HAK:

Heath, who is working on his autobiography, asks if you would give permission for an American research assistant to have access to your papers of the relevant period. He is aware that your papers are at the Library of Congress and the National Archives.

The research assistant is an "advanced" student at a college in Buffalo whose name I can't read.

According to Rosemary, these papers are Classified and you would be unable to grant access to anyone without the requisite clearance.

Draft note to Heath explaining this

Other

ssm

APRIL 1945

THE WORLD AT WAR

# HITLER'S BIGGEST BLUNDER

Why did Germany declare war on the US in December 1941?

**Nicholas Henderson** considers motives and consequences in the days before and after Pearl Harbor.

Hitler's declaration of war upon the United States of America on December 11th, 1941, four days after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, was a turning-point in history.

According to Ribbentrop, his foreign minister, and Ernst von Weizsaecker, State Secretary of the Foreign Ministry, Hitler believed that Germany and Italy were obliged to declare war under the terms of the Tripartite Pact. This had been signed with the Japanese in Berlin on September 27th, 1940. This was also the view of Goebbels according to the entry in his diary of December 9th:

> We can have no other choice but to follow the letter of the law in the three-power treaty and declare war against the United States.

Mussolini thought the same, as we know from an intercepted message sent to Tokyo from the Japanese ambassador in Rome - not that

Announcing his declaration of war on the US to the Reichstag in December 1941 (above), Hitler believed he was fulfilling Germany's obligation to Japan under the Tripartite Pact.

35

TORY TODAY

Tricky Treaty: Foreign Minister Matsuoka proposes a toast in Tokyo, to celebrate the 1940 Tripartite Pact while German Ambassador Ott can be seen on the extreme right of the photograph. In spite of the mutual aims of the main Axis powers, Germany and Japan had a guarded relationship.

this was of great significance because from the time of her débâcle in Greece the previous year Italy had ceased to play an independent and decisive role. Likewise Winston Churchill. In a PS to a letter to George VI on December 8th, 1941, asking for his approval to visit President Roosevelt in the immediate aftermath of Pearl Harbor, Churchill wrote:

> I am expecting that Germany and Italy will both declare war on the United States, as they have bound themselves by treaty to do so.

Robert Sherwood in his book on Roosevelt and Harry Lloyd Hopkins has indicated that the American leaders thought the same.

They were all wrong. Article III of the Tripartite Pact committed the three powers:

> ... to assist one another with all political, economic and military means when one of the three contracting parties is attacked by a power at present not involved in the European war or in the Sino-Japanese conflict.

(Under Article V the Soviet Union was excepted from the provisions of the pact). As Japan was the attacker rather than the attacked at Pearl Harbor the *casus foederis* under Article III was not engaged and Germany was not bound to join Japan in war upon the USA.

In the course of 1941 there was much discussion between Germany and Japan about the significance of the pact. For Hitler the aim was 'to bring Japan into active operations in the Far East as soon as possible' as he put it in his directive of March 5th, 1941. For both Germany and Japan the pact was intended to serve as the basis for establishing 'the new order' in Europe and East Asia for which the defeat of the British Empire was the essential prerequisite. The principal target in all respects was England. She was as much the

enemy of Japan as of Germany.

In the spring of 1941, Hitler was pressing Japan to attack Singapore. This would lead to the speedy overthrow of England; and it would divert American attention from the Atlantic to the Pacific without this leading the Americans to risk sending their fleet into what would by then be Japanese waters.

The Japanese nevertheless had doubts. They needed assurance of German support should a military move by them lead to conflict with either Russia or the USA. Such a promise was accordingly given for the first time in the course of a visit to Berlin by the Japanese foreign minister in the spring of 1941 - a dramatic event in which the diminutive self-important Matsuoka, was on tip-toe to hold his own with the overbearing Nazi leaders, then at the zenith of their power.

