My Favorite Counter-Factual

I always think about this around this date. Since it is a counter-factual question, it can provide endless minutes of amusement.

After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on this date 70 years ago, the US immediately declared war on them, having, one might suggest, good and sufficient provocation. Later on that same week, Germany and Italy, adhering to the Axis alliance, followed up with a declaration of war on the USA. And that is the counter-factual: what if they had not?

Historians like to say that invading the USSR was Hitler's greatest mistake. But the invasion of the USSR was a necessary consequence of Nazi ideology, and one might argue that sooner was better than later from Germany's perspective, given the disarray of the Soviet forces, two-front war be damned. But I think Herr Hitler's alliance with Japan and subsequent declaration of war on the US was his biggest "unforced" error.

Hitler wanted the Japanese as allies to threaten the USSR from the East and force Stalin to keep large numbers of the Siberian army out of Europe for fear of Japanese attack. With the advantage of hindsight, we now know that this didn't happen, and that it was Siberian reinforcements that halted the final German offensive of 1941 that might well have taken Moscow (for whatever that might have been worth). The Japanese alliance, in fact, bought Germany nothing but trouble, since it added to her enemies while doing nothing to alleviate the situation on the ground.

True, Germany had a treaty with Japan. But treaties have never been worth more than the paper they're written on, and Hitler could have found reasons not to declare war on the US once the Japanese opened overt hostilities. The very fact that Japan initiated the conflict would have provided sufficient weasel-room, should Hitler have been so inclined.

What would have been the position of Roosevelt and the US government, if that had been the case? Despite the loss of four destroyers on Neutrality Patrol, there was not any especial sentiment in the country in favor of going to war with Germany; rather the reverse, in fact. Had Germany not declared war on the US after Pearl Harbor, how could Roosevelt have justified a war against the Nazis, especially as he had a brand-new war against Japan to deal with? I submit it would have been a delicate situation that would have at least substantially delayed overt US participation in the war against Germany. I imagine we would have found some grounds sooner or later to declare war on Germany, but it is also not impossible to imagine public opinion being very much behind the idea of turning our attention against the country that attacked us -- Japan -- and not fishing around for yet more war on top of that.

Thus Hitler, IMO, really shot himself in the foot with this, and whatever the outcome of the war might have otherwise been, pretty much ensured that he would lose after inviting the US to join in the festivities. A much bigger mistake than attacking the USSR.

-- Mal

book you're writing?

snark over.

There's a difference between the European Axis powers declaring war on the US and keeping the US out of the war in Europe. It wouldn't have taken the US long to declare war on Germany and Italy had they not done so first because with the common foe of Japan, the US and Britain were now at war together. Roosevelt was already doing everything he could short of declaring war with Germany, and we were already effectively fighting the Battle of the Atlantic before December 7.

I do think it's true that Hitler underestimated the US and didn't really think it through. I think there may even have been a small tactical advantage for him in declaring war on the US, in that the U-boats could begin immediate, unrestricted warfare against US shipping, particularly along the eatern seaboard, before we adopted effective antisubmarine measures. Left to declare war on our own terms, Doenitz would have lost the roughly 6 months of comparatively simple hunting that occurred right after Germany declared war on the US. Even if the US dallied on a declaration of war, we would have forced Hitler's hand anyway as we upped shipments of war materiel to Britain and the USSR. The German navy could not allow US shipping to remain off-limits for long under those circumstances.