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

  First, it confirmed him in his thinking that Germany’s chance of total victory–that is, keeping the Americans out of the war–rested upon the rapid destruction of the Soviet Union. And, secondly, it drew him still further in the direction of an active policy towards Japan, something which had made no progress since the conclusion of the Tripartite Pact the previous September. ‘The smashing of Russia would also allow Japan to turn with all her might against the United States,’ he told his military leaders on 9 January. And this would prevent the United States from entering the war.68 The navy’s report on the meeting explicitly drew out the strategic thinking, and consequences, in Hitler’s exposé. ‘If the USA and Russia should enter the war against Germany,’ the report of Hitler’s comments ran, ‘the situation would become very complicated. Hence any possibility for such a threat to develop must be eliminated at the very beginning. If the Russian threat were non-existent, we should wage war on Britain indefinitely. If Russia collapsed, Japan would be greatly relieved; this in turn would mean increased danger to the USA.’ Hitler then added a further reflection, indicating the way he was starting to invest hopes in Japan: ‘Regarding Japanese interest in Singapore, the Führer feels that the Japanese should be given a free hand even if this may entail the risk that the USA is thus forced to take drastic steps.’69 Japanese expansion in the Far East, in other words, was now starting to form an intrinsic part of Germany’s strategy for final victory in Europe. Rapid defeat of the Soviet Union was the key to both.

  With the passing of the Lend-Lease Act on 11 March 1941, the German leadership concluded, as an article in the Völkischer Beobachter (the main Nazi daily newspaper) stated, that the United States was now irredeemably committed to support for Germany’s enemies. ‘We now know what and against whom we are fighting,’ the article declared. ‘The final struggle has begun.’70 According to a report on reactions in the High Command of the Wehrmacht to Roosevelt’s speech announcing the implementation of the Lend-Lease Act, the general view was that it ‘may be regarded as a declaration of war on Germany’.71 Hitler himself, amid the abuse he showered on President Roosevelt, agreed that the Americans had given him a reason for war. He was not yet ready for it, but ‘it will come to war with the United States one way or the other’, he remarked. Roosevelt, and the Jewish financiers behind him, worried about their losses if Germany should win the war, would see to that. His only regret, Hitler went on, was that he still had no aircraft capable of bombing American cities. He would happily hand out such a lesson to the American Jews. The Lend-Lease Act had brought additional problems, but these could be mastered ‘by a merciless sea war’. It was important to increase the tonnage sunk by U-boats. But the Americans were themselves for the time being still constrained by the limitations of their armaments capacity.72

  It was ‘as a countermeasure to the expected effects of the aid to England law of the United States’ that, on 25 March 1941, Hitler extended the German combat zone to the waters around Iceland and the fringes of the American neutrality zone. This followed rumours reaching Berlin that the American administration was contemplating providing naval escorts for convoys as far as Iceland.73 As we have seen, it would be some months before Roosevelt finally agreed to the escorting of convoys which the more hawkish members of his administration were already urging. But from the German perspective, escorting was one of a number of issues in the spring of 1941 which gave the impression that Roosevelt was deliberately escalating the conflict in the Atlantic, seeking a provocation that would enable him to take America into the war.

  The permission in late March granted to the British to have their warships repaired in American docks, then the seizure of Axis vessels in American ports at the end of the month and the agreement with Greenland to establish a military base there were all seen as self-evidently hostile acts towards Germany. They were accompanied by rumours of American plans to occupy the Azores (which the Germans had for a while considered possessing to pre-empt the Americans–a move Hitler still favoured in order to provide a base for long-range bombers to attack the United States).74 And, though Roosevelt’s administration introduced patrolling (to warn British convoys of lurking German submarines) rather than fully fledged escorting, this, too, augured future trouble.

