School of War - Ep 36: Charlie Laderman on Hitler’s Decision to Declare War on America

Episode Date: July 12, 2022

Charlie Laderman, lecturer at King’s College London and co-author of Hitler's American Gamble, joins the show to talk about his latest book, which covers the crucial days between the attack on Pearl Harbor and Hitler’s perplexing declaration of war on the United States. ▪️ Times  • 01:52 Introduction • 02:50 Wasn’t War Inevitable? • 07:12 Japan And Germany - Strange Bedfellows • 11:10 Hitler’s Blurred Vision • 14:45 Japan - Will They, Won’t They Attack  • 15:51 Churchill’s Outlook • 22:58 Anti-Interventionist Sentiment • 26:57 Anti-Semitism • 31:18 Roosevelt Sees Things Clearly • 35:21 A War With Germany, Not Japan     • 38:40 Catastrophic German Strategic Errors • 43:23 Hitler’s American Gamble  • 49:15 Pearl Harbor Condemned The European Jews • 53:54 Alarmingly Relevant Parallels

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December the 7th, 1941, brought America into World War II, and indeed made the war a truly single global conflict. But was that inevitable? Of course, we were going to go to war with Japan at that point, one way or the other. But was it necessary that we also go to war with Germany? Plenty of Americans, including influential isolationists like Charles Lindberg, and a range of skeptics, including a group of U.S. senators, thought that we shouldn't. And to look at the matter from Hitler's point of view, if war with America could be postponed

until his war with Russia could be won, wouldn't that be preferable? Well, in the days after Pearl Harbor, Hitler took basically the opposite view and declared war on America preemptively. His American gamble, as a brilliant new book terms it, in the end, destroyed him, his regime, and the axis power is writ large. What made him do it? It is a prescription for war, this Iraqi invasion of Hawaii. 1941, a date which will live in infinite.

The bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalee. We continue to face a grave situation in Iran. We have people who not see buildings. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields and in the streets. We shall never surrender. Hi, I'm Erin McLean.

Thanks for joining School of War. I'm delighted today to be joined by Charlie Latterman, lecture in international history, core team responsible for directing the Center for Grand Strategy at King's College London. Before that, he was Research Fellow in History at Peter House, University of Cambridge, where he remains a senior research associate, author and co-author of numerous books and articles, most recently with Brendan Sims, Hitler's American Gamble, Pearl Harbor, and Germany's March to Global War. Charlie, thanks so much for joining. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. So I just want to sort of kick us off

with a general question here, because your book, which is really, really fascinating. And I'm not the only one to say this. Actually, before we go, I just want to say, if you look at the first few pages in the book, the list of people praising the book is impressive, both in its scope and sort of, if you like, ideological diversity. It's a very, you've got everyone from Victor Davis Hansen to Corey Shockey here. So there's something interesting here. But it's this fascinating account, right, of the period immediately after Pearl Harbor.

And it's sort of a scene-setting question for you, I think for a lot of people, and you sort of address this in the book, Japan attacks, the United States at Pearl Harbor. Shortly thereafter, the United States is at war with the axis. You know, wasn't that inevitable. Why is that such a big? It's obvious, right? Germany and Japan are aligned. It's obvious that the United States was going to find itself at war with both. I take it that the purpose of the book in some ways is to demonstrate that this is not the case. But how is this not the case? How is it not inevitable that the United States and Germany are going to go to war? Yes, it's a great question. It was the whole basis for how we got to looking at this particular topic. Brendan and I used to teach a course together, and we were just fascinated by that period. In the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, what it must have been like to be sitting in the White House or in Ten Downing Street, trying to work out exactly what was going to happen. And as you say, the presumption for many years has been that there was an inevitability about what was to happen in the moments after the Japanese struck pole hard. This has been perpetuated not just by scholars, but also by the actors themselves. Winston Churchill's famous line that he went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved

and thankful when he heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor because we had won after all, America was in the war up to its neck and into the death. But if you look at Churchill's reaction at the time, it certainly wasn't this sort of very relaxed perspective on what was going to happen. And I think justifiably it wasn't, it wasn't relaxed because he knew that in the lead up to this, the world hadn't been enmeshed in what we would later call the Second World War. It had been involved in two largely separate, conjoined in a number of ways, but largely separate conflicts between what was going on in Asia, the Sino-Japanese War that had been ongoing since the early 1930s, and the war in Europe.

that had started in the late 1930s. And the two conflicts had sort of raged for those years, but it wasn't necessarily completely interlinked. It wasn't necessarily clear that the two would become inextricably tied. And the United States was obviously formally neutral in both of those conflicts. And what you see in the lead up to December 7, 1941, is a sense to which the majority of Americans still up until early December 1941 do not want to get themselves involved in a foreign conflict,

and particularly a conflict again in Europe. Opinion polls show that right up until the beginning of 1941. And so when the Japanese strike on Pole Harbor, it's not clear that Franklin Roosevelt will be able to use this as a means to bring the United States into the war. And again, we can talk about whether Franks in Roosevelt, whether he actually wanted to bring the United States sort of fully fledged into the war prior to this.

