The more I study, the less I seem to know. I have come to think of myself as someone who knows something about history, but sometimes facts become blurred and the memory fades. For example, when I think about WWII and Hitler’s perception of the US in regards to his ultimate plans, I somehow came to believe that Hitler thought the US would not be a difficult defeat after Europe came under his control. My bf seems to think that Hitler never had any real plans/ideas about defeating the US and that his plans were to remain in control of Europe (and some of Africa). What did Hitler think of the US ,ilitarily, and should the US have been fearful that Hitler might try to defeat them after he was done in Europe? Basically, what I am trying to understand is if the US went in to protect Europe or to stop Hitler before they became an immediate threat to the US.
Hitler, very conveniently, declared war on the U.S.. On Dec. 11, 1941 IIRC.
He did so technically because of his treaty with Japan, but there was no guarantee that he would honor it. It wouldn’t have been the first treaty he had ignored or broken.
Roosevelt of course jumped on the excuse to bring the war to Europe, as he had been trying to move America off of isolationism for years.
It’s hard to know what thoughts were ever in Hitler’s head, but there was never the slightest realistic threat to the U.S. from Germany. If you want to get into “what if” alternate realities, you can construct a scenario in which Hitler never invaded Russia, defeated Britain and developed long-range missiles, but barring that he no more could have taken a million troops to the U.S. than he could to the moon.
Hitler declared war on the US the day after (I think, anyway it was real quick) Pearl Harbor. My understanding is that he hoped the Japanese would declare war on the Soviet Union - a kind of one good turn deserves another sort of thing. He needed, or at least wanted, a second front for Stalin to worry about.
So Roosevelt had limited choice in asking for war to be declared on Germany (recent years not withstanding, Congress has the power to declare war. The President has powers to commit troops to counter, “Clear and Present Dangers.” Or some such wording anyway.) I don’t think this was a surprise to anyone. We had clearly aligned ourselves with Great Briton long before this.
My guess is that he had no real plans after winning in Europe. Given the state of his navy invading the UK was something of a tough nut to crack. Getting across the Atlantic would have been a reach indeed. Remember, even with all the US’s manufacturing/resourses we had England to get ready on, and it was still a tough thing to do.
Though to think it would have called it good enough for the day to quit then is probably very optimistic. I’m sure he would have eventually thought, after consolidating his gains, that being the, “King of Everything,” had a nice ring to it.
Something like a preemptive war or “war of choice”, in Europe anyway?
Hitler would undoubtedly have saved an attack on the U.S. for after he’d beaten Europe, Russia and Africa, which would imply the Middle East as well. With that kind of lebensraum and resources, he or his successors could have figured out a way to invade. Excpet that we’d have the bomb, and we’d use it. Of course, he’d probably have it, too, in such a scenario. Nasty situation, eh?
If my memory serves me corectly, Hitler declared war on the U.S. right after we declared war on Japan for bombing Pearl Harbor.
As far as Hitlers plans for the USA were concerned…
Back in my College days I was taugt by my History professor that once Hitler suceeded on running the United States out of Europe ( which very few know that he almost did), Hitler planed to conquer the US by first siezing Greenland. Greenland was to served as a launching site for his rockets, missles bases, and long range bombers to strike directly at American targets. He (Hitler) planned to blitzkrieg Washington DC the same way that he did london until it was completely destroyed. Meanwhile his submarine units (called wolfpacks) were to torpedo the entire eastern seaboard until all the shipyards and the entire US Navy and Marine Corps bases were completely wiped out. Once these things were accomplished and he managed to land Nazi troops on US soil, his first place of invasion was to be New Jersey “mainly because New Jersey at that time had a very high population of Jewish people living there”. Once New Jersey was siezed, The Nazis were going to build concentration camps there and were going to kill everyone that was either too old, too young, or too weak to work. The rest would become slaves. These slaves were going to rebuild all the railroads that led down south. Once this was accomplished the Nazi’s were going to make a big push inward on an all out rampage killing every black, hispanic, native american, and every non white person in sight as well as anyone else that stood in their way including whites. This is what he called (ethnic purification)
Meanwhile the Japanese were expected to invade the western seaboard and push inward. The both were expected to meet up in the middle of the country. Once this was accomplished and the US was both destroyed and beaten into submission, Hitler planned to turn on the Japanese, take all the territories that they had conquered, then get rid on them too. Meanwhile in the U.S., he was going to segragate the entire caucasion population into two main catagories.