  The first apparent clash of an American destroyer, the USS Niblack, with what was–wrongly, as it turned out–taken to be a German U-boat in April seemed a sign of things to come, which could only hasten the descent into full-scale conflict. The sinking of the Robin Moor on 21 May provided an even more dangerous flashpoint, and was followed, six days later, by Roosevelt’s big speech declaring his administration’s intention to do everything to prevent German dominance of the Atlantic, and introducing a state of ‘unlimited emergency’.75 The unexpected American soft-pedalling of the Robin Moor sinking came as a notable relief to Berlin, as did the fact that no significant action followed the fanfare preceding Roosevelt’s major speech. A period of mounting tension over the spring had subsided into an uneasy stalemate. The last thing Hitler had wanted, preoccupied as he was by military action in the Balkans and, especially, the build-up to ‘Operation Barbarossa’, was the entry of America into the war as a result of some incident in the Atlantic.

  He had, in fact, repeatedly given instructions to the trigger-happy Admiral Raeder, heading a bellicose German naval leadership anxious to engage fully with the increasing American threat in the Atlantic, to avoid all incidents that could be seen as a provocation. The Robin Moor sinking had been carried out in disregard for Hitler’s explicit orders, but remained, until the autumn, a stray incident. The strict prohibition on German submarines taking any action against American shipping was repeated as ‘Barbarossa’ approached. At the beginning of June, Hitler informed Raeder that ‘the question of searching American merchant ships is to be postponed until units of the fleet are sent to operate in the Atlantic’, clearly a temporary ban until the war at sea could finally be fought with no holds barred.76

  On 21 June, the day before the invasion of the Soviet Union, the question of German naval action against American ships in the Atlantic was again raised by Admiral Raeder. He brought up a near-incident the previous day, when a U-boat had encountered an ageing American battleship, the Texas, with a destroyer escort, ten miles within the proclaimed German combat area. The submarine had given chase, but the Texas had eventually steamed away unscathed and unaware of the danger.77 Raeder welcomed the incident, as he did that of the Robin Moor, and gave Hitler his opinion that ‘where the United States is concerned firm measures are always more effective than apparent yielding’. But Hitler was adamant. ‘For the present,’ the report of his meeting with Raeder ran, ‘the Führer wishes to avoid incidents with American warships and merchant ships outside the closed area under all circumstances. For the closed area, clearly defined orders will be necessary which will not involve submarines in confused and dangerous conditions, and which can be carried out.’

  Raeder himself, getting the message, proposed a fifty-or hundred-mile strip inside the boundary of the combat zone, within which attacks on American warships should be avoided. Hitler wanted no misunderstandings. ‘The Führer declares in detail’, the report continued, ‘that until operation "Barbarossa” is well under way he wishes to avoid any incident with the United States. After a few weeks the situation will become clearer, and can be expected to have a favourable effect on the United States and Japan; America will have less inclination to enter the war, due to the threat from Japan which will then increase.’78 With that statement, not only was the temporary nature of the ban on attacking American shipping made plain, but the globally strategic aims of the attack on the Soviet Union were evident. In these aims, the position of Japan was crucial.

  Uneasy and uncertain about Japanese intentions since the signing of the Tripartite Pact, the Nazi leadership had actively sought to persuade Japan to attack Singapore. Hitler’s war directive of 5 March 1941, on ‘Co-operation with Japan’, began: ‘The aim of the cooperation based
on the Tripartite Pact has to be to bring Japan to active operations in the Far East as soon as possible. Strong English forces will be tied up as a result, and the main interest of the United States of America will be diverted to the Pacific.’79 Some days earlier, Ribbentrop had actively tried to persuade Oshima Hiroshi, the newly re-appointed and overtly pro-Axis Japanese ambassador in Berlin, to strike against Singapore.80 This, it was recognized, ran the risk of bringing American involvement in the war, something German policy was otherwise striving at all costs to avoid. The apparent contradiction was, however, merely superficial. American involvement in the Pacific, it was thought, would hinder rather than encourage participation in Europe. But, beyond that consideration, it was felt that a rapid strike against Singapore, bastion of British possessions in the Far East, while avoiding aggression towards the American base in the Philippines, could be undertaken without any declaration of war by the United States, and yet still preoccupy the Americans with defence in the Pacific at the expense of the Atlantic. A further worry lay behind the intensified German attempts to persuade the Japanese to act against Singapore. If and when Germany found herself at war with the United States, she desperately wanted Japan to be alongside her in the conflict. And, still apprehensive about Japanese intentions, there was the lingering fear that some rapprochement might be found with the United States, leaving Germany facing the eventual deployment of American might alone.81

