Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941

by Ian Kershaw

  The current conditions for Japanese intervention, he implied to Oshima, were optimal. ‘The Russian war was won’, he roundly declared. Soviet resistance would soon be broken. He would be finished in the east by September. He did not need any help. He could continue the struggle alone. But, he stated, the smashing of the Soviet Union also brought the moment of fate for Japan. He and Ribbentrop (also present) had already encouraged Japan to push into Siberia. An attack on Vladivostok had temporarily become the substitute for Singapore.94 Hitler’s strategic aim now became apparent. ‘What would America then do? How would she then conduct the war?’ he asked. ‘The destruction of Russia must become the political life’s work of Germany and Japan. And we could make it easy for ourselves if we acted at the same time, if we cut off Russia’s life-support at the same time.’ It offered the chance–and the hope. ‘If we were able to keep the United States out of the war at all,’ he concluded, ‘it would only be through the destruction of Russia and only then, if Japan and Germany act in clinical fashion [eiskalt] and definitively.’95

  Again, Hitler had veered between the idea of the destruction of the Soviet Union to keep America out of the war, and as a platform for aggression against the United States. Either way, the talk with Oshima, with the war in the east presumed won, indicated that the United States figured centrally in Hitler’s thoughts on attaining final victory. Mastery in Europe (reverting to his ideas of 1928 in the ‘Second Book’) had to be viewed in its global implications. It was the premiss for the showdown with the United States that Hitler again here saw as inevitable. And, though he was obviously speaking for effect, hoping to impress the Japanese to act as he wanted, Japan’s position in Hitler’s strategic vision at this point was plainly pivotal. But he could do nothing except hope that the leaders of Japan would see matters as he did. In reality, he was, and remained, quite in the dark about Japanese intentions. He was still convinced a month later that Japan would attack the Soviet Union.96 Unknown to him, on 2 July, almost two weeks before Hitler’s talk with Oshima, the Japanese leadership had already decided against the ‘northern option’ of attacking the Soviet Union. The leaders of Japan were less sure than Hitler was that the German war in the east was already won.

  Within a month of the rosy vista Hitler was painting for Oshima’s benefit, the mood in his East Prussian headquarters had turned distinctly gloomier. Despite continuing German advances, it was now obvious that the quick knockout had not succeeded. Logistical difficulties were mounting alongside the growing numbers of casualties. Above all, Soviet defences were proving more resilient than had been forecast. On 11 August, General Halder acknowledged that ‘we have underestimated the Russian colossus’.97 The war, it was ever more clear, would drag on through the winter. Hitler, suffering from dysentery and high nervous tension, was embroiled by mid-August in the first of many damaging conflicts with his leading military advisers. Should the primary objective be Moscow, as his generals were suggesting, or still, as the ‘Barbarossa’ plan had laid down and Hitler insisted, the push to secure the key industrial and oil-rich regions of the southern Soviet Union and the dominance of the Baltic through the conquest of Leningrad in the north?98 As the decision–which only weeks later resolved itself into the desperate big autumn push for Moscow before the winter snows set in–hung in the air and Hitler’s generals recoiled beneath his thunderous outbursts, news of the Atlantic Charter, the outcome of Churchill’s meeting with Roosevelt in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, filtered through.

  Goebbels immediately, cynically and with some accuracy summed up the Atlantic Charter as ‘a typical propaganda product’–something about which he knew a great deal. ‘Evidently Churchill had set out to draw America into the war,’ he commented. ‘In that he did not succeed. Roosevelt can’t at the moment bring about the entry of the United States into the war because of American popular opinion. So obviously they’ve agreed on this gigantic propaganda bluff.’ Goebbels instructed the German press to pour out all its vitriol on the eight points of the Charter. He acknowledged that, through the Charter, Roosevelt had allied himself unequivocally with the aims of the British belligerents. But on no account could it be claimed ‘that through this Declaration a transformation in the general war situation had taken place’.99 The line that the Atlantic Charter was ‘a great big bluff’ was taken up by Ribbentrop in a memorandum he drew up for Hitler on 17 August.100

