Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed the World, 1940-1941
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129. Political Strategy Prior to the Outbreak of War (Part IV), Japanese Monographs, 150, appendix 4 (http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/monos/150/150app04.html).
130. Bix, pp. 430–31; Iriye, Origins, p. 182; Ike, pp. 262–3 (where the fleet departure time is mistakenly given as 6.00 p.m.); Morley, The Final Confrontation, p. 332; Prange, p. 390; Bergamini, vol. 2, pp. 1057–9.
131. Ike, p. 261 and n. 46; Morley, The Final Confrontation, p. 327; Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 179.
132. Quoted in Bix, pp. 430–31.
133. Bix, p. 431.
134. Ike, p. 271.
135. Ike, p. 279.
136. Ike, p. 282.
137. Ike, pp. 282–3; Bix, p. 433.
138. Butow, p. 363; Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 182.
139. Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 183; Morley, The Final Confrontation, p. 323.
140. Morley, The Final Confrontation, p. 344; The ‘MAGIC’ Background of Pearl Harbor, vol. 4, appendix, pp. A130–34.
141. Morley, The Final Confrontation, p. 329.
142. Morley, The Final Confrontation, p. 338.
143. Robert E. Sherwood, The White House Papers of Harry L. Hopkins, London, 1948, vol. 1, p. 430; also quoted in Morley, The Final Confrontation, p. 344; Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 194.
144. Toland, The Rising Sun, pp. 193–4, 198–9; Bix, p. 436.
145. Morley, The Final Confrontation, p. 344; Iriye, Origins, p. 183.
146. A ‘prophetic’ survey undertaken the previous July had, in fact, raised the possibility of exactly such a carrier-led air attack, and pointed to the need to strengthen defences at Pearl Harbor (Prange, pp. 185–8). The subsequently devised Joint Army-Navy Hawaiian Defense Plan for the protection of Pearl Harbor against a surprise attack from the air was, however, a very good one (Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 195). No one seemed to recall the warning passed on by Grew the previous January (Grew, p. 368).
147. Langer and Gleason, The Undeclared War, pp. 926–7 (and p. 911); Iriye, Origins, p. 183; Morley, The Final Confrontation, p. 345; Heinrichs, Threshold of War, p. 216.
148. Toland, The Rising Sun, pp. 201–2; Morley, The Final Confrontation, pp. 334–5, 344–5.
149. Morley, The Final Confrontation, p. 338.
150. I. C. B. Dear and M. R. D. Foot (eds.), The Oxford Companion to the Second World War, Oxford/New York, 1995, p. 872; Toland, The Rising Sun, pp. 221, 235; Dallek, p. 311; Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms. A Global History of World War II, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 260–61.
151. Letter to Sasakawa Ryochi, 24 January [1941], appended as a last folio to the Konoe Memoirs.
152. It was such that conspiracy theories–essentially, that the American administration knew of the forthcoming attack, but deliberately avoided proper security precautions and let the devastating assault take place as the event necessary to justify the United States entering the war–rapidly surfaced and have never entirely been put to rest. They were always wildly far-fetched, and the thorough analyses by Prange of the military build-up to Pearl Harbor on both the American and Japanese sides (see here particularly the remarks in his concluding chapter, pp. 725–38), and of American intelligence by Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor. Warning and Decision, Stanford, Calif., 1962, esp. pp. 382–96, have pointed unmistakably to a catalogue of errors and misjudgements, not Machiavellian plotting, behind the extraordinary events. This is underpinned by the more recent study of Richard J. Aldrich, Intelligence and the War against Japan. Britain, America and the Politics of Secret Service, Cambridge, 2000. This dispatches (pp. 68–84) a further strand of conspiracy theory: that Churchill received clear intelligence about Pearl Harbor, but deliberately withheld it from Roosevelt.
153. Toland, The Rising Sun, p. 227. When Kido, in the royal palace, heard the ‘great news’, he ‘felt that the Gods had come to our aid’ (Kido Diary, doc. no. 1632W (90), 8.12.41).
154. Bix, pp. 436–7; text of the Imperial Rescript on the Declaration of War, in Political Strategy Prior to the Outbreak of War (Part IV), Japanese Monographs, 150, appendix 7 (http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/monos/150/150app07.html).