And there's some debate over this. But what's most important is that sense to which, from the perspective of politics in the United States, one, the sense was that the Roosevelt administration had, was now involved in a war in Asia. it wasn't clear that the public would support also in meshing the United States in a war in Europe as well, whether the United States had the resources to do so. And it wasn't clear that whether Roosevelt would get the blame for having provided through then lease supplies and defense aid to the European allies,

to Britain and to the Soviet Union, their fight against Nazi Germany. It wasn't clear that he wouldn't be blamed for having given away some of America's best resources and left it exposed against Japan. So the political difficulties are great, but it's also not clear, not just it's not clear in Washington and London exactly what's going to happen. It's also not entirely clear in Tokyo either. There's a big debate leading up to December, December, 7th, 1941 about what the Germans might do. And so what we sort of start from the basis of is on that day, the only person who fundamentally knows what's going to happen in the days afterwards is Adolf Hitler. For everyone else, there were so many questions that are up in the air in the immediate aftermath of the Japanese attack.

Well, let's stick with the Germans and the Japanese for a minute then. So when you step back and sort of look at it with eyes not clouded by a sense of inevitability given what actually happened, it's not immediately obvious, is it that Germany and Japan would naturally find themselves aligned? How does that ultimate alignment come about? You know, what is the shared global? I mean, obviously, actually be interesting to hear you talk to the obvious tensions between the global visions, but what is shared between them such that they do end up waging this global conflict ultimately together? Yes, I think for both of them, they have a great deal of resentment at the way in which the international order has emerged in the first half of the 20th century.

Both had been rising powers at the turn of the 20th century. One finds themselves on the losing side in the First World War. The other finds themselves in the winning side, the Japanese, but both believe that they don't get fairly treated in the aftermath of that conflict. The Japanese feel like they have been discriminated against, that they are not seen as authentically part of the collection of civilized states as it was understood at the time that they were being sort of racially discriminated against, They weren't being allowed to have imperial possessions in the way that the rest of the major European powers had.

And for both, there is this sense of feeling that they were have-nots, which is the concept of the time, have-nots in the international system, that the British and the Americans in particular with the great halves of the system, that their hegemony underpinned global order, that they were these satiated powers, and the Japanese and the Germans, and alongside them, Mussolini's Italy, were have not powers, they were pretenders who were being prevented from having their own place in the imperial sun. So that's sort of what brings them together. Although again, there isn't this inevitability. Even in Hitler's Germany, there's an uming and aering throughout the 1930s

about whether to fully support the Japanese in their struggle with the Chinese. But ultimately, Hitler makes the decision to back the Japanese in that struggle. And what we see there is this sort of growing alignment around resentment and a sense that both had to strike in order that the both the time was running out for them essentially. And this sort of increases to at the late 1930s and into the early 1940s that they would have to strike against the major powers, the Germans obviously do that in the late 1930s in Europe, but also increasingly there's a sense that they might have to do so against the United States as well because there's a sense that the United States is increasingly finding itself on the side of the

allies. But the Japanese also increasingly believe that time is running out for them, that the Americans and the British are preventing them from dominating East Asia. And as a result, both come closer together in that belief that they need to unite against these major powers. But at the same time, there's a great deal of mistrust between the two of them. These are But at least trusted actors, certainly Adolf Hitler, this idea that you can believe exactly what he's going to say. The Japanese already see this when the Germans invade the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, not providing any advance notice to the Japanese about this, which completely turns

Japanese strategic calculations on their head. And so throughout the end of 1941, there's this sense on the Japanese side, particularly from this sort of racial prism, that Hitler, as someone who believes in the Aryan race, whose pronouncements have been all about sort of, all about sort of racial purity, would ultimately leave the Japanese in the lurch, if the Japanese ever did attack the British and the Americans, and would find common cause with Japan's enemies in sort of a racial estrangement. So what we see is, in some sense, as I say, moving closer together, common geopolitical interests, but at the same time, a great deal of mistrust between the two sides.

And if, you know, common geopolitical interests were enough to overcome, you know, the tensions generated by, you know, essentially competing fascist or racist visions of the world that, you know, preside in Germany and Japan, shouldn't it also then have been the case that geopolitical interests should have overcome hostility, certainly from Germany to the Soviet Union? How is it not, or maybe it is, how is it not an enormous failure of policy, if the goal is the defeat of Anglo-American hegemony, how is it not an enormous failure that Germany ultimately not only does not accommodate or cooperate with the Soviet Union

as it is at the start of the war, but invades. Is this a sort of straightforward failure, or is there more to the thinking that I'm missing in retrospect? No, I mean, ultimately, these two decisions that Hitler takes in 1941 to invade the Soviet Union and to declare war in the United States are seen as sort of these great unforced errors that were unnecessary for him to do that, sort of the standard historiographical narrative on this. But I think if you try and, and I think it's the hardest thing to do in history,

to try and see the world through the prism of actors who are so alien to us and who have such extreme views, not to sympathize with them in any way, but at least to try and see the world through their eyes, ultimately that's what we see with Adolf Hitler's conception of geopolitics. The belief, as you say, that Germany was always going to be this minor power in a world dominated by the great imperial powers of the world. And we see this particularly in Hitler's second book, his unpublished second book, where he spends a great deal of time focusing on the United States and the British Empire as powers that he both in some senses admire. but also fears because of Germany's sense that it would be ultimately inferior to them.

