Now it is almost back to the way it was.

Mark you are completely missing the point – whether the records are considered "state secrets" or not has nothing to do with whether they are accurate.

Sure the Sov's clamped down on everything, and hte modern Russians are doing it again, and you can't find out details of politically embarrasing stuff….try finding records in the USA relating to some of the stuff taken from Germany in 1945 – some of it is under 100 year embargoes!

But that's irrelevant to whether the daily returns of manpower & equipment are accurate.

And if you don't like that, then what is the data that your argument about hte supposed ineffectiveness of the Far East army based on? If not actual Soviet data then what? How accurate were Allied estimations of hte effectiveness of het Kwangtung army in 1945 – because that's about the level of "intelligence" you get if you don't use such Soviet data as is known to be accurate.