Why Hitler Declared War

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Wade Hampton III
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Why Hitler Declared War

Post by Wade Hampton III » Mon Jul 30, 2018 3:40 am

From the Web...

Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States only after the leaked
Rainbow Five plan convinced him that war with the United States was
inevitable. 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.” 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.” In this article I will
explain why Hitler was forced to declare war on the United States.
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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.”

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. 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. 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. Also in June 1941, Roosevelt ordered the closing of all
the German and Italian consulates in the United States.

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. 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.”

The Atlantic Charter was in effect a joint declaration of war aims,
although Congress had not voted for American participation in the war.
The Atlantic Charter, which provided for Anglo-American cooperation
in policing the world after the Second World War, was a tacit but
inescapable implication that the United States would soon become
involved in the war. This implication is fortified by the large
number of top military and naval staff personnel who were present
at the conference. Roosevelt’s Orders to Shoot-on Sight German Ships
and Submarines Roosevelt’s next move toward war was the issuing of
secret orders on August 25, 1941, to the Atlantic Fleet to attack
and destroy German and Italian “hostile forces.” These secret orders
resulted in an incident on September 4, 1941, between an American
destroyer, the Greer, and a German submarine. Roosevelt falsely
claimed in a fireside chat to the American public on September 11,
1941, that the German submarine had fired first. The reality is
that the Greer had tracked the German submarine for three hours,
and broadcast the submarine’s location for the benefit of any
British airplanes and destroyers which might be in the vicinity.
The German submarine fired at the Greer only after a British
airplane had dropped four depth charges which missed their mark.
During this fireside chat Roosevelt finally admitted that,
without consulting Congress or obtaining congressional sanction,
he had ordered a shoot-on-sight campaign against Axis submarines.
On September 13, 1941, Roosevelt ordered the Atlantic Fleet to
escort convoys in which there were no American vessels. This
policy would make it more likely to provoke future incidents
between American and German vessels. Roosevelt also agreed about
this time to furnish Britain with “our best transport ships.”
These included 12 liners and 20 cargo vessels manned by American
crews to transport two British divisions to the Middle East.

More serious incidents followed in the Atlantic. On October 17, 1941,
an American destroyer, the Kearny, dropped depth charges on a
German submarine. The German submarine retaliated and hit the
Kearny with a torpedo, resulting in the loss of 11 lives. An older
American destroyer, the Reuben James, was sunk with a casualty
list of 115 of her crew members. Some of her seamen were convinced
the Reuben James had already sunk at least one U-boat before she
was torpedoed by the German submarine. On October 27, 1941, Roosevelt
broadcast over nationwide radio his Navy Day address. Roosevelt began
his Navy Day address by stating that German submarines had torpedoed
the U.S. destroyers Greer and Kearny. Roosevelt characterized these
incidents as unprovoked acts of aggression directed against all
Americans, and that “history will record who fired the first shot.”
What Roosevelt failed to mention in his broadcast is that in each case
the U.S. destroyers had been involved in attack operations against the
German submarines, which fired in self-defense only as a last resort.
Hitler wanted to avoid war with the United States at all costs, and
had expressly ordered German submarines to avoid conflicts with U.S.
warships, except to avoid imminent destruction. It was Roosevelt’s
shoot-on-sight orders to U.S. Navy vessels that were designed to make
incidents like the ones Roosevelt condemned inevitable. Despite
Roosevelt’s provocations, the American public was still against
entering the war. By the end of October 1941, Roosevelt had no
more ideas how to get into a formal and declared war:

“…He had said everything ‘short of war’ that could be said. He
had no more tricks left. The hat from which he had pulled so many
rabbits was empty.”

Even full-page advertisements entitled “Stop Hitler Now” inserted in
major American newspapers by Roosevelt’s supporters had failed to
sway the American public. The advertisements warned the American
people that a Europe dominated by Hitler was a threat to American
democracy and the Western Hemisphere. The advertisements asked:

“Will the Nazis considerately wait until we are ready to fight them?
Anyone who argues that they will wait is either an imbecile or a traitor.”

Roosevelt endorsed the advertisements, saying that they were “a
great piece of work.” Yet the American people were still strongly
against war.

Roosevelt Provokes Pearl Harbor Attack!

Provoking Japan into an overt act of war was the principal policy that
guided Roosevelt’s actions toward Japan throughout 1941. Lt. Cmdr.
Arthur H. McCollum, head of the Far East desk of the Office of Naval
Intelligence, wrote an eight-action memorandum dated October 7, 1940,
outlining how to provoke a Japanese attack on the United States. The
climax of Roosevelt’s measures designed to bring about war in the
Pacific occurred on July 25, 1941, when Roosevelt froze all Japanese
assets in the United States. This brought commercial relations between
the nations to an effective end, including an end to the export of
oil to Japan. Prince Konoye, the Japanese premier, requested a meeting
with Roosevelt to resolve the differences between the United States
and Japan. American Ambassador Grew sent a series of telegrams to
Washington, D.C. in which he strongly recommended that such a meeting
take place. However, Roosevelt steadfastly refused to meet with the
Japanese premier. Foreign Minister Toyoda made a dispatch to Japanese
Ambassador Nomura on July 31, 1941. Since U.S. Intelligence had cracked
the Japanese diplomatic code, Roosevelt and his associates were able
to read this message:

“Commercial and economic relations between Japan and third countries,
led by England and the United States, are gradually becoming so horribly
strained that we cannot endure it much longer. Consequently, our Empire,
to save its very life, must take measures to secure the raw materials
of the South Seas… I know that the Germans are somewhat dissatisfied
with our negotiations with the United States, but we wish at any cost
to prevent the United States from getting into the war, and we wish
to settle the Chinese incident.”