The White collar and Blue collar workers
The white collar workers (Doctors, Lawyers, Judges, Bankers, Politicians, Executive Businessmen, engineers ect) were all expected to have Blond hair and Blue eyes (symbols of what he visioned as genetic superiority)
The blue collars ( people with black hair, green eyes, ect ) were all going to be everyone else (Teachers, store clerks, trash men, ect) Therse people would all be given a very limited education and would have very high restriction placed upon them. They would spend their entire lives in the direct servitude of what Hitler visioned as his true genetic “Master Race”
This was taught to me many years ago. I have no direct sites to verify this and have no references to prove the accuracy of all printed above.I am sure that there are others out there reading who may know a great deal more about this that can (and I’m sure they will) chime in on this and make any corrections they see fit, but for what its worth this is what we were taught, correct or not!
In The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer, Shirer describes a meeting Hitler had with various members of his government. All of them believed that America wouldn’t become a world player until the 1980s. There were no real plans for America until just before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Hitler figured that he could roll through Europe, sew up the occupation of the whole continent, and then deal with America at his leisure.
Hitler’s Nazi regeme had a specific name for these two catagories, but at this time I can’r remember exactly what it was. If anyone knows and is willing to inform us. it would be really appreciated
Hitler had fantasies about many things, but Starguard’s professor’s scenario is only that.
First, it’s hard to imagine what “almost running the United States out of Europe” might mean. It never happened. Certainly, German forces put up enormous resistance on all fronts, but the Italian and the Normandy landings were successes. The only truly large-scale counterattack was the Battle of the Bulge, but that never came close to driving our forces anywhere.
The rest of the scenario is about as plausible. The bombing of London never succeeded, and the planes were at the limits of their ranges even though they had only a couple of hundred miles to fly. Southern Greenland is more than 2500 miles from Washington, DC. No planes in the world could fly missions that long, even if they weren’t planning on returning to their bases. Hitler had no aircraft carriers that I know of. Long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles were still a decade or more away from development as well. And where would all our forces be while these wolfpacks were roaming around at will? Pushing the U.S. out of Europe would have allowed us to concentrate our forces on our coasts if it came to that.
Sheer nonsense, from beginning to end.
What Exapno Mapcase said.
Seriously, Starguard , if you can remember the professor’s name, give him a call and remind him to lossen the band on his tin-foil hat a couple of notches.
The Germans never came close to pushing the Allied armies out of Europe after June 6th. The Battle of the Bulge was a smashing success, for about ten days or so, at tops, followed by another week or so of doing okay. It was the best Germany could do, given the good luck of bad weather (limiting Allied air superiority), a very effective surprise attack, and being able to bring everything they had left to bear at one point. But at most it set things back by a few months. Even if successful it might have extended things by a year. Once the Allies were on the ground at Normandy Hilter was pretty much hosed.
The Normandy landings suceeded only because of an extensive deception campaign to deceive Hitler as to the time & place of the attack.
And BTW–the keel for the first German Carrier was laid, but work stopped when the Russian campaign started to go sour, & it was never finished.
The Italian fleet was, in fact, far more impressive than Germany’s, & their Naval Officers’ Corps as good as any seen in the War. Churchill says so in his 6 Volume “History Of The Second World War”.
I have all 6 in the firsat edition (US). 
I too have read a great deal about WWII, and AFAIK Starguard’s professor was completely full of it. There were no such detailed plans to invade America. By the time America entered the war, Hitler had already given up on the idea of invading England.
Sorry, Bosda, I’m going to have to see some hard data that the only reason Normandy succeeded is the deception campaign. I think you’re overreaching there.
The allies sent some decent strength divisions into Normandy against what wasn’t really the cream of the Axis forces. Even with the distracted units (and some out of position, it’s true) I think there was a decent chance of establishing the beachhead.
The Nazis were stuck between a sleeping giant and a drunken bear (the US and the USSR, respectively): defeating one may be possible if you forsake all other goals and devote one or two generations to the meat grinder, but to take on both is the equivalent of beating up on the Triad to get the guns to attack the Mafia.
Japan was in exactly the same situation, if you substitute a maddened dragon (China) for the bear. Japan might have convinced us to pull out of a massive war of attrition after losing all hopes of its own recovery following a decade-long war, but because it needed to commit troops to mainland Asia it had no possibility of killing that many Americans.
The only way for either of them to have won would have been for them to focus on either their close enemy or the US. Germany could have played up anti-Bolshevik sentiment in the US (unlikely with a popular near-Socialist like FDR in office) to encourage isolationism, or tried to keep Stalin from breaking the treaty that, in our world, Hitler broke (people who think they can reason with Stalin end up freeze-dried). Japan could have, I dunno, refrained from bombing a US base, or it could have let China kill itself off and focused on a Pacific campaign.
Then, maybe, after a long and brutal battle across one ocean or the other, then fighting an increasingly desperate land war into the very hinterlands of the US, killing fanatical partisans from every corner and region, losing immense amounts of soldiers in distant battlefields, well, maybe they could have beaten the US. But I doubt they could have even gotten a beachhead.