Ribbentrop sought to dispose of Japanese misgivings. If Russia took action against Japan, Germany would immediately attack Russia. Matsuoka for his part gave an assurance that if war broke out between Germany and the Soviet Union, Japan would join in attacking Russia. But he spoke of the bitter ideological struggle in Japan and condemned 'the intellectuals who were pro-British and pro-America and ... who liked to capture the tiger cub but who were not prepared to go into the den and take it away from its mother'. These tiger-shy intellectuals held sway for the time-being, with the result that Matsuoka was unable to deliver his promise.

At a final meeting with Matsuoka on April 4th, Hitler repeated Ribbentrop's promise that Germany would become actively involved if Japan got into a conflict with the USA:

> It made no difference with whom the USA first came into conflict, whether it was with Germany or Japan ... Germany would ... promptly take part in case of a conflict between Japan and

36

(LC)

APRIL 1993

America because the strength of the Allies in the Tripartite Pact lay in their acting in common. Their weakness would be allowing themselves to be defeated separately.

During the Japanese foreign minister's time in Berlin the German leaders breathed not a word to him of their intention to attack Russia within a matter of weeks. This was in keeping with the tenor of no-confidence that had governed Japanese/German relations since the Nazis in breach of the 1936 Anti-Comintern Pact, concluded their non-aggression pact with Moscow in August 1939, without any warning to Tokyo, and that was later to reach an apogee of disjunction in Japan's failure to warn Berlin of their attack on Pearl Harbor. Ribbentrop was later to say at Nuremberg:

> 'My experience has taught me that the Japanese are very close-mouthed. We never knew exactly where we stood, never. They never said really what was going on.

It was in the same spirit that Matsuoka, stopping off in Moscow on his way back to Tokyo concluded, on April 14th, 1941, a Neutrality Pact with the Russians, without having given any prior notice to the Germans. Russia's impulse for this pact was her fear of a German attack; Japan's was the desire to secure her backdoor prior to a possible drive southward.

Ribbentrop confided later that this pact had confronted the German government with an astonishing *fait accompli*. Brashly, the Germans urged Japan to take immediate military action against Russia after their attack in June. They suggested that Japan should seize Vladivostok and then move westwards so as to meet up halfway with German troops advancing to the east. Thus they would dispose of the Russian question jointly, ensure the defeat of England and stifle any US tendency to intervene. The Japanese were not prepared to pull the Führer's chestnuts out of the fire. They answered that they were busy securing points d'appui in French Indo-China with a view to exerting increased pressure on Britain and the USA in the south. They were not at present in a position to enter the war against the Soviet Union.

The Japanese regarded the attack on Russia without any warning to Tokyo as yet another example of German perfidy. It also meant a serious curtailment in the supply to them of high technology goods as German industrial capacity was absorbed by the increased demands of war; besides which, the route between the two countries was now cut off. What governed Tokyo's policy at this stage was the crucial importance of the China campaign and their fear that an attack on Russia, or on the Anglo-Saxons, would raise new dangers without doing anything to dislodge Chang Kai-shek. Skilfully they managed to get the Germans to make considerable concessions and to recognise the Nanking government at the cost to Berlin of Germany's favoured position in China, without undertaking

as a *quid pro quo*, to make any move on Vladivostok.

Far from contemplating an attack on Russia, the Japanese put themselves forward in October 1941 as mediators between Berlin and Moscow to bring about a political solution to the Soviet-German conflict. They badly needed the restoration of land communications with Europe; and they wanted Germany to be ready to deploy major forces in the East against their likely enemies, the British and the Americans. But the Germans were not interested in peace, confident that their offensive against Moscow would succeed. At one moment in the summer of 1941 the Japanese had even looked as though they might be thinking of reaching, with Moscow, a general agreement on a whole range of bilateral issues. What did emerge from the highly opportunistic and un-ideological decision-making processes of the two countries was a policy that was to remain constant: that neither Japan nor Russia would go to war with the other unless they were confident that the other had already been virtually beaten. In the inner struggle for power in Japan regarding policy towards Germany and the USA, Matsuoka was removed from office. He was replaced as foreign minister by Admiral Toyoda, a steadier, less erratic figure whom Eugen Ott, the German Ambassador in Tokyo, thought 'very reserved'.

