Excerpt from a book review published in the New York Times September 8, 1989
Why did Hitler betray the Japanese in 1941?
One must wonder whether the most hated man in the free world, himself the hater of Jews, felt any kinship with the most hated Jew in history, Judas, when he gave the declaration. On December 11th, 1941, the German leader Adolf Hitler declared that the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was an "act of cowardice", which "made the United States a natural ally of the German Reich in the defence of the Aryan Civilization against Asiatic Hordes". Until then, the Germans had been in alliance with the Japanese, and it was widely believed that the two might form a common front. Reading through the diary of President Roosevelt and the memoir of the British Prime Minister Churchill, one can see that the declaration came as a total shock to the Allies. Roosevelt wrote that "this is no good", while Churchill lamented "a dark day for the future of our War Effort & even Democracy itself". The President had promised Churchill that the United States would join the war in Europe at the soonest politically viable moment, but Hitler's move had thrown that plan into disarray. The Charles Lindbergh led America First Committee ended up using Hitler's declaration as a way to pressure the President into rerouting American support for the European front into the Pacific. Roosevelt came out of the affair a broken man, and it undoubtedly contributed to his death in 1942. And as we all know, defeating Germany was too late in 1945, as the Atomic Age had begun.
In his new book, Hitler's Betrayal, Professor of History at Harvard University Nicholas Hanson seeks to find out what led to the Fuhrer's decision. Eschewing traditional explanations emphasising tactical brilliance, Professor Hanson argues that Hitler was largely an irrational, emotional decision-maker. Through state-of-the-art psychological analysis of Hitler's published texts (his diaries are obviously unavailable), he argues that Hitler displayed the 'vindictive' personality trait. With this in hand he further argues that Hitler's decision was driven by the desire to revenge Japan's failure to attack the Soviet Union earlier in 1941...
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