155. Hull, vol. 2, pp. 1095–7 (quotation p. 1096); Morley, The Final Confrontation, p. 338; The ‘MAGIC’ Background of Pearl Harbor, vol. 4, p. 101; Toland, The Rising Sun, pp. 224–5. Nomura’s description is in Political Strategy Prior to the Outbreak of War (Part IV), Japanese Monographs, 150, appendix 6 (http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/monos/150/150app06.html).
156. Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt. A Rendezvous with Destiny, Boston, 1990, p. 407; Bergamini, vol. 2, p. 1096; Carr, p. 166.
157. Langer and Gleason, The Undeclared War, pp. 938–9.
158. Nazli Choucri, Robert C. North and Susumu Yamakage, The Challenge of Japan before World War II and After, London/New York, 1992, pp. 37–8, 40–43, 118–20, 132–7.
159. See Paul W. Schroeder, The Axis Alliance and Japanese-American Relations 1941, Ithaca, NY, 1958, pp. 203–8. Carr, p. 157, poses the same question, to which he then offers a cogent answer: ‘No American president, especially one as sensitive to public opinion as Roosevelt, could possibly have carried through a volte-face on this scale in the teeth of an outraged public…Also, any hint of surrender to Japan would have had a demoralizing effect on the enemies of the Axis.’
160. See on this the pertinent comments of Feis, pp. 274–5, that Konoe ‘was a prisoner, willing or unwilling, of the terms precisely prescribed in conferences over which he presided’, and ‘it is unlikely that he could have got around them or that he would have in some desperate act discarded them. The whole of his political career speaks to the contrary.’
161. See, for instance, Toland, The Rising Sun, notes to pp. 141 and 145; and Morley, The Final Confrontation, p. 319.
162. See Langer and Gleason, The Undeclared War, p. 721.
163. See Iriye, Origins, pp. 178–9.
CHAPTER 9. BERLIN, AUTUMN 1941
1. Sebastian Haffner, Von Bismarck zu Hitler. Ein Rückblick, paperback edn., Munich, 1989, p. 293. See also Enrico Syring, ‘Hitlers Kriegserklärung an Amerika vom 11. Dezember 1941’, in Wolfgang Michalka (ed.), Der Zweite Weltkrieg. Analysen, Grundzüge, Forschungsbilanz, Munich/Zurich, 1989, p. 683.
2. Max Domarus (ed.), Hitler. Reden und Proklamationen 1932–1945, Wiesbaden, 1973, p. 1809.
3. Text in Domarus, p. 1808 n. 543; and DGFP, 13, doc. 577, pp. 1004–5; see also Paul Schmidt, Statist auf diplomatischer Bühne 1923–45. Erlebnisse des Chefdolmetschers im Auswärtigen Amt mit den Staatsmännern Europas, Bonn, 1953, p. 554.
4. Meldungen aus dem Reich. Auswahl aus den geheimen Lageberichten des Sicherheitsdienstes der SS 1939–1944, ed. Heinz Boberach, Neuwied/Berlin, 1965, p. 198.
5. Harry W. Flannery, Assignment to Berlin, London, 1942, p. 291.
6. Mein Tagebuch. Geschichten vom Überleben 1939–1947, ed. Heinrich Breloer, Cologne, 1984, p. 64.
7. ‘Inside Germany Report’ for December 1941, cited in Philipp Gassert, Amerika im Dritten Reich. Ideologie, Propaganda und Volksmeinung 1933–1945, Stuttgart, 1997, p. 321.
8. Wilm Hosenfeld, ‘Ich versuche jeden zu retten’. Das Leben eines deutschen Offiziers in Briefen und Tagebüchern, ed. Thomas Vogel, Munich, 2004, p. 561.
9. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich, part II, vol. 2, Munich, 1996, p. 453 (8.12.41).