So the idea of seizing Labens around the East of carving out essentially the space in Eastern Europe in the Soviet Union to gain access to those resources is what's necessary for Germany to become a great power and for it to ultimately be able to hold its own in a world where the United States and the British Empire, the major powers. So that becomes a major underpinning of Hitler's decision to attack the Soviet Union. And we see that also with the sense that he also believes that if you knock the Soviet Union out, and this is a big part of Hitler's sort of perspective on this, of striking quickly, that you can overcome Germany's deficiencies by acting quickly

in these narrow windows of opportunity. But if you do that, you would also deprive the British, and ultimately the Americans as well of a potential ally on the European continent and that that would lead them to sue for peace and that they would ultimately have to come to terms with Nazi domination of Europe. So as you say,

we know what ultimately happens with this that Hitler brings about the very destruction that he seems to want to avoid, but at the same time, in terms of his own sort of geopolitical perspective and in terms of making Germany a great power, there's the ideological elements to this as well, the anti-communism, but also the anti-Semitism

that underpins this as well. But at least from a purely geopolitical perspective, this is about carving out Germany's place as a major power and one that could rival the other major powers of the world. Did it cross Hitler's mind? If he had had his druthers, would he have preferred Japan to wait in terms of an attack on the United States? No, but I think what we see throughout this time is a fear that the Japanese won't strike.

And throughout 1941, we increasingly get this sense that, and that's why Hitler on December 7, 1941, where he hears the news of the Japanese attack, is so delighted. And it's, we have from a whole range of accounts, have his surprise of what happens, but his joy and exhortation at hearing about it. And his sense is his concern that the Japanese will come to terms with the Americans and the British because what he wants to see the Japanese do is not strike against the Soviet Union. He wants to see them strike and wage war against the British and the Americans because that will ultimately tie those powers down in the Pacific and allow him to finish off the Soviets. Yeah. Well, we'll come back to Hitler because obviously he's at the center of all of this.

but let's switch for a minute and talk about the Brits. How does the world look on December the 6th, you know, 1941 to Winston Churchill? What is the likely course of events if there's no foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor? How are things likely to play out in the coming years? Yes, for Churchill in that period, it's one of the most concerned that he is at any point in the war because his sense increasingly is that the United States

is not, despite Roosevelt's pronouncements, despite the fact that it's waging undeclared naval warfare against the Germans in the Atlantic, that it's not going to formally enter the war. And if it doesn't, then that's going to constrain its involvement in the conflict and also potentially constrain the resources that might be available for the British, with the Americans giving supplies to their own forces, of course, but also to the Soviets as well. the sense was that this was a table full of hungry guests and the British were going to be the ones who aren't going to eat. They were the ones who were going to lose out. So there's that side of it.

There's a concern that the Americans may not end up in the war. And you're seeing this with Churchill's advisors, particularly the South African leader, Jan Christian Smut, saying to him, what is going on in the United States? Roosevelt is sort of Hamlet-like, hesitating, even though American ships are being fired on. he's not calling for a declaration of war. And this is the sort of the perspective throughout the British cabinet. What is it going to take to bring the Americans into the war? So that's one side. But then at the same time, you're getting this increasing tension with the Japanese in East Asia.

And the concern is that Britain is not only going to be fighting the Germans, but they could also be fighting the Japanese as well without an American ally. And that's the sort of worst-case scenario for Churchill. and he sort of outlines this specifically at this time where he says, do you know what, like the worst case scenario is being, so the best case scenario, let's start with that. The best case scenario is that the Americans enter the war on outside against the Germans. The next best scenario is that the Japanese come in and the Americans come in as well. And the worst case scenario, which is the one that he really fears, is the Japanese attack.

They avoid any attack on American possessions. Roosevelt can't bring the United States into the war in East Asia for, political reasons, and the United States, Britain is in this sort of position where it's basing war on two fronts, three fronts, if we include the Mediterranean as well, without an American ally. And so this horror is sort of in Churchill's mind. And what we're seeing, there's some sort of talk to allies of saying, well, we believe that Roosevelt will come in. He's sort of, he's telling us that he would, he would do so. But those who see him across these days, see a very different Churchill. And so when we get to the evening of December 7th, 1941,

in Britain, Churchill sitting at the table in Chequers with Avril Harriman and the US ambassador Weinand, he's sitting there with his head and his hands, barely getting involved in this conversation. There's a sense of real trepidation about the way in which the war is going and the way in which the world might turn. So before the Japanese attack on Balhaba, Churchill is very very, much alarmed as to what might transpire for the British. And of course, as you point out in his account of the days that follow, the attack brings immediate relief to Churchill's state of mind. He is relieved and has a clear vision of a victorious future. The reality is a bit more complicated. What actually happened and what were the sort of major

trends of thought for Churchill and his circle in the aftermath of the attack? Yes. Yes, so as you say, initially there is an exhilaration because he has avoided that worst-case scenario. It isn't the case that the Americans are out around. The Japanese are in and the British are now facing a difficult position, but at least they have an American ally or so it looks in East Asia. But as the minutes and hours tick away, it also becomes clear that this may not improve the British position, particularly in Europe and particularly with relations to suppliers.

So he makes plans almost immediately. to try and get to Washington in order to discuss with Roosevelt, even though the sort of general staffs are both sides of discussed in the summit, if there is a war the Americans are in, then the focus will be on Germany first, as opposed to Japan. What does this look like if the United States is not formally at war with the Germans and are formerly at war with the Japanese? Will Roosevelt be able to sort of, to be able to see on, off the pressure from American public opinion to focus America's war effort in East Asia, and particularly with regard to lend lease supplies.

Churchill's determined to get to Washington. And even before he gets a response from those about this, the US Army unilaterally placed this embargo on lend lease supplies going to the British and the Soviets. So Britain is placed in this position, and as this sort of starts to trickle through to officials in London. There is alarm Churchill being woken up in the early hours to be told about this because Britain is not only reliant on American material, on tanks or planes, but also on a whole range of commodities and chemicals which have acquired to build Britain's own weapons. So Britain is in a very dicey state at this point if this sort of uncertainty in US German

relations continues for any extended period of time because Britain, is faced with the possibility of not being able to wage war without American resources. So there's that sign. And he's also getting information from British diplomats in Washington that says public opinion hasn't quite caught up to the idea that the Germans and the Japanese are one and the same. There's this distinction that's being drawn in the public mind. And for many Americans, the senses the focus is on the war in the Pacific. and the idea of a war with Hitler is one which many Americans are still not reconciled to. Well, let's talk about the United States then.