I think Bosda’s assertion is a fair one, though with some caveats. It becomes clearer if you restate the proposition in other terms. Had the Germans known the the location and time of D-Day in advance, they could have concentrated suffucient forces to defeat the landing.
But there were several other things that the Allies had to accomplish before the success of the invasion was secured, or could even be launched. First among them was winning the Battle of the Atlantic against the U-Boats. Second was America’s conversion of civilian industry to war production.
But I’m straying off the OP into IMHO territory, so I’ll stop now.
This is a subject that has come up before; here is a previous thread related to the OP: Did Hitler have any plans to invade the US?
For those that don’t want to follow the link, I’ll quote the quote I used in that thread. This is from Lee Sandlin’s article Losing the War, which originally appeared in The Chicago Reader:
(emphasis added)
For those that are interested, Sandlin’s article is available in its entirety on This American Life’s website. Even though the article was written in 1997, I think there are some disturbing parallels to our current situation.
Count me as another that is extremely skeptical of Starguard’s professor’s claims.
Very true, and if those ships weren’t being run by the Italian Navy ( a joke) they could have been dangerous. The Italian people just didn’t have their hearts in that war and their morale and fighting was crap thru-out the war. A Nazi Carrier would have been pretty well just a target for the British navy. They worked well in the Pacific where they coudl hide- no hiding in the North Sea.
True, there would have been many more casualties had Hitler not been decieved where we were invading. But most think the invasion would have succeeded anyway, If not, then they would have bombed the crap out of the Nazis some more, then re-invaded next year. Note that we had already invaded Europe in Italy, so that would have proceeded, delaying the end by maybe at most a year.
DrDeth --have you ever opened a book in your life? Because your posts are nonsense.
Carriers didn’t hide in the Pacific–they dominated it! Carriers operated in the Atlantic, too. Escort Carriers. And quite sucessfully.
I can’t comprehend where you pulled the idea from, that carriers “hid”, but I suspect you store flying monkeys there too.
As for D-Day, both Eisenhower’s book Crusade In Europe and Sir Winston Churchill’s History Of The Second World War agree that a D-Day defeat would have cost Churchill the Prime Minister’s seat, & probably ended any future attempts to inaved Northern Europe by sea.
Nitpick****
Ect may be short for ectoplasm, but it is not the abbreviation for etcetera. Try etc.
Thanks. :smack:
Almost all of Hitler’s initial plans for conquest were entirely to the east. There were a few small areas along its western border as well as Austria to the south that he wanted to “bring back” into Germany, but Hitler was mainly looking east.
First and foremost, for land (to grow food and hold Germans) and resources such as oil.
Secondly, to rid the world of his #1 enemy: Communism.
Thirdly, for racial reasons. He considered Slavs and other Eastern European peoples subhuman. They needed to be “replaced.”
So Hitler grabbed some and then all of Czechoslovokia. “Reunited” Austria. Then Poland was next, because of the reasons given above.
The war with France and England wasn’t really wanted at that time. They entered the war due to treaties with Poland. No treaties, then the first 10+ years of WWII in Europe would have been in Eastern Europe.
So Hitler was forced to deal with France and England. France was conquered but a puppet government was put in place. Once England was no longer viewed as a threat and resources were needed later, it too was mainly just harrassed.
People make a big deal of Hitler’s “mistake” in attacking Russia while England was still a threat. Hitler didn’t care that much about England. He thought they would eventually negotiate a truce. Russia was The Goal all along.
(Denmark, Norway, and the Low Countries were just places he needed to control for defense purposes. Something the people involved did not look so blandly upon.)
So suppose Hitler had no war with England and France. He would have fought long and hard with Russia. If Russia prevailed much as it did in WWII, then Hitler’s later plans didn’t matter. If Russia folded since it was “standing alone”, then Hitler probably had bigger plans for much further down the road.
This indeed would have been strongly based on the same 3 points I started with. More land and resources, bringing National Socialism to other areas of the world and ridding the world of people he loathed.
Note that once he had Russia west of the Urals, Russia east of the Urals would be easy. But I suspect that Japan would have declared war on Russia once they were convinced that Russia was effectively defeated. Then the Japanese would have taken the best parts of eastern Siberia.
Hitler also wanted Germany to have all the benefits of being a world power again, and that means colonies. So the Middle East and Africa would have contained areas of interest.
Hitler had to have viewed America as being very, very far down on the list. He probably hoped that he could “inspire” America to be more like Nazi Germany and thus have a German friendly government in place. The German-American Bund was quite popular before 12/7/41. The eventual goal for places like the US was more like Vichy France. Technically independent but politically subjugated.
America, then and now, is quite easy to lead into tyranny. And those “I have a rifle that says otherwise” types are exactly the people that can be most easily relied upon to help.