Since the spring of 1941 the Japanese had been negotiating with the Americans for a general settlement. Washington had never recognised Japan's occupation of Manchukuo, and relations had deteriorated with the opening of the Sino-Japanese conflict in 1937. Talks were to continue up to the moment of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th.

Tokyo's aim was to be able to complete, unhindered by the USA, their military domination of China, secure an end to the eco-

Golden handshake? Hitler and Matsuoka in Berlin in March 1941. Matsuoka elicited verbal assurances from both Ribbentrop and Hitler of German support in the event of Japanese-initiated conflict with Russia or America, but was soon after replaced as foreign minister by Admiral Toyoda.

37

HISTORY TODAY

One way ticket: Germans on the road to Moscow – but Japan would not bow to Hitler's request for them to attack Russia from the Far East.

nomic sanctions that were being increasingly tightened by Washington, and establish their Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere. The USA sought to bring about Japan's withdrawal from China and French Indo-China, an open door in China for all powers, and the detachment of Japan from the Tripartite Pact.

Germany took a great interest in the Washington talks about which, in true Tripartite Pact tradition, the Japanese kept them scantily informed. Berlin was nervous that these would succeed so well that the USA would feel relieved of any threat in the Pacific, thereby encouraging them to concentrate the American effort on support for the British in the Atlantic and Europe. But this did not mean that Germany wanted to see Washington/Tokyo relations deteriorate to the point where the USA would become involved in war with Japan, because this would risk the embroilment of Germany.

Hitler showed resignation over the persistent Japanese refusal to join in the war against the Soviet Union. By the autumn of 1941 he had decided to cease pressurising Tokyo to do so since this could be taken as a sign of weakness. Besides, he was confident about the outcome of the war and said on October 21st, so Weizsaecker has reported, that 'when Russia collapses and England makes peace it would only be a nuisance to have Japan involved'.

For a long time Hitler showed uncharacteristic patience towards the USA. He was determined to avoid war with them until he had smashed Britain and Russia. He turned a blind eye to Roosevelt's 'non-neutrality', as the Commander-in-Chief of the German Navy, Admiral Raeder, called it.

In his testimony at Nuremberg, Ribbentrop

spoke of Hitler's 'wish before everything to avoid war with the USA for which ... there was absolutely no necessity' – a wish, he said, that had extended from 1938 until the time of Pearl Harbor.

What then, was it that made Hitler change his mind and declare war on the USA? There is no doubt that just as American provocation was increasing, so was Japanese pressure. By November 1941 the Japanese had concluded that the Americans were not going to yield in the prolonged negotiations. American embargoes on oil and other essential raw materials, tightened after Japan's occupation of southern Indo-China in July, threatened their very existence. As Tokyo saw it, they were confronted with the alternative of having to abandon all their objectives or go to war. General Hideki Tojo, who had replaced Prince Konoye as prime minister in mid-October, was determined to attack the USA should negotiations fail.

The Japanese now asked Berlin whether, in the event of Japan being involved in war in the south with the USA, they could rely on Germany not making a separate peace or armistice. Having consulted Ribbentrop, the German Embassy in Tokyo gave this assurance. Ott also reported that he had been asked by the Japanese whether 'in my opinion Germany would likewise consider herself at war with the USA if Japan should open hostilities with them'. His answer was non-committal.

At this stage the Japanese gave the impression that any advance would be to the south. There was no mention of Pearl Harbor, although intensive training and planning for an attack there had been going on since September.

As Japan's attitude to the idea of war with the USA was now hardening, so was Germany's. Lend-Lease aid had been extended to Russia. American activity in the Atlantic had become increasingly bellicose, culminating in the amendment of neutrality legislation and the arming of merchantmen. Naval pressure on Hitler to retaliate was becoming irresistible. On November 28th, General Oshima, the Japanese Ambassador to Berlin, had a meeting with Hitler at which Ribbentrop was present. Hitler wanted to know how the Japanese-American negotiations were going but Oshima was not well informed on the subject. Oshima gained the impression that in the event of a Japanese-American war, Germany would support them with all its power. But he had no guarantee and nothing written to this effect.