So, and I'm interested in Roosevelt, of course, in the evolution and his thinking. And actually, I guess I shouldn't assume, you know, the question is, is there an evolution and is there before and after the seventh? It might be a good place to go. But before that, can we talk a bit about the anti-interventionists? You know, you make a good use of their main. materials in the book. It's an interesting story, one that part of me thinks we actually should pay more attention to because it seems unfortunately relevant to some of the debates we're having

today. But there's a whole range of characters, you know, Arthur Vandenberg, obviously Charles Lindberg, some who are new to me, as I'm not an expert in the period, but people like Gerald Nye, what is the scope of, you know, anti-interventionist opinion, what drives it? Talk a little bit about some of these key players and what are the conditions that sort of Roosevelt is operating under in the face of this opposition to involvement in the war. Yes, I think that's a great question because it's something which a lot of people haven't really taken their ideas seriously. And particularly when we're looking at this period, there's a sense to which,

well, the anti-interventionist esteem has sort of run out, that there's this sort of inevitability from 1941 that the US would get into the war. And so we don't need to pay much attention to the anti-interventionist. but they retain a very strong influence into this period. The American First Committee as well, of course, is well organized. It might have lost the debates on NLEAS, but they still retain an important sway over a large scale of the public mind. So as I mentioned earlier, if you look at opinion polls in late November 1941, early December 1941, and Roosevelt is reading them extremely carefully, he's aware that the vast majority of Americans don't want to recognize the existence of a state's

of war with Germany, no more than about 20, 25% at this point, even as later as the beginning of December 1941. So there is this sort of lingering anti-interventionism that's very important, but also what's really important, and this obviously ties into our discussion about Roosevelt, is the importance to him, if the United States is going to be brought into another conflict, the United States should do so in a united manner. And so the America first, their power comes from their possibility and their ability to bring about sort of disunity over an American entrance into the war. And as you say, the background to them, I think, is very important in many senses.

They're in line with quite a lot of sort of 19th century American political thought on foreign policy of avoiding entangling alliances of non-intervention in great power conflicts, particularly in Europe. And in particular, after the First World War, this sense to which, this, in a similar way to the way that we might look at the Iraq War today, that this was, that many people will look at the Iraq War as Americans in the 30th of the First War was sort of this terrible mistake, that the United States should never get involved in this sort of conflict again, that it had been sort of manipulated into this war by shadowy interests, that it was doing so to advance the interests of other nations, that that was sort of the overwhelming. perspective of the majority of Americans in the 1930s. And even Franklin Roosevelt, as in his first term in office and in the early part of his second term, was having to sort of at least pay lip service to that idea that the United States would never again find itself involving itself in a foreign conflict. So there's a great deal of power to this. And as you say, figures like Limburg, Gerald Nye, Johnson in California, they retain a real influence. within the Senate. And their emphasis is both on keeping the United States out of the war,

but also putting an emphasis that after December the 7th, that if the United States was going to be fighting a war with Japan, that it couldn't continue to be providing so many resources and supplies to the Allies in the war against Hitler. The focus had to be on America's own forces, and the focus had to be on the enemy that had attacked the United States, and that was Japan. You know, I take your point and I don't want to be dismissive of the arguments and vision of this, you know, powerful group. And, you know, there's this risk of just, you know, sort of categorizing them mentally as, you know, the bad guys in a Caswell issue guru novel, you know, obviously overcome by history. But, you know, again, unfortunately, I think that current day

debate showed that this line of thought is not not dead entirely. And at the risk of sounding dismissive of it, I mean, you made reference to, you know, manipulation by shadowy forces. What was the role of anti-Semitism in this movement. I presume, without being an expert in it, that it was not everything. But how significant was it? Yeah, no, that's a good point. I mean, when I was talking at shadowy forces there, and in relation to the 1930s, this was sort of munitions manufacturers. This is the sort of the Nye Commission on America's entrance into the First World War, this sense to which these munitions manufacturers were the people who had brought the United States into the war, bankers as well. And obviously, there's an element. So they're sort of tied in with sort

classic anti-Semitic stereotypes, but this was more aimed at the likes of J.P. Morgan and others who'd help fund the British War effort during the First World War. That's sort of the focus of things like the Nye Commission. But as you say, there is this sort of anti-Semitism within the non-interventionist movement, and particularly associated with the likes of Charles Lindberg after his infamous speech in Des Moines, Iowa, where he talked about the United States was sort of being manipulated into war for reasons other than its own interests by Jews and by and by the British. But there's a huge back, sort of this sort of backlash against Lindbergh's speech, and the vast majority of Americans don't believe that idea. They don't believe that Lindberg's

perspective is an accurate portrayal. So there's certainly anti-Semitism within the movement. I don't want to downplay that. Certainly Limburg's anti-Semitism there is overt and clear. But what I wanted to sort of bring to the fore in this is that, To a great extent, the opposition of this sort of America First non-interventionists draws on sort of longerstanding non-interventionist traditions in the United States and this idea that the United States should not be involving itself in great power conflicts in Europe. And that, I think, is the most powerful force motivating this movement.

