Book contents
- Hitler’s Fatal Miscalculation
- Cambridge Military Histories
- Hitler’s Fatal Miscalculation
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations and German and Russian Terms
- Introduction
- 1 Hitler’s Pre-War Assessment of the United States and Japan
- 2 Hitler’s Physical Health in Autumn 1941
- 3 ‘All Measures Short of War’: the German Assessment of American Strategy, 1940–1941
- 4 Forging an Unlikely Alliance: Germany and Japan, 1933–1941
- 5 Facing the Same Dilemma: the US and German Quest for Rubber
- 6 The Crisis of the German War Economy, 1940–1941
- 7 The End of Blitzkrieg? Barbarossa and the Impact of Lend-Lease
- 8 The Battle of the Atlantic
- 9 The Luftwaffe on the Eve of Global War
- 10 The Holocaust
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Introduction
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2021
- Hitler’s Fatal Miscalculation
- Cambridge Military Histories
- Hitler’s Fatal Miscalculation
- Copyright page
- Epigraph
- Contents
- Figures
- Maps
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations and German and Russian Terms
- Introduction
- 1 Hitler’s Pre-War Assessment of the United States and Japan
- 2 Hitler’s Physical Health in Autumn 1941
- 3 ‘All Measures Short of War’: the German Assessment of American Strategy, 1940–1941
- 4 Forging an Unlikely Alliance: Germany and Japan, 1933–1941
- 5 Facing the Same Dilemma: the US and German Quest for Rubber
- 6 The Crisis of the German War Economy, 1940–1941
- 7 The End of Blitzkrieg? Barbarossa and the Impact of Lend-Lease
- 8 The Battle of the Atlantic
- 9 The Luftwaffe on the Eve of Global War
- 10 The Holocaust
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The introduction will attempt to give an overview of the existing scholarship on the topic of what can safely be regarded as Hitler’s most idiosyncratic and poorly understood decision: his declaration of war on the USA in December 1941. No monograph exists on the subject: those historians who have engaged with it have done so in the context of articles, general histories of WW 2 and biographies of either Hitler or Roosevelt. It is often described as an impossible-to-fathom irrational decision and this may well be the reason why quite a few authors have decided to omit any mention of it in their books.
Two main schools of thought can be said to exist: the one initiated by Andreas Hillgruber (1925-1989) maintains that the dictator, when faced with the prospect of military defeat in November 1941 chose to declare war on the US as a gesture to mask the fact that he had lost the initiative or indeed was seeking self-immolation. Eberhard Jäckel (1929-2017) and his followers insist that he was hoping to force the US to split its resources between two oceanic theatres. It is my considered opinion that both theories raise more questions than they answer and will propose a new one.
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- Hitler's Fatal MiscalculationWhy Germany Declared War on the United States, pp. 1 - 10Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2021