  The following day, Goebbels visited a sick and irritable Hitler in his field headquarters. Unsurprisingly, the German dictator was dismissive about the significance of the Atlantic Charter, much as Goebbels himself had predicted. Here, as repeatedly, Hitler’s views on the United States were shaped, at least in part, by the dispatches relayed to him from the German military attaché in Washington, Bötticher, who had cabled the message that the Atlantic Conference was of no importance. Bötticher had consistently (and erroneously) believed that the United States was so preoccupied with Japan that the Pacific was her priority. Correspondingly, he minimized the threat to Germany. And he further pandered to Hitler’s prejudices through his frequently reported belief that the Jews were running America.101 Bötticher had now signalled that the meeting between Churchill and Roosevelt would do nothing to alter the course of events or the balance of forces. America could not enter the war as yet, whatever the declarations, since military preparations were incomplete and she feared war on two fronts. He saw the internal differences in the United States as a reflection of ‘the conflict between the Jewish conception of the world and true Americanism’, the latter opposed to intervention.102

  Given such background information, it was a foregone conclusion that Hitler would be unimpressed by the Atlantic Charter. Grossly overestimating some recent parliamentary criticism of Churchill, he thought the British Prime Minister’s domestic difficulties lay behind his attempt to persuade Roosevelt to enter the war.103 The American President was unable to oblige, as he actually wanted to do, because he had to be cautious of the domestic situation in the United States. (Hitler was well apprised of the bitter debates in Congress over the extension of the Selective Service Act.) Roosevelt and Churchill had settled on the Declaration of the Atlantic Charter, in his view, because they were in no position to decide on anything of practical value. The Charter, Hitler concluded, ‘can do us no harm at all’.104

  Japanese intentions were still a matter merely of guesswork. ‘The Führer is convinced that Japan will carry out the attack on Vladivostok as soon as forces have been assembled,’ Raeder noted from his meeting with Hitler on 22 August. ‘The present aloofness can be explained by the fact that the assembling of forces is to be accomplished undisturbed, and the attack is to come as a surprise move.’105 Hitler’s optimism was unfounded and misplaced. The German Foreign Ministry, in fact, was far less sanguine than Hitler about Japan’s intentions. The replacement of the pro-Axis Japanese Foreign Minister Matsuoka in mid-July by Admiral Toyoda, known to be more conciliatory towards America, was not seen as a positive sign. It stirred worries that Japan, faced with the freezing of Japanese assets in the United States on 26 July as a reaction to the occupation of southern Indochina, might be anxious to reach a rapprochement with the Americans. The unease was heightened by information gleaned at the end of August that an important message from the Japanese premier, Prince Konoe, had been passed to President Roosevelt. This was interpreted as a move to avoid conflict, precisely the opposite of what Germany wanted. The Germans were left guessing. But they could not avoid the suspicion that the Japanese were anything but anxious to rush into action that would invite a clash with the United States.106

  It was at this stage that the Greer incident gave a new twist to events in the Atlantic. Goebbels was initially inclined to play it down. He even thought at first that it had probably been an English submarine deliberately attempting to create a provocation to bring the Americans into the war. He still took the view that Roosevelt’s position was not strong enough to risk war. He was surprised at the way the American press was exploit
ing the affair. For his part, he was prepared to let the German press attack Roosevelt personally, but not to link these attacks to the incident in the Atlantic and offer any provocation. ‘Our position is for the time being extraordinarily difficult,’ he noted. ‘We have to operate with great sensitivity and the utmost tact.’107 But when Roosevelt delivered his ‘shoot-on-sight’ speech on 11 September, Goebbels told the press to fire a full-scale broadside at the President. He interpreted the speech as Roosevelt’s commencement of an unofficial war. Only American opinion, he presumed, was holding back an officially declared war. And it need not be doubted, he thought, that if there should be a series of armed clashes Roosevelt could whip up opinion without difficulty to back an official declaration. That this would be unwelcome to Germany at this stage, Goebbels made plain. ‘The entry of the United States into the war would be not so much materially but psychologically extremely unpleasant,’ he commented. ‘But that, too, would have to be borne.’108 A day later, he summed up his own (and without doubt Hitler’s) feelings. ‘The longer a formal declaration of war can be delayed, the better it is for us. If, what we are all hoping and urgently yearning for, we have brought the eastern campaign to a victorious conclusion, then it can’t harm us much more.’109