This obvious Japanese desire for peace with the United States did not
change Roosevelt’s policy toward Japan. Roosevelt refused to lift the
oil embargo against Japan. The Roosevelt administration was well
aware that Japan imported approximately 90% of her oil, and that 75%
to 80% of her oil imports came from the United States. Roosevelt also
knew that the Netherlands East Indies, which produced 3% of the world’s
oil output, was the only other convenient oil producer that could meet
Japan’s import needs. On October 31, 1941, an oil agreement between
Japan and the Netherlands East Indies expired. The Netherlands East
Indies had promised to deliver about 11.4 million barrels of oil to
Japan, but actually delivered only half of that amount. The Japanese
Navy had consumed approximately 22% of its oil reserves by the time
the war broke out. By the closing months of 1941, the United States
was intercepting and breaking within a matter of hours almost every
code produced by Japan.[24] In the last week of November 1941,
President Roosevelt knew that an attack by the Japanese in the
Pacific was imminent. Roosevelt warned William Bullitt against
traveling across the Pacific:

“I am expecting the Japs to attack any time now, probably within the
next three or four days.”
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Roosevelt and his administration knew this based on the intercepted
Japanese messages. This information was not given to the commanders
at Pearl Harbor to enable them to prepare for and thwart the Japanese
attack. Adm. Husband Kimmel, commander-in-chief of the U.S. Pacific
Fleet, states that if he had all of the important information then
available to the Navy Department, he would have gone to sea with his
fleet and been in a good position to intercept the Japanese attack.
Kimmel concludes in regard to the Pearl Harbor attacks:

"When the information available in Washington was disclosed to me I
was appalled. Nothing in my experience of nearly 42 years of service
in the Navy had prepared me for the actions of the highest officials
in our government which denied this vital information to the Pearl
Harbor commanders."

The Rainbow Five Plan!

On December 8, 1941, President Roosevelt made a speech to Congress
calling for a declaration of war against Japan. Condemning the attack
on Pearl Harbor as a “date which will live in infamy,” Roosevelt
did not once mention Germany. Hitler’s policy of keeping incidents
between the United States and Germany to a minimum seemed to have
succeeded. Hitler had ignored or downplayed the numerous provocations
that Roosevelt had made against Germany. Even after Roosevelt issued
orders to shoot-on-sight at German submarines, Hitler had ordered his
naval commanders and air force to avoid incidents that Roosevelt might
use to bring America into the war. Also, since the Tripartite Pact
did not obligate Germany to join Japan in a war initiated by Japan,
it appeared unlikely that Hitler would declare war on the United States.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor surprised Hitler. Hitler had never
wanted Japan to attack the United States. Germany had repeatedly urged
Japan to attack Singapore and the rest of Great Britain’s Far East
Empire, but Japan refused to do so. After the war Col. Gen. Alfred
Jodl said that Hitler had wanted Japan to attack Great Britain and
the Soviet Union in the Far East, which would have set up a two-front
war. Hitler thought Roosevelt would probably not be able to persuade
the American public to go to war to defend Britain’s Asian colonies.
Jodl said that Hitler had wanted in Japan “a strong new ally without
a strong new enemy.” Hitler’s decision to stay out of war with the
United States was made more difficult on December 4, 1941, when the
Chicago Tribune carried in huge black letters the headline: F.D.R.’s
WAR PLANS! The Washington Times Herald, the largest paper in the
nation’s capital, carried a similar headline. Chesly Manly, the
Tribune’s Washington correspondent, revealed in his report what
Roosevelt had repeatedly denied: that Roosevelt was planning to
lead the United States into war against Germany. The source of
Manly’s information was no less than a verbatim copy of Rainbow Five,
the top-secret war plan drawn up at Roosevelt’s request by the joint
board of the United States Army and Navy. Manly’s story even contained
a copy of President Roosevelt’s letter ordering the preparation of the
plan. If those in authority wished to engage in power politics, the
least that they should have done was to advise their naval and
military commanders what they were endeavoring to accomplish. To
utilize the Pacific Fleet and the Army forces at Pearl Harbor as
a lure for a Japanese attack without advising the commander-in-chief
of the fleet and the commander of the Army base at Hawaii is something
I am wholly unable to comprehend. Rainbow Five called for the creation
of a 10-million-man army, including an expeditionary force of 5 million
men that would invade Europe in 1943 to defeat Germany. On December 5, 1941,
the German Embassy in Washington, D.C., cabled the entire transcript of
the newspaper story to Berlin. The story was reviewed and analyzed in
Berlin as “the Roosevelt War Plan.” On December 6, 1941, Adm. Erich
Raeder submitted a report to Hitler prepared by his staff that analyzed
the Rainbow Five plan. Raeder concluded the most important point contained
in Rainbow Five was the fact that the United States would not be ready to
launch a military offensive against Germany until July 1943. On December 9,
1941, Hitler returned to Berlin from the Russian front and plunged into
two days of conferences with Raeder, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, and
Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring. The three advisors stressed that the
Rainbow Five plan showed that the United States was determined to defeat
Germany. They pointed out that Rainbow Five stated that the United States
would undertake to carry on the war against Germany alone even if Russia
collapsed and Britain surrendered to Germany. The three advisors leaned
toward Adm. Raeder’s view that an air and U-boat offensive against both
British and American ships might be risky, but that the United States
was already unquestionably an enemy. On December 9, 1941, Roosevelt made
a radio address to the nation that is seldom mentioned in the history books.
In addition to numerous uncomplimentary remarks about Hitler and Nazism,
Roosevelt accused Hitler of urging Japan to attack the United States.
Roosevelt declared:

