Hitler's Fatal Miscalculation Why Germany Declared War on the United States

Hitler's decision to declare war on the United States has baffled generations of historians. In this revisionist new history of those fateful months, Klaus H. Schmider seeks to uncover the chain of events which would incite the German leader to declare war on the United States in December 1941. He provides new insights not just on the problems afflicting German strategy, foreign policy and war production but, crucially, how they were perceived at the time at the top levels of the Third Reich. Schmider sees the declaration of war on the United States not as an admission of defeat or a gesture of solidarity with Japan, but as an opportunistic gamble by the German leader. This move may have appeared an excellent bet at the time, but would ultimately doom the Third Reich.

List of Figures; List of Maps; Preface; Acknowledgments; List of Abbreviations and German Terms; Introduction; 1. Hitler's Pre-war Assessment of the United States and Japan; 2. Hitler's Physical Health in Autumn 1941; 3. 'All measures short of war': the German Assessment of American Strategy, 1940/41; 4. Forging an Unlikely Alliance: Germany and Japan, 1933–1941; 5. Facing the Same Dilemma: The US and German Quest for Rubber; 6. The Crisis of the German War Economy, 1940/41; 7. The End of Blitzkrieg? Barbarossa and the Impact of Lend-Lease; 8. The Battle of the Atlantic; 9. The Luftwaffe on the Eve of Global War; 10. The Holocaust; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index.

Klaus H. Schmider has been with the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst since May 1999. He is the co-author of Volume 8 of the official German history of World War II, Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg (2007).