Ribbentrop later the same day asked to see Oshima to whom he expressed his eagerness for Japan to have a showdown with the USA. There would never be a more favourable moment from Japan's point of view. At the end of the meeting Ribbentrop gave the following oral undertaking:

> Should Japan become engaged in a war against the United States, Germany, of course, would

[L0]

APRIL 1994

join the war immediately. There is absolutely no
possibility of Germany's entering into a separate
peace with the United States under such circum-
stances. The Führer is determined on that point.

This, which is the only categorical commit-
ment that Germany would make to join in
war with the USA, apart from Hitler's promise
in April, is recorded in the diplomatic mes-
sage sent by Oshima to Tokyo and intercept-
ed by the Americans. But, surprisingly, there
is no mention of such an assurance in the
unsigned, incomplete German Foreign Min-
istry record of the meeting. Equally surprising
is Oshima's testimony in the Tokyo War
Crimes Trial that he had no recollection of
this meeting, let alone of Ribbentrop's com-
mitment. But he said that if Ribbentrop had
made such a statement this would have been
because:

he wanted either to ascertain the Japanese atti-
tude towards the USA, or to influence Japan by
strong expressions as he was always afraid that
Japan would turn away from Germany as a
result of the Japanese-American negotiations.

Oshima added that in fact Germany had not
at that stage decided to join the
Japanese/American war and this at once
became clear when, a few days later, he asked
Ribbentrop on instructions whether Ger-
many's commitment to do so could be put in
writing. Ribbentrop postponed giving an
answer, according to Oshima, 'on the pretext
of consulting Hitler'.

Meanwhile the Japanese, who on Decem-
ber 1st, had taken the decision to attack the
USA, were exercising similar pressure on Ott
in Tokyo, Tokyo, now foreign minister, said to
the ambassador on November 30th, that 'he
hoped in the event of Japan being at war with
the USA, Germany and Italy would, according
to the Tripartite Pact, stand by her side'. Ott
replied that there could be no doubt about
this and that Germany would be ready to
enter into an agreement about it. Weizsaecker
wrote in his diary on December 6th:

We have been asked if we would be willing if
need be to bind ourselves not to sign an
armistice without Japan's consent with the USA
and Britain and, in the event of war with the
USA breaking out, to regard ourselves as at war
with the USA as well. In my view we cannot say
no, but on the second count we must demand
reciprocity. This is the line our negotiations
have been taking.

At 4am on December 5th, Ribbentrop had given Oshima the draft of a treaty such as the Japanese had urgently been requesting. This said that in the event of war between Japan and the USA, Germany and Italy would join in with all available means and would not make a separate peace. By reciprocity Weizsaecker meant that Germany wanted, as a *quid pro quo*, an undertaking from Japan to join Germany in war with Russia. Hitler's policy of not wishing to press Japan to become involved in the war against Russia had been reversed.

Since the German army was in jeopardy in

front of Moscow, it would make a great differ-
ence if Japan attacked in the Far East so as to
deter the Russians from using troops from
there on the Western Front. In fact the Rus-
sians were already confident that Japan was
not going to attack them, having received
intelligence to that effect from their spy in
Tokyo, Richard Sorge; and this enabled them
in October and November to move up to ten
divisions, or half the total strength, from the
Far Eastern Command to the west.

Japan refused to meet Hitler's request, pre-
ferring, if need be, to sacrifice the treaty and
do without a German declaration of war on
the USA rather than become involved in war
with Russia. But astonishingly, Hitler did not
make any sustained effort to secure his *quid
pro quo*, and, in the event was prepared to go
to war with America without it. As a result,
the Russian reinforcements from the Far East,
equipped with winter-clothing, were de-
ployed in a successful counter-offensive
against ill-clad German troops in tempera-
tures down to -40° Fahrenheit.