  The caution that Goebbels voiced was not shared by Raeder and the naval leadership. As before, they were keen to engage fully in the battle of the Atlantic and did not want to accept the American escalation in the Greer affair lying down. On 17 September, Raeder and U-boat chief Admiral Dönitz put a number of proposals to Hitler to amend the combat instructions to submarines in the Atlantic. Apart from their interest in maximizing the sectoral interests of the navy, both felt that Germany’s best chance of victory lay in cutting off British supplies from the United States. To do this meant expanding the war at sea to American ships assisting British convoys. Hesitation in such an undertaking, they thought, was a grave mistake. They wanted the freedom to attack convoy escorts without regard to the blockade area, and to attack American vessels if they were helping the enemy or engaged in an assault or a pursuit. They also sought the recognition of only a twenty-mile neutrality zone off the American coast. The proposals amounted to little less than unrestricted licence for U-boats in the Atlantic. But they went much too far for Hitler at this crucial juncture in the eastern campaign. ‘On the basis of a detailed discussion of the situation as a whole,’ recorded Raeder, ‘in which it appears that the end of September will bring the great decision in the Russian campaign, the Führer requests that care should be taken to avoid any incidents in the war on merchant shipping before about the middle of October.’110 But, of course, the end of September did not bring victory in the Soviet Union. And the middle of October came and went without any change in Hitler’s orders to the U-boats in the Atlantic.

  Hitler’s attention, and that of his leading generals, was meanwhile focused intently upon the unfolding drama on the eastern front. Though the advance on Moscow had commenced at the start of October, the chances of taking the city before the winter were dwindling. The timetable was by now awry. The grand strategic scheme behind ‘Barbarossa’ lay already on the verge of ruination. But the threat from the United States, rearming fast, had not diminished. To the German leadership, Roosevelt–pushed by Jewish warmongers–was determined to take America into the war.

  Action by Japan in the Far East was increasingly imperative from Berlin’s perspective. But a subtle difference had taken place in German expectations of Japan. When Hitler had talked to Oshima in July, he had hoped, even presumed, that the Japanese would cooperate in the demolition of the Soviet Union, and then deal with America. Now, the hopes were starting to rise that the simmering tension between Japan and the United States would not cool into some uneasy rapprochement, but would boil over into full-scale war in the Pacific. By this time, Hitler wanted to avoid imposing pressure on Japan. He did not want it to appear that Germany needed the Japanese.111 Despite this, on 13 September Ribbentrop, warning that Roosevelt’s aggression was certain to lead to war between the Axis powers and the United States, sought assurances from Tokyo that Japan would honour her commitments under the Tripartite Pact. He wanted a warning to Washington along those lines.112

  New hope arose from the change of government in Tokyo on 18 October. The end of Konoe’s government and the new Cabinet formed under General Tojo, known to be a militant, were correctly interpreted as a sign that the basis for negotiations with Washington had failed. Hitler remained sceptical. He saw a mismatch between strong words and action from the new Japanese Cabinet. He distrusted Tojo, thought the construction of the new Cabinet was a tactical bluff to force concessions from America, and had as great a difficulty as ever in reading Japanese intentions, which remained completely opaque. Even Oshima was kept ignorant of his government’s aims.113 But Goebbels presumed ‘that now at least gradually the Japanese intervention will start to get going’.114 That, in turn, would preoccupy the Americans, distract them from the Atlantic and the European war, and allow the Germans time to finish off the Soviets. As long as the eastern campaign was unresolved, however, the prohibition of incidents that might be dangerous flashpoints in relations with the United States had to be upheld.