  This worry continued throughout the spring of 1941, enhanced by German awareness of the Japanese moves to defuse the mounting tension between Japan and the United States, a development which seemed to conflict with the impression given by Oshima, supportive of German policy, and the messages filtering to Berlin via the German embassy in Tokyo about the anti-American, pro-Axis stance of the Japanese Foreign Minister, Matsuoka. When Matsuoka paid a visit to Berlin at the end of March 1941 every effort was made both by Ribbentrop and by Hitler himself to press him to commit to an early strike against Singapore. ‘The capture of Singapore’, said Ribbentrop, ‘would perhaps be most likely to keep America out of the war because the United States could scarcely risk sending its fleet into Japanese waters. If today, in a war against England, Japan were to succeed with one decisive stroke, such as the attack on Singapore, Roosevelt would be in a very difficult position. It would be difficult for him to take any effective action against Japan.’82 Hitler, in his own audience with the Japanese Foreign Minister, pulled out all the rhetorical stops. Germany had, he said, taken account of the possibility of American aid to Britain. But this could have no worthwhile effect before 1942. And Japan need have no fear of the Soviet Union in the event of a move against Singapore, given the German divisions on the eastern border ready to be deployed if need be (though Hitler divulged nothing of the actual plans to invade). He urged ‘joint action’ now by the Tripartite Pact powers. No time could be more favourable for the Japanese to act. But, to Hitler’s disappointment, Matsuoka stonewalled. An attack on Singapore, he commented, was a matter of time, and in his own opinion the earlier it came the better. But other views, he said, prevailed in Tokyo. He could offer no commitment.83

  In their further meeting after the Japanese Foreign Minister’s brief courtesy call on Mussolini, Hitler again exuded a confidence that belied his underlying anxiety. In the event that America should enter the war, Germany would prove victorious, he claimed. She would wage war with her U-boats and Luftwaffe, and had taken precautions to ensure that there could be no American landing in Europe. In any case, American troops were no match for German soldiers. He went on to make an unprovoked promise of significance. If Japan should come into conflict with the United States, Germany would immediately ‘draw the consequences’. America would seek to pick off her enemies one by one. ‘Therefore Germany would’, declared Hitler, ‘promptly take part in the case of a conflict between Japan and America, for the strength of the allies in the Tripartite Pact lay in their acting in common. Their weakness would be in allowing themselves to be defeated separately.’84 These unprompted remarks give a clue to Hitler’s reasons for declaring war on the United States eight months later. But for now he had to accept that Japanese intentions were unclear, and that nothing he could do was able to push Japan into the aggression in the Far East that he desired.

  As the date neared for Hitler to launch his all-out offensive against the Soviet Union, Japanese plans remained nebulous. The Germans tried to encourage a more distinctly anti-American stance.85 But nothing materialized. On 6 June, the German ambassador in Tokyo, General Eugen Ott, reported that Japan was trying to improve relations with the United States to prevent American entry into the war. As a consequence a Japanese attack on Singapore had been shelved for the time being, since it was assumed that this ‘would bring America to enter the war at once’. Ott was sure that the Japanese would honour their pledge to fight if the United States took the initiative in entering the war. But if America entered the war as a result of a conflict between Germany and Russia, Japan would feel no obligation to fight under the Tripartite Pact.86

  When German troops fell on the Soviet Union on 22 June, therefore, the stakes from Hitler’s point of view could scarcely have been higher. A speedy triumph in the Soviet Union was absolutely imperative. German total victory depended upon a quick knockout blow against Stalin’s forces, aided if at all possible by a Japanese strike in the Far East aimed at Britain and America. Japan’s actions, which Hitler could not control, were now a crucial component of German strategy. For behind the whole strategy lay the spectre of American intervention. Once America joined the war, as seemed inevitable if the struggle were to become prolonged, Germany’s chances would rapidly diminish. It came back to what Hitler had told Jodl on 17 December 1940: ‘We must solve all continental European problems in 1941 since from 1942 onwards the United States would be in a position to intervene.’87