And obviously, it moves away from, by the end of this year, there's great deals, the vast majority of Americans want to support the British, but still, as I say, the vast majority aren't necessarily reconciled to entrance into the war. So they still hold this sway over the American public mind. And because, you know, we're talking about, you know, post-Barborosa, you know, what we're discussing here is, you know, a right-wing, you know, anti-interventionist movement. I presume, a question for you, prior to the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, I presume there was left-wing anti-interventionism as well. Was that a force in America? Was that, I presume, gone completely by December 41, but was that relevant to the debate?

Not completely gone. So Norman Thomas, who's the socialist candidate for president in sort of long-standing candidates, about 30s, he remains sort of a major figure in America First as well. So American First is this sort of collection of different individuals, both on the left and the right. And actually, Barbara Rosser, to a certain extent, you'd think, sort of looking back, where that showed the sort of the scope of hit as ambitions and it showed the threat. But actually, for many Americans, particularly on the right, as you say, there's a sense to which now that the Nazi Germany had attacked the Soviet Union, there was even less reason for the United States to get involved in the conflict because the fight was now between

those two great totalitarian states. And one, the American sort of, the right of an American policy doesn't want to get involved in a war where they're allied with the Soviet Union. But there's also a sense similar to sort of Henry Kissinger's famous line about the Iran-Rour. It's a pity that they both can't, they both can't lose. And that's sort of what the desire is there. And there's a sense to which if the United States is going to supply the Soviets and the British, then the United States can potentially stay out of this conflict. And this is not just a perspective that's coming from the non-interventionist, even from within the Roosevelt administration, there's a sense to which actually perhaps

America's resources are best deployed during this period in aiding the allies against Nazi Germany and that this would ensure that Americans don't have to fight and die again on European soil. Let's go to Roosevelt in his administration then. So what is his view of the situation on on December the 6th and is his ultimate attitude and approach to the war after the German Declaration of War basically consistent with what he would have wanted to do? Or does Pearl Harbor, you know, and then the events of the days that immediately follow, sort of scramble his vision of things? Yes. I mean, I think Franklin Roosevelt, I think, is one of the most difficult presidents for us to sort of understand exactly what's going in on within his minds. And we see that even

his advisors saying that they can't necessarily tell what's going on within his mind because he doesn't share his innermost thoughts with him. He's not someone who sort of pours them out on paper either. There's very few sort of letters or dire entries by Roosevelt himself that would give you a sense into his inner turmoil on this. And his sense, what the idea that he wants to be able to show and as a number of his advisors say is this, that there isn't this sort of turmoil going on, that everything has this sort of larger plan and that he doesn't actually, isn't actually sort of concerned over this. So that's something which I think is important just to keep in mind when we're looking at Roosevelt. But we have seen him move increasingly from the late 1930s,

from the time where he issues his famous quarantine speech in 1937 of sort of quarantining the authoritarian dictatorships of Italy, Japan and Germany. From that moment, from that moment, moment, he's increasingly committed to the defeat of those Axis powers. And we move throughout the late 1930s and the early 1940s to increasing support of the Allies and to all measures short of war. And particularly after his re-election in 1940, that that is sort of the policy of Roosevelt, that the United States will become the arsenal of democracy, supporting the Allies and ensuring that the Nazis don't win. But I think there's still debate that rages over whether he did ultimately want to bring

the United States into this conflict. And I think what he's skillfully able to do is to tell people exactly what they want to hear without ever making commitments on this. So the British, I think, the perspective, I think, of British diplomats, but also British scholars since has been very much that it's not clear that Roosevelt actually does want to bring the United States into the war. Isaiah Berlin would famously talk about Roosevelt wanting to keep America out so that he could be in a sort of neutral position in order to sort of remake the world after the war. But I think what's important within that is he's determined to

see Nazi Germany defeated. I think what we would argue Brendan Sims and I was, that he had a very clear end in mind that the Nazi Germany should be defeated, but his means were quite fluid and quite flexible. And I think the sense is that if you can do that without having to commit American troops, when there's such great political opposition to this, then that would be the best case scenario. But increasingly, he moves towards a position where intervention looks like it will be necessary. But I think what the sort of struggle for Roosevelt is as late as December 1941, he doesn't believe that the American public will support a declaration of war on Nazi Germany, which is why he believes that it's in his interest for this to sort of be

a face accompli, that if the Germans are the ones who issue that declaration, then that will allow him to bring the United States into the war with a politically united country. But any attempt for him to preempt this will essentially lead to these sort of fissures and divisions within American society. So it's a very complex position. He's committed, as I say, to the defeat to Nazi Germany, but, and increasing, as I say, to intervention, but wants that decision almost to be taken out of his own hands. And so now, you know, with the historical record available to you and lots of time to think about it, which Roosevelt did not have in the moment, you know, post-Pold, post-Purl Harbor,

but pre-German declaration of war on the 11th, how likely, is he right? How likely is it Is it that while war with Japan at this point is obviously happening, we may, the United States may find ourselves in a war with Japan but not with Germany? Yeah. I mean, I think Roosevelt is very skillful during that period, resisting pressure from those within the administration to preempt Hitler, people like Henry Stimson, the Secretary of War, do want to on December 8th, 1941, call for a declaration of war against Germany as well. And Roosevelt doesn't do that.