10. Nicolaus von Below, Als Hitlers Adjutant 1937–1945, Mainz, 1980, p. 296.
11. Karl Dönitz, Memoirs. Ten Years and Twenty Days, New York, 1997, p. 195.
12. Walter Warlimont, Inside Hitler’s Headquarters 1939–45, Presidio edn., Novato, Calif., n.d., p. 208.
13. Warlimont, p. 203.
14. Warlimont, p. 50.
15. The Ribbentrop Memoirs, London, 1954, p. 160.
16. Ernst von Weizsäcker, Erinnerungen, Munich/Leipzig/Freiburg, 1950, p. 328.
17. Even as late as 24 February 1945, Hitler still spoke of the ‘vast territory’ of the United States, ‘ample to absorb the energies of all their people’, as the model w
hich he hoped to emulate for Germany in Europe, ‘to ensure for her complete economic independence inside a territory of a size compatible with her population’, adding that ‘a great people has need of broad acres’ (The Testament of Adolf Hitler. The Hitler–Bormann Documents, February–April 1945, ed. François Genoud, London, 1961, p. 88). For textual problems with this source, see Ian Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–1945. Nemesis, London, 2000, n. 121, pp. 1024–5.
18. Hitler: Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen. Februar 1925 bis Januar 1933, ed. Institut für Zeitgeschichte, vol. 3, part 1, Munich, 1994, p. 161 (18.10.28).
19. Hitler: Reden, Schriften, Anordnungen, vol. 4, part 1, p. 417 (25.6.31).
20. The preceding paragraph draws on the informative analysis in Gassert, pp. 87–103.
21. Gassert, pp. 34–6.
22. Eberhard Jäckel and Axel Kuhn (eds.), Hitler. Sämtliche Aufzeichnungen 1905–1924, Stuttgart, 1980, pp. 96–7, 99.
23. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 876–880th printing, Munich, 1943, pp. 722–3; trans. Ralph Mannheim with an Introduction by D. C. Watt, paperback edn., London, 1973, pp. 582–3.
24. Dietrich Aigner, ‘Hitler und die Weltherrschaft’, in Wolfgang Michalka (ed.), Nationalsozialistische Außenpolitik, Darmstadt, 1978, p. 62.
25. See Gassert, pp. 95–6; and Gerhard L. Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany. Diplomatic Revolution in Europe 1933–36, Chicago/London, 1970, p. 21; Gerhard L. Weinberg, ‘Hitler’s Image of the United States’, American Historical Review, 69 (1964), p. 1009.
26. Hitler’s Second Book. The Unpublished Sequel to Mein Kampf, ed. Gerhard L. Weinberg, New York, 2003, p. 112.
27. Hitler’s Second Book, pp. 116–17.
28. Hitler’s alleged remarks about the United States in tainted and discredited sources, Edouard Calic, Unmasked. Two Confidential Interviews with Hitler in 1931, London, 1971, and Hermann Rauschning, Hitler Speaks, London, 1939, cannot be regarded as authentic statements.
29. Ernst Hanfstaengl, Hitler. The Missing Years, paperback edn., New York, 1994, p. 188.
30. Gassert, pp. 93–4; Andreas Hillgruber, ‘Der Faktor Amerika in Hitlers Strategie 1938–1941’, Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte. Beilage zur Wochenzeitung ‘Das Parlament’, 11 May 1966, p. 4; Weinberg, ‘Hitler’s Image’, pp. 1010–12.
31. Weinberg, Diplomatic Revolution, pp. 133–58, esp. pp. 145, 149, 157.
32. See Gassert, pp. 183–246, for an extensive survey of these features of German depictions of the United States.
33. Akten der Reichskanzlei. Die Regierung Hitler, ed. Karl-Heinz Minuth, vol. 1, Boppard am Rhein, 1983, p. 317; and see Gassert, pp. 183–4.
34. IMT, vol. 25, pp. 402–13, doc. 386-PS; trans. Jeremy Noakes and Geoffrey Pridham (eds.), Nazism 1919–1945. A Documentary Reader, vol. 3, Exeter, 1988, pp. 680–87.
35. DGFP, 1, doc. 423, p. 656; Hillgruber, ‘Amerika’, p. 7. For the ‘quarantine speech’, chiefly targeting Japan, see Robert Dallek, Franklin D. Roosevelt and American Foreign Policy, 1932–1945, New York, 1979, p. 148.
36. Gassert, pp. 246–59.
37. Frank Freidel, Franklin D. Roosevelt. A Rendezvous with Destiny, Boston, 1990, p. 314; Gassert, pp. 258–9.
38. Saul Friedländer, Prelude to Downfall. Hitler and the United States, 1939–1941, New York, 1967, pp. 8–9.
39. Adam Tooze, The Wages of Destruction. The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy, London, 2006, p. 283.