  So although such incidents did indeed multiply, they received only passing attention in the German press, and their significance was seen as domestically contrived by Roosevelt. The torpedoing of the Kearny on 17 October was thus portrayed as an invention by the American President to help the passage through Congress of the controversial bill to repeal important sections of the Neutrality Act.115 And when the Reuben James went down on 31 October, the German press contented itself with a vehement denunciation of the claims by Roosevelt about the secret documents he alleged to have in his possession illustrating Nazi intentions for South America. On the consequences of the sinking itself, Goebbels summed up, perceptively enough: ‘Roosevelt probably has no use for war at present. He has first to see how things go with Japan, and then public opinion in the United States stands in his way. Anyway, I don’t think there is need for anxiety at the moment.’116 In a speech to the Nazi Party ‘old guard’ on 8 November 1941, the anniversary of the ill-fated putsch of 1923, Hitler underlined his own moderation in the Atlantic, in contrast to the trigger-happy actions of the Americans and the provocations of Roosevelt, and again poured scorn on the President’s alleged evidence of Nazi plans in South America.117 Speaking to Raeder five days later, Hitler confirmed that the orders to the navy would remain unchanged even if Congress repealed the Neutrality Law. He agreed that it remained naval policy ‘to lessen the possibilities of incidents with American forces’.118 Nevertheless, as Hitler must have seen, this policy (which naval leaders had, as we have noted, long been straining to have changed) could not continue indefinitely once the American Neutrality Laws had been amended without conceding the battle of the Atlantic, and, with that, the strengthening of the vital supply-line to Britain that enabled the British war effort to continue.119 The German toleration policy necessarily, therefore, had time limits–undefined, but real.

  During the autumn, Hitler had talked more than once in his usual sweeping, though vague, fashion about the great showdown with the United States as an obligation of the next generation. It was a return to (or a repeat of) what he had envisaged in the 1920s. But how far he believed what he was saying is difficult to judge. As always, it was the effect on those listening that counted for him.120 For by this time Hitler knew better than most that the showdown would come earlier than that. The truth was that war with America could now not be avoided, or even long delayed.

  With neither the Germans nor the Americans prepared, however, to push over the brink and into the cauldron of war in the Atlantic, it would be events in the Pacific, uncontrollable by Hitler’s Reich, that would eventually bring the fateful decision that took Germany into outright hostilities against the United States.

  IV

  Ribbentrop’s request of 13 September, seeking assurances from Japan under t
he terms of the Tripartite Act in the event of war between Germany and the United States, remained unanswered throughout October. The change of Japanese government in the middle of the month, when the hardline General Tojo had replaced Konoe as Prime Minister, had, to external appearances, brought no substantial alteration in policy. Hitler, it was reported in the Foreign Office, expected little of the new Cabinet. He had, it seems, changed his mind since the summer about Japan entering the war against the Soviet Union and now had some anxiety that this might be in Tojo’s mind. It was not now what he wanted. Conflict between Japan and the United States in the Pacific was far more desirable from his point of view. He still harboured by now dwindling hopes that he could force Britain to the conference table by defeating the Soviet Union. ‘If Russia collapses now and England wants to make peace with us,’ he reportedly said, ‘Japan could be an obstacle for us.’121 What impact Tojo’s takeover of power had on relations between Tokyo and Washington was unclear to the German leadership. The impression gleaned from the German ambassador in Tokyo, General Ott, was that relations between Japan and the United States had deteriorated. But there was little sign of any obvious action. Towards the end of the month, Goebbels noted a rise in tension, but at no more than the propaganda level. ‘It is very questionable’, he remarked, ‘whether Tojo will proceed to decisive action. Perhaps the Führer is right to be sceptical. At any rate, we should not harbour false hopes.’122 At the end of the month, Ott reported that the Japanese had still not come to a decision on the warning to the United States which Germany had sought six weeks earlier, on 13 September.123 It was highly discouraging.