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

by Ian Kershaw

  Goebbels, influenced by Hitler, was now an outright sceptic about the Japanese. Tojo ‘talks tough, but he doesn’t shoot’, was the Propaganda Minister’s verdict on 6 November. ‘The Japanese are evidently not yet inclined to intervene actively in the conflict,’ he added. ‘Thank goodness that we didn’t reckon with the active military support of Japan, so that our calculations are not substantially affected by this fact.’124 But Goebbels was not fully in the picture.

  Things had by this point just started to move. And the overtures had come from Tokyo, not Berlin. The first straw in the wind was a message from Ott on 5 November about a tentative approach from the Japanese navy ‘concerning a German assurance not to conclude a separate peace or armistice in case of a Japanese-American war’.125 More promising still–and the opening to a flurry of exchanges–was a feeler transmitted by General Okamoto Kio Puku, the head of the foreign armies section of the Japanese General Staff, on 18 November. Okamoto reported that a peaceful solution to the problems between Japan and the United States was unlikely, in the view of the Japanese General Staff. Should relations break down, the Japanese would resort to ‘self-help’, which would be followed by the entry of the United States into the war. What Okamoto wanted, on behalf of the General Staff, was both states, Germany and Japan, to ‘obligate themselves not to conclude any armistice or peace separately but only jointly’.126 Ribbentrop provided a quick response. He had Ott pass on the message on 21 November: it was taken for granted in Berlin that any armistice or peace, in the event of war between Japan or Germany and the United States, could only be concluded jointly, and that this could be made a formal agreement.127

  The Japanese wasted no time. Within two days, on 23 November, Ott was transmitting Okamoto’s reply, which made it evident that Tojo himself had been consulted. The diplomatic ratchet was now turned one notch further. Okamoto had wanted to hear from Ott, the ambassador reported, whether in his view ‘Germany would also consider herself at war with the United States if Japan should open hostilities’.128 The Tripartite Pact, we might recall, had stipulated as its condition for any joint action aggression by a third force. But what if Japan fired the first shot? On that eventuality, nothing had been agreed. Oddly, Hitler’s verbal expression of readiness at his meeting the previous April with Matsuoka to offer Germany’s immediate support in the event of Japan becoming embroiled in conflict with America, without any qualification about the aggressor, had in the meantime been forgotten or ignored.129 Whether it had been inaccurately reported at the time in Tokyo, not treated as a serious and binding commitment by Hitler, or simply overlooked, is unclear. In any case, it had been less than a formal agreement. So what Okamoto was now seeking was formal assurance that Germany would offer military support in a war Japan herself had started–something not covered by the pact. Giving such a guarantee would commit the German Reich to war with America–an eventuality which up to this juncture everything had been done to avoid. The initiative for deciding on Germany’s war with the United States would have been passed to Japan. In return for such a guarantee, Okamoto was offering precisely nothing. And, though Hitler and Ribbentrop were unaware of this, the Japanese government, as they sought an agreement with Germany to rule out a separate peace with America, were prepared to meet a German request to engage in the war against the Soviet Union with a firm refusal. Should this become a German condition of support for the Japanese war against America, no agreement would be entered into.130 But that would not halt the Japanese preparations, now entering their final stages.

  Of these the Germans knew nothing. Ernst von Weizsäcker, State Secretary in the German Foreign Office, had noted in his diary on 23 November that it would be difficult to close the gap between Japanese and American demands, but that Tokyo provided little information on the progress of the negotiations with Washington.131 Goebbels continued to bemoan Tojo’s perceived lack of aggression. ‘There can at present be no talk of Japanese intentions to intervene in the war,’ he concluded in mid-November.132 In fact, the Japanese leaders had already fixed 25 November as their deadline for reaching agreement with the Americans. If none were achieved by that date, there would be war. None was received; and the next day the naval task force set out in secret for Pearl Harbor.

  Okamoto’s key question, posed on 23 November, received no answer for five days.133 But once Ribbentrop learned, on 27 November, that the Americans had presented Japan with an ultimatum almost certain to result in an end to negotiations and a breakdown of relations, he moved swiftly, doubtless after consultation with Hitler.134 Next day he told Oshima, the Japanese ambassador, that in his view Japan could not now avoid a showdown with the United States. The situation, he thought, could never be more favourable than the present. He vehemently urged Japan to declare war straight away, on the United States as well as on Britain. According to Oshima’s dispatch to Tokyo, the German Foreign Minister then stated: ‘Should Japan become engaged in a war with the United States, Germany of course would join the war immediately. There is absolutely no possibility of Germany’s entering into a separate peace with the United States under such circumstances. The Führer is determined on that point.’135

  On 30 November in Tokyo, Ott assured the Japanese Foreign Minister, Togo, that Germany would stand by Japan.136 An urgent reply was cabled to Oshima. He was to inform Hitler and Ribbentrop secretly that ‘there is extreme danger that war may suddenly break out between the Anglo-Saxon nations and Japan through some clash of arms’. He was to add that ‘war may come quicker than anyone dreams’.137 He was to ensure that Ribbentrop’s spoken promise was turned into a written agreement. Late on the evening of 1 December, or in the early hours of 2 December, Oshima signalled Tokyo’s agreement to Ribbentrop. But before a formal agreement could be drawn up, Ribbentrop needed Hitler’s final approval.138