“We know that Germany and Japan are conducting their military and naval
operations with a joint plan. Germany and Italy consider themselves at
war with the United States without even bothering about a formal
declaration…Your government knows Germany has been telling Japan that if
Japan would attack the United States, Japan would share the spoils when
peace came. She was promised by Germany that if she came in she would
receive control of the whole Pacific area and that means not only the Far
East, but all the islands of the Pacific and also a stranglehold on the West
Coast of North and Central and South America.”

All of the above statements are obviously lies. Germany and Japan did not
have a joint naval plan before Pearl Harbor, and never concocted one for
the rest of the war. Germany did not have foreknowledge and certainly
never encouraged Japan to attack the United States. Japan never had any
ambition to attack the west coast of North, Central, or South America.
Germany also never promised anything to Japan in the Far East. Germany’s
power in the Far East was negligible.

“We expect to eliminate the danger from Japan, but it would serve us ill
if we accomplished that and found that the rest of the world was dominated
by Hitler and Mussolini. So we are going to win the war and we are going
to win the peace that follows.”

On December 10, 1941, when Hitler resumed his conference with Raeder,
Keitel, and Göring, Hitler said that Roosevelt’s speech confirmed everything
in the Tribune story. Hitler considered Roosevelt’s speech to be a de facto
declaration of war. Since war with the United States was inevitable, Hitler
felt he had no choice but to declare war on the United States. Hitler
declared war on the United States in his Reichstag speech on December 11, 1941,
stating among other things:

"Since the beginning of the war, the American President Roosevelt has steadily
committed ever more serious crimes against international law. Along with
illegal attacks against ships and other property of German and Italian citizens,
there have been threats and even arbitrary deprivations of personal freedom by
internment and such. The increasingly hostile attacks by the American President
Roosevelt have reached the point that he has ordered the American navy to
immediately attack, fire upon and sink all German and Italian ships, in
complete violation of international law. American officials have even boasted
about destroying German submarines in this criminal manner. American cruisers
have attacked and captured German and Italian merchant ships, and their peaceful
crews were taken away to imprisonment. In addition, President Roosevelt’s plan
to attack Germany and Italy with military forces in Europe by 1943 at the latest
was made public in the United States, and the American government made no effort
to deny it."

Hitler ended this speech with a declaration of war against the United States.
Roosevelt had finally gotten a declared war with Germany using Japan as a back
door to war.

Closing Thoughts on Hitler’s Declaration of War Against the United States:

"No nation has ever been led into war with as many soothing promises of peace
as the American public received from President Roosevelt. Most of the American
public felt that the United States had entered the First World War under false
pretenses. Polls consistently showed that the American public did not favor
entry into a second war in Europe. Roosevelt assuaged these fears with statements
such as '…I have passed unnumbered hours, I shall pass unnumbered hours, thinking
and planning how war may be kept from this nation'.”

The truth is that Roosevelt did everything in his power to plunge the United States
into war against Germany. Roosevelt eventually went so far as to order American
vessels to shoot-on-sight German and Italian vessels — a flagrant act of war.
However, Hitler wanted to avoid war with the United States at all costs. Hitler
expressly ordered German submarines to avoid conflicts with U.S. warships, except
to prevent imminent destruction. It appeared that Hitler’s efforts would be
successful in keeping the United States out of the war against Germany. Hitler
declared war on the United States only after the leaked Rainbow Five plan convinced
him that war with the United States was inevitable. The extraordinary cunning of
leaking Rainbow Five at the very time he knew a Japanese attack was pending enabled
Roosevelt to overcome the American public’s resistance to entering the war. It
allowed the entry of the United States into World War Two in such a way as to make
it appear that Germany and Japan were the aggressor nations.

Wade says, "Undoing the lies...one page at a time!"

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