  III

  America was understandably far from the forefront of Hitler’s thoughts over the weeks following the onslaught against the Soviet Union. But if the problem of the United States was at the back of Hitler’s mind, it was not out of it. It was crucial above all, over this phase, until victory could be achieved, that no incidents involving American shipping should disturb the Atlantic front and serve as a conceivable pretext that Roosevelt might exploit to take America into the war. With Admiral Raeder and his colleagues still champing at the bit, Hitler could do no other than adamantly persist in the policy, already adopted before ‘Barbarossa’, of holding his U-boats in check, despite Roosevelt’s intensified ‘undeclared war’ in the Atlantic. ‘Germany’s attitude to America’, it was reported by the navy’s leadership on 8 July, was ‘to remain as before: not to let herself be provoked’.88

  The previous day American troops had set foot in Iceland. This further departure from the neutrality of the United States unquestionably made the war in the Atlantic more difficult for Germany, with its obvious consequence of easing the passage of British convoys using the same route as American vessels supplying the troops in Iceland. But Hitler was not prepared to countenance any retaliatory measures. U-boat commanders in the north Atlantic had, in fact, promptly requested permission to take action in Icelandic waters. But policy remained the same: avoid any provocation.

  Raeder was unhappy. On 9 July, at the ‘Wolf’s Lair’, the ‘Führer Headquarters’ that had been set up in East Prussia, he sought a decision from Hitler on whether ‘the occupation of Iceland by the USA is to be considered as an entry into the war, or as an act of provocation which should be ignored’. The response offers an insight into Hitler’s thinking. ‘The Führer’,

  Raeder’s notes of the meeting ran, ‘explains in detail that he is most anxious to postpone the United States’ entry into the war for another one or two months. On the one hand the Eastern Campaign must be carried on with the entire Air Force, which is ready for this task and which he does not wish to divert even in part; on the other hand, a victorious campaign on the Eastern Front will have a tremendous effect on the whol
e situation and probably also on the attitude of the USA. Therefore for the time being he does not wish the existing instructions changed, but rather wants to be sure that incidents will be avoided.’89

  Whether the postponement of conflict with the United States for some two months was envisaged as leading, after a triumphant end to the eastern campaign, to Germany opening hostilities or to a presumed move by Roosevelt to enter the war was not made clear. But the sense of Hitler’s comments implies that in such an eventuality the move would have been made by Germany. This is reinforced by his remarks to Raeder just over a fortnight later, on 25 July. Hitler repeated that he wanted to avoid having the United States declare war while the eastern campaign was still in progress. But ‘after the eastern campaign he reserves the right to take severe action against the USA as well’.90 In the high summer of 1941, then, with the Wehrmacht rampaging eastwards, Hitler was contemplating war with the United States in the near future–but only once the Soviet Union had been crushed.

  Victory in the east seemed at this time almost achieved. The chief of the army General Staff, General Franz Halder, had as early as 3 July concluded that it was not going too far to claim that the eastern campaign had been won within the space of two weeks.91 The arrogant presumption would soon rebound drastically. But it was in this euphoric atmosphere that Hitler ruminated on war against the United States once his hands were free in the east.

  In the middle of July he opened up to Oshima, the Japanese ambassador in Berlin, the giddy prospect of a combined effort by Germany and Japan to demolish the threat first of the Soviet Union, then of the United States. ‘We won’t get round the showdown with America,’ Hitler told him. It should not be presumed, because he was not doing anything at present, that he accepted the American occupation of Iceland. He had no fear of America. The European armaments industry was far greater than the American. And he had experienced American soldiers in the First World War: the Germans were far superior. As soon as the eastern campaign was over, he would transfer his efforts from land to building up the navy and air force. (A war directive to this effect had, in fact, been issued the previous day. The extended emphasis upon U-boats, not surface ships, clearly had Britain and America in its sights.92 And we might recall that Hitler, already in May, was envisaging bases on the Azores for long-range bombers to attack the United States.93) He lavished praise upon the Wehrmacht, then told Oshima that the destruction of Russia was in the supreme interest both of Germany and of Japan. Russia would always be the ally of their enemies. Germany was menaced in the east by the Soviet Union and in the west by the United States, he declared. For Japan, it was the other way round. He was therefore of the opinion, he went on, ‘that we should jointly destroy them’.