He avoids that because he, I think Rosa has a, is very much attuned to the American public sentiment. He knows that that will look exploitative and may lead to a backlash, particularly as I say, from those non-interventionists. I think what he does is quite skillfully on December the 9th, 1941 in a, one of his fireside chance, is to sort of escalate the rhetorical clash that's been going on with Hitler over the last four years. is there's been this rhetorical battle between Mosel and Hitler. And he sort of escalates that by saying essentially, the Germans are behind what happened at Pol Harbor. We're essentially at war with Germany. He doesn't call for Congress to declare war,

but he basically declares the existence of a state of war. But he knows that he needs Hitler to make that official, because it will be very hard for him to go to Congress while they're still this lingering anti-interventionist sentiment. And I think what he does is that he does judge the situation quite effectively. And I think from the moment that the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor, Hitler knows exactly what he's going to do. He's going to declare war. But there are voices within the German high command, there's voices within the German foreign office, and particularly the German diplomats in

Washington who are saying, look, we really should avoid a declaration of war. And Roosevelt is in a very difficult political position. He will find it very hard to call for a declaration of war. The Germans were aware very quickly that there has been this embargo on Lenny's supplies, that this is a very sort of difficult political situation that Roosevelt and Churchill find themselves in. But for Hitler, the senses, great powers, they don't wait for other powers to declare war on them. They act. And for him, there was this sort of, now.

window of opportunity where he's got to avoid the Americans and the British should have essentially strangling him economically through Len Nice and economic warfare and that he has to act because if he doesn't, then Germany is going to be defeated anyway. So this is why we call it a gamble. So yeah, say more about that. And let's, I mean, in a way, this is the main event is Hitler's decision making. Because it's just, you know, it's a, it's a fascinating book and this is a really interesting conversation. I still struggle, though, with with, you know, the inevitability of what actually happened, you know, whether it's beginning with Hitler's decision to invade Russia without having resolved the war with

the UK, survivable, but, you know, there's a way in which sort of objectively seems like an error to then, you know, compounding it on a substantially more massive scale with this now declaration of war in December of 1941. There is just this sense that these are catastrophic, strategic errors that obviate, you know, German battlefield progress, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. You know, please help me understand, you know, Hitler's thinking in such a way that it seems slightly less mad. Because it does just seem mad in retrospect.

And I'm aware that I'm sort of falling victim to some sort of, you know, sort of intellectual, common intellectual laziness and thinking. No, I mean, I think there is, we know what the ultimate outcome of this, that he brings about the very destruction that he is seeming to avoid. And I think that that's really important within this. There is inevitability from the moment the Polarhab happens, but only within Hitler's head. So what we would say is that there is no, it doesn't have to be this way.

Another leader might have acted differently, but as you can say, like another leader wouldn't have put himself in this position in the first place, that if Hitler had been able to stop at that point, then he wouldn't have been Hitler. And I think what's fundamental to try and understand from his perspective, and from this, I don't think this is completely, I think there's a lot of parallels between the way in which the Germans act and the way in which the Japanese act, that there's this narrow window of opportunity that if they don't act now, they're going to have to basically accept that they're going to be these also-vans,

second-rate powers in a world dominating. by the Anglo-American powers, and that's something that they are not willing to reconcile themselves to. And so for Hitler and for the Japanese, they have to strike and they have to be bold and act now, and it comes back to timing more than anything, that in the long run, if they don't do anything, they're essentially done for anyway.

But if they act in this moment, there's a possibility that they can carve out this space, that they can gather enough resources in, they might be able to, not to defeat the British and the Americans outright, but there's a sense to which the British and Americans might feel that they have to live with the Germans and Japanese and the empires that they've built. That's the sort of a, it's sort of a, they're looking towards, like, what they see as sort of a multilateral system where they are a bit more powerful than they've been before

and that they were sort of powers within that system. So that's the way in which, and as I say, as much, and I stress this, this is something which Brendan Simpson's Nirov, the utter rationality of Hitler's thought, it's only, the only way to understand his decision to do this is to understand it within his own terms and with his own sort of geopolitical blinkers on. And as we say, as you say, it's, we know that it was a catastrophic, destructive decision, but that is not obvious at the time. This isn't something that he just does. I think in the past there's been sort of different schools of thought on why Hitler does this,

that he sort of has this. There is no sort of rationality. He doesn't care by this point and just wants as much destruction as possible. Or there's a sense to which he sees the Americans as being weak and that they're being, they're materialistic and they won't sort of stick it in a war. I don't think that's the case. Hitler, for a long time in his writings, has written about the power and the potential power of the United States. He knows that on the surface, the United States is destined to be a

power on a scale unlike anything the world had seen before. But at the same time, he believes that that's in the future. And if the Germans can at least carve out this space, claim all these resources in the East, then they might be able to withstand the coming onslaught from the British United States. And the other thing I'd say is that from Hitler's perspective, he believes that war inevitable. The Americans are coming into the war regardless, that actually effective in the United States is already at war. It's firing on German ships on the high seas. And his senses, well, we will take the initiative now, and that will put us in a better position. It's sort of making the best of a bad, of a bad hand in Hitler's mind. So that's, hopefully that gives you

some sense of the thing, of things from his perspective, while still accepting your point that There's a fundamental irrationality to his decisions. Is part of the calculus or the gamble that because Japan has attacked the United States that Roosevelt will somehow, even with sort of mutual and multidirectional declarations of war, Roosevelt will still be forced into some kind of Asia-first strategy and that Germany off the hook? Well, I think what he doesn't want to see is to see the Japanese go down to sort of total destruction where the Americans can focus all their resources on the Japanese. So I think there's a

sense there that if you get the Americans to divide their supplies and you get them to divide between East and West, that that might prevent them being able to destroy the two sides. But I think what's important to remember, I think with the benefit of our hindsight and the benefit of being able to see the whole picture, if Hitler hadn't, if he just allowed even a series of weeks or months to play out, then I don't think it is clear that Roosevelt would have been able to get the United States inevitably to declare war.