Oshima explained at the War Crimes trial
how, on the evening of December 7th, one of
his staff telephoned him at home saying that,
according to a London radio broadcast, the
Japanese navy had attacked Pearl Harbor:

I was very much surprised as I had never expect-
ed it and could hardly believe it ... Sometime
later Ribbentrop telephoned to ask whether the
radio broadcast was true ... at his request I went
to see him at the Foreign Office. He was also
much surprised and seemed not to believe the
outbreak of the Japanese/American war.

Ribbentrop confirmed at Nuremberg that the
Japanese attack had come 'as a complete sur-
prise to us, as to the Japanese Ambassador'.
According to Ciano, Ribbentrop who tele-
phoned him that night, was 'overjoyed about
the Japanese attack on America'.

It must be underlined that by the time of
the Pearl Harbor attack nothing that could be
called an agreement relating to action against
the USA had been reached between Tokyo
and Berlin. Nevertheless, at 1pm on Decem-
ber 8th, Oshima called on Ribbentrop and
told him that Japan wished Germany and Italy
to issue formal declarations of war on Ameri-
ca at once. Ribbentrop replied that Hitler was
then in the middle of a conference at general
headquarters discussing the formalities of
declaring war. He also told him that on the
morning of December 8th, Hitler had issued
orders to the entire German navy to attack
American ships wherever and whenever they
might meet them.

At Nuremberg, Ribbentrop explained how
when he saw Hitler the following day, he told
him that:

According to the stipulations of the Three Pow-
ers Pact since Japan had attacked, we would not
have to declare war on the United States of
America, formally ... so then the Führer decided
– he thought this matter over quite awhile, then
he gave me a very clear decision in that respect.
This is more or less what he said: 'If we don't

Hans Thomsen, German
Charge d'Affaires in
Washington, in whose
estimation Roosevelt was
unlikely to broaden the
conflict to involve Germany,
having declared war on
Japan in response to Pearl
Harbor.

HISTORY TODAY

'That ruffian, Roosevelt' - at an inspection of a naval base at Hampton Roads, Norfolk, Virginia, to ascertain the speed of American defence preparations. Ribbentrop had scathingly commented to Mussolini that 'the American rearmament was the biggest bluff in history'.

stand on the side of Japan, the Pact is politically dead. But that is not the main reason. The chief reason is the United States is already shooting against our ships. They have been a forceful factor in this war, and they have, through their actions, already created a situation which is practically, let's say, a situation of war ...' The Führer was of the opinion at that moment that it was quite evident that the United States would now make war against Germany therefore he ordered me - he gave me the precise order - to hand the American Ambassador his papers.

In reality, at this stage the US Government had not decided to declare war on Germany. As the German Chargé d'Affaires in Washington, Hans Thomsen, reported to Berlin on December 8th, 1941, President Roosevelt's speech to Congress asking them to declare war on Japan 'made no mention whatever of Germany and Italy which indicates that for the present he wants to avoid any worsening of the situation in the Atlantic'.

The American leaders were pretty sure that it would not be long before Hitler declared war on the USA because they had been intercepting and deciphering messages to that effect between Berlin and Tokyo, including Ribbentrop's promise of November 29th. But they could not be sure when. Hitler made his decision to declare war on December 9th, and called a special meeting of the Reichstag to announce it. Discussion had to take place on the terms of a tripartite agreement to commit the three powers to war and to avoid making a separate peace. Both Japan and Germany were in a desperate hurry to reach agreement, Japan because she was nervous that the Germans might, at the last moment, leave them alone to fight the Americans, Germany out of fear that Washington would steal a propaganda march on them by getting a declaration of war in first.

A report presented to the Tokyo War Crimes Trial of a meeting on December 14th,

1941, when Oshima was awarded a high German decoration, reveals Hitler's attitude to Pearl Harbor and explains much of his readiness thereupon to declare war on the USA.

'You gave the right declaration of war,' Hitler said, 'this method is the only proper one'. He himself negotiated with infinite patience at times, for example, with Poland and also with Russia. When he realised that the other did not want to come to an agreement, he struck suddenly and without formalities. He would continue to go this way in the future. The Japanese government did indeed not act thoughtlessly; it had, he must say, shown angelical patience toward that ruffian, Roosevelt.