40. Wilhelm Treue (ed.), ‘Rede Hitlers vor der deutschen Presse (10. November 1938)’, Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, 6 (1958), p. 191.
41. DGFP, 4, doc. 158, p. 192; Friedländer, Prelude to Downfall, p. 9.
42. Domarus, p. 1058; trans. Noakes and Pridham, vol. 3, p. 1049. And see Tooze, pp. 283–4.
43. See Dallek, p. 181 for Roosevelt’s remarks, made in private, but leaked to the press; and Gassert, p. 261 for the German propaganda response.
44. William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Challenge to Isolation, 1937–1940, New York, 1952, pp. 84–5; Cordell Hull The Memoirs of Cordell Hull, New York, 1948, vol. 1, p. 621.
45. Below, p. 161.
46. Langer and Gleason, Challenge, p. 87.
47. Domarus, pp. 1166–79, for the parts of the speech given over to the ‘answer’ to Roosevelt.
48. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, ed. Elke Fröhlich, part I, vol. 6, Munich, 1998, p. 332 (29.4.39). See Gassert, pp. 263–6 for the positive impact of the speech within Germany.
49. William L. Shirer, Berlin Diary, 1934–1941, paperback edn., London, 1970, p. 133. Shirer was correct in presuming that Hitler’s comments would go down well with isolationists. See Langer and Gleason, Challenge, p. 89.
50. Friedländer, Prelude to Downfall, pp. 50–51; Gassert, pp. 271–7.
51. Friedländer, Prelude to Downfall, pp. 61, 65.
52. KTB d. OKW, vol. 1, 1965, p. 108E; Hillgruber, ‘Amerika’, p. 8.
53. DGFP, 8, doc. 172, p. 180 (1.10.39); doc. 405, pp. 470–71 (1.12.39); Hillgruber, ‘Amerika’, p. 9.
54. DGFP, 7, doc. 378, p. 377 (28.8.39); Hillgruber, ‘Amerika’, p. 9.
55. Below, p. 200.
56. Franz Halder, Kriegstagebuch. Tägliche Aufzeichnungen des Chefs des Generalstabes des Heeres 1939–1942, vol. 1: Vom Polenfeldzug bis zum Ende der Westoffensive (14.8.1939–30.6.1940), ed. Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Stuttgart, 1962, pp. 86–90.
57. DGFP, 9, doc. 192, p. 277; Hillgruber, ‘Amerika’, p. 9.
58. Quoted in Langer and Gleason, Challenge, p. 516.
59. DGFP, 10, doc. 199, pp. 259–60; Hillgruber, ‘Amerika’, p. 12.
60. Wolfgang Michalka, ‘From the Anti-Comintern Pact to the Euro-Asiatic Bloc. Ribbentrop’s Alternative Concept of Hitler’s Foreign Policy Programme’, in H. W. Koch (ed.), Aspects of the Third Reich, London, 1985, pp. 281–2.
61. Friedländer, Prelude to Downfall, p. 125.
62. Gassert, p. 281.
63. Gassert, pp. 284–6.
64. Fuehrer Conferences on Naval Affairs 1939–1945, London, 1990, p. 162.
65. DGFP, 11, doc. 633, pp. 1061–2.
66. Friedländer, p. 172.
67. Domarus, p. 1661.
68. KTB d. OKW, vol. 1, pp. 257–8; also quoted in Andreas Hillgruber, Hitlers Strategie. Politik und Kriegführung 1940–1941, 3rd edn., Bonn, 1993, p. 364.
69. Fuehrer Conferences, p. 172.
70. Quoted in Friedländer, Prelude to Downfall, p. 175.
71. Quoted in Friedländer, Prelude to Downfall, p. 175 n. 1.
72. Heeresadjutant bei Hitler 1938–1943. Aufzeichnungen des Majors Engel, ed. Hildegard von Kotze, Stuttgart, 1974, p. 99 (24.3.41).
73. Friedländer, Prelude to Downfall, p. 203.
74. Fuehrer Conferences, p. 199 (22.5.41); Friedländer, Prelude to Downfall, pp. 205–8; Thomas A. Bailey and Paul B. Ryan, Hitler vs. Roosevelt. The Undeclared Naval War, New York, 1979, pp. 122–9.