I think the inevitability there is that it's not clear that just because America declares war in Japan, that they will declare war on Nazi Germany immediately afterwards. From Roosevelt's perspective, from a political perspective, it requires in order to bring the US into the war united for the Germans to act. And if the Americans don't, if this uncertainty continues, if they're not in a formal state of war with Germany, then those supplies will dwindle going to the British and the Soviets.

And that might lead to a very different situation on the Eastern Front where the Soviets are heavily reliant on Lennyse material coming for the British and the Americans to defend Moscow. And the British are heavily reliant on American tanks in the desert. So this might tick the balance in either of those two conflicts. And as I say, if Hitler hadn't acted, then I think the war might have turned out very differently. So in that sense, I think that's what for us made these five days so fascinating, that so much was at stake. And it's really only the decisions by Hitler that leads the war to inevitably become the way that it does. You know, hearing your analysis here and reading it in the last,

book and sort of comparing Hitler's approach to these decisions to, you know, Roosevelt's, for example, it is sort of striking. I don't know if you agree with this, but he sort of approaches it almost with this sort of tactical mindset, is a sort of violence of action to it, a sense that the moment is now got to pour it on, you know, it's all things that suit you well, generally speaking, as, you know, an infantry squad leader, which he more or less was. And Roosevelt, you know, events is a kind of patience and nuanced appreciation of what has to fall into place. in order to make certain things possible, a sense of sequencing and prioritization that Hitler lacks.

I don't know if that's oversimplifying things, but that's superlantic. No, I think that's a nice way of putting it. I think it comes back to sort of the relative power disparity between the two sides. And Hitler sort of almost captures this. He has this analogy which he uses, I'm telling which day exactly,

but in this period between December the 7th and 11th to one of his advisors, saying that it's a bit like a boxing match between sort of a sort of smaller, less heavy opponent and a major heavyweight, that if the heavyweight sort of saves his, doesn't use sort of his best punches, if he sort of holds off on sort of unleashing on the smaller fighter, if the smaller fighter sort of launches this sort of like rapid fire assault, then he can knock the heavier fighter off balance. And that sort of captures the way in which Hitler sees this, that he knows that the Americans are much,

more powerful potentially, but he also knows that the American economy isn't mobilized to anywhere near its full potential. And certainly he, I'm not even sure whether Roosevelt could anticipate the extent to which the American economy ratchets up, because we have to remember, even with Len Lease, it's only a very small part of the American economy that's mobilized prior to American entry into the war. And that's why you've got these sort of like very sort of scarce resources It's being shared between the British, the Soviets and the Americans. And it's not really until the Americans come into the war, that they can really sort of ratchet up their industrial base

and fight this war with resources that are unmatched by any other side. But yes, it's said for Hitler, there's a sense to which, before the Americans are in that position, then if the Germans strike, then politically, the Americans might lose the will to want to fight and die on your own. European soil again. So there's that that's his perspective. But as I say, he's getting advice saying actually you're you're underestimating this and you're your best to actually make the situation more difficult for Roosevelt. But I think also the thing which I can just sort of have one final

point on that is both of their experience of the First World War plays a major role within this. Hitler, his his experience is very much channeled through that perspective. He thought, as you said, as an ordinary soldier on the Western. front, he'd seen the American forces come in after April 1917. And his sense was the Americans were able to declare war at April 1917. They picked the time that best suited them to come into this conflict. And for him, there was a sense of we don't want the same thing to happen again. We're going to pick the time this time. We're not going to allow war to be declared on us. We're going to be the ones declaring the war. But obviously, he finds himself not just in

the same position as the Kaiser's Germany, but in a far work. position where he's ultimately, and his regime is crushed between the Americans and the Soviets. You make this fascinating and kind of terrible observation in the book that, in a way, December the 7th condemns the Jews of Central and Western Europe. What do you mean by that? So obviously it's the case that well before December 1941, the Nazis had perpetrated this large-scale genocide across Central Eastern Europe, and particularly on Soviet jury after Barbarossa, over a million Jews massacred in Hitler's genocidal policies. But what we see throughout this time is Hitler drawing this distinction between Western European

jury and Eastern European jury. And for Hitler, there's a sense to which the Western European jury could be held back, as essentially hostages to deter the Western powers from intervening in this conflict. And obviously, in the essence of Hitler's radically anti-Semitic worldview, the idea of the destruction of the Jews is sort of, and a belief, as he puts it in 1939, that if the world again comes into a world war, this will lead to the destruction of world jury. that he makes that terrible prediction in 1939. And what he does throughout this time is to have that view, I think,

it's just to sort of, that captures the essence of the sort of the radically anti-semitic worldview. But at the same time, he sort of uses Western European jury and sort of is in these sort of coded messages that he makes to the United States. There's a sense of if the Americans come into the war, then ultimately, we're going to unleash, that prediction is going to sort of become this self-fulfilling prophecy. We're going to destroy European jury. And what we see in the aftermath of his declaration of war on America is what he tells, both gerbils, but also the galiters, his sort of close advisors, he says that the, I predicted that the World War would lead to the structure of the Jews.

The World War is now here. The United States are in this war. the most powerful states in the world are now all enmeshed in this war, and so the destruction of the Jews must follow. And we see this move towards what is essentially a decision in principle that's taken prior to this. Obviously, there's large-scale massacres and genocide being committed against European jury, but Hitler hasn't communicated to those on the ground, the German forces on the ground, this sort of final solution. But that's what follows the aftermath of the American entrance into the war where Hitler essentially has, believes that there's nothing left to deter him from acting in this way. And to a great extent, this accelerates the genocide of European jury that the Holocaust sort of follows in the aftermath of this.