Hitler's contempt for the Americans, coupled with his personal dislike of Roosevelt, was one of the strongest influences on his decision to declare war. According to Speer he believed that Roosevelt was not a victim of infantile paralysis but of syphilitic paralysis and was therefore mentally unsound.

'I don't see much future for the Americans', he said in a monologue at his headquarters at the beginning of 1942:

> It's a decayed country. I like an Englishman a thousand times better than an American ... Everything about the behaviour of American society reveals that it is half Judaised and the other half negrified. How can one expect a state like that to hold together - a country where everything is built on the dollar.

Ribbentrop had the same illusions. Speaking to Mussolini in the spring of 1941 he said, as recorded by Schmidt, Hitler's interpreter, that 'American rearmament was the biggest bluff in world history'. German contempt for the USA can only be compared with the British under-estimate of the strength of the Japanese forces.

Hitler was convinced that the Americans were going to declare war on Germany anyway and he wanted to avoid them 'stealing a march upon us by taking a step of this kind', as he put it. It was a 'relief', to use Hitler's own word, for his navy to be able to attack the USA at sea instead of being a defenceless prey to their hostile, so-called neutrality.

Goebbels wrote in his diary on December 13th,

> The Führer believes that even if Japan had not entered the war, then he would sooner or later still have had to declare war on the Americans. The Führer has been fighting an internal battle with himself over the past weeks and months, because he knew that either the submarine war would have to be resigned to uselessness or he would have to take the decisive step of declaring war on America. Now this ton-weight has been taken off him. He sees the Battle of the Atlantic now as much more positive.

Despite his failure to take Moscow before the onset of winter, Hitler remained supremely confident that with the spring he would resume the offensive and smash the Russians quickly before American help could become

40

[LC]

APRIL 1994

effective. In such circumstances the USA would be reluctant to become involved in a land war in Europe and England would be bound to capitulate. He even found reason to welcome the date chosen for the involvement of the Americans in war. It was a time when 'the surprises of the Russian winter were pressing most heavily on the morale of our people'. They would relish the movement and opportunities opened up by the extension of the conflict.

Immediately after the Japanese attack there were many in America, including former isolationists, China supporters, not to mention Admiral Ernest King, Chief of Naval Operations and the US Navy generally, who believed that the US war effort should be concentrated on the Pacific. It is far from obvious whether and when Washington would have committed themselves to war with Hitler. As the German Chargé d'Affaires in Washington put it in a telegram to Berlin on December 8th: 'From the standpoint of the American conduct of war against Japan it would seem to be logical to avoid a war on two fronts'. In a footnote to his book on *The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich*, William Shirer has written:

> My own impression in Washington at that moment was that it might be difficult for Presi-

> dent Roosevelt to get Congress to declare war on Germany.

Speculation on what the Americans would have done had Hitler not declared war has also to take account of the widespread reluctance of the public to accept voluntary involvement in the European war (79 per cent according to a Gallup Poll on May 1941) however strongly anti-Nazi were many influential people, including the president himself. He had even delivered a peace pledge during his previous presidential campaign: 'I shall say it again and again and again: your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars'. In August 1941 the House of Representatives had only agreed by a single vote to the renewal of compulsory military service. In November the vote of Congress for Lend-Lease was less than it had been nine months earlier.

The American leaders had plenty of advance information of the likelihood of some Japanese attack but they were hesitant to take precautionary measures before Pearl Harbor for fear of being called 'alarmist' or 'war-mongers'. Roosevelt and General George Marshall, Chief of Staff, were described by Robert Sherwood, as 'far more afraid of the isolationists at home than they were of the enemies abroad'.

The attack on Pearl Harbor, November 8th, 1941. The Germans were as surprised as the Americans about the attack, but Hitler showed little hesitation in taking up arms against the US three days later.

HISTORICAL TODAY

"I am looking forward to dictating peace to the United States in the White House at Washington"

— ADMIRAL YAMAMOTO

What do YOU say, AMERICA?

'Yellow peril': a US propaganda poster attempting to sway the non-interventionist, America-First lobby by bringing home - and exaggerating - the Japanese threat.

