Hitler's Fatal Miscalculation: Why Germany Declared War on the United States

Cambridge Military Histories

by Klaus H. Schmider

"In the last days of November 1941, Nazi Germany's strategic situation was ambiguous: her armies were in possession of most of continental Europe and fighting deep inside the USSR, but the momentum of the Wehrmacht's war machine appeared to be spending itself. In relation to the numbers of U-boats available, sinkings had been dropping since June; her surface fleet was unlikely to pick up the slack, since it had just had fuel restrictions imposed on it which all but ruled out a resumption of Atlantic operations. In the air, nighttime RAF bombing raids were becoming a feature of everyday life, and reaching deeper and deeper into areas of the German geography thus far untouched. On the Russian front, which consumed most of the army's and air force's assets, operations aimed at rendering the situation of the defenders of Leningrad and Moscow untenable and force the surrender of those of Sevastopol, were still in progress. On the downside, Army Group South had just been forced to abandon its most recent prize - the city of Rostov - to the counterattacking Red Army, an event that definitely had to be rated as a 'first' in the annals of the Russo- German war. Crucially, the war economy which needed to deliver a maximum output if the armed forces of the Third Reich were to have even a remote chance of meeting the conflicting priorities set by their warlord, had entered a period of crisis, with neither enough labour nor raw materials available to meet the demands for 1942"--

Genres: History, World War II, Nonfiction

610 pages, Hardcover

First published January 31, 2021

Reviews

[The White Tiger]

Thesis: Hitler's decision to declare war on the United States was a momentous strategic miscalculation based on the information he had available to him before the attack on Pearl Harbor, challenging existing explanations in the historiography that he was either a madman or desperate. Key elements of Hitler's decision: (1) U.S. rescinded Neutrality Act in late '41; (2) Hitler believed that it was only a matter of time before Germany and America would be at war and that U.S. economic-industrial-military potential would surpass Germany's eventually; (3) Hitler was not aware of how badly the campaign against USSR was proceeding; (4) Hitler believed that recent and emerging aviation technologies and defenses would hold RAF bombing campaigns in check; (5) Italy had proven to be a catastrophic liability, shifting Nazi ally politics East; and (5) Hitler (possibly) and Nazi economic and military intelligence analysts believed that Japanese territorial expansion into SE Asia would capture 90% of the world's natural rubber supply, severely hamstringing American rearmament and Lend-Lease.

Style: Analytical history organized thematically to address key questions and unresolved issues in the literature. Prose is clear and direct.

Thoughts: This is a great example of superior scholarship within a very mature historiography. Schmider's methodology and analysis are sound. This work deserves more attention, particularly because it is likely to be overshadowed by Simms and Laderman's Hitler's American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and Germany’s March to Global War.