Hitler’s American Gamble: Pearl Harbor and Germany’s March to Global War by Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman
There were many hinge moments in the Second World War: Hitler’s decision to invade Russia in 1941, the Battles of Midway and Stalingrad in 1942 and D-Day in 1944. Yet none was more pivotal than the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which brought the United States into the war and ultimately doomed the Axis powers to defeat.
The assumption is that the US was bound to fight Germany from the moment Japan launched its pre-emptive strike. In fact, insist the authors of this well-written and highly original study, that was never a given and it was Hitler’s fateful decision on December 11 to declare war on America, rather than the other way around, that was the true turning point in the war.