Isaiah Berlin who was working in the USA at the time says that the idea that the USA might have been committed to fighting only against the Japanese in the Pacific while their allies, the British, were fighting both against the Japanese and against the Germans, was not something that at the time occurred to him or to anyone with whom he talked, as a possibility. Nor does he now believe that it would have struck Congress as tenable. So that he does not consider that Roosevelt would have been effectively prevented, had he wanted to do so, from engaging the USA in the war in Europe.

There is no doubt about the force of this reasoning. But it does not of course follow that entry by the Americans into the European war would have been so rapid, uncontroversial and effective as it was, had the initiative lain with them. There would certainly have been an acrimonious debate in Congress. It could well have been pointed out that the idea of separate wars was already in place: there was one against the USA and Britain in which the Japanese and Germans were taking part; there was another in which the Germans but not the Japanese were fight-

ing the Russians; there was a third, in which the Japanese, but not the Germans, were at war with the Chinese.

What if, following Pearl Harbor, Hitler, in going before the Reichtstag, had refrained from a diatribe against Roosevelt and the decadent Americans and had delivered himself instead of one of those protestations of peaceful intent, such as had bemused European opinion before the outbreak of war; if he had spoken in high-minded terms of the restraint he had shown in not responding to the many naval incidents with US vessels that had occurred in the Atlantic; and if he had said that the Germans had no quarrel with the American people, especially when the two countries had in common the cause of resisting the spread of Communism?

Any warlike American response against the Germans would have been bound to have been delayed. The America-First movement was strong. In a Gallup poll of October 22nd, 1941, only 17 per cent of Americans said they favoured war with Germany. In the following summer of 1942, US opinion polls showed that nearly one third of Americans favoured a compromise peace with Germany. 'I can see why we are fighting the Japanese', commented one Gallup addressee, 'but I cannot see why we are fighting the Germans'. There could well have been much talk in the USA of the need to avoid the extension of the war. Those against American intervention could have been expected to urge the search for a mediator. The Russians may well have been readier for peace than their public posture suggested. By October 1941, at least one offer of a separate peace had been made by a demoralised Stalin. It is fairly certain that without Hitler's declaration of war there would not have been an immediate and categorical American commitment to the European theatre. In the ensuing delay Hitler might well have succeeded in his aims of smashing Russia. What is certain is that by his action he brought about a war on two fronts at a time when he was particularly stretched on one of them.

He was under no treaty obligations to join the Japanese in their war against the USA, even if he apparently thought that he was. Indeed it is astonishing, not only that he (like Mussolini) was ignorant of the terms of the treaty, but that he should have attached weight to abiding by it, given his insouciant disregard of treaty obligations in general. He had no military means of launching an attack across the Atlantic and no bilateral staff talks had taken place in preparation for joint action. He could surely have tried seriously to exact a price from Tokyo for joining them in war; and if they had not been prepared to pay it this would have absolved him from any moral blame had he not gone to war. Not that he was under any moral obligation either. The Japanese had refused to help Germany in their war against Russia.

It may be misleading to look for a motive based on reason for what Sebastian Haffner in

42

E.C.S.

APRIL 1994

his study of Hitler described as 'an act of lunacy ... the most incomprehensible of the mistakes by which he transformed near-complete victory into inevitable defeat'. He was surely not acting rationally. The cold calculation that had been at the foundation of his *realpolitik* in earlier times had given way to the dictates of providence. He even likened himself to a sleepwalker. Joachim Fest, Hitler's biographer, has written that his decision to declare war on the USA - the war that he had dreaded all along - 'was even less free, even more coerced, than the decision to attack the Soviet Union ... It was really no longer an act of his own volition but a gesture governed by a sudden awareness of his own impotence'.