So reading the book and chatting with you today, I find that your analysis, to not only be really interesting and sort of thought-provoking in the way that any good strategic analysis of any significant event will be, but also kind of alarmingly relevant in this sense. We were talking about the anti-interventionists. I think that there's on the right, there's certainly a viewpoint in the debate

about American foreign policy today that sounds a bit more and more like that. And you can kind of tell that some of the, not everyone, but some of the folks who advance that viewpoint or dying on some level to say what they really think about American involvement in World War II. On the other side of the ledger on the left, I've had, you know, an American academic who will remain nameless tell me very bluntly that, you know, American involvement in World War II was really just Roosevelt's desire to mop up the British Empire. The whole thing was a bit

sort of capitalist and rapacious and regrettable. It was a very Stalin-esque kind of analysis of American involvement in the war. So you get it at both ends of the spectrum. You know, just Stepping, stepping back, when you look at the events and the arguments of the period that you're looking at in this book, and then you look at the debates in, I'll just say in the United States today, you have debates between sort of, we'll say interventionist and isolationist, just to speak in broad sweeping terms, you also have an Asia first sort of subset of the debate, which again is a very clear echo there to things that, you know, Arthur Vandenberg seems to be thinking during the period in question. And how much, what parallels do you see and what major differences do you see in the debates of December 1941 and debates of today in American foreign policy? Yeah, you're absolutely right. And I think it's something where even since the book has become, it was published, the

analogy has become sort of even more sort of pressing on our mind. But as you say, that emphasis on where should the focus of America's resources be? Should it be on Europe? Should it be on Asia? can the United States fight wars on two fronts against sort of challenger powers in Europe and in Asia? This is a similar debate that went on in the United States at this period. And as I said, it's sort of an echo of the sort of aftermath of the Iraq War and the aftermath of the First World War, that it sort of stimulates anti-interventionist thought and this belief that the United States should not get itself involved in these conflicts.

Again, I think there's a lot of echoes in the debate between anti-intervention. and interventionists. Obviously, I think what the difference is, is in many senses, the anti-interventionists were the sort of the status quo spokespeople at the time. As I mentioned previously, to a great extent, some of their thought is sort of very much in line with sort of 19th century American foreign policy traditions. So it's sort of tied to the sort of shibbolists around the Monroe Doctrine, no entangling alliances and not get involved in these conflicts. Obviously, we've now, we're, we're, we're, we're the anti-interventionists are essentially the revolutionary party. Now, they're the ones who are

trying to challenge what is the established traditions in American foreign policy based around alliances, based around sort of the United States' belief that it's not in the interest of America for this area of Eurasia to be dominated by hostile powers. And so I think there's a lot of echoes that even before talking about then least, which obviously has been, it's back in the news and back in sort of political discussions with the Lennese program for Ukraine. And there's a sense, I think, again, that the United States could potentially avoid involving itself militarily in this conflict by economic warfare, by supporting opponents of sort of these authoritarian dictatorships by sort of backing them with economic warfare. So I think on the American side, there's very much echoes of the past for the, for the, for the, for the,

for the British today and for the Europeans, a sense of can they, where do they, where do they stand with relation to the United States? I think probably a greater deal of uncertainty than at any point since that period as to whether, again, the United States will sort of stand behind them in a European conflict. Obviously, there's a lot of differences between the status, the power and the will of Europeans to go to war again to what that was in 1941. But I do think there's sort of, there is this sense of American's relationship to Europe, which is again there. But I think the other important analogy is for the authoritarian powers. And as I say, if we look at the Russians, if we look at the Chinese, there was very much echoes. I mean,

I'm not sort of making facile analogies between sort of Vladimir Putin and Hitler that we often hear. But there's certainly a perspective on both sides of seeing these sort of narrow windows of time where essentially they need to strike now. I mean, if you look at the Russians in Ukraine, there's certainly a sense of sort of exploiting this moment. There's very much a recognition that the Russian haven't got the economic power and essentially that they're not sort of peer competitors

on an industrial and economic level with the United States, but there is a sense to which the United States is distracted, not willing to get involved in these conflicts, and if the Russian strike and sort of create realities on the ground, they can shift geopolitical realities. But I think also from the Chinese side, and in relation to Taiwan, there's a lot of similarities between Japanese position in 1941

with relation to oil and the need to access oil in order to sort of maintain their status as a major power and the way in which, say, the Chinese look at the access to semiconductors and chips in Taiwan and the possibility that the regional balance of power and the Chinese, I think this is what's so dangerous about the current moment. And I think there's been too much discussion of the sort of Thucydides trap and this sense to which the Chinese are sort of inevitably going to rise and supplant the United States. I think what's more dangerous is that the Chinese rise and believe that actually they're not going to,

they're reaching their peak and they've got to act now before the situation on the ground turns against them. And I think that's the danger of the analogy in 1941, the authoritarian powers look at the situation. They look at the sense to which whether democracies will fight, whether they will allow them to act, this uncertainty that exists. And this sense to which, unless they act now, then they'll forever miss that opportunity. And that is what leads to conflicts and to major wars. And that's what makes these situations so dangerous. Charlie Letterman, author of Hitler's American Gamble. I won't say that the conversation has made me feel better, but I have learned a lot.

And I'm grateful to you for joining us today. Thank you, Vietam. It's been a pleasure to speak to you. This is a nebulous media production. Find us wherever you get your podcasts.