Why Hitler Declared War on the United States

Establishment historians state that Adolf Hitler made a mistake when he declared war on the United States. For example, British historian Andrew Roberts wrote:

“It seems an unimaginably stupid thing to have done in retrospect, a suicidally hubristic act less than six months after attacking the Soviet Union. America was an uninvadable land mass of gigantic productive capacity and her intervention in 1917-18 had sealed Germany’s fate in the Great War.”[1]

Historian Martin Gilbert wrote in regard to Germany’s declaration of war on the United States,

“It was perhaps the greatest error, and certainly the single most decisive act, of the Second World War.”[2]

In this article I will explain why Hitler was forced to declare war on the United States.

American Steps Toward War

       In his State of the Union address to Congress on January 6, 1941, Roosevelt outlined his plan for lend-lease aid to the anti-Axis powers. International law has long recognized that it is an act of war for a neutral government to supply arms, munitions, and implements of war to a belligerent. But Roosevelt brushed off objections to lend-lease based on international law. Roosevelt stated,

“Such aid is not an act of war, even if a dictator should unilaterally proclaim it to be.”

In this same speech, Roosevelt barred the door to suggestions of a negotiated peace, “We are committed to the proposition that the principles of morality and considerations of our own security will not permit us to acquiesce in a peace dictated by aggressors and sponsored by appeasers.”[3]

President Roosevelt signed the Lend-Lease Act into law on March 11, 1941. This legislation marked the end of any pretense of neutrality on the part of the United States. Despite soothing assurances by Roosevelt that the United States would not get into the war, the adoption of the Lend-Lease Act was a decisive move which put America into an undeclared war in the Atlantic.

It opened up an immediate appeal for naval action to insure that munitions and supplies procured under the Lend-Lease Act would reach Great Britain.[4]

On April 9, 1941, the United States entered into an agreement with a Danish official for the defense of Greenland. Roosevelt simultaneously illegally sent American Marines to occupy Greenland.[5]

In June 1941, Roosevelt agreed with Churchill to relieve the British troops in Iceland, and this was done with U.S. Marines on July 7, 1941.[6] Also in June 1941, Roosevelt ordered the closing of all the German and Italian consulates in the United States.[7]

Another step toward war was the adoption on April 24, 1941, by the United States of a naval patrol system in the Atlantic to insure delivery of munitions and supplies to Great Britain. The American Navy under this scheme was assigned the responsibility of patrolling the Atlantic Ocean west of a median point represented by 25º longitude. American warships and planes within this area would search out German vessels and submarines and broadcast their position to the British Navy. Roosevelt tried to represent the naval patrol as a merely defensive move, but it was clearly a hostile act toward Germany designed to help the British war effort.[8]

The first wartime meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill began on August 9, 1941, in a conference at the harbor of Argentia in Newfoundland. The principal result of this conference was the signing of the Atlantic Charter on August 14, 1941. Roosevelt repeated to Churchill during this conference his predilection for an undeclared war, saying,

“I may never declare war; I may make war. If I were to ask Congress to declare war, they might argue about it for three months.”

 

Continue reading the full article here to discover:

  • Roosevelt’s secret orders to attack German ships and submarines and the fatal consequences.
  • Roosevelt’s extreme efforts to incite Americans to a war they did not want.
  • How Roosevelt provoked the Pearl Harbor attack to bring about war in the Pacific.
  • The leaking of the secret “Roosevelt War Plan”

WARNING: You will never think of FDR the same way again.

 

 

ENDNOTES

[1] Roberts, Andrew, The Storm of War: A New History of the Second World War, New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2011, pp. 193-194.

[2] Gilbert, Martin, The Second World War: A Complete History, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1989, p. 277.

[3] Chamberlain, William Henry, America’s Second Crusade, Chicago: Regnery, 1950, pp. 129-130.

[4] Ibid., p. 130.

[5] Sanborn, Frederic R., Design For War: A Study of Secret Power Politics, 1937-1941, New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1951, p. 258.

[6] Churchill, Winston S., The Grand Alliance, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950, pp. 149-150.

[7] Sanborn, Frederic R., “Roosevelt is Frustrated in Europe,” in Barnes, Harry Elmer (ed.), Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, Newport Beach, CA: Institute for Historical Review, 1993, p. 216.

[8] Chamberlain, William Henry, America’s Second Crusade, Chicago: Regnery, 1950, pp. 136-137.

 

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