It is impossible to ring down the curtain at this high point in the Tokyo-Berlin relationship without being aware of the contrast between the way dictatorships and democracies conduct diplomacy. A main purpose of diplomacy must be to ensure the support of allies for the attainment of national objectives, whether in peace or war. The record of Japanese/German relations in these years was abysmal in the interests of both countries. They were bound by an alliance and they had undertaken commitments towards each other. Little good did this do either of them. Hitler's declaration of war on the USA, which certainly served Japan's interest, did not flow from any formal diplomatic undertaking. None existed. Germany did nothing to help Japan, whether in its war with China, or in the prolonged negotiations with Washington in 1941 or in its aim of creating a 'Greater East-Asia Co-prosperity Sphere'. They failed to notify Japan in advance either of their non-aggression pact with the USSR in August 1939 or of their attack on the USSR in June 1941.

Japan repaid these compliments by not giving Germany advance notice either of their Neutrality Pact with Russia in April 1941 or of their attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. They did nothing to help the Germans in their war against the Soviet Union. On the contrary, their neutrality enabled the Russians to withdraw troops from the Far East with impunity at the crucial moments for use in preventing the Germans from taking Moscow.

No system of military or political collaboration was established between Tokyo and Berlin such as existed between London and Washington. It was as if a dictatorship by its very nature could not share or co-operate with any other power, let alone be beholden to them by any unequivocal or unbreakable commitment.

There is another feature of a dictatorship that emerges that makes it an unpredictable and dangerous piece on the diplomatic chequer-board: the absence of any checks or counter-weights, such as exist in democracies, to the whims and impulses of a single ruler. Hitler's belief in racism, that, for instance, the miscegeneration of the Americans undermined them for combat in war, or that the colour of the Japanese rendered them inherently

undesirable as allies, was hardly compatible with level-headed diplomacy. Public opinion in a democracy is not always measured or far-sighted in its judgements or interventions on foreign policy. The French and British governments had popular support for their policy of appeasement of Hitler in the 1930s and for military confrontation with Nasser in the 1950s. Nevertheless, the issues then were open to public discussion, as they always are in a democracy and the people have the chance to exert their will.

It is not being suggested that dictatorships are inherently at a disadvantage in diplomacy. William Hayter, with direct experience of a diplomat of Stalinist Russia, as of the USA under President Roosevelt, believes that dictators, thanks to their very immunity from public pressure, are able to act decisively and perhaps, as happened with the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact, in complete contradiction to previous policy, whereas democratic rulers have to carry their electorates with them which may make the radical and rapid changes of policy difficult.

But the choice of peace or war is not something that should be decided clandestinely by the will of one man or by a clique answerable to no other authority. His declaration of war on the USA, an act of supreme irresponsibility, was Hitler's biggest blunder. It was a decision that was not inevitable and that transformed the pattern of subsequent events.

FOR FURTHER READING:

James William Morely (ed.) *Deterrent Diplomacy: Japan, Germany and the USSR 1935-40* (Columbia University Press, 1976); Ian Nish, *Japanese Foreign Policy: 1869-1942* (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977); *Documents on German Foreign Policy Series D* (1937-1943) Vols. XII and XIII (H. M. Stationery Office, 1964); Christopher Thorne, *Allies of a Kind* (Oxford, 1978); *The Tokyo War Crimes Trial Vol 14* (Garland Publishing Inc., 1981); Sebastian Haffner, *The Meaning of Hitler* (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1979).

*Sir Nicholas Henderson is author of several books and articles. He has been private secretary to Anthony Eden, Ernest Bevin and R.A. Butler; and British Ambassador to Warsaw, Bonn, Paris and Washington.*

Hitler presents General Oshima, Japanese Ambassador to Berlin with the Grand Cross of the Order of the Golden Eagle in December 1941 and following the Pearl Harbor attack.

43

Dear Mrs. Henkel:

Dr. Kissinger has selected two quotes from his writings, which
may fill your dinner program need.

He has a strong preference for the first one, but if you think
it is too solemn, please check with him.

(1) "The statesman lives with the knowledge that history is the enemy of permanence but no leader is entitled to resignation. The statesman's responsibility is to struggle against the transitory without demanding that he be paid in the coin of eternity."

(2) "America cannot always assure the well-being of its friends. But it will not be able to assure even its own well-being unless it knows who its friends are."