75. Bailey and Ryan, pp. 129–32, 138–44.
76. Fuehrer Conferences, p. 218 (6.6.41).
77. Bailey and Ryan, pp. 148–9.
78. Fuehrer Conferences, pp. 219–20 (21.6.41).
79. Hitlers Weisungen für die Kriegführung. Dokumente des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht, ed. Walther Hubatsch, paperback edn., Munich, 1965, p. 121.
80. DGFP, 12, doc. 78, pp. 144–5.
81. See Friedländer, Prelude to Downfall, pp. 196, 202.
82. DGFP, 12, doc. 281, p. 382.
83. DGFP, 12, doc. 222, pp. 388–92.
84. DGFP, 12, doc. 266, pp. 455–6.
85. DGFP, 12, doc. 496, pp. 777–80; Ciano’s Diary 1939–1943, ed. Malcolm Muggeridge, London, 1947, p. 341 (12.5.41).
86. DGFP, 12, doc. 596, pp. 967–70.
87. KTB d. OKW, vol. 1, p. 996.
88. Quoted in Friedländer, Prelude to Downfall, p. 255.
89. Fuehrer Conferences, p. 221 (9.7.41).
90. Fuehrer Conferences, p. 222 (25.7.41).
91. Franz Halder, Kriegstagebuch. Tägliche Aufzeichnungen des C
hefs des Generalstabes des Heeres 1939–1942, vol. 3: Der Rußlandfeldzug bis zum Marsch auf Stalingrad (22.6.1941–24.9.1942), ed. Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, Stuttgart, 1964, p. 38.
92. Hitlers Weisungen, pp. 159–62.
93. Fuehrer Conferences, p. 199; Hillgruber, ‘Amerika’, p. 18.
94. See Eberhard Jäckel, Hitler in History, Hanover/London, 1984, p. 72.
95. Staatsmänner und Diplomaten bei Hitler. Vertrauliche Aufzeichnungen über die Unterredungen mit Vertretern des Auslandes 1939–1941, ed. Andreas Hillgruber, paperback edn., Munich, 1969, pp. 292–303; and see Hillgruber, ‘Amerika’, p. 17.
96. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, part II, vol. 1, Munich, 1996, p. 263 (19.8.41).
97. Halder, Kriegstagebuch, vol. 3, p. 170 (11 Aug. 1941); trans. The Halder War Diary, 1939–1942, ed. Charles Burdick and Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, London, 1988, p. 506.
98. See Kershaw, Hitler, 1936–1945, London, 2000, pp. 407–18.
99. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, part II, vol. 1, pp. 236–7 (15.8.41). And for German propaganda about the Atlantic Charter, see Friedländer, pp. 268–9; Gassert, pp. 312–13.
100. DGFP, 13, doc. 209, p. 323; Friedländer, p. 267.
101. David Kahn, Hitler’s Spies. German Military Intelligence in World War II, New York, 2000, pp. 80–83.
102. Friedländer, Prelude to Downfall, pp. 266–7, citing Bötticher’s telegram of 14 August 1941.
103. For Churchill’s critics at this point, see John Charmley, Churchill: The End of Glory. A Political Biography, London, 1993, pp. 448–9.
104. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, part II, vol. 1, p. 263 (19.8.41).
105. Fuehrer Conferences, pp. 228–9 (22.8.41).
106. Friedländer, Prelude to Downfall, pp. 275–81.
107. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, part II, vol. 1, pp. 367–8, 370–71, 375–6 (6–8.9.41), quotation p. 376.
108. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, part II, vol. 1, pp. 407–8 (13.9.41).
109. Die Tagebücher von Joseph Goebbels, part II, vol. 1, p. 417 (14.9.41).
110. Fuehrer Conferences, pp. 231–3 (17.9.41). Ernst von Weizsäcker, State Secretary in the Foreign Office, had noted in his diary on 19 September the utmost caution to be exercised towards the United States, even though Roosevelt had eight days earlier declared that American ships would shoot on sight (Die Weizsäcker-Papiere 1933–1950, ed. Leonidas E. Hill, Frankfurt am Main, 1974, p. 270).