  Even in the early 1940s heads of state were rarely out of telephone or radio contact. But for the next three days it indeed appears that Hitler was incommunicado, stranded after a flying visit to the eastern front and unable to return to his East Prussian headquarters until 4 December. Only then could Ribbentrop reach him for a final decision, which led to the rushed drafting of a new agreement effectively superseding the Tripartite Pact of the previous year and presented to Oshima that night.139 With Hitler’s approval, the die was now effectively cast that would take Germany into war against America.

  Rome was immediately contacted by an impatient Ribbentrop and fell into line straight away. Mussolini was pleased at the Japanese initiative. ‘Thus we arrive at the war between continents, which I have foreseen since September 1939,’ he declared.140 Under the vital first two articles, all the partners committed themselves to involvement if war should break out between any one of them and the United States, and to conclude no armistice or peace with the United States or Britain other than by complete mutual consent.141 All that remained was for it to be signed. Weizsäcker expected matters to be finalized by 6 December.142 But that did not happen. Details still had to be ironed out. It took time.

  German leaders had for some days sensed that the crisis in relations between Japan and the United States was coming to the boil. With German troops bogged down in the Russian wastes and a major military crisis brewing on the approaches to Moscow, this was extremely welcome news. So was the prospect dangled by Oshima of a Japanese move on Singapore in the near future.143 The urgency to accommodate Japanese requests for a revised tripartite agreement reflected this feeling that a key turning point in the conflict, to Germany’s advantage, was approaching.

  Not everyone shared Hitler’s (and Ribbentrop’s) optimism about the Japanese. In the Foreign Office, Weizsäcker commented that the Japanese had for some days regarded a clash with the United States as inevitable. The military effect of Japan’s entry into the war from a German point of view seemed to him fairly evenly balanced. But overall, rational and pessimistic about Germany’s long-term chances, he did not welcome Japanese participation.144 News was by now filtering through from the Foreign
Office to army General Staff headquarters that the storm was likely to break soon. General Halder heard on 6 December that conflict between Japan and the United States was ‘possibly imminent’.145 Goebbels, outside the information loop about the diplomatic toings and froings between Tokyo and Berlin, repeatedly registered the mounting tension. On 6 December he noted: ‘The row between Washington and Tokyo is still at a critical peak. I no longer have the impression that things can be mended. Sometime the bomb will go off in this conflict.’146

  He had no idea how close he was to the truth. Early next morning, Hawaii time, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. It was evening in central Europe on 7 December when the stunning news reached Hitler’s headquarters.

  V

  The German leadership had no prior inkling of a Japanese attack. They seem, in fact, to have been hoping that the first strike would come from the Americans.147 In the first week of December ‘we did not believe there would be a direct attack by Japan on America’, Weizsäcker later recalled. When news of Pearl Harbor broke, the Foreign Office at first thought it was a hoax.148 That was Ribbentrop’s first, angry reaction. He thought it was probably a propaganda trick by Germany’s enemies, and that his press department had fallen for it. He asked for further enquiries to be made and a report given to him next morning.149 Confirmation came through faster than that. In Rome, Count Ciano, the Italian Foreign Minister, received a telephone call that night from an excited Ribbentrop. ‘He is joyful over the Japanese attack on the United States,’ Ciano noted. He offered Ribbentrop his congratulations, but was doubtful about the advantages the new development would bring. ‘One thing is now certain,’ he thought. ‘America will enter the conflict, and the conflict itself will be long enough to permit her to put all her potential strength into action.’150 Weizsäcker was privately also unsure about the benefits for Germany. Japan, he reflected, had now ranked herself with the ‘aggressors’. ‘The military effect would have to be a very big one to justify this procedure. Now our relations with the United States will also be legally clarified very quickly,’ he adjudged.151

  Goebbels, though attentively following the growing tension in relations between Japan and the United States, was equally surprised at the news of Pearl Harbor. ‘Suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, the news breaks that Japan has attacked the United States,’ he wrote in his diary. ‘The war has arrived.’ It was what he had been hoping for but doubting would happen over the past weeks. He was still unsure where the attack had taken place; ‘somewhere in the Pacific’ was all he knew. During the night came further news. Roosevelt had summoned Congress and war had been declared on Japan from 6 a.m. that morning. Soon afterwards Hitler was on the line. He was ‘extraordinarily happy’ about the turn of events. He wanted the Reichstag to be summoned for Wednesday (10 December)–it was now in the early hours of Monday–to clarify the German position. As always, Hitler immediately thought of the propaganda effect. He was wasting no time. Goebbels now reckoned (we noted his comment near the beginning of the chapter), presumably on the basis of his conversation with Hitler, on a German declaration of war against the United States in accordance with the Tripartite Pact. But he saw a notable advantage in the sharp reduction of weaponry provided by the United States for aid to Britain, and also that Germany was now in some ways ‘shielded on the flanks’, since America would be distracted by events in the Pacific. ‘For the Führer and for the whole headquarters there is the purest joy about the development. At least now we have a serious threat removed from round our neck for the time being,’ he recorded, his views unquestionably echoing if not directly quoting Hitler’s own. ‘Roosevelt will not be able to be as bold over the coming as in the previous weeks and months,’ he added. ‘This war has become a world war in the truest meaning of the word. From small beginnings, its waves have now enveloped the entire globe.’ Now was Germany’s great chance, once the present crisis was surmounted. ‘If we win this contest, then nothing stands in the way of fulfilling the dream of German world power,’ he summed up.152

  For Hitler, immersed in the deepening crisis on the eastern front, where the Soviet counter-offensive against the frozen and exhausted German troops not far from Moscow had begun two days before Pearl Harbor, the elation at events in the distant Pacific was unalloyed. ‘We can’t lose the war at all,’ was his relieved reassessment of the situation. ‘We now have an ally which has never been conquered in 3,000 years.’153 For him it was no less than ‘a deliverance’.154 When he had burst in, clutching the telegram with the news of war between Japan and America, the astonished Keitel had the feeling that Hitler had been freed from a nightmare.155 As the word rapidly spread, the entire headquarters was ‘caught up in an ecstasy of rejoicing’.156 Had Hitler realized that, when the dust settled over Pearl Harbor, the damage inflicted by the Japanese raid would prove to be substantially less than the knockout blow needed in Tokyo, his mood might have been less ecstatic. As it was, he was sure that his long-held presumption would turn out to be correct: America would now be tied down by the war in the Pacific; and Britain’s position would be undermined both by the dwindling supplies coming across the Atlantic and by Japanese attacks on her possessions in the Far East. The prognosis for Germany’s chances had improved at a stroke. Little wonder that Hitler was still beaming with optimism when he arrived in Berlin on 9 December.157

  There was never the slightest doubt, given these views, that Hitler would use the occasion to take Germany into war with the United States. This was, we have seen, no mere spontaneous, emotional reaction to Pearl Harbor itself. For weeks beforehand, the dealings with the Japanese had been predicated on Germany entering a war against the United States which might be caused by events outside German control. On hearing the news of Pearl Harbor, Hitler did not hesitate for a moment. That Germany would now declare war on the United States was taken for granted by Goebbels from his telephone conversation with Hitler. When Hitler’s Luftwaffe adjutant, Nicolaus von Below, returned to Führer Headquarters on the morning of 9 December after a period of leave, he immediately gleaned the impression that Pearl Harbor was seen as a signal to declare war on America.158 And Wolfgang Brocke, then a young officer attached to Hitler’s headquarters, recalled, if long after the events, that Hitler’s immediate reaction on hearing the news of Pearl Harbor had been that he could now declare war on the United States.159

  Unquestionably, the battle of the Atlantic was the imperative behind Hitler’s vital decision. Keitel connected Hitler’s elation on hearing the news of Pearl Harbor with the feeling that it brought a relief from the consequences of America’s ‘undeclared war’, which had worked to Germany’s disadvantage.160 And without waiting for the declaration of war, on 8–9 December Hitler removed the shackles from his U-boats. From now on, they had free licence to attack American shipping.161 That was a notable relief for submarine commanders, noted Goebbels. It was impossible to fight a ‘torpedo war’ when the commander had to study half a dozen instruction manuals to work out whether he had permission to fire. Much of the failure of the war at sea could be attributed to the way the U-boats had been hamstrung. ‘That’s now over. No more free zones will be acknowledged, and the American flag will no longer be respected. Anyone caught on the way to England must reckon with being torpedoed by our U-boats.’162 This reflected Hitler’s thinking.

  When Ribbentrop saw him on the morning of 9 December–before the declaration of war, but after his ‘licence to kill’ orders had been sent out to the U-boats–Hitler stated that the main reason for Germany now entering the war was ‘that 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, of war.’163 For months he had held his naval leaders back while they had chafed at the bit because of the constraints under which they had to operate in the Atlantic. And all the time, the Americans had been gradually intensifying their ‘undeclared war’. The provocations had mounted, and still Hitler
had felt forced to hold back. But let no one say he bore his grudges lightly. He could not wait for the moment when he was at last free to retaliate. The vehemence with which, in his Reichstag speech on 11 December, he poured out his hitherto unresolved grievances against what he portrayed as an almost endless catalogue of American transgressions in the Atlantic over many months was not purely for propaganda effect.164 It reflected his inner burning desire to get even with President Roosevelt. Even more importantly, the U-boats were his only method of attacking America. And without forcing the United States onto the retreat, or at least to a readiness for concessions, the war could not now be ended.

  The clearest possible indication of Hitler’s thinking can be seen in his confidential remarks to his party leaders the following afternoon. They make plain that, in his crucial decision, the war in the Atlantic was uppermost in his mind.

  Goebbels recapitulated what Hitler had to say: