The attack on Pearl Harbour was a striking example of the disunity of the Axis Powers; it was the result, as well, of Hitler's own inability to co-operate with others, of his wilful acceptance of risks, of his intuitive pursuit of confused and divided aims. But if it seemed to him to be a disastrous development, that was chiefly because he had also failed to defeat Russia ‘in a rapid campaign’. For this reason, his attitude to the War, if not his actual strategy, was fundamentally defensive, if not defeatist, before the attack on Pearl Harbour occurred; and that remarkable operation, coming so soon on his disappointment in Russia, far from offering new opportunities and welcome relief, seemed yet another reverse. The possible consequences of the American entry far outweighed, for him, the opportunities provided by the entry of Japan.

This is made quite clear by the fact that Raeder took the other view. Surprised by the Japanese attack, anxious about the United States, he still felt that the Japanese entry could be turned to good account. On some fronts it could offer new opportunities. Japan's intention, after this single and successful attempt to destroy the United States Fleet, was clearly to turn on South-East Asia, against British and Dutch positions, and to threaten the British control of the Indian Ocean. This would greatly increase the embarrassment of the British in the Middle East, and should assist Germany in a final successful attack on the key position of Suez. In the Atlantic, on account of the withdrawal of American merchant shipping and escort forces to the Pacific, ‘the situation with regard to surface warfare by heavy ships and auxiliary cruisers will probably change in our favour’, while U-boats could be despatched to a new and probably profitable area off the American east coast.

On other fronts, in Raeder's view, the Japanese entry provided a most welcome breathing-space. ‘The danger of major operations against the west coast of France’, he declared on 12 December 1941, ‘will decrease for the present… and such a respite will be very welcome.’ Anglo-American action against Dakar, the Azores, the Cape Verdes and North-West Africa, of which danger he had been so anxious for so long, also ceased, in